Every 2023 Movie With A 95% Or Higher On Rotten Tomatoes

Anyone who says they don't make good movies anymore simply needs to watch more movies. It's true that 2023 has had its fair share of major disappointments — not to mention the existential crises about the future of the entertainment industry — but there have also been great films of all genres, from animated blockbusters to scintillating romances to terrifying horror. This list is by no means a comprehensive rundown of the year's best films, but it includes the movies that were universally liked enough by critics to score 95% or over on Rotten Tomatoes.

A couple of disclaimers before we begin: Specific Rotten Tomatoes scores are subject to fluctuation, so to provide some sense of stability, this list includes only films that have received enough reviews to be officially "Certified Fresh." Some of these films might be listed as being from different years based on festival premieres or international releases, but we're considering any movie first released in the United States in 2023 as a "2023 movie." And finally, we're only considering narrative features for this particular list. 

Can a movie be called a "crowdpleaser" if it failed to attract crowds? Kelly Fremont Craig's cinematic adaptation of Judy Blume's classic middle-grade novel "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." came in under expectations at the box office, but nearly everyone who saw it loved it. Not only is its 99% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes among the highest of any film released in 2023, but its audience score on the site is also impressively high at 95%, and it earned an A rating from the CinemaScore polling service.

Following 6th grader Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) as she makes new friends, explores religion, and anxiously awaits her first period, the film is a faithful adaptation that respects its young audience's intelligence. It also has a top-notch cast, including Rachel McAdams, Benny Safdie, and Kathy Bates alongside many talented child performers. "Although the target audience is unquestionably mothers and daughters," wrote ReelViews' James Berardinelli, "'Are You There God? It's Me Margaret' has things to say to viewers of all genders and ages."

Celine Song's directorial debut "Past Lives" is the type of romantic drama that's easy to fall in love with. The story begins in South Korea, where childhood sweethearts Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) must say goodbye to each other when Nora and her family immigrate to Toronto. 12 years later, Nora, now living in New York, reconnects with Hae Sung over the internet, only for the two to fall out of contact again. 12 years after that, Hae Sung visits New York City to see Nora — who is now married to another writer named Arthur (John Magaro).

This low-key story is packed with intense romantic longing and is told with impressive emotional maturity. All three lead characters are nuanced and relatable, with brilliantly subtle performances from their actors. "Past Lives" was among the most talked-about films at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and love for the movie continued to grow over its successful run in arthouses this summer, with a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Looper's own review of the film couldn't list a single negative quality of the movie except: "It ends?"

At 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, "BlackBerry," directed and co-written by Matt Johnson, is easily the most critically acclaimed of 2023's strangely large number of films focusing on the histories of popular consumer products. Part of this is due to the fact it's possibly the only one of these films that doesn't feel like an advertisement; the BlackBerry brand is all but dead, and this rise-and-fall drama serves as a cautionary tale about how great ideas can become corrupted by big business and personal hubris.

Jay Baruchel is captivating as Mike Lazaridis, the unassuming inventor of the world's first smartphone, but it's Glenn Howerton who earned the highest praise from critics from his portrayal of the shady businessman Jim Balsillie: The "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" star won best supporting actor at the Hollywood Critics Association Midseason Awards. Reviews praised the Canadian indie's thrilling energy, earning favorable comparisons to films like "The Social Network" and "The Wolf of Wall Street." "'BlackBerry' is funny, fast and nerve-rattling," wrote Barry Hertz in The Globe and Mail. "And it is always — always — intensely entertaining."

Like "Past Lives," Raine Allen-Miller's "Rye Lane" is a romantic directorial debut that wowed the crowds at Sundance and earned near-universal critical acclaim, with a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Unlike "Past Lives," however, you can't expect to see "Rye Lane" show up at the Oscars — though released theatrically in the United Kingdom, it was sent straight to Hulu and is thus branded a "TV movie" in America. It's downright criminal that it got completely snubbed at the Emmys in favor of "Hocus Pocus 2" – but who needs awards when you can still enjoy a movie this funny, charming, and visually striking?

This rom-com follows two strangers, Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah), who meet in the bathroom at an art show and spend the rest of the day together. Both are trying to deal with recent break-ups, and they have instant chemistry even as the day's escalating chaos challenges what they thought they knew about each other. Top critic Ty Burr wrote of the film, "The vibe is so infectious, the colors so happily overripe, and the soundtrack so blissful that it's hard not to fall for the damn thing."

"Joyland" was Pakistan's official entry for best international feature at the 95th Academy Awards — though it was nearly banned from theaters in its home country due to its positive depiction of a transgender woman as a potential love interest. After winning the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and Queer Palm at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival along with the Independent Spirit Award for best international film, it made its way to American indie cinemas in the spring of 2023, courtesy of Oscilloscope.

Despite its title, "Joyland" is not a film that will leave you with a smile on your face. This is a family drama that ends in tragedy, delivering a searing look at the damages that patriarchy and cis-heteronormativity can wreak on individuals. At 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, it left critics stunned. John Nugent's review in Empire called the movie "a storming debut from writer-director Saim Sadiq: emotional, tender, and quietly radical. With any luck, it will herald a new era for Pakistani cinema."

When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, "Full Time" won awards for both best director (Eric Gravel) and best actress (Laura Calamy). It earned more awards following its French release in 2022, before eventually having a limited release in the United States in 2023. This is one of the less widely-seen films on this list, but at 98% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes (and 93% from audiences), those who have seen it have been extremely enthusiastic about it.

Following a single mother and hotel maid as she goes about her increasingly stressful day, "Full Time" has been praised for its thrilling intensity — earning multiple comparisons to the films of the Safdie brothers — as well as for its approach to drama. Cath Clarke from The Guardian found its degree of realism particularly surprising, writing, "It's such an authentic and relatable film — so meticulously observed, in fact, that to be perfectly honest, I assumed it had been made by a woman."

Not to be confused with the much worse-reviewed 2023 film "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," Rodrigo Sorogoyen's "The Beasts" is a Spanish and French co-production that won nine categories including best film at Spain's Goya Awards. In this thriller inspired loosely by true events, Denis Ménochet and Marina Foïs star as a French couple trying to set up an organic farm in Galicia, where the local "hill people" aren't pleased with their presence (to put things mildly).

Earning a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, "The Beasts" left many critics deeply unnerved, with several comparing it to John Boorman's infamously twisted "Deliverance." Writing for Variety, Peter Debruge described the film as "a deeply uncomfortable portrait of everyday evil that's all the more terrifying for being true — not the two main characters, who are fictional, but the conflict that comes to define their new life in that wild corner of northwest Spain."

Released theatrically in South Korea in 2021, Hong Sung-eun's "Aloners" didn't get a theatrical release at all in America. Instead, Film Movement has made it available for rental or purchase on various digital platforms. Judging from its Rotten Tomatoes score of 98%, the vast majority of critics who've seen it believe that it's worth renting, if not purchasing.

Gong Seung-yeon stars as Jina, a call center worker who lives in complete isolation outside of her job, but begins to open up to a new trainee (Jung Da-eun). For cultural context, Korean society has historically been very group-oriented, and the growing number of honjok loners among younger generations was a topic of interest even before the COVID-19 pandemic made this subject matter even more universally relevant. "While the message is pat," wrote Noel Murray in the Los Angeles Times, "the way it's presented is poignant, thanks to an arresting lead performance from Gong, who manages a tricky balance of chilliness and charm."

"Return to Seoul," from writer-director Davy Chou, is another entry on this list submitted to the Oscars and other awards as a 2022 film (it won best film from the Boston Society of Film Critics) but didn't receive a commercial release in the United States until 2023. Whatever year you count it under, this international co-production with a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes is among the very best, a thoughtful character study centered around what should be a star-making performance from first-time actress Ji-Min Park.

Park plays Freddie, an adoptee who grew up in France and is seeking out her birth family in South Korea. The film follows Freddie on multiple trips to Korea, taking unexpected turns as the character changes over the years in her struggle for a sense of belonging. Amy Nicholson of The New York Times raved, "'Return to Seoul' is a startling and uneasy wonder, a film that feels like a beautiful sketch of a tornado headed directly toward your house."

The Mexican-Peruvian horror film "Huesera: The Bone Woman," directed and co-written by Michelle Garza Cervera, won the best new narrative director and Nora Ephron awards when it premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. Released in 2023 in Mexican theaters and streaming exclusively on Shudder in the United States, it's one of the best-reviewed horror films of the year on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 97% rating from critics.

Centering around a pregnant woman (Natalia Solián) who gets cursed by an evil spirit, "Huesera: The Bone Woman" draws inspiration from "Rosemary's Baby" to deliver a fresh work of body horror. Based on her spine-tingling direction here, critics are hyped to see what Cervera makes next. Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News said that the film "announces the welcome arrival of a new horror filmmaker who knows how to tell a damn good, multi-layered story that has a purpose and a vision."

Released to blockbuster success in Japan in 2022 before coming to the States in 2023, "Suzume" is the latest anime from writer-director Makoto Shinkai. This fantasy adventure follows a teenage girl (Nanako Hara in Japanese, Nichole Sakura in English) traveling across Japan to stop a supernatural "worm" from causing natural disasters. As anyone who's seen a Shinkai film can expect, there's also a romance involved — but the romance is downplayed, given that the love interest (Hokuto Matsumura in Japanese, Josh Keaton in English) is magically transformed into a chair for the majority of the film.

For all its whimsical strangeness, "Suzume" still tugs at the heartstrings with its coming-of-age drama and the unusually direct way it addresses the tragedy of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%, only two points behind Shinkai's mainstream breakout "Your Name" and higher than his subsequent film "Weathering With You." Tim Robbey's review for the Daily Telegraph (UK) called it "Shinkai's most spookily beautiful work to date, while remaining treasurably odd."

"A Thousand and One," the feature debut of writer-director A.V. Rockwell, won the grand jury prize in the U.S. dramatic competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and went on to receive a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 97%. Set in New York City over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, this drama stars Teyana Taylor as Inez de la Paz, a mother who tries to take back her son Terry (played by Aaron Kingsley Adetola at age 6, Aven Courtney at age 13, and Josiah Cross at age 17) from the foster system.

Taylor's performance earned raves, as did Rockwell's assured direction and the emotionally devastating portrayal of the systemic social failures of the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. In her four-star review for The Washington Post, Ann Hornaday wrote, "This is a tough, beautiful, honest and bracingly hopeful movie about mutual care and unconditional love, with a transformative and indelible performance at its core."

Cristian Mungiu is among the most celebrated directors of the Romanian New Wave, with his most famous film being the 2007 Palme d'Or-winning abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." His latest movie, "R.M.N.," which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is based on the 2020 Ditrău xenophobic incident, in which a mob of Hungarians violently forced Sri Lankan workers out of their town.

It's certainly not an easy watch, but those who've seen it agree it's a powerful one. The film's Rotten Tomatoes score is 96% among critics and an even higher 98% among audiences. As Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor wrote, "Mungiu does not offer an easy remedy for this toxic mess. How could he? But no one who makes a movie this vehement can fail to harbor a hope for what human beings, at their best, can be. 'R.M.N.' is the work of an outraged idealist."

Between "Joyland" and "The Blue Caftan," 2023 is shaping up to be an impressive year for queer stories from predominantly Muslim countries. Directed and co-written by Maryam Touzani and officially submitted by Morocco for best international feature at the 95th Academy Awards, "The Blue Caftan" tells the story of a husband (Saleh Bakri) and wife (Lubna Azabal) who run a traditional caftan shop and hire an apprentice (Ayoub Missioui) — with whom the closeted husband quickly falls in love.

Critics embraced this quietly groundbreaking drama, giving it a 96% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. Those who went in expecting the sort of straightforward tragedy that so often dominates gay narratives were pleasantly surprised. "What at first appears to be a story of secret lives and betrayal destined for a tragic end becomes a nuanced portrait of unconditional love and acceptance at its most radical," wrote Chris Shields at Sight and Sound.

If you've only seen one film on this list, it's probably "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse." The sequel to the groundbreaking animated film "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" is one of the most popular films of 2023 and is widely agreed to be in the same league as its predecessor. On Rotten Tomatoes, "Across the Spider-Verse" currently holds a 95% critics' rating, just two points below that of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (the audience scores are tied at 94%).

Co-directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson from a screenplay by David Callaham and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, "Across the Spider-Verse" delivers more of everything people loved from the first movie: More Spider-people, more inventive animation styles, more comedy and action and emotion. The one thing it doesn't have is a more satisfying ending — viewers will have to wait for "Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse" for an actual narrative conclusion. Even superhero skeptics loved this movie, with Adam Nayman at The Ringer calling it "smart stuff, leaps and bounds beyond Marvel's snarky hegemony."

When it premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, "Blue Jean" won the Giornate Degli Autori's People's Choice Award. It later earned writer-director George Oakley and producer Hélène Sifre BAFTA Award nominations for outstanding debut by a British writer, director, or producer. When it hit American theaters in summer 2023, critics in the U.S. ended up liking it just as much as critics in the U.K. The film holds a 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

This story about a closeted lesbian physical education teacher (Rosy McEwen) in 1988 — the same year Section 28 banned "promotion of homosexuality" in British schools — proves scarily relevant to current concerns about rising homophobic and transphobic legislation. "[All] of this might have come across as didactic and blandly worthy," wrote the Financial Times' Leslie Felperin, "but Oakley evokes a strong sense of period with gritty, grainy cinematography that harks back to the look of 1980s British drama."

Gabriel Bier Gislason's "Attachment" was released in Denmark in 2022, and in the United States, it's streaming exclusively on Shudder. This genre-bending film's first act is essentially a lesbian romantic comedy, with Danish actress Maja (Josephine Park) and British Jewish academic Leah (Ellie Kendrick) instantly hitting it off at Christmas. However, when Leah has to return home to her mother (Sofia Gråbøl) due to health issues, the story shifts in the direction of psychological horror, with a great deal of mystery and creative usage of Jewish folklore.

Though it has a 95% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, most reviews were relatively mixed, leaning positive but not as passionately as most other films on this list — for comparison, it only has a 64 rating on Metacritic. Megan Navarro's review for Bloody Disgusting was emblematic of this mixed-positive consensus: "The horror allegory for codependency told through Orthodox Judaism reinvigorates an oft-stale subgenre, even though Gislason's simple resolution can't avoid possession pitfalls by the journey's end."

The highest-rated 2023 summer blockbuster among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with a Tomatometer score of 96%, is one of the year's biggest surprises. Critics have not been fond of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise in the past, to put it kindly. Still, the animated reboot "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," directed by Jeff Rowe, is a significant artistic step up from previous cinematic incarnations of the heroes in a half-shell.

Reviews highly praised the film's animation, which makes use of the technical innovations of the "Spider-Verse" films for a rougher and grittier style, as well as its youthful energy and sense of humor. Liz Shannon Miller at Consequence was one of many who found it a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of lesser corporate blockbusters: "In a time when so much of what we consume can feel plastic and cheap and mass-produced, it's the human touch we come to crave — especially when it leads to something as fun as this."

The confusingly-titled "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" might have underwhelmed at the box office compared to previous installments in the spy series, but with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the Christopher McQuarrie-directed action extravaganza is the second-best reviewed "Mission: Impossible" film, behind only 2018's "Mission: Impossible — Fallout." For the record, 96% is the same Tomatometer score another Tom Cruise-starring movie, "Top Gun: Maverick," earned last summer.

Love him or hate him, Cruise is a master when it comes to stunts, delivering physical spectacles that demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Though action always takes precedence in these movies, the story of "Dead Reckoning Part One" also earned acclaim, especially in the way it addresses topical concerns about artificial intelligence. "Relentlessness of this order ought to be chilling," wrote Anthony Lane for the New Yorker. "Not so. Instead, we are stirred and amused by a preternatural sight: men as little machines."

The CG anime "The First Slam Dunk" is the only narrative film of 2023 to maintain a "Certified Fresh" score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes through the end of the year. Writer/director Takehiko Inoe adapted the final arc of his own classic basketball manga "Slam Dunk," and the result was one of Japan's biggest box office hits of the year. While the source material might not be as nostalgically familiar to American audiences, the movie is fortunately easy to follow without background knowledge, as flashbacks presenting the players' backstories are seamlessly intercut with the action of the game itself.

"The First Slam Dunk" is one of the highlights of what's been a great year for Japanese cinema and for hybrids of 2D art with 3D animation. David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote of the film, "No movie has so literally reduced basketball to 'just a game,' and no movie this side of 'Hoop Dreams' has so ecstatically conveyed why it's also so much more than that."

Produced as the kick-off to the 70th anniversary celebration for the "Godzilla" franchise, Takashi Yamazaki's "Godzilla Minus One" has become something of a phenomenon among the American moviegoing public. Its Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores are tied at 98%, and it became the highest grossing live-action Japanese film at the North American box office within a week of release.

Not only is the film very good, but it's good in ways people are genuinely surprised to find in a kaiju movie. "Did not have 'Cry During a Godzilla Movie' on my 2023 bingo card but here we are," said Brian Gill on the Mad About Movies Podcast. Set in the aftermath of World War II, "Minus One" revisits the nuclear horror of the original 1954 "Godzilla" film. But by focusing on underdog civilian perspectives and Japanese trauma over its defeat in the war, it delivers what might be the most emotionally powerful human story in the series.

"The Teachers' Lounge," directed and co-written by İlker Çatak, is the winner of five German Film Awards (out of seven nominations) and became the country's official submission for the best international film award at the 96th Academy Awards. It's one of the best-reviewed films of 2023, with a 98% fresh score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes — though its audience score is in the "rotten" range. Why this huge gap? A reasonable explanation is that "The Teachers' Lounge" makes the viewer feel uncomfortable via the characters' escalating bad decisions. Like the similarly discomforting "Uncut Gems," critics applaud how the film successfully accomplishes this goal, though the intention itself isn't appreciated by all viewers.

The film follows Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), a middle school math and gym teacher, as she tries to investigate a pattern of thefts happening in her classroom. Matt Zoller Seitz praised how the film takes this grounded premise to heights of intensity in his review for RogerEbert.com, writing, "It's not easy to make an intense thriller about things that could actually happen. But when one appears, it's glorious."

Aki Kaurismäki is perhaps Finland's most notable auteur, directing dry comedies with a distinctive minimalist style and close attention to the struggles of his country's working class. "Fallen Leaves," his latest film, is a rom-com of sorts about a lonely woman working odd jobs (Alma Pöysti) who crosses paths with a similarly lonely alcoholic man (Jussi Vatanen). Its critics score on Rotten Tomatoes currently stands at 98%.

"Fallen Leaves" won the jury prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and has gone on to receive bountiful awards recognition, including a surprising but deserving best actress (musical or comedy) nomination for Pöysti. The Ringer's Adam Nayman wrote of the film, "Faced with a bruised and battered world, 'Fallen Leaves' merely soothes it, and that's enough; of all the movies released in 2023, it's the one with the most humane, satisfying ache." A bonus point in its favor: in a year filled with three-hour-long epics, "Fallen Leaves" is able make all its points within a compact 81 minutes.

Trần Anh Hùng won the best director award at Cannes for the foodie romantic drama "The Taste of Things." France selected the film as its official submission to the 96th Academy Awards — a move that prompted some controversy given the snubbing of another movie on this list. But critics aren't holding that dispute against "The Taste of Things," which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 98% as we write this.

Set in 1885, the movie stars Benoît Magimel as restaurant owner Dodin Bouffant and Juliette Binoche as his star chef Eugénie. The meticulously prepared, gorgeously filmed dishes shared between the characters serve as expressions of their love. It's extremely traditional and extremely French, but familiarity isn't a knock against a film so expertly crafted. "Lingering on the tongue like a sip of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the film leaves one feeling a little drunk, desperately hungry and entirely alive," wrote Zachary Barnes in The Wall Street Journal.

"Shayda," written and directed by Noora Niasari, tells the story of an Iranian immigrant (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and her daughter (Selina Zahednia) living in a women's shelter in Australia — and what happens when her abusive, estranged husband (Osamah Sami) reenters their lives. As of this writing, only a single negative review keeps the film short of a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, although its 98% rating is still mighty impressive.

Sundance attendees loved Niasari's tense feminist drama, giving it the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Australia selected "Shayda" as its entry for best international film at the 96th Academy Awards, though it missed the shortlist. Some reviews were relatively muted in their praise, finding parts of it predictable, but as Deadline's Damon Wise put it, "Even at its most conventional, Niasari's film is always respectful of the reality behind its fiction, alluding to the full spectrum of domestic abuse in the obliquely glimpsed stories of the women who pass through Shayda's shelter."

Louis Garrell, the son of French New Wave filmmaker Philippe Garrell, is best known as an actor (he has a supporting role in another film on this list), but he's also been directing movies as well — this nepo-baby's got talent! With a 98% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, the heist comedy "The Innocent" is his best-reviewed directorial work thus far. Released in 2022 in France, it was the most nominated movie at the 48th César Awards, with 11 nominations. It won two categories: best original screenplay and best supporting actress for Noémie Merlant.

More than anything else, critics described "The Innocent" as fun. While full-on raves were few (its Metacritic score is only 68), the mix of genres, a fast pace, and a wacky sense of humor was almost universally agreed upon as solid popcorn entertainment. Critic and comedian Ian Thomas Malone wrote of the film, "'The Innocent' thoroughly marches to the beat of its own drum, a tender comedy that finds ample meaning within the simple mechanics of narrative."

From "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" to "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" to "Fast X" to "Rebel Moon: Part 1 — A Child of Fire," 2023 might as well be called "the year of the 'Part 1.'" You can add Martin Bourboulon's "The Three Musketeers: Part 1 — D'Artagnan" to the list of the year's incomplete blockbusters, though French audiences already got to enjoy its follow-up, "Part 2 — Milady," over the 2023 holiday season (Americans will have to wait for the second part in 2024).

The latest adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic swashbuckler novel, starring François Civil as D'Artagnan and Vincent Cassel, Pio Marmaï, and Romain Duris as the three musketeers, may be one of the best cinematic interpretations yet, judging from its 98% fresh rating among critics. Empire magazine's Lillian Crawford described it as "an epic adaptation worthy of [the novel's] scope, rendered in delicious French by its dangerously sexy cast."

Maryna Er Gorbach's "Klondike," about a family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine at the start of the war in 2014, was already winning awards at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The escalation of the conflict underlined the importance of this film, which continued to wow crowds and win awards at film festivals around the world and became Ukraine's official submission to the 95th Academy Awards.

Finally getting an American theatrical release from Samuel Goldwyn Films in August 2023, "Klondike" has a 98% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. "'Klondike' is certainly not an easy watch," wrote Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles Times, "but it is a profound one — a film that feels both prescient and retrospective about Ukraine, locked in what seems a never-ending existential conflict with its neighbor."

Search for "When Evil Lurks" on Google Images and most of the top results will be blurred out if you have Safe Search on. It's that kind of horror movie, filled to the brim with blood, guts, and downright shocking displays of graphic violence — sometimes with children and animals involved. And yet this Argentinian possession story from director Demián Rugna isn't just going for shock value — if it was, it probably wouldn't have a Rotten Tomatoes score of 98%.

"What makes Demián Rugna's film so effective is not the gore or the idea of a demonic contagion," said Alison Willmore in her write-up of the movie for Vulture. "It's the way that the weaknesses of human nature, on both a personal and a systemic level, make stopping the corruption almost impossible once it appears." This might not be a film everyone can stomach, but those who can come away impressed.

"Fremont," directed and co-written by Babak Jalali, stars first-time actress Anaita Wali Zada as Donya, a former U.S. military translator in Afghanistan who now works at a fortune cookie factory. Co-starring comedian Gregg Turkington and Jeremy Allan White from "The Bear," this low-key character study has a 97% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film's dry comedy, deliberate pacing, and black-and-white cinematography have prompted a lot of comparisons to the films of Jim Jarmusch. While many have described the film as "slight" or warned that it might be too uneventful for some viewers, critics have responded positively to the strength of its characterization. Reviewing it for The Stranger, Chase Hutcherson wrote, "A film in which the most 'exciting' thing to happen is that someone goes for a drive, 'Fremont' is a gem of small storytelling that becomes deceptively vast the longer you sit with it. It is as patient as it is playfully poetic."

Hirokazu Kore-eda has one of the strongest track records of all currently working directors — every film he's directed with enough reviews for a Tomatometer rating has a fresh one. Such is the case with "Monster," his latest thriller, which has earned a 97% approval from critics. This mystery, gradually unraveling through the presentation of three different characters' perspectives, is as adept at exploring complex social issues and painfully intense emotions as any of Kore-eda's best films.

"Monster" won two awards at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival: best screenplay and another award we won't name here since it arguably counts as a spoiler for the film's third act. While critics didn't universally concur on whether the distinctive multi-perspective structure was mostly effective or overly manipulative, they generally agreed that it ends up in a powerful place. "Despite its sometimes overwrought mystery-tale gambits," wrote Mark Jenkins in The Washington Post, "'Monster' ultimately shifts from a saga of fateful misunderstanding to one of mutual comprehension."

After the disappointment of 2017's sci-fi flop "Downsizing," Alexander Payne has returned to form with "The Holdovers." Set in 1970 and filmed to look like a movie from that era, this dramedy stars Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly classics professor assigned to look after students "held over" at a boarding school during Christmas vacation. First-time actor Dominic Sessa plays Angus Tully, one such "holdover" with a particularly complicated family situation, while Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays Mary Lamb, the cafeteria lady mourning her son killed in Vietnam.

All three actors have been picking up awards left and right, with Randolph nearly sweeping critics' awards for supporting actress. With 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, this is one of the consensus crowdpleasers of the fall movie season. Leah Greenblatt of Esquire magazine praised the film's throwback quality: "It may not be the future of filmmaking, but for two hours at least, the past has rarely felt more present."

Justine Triet's "Anatomy of a Fall," a relationship drama wrapped up inside a murder procedural, won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at Cannes. With 96% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it's proven a favorite of critics, who have showered it with awards for best international film — though it won't repeat those wins at the Oscars due to France snubbing the film as its official submission, possibly for political reasons.

One major key to the film's success is its provocative ambiguity — the story, and Sandra Hüller's brilliant leading performance therein, can be read in two different yet equally valid and compelling ways. Wendy Ide emphasized this appeal in her review for The Guardian, writing, "Ultimately, one of the key pleasures of the picture is its uncertainty — the niggling doubts that remain, and the sense that a crucial piece of the puzzle is tantalizingly out of reach."

Any Hayao Miyazaki movie is an event, but "The Boy and the Heron," the director's latest failed attempt at retiring, has been embraced by critics with an enthusiasm beyond that which has greeted most of his films. Its Rotten Tomatoes score of 96% is tied with that of consensus favorite "Spirited Away" and behind only the 98% score for "Kiki's Delivery Service." The American moviegoing public has also embraced this distinctively odd fantasy, breaking records for an original anime film at the US box office.

There's a lot going on in "The Boy and the Heron": scenes taken from Miyazaki's childhood, the horrors of World War II, reflections on the fate of Studio Ghibli, different aspects of life and death colliding in adorably animated metaphors, and hungry fascist parakeets, among other things. In The Boston Globe, Odie Henderson called it "a triumphant film that, as expected, is as enthralling as it is occasionally confounding. I have seen 'The Boy and the Heron' twice, yet still cannot fully explain it to you."

"Poor Things" (which narrowly missed this list with 93% on Rotten Tomatoes) isn't the only feminist take on "Frankenstein" to excite genre fans this year. "Birth/Rebirth," directed and co-written by Laura Moss, offers a uniquely disturbing twist on the tropes introduced in Mary Shelley's classic. Here, the mad doctor (Marin Ireland) obsessed with bringing the dead back to life finds her perfect test subject when a nurse (Judy Reyes) loses her six-year-old daughter (A.J. Lister) to a sudden illness. Inevitably, things go very bad.

Premiering as part of the Sundance Film Festival's midnight line-up, "Birth/Rebirth" has gone on to earn three Independent Spirit Award nominations and a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As K. Austin Collins wrote in Rolling Stone, "The movie is freaky. But it never feigns to become a mere freakshow. It works, in part, because it hurts. It works because it defers that hurt until, at long last, it cannot be avoided."

Similar to fellow Sundance premiere "A Thousand and One," "Earth Mama" explores the struggles of a Black single mother whose children are caught in the foster care system. Writer/director Savannah Leaf drew inspiration for this fictionalized narrative from the true stories depicted in "The Heart Still Hums," a documentary short film she co-directed with Taylor Russell. Not only is this Leaf's feature directing debut, but it's also the first time rapper Tia Nomore has acted — and she's excellent playing a deeply flawed but strongly sympathetic character.

This sad yet hopeful film flew under the radar during its summer release (box office numbers weren't even reported), but it's been recognized as one of the best independent films of the year by the National Board of Review, earned best first feature and best breakthrough performance nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, and a score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Little White Lies' David Jenkins called it "the first insanely good entry into what we can hope will be a long and winding career behind the camera."

Wes Anderson's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," based on the short story of the same name by Roald Dahl, is an odd duck of a film. It's the only short film to qualify for this list, though at 39 minutes in length, it's as long as a short film can be without technically qualifying as a feature for awards purposes. It's also perhaps the most directly faithful literary adaptation ever filmed, with stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayaode, Dev Patel, and Ralph Fiennes reading practically every word of the short story while enacting it on stylized theatrical sets.

With a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes, "Henry Sugar" proved less divisive than Anderson's 2023 feature "Asteroid City" (75%). Perhaps it's just because fewer critics reviewed it, or perhaps the short format and the strength of Dahl's fantasy made it more involving for those more reticent towards Anderson's style. In her video review with Breakfast All Day, Christy Lemire said, "I think this is the just the right bite-size amount of Wes Anderson ... I kind of feel like shorts are an excellent use of his style [and] his voice."

Anderson also directed three other Dahl-based shorts for Netflix this year, and while the others don't have enough reviews to be "Certified Fresh," it's worth noting that "The Rat Catcher" is currently at 100%.

Usually when a live-action film released by Netflix gets rave reviews from critics, it's either a film festival acquisition or some Oscar-seeking project from an established auteur. This makes it a pleasant surprise that "They Cloned Tyrone," an unpretentious sci-fi comedy from a first-time director (Juel Taylor) released during the summer movie season, turned out not only good but nearly unanimously praised, with a 95% rating from critics (the verified audience rating is 100%).

Reviewers praised the movie's clever stylistic homage to classic blaxploitation films, its integration of social commentary into a wacky mystery, and the chemistry of the film's three main stars, John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx (nominated for best supporting performance at the Gotham Awards). Empire magazine's Amon Warmann described it as "a stylish, laugh-out-loud blast that has something to say but doesn't sacrifice enjoyment to do so, anchored by a trio of great performances."

In a year where Disney's big releases mostly floundered both critically and commercially, there's something oddly cathartic about one of the year's best-reviewed animated films being one that Disney almost killed. "Nimona," based on N.D. Stevenson's webcomic about a shapeshifter pursuing "villainy" in defiance of an oppressive medieval-futuristic regime, was initially in the works at Fox's Blue Sky Studios until Disney shut the studio down. Fortunately, the movie got a second life thanks to Netflix, Annapurna Pictures, and DNEG Animation, with former Blue Sky animators Nick Bruno and Troy Quane directing.

The finished "Nimona" earned a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score and multiple award nominations for best animated film. It's earned praise for its stylized animation, offbeat humor, and, perhaps most significantly, its handling of both textual and subtextual LGBTQ+ themes. "'Nimona' is set to be one of the great films of 2023 for queer representation and positivity," wrote Pat Mullen in Xtra magazine. "It's refreshing to see a film that's more concerned with getting it right than getting it done first."

Carolina Cavalli, an Italian filmmaker who also co-wrote fellow list entry "Fremont," made her directorial debut with the coming-of-age comedy "Amanda," released in Italy in 2022 before coming to American arthouses in 2023. Benedetta Porcaroli plays the title character, a self-obsessed 24-year-old trying and failing to get a boyfriend but in desperate need of making any kind of friend.

This protagonist has sparked some strong feelings from critics, with many finding her frustrating to watch. But thanks to Porcaroli's strong performance, this sense of frustration cohered into something compelling and funny enough that the film managed to get a 95% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. "I got very impatient with this film," said Amy Nicholson in her mixed but ultimately positive review for NPR Los Angeles' FilmWeek, "but the one thing that holds your attention is Benedetta Porcaroli. She's astounding, and she makes you like it better than you should."