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. 

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?"

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."

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."

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."

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."

"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."

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.

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."

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 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."

"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."

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.

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."

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."

"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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."