The Year 2023 in Movies

Continuing with the final part of our year in review, Matt Lynn Digital invites you to look back at the last year in reviews of books, movies, music and television. We look at these with individual categories, one per day through today. Today we share the forty-seven (47) movies from nine (9) decades reviewed by Matt Lynn Digital in 2023.

(The 1972 movie The Godfather).

The top rated movie we watched in 2023 was The Godfather (1972). Earning 4.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5, the film presented solid exposition of the power dynamics and traditions for the family as established by the family patriarch Vito, along with the command-and-control structure of the working the business.

(The 2023 movie Oppenheimer).

Four movies earned 4.5-stars in 2023, including the movie Oppenheimer (2023). The movie detailed the role American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer had in the development of the atomic bomb. The further movie Gone Girl (2014) was joined by There Will Be Blood (2007) and the movie Mystic River (2003).

(The 2023 movie Killers of the Flower Moon).

The movie Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) leads a dozen movies that earned 4.25-stars from Matt Lynn Digital. The ongoing murders of members of an affluent Native American tribe for profitable mineral rights, under the guise of marriage and love, made for a somber yet at times poignant movie. Other films to earn 4.25 stars included the movie The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), the biopic King Richard (2021), the biopic The Aviator (2004), the animated movie The Incredibles (2004), the pandemic-fueled horror movie 28 Days Later (2002), the alcoholism-fueled movie Leaving Las Vegas (1995), the coming-of-age movie The Breakfast Club (1985), the supernatural comedy Ghostbusters (1984), the political history movie Reds (1981), the independently released Friday the 13th (1980) and, finally, the movie Apocalypse Now (1979).

(The 2022 movie Death on the Nile).

The mastermind detective movie Death on the Nile (2022) leads a group of nine (9) movies to earn 4.0-stars from Matt Lynn Digital in 2023. Other quality movies in this group include the movie The Hateful Eight (2015), the biopic Walk the Line (2005), the historical drama Gladiator (2000), the movie The Big Lebowski (1998), the psychological horror movie The Silence of the Lambs (1991), the comedy Home Alone (1990), the science fiction movie Planet of the Apes (1968) and, finally, the film noir movie The Maltese Falcon (1941).

(The 2019 movie El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie).

Eighteen (18) movies earned the 3.75-stars rating for 2023, led by El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019). That coda to the Breaking Bad (2008-2013) television series spells out what happened with character Jesse Pinkman. Other movies earning 3.75 stars include the science fiction movie Alien: Covenant (2017), the animated movie The Secret Life of Pets (2016), the animated movie Inside Out (2015), the live-action animated movie Paddington (2014), the movie Chef (2014), the supernatural horror movie Oculus (2013), the biopic The Express (2008), the comedic movie Clerks II (2006), the science fiction blockbuster War of the Worlds (2005), the comedy Freaky Friday (2003), the movie Frequency (2000), the science fiction movie The Fifth Element (1997), the crime drama Absolute Power (1997), the family movie Hocus Pocus (1993), the neo-noir movie Blow Out (1981), the dystopian crime movie A Clockwork Orange (1971) and, finally, the animated movie Cinderella (1950).

(The 2021 movie Cry Macho).

A pair of movies led by the western movie Cry Macho (2021) earned 3.5-stars from Matt Lynn Digital. The other is the fantasy comedy Jack Frost (1998).

(The 2023 movie Nefarious).

Alleged demonic possession was in play for the movie Nefarious (2023), which at 3.25-stars on a scale of 1-to-5 completes our reviewed movies for the year. Having felt manipulated by this film to make a political point, our feeling was that we could have enjoyed this movie more if the presentation had taken a different approach.

Matt Lynn Digital appreciates your continued interest in the content we offer. Should you have albums that you’d like us to review, or similar work to that mentioned above, please be sure to let us know.

Matt – Sunday, December 31, 2023

Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton and Edward Herrmann in the Warren Beatty movie ‘Reds’

A love triangle mixes with the epic historical drama of the life and career of socialist, journalist and activist John Reed today. Reed reported on the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days That Shook the World, which held a large sway in the Warren Beatty directed and written movie Reds (1981). Trevor Griffiths also wrote Reds along with Beatty.

(From left, Edward Herrmann as Max Eastman, Warren Beatty as John Reed and Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant in the Warren Beatty movie Reds).

The movie Reds begins when suffragist and journalist Louise Bryant, married to another man at the 1915 encounter, meets radical John Reed for the first time at a lecture in Portland, Oregon. The intellectually engaging meeting convinces Bryant, portrayed by Diane Keaton, to join Reed, as portrayed by Warren Beatty, in Greenwich Village, New York City, New York. The womanizing ways of Reed is at odds with the idealism of his writing for Bryant.

(Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman in the Warren Beatty movie Reds).

The opportunity to meet Emma Goldman and Eugene O’Neill in the district folds into conversations on writing and the radical feelings of the group. O’Neill and Bryant develop intimate feelings for each other in this period, as the strikes of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) alongside the St. Louis, Missouri Democratic presidential convention stirs Reed‘s passions even further. The subsequent marriage of Reed and Bryant hits the difficulty of Reed‘s infidelity, prompting professional, interpersonal and political turmoil between the pair. Goldman and O’Neill were portrayed by Maureen Stapleton and Jack Nicholson.

(Jack Nicholson as Eugene O’Neill in the Warren Beatty movie Reds).

The story of John Reed‘s health, losing a kidney in the midst of this, leads to another instinct to head to Russia as the possibility of what became the Russian Revolution. Professionally reuniting for that trip, Bryant too experiences the ideals of that revolution. The love the pair once experienced reignites, at least until Reed and other communist sympathizers in America break ideologically. Practitioners of the Bolshevik ideology in the Petrograd (St. Petersburg), Russia put Reed to work as a propagandist. With help from O’Neill, Bryant aims to reconnect with Reed while the two are kept from having any legitimate communication. The parallel storylines of history and love were messy and difficult. The way both stories come to resolution reflect the successes of the story.

(From left, Paul Sorvino as Louis C. Fraina and Jerzy Kosinski as Grigory Zinoviev in the Warren Beatty movie Reds).

There is so much more to the tale of Reds than what this introduction to the story of the movie does in more than three hours of movie. Airport Friend rates the movie in the top ten movies he has ever seen. I grant the movie Reds and directed and partly written by Warren Beatty 4.25-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.

Matt – Wednesday, August 16, 2023