Award season for film is upon us and we have spent the last few weeks pouring over dozens of additional films to pick our top choices for 2023. The actors and writers strike had a larger effect on the bigger tentpole films later in the year but the ones that typically go up for award season were still represented strongly.
This year several categories had strong ties between first and second place, showing the strength of the stories written by the writers, the directing, and the actors and actresses who portrayed those characters.
As someone who votes as a member of several critics groups, sometimes our favorites don’t shine in the combined voting of a larger membership. So I have started the TiBS Editors Choice Awards as a way to express my picks for the top categories to help showcase some other gems that may not reflect in the larger voting groups.
This year the top 3 films were a difficult choice and a widely varied category of films. Coming in at #3 was Oppenheimer, a biographical look at the life of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the film swept a large number of awards, including 6 categories for TiBS Editors Choice including Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Nolan), Best Score (Ludwig Göransson) and Best Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema).
Second was a twisted tail of privilege and lust in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Saltburn’s overall cast and setting combined with a unique story made this film hit our #2 spot.
Best Film for the first TiBS Editors Choice Awards went to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy And The Heron. Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki have created another monster hit with a film that many thought would never be made when he announced his retirement. Marketed as a semi-autobiographical take on his childhood, The Boy and The Heron brings all the joy and magic of Studio Ghibli to the screen and reaches a broad audience of interest and enjoyment. “Mahito, a young 12-year-old boy, struggles to settle in a new town after his mother’s death. However, when a talking heron informs Mahito that his mother is still alive, he enters an abandoned tower in search of her, which takes him to another world.”
We also want to call out performances from a new talent in film both in specific performance and directorial debut. In the new talent category (Breakthrough Performance), Dominic Sessa stands out with his debut in The Holdovers. A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.
Sessa stands out as an acting veteran along side Paul Giamatti (his teacher) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (the school’s head cook). Together these 3 land wins in 3 categories for our awards including Best Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Best Breakthrough Performance (Dominic Sessa), and The Holdovers in our top 10 films, landing at #9.
Complete TiBS Editors Choice Award List
BEST FILM: The Boy and The Heron
TOP 10 FILMS (ranked first place to 10th)
- The Boy and The Heron
- Saltburn
- Oppenheimer
- American Fiction
- Killers of The Flower Moon
- The Creator
- Poor Things
- Spider-man: Across The Spiderverse
- The Holdovers
- Origin
BEST LEAD ACTOR:
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
BEST LEAD ACTRESS:
Emma Stone, Poor Things
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
BEST ENSEMBLE CAST
Asteroid City
BEST DIRECTOR:
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Origin, Ava DuVernay
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
BEST DOCUMENTARY:
Still: A Michael J. Fox Story
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE:
Perfect Days, Japan
BEST ANIMATED FILM:
The Boy and The Heron
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer
BEST STUNT WORK:
John Wick: Chapter 4
BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE AWARD:
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
BEST DEBUT FEATURE FILM:
Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
