The best films of 2023, as chosen by The Economist

livemint.com:

winner of the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes Film Festival, Justine Triet’s courtroom drama is both a gripping whodunnit and an unsparing examination of the sexual and professional rivalries within a marriage. Read more of our guides to the cultural treats of 2023 Hayao Miyazaki, a co-founder of Studio Ghibli, has said that this will be his final film—and what a swansong it is. A cryptic, cosmic fairy tale about letting go of the past, “The Boy and the Heron" is comparable to several of Mr Miyazaki’s previous visionary masterpieces.

One of the few recent science-fiction blockbusters not to be based on a superhero comic or film franchise, this impressively gritty war epic stars John David Washington as a soldier in the battle between humans and robots. Artificial intelligence is Hollywood’s current favourite villain, as “M3GAN" and the latest “Mission: Impossible" instalment showed. In 1970 a grouchy history teacher (Paul Giamatti) is forced to spend the Christmas holiday in a boarding school with an unruly student (Dominic Sessa) and a bereaved cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Reuniting the director and the star of “Sideways", a hit film of 2004, this humane, hilarious comedy already feels like a festive classic. A dogged journalist (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) investigates the case of a serial killer who is murdering prostitutes in the Iranian city of Mashhad, only to find that many of the city’s residents support the killer. Ali Abbasi’s dark thriller may be an excoriating critique of Iran, but it’s relevant to populist politics in the West, too.