Poor Things (2023)
1. All of Us Strangers
Like Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021), which uses a similar timeslip concept, Haigh’s film is engaged with generational patterning and the impact of grief; but it is more invested in exploring the possibility of ultimately irreducible difference”Ben Walters
2. The Beast
There’s a real gut-punch of an ending thanks to the sheer jolting force of passion mustered by Seydoux, a fitting way to round off a film so preoccupied with disconnection and the waning of affect.”Kieron Corless
3. The Boy and The Heron
The Boy and the Heron is a story about the necessity of recognising and accepting one’s responsibilities – about the interior journey from innocence to experience, which gets thrillingly externalised through a series of surreal and epically scaled landscapes that are only familiar by the standard and iconography of Miyazaki’s own body of work. ”Adam Nayman
4. Close Your Eyes
The unfussy elegance of Erice’s filmmaking remains as fresh and clear as ever. It’s a contemplative style, allowing his superb cast time and space, regularly fading to black between scenes.”Leigh Singer
5. Daaaaaali!
Daaaaaali! moves in a kind of perfect (dis)comfort zone for Dupieux. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect fit than Dalí, the Spanish provocateur and surrealist. ”John Bleasdale
6. Eileen
There is a sickly, nicotine-yellow tinge to much of William Oldroyd’s adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2015 debut novel Eileen. It’s present in the colour grade and the costuming of this neat, assertive film, imbuing it with a sense of malady from the very beginning.”Caitlin Quinlan
7. Evil Does Not Exist
Evil Does Not Exist – Hamaguchi has said the title entered his mind while visiting the film’s locations – shows a filmmaker willing to muss up his own conceits and take gratifying risks when we might least expect them. ”Nicolas Rapold
8. Fallen Leaves
As in all of Kaurismäki’s Proletariat films, love represents the characters’ sole possibility of transcending – or at least surviving – the grinding reality of life under capitalism.”Giovanni Marchini Camia
9. Hit Man
Linklater’s latest feature is a screwball docudrama about a nerdy New Orleans philosophy professor whose sideline as a police-surveillance tech mutates into a series of flamboyant masquerades impersonating contract killers. It’s an unlikely job, but somebody’s got to do it. ”Adam Nayman
10. In Camera
Nabhaan Rizwan remains extraordinarily subtle as Aden, which is especially remarkable, given the span of his dramatic arc. It’s such a finely honed performance that we can’t see the joins, we don’t notice the moment when Aden crosses the line from sympathetic, put-upon striver to something more closely resembling sociopathy. ”Jessica Kiang
11. The Killer
“Modulated by Fassbender’s peculiar performance – highly restrained but not chilly, and definitely not cool cool – its superlative action plots out a double-edged study of professional independence that’s notable even alongside cinema’s gallery of criminal-with-a-code portraits.”Nicolas Rapold
12. May December
Fiction and fact, self-delusion and self-truth are given a dangerous edge in Haynes’s film, which, ultimately, isn’t so much about Julianne Moore’s Gracie’s actions as it is about society’s appetite for demonstrations of compunction, even where none is felt.”Ela Bittencourt.
13. Killers of the Flower Moon
In its gripping, turbulent, breathless final third – including a witty, touching epilogue – Killers of the Flower Moon becomes more than a revisionist western, more than a poisonous love story and more even than a classic gangster movie. It becomes a Martin Scorsese film, and there can be no higher praise.”Jessica Kiang
14. Maestro
Bradley Cooper’s directorial style, right until the graceful slowdown of the concluding chapters, is to drop us mid-sentence into conversations and in-jokes, all go-go-go, chatter and sparkle and Leonard Bernstein flinging himself from one affair to another.”Jessica Kiang
15. On the Adamant
Rather than relying on a linear narrative or a rigid analysis of the Adamant’s functions, Philibert’s scenes glide between collective meetings determining schedules and events, art therapy workshops, and portraits of the patients whose recurring presences form the core of the film.”Travis Jeppesen
16. The Pigeon Tunnel
An impressionistic patchwork in structure, Morris’s film is all fragments and canted angles in its framing and dressing: mirrors making multiple le Carrés; noirish dramatisations in shallow focus.”Nick Bradshaw
17. Poor Things
This dazzling suite of dirty minded delights is set in not-quite-reality during an era of never-quite-was. But particularly for women, and particularly for men, the poor things, its accuracy about the here and now gives its macaroon swirls an acidic sting – in both senses: formaldehyde and LSD.”Jessica Kiang
18. Youth (Spring)
Filmed over six years in buildings that house both workshops and dorms, it’s a portrait of a grind, yes, but also a testament to the irrepressible, earthy energy of the latest generation pressed into industrial service.”Nicolas Rapold
19. Tótem
The film is nothing so manipulative as a tearjerker, with Avilés’s exceptional direction keeping sentimentality at bay while still, almost magically, sampling the different flavours of grief that run like currents and crosscurrents between the members of this close-knit, bickering family. ”Jessica Kiang
20. Samsara
Samsara is a voyage that probes spiritual and cinematic boundaries to create a deeply moving meditation on what happens after we die and is, at times, a transcendent experience.”Ben Nicholson
► BFI London Film Festival 2023 runs until October 15. For screening details and tickets, visit the festival website.