The Ten Best Performances of 2023

December 29, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged All of Us Strangers, American Fiction, Andrew Scott, Barry Keoghan, Emma Stone, Jeffrey Wright, Margaret Qualley, Mark Ruffalo, Molly Gordon, Paul Giamatti, Poor Things, Rosamund Pike, Saltburn, Theater Camp 2 Comments

It has already begun: the long march towards coronating a new quartet of actors whose performances are deemed the finest of 2023. And while the Oscars, Globes, and flurry of other guild awards tend to recognize the same handful of actors over and over again, here at Silver Screen Riot, we have our own version of who offered the best performances of 2023. So now that we’ve already gotten our way through the Ten Best TV Shows of 2023, and the Ten Best Movies of 2023, it’s time to move onto the Ten Best Performances of 2023.

Though it should go without saying, by “best”, I mean entirely my favorites so no need to send over an Excel sheet proving me why my preferences are wrong. From a year teeming with standout performances, several noteworthy ones made the greatest impact, though I could probably double this list and be more happy with it. But time is finite (mine and yours) and so here they are: Read More

The Ten Best Movies of 2023

December 22, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Barbie, Best of, Bottoms, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Lists, Past Lives, Poor Things, Saltburn, Talk to Me, The Holdovers, The Zone of Interest, Theater Camp, Top Ten 3 Comments

End-of-year lists are a rite of passage, a time to select the best of the best from all we’ve seen. And then anguish over what we’ve chosen. Like its small-screen counterparts, 2023 proved to be an unusual year in film. Countless delays due to widespread industry strikes shifted many potential blockbusters to 2024 and beyond, while numerous big-budget films flopped. In many ways, 2023 was a sea change year, signaling that past successes may not guarantee future wins. Disney Studios, for instance, experienced more flops than hits, and only two movies ended up scraping past the billion-dollar mark at the box office. Read More

The Ten Best TV Shows of 2023

December 21, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Beef, Dave, Drops of God, How To With John Wilson, Lists, Succession, The Bear, The Curse, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Last of Us, Top 10 Movies 4 Comments

2023 was a weird one. On the one hand, the TV industry had finally started to shake off the dust of the pandemic production halts to deliver a full year of small screen entertainment, though there were lingering effects and aftershocks felt throughout the industry. And then came the strikes. First the WGA and then SAG, strikes that lasted, in totality, from May to November. Or, a good half of the year. While necessary, the strikes impacted the release schedule of many a film and series and so kind of left viewers with yet another lopsided, half-formed year. But it certainly wasn’t still without its highlights. Read More

Top Ten Movies of 2022

December 29, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists 2 Comments

It’s been another game-changing year for movies. And not necessarily in the best ways. With pandemic aftermath continuing to shape the industry and the release of both major blockbusters and independent films, the wall between the big and small screen has continued to evaporate. As the global box office continued to struggle to recover, the biggest releases are overwhelming taking the biggest piece of the pie. The box office for films in the US and Canada is expected to finish the year at just $7.35 billion, a 35% drop off compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019, due in part to a lack of films released though in theater performance remained a major issue. While adult-oriented fare like dramas struggled to not flop, the top 10 films of 2022 accounted for more than half of the industry’s total box office, compared to 30-40% in previous years.

The Top Ten Best TV Shows of 2022

December 27, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular 4 Comments

2022 might not have been a banner year for movies but boy did it rip on the small screen. One of the best years that I can recall in terms of what was offered on television, whittling my favorites down to just a list of ten was an extremely difficult task. Choosing just ten meant I had to jettison shows I genuinely adored like Apple TV+’s Irish dark comedy Bad Sisters, AMC’s seductive Interview with the Vampire retelling, Netflix’s epic fourth season of Stranger Things, and the second season of HBO’s hysterical Righteous Gemstones. In a lesser year, all likely would have earned a slot here. Read More

The 10 Best Performances of 2021

March 27, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Ann Dowd, Kristen Stewart, Renate Reinste, Riz Ahmed, Simon Rex, Troy Kotsur 1 Comment

With the Oscars set to finally wrap up the 2021 Awards season this evening, it’s worth looking past the politicking and star power of the major awards shows to what was truly the most outstanding performances of last year. Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, the Academy Awards sometimes get things right but more often than not favor history and campaigning into who walks away with the golden statue. I’m looking instead at the purity of the performance in question to name the 10 best performances of 2021. Read More

Top Ten Films of 2021

December 22, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Bo Burnham: Inside, CODA, Dune, Pleasure, Red Rocket, Titane, Zola 1 Comment

What a year it’s been. In some capacities, post-pandemic life began to creep back to normal with the aid of vaccines. So too did the global box office. But multiple variants spooked people into skipping out of movies in theaters as a fundamental shift to the industry took shape. Day and date releases became more prevalent as the economics of a new movie market unfurled. A misleading rescue beacon, Spider-Man: No Way Home just delivered the best receipts of the entire 2020/2021 but that level of resurgent success seemed reserved exclusively for superhero content. No adult-skewing cinema has fared nearly as well. Read More

The SXSW 2021 Movies Already on Our Radar

February 12, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Lists Tagged Alien On Stage, Gaia, Here Before, I’m Fine (Thanks For Asking), Introducing, Jakob’s Wife, Language Lessons, Ninjababy, Offseason, Selma Blair, Sound of Violence, Swan Song, SXSW, SXSW 2021, The End Of Us, The Fallout, The Oxy Kingpins, The Spine of Night, Witch Hunt, Women is Losers, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror 1 Comment

SXSW has a history of bombast. What was once a modest Austin festival that celebrated the local scene, music, and emerging artists grew into one of the largest and most-attended festivals the world over. As crowd sizes grew so too did the prestige and scale of debuts with massive blockbuster movies like Furious 7 or Ready Player One playing to salivating fans willing to wait hours to see the world premiere. Read More

The Sundance 2021 Movies We Can’t Wait to See

January 4, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Lists Tagged A Glitch in the Matrix, Censor, CODA, Coming Home in the Dark, In the Earth, In The Same Breath, John and the Hole, Land, Mass, On the Count of Three, Passing, Prisoners of the Ghostland, Sundance, Sundance 2021, sundance 2021 movies to see, Sundance 2021 Movies We Can't Wait to See, The Pink Cloud, Violation, Wild Indian 1 Comment

Each and every year, figuring out what to watch at the Sundance International Film Festival is a journey in and of itself. Last year, I saw a good smattering of my favorite films of the year in Park City, including Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor and others that played the fest, like Dinner in America, later made its way onto that same list. This year, things are different. For the first time in its celebrated history, the entire festival will be conducted online. While this means no late-night parties, no skiing on those powdery Utah slopes, no rubbing elbows with your favorite celebrities, and less standing in blisteringly chilly queues, it also means enjoying Sundance from the comfort of your own couch. Read More

Top Ten Films of 2020

December 31, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Another Round, Best of the Year, Dinner in America, First Cow, Kajillionaire, New Order, Palm Springs, Possessor, Soul, The Invisible Man, The Painter and the Thief, Top Ten Leave a comment

Even though the theaters were closed for the vast majority of 2020 (at least where I live), I still managed to see nearly as many new releases this year as I did last year. In fact, I only saw five less, despite taking a six-month break from reviewing film. A small silver lining in all the nightmarishness of the year that would not end. Though it concluded rather…inconspicuously, 2020 started with a bang with my attending Sundance Film Festival (for the fifth time) and looking forward to an exciting year of personal and professional growth. Welp, that mostly ended in the gutter but here I am knocking out a Top Ten list because I know it is my sacred duty as a reviewer of film to produce such an annual list so produce I shall. Read More