Most casual cinephiles know about Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, and Asteroid City. The more serious might have heard about Poor Things, Past Lives or Anatomy of a Fall. All of those excellent films earned plenty of buzz in 2023.
What about the ones that didn’t? Here are five under-the-radar recommendations you can stream now. While not necessarily the best movies of the year, these stories haven’t received the recognition they deserve. Let’s change that, starting with…
1. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a fascinating film. Cowritten by director Daniel Godhaber and lead actress Ariela Barer, this heart-pounding heist thriller turns angry young ecoterrorists into understandable, sympathetic, even likable heroes.
In the original nonfiction manifesto How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Swedish scholar Andreas Malm critiques the current climate-activist movement’s commitment to nonviolence, arguing that the only way to overcome the self-fulfilling prophecy of climate despair is to engage in radical acts of property destruction and sabotage. Following a fictional group of twenty-somethings as they attempt to literally blow up a pipeline, the film imagines what it would look like if people applied Malm’s academic treatise in real life.
One character rejects the label “terrorist,” saying they are acting in “self-defense,” though in terms of cinematic genre the film feels morally closer to rape-revenge fantasy, substituting for the literal rape a range of traumatic backstories attributable to oil company greed. It totally works. By portraying the characters the way they see themselves, Goldhaber and crew give the viewer reason to lament the protagonists’ failures and cheer their successes. Propulsive music, a creatively structured Reservoir Dogs-style nonlinear plot, and strong ensemble acting prevail. Available on Hulu.
2. When Evil Lurks
Coming out of Argentina, When Evil Lurks is a solid horror movie with an original premise that evokes a Latin American take on The Exorcist without feeling derivative. In this grisly tale, a family tries to prevent the emergence of a supernatural evil about to be born in their rural village.
Writer-director Demián Rugna creates a rich alternative history of Argentina that includes a unique mythology of “demons.” He doesn’t over-explain the lore, trusting his audience to figure out what’s literally going on. At the metaphorical level, the film leaves just enough unspoken as well, avoiding the trap too many horror films fall into these days of bludgeoning the audience with an obvious, pre-digested interpretation while forgetting to, you know, actually be scary.
Along the way, When Evil Lurks explores modernity and the death of God, the breakdown of traditional family life and small towns, and above all the decline of religion. The film imagines an evil that lurks inside our heads, gestating from our fear, shame, and despair. This evil comes first for our children, notably in places with electric technology, turning offspring into monsters. It can’t be killed by guns, and can only be escaped by leaving everything behind and moving far away as a migrant or refugee. It’s a perfect icon of horror in 2023 Latin America. Available on Shudder and AMC+.
3. They Cloned Tyrone
At the risk of sounding reductive, They Cloned Tyrone is the Black Truman Show. John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris deliver stellar silliness tinged with unexpected humanity. As a drug dealer, a pimp, and a “ho,” the trio discover something odd going on in their urban neighborhood.
What starts as a more-or-less realistic indie movie about a life in the ‘hood becomes a mystery and a comic conspiracy thriller, and eventually a sci-fi parable about how The Man uses cultural “mind control” to keep Black people in the ghetto, and finally a heist movie as the crew attempt to take down the system.
Through all these plot and genre shifts, director Juel Taylor keeps the tone consistent with a fun and sexy 70s Blaxploitation vibe right down to the digitally added “film grain.” There’s a great retro-flavored soundtrack, too, stuffed with funk, soul, and hip-hop.
Tyrone ranks with Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You and Donald Glover’s TV series Atlanta among the best recent Afro-Surrealist cinema. Available on Netflix.
4. Cassandro
Set in the late 1980s on the Texas-Mexico border, Cassandro tells the true story of Saúl Armendáriz, the first openly gay lucha libre wrestler, played here by Gael García Bernal.
Armendáriz wrestles as “Cassandro,” a flamboyantly feminine type of male luchador called an exótico. Despite being about, basically, an immigrant drag queen wrestler, Cassandro is shot in an unexpectedly low-key, almost naturalistic, style to remind us that this is not fundamentally a sports film. Instead it’s a psychological drama about being “out” as queer in a highly masculine culture. The conflict is all internal as he risks allowing himself to be his flamboyant self.
Cassandro doesn’t necessarily give us the whole historical and cultural context of the exótico wrestlers, or the way the real life Armendáriz changed that tradition, pioneering new roles for gay people in Mexico. (But we’ve got Wikipedia for that.)
With García Bernal’s athletic and likable central performance, and the film’s inspiring story and chill vibe, Cassandro is a nice hangout movie. Available on Amazon Prime.
5. Totally Killer
Totally Killer is the third in producer Jason Blum’s series creating horror remakes of classic sci-fi comedies.
In 2017’s Happy Death Day, a young woman keeps living her final day over again Groundhog Day-style as she repeatedly tries to unmask her killer, and in 2020’s Freaky, the classic body-swap comedy Freaky Friday is given a slasher movie makeover when a teenager swaps bodies with a serial killer.
Now Back to the Future gets the slasher treatment in Totally Killer, when a high school student from 2023 accidentally travels back in time to 1987 and teams up with her own teenage mother to stop a series of infamous murders.
As an episode in the unofficial Blumhouse comedies-remade-as-horror-movies anthology serires, Totally Killer is as much self-aware fun as the others, if not quite as scary. Available on Amazon Prime.
