Atlanta Film Critics Circle Names 'Oppenheimer' Best Film of 2023

We are now fully in awards season as critics groups over the next several weeks will announce their selections for the best of 2023. As is the custom, the New York Film Critics Circle went first, and last week chose Killers of the Flower Moon as the Best Film of the Year.

Today, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle chose Oppenheimer as 2023’s Best Film. I’m a proud founding member of this organization, and I know that our small but growing collection of 34 critics worked diligently to see as many films as possible this year. But being a critic in Atlanta is different than being on in New York. New York and Los Angeles remain the forefront of the film critic establishment, and I take no issue with that. They’re the biggest media centers and have the highest concentration of both critics and talent. They have the infrastructure to host multiple screenings well in advance of the rest of the country.

Being a critic in Atlanta is a little different. For example, NEON is one of the biggest players in the awards season. However, they only sporadically screen their movies for Atlanta critics, and their box of screeners (containing 13 films for consideration plus 2003’s Oldboy as a treat) only arrived about a week before the voting deadline. This is the standard practice among the studios: give as little time as possible in the hopes that recency bias works in your favor. This is particularly silly now since it’s not like any of these studios had to book theaters, and most of the screeners this year were digital, meaning they weren’t subject to printing and mailing a disc. And what did this strategy get them? Nothing. With the exception of Anatomy of a Fall (a NEON release), all films in AFCC’s Top 10 were shown to critics well in advance of our screening deadline. In trying to play the critics groups, the studios played themselves.

This may seem like inside baseball, but as you see headlines about what films won with critics, it’s important to keep in mind that not all cities are treated equally by studios even though I think Atlanta has critics that are just as stellar as those in New York.

Without further ado, here’s the press release, which contains the full list of winners. My personal Top 10 arrives later this month.

For Immediate Release

Dec. 4, 2023

Atlanta Film Critics Circle Announces its 2023 Winners

After a weekend of vote tallying and several close races, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle (AFCC) has announced its 7th annual awards celebrating the top film achievements of the year.

The AFCC’s Best Film of 2023 is Oppenheimer, a biographical thriller portraying the life of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the film swept the AFCC’s awards in several categories, including Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema), Best Ensemble, Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan), and Best Score (Ludwig Göransson).

Many of the AFCC’s Top 10 films effortlessly combined compelling storytelling with an examination of societal issues that stretch back for decades.

“It’s always hard to narrow down our favorite films of the year, but this year felt particularly tough thanks to a plethora of incredible options,” said AFCC member Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor at Engadget and co-host of The Filmcast. “In the same year we saw Barbie reckon with toxic masculinity and the limits of living in a patriarchal society, we also saw films explore the evil of building the atomic bomb and Native American genocide.”

In a year punctuated by ongoing wars, labor union strikes, and advanced leaps in artificial intelligence, Oppenheimer delivers a timely – and terrifying – message about the pursuit of technical progress without consideration of the consequences. The film’s cultural significance also transcended its own contents when it became part of a celebration of the movie-going experience. Oppenheimer was released the same weekend as director Greta Gerwig’s box office and critical hit Barbie. Rather than creating a divisive face-off at the box office, the overlapping releases prompted an unlikely theatrical double-feature dubbed “Barbenheimer.” Barbie also landed in the AFCC’s top films of the year.

It seems fitting, then, that the Best Supporting Actor race resulted in a tied vote between performances in the two films, with Ryan Gosling winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in Barbie as Ken and Robert Downey Jr. winning for his portrayal of politician Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer.

AFCC advisory board member Josh Sewell said the committee counting votes required several rounds of tallying in some categories due to how tight the races were, including a near 3-way-tie in the Best Supporting Actor field. “Only a handful of votes separated the back half of our Top 10, which speaks to the overall quality of the filmmakers and performers,” he said. “That seems fitting in a year when actors and writers were forced to strike in order to prove how valuable their work is to the industry.”

Rather than splitting the vote, actress Lily Gladstone won it twice, securing both Best Lead Actress and Best Breakthrough Performer for her work in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

“Lily Gladstone, the AFCC’s choice for both Best Actress and Breakthrough Performer, is the heart and soul of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon,” said AFCC member Curt Holman, film columnist for Creative Loafing. “As the film documents a murderous conspiracy striking the Osage nation in the 1920s, Gladstone infuses her character with dignity and a complicated emotional life that transcends potential clichés as a victim.”

Other winner highlights this year include director Celine Song’s Past Lives, which won Best First Feature, Da’Vine Joy Randolph for Best Supporting Actress in The Holdovers, French film The Anatomy of a Fall for Best International Feature, and John Wick: Chapter 4 for the AFCC’s second-ever Best Stunt Work award.

AFCC member Nsenga Burton, Ph.D., Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Burton Wire, said the winners signaled a year for large collaborative efforts, sometimes at the expense of smaller, character-driven films. “As you can see from the list, ensemble films were the big winners this year for AFCC,” she said. “But I’m excited to see breakout star Lily Gladstone and screenwriters and filmmakers like Celine Song and Cord Jefferson make the cut.”

About the AFCC

Co-founded by longtime Atlanta film critics Felicia Feaster and Michael Clark in 2017, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle is an attempt to fill a void in the local film community, and in the representation of Atlanta’s media on the national stage. The AFCC is supported by its Advisory Board and longtime critics Jason Evans, Will Leitch, Hannah Lodge, Michael McKinney, Kyle Pinion, and Josh Sewell.

Composed of a dynamic mix of 34 Atlanta-based critics working in newspaper, magazine, and online journalism, the AFCC’s mission is to establish a national presence for a film critics group in Atlanta and to foster a vibrant film culture in Atlanta, already home to an exploding film industry production presence.

Members (critics living in and/or currently writing for global, national, regional and/or Atlanta metro area outlets) of AFCC voted on December 3 for the group’s annual awards.

Complete AFCC Award List

BEST FILM:    Oppenheimer  

TOP 10 FILMS (ranked from first place to tenth place)  

1. Oppenheimer

2. Killers of the Flower Moon

3. The Holdovers

4. Past Lives

5. Barbie

6. May December

7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

8. American Fiction

9. Anatomy of a Fall

10. Poor Things

BEST LEAD ACTOR:

Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

BEST LEAD ACTRESS:

Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon    

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

TIE - Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer; Ryan Gosling, Barbie

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST

Oppenheimer

BEST DIRECTOR:

Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer   

BEST SCREENPLAY:    

Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer   

BEST DOCUMENTARY:

Still: A Michael J. Fox Story

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE:

Anatomy of a Fall (France)

BEST ANIMATED FILM:

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:

Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer   

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:

Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer   

BEST STUNT WORK:

John Wick: Chapter 4

AFCC Special Award for BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMER:

Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon    

AFCC Special Award for BEST FIRST FEATURE FILM:

Celine Song, Past Lives