Continuing my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2023
#4. Asteroid City

Last year saw an interesting trend of films serving as a metaphor for their directors’ careers. Michael Mann’s Ferrari depicted a man relying on corporate funding to execute his vision with the help of a dedicated team that he drives a bit too hard. David Fincher’s The Killer portrayed a ruthless perfectionist tireless in his pursuit of each objective — a fitting topic for a director known for shooting hundreds of takes of even the simplest scenes.

Even Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has been read as a metaphor for regrets over the superhero era ushered in by the director’s Dark Knight trilogy — not exactly the atomic bomb, but a pretty seismic and destructive cultural event.

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