Bennett Campbell Ferguson’s Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2023

TRAUMA TALES

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Just as Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” buoyed me during quarantine, his “Oppenheimer” (1) became one of my lifelines during another harrowing year. I needed “Oppenheimer”—its earth-and-sky scope, its ruthless “I believe we did” honesty, its wounded but enduring romanticism. “Kitty and I, we’re grownups,” J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) says of his wife, Katherine (Emily Blunt). “We’ve walked through fire together.” I have loved Mr. Nolan’s films since before I was a grownup, and they’re still guiding me through the fire.