A Safari Through the Films of 2023 in Haiku-like Poems

All of the new releases I saw in 2023 ranked in order from most best to least best:

1. Barbie (Greta Gerwig)
A doll, a dream house
This land is her land, your land
Ain’t she a woman?

2. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
Big science project
An atom split, a world changed
We are become death

3. Dicks: The Musical (Larry Charles)
Two twins, two parents
Two sewer boys in a cage
Life is a hand job

4. Joyland (Saim Sadiq)
A man on a path
Finding himself in a dance
What family wrought

5. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)
Alone, together
Finding what family is
And what it isn’t

6. American Fiction (Cord Jefferson)
The people want pulp
They won’t eat their vegetables
So give ‘em da hood

7. Polite Society (Nida Manzoor)
She dreams of action
Stunts her family disdains
First save her sister

8. BlackBerry (Matthew Johnson)
Email on your phone
Make it quickly, make it work
It does for a bit

9. Bye Bye Tiberias (Lina Soualem)
When home is not home
Loving someone who flew away
To leave and return

10. Saltburn (Emerald Fennell)
A poor, naughty boy
Worms his way into the manse
Maybe not that poor

11. Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgli)
Careful what you wish
Popularity indulged
Circling the drain

12. Creed III (Michael B. Jordan)
An old friend returns
Complicating quite a bit
Quick fists, heavy hands

13. Bottoms (Emma Seligman)
A school most vapid
Two friends, ready to explore
It’s time to throw hands

14. Joy Ride (Adele Lim)
To find family
A trip down memory lane
Lost along the way

15. Bobi Wine: The People’s President (Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp)
An artist’s journey
From the streets to parliament
A mic, a platform

16. Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)
That’s a real big man
Standing in our living room
And he is scary

17. Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Steven Soderbergh)
A whirlwind romance
Hot bodies undulating
On stage, in your face

18. Beau is Afraid (Ari Aster)
Chaos surrounding
A journey to find himself
The dad, holy shit

19. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie)
What a dumb title
The plot is pretty dumb too
The Key! Get the key!

20. Fool’s Paradise (Charlie Day)
A swing and a miss
A satire without humor
A steaming hot turd

Slam Zuckert is a municipal bureaucrat. He sees a lot of movies and reads a lot of books and sometimes writes about them. His favorite movie is There Will Be Blood, his favorite mathematician is Georg Cantor, and his least favorite mathematician is Leopold Kronecker.