No. 1
Past Lives 2023
No. 1 - the closing Uber ride. Sean calls it the best ending of the year, a simple, fully intentional use of cinematic language he'd talked through with Celine Song on the show.
The Big Picture · Top Five · Discussion · Interview
The Top 10 Movies Scenes of 2023 and ‘American Fiction’ With Cord Jefferson
December 22, 2023/ 92 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
The last recording of the year. Sean and Amanda count down their favorite movie scenes of 2023, five each and alternating, then review 'American Fiction' before Sean sits down with its writer-director Cord Jefferson.
17 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Sean's Best Scenes of 2023counted down worst-to-best on air
No. 2
Killers of the Flower Moon 2023
No. 2 - the epilogue near the end, and who delivers it. A bold artistic choice from their collective No. 1 movie of the year; Sean keeps it vague to avoid the spoiler.
No. 3
Anatomy of a Fall 2023
No. 3 - the recorded argument between the couple, played back in court and dramatized between the two actors. It changes how you read the whole film.
No. 4
John Wick: Chapter 4 2023
No. 4 - a cheat, two scenes: the overhead Dragon's Breath shootout borrowed from first-person shooters, and the Sacre-Coeur stairs fight. Amanda took the stairs; Sean likes the flamethrower.
No. 5
Beau Is Afraid 2023
No. 5 - the Mariah Carey sex scene, the hardest Sean laughed in a theater all year. Shout-out to Parker Posey and the prosthetics work.
Amanda's Best Scenes of 2023counted down worst-to-best on air
No. 1
The Taste of Things 2023
No. 1 - the opening feast and its preparation. Shot like an action sequence, the Mission: Impossible of food; balletic, in media res, treating food as both art and love. Wider U.S. release Feb. 9.
No. 2
Oppenheimer 2023
No. 2 - the Trinity test. Amanda rented it and skipped to the scene; the cut to silence makes it the best in-theater moment of the year. Sean was amused she picked it first.
No. 3
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One 2023
No. 3 - the Rome car chase, screwball action shot on location. The train sequence and the Venice bridge fight were runners-up in the same movie.
No. 4
Maestro 2023
No. 4 - Bradley Cooper conducting Mahler in the cathedral, six minutes of music, sweating, and prosthetics. 'Total cinema.'
No. 5
Leave the World Behind 2023
No. 5 - the pile-up of driverless white Teslas, an image about tech and idiocy. It had topped Netflix's chart for about 15 days at recording.
'American Fiction'Sean and Amanda on the movie before the interview
American Fiction 2023
Cord Jefferson's debut, adapted from Percival Everett's 2001 novel 'Erasure.' Jeffrey Wright as Monk, a frustrated writer who dashes off a parody of 'black' fiction that sells for a fortune. Half biting publishing satire, half quiet family drama; the pair split on which half lands harder. A murderers' row cast (Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams) and a chilling Adam Brody cameo. They peg it for a Best Picture nomination and Wright for Best Actor.
Cord Jefferson on 'American Fiction'
Cord Jefferson on
Hollywood Shuffle 1987
Robert Townsend's satire, a touchstone Jefferson keeps citing; he notes it has little of the family-drama half.
Cord Jefferson on
Bamboozled 2000
Spike Lee's media satire, the other comparison point critics reach for.
Cord Jefferson on
Friends with Money 2006
Jefferson's favorite Nicole Holofcener film, and a model for pairing a comedy of manners with intimate character study.
Cord Jefferson on
The Best Man Holiday 2013
Sean's example of the upper-middle-class black family story told before, usually as rom-com rather than something this probing.
Cord Jefferson on
Sound of Freedom 2023
Jefferson's shorthand for the polarized, everyone-in-their-corner media landscape he made a deliberately big-tent movie against.
Cord Jefferson on
Carnal Knowledge 1971
His last-great-thing pick, Mike Nichols with Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel; he saw it for the first time recently and it blew his socks off.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Honorable-mention scenes BarbieMay DecemberNapoleonPoor ThingsSpider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseNo Hard FeelingsAir
In passing Don't Look UpAsteroid CityInterstellarJackie BrownHorizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Mr. RobotThe Good PlaceWatchmenSuccessionMaster of NoneLiving SingleYoungerAnd Just Like ThatM*A*S*HLost
Podcasts An American Scandival
Books ErasureInterior Chinatown