Barack Obama's list of the best movies of 2023 sure has a lot of Barack Obama movies on it
Hey, have you heard of this new movie Rustin? We heard the producer is really handsome
It’s a long-standing tradition for Barack Obama—who’s done a lot of work, over the years, to cultivate his image as “The President who might actually like a movie you like”—to release lists of his pop culture consumption. This year, though, Obama’s listing of his favorite films of the year was a bit different—in so far as it was topped with a number of movies that Obama had himself produced, through his film production business Higher Ground.
Now, to be fair to the former president, he didn’t try to obfuscate his links to Rustin, Leave The World Behind, or American Symphony. (Similarly, he was careful with his 2022 list to note which movies were Higher Ground productions.) But there’s something undeniably a little depressing about the fact that even a guy like Obama, quite possibly the most famous movie nerd on the entire planet, has to do a bit of the old self-promotional hustle in order to get eyes on his stuff. What the hell are the rest of us supposed to do?
Outside his own work—which, he swears, he thinks genuinely are three of the best movies of the year—Obama’s picks were good as ever, threading a line between fairly obvious prestige choices (Oppenheimer, The Holdovers) and less immediately obvious picks, like Rina Manzoor’s energetic and wonderful martial arts comedy Polite Society. (He also liked Michael Jordan shoe story Air, which is the first we’ve heard anyone talk about Air since, like, May, so good for him.)
Anyway, we can’t wait to read Obama’s next list of books or shows or music, which will, presumably, come complete with an invitation to join his Patreon. Subscribers at the $10 a month level get their own enduring sense of a cultural legacy squandered!