David Zalubowski/AP

Attorney Scott Gessler argues for Donald Trump before the Colorado Supreme Court on Dec. 6, 2023, in Denver, in the case about whether the former president can be on the state's presidential primary ballot.

The Colorado Supreme Court may have just put a big gift under Donald Trump’s Christmas tree. 

In fact, the court’s blockbuster 4-3 ruling Tuesday disqualifying the former president from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot presents him with multiple gifts: It fuels his argument that a politicized American legal system is out to “get” him – and deprive voters of their choice of candidates. It has spurred even his fiercest GOP presidential primary foes to rush to his defense. And it deflects attention from the latest Trump controversy, rhetoric on immigrants that has summoned Hitler comparisons. 

The Colorado high court ruled that former President Trump had engaged in “insurrection” and was therefore ineligible to become president again under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision, based on Mr. Trump’s apparent efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is on hold pending an expected emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

But the implications go far beyond Democratic-leaning Colorado, whose primary is March 5 and which is likely to vote Democratic anyway next November. Similar efforts to get Mr. Trump off the ballot in other states, including Arizona, Michigan, and New Hampshire, all general-election battlegrounds, could be more consequential if he is stricken from those ballots as well. National polls show Mr. Trump with an enormous lead for the GOP nomination and in a tight race with President Joe Biden in the general election. 

The fresh turmoil around 2024 adds to an already fraught election season, featuring two older, unpopular men, and threatens to heighten concerns about the health of American democracy. 

“It’s a stunning decision that will have legal and political consequences,” says Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of political communication and recent American history at American University.

The Colorado Supreme Court majority agreed with a lower court ruling that Mr. Trump had engaged in “insurrection,” but differed on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment – ratified after the Civil War – applied to the president. The lower court found that the president was not an “officer of the United States,” and therefore not subject to the provision that would bar him from holding federal office again. 

The politics of the Colorado ruling are unavoidable and hint at a highly charged debate going forward. All seven members of the state’s high court were appointed by Democratic governors, but the ruling was 4-3. One dissenting justice, Carlos Samour, wrote that the decision to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot “flies in the face of due process doctrine,” given that he wasn’t convicted of insurrection in a criminal trial or a proceeding of similar thoroughness.

There are wider unanswered questions nationwide: How is “insurrection” legally defined, and must "insurrection" be proved in a court of law for a person to be barred from the ballot under the 14th Amendment?

Mr. Trump has not been charged with insurrection in any of his federal legal cases, including the one focused on his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. In his second impeachment, over the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Trump was charged with “incitement of insurrection” and acquitted. And of the 1,100 rioters prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6, none were charged with insurrection.

David Zalubowski/AP

Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Boatright listens as attorneys in the Donald Trump ballot-access case argue before the court, Dec. 6, 2023, in Denver.

The lower Colorado court finding that Mr. Trump contributed to an insurrection was “incredibly significant,” says Claire Finkelstein, professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. 

“If I were a member of the [U.S.] Supreme Court, I would sort of feel that it was our duty to take the case, because it’s a critical question of enormous constitutional importance and dimensions,” says Professor Finkelstein. 

For example, she says, the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Section 3, “could come up with regard to members of Congress. It could come up with regard to former members of the administration, and so on. So it’s not just a Donald Trump problem.”

But for now, all eyes are on the Trump case – and what it means for the nomination race and next November. The latest New York Times/Siena poll, released Wednesday, shows that Mr. Trump’s legal woes have not hurt his standing among Republican voters, with 62% saying that if he wins the GOP nomination, he should keep it even if convicted of a federal crime. But the flip side is that nearly one-fourth of Republicans don’t want Mr. Trump as the nominee if he’s convicted – though the timing of the cases suggests the nomination will be set before any verdicts. 

Over time, with each state and federal indictment since the first in March, Mr. Trump’s standing in Republican primary polls has edged upward. He wears his legal woes as a badge of honor, depicting himself as a proxy for his supporters and telling activists, “They’re coming after you.” 

Following the news out of Colorado, the other GOP presidential candidates rushed to Mr. Trump’s defense. “The last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot,” former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters Tuesday night.

Another complicating factor is that time is short. The deadline to get on the Colorado ballot is Jan. 5. The state’s high court stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, saying that if Mr. Trump appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, as expected, he would remain on the ballot. 

Still, the Colorado case could inspire new ones, heightening the sense of uncertainty around a 2024 election already expected to be like no other. 

Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, called the ruling “badly judged, banana-republic election interference.” 

Even Trump critics, such as former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb, predict the Colorado ruling will be overturned. “It could be 9-0 in the Supreme Court for Trump,” Mr. Cobb said on CNN Tuesday. 

For Democrats, the Colorado ruling presents a mixed bag of political opportunity and peril: It furthers their narrative that Mr. Trump is an “insurrectionist” who threatens the very essence of American democracy. But if Mr. Trump somehow were not to be the GOP nominee, and Mr. Biden faced another of the top Republican candidates, he’d likely face a steeper climb toward reelection.

Speaking to reporters in Milwaukee Wednesday, Mr. Biden said it was “self-evident” that Mr. Trump is an “insurrectionist,” but added he’d leave it to the judiciary to decide if he should be excluded from the Colorado ballot. 

Democrats will also have to reckon with the fact that “time often sands the edges” of historic events like Jan. 6, which shook the nation nearly three years ago, says Professor Steinhorn.

“There are a significant number of Republicans who may have been concerned about Jan. 6 when it was happening, and the immediate aftermath, but don’t seem as concerned now.”

Ukrainian aviator Roman Schemechko loved building model airplanes as a child. Russia’s war on Ukraine has given him an unfortunate pretext to revisit that passion.

Prototypes of attack and surveillance drones built by his company, Besomar (White Demon), fill a spacious room in a bare-bones office building in Lviv.

“Drones save lives,” says Mr. Schemechko, now the CEO. “The more drones we have, the more possibilities we have to strike the enemy.”

The drone industry in Ukraine is booming. A new generation of Ukrainians has had its imagination captured by the beauty and logic of uncrewed aerial vehicles, and been inspired to manufacture drones. Many of them hail from a business and engineering, rather than a military, background. Others are former video gamers who found their groove in military technology. The cost of war fills them all with the same sense of urgency.

Ukraine has become a giant testing ground for drones from all over the world - the United States, Germany, Poland, and other partner countries. Countless new companies are taking shape around the technology; teams of engineers are tinkering on prototypes, trying to clear the Ministry of Defense and NATO checklists of technical requirements, hoping to nail a military contract.

“They come to Ukraine to understand if a drone is a real combat drone,” says Maxim Sheremet, leader of drone manufacturer Dronarnia. “It is not the same as killing in Iraq using powerful UAV drones,” he adds. “In Ukraine, war became not on the front lines but in our minds. You need technology.”

Dominique Soguel

Roman Shemechko, founder of the drone manufacturing company Besomar, shows a prototype made with the help of 3D printing. "One person can produce many drones that can be used to drop bombs or spy on the enemy," he says.

A booming field

Drones became part of Ukrainian defense capabilities against Russia in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and part of eastern Ukraine. They provide many advantages in asymmetric warfare, with low cost and reduced risk to military personnel atop the list. They can be used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision strikes without the investment associated with crewed aircraft. Even the most expensive model is several orders of magnitude cheaper than an F-16, and relatively basic ones can carry enough explosives to take down a tank.

“Drones can be more effective in surveillance than a human pilot on the plane,” points out Mr. Schemechko. “You can fly safely and not be afraid for your life. ... One person can produce many drones that can be used to drop bombs or spy on the enemy. In contrast, it requires a lot of time to train a pilot. You need two to three months to produce a pilot with a decent level of knowledge and skill.”

Drones – unlike pilots – are also easier to replace. “When a drone is destroyed and lost, a drone pilot can take a new one and keep going.”

The intensity of drone warfare between Russia and Ukraine is pushing both sides to fine-tune the full spectrum of related technologies and combat strategies.

Dominique Soguel

Yurii Dombrovskyi, CEO and co-founder of SpecAero, uses a whiteboard to explain how a drone’s radio frequency system works.

In a cavernous room in Kyiv that echoes with the whizzing of small drones taking off and crashing into safety nets, one group of aspiring operators is learning such techniques.

Kyrylo, an athletic man with a square jaw who sports virtual reality goggles, manipulates a remote controller linked to a first-person view (FPV) drone. He is training to pilot through the perspective of the drone’s onboard camera.

“There are a lot of people in infantry who want to transfer to the drone operator units because they think that it’s easier or because they’re afraid of shelling,” says Kyrylo, who was taking a break from his front-line position in the Donetsk region to take part in a drone flight course in Kyiv. “They just don’t realize that this position and this job is very dangerous. Drone operators are very valuable indeed for the enemy as a target.”

The room is full of men and women gathered around netted cages with padded landing mats. Dozens of them sit in classroom-style rows, their faces lit by screens, eyes glued to the simulated obstacle course in front of them, hands tapping away at remote controls as they pretend to navigate FPV drones.

In 2014, Ukraine had only a handful of drone piloting schools. Now there are over 30 that are part of the Army of Drones project of the digital ministry. “Ukraine has thousands more drone pilots now than it did pre-invasion,” says Andrii, a drone flight instructor at the independent Boryviter Military School.

“Ukraine and Russia are like racing horses,” he says. “They are going nose to nose. There are times when we see the Russians are stealing technologies from us. In other situations, we can be behind them. In the FPV sphere, we are on par. On the quantity front, knowing the resourcefulness of Russia, we can fall behind if we don’t ramp up our own production.”

A pressing need

Mr. Sheremet has been working for military technology companies since 2012. He founded Dronarnia with the help of students passionate about making FPV drones, just one month after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now the students sit in assembly lines producing all kinds of pilotless aircraft.

Dominique Soguel

“We have to create products that are cheaper than the targets,” says Maxim Sheremet, shown here in a drone manufacturing lab in Kyiv. “Otherwise, we will not win because our enemy has more resources than our country.”

But there are fewer than two dozen mass producers in the country. Many say current production capacity only meets about 3% of current military needs. Among those trying to scale up and fast is Oleksandr Yakovenko, CEO of TAF Drones.

The company already has four factories spread out across Ukraine – despite suffering a sabotage attack that destroyed equipment worth $300,000 in July. The bulk of its supplies (90%) come from China or Taiwan. The remainder comes from suppliers in Europe and the U.S. “We have to create products that are cheaper than the targets,” he says. “Otherwise, we will not win because our enemy has more resources than our country.”

Near Kyiv, Yurii Dombrovskyi and his team are hard at work testing a drone model in an airfield. After they spent a prolonged period tinkering with radio systems, the prototype launches toward the sun and loops successfully around the field. It takes time to get all the specs right: size, speed, weight, altitude, range, payload capacity, and, most vital, the ability to bypass Russian jamming systems.

Dominique Soguel

A member of the SpecAreo team sits in a van equipped with a UAV communications system.

“We need hundreds of thousands of such products – for yesterday,” says Mr. Dombrovskyi. “We don’t have time for testing and standardization. We are in the heat of war. There is no choice for us.”

Most drone producers rely on China for the bulk of their parts. They say they would like more guidance and supplies from allies in the West. “We need U.S. solutions, technologies, and advice,” says Mr. Dombrovskyi. “We need supply alternatives to China because China, frankly, is not such a friendly country.”

Ukraine’s drone producers typically aspire to military contracts with the Ministry of Defense. Many have an eye on or are already active on the international market. They have understood that drones not only are essential for victory in Ukraine but have also become the weapon of the future.

“Three or four years ago, nobody would have thought that drones would play such a big role in daily warfare,” observes Yuri Momot, deputy general of Piranha-Tech, a company developing jamming systems to take down Russian drones. “The war itself is a big trigger for progress.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

In suburban Manchester, a crowd has gathered at a disco to dance with an unconventional DJ: the mayor.

It’s an underground rave of sorts. Inside a community sports club, the subterranean space has been festooned with pulsing neon lights. The event, a fundraiser for a food bank and a local branch of the British Labour Party, is titled Dance for Change with Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. Shaking a hand-held microphone as if it were a maraca, the Generation X mayor boogies to songs by northern English bands that he’s selected. 

“This goes out to all the politicians in the room,” Mr. Burnham jokes before spinning “I Wanna Be Adored” by legendary local band The Stone Roses. 

Mr. Burnham is accustomed to adulation. The former Cabinet minister has twice won election as mayor of a region of 2.8 million people and an economy larger than that of Northern Ireland. Some people believe that he has the potential to become a future prime minister.

“He’s a decent guy. He doesn’t seem so tribal as some politicians,” says Ian Davis, a patent attorney, shouting to be heard over the thumping bass in the disco. “One day, I hope he’ll return to national politics.”

During an interview in his office a few days earlier, the mayor said he hadn’t ruled out a return to Westminster. In the meantime, though, he is at the forefront of a historic initiative to spread political power more evenly across Britain.

For now, he’s at the forefront of a nascent initiative to decentralize power in Britain. In 2016, a devolution deal with the government created nine new regional power centers, led by metro mayors. The big idea? Devolve London’s traditional policymaking role in areas such as transport, economic development, and housing.

In practice, the national Parliament is often still reluctant to cede power. But the leader of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as Mr. Burnham is formally known, has made enough of a difference to attract attention. Among his accomplishments: lowering homelessness rates and taking the city bus service back into public ownership, slashing fares. Last week, he notched up his biggest success yet, winning his city greater freedom over how to spend its £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) grant from the British government. 

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

At a disco fundraiser for a local branch of British Labour Party, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham compiled a DJ playlist of northern bands such as New Order and Doves.

The tattoo means something ...

Mr. Burnham’s ethos is that it’s better to work with people than against them. To that end, the lifelong Labour man has forged genial working relationships with members of the ruling Conservative Party. He calls it a “place-first approach, rather than politics or party-first approach.” In Britain’s highly polarized political environment, it’s a novel style of leadership.

“Burnham has fashioned an identity for himself as a maverick since he came to Greater Manchester,” says Joshi Herrmann, founder and editor of The Mill, an online newspaper, based in Manchester. “I don’t know where that lies on the line between clever political positioning and an authentic, political sort of eccentricity.”

Since becoming mayor in 2017, Mr. Burnham has ditched the suits and ties he wore in Parliament. The boyishly handsome mayor, whose black hair gathers into a wave you could surf on, opts for smart-casual dark clothing. It conveys egalitarianism. In conversation, the politician touts the strengths of northern values such as humility and solidarity. It’s why he got an arm tattoo of the traditional Manchester symbol: a worker bee.

“My mother still can’t believe it,” says the mayor of that tattoo. But it is more than decorative, he insists. “That is a symbol of no one being more important than anyone else,” he explains. “Everyone has to work together.” 

Mr. Burnham jokes that it’s difficult, as mayor of Manchester, to admit that he was born in nearby Liverpool, long a rival city. He delivers the line with mock sheepishness. (It should be noted that Mr. Burnham is anything but parochial.) Last year, he engaged in a battle of the DJs with Liverpool metro Mayor Steve Rotheram. The two are collaborating on a book, coming out in January, titled “Look North! A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain.”

“It will argue that if the values of the north were more preeminent in the U.K., we’d have a fairer, more collaborative country,” says Mr. Burnham, rather than one dominated by power centers in London that tend to treat the north as an afterthought.

Mr. Burnham is well positioned to understand the economic and social inequalities between the north and south of the country. The working class northerner earned a place at the elite Cambridge University. There, he experienced a political awakening.

In 1989, overcrowding at Hillsborough Stadium in the northern city of Sheffield resulted in the deaths of 97 Liverpool soccer fans. The tragedy evinced very different reactions in the two worlds that Mr. Burnham inhabited.

“There was the Cambridge world, where I was studying, where nobody was talking about it,” he says. “And then there was the world at home where everyone was just in utter despair about it. I just couldn’t reconcile these two worlds. And it told me that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way things were.”

It wasn’t the last time that the Hillsborough disaster would profoundly shape Mr. Burnham’s professional path. Elected to Parliament in 2001, he rose rapidly through the ranks. By 2008, he had become minister for culture, media, and sport.

On the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy, Mr. Burnham was invited to talk at a memorial service at a packed Liverpool stadium – “a complete, total collision of my professional and personal worlds,” he says.

Liverpool fans had long been angry that Sheffield police had not been held accountable for poor crowd control decisions. The Labour government had done little to get to the bottom of the tragedy. It was a politically fraught issue, and Mr. Burnham says he felt at a crossroads, torn.

Sharpening his dilemma, his televised speech was interrupted by chanting Liverpool supporters calling on the government for justice.

“In your life, you will come up against moments like this where there’s something you know to be right and just. And yet you might be in an organization where they’re taking a different approach. And the question is what do you do?” he remembers musing.

“Do I keep going in terms of my career, or be true to myself?” 

Mr. Burnham chose to take the fans’ side, pressing for a new inquiry that eventually found that the police had engaged in a cover-up.

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who sees local politics as the most productive route to change, sits in his office.

King of the north?

Mr. Burnham’s activism on the Hillsborough issue raised his public profile. But his two subsequent campaigns to become leader of the Labour Party were unsuccessful. He grew weary of Westminster politics. So he ran for the newly created position of mayor of Greater Manchester.

“The virtue of taking power closer to people is that you can be on a level with people,” says Mr. Burnham. “You can exercise that power collaboratively rather than in a top-down approach.” 

It sounds good in theory. But the reality is that Mr. Burnham’s reputation as “king of the north” may be overstated.

“He doesn’t have that many concrete powers because devolution ... is still very incremental in the U.K.,” says Mr. Herrmann. “So he really has to rule via public messaging.”

In addition to regularly doing interviews, the mayor has also been canny about forging alliances. That includes collaborating with Michael Gove – the Conservative minister for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – who is deeply unpopular in Labour circles. Mr. Gove joked that it would be fatal to the mayor’s political career if they continued to find so many points of agreement. 

Mr. Burnham heaped praise on Mr. Gove for pushing a new, updated devolution deal earlier this year, looking beyond party labels.

“I see more people caught up in the process of politics, the playing of the game of politics, and less interested in the actual use of the position you’re in to do something meaningful and beneficial to the people who need help,” Mr. Burnham says.

For all his magnanimity, Mr. Burnham has clashed with the British government. He contested its pandemic decision to place Manchester under the most severe level of lockdown restrictions. In October, he was aggrieved by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision, which cited cost overruns, to cancel construction of a high-speed railway to the north.

Mr. Burnham had argued that the railway upgrade, aimed at easing bottlenecks on a busy network, was vital for the region’s economic growth. The scaled-back route, ending in the midland city of Birmingham, is another example, Mr. Burnham says, of northerners being treated as second-class citizens.  

But that has not stopped him from “evolving the office [of mayor] to showing voters where it can make a difference,” says Georgina Blakeley, co-author of a book on the subject. “It’s gaining visibility among voters,” she adds.

Persistence, and pre-dawn walks

Mr. Burnham is proudly touting a brand-new agreement with the government that will provide Manchester with a block grant. Until now, the city’s £1.5 billion budget has come from 150 different sources, each with its own rules and regulations. The new so-called single settlement will give Manchester more freedom to allocate its money as it sees fit.

In September, the mayor notched up another hard-won victory, when the city took back control of Manchester’s privatized and deregulated buses, extending services and slashing fares by as much as half. This will make life easier and cheaper for a lot of people: Seventy-five percent of public transport journeys in the city are by bus.

“It’s a game changer for Manchester,” says Professor Blakeley, who teaches governance and democracy at the University of Huddersfield.

The bus reform, which she calls “a really successful plank of Andy Burnham’s tenure in office,” was delayed because Parliament dragged its feet for two years, she points out. “The characteristic that he needs the most, and that I’ve seen in action, is persistence,” she says.

The mayor has also expanded the remit of his office by going beyond devolution affairs and delving into issues that are primarily the jurisdiction of local councils. He has been known to go on 4 a.m. walks so that he can witness the scale of the homelessness problem, for example.

“When he came to Greater Manchester, he made his big campaign about homelessness and rough sleeping, even though that’s not actually an issue that mayors have any real control over,” says Mr. Herrmann. “But he used his convening power,” getting people from different government agencies together to try to find a solution.

In 2018 he launched his emergency A Bed Every Night campaign, which has brought down the number of rough sleepers.

The mayor is an effective retail politician because his heart-on-sleeve approach connects with people on an emotional level, says Mr. Herrmann. After a terrorist killed 22 people by detonating a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, Mr. Burnham ran the 2019 Boston Marathon to raise money for families of victims. 

“It goes back to that solidarity point,” says the mayor.

If Mr. Burnham harbors ambitions to become a national leader, he will have to wait his turn. Current polling suggests that the Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, will handily win the next general election. For now, Mr. Burnham is focused on winning a third mayoral term in May. He says he believes that role is the most functional level of British politics and where the most beneficial change is happening. 

“I would like the north of England to have a permanently louder voice,” he says. “I don’t think that in my political lifetime now I can do everything that I would want to do, in terms of the life that I think people here should have – the transport we should have, the jobs we should have.

”However, I would like to think I’ve helped create machinery that will allow the 21st century to be better.”

Introducing my Top 10 films for 2021 in the Monitor, I wrote, “I do hope, in vain perhaps, that in a post-pandemic world, audiences of all ages will once again throng the theaters for all kinds of movies, not just the blockbusters.” 

Well, here we are in 2023, and there’s no getting around it: This was the year of “Barbenheimer.” The surprise double smash of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” has thus far collectively grossed over $2 billion worldwide. At the same time, expected hits such as the “Indiana Jones” and “Mission: Impossible” sequels, as well as a bunch of Marvel movies, were commercial disappointments. What defines a blockbuster has changed, and perhaps for the better. People of all ages lined up to see a campy-edgy comedy about a beloved/derided doll and, of all things, a gargantuan biopic about a moody nuclear physicist.

Does this mean that the theatrical moviegoing experience is back in full force? I am inclined to view the success of these films as one-offs. They were “event” movies, in much the same way as two other huge 2023 hits, both concert films, Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.”

Jaap Buittendijk/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP

Timothée Chalamet stars in “Wonka,” an origin story about the fictional chocolatier.

What still holds true is that most of the more interesting movie work in the United States and abroad is being done outside the calcified studio system, for audiences less inclined these days to troop out to the local multiplex. Even Oscar-centric movies such as Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” with its hefty $200 million price tag, had to secure the bulk of its funding from a streaming service, Apple, after the major studios balked.

The pandemic certainly cut back on Hollywood’s hegemony, and the long-term labor strikes this year will no doubt impact whatever productions are forthcoming. 

But even before these crises, Hollywood was deep into play-it-safe mode, relying on franchises to fill its coffers. My hope is that the burgeoning indie realm will encourage more artistic risk-taking and provide more distribution outlets than the standard theatrical models. The payoff will be a replenishment of movie love for discerning audiences of all ages.

Meantime, there was still much to like this year, even in some of the movies I was mixed about. Before we get to the main course, I’ve included a few appetizers.

Zipporah Films, Inc.

The documentary “Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros” follows a Michelin-starred restaurant in France run by the same family for four generations.

“Oppenheimer” aside – and I have reservations about the heroic martyr aspects of that film – probably the best biopic of the year was about a sneaker: “Air.” The seriously satirical “American Fiction” featured a cast, headed by Jeffrey Wright, that was across-the-board top-notch. The highly touted, sexually graphic “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, overplays its feminist bona fides but boasts a world-class comic performance from Mark Ruffalo. 

Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” suffers from too many good ideas but at best displays the great Japanese animator’s trademark visionary flights. “The Holdovers” is spotty but nevertheless represents a return to form for Alexander Payne, the rare Hollywood director who still values humans over hardware.

And now, in alphabetical order, my Top 10 list, drawn from movies that first opened, in theaters and/or online, in 2023. 

Anatomy of a Fall – The best reason to see this smart psychological procedural, which sometimes strains to be more than that, is for Sandra Hüller’s uncompromising performance as a famous novelist who may or may not have killed her husband. Her every facial nuance speaks volumes. Justine Triet’s film won the 2023 Palme d’Or at Cannes, that festival’s highest honor. (Rated R; multiple languages with English subtitles)  

Music Box Films

In “Full Time,” Laure Calamy plays a woman trying to keep her job during a transportation strike in Paris.

Full Time – Writer-director Eric Gravel’s film, paced like a thriller, demonstrates how dramatically rich the working life of a protagonist can be. Laure Calamy plays a harried single mother who works as a chambermaid in an upscale Parisian hotel during a mass transportation strike. Her quicksilver performance is the engine that propels the action. Released early in 2023 and not widely seen, this gem is well worth seeking out. (Not rated; French with English subtitles)

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros – Frederick Wiseman, our greatest documentarian, in a career spanning almost six decades, has fashioned one of his best. This four-hour film about a legendary family-owned French restaurant in the Loire Valley is about so much more than nouvelle cuisine. Certainly the sumptuous offerings, and what it takes to prepare them, are on full display. But what the movie is really about is the passage, and the transience, of life. (Not rated; French with English subtitles) 

Past Lives – A first feature from writer-director Celine Song, “Past Lives” is about two childhood friends from South Korea who briefly reunite as adults in New York under very different life circumstances. Song’s emotional honesty transforms what could have been a standard rom-com into a deeply expressive work about how our pasts still hold us no matter how old we are. (PG; English and Korean with English subtitles)

Jon Pack/A24/AP

Greta Lee (left) and Teo Yoo star in “Past Lives.” In the movie, two childhood friends from South Korea meet again as adults in New York.

R.M.N. – Set in 2019, the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s searing examination of xenophobia in a rural village has a resonance all too relatable today. The film is the work of an outraged idealist. (Not rated; multiple languages with English subtitles)

The Taste of Things – Benoît Magimel plays a famous Belle Epoque chef and Juliette Binoche is his longtime cook and occasional lover in this sensuous swirl of a movie. As directed by Tran Anh Hung, their interlocking lives are portrayed with such flavor that even the most resplendent sauces on display are outshone. (Not rated; French with English subtitles)

The Teachers’ Lounge – Director Ilker Çatak’s psychological thriller features a harried sixth grade teacher, played spellbindingly well by Leonie Benesch. Her attempt to do the right thing in uncovering a school scandal leads her into a morally compromised morass. It’s the German entry for an Oscar. (PG-13; German with English subtitles)

The Zone of Interest – Hands down the most powerful movie I saw all year. Jonathan Glazer’s film about an Auschwitz commandant and his family is a steady-state study of the inexplicableness of evil. Sandra Hüller, so good in “Anatomy of a Fall,” is equally strong here in a completely different role as the commandant’s wife. There has never been another film like this one, about the Holocaust or about anything else. (PG-13; German and Polish with English subtitles)

20 Days in Mariupol – The Ukrainian photojournalist Mstyslav Chernov chronicled his 20 days in the port city of Mariupol at the start of the Russian invasion. The result has a devastating you-are-there immediacy as he dodges sniper bullets and bunks with medics and civilians under siege. (Not rated; Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles)

Wonka – Rejoice, foodies! This is the third film on the list centered on culinary marvels. Paul King, who directed the wonderful “Paddington” movies, gives us a kinder, gentler Willy Wonka in this jubilantly funny and inventive musical starring Timothée Chalamet as the young chocolatier. (PG)

A few runner-up worthies are also worth tracking down: “The Delinquents,” “Asteroid City,” “The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic,” “Plan 75,” “Robot Dreams,” and “The Civil Dead.” 

Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. 

Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse via AP

Italy's Premier Giorgia Meloni, right, and Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama, left, shake hands after signing a cooperation agreement on migration in Rome on Nov. 6, 2023.

The European Parliament reached agreement today on a new set of asylum rules. The agreement caps a three-year effort, as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez put it, “to have an improved, more humane, and better coordinated management of our frontiers and migration flows.”

The human influx reaching Europe has frayed unity between countries of entrance and the remaining members of the 27-nation European Union. The new framework seeks a balanced and unified response that adheres to the bloc’s founding values of equality, rule of law, and defense of individual dignity.

Some numbers illustrate the challenge. The EU has registered more than 355,000 irregular border crossings into the bloc this year, an increase of 17%. The total number of asylum-seekers could top 1 million. According to the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 2,500 migrants have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea – 50% more than last year.

Amid this human flow, Europe is drifting further from its democratic center – although finding a causal link between those two trends requires some caution. Support for some populist hard-right parties has risen above 20% in four of the bloc’s five most populous countries and is gaining in at least a dozen more. In France this week, attempts to make President Emmanuel Macron’s immigration bill more palatable to the hard right have threatened to break apart his ruling coalition.

Yet among ordinary Europeans, anti-immigrant messages may have only limited appeal. The most recent surveys by Eurobarometer found that only 31% of those asked said migration was a top-four concern, while 69% support their countries investing in programs to help immigrants integrate.

The five new regulations agreed to today would expedite asylum claims, mandate health screening for migrants, and set up facilities for more efficient deportation. Their centerpiece is a burden-sharing arrangement between countries such as Italy, Greece, and France and other EU members farther north or inland. Those countries could elect to accept migrants or pay into a fund to help “entry” states cope with the influx.

Human rights groups were quick to decry the reforms today, charging that they will result in detention camps, rapid expulsions of people back into dangerous conditions at home or in transit countries, and infringements of personal privacy. They say they were hastily adopted ahead of June 2024 European Parliament elections that could see greater gains for far-right parties.

The new rules still face several hurdles. The drafters hope, however, that they will result in better cooperation between the E.U. and its neighbors. With a common framework and "a perspective of listening, not lecturing," said Manfred Weber, leader of the European People's Party, Europe and "transit" states like Albania and Tunisia may help migrants find safer passage with dignity and compassion.