aspect ratio crop problem in photos

That is really weird! I just played with a 16x9 photo imported from my phone, and it crops in "Freeform" just fine. So the problem is not Ventura. But freeform is surprisingly not an option on the iPhone. I wonder if it worked for me because I transferred the picture to my Mac by downloading from iCloud.

Have you restarted you Mac? If that doesn't work, I'd try restarting in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work is also diagnostic.

By the way, 16x9 is just a pre-crop-- it doesn't get more picture; it just cuts away parts of the picture that it had already actually taken. I don't use it on my phone, because I might later find that I want those parts. I can do the cropping, myself.

This seems to work for me, but I'm not doing RAW or anything weird. Did you take these pictures with your phone? What format are they in?

Which system version do you have installed? Is the version given 10.12 below your question still valid?

Have you set the checkmark to landscape for the aspect ratio?