The movie landscape shifted momentously in 2023, thanks to the gradual toppling of a giant—namely, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Following 15 years of box-office (and cultural) dominance, the MCU began to wobble in February with the scattered Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It regained its footing somewhat with the assured Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, until it came crashing to the ground in November with the dreadful The Marvels, the sprawling franchise’s all-time worst-performing entry. Factor in Disney+’s roundly panned Secret Invasion and underwhelming Loki Season 2, and the once-mighty titan finally appeared to be on its last legs, thereby ending an era of seemingly unshakable supremacy.
With audiences seemingly tiring of superhero fare, they turned their attention elsewhere, including to modern and historical dramas—be it Celine Song’s thwarted-romance debut Past Lives, Martin Scorsese’s crime epic Killers of the Flower Moon, Todd Haynes’ art-imitating-life May December, Cord Jefferson’s satiric American Fiction, Justine Triet’s courtroom whodunit Anatomy of a Fall, or Jonathan Glazer’s unique Holocaust nightmare The Zone of Interest. To be sure, there was at least one men-in-tights affair that wowed critics and audiences alike: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson’s spectacular Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Nonetheless, moviegoers largely craved something new, and nowhere was that more evident than with the cinematic event of the past twelve months: Barbenheimer, the two-for-one weekend extravaganza that made both Barbie and Oppenheimer the summer’s hot topics.
Wildly different and yet marked by a similar auteurist spirit, Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan’s blockbusters are unquestionably what we’ll remember most from this year. Thus, it’s no surprise that at least one of them makes a standout showing in this, our rundown of the best films of 2023.
