Top 10 Lists

Was 2023 the year that saved the movies? It’s a question that stems from a false premise; any prior suggestion that cinema was imperiled—that the multiplex is homogenized, that streamers are destroying theaters, that studios don’t make films for grownups anymore—ignores the immutable fact (or at least this critic’s fierce opinion) that artists have spent the past decade stubbornly churning out high-quality motion pictures. Still, it’s difficult to deny that something happened on July 21, 2023—a moment that, depending on your perspective, either signaled a seismic shift in audience behavior or vindicated your long-held insistence that movies remain alive and well.

I am speaking, of course, of #Barbenheimer, that ungainly portmanteau of two of the year’s most critically and commercially successful pictures, which arrived in theaters on the same day. Rather than cannibalizing each other, they complemented one another, sparking a craze of double features and breathing fresh life into the industry. Here were two movies that, in empirical terms, had nothing in common; one was a brightly colored fantasy inspired by a doll, the other a sober and intense three-hour epic about the birth (and aftermath) of the atomic bomb. Yet people flocked to Barbie and Oppenheimer alike, and in the process they reminded everyone that the simple act of going to the movies remains a cherished pastime—a sacred ritual in which art and commerce need not be mutually exclusive. Read More

Are movies better than they’ve ever been? This isn’t a rhetorical question, nor is it a trolling provocation. Concordant to the annual list-making ritual—the absurd and irresistible exercise of reducing a year’s worth of cinema to a discrete number of worthy titles—is the compulsion to take stock of the industry at large. This is frequently a demonstration of despair: a lament that movies are dying, are childish, aren’t what they used to be. The perpetuity of these vague assessments—that they invariably allude to some unspecified past in the medium’s history, a golden age when Then was indubitably superior to Now—would seem to diminish their accuracy. But critics are creatures of grievance, and there is always some new cataclysmic trend—the decline of originality, the prioritization of commerce over artistry, the lack of visual and narrative audacity—for us to complain about.

2022 was no different, even if the particular breed of doomsaying it invited was a familiar species. Once again, the box office was dispiritingly ruled by franchises, sequels, and spinoffs; of the 12 pictures that grossed $150 million domestically, only one—Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, whose subject matter isn’t exactly novel—wasn’t rooted in existing intellectual property. (Last August, I bemoaned the financial failures of three largely original movies that simultaneously landed in theaters with a collective thud.) Conversely, many bracing and adventurous films—the barreling excitement of Athena, the silky suspense of KIMI, the dastardly twists of Fresh—virtually ignored theaters altogether, instead requiring a subscription (or at least a friend or family member’s password) to a boutique streaming service. Cinema may not be dead, but in terms of production and distribution, it is undoubtedly changing, and that constant state of flux inspires grave uncertainty about the art form’s future. Read More

Have the movies finally come back? Or did they never leave? Or maybe my outlook is too rosy; survey any random flock of experts, and you’ll likely be met with an alternative, despairing answer. The state of the motion-picture industry is in constant motion, requiring perpetual reassessment and funereal lamentation. You’ve heard all of these eulogies before: Movies for adults are dead. Disney has monopolized the box office. Streaming is cannibalizing theaters. Superheroes are the only remaining genre. Martin Scorsese lost.

All of these exaggerated appraisals of modern movie-going may well carry an element of truth. (Scorsese, after releasing his last film on Netflix, has changed horses and will distribute his new picture via… Apple.) And yet, as I did last year (and last week), I again find myself resisting the notion that our classical understanding of cinema—of anticipating, watching, and arguing about film—is in mortal peril. Sure, certain trends—in particular the box-office supremacy of the superhero genre at the expense of, well, virtually everything else—are alarming. But while audiences may no longer be piling into theaters with the same multi-pronged hunger, good movies just keep getting made, and you have ample opportunity to watch them. All that’s required of you is artistic curiosity. (Well, and the means to access the ever-expanding buffet of streaming services.) Read More