In 2023, One Cultural Phenomenon Transformed My Hopes for the Future of Movies

Dear Bilge, Esther, and Mark:

When our longtime colleague A.O. Scott left his post as the New York Times’ co-chief film critic earlier this year with a plan to focus instead on books coverage for the same paper, his farewell exit self-interview was decried by some readers, inside the profession and out, for being unduly negative about the state of film (and by extension, film criticism) in 2023.

As critics who make a living writing and talking about movies and why they matter, we are presumably all in agreement that the medium still feels very much alive. But between us Movie Clubbers, back in March I read that piece identifying with much of what Tony had to say. I too have publicly and privately despaired, in the nearly four years since COVID-related theater closures and the rise of streaming ripped a hole in the hull of the industry, that “the cultural space in which the movies I care most about have flourished seems to be shrinking.”

It can be hard to locate, in this moment of technological dislocation, where “the movies”—to use the collective noun we used to throw around so easily—are even happening. Buried deep in the “new releases” menu of a streamer you don’t subscribe to? Downloaded to the phone screen of the guy next to you on a plane? At a film festival across the globe, after which many of the movies so tantalizingly praised or witheringly panned by the handful of critics lucky enough to attend may never see distribution? Even as a professional movie-seeker, I spend the whole year puzzling over what to watch, when it will be made available to how wide of a public, and on which viewing platform to find it. It’s become common for me, the night before finalizing my Top 10 list or voting on critics’ awards, to stumble across some stone-cold masterpiece that, without exhaustive research and/or exceptionally strong word-of-mouth, would have sailed right by me and into the bin of oblivion.

One point that seemed hard to contest back when A.O. announced his exit in March was that commercial theatrical projection was on its way to becoming an extinct distribution model. If a movie wasn’t a special-effects blockbuster developed from a carefully guarded hoard of preexisting IP, it could not be relied on to move viewers off their couches and into a place as expensive, inconvenient, and potentially disease-spreading as a movie theater.

And then came Barbenheimer.

That jokey portmanteau title for a pair of wildly different movies became the popular nickname for a mass-culture phenomenon, complete with audiences decked out in full sparkly-fuchsia and/or gray-felt-hatted finery, all of us participating in a spontaneous communal event in celebration of … cinema? I remember floating through that whole opening weekend in a haze of generalized goodwill, refreshing and re-refreshing the box-office numbers: Yay for Oppenheimer! You go, Barbie! Way to show up for the kind of movies you claim to want to see more of, audiences!

In the atmosphere of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, then at the height of a tense summer as it became clear the standoff would most likely drag on through the fall, success at that scale for any two nonsequels—let alone films from prestige auteurs with strong personal visions—meant the world to anyone working in or around the film industry. It was proof that thoughtfully made “real” films—big-budget projects, to be sure, but not prepped-in-a-lab franchise tentpoles—could get audiences to care about movies as a whole, and to treat the theatrical release of an exciting new one as a major public event. This has since happened at least twice since with the success of Taylor Swift’s and subsequently Beyoncé’s self-produced concert films, both of which skipped over the studio-acquisition stage entirely and made lucrative deals directly with theater chains to show their films in special weekend-only engagements, often at a higher ticket price. That innovation, together with the resolution of the strikes on terms that seem, on the whole, very favorable for creators, has infused me with a fresh jolt of hope that (crosses fingers, spins around thrice) my faith in the future of movies is not wholly delusional.

You’ll notice I’ve just written a whole paragraph on the phenomenon of Barbie’s and Oppenheimer’s popularity without ever mentioning their shared, if very dissimilar, exceptional quality as actual films. It seems silly to place these two works of art in conversation just because of the chronological accident of their release date. But since you, Bilge, put Oppenheimer at No. 1 on your Top 10 list this year, I wonder if you could kick off our first round with some discussion of that movie: its somber but strangely majestic beauty, its treatment of a historical atrocity that’s still echoing into the present, its place in Christopher Nolan’s body of work, and the weird surprise of its massive box-office success. If a certain jointed plastic doll finds her way into the discussion, I won’t object.

My own Top 10 list is here, but I’ll include just the titles below, including five more-than-list-worthy runners-up so the three of you can have them handy to argue with, puzzle over, or applaud, as you see fit.

Anatomy of a Fall
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros
Theater Camp
Tótem
You Hurt My Feelings
The Zone of Interest

Runners-up: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Fallen Leaves, M3gan, Reality, the re-release of Stop Making Sense

I all but skipped around my Mojo Dojo Casa House when our editor confirmed that the three of you were all down to participate in this year’s Movie Club. Thanks so much for being a part of it—this is, without a doubt, the longest and juiciest conversation about movies I get to have all year, and I can’t imagine three critics I’d rather chop it up with.

Yours on Team Barbie (not that there are teams! But still!),

Dana

Read the next entry in Movie Club: Oppenheimer’s Terrifying Chain Reactions