Hollywood Fights to Stay Big

Looking for a clear path ahead (Oppenheimer/Universal Pictures).

Dear Wags,

There are pivotal years in Hollywood history. In 1939, the studio system produced the bounty of The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Dark Victory and Gone with the Wind. In 1967, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and In the Heat of the Night signaled the arrival of a New Hollywood. In 1977, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Saturday Night Fever ushered in the blockbuster era. Where does 2023 fit in that storied history?

It was another year of crisis for a business that’s been rocked by too many of them. The industry struggled to find its footing amid labor unrest, corporate upheaval, political controversy, and audience drift. Disruptions played havoc with release schedules and further undermined awards season. Unsurprisingly, the year’s biggest movies conveyed a longing for a time when Hollywood led the cultural conversation.

All the stops were pulled out to lure audiences back to theaters. At key moments, it worked. Even so, movie-going is becoming a novelty act. Watching Barbie, the year’s top-grosser, was fascinating—for as much as what went on in cinemas as what happened onscreen. Post-pandemic, we not only prefer watching from the couch, we schlep couch potato habits with us wherever we go. In theaters, eyes stay glued to cell phones. It’s understood that no movie holds our attention for long. Little wonder Barbie played like TikTok vignettes strung together. By comparison, Grease was plot-heavy.

Barbie’s glibness —a schmear of You Go Girl clichés sandwiched between dance moves and product placement—hardly put off audiences. It was not revolutionary, but people don’t want a revolution. They are desperate for comfort and a sense of fun. In a fractured culture, movies inspired by toys (The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the year’s second highest grosser) still bring warring tribes together. Little else does. Three superhero pictures — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania— were top earners, but the genre is as exhausted as Westerns were in 1970. As usual, most of the year’s biggest movies were sequels or reinventions of durable I.P.

There were intriguing exceptions. The Sound of Freedom, a scrappy little number about a vigilante fighting human traffickers, became a sleeper hit with an ignored red state constituency. (For better and worse, its success reminds us of Dirty Harry pictures in another era.) Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour powered the rise of the concert movie; the year closes with Beyoncé's Renaissance.

The most inspiring hit was Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Defiantly theatrical and critically acclaimed, it has made more than $953 million. Amid so many retreads, an auteur scored with an original idea. Maybe we’re at another hinge moment in this Netflix-dominated age, and sprawling, theatrical epics will return in force. We need 10 Oppenheimers drawing large audiences.

Meantime, here’s what our Picture Squad loved most this year. This holiday season, we hope you’ll brave the multiplex to see a few of them. We keep forgetting that big, dark room can still be magical.

Yours Ever,

Marcello Rubini

Emma’s a gemma (Poor Things/Searchlight).

Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos drew raves at the Venice Film Festival for the loopy saga of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a charming reanimated corpse. Mary Shelley wasn’t a producer, but this frenetic black comedy makes mischief with the Frankenstein story. Bella grows from wild monster-child into jaded monster-woman, her worldview shaped by the bumbling men pursuing her. Willem Dafoe is her mad scientist creator, while lab assistant Ramy Youssef and cad Mark Ruffalo fall for her. An electrifying performance puts Stone in the hunt for an Oscar. — Elizabeth Lavenza

Gladstone and Scorsese, two discoveries of 2023 (Killers of the Flower Moon/Apple).

Killers of the Flower Moon

When you make one of the best movies of a brilliant career at 81, you inadvertently give hope to anybody worried about the political future of America. Wag Supremo Martin Scorsese vaulted to the head of the awards season pack with his masterful adaption of David Grann’s bestseller. It’s a Western, a murder mystery, and a tragic love story rolled into one. In a cast of heavy hitters, newcomer Lily Gladstone dazzles as an Osage heiress a the center of a sinister plot. — Jack Crabb

Wright, by the book (American Fiction/MGM-Amazon).

American Fiction

Cord Jefferson finds the humor in a society mired in reckonings that don’t reckon with very much. His directorial debut stars Fantastic Jeffrey Wright as a cranky literary novelist tired of seeing his books on remainder tables. So, he writes a parody of ghetto and liberation clichés, only to see it race up the bestseller list. The result is both a satire of race obsessions and the story of a mature man coming to terms with his limitations. —Bobby Taylor

Yoo and Lee have a connection (Past Lives/A24).

Past Lives

The genius of Celine Song’s not-quite-love-story is that it makes a poetic virtue out of loss. Greta Lee leaves behind her closest childhood friend (Teo Yoo) in South Korea and begins a life in America. Eventually, he follows her, though she’s married to another man (John Magaro). The result is a moving reflection on wanting what we cannot have. — Nola Darling

Portman and Moore open old wounds (May/December, Netflix).

May December

The Mary Lay Letourneau saga may have inspired Todd Haynes’ latest movie, but you don’t need to know a thing about it be riveted by this take on scandal obsession. Natalie Portman is an actress preparing to play the role of a woman (Julianne Moore) once tarred by controversy. Charles Melton is a revelation as her victim/husband. The result is Oscar-bound — Emma Hamilton

Sessa, Randolph, and Giamatti light up the holidays (The Holdovers/Focus Features)

The Holdovers

Not since the Ice Storm has a movie so perfectly captured the lumpy, lost quality of the early 1970s. The tale of three loners (Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph) stranded at a boarding school is the sort of little movie that isn’t supposed to work anymore. Genius Alexander Payne proved us wrong with a smart script, the perfect cast, and just the right dollop of sweetness. It feels destined to become a holiday staple. — Mary Hatch

Watch your step: Hüller and Theis hit a new low (Anatomy of a Fall/Neon).

Anatomy of a Fall

Director Justine Triet won the Cannes Palme d’Or for this twisty whodunit she cowrote with Arthur Harari. A novelist (Sandra Hüller) becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation after her husband (Samuel Theis) is found dead near their alpine retreat. Did she do him in, or is she being railroaded? The star witness is the couple’s blind son (Milo Machado Graner), who discovers the body. Hüller earned global acclaim as the woman at the center of the mystery. — Christine Vole

Hüller turns a blind eye (Zone of Interest/A24).

Zone of Interest

The banality of evil is chillingly rendered by director Jonathan Glazer in this adaptation of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel. An S.S. officer (Christian Friedel) and his wife (Hüller, in another standout performance) tend to their family in a bucolic setting. It happens that this idyll is taking place next to Auschwitz, but mass murder is tuned out while the central characters go about their ordinary lives. The result is a grim portrayal of Nazi crimes and the universal tendency to go numb in the face of injustice. — Helen Hirsch

Menzies and Louis-Dreyfus can’t handle the truth (You Hurt My Feelings/A24).

You Hurt My Feelings

Wag Nicole Holofcener’s wry marriage comedy is all about the white lies we tell ourselves and our spouses. An author (Dame Julia Louis-Dreyfus) overhears her therapist husband (Tobias Menzies) confessing that he didn’t like her latest book. That revelation causes both of them to question what they are doing with their lives. You root for these Upper West Side sad sacks to work it out. — Allison Portchnik

Raven Jackson’s Sundance sensation (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt/Jaclyn Martinez/A24).

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Raven Jackson’s directorial debut is an experimental coming-of-age story set in rural Mississippi, with a trio of performers (Kaylee Nicole Johnson, Zainab Jah, and Charleen McClure) playing the central character at different stages of her life. As a collection of disconnected moments, the movie reflects the tapestry of memory. The festival circuit darling also signals the arrival of a major new talent. —Eve Batiste

Oppenheimer

Cillian Murphy headed an all-star cast in the world-smashing story of the father of the atomic bomb. Nolan, one of the last big name directors, displayed astounding technical virtuosity spinning a 20th century legend. The result is the rare blockbuster that manages to be both highbrow and entertaining. — Moira Davidson