PEOPLE Picks the Top 10 Movies of 2023, from “Oppenheimer” to “Barbie” and “The Color Purple”

See PEOPLE's picks for the 10 best films of the year

There are still some big, unresolved questions about the fate of the cinema — streaming, AI, post-pandemic patterns of attendance — but 2023 was a fabulous year for movies.

You had not one but two daring masterpieces about American history at its most troubling — Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, which could just as easily shared the No. 1 spot — as well as the crazy summer buzz of excitement that anticipated the arrival of both Oppenheimer and Barbie. This was the giddy box-office event dubbed Barbenheimer. Greta Gerwig’s half of that phenomenon became the most successful movie ever directed by a woman — and it was a movie that, strangely enough, percolated with as many ideas and paradoxes as the -heimer half.

Narrowing this down to 10 wasn't easy — so let’s name a few honorable mentions: John Wick: Chapter 4, Priscilla, American Fiction and Asteroid City.

'Oppenheimer'

Director Christopher Nolan’s three-hour masterpiece is about how a life-annihilating force — the atomic bomb — was unleashed on a world already (always) buffeted by other, older forces, the ones that have made and broken societies: political, ideological, psychological. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), having followed a line of thought to its logical end to create the bomb, is horrified — destroyed — when he realizes that his genius can’t influence the White House’s dangerous Cold War vision. (Truman considers him a crybaby.) His tragedy is at the heart of a colossal, almost assaultive cinematic experience that’s exciting, dismaying and invaluable.

'Killers of the Flower Moon'

Martin Scorsese directed the most sinister western ever to come out of Hollywood: an epic account, well over 3 hours long, about the systematic murder of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma — it was a scheme by White men to gain control of the oil rights that had made the Osage colossally wealthy. The film is, in some ways, a cruel and excruciating exercise in suspense: Will a rich Osage woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone, giving a fascinatingly enigmatic performance) survive the slow death being planned for her by her husband (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his uncle (Robert De Niro)? One of the greatest films ever by one of our greatest filmmakers.

'The Color Purple'

This latest adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel about long-suffering Celie (Fantasia Barrino) is the best, with a much surer tone than Steven Spielberg’s 1995 film and a cast of confident, ingratiating talents, including Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks and Halle Bailey. Even Colman Domingo, as the rotten Mister, is magnetic. Exuberant, bold and, as the storms recede from Celie’s life, soul-healing.

'Maestro'

The tempo is furioso in director-star Bradley Cooper’s wildly stylish but endearing film about the chaotic union of composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein and wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan).

'Air'

Ben Affleck directed and starred in a fleetfooted film about how Nike courted young Michael Jordan. The unbeatable ensemble included Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Jason Bateman and — one of the year’s slam-dunk performances — Chris Messina as a blisteringly foulmouthed agent.

'May December'

Director Todd Haynes’ squirm-inducing study of moral accountability in the suburbs starred Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman — both great, although playing their roles in very different keys — as a scandalous homemaker and an unscrupulous actress. Funny, campy, sad, oblique.

'The Holdovers'

Goodbye, Mr. Chips for a much less sentimental age: A lonely, dyspeptic teacher (Paul Giamatti, in the richest role of his career) gets schooled in life during a long holiday break. For company he has a rather sour young student (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s head cook, played by the extraordinary Da’Vine Joy Randolph with a simple humor and gravity that counterbalance Giamatti’s endless variations on exasperation.

'Anatomy of a Fall'

In the role of a writer accused of murdering her husband, German actress Sandra Hüller gave a remarkably tricky performance — a naked display of emotion that, in an instant, could vanish behind a veil of inscrutability. Was the woman guilty or innocent? Who can say? (Hüller was also terrific in The Zone of Interest, playing a Nazi’s wife who thinks she’s found heaven living in a tidy house right next to Auschwitz.)

'Past Lives'

The year’s most touching romance was, in a sense, just a dream, a chimera: Nora (Greta Lee) is haunted by her feelings for Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), a friend from long-ago childhood. Runner-up in what might be called the “love can feel like a phantom limb” department: The crushingly sad and mysterious All of Us Strangers, starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal.

'Barbie'

Director Greta Gerwig’s pastel-pink fantasy about the iconic doll (Margot Robbie) turned out to be a red-hot hit. But was it a feminist satire about sexist role models or a lavish endorsement of the Mattel brand? Also, why would a plastic doll have intimations of mortality? (Pixar’s Toy Story films have shown a firmer grasp on that peculiar topic.) And, finally, why should a film about Barbie be stolen by Ken (Ryan Gosling, flawlessly funny)? Some of these ambiguities might have been resolved if Gerwig, a ravishingly unusual comic actress, had played Barbie herself. Feel free to debate this among yourselves — into the new year, if necessary.

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