The best movies from 2023 to watch right now, including Barbie, Oppenheimer, Across the Spider-Verse, and more. These are the best new movies to watch right now.
This year at the movies, we’ve had surprise box-office hits, strong genre fare, early awards contenders, and everything else in between. It’s been a fantastic year for cinema.
We launched our list of the best movies of 2023 in February, but we will continue to update it as the year goes along, adding our favorite movies as we catch up with them. At the end of the year, this will then turn into our definitive list, with our staff voting on the best movies of 2023.
For now, consider this a sampling platter — a rolling list that encapsulates the many different kinds of good movies that have been released this year, and the different tastes in movies we have on our staff. There’s plenty in here for any kind of movie-watcher to enjoy.
Because this list is not ranked (yet), we’ll be listing the entries in reverse chronological order. That means the most recent release will be listed first, and then the next most recent, all the way down to the earliest release of the year that we liked. That also means new additions will be surfaced earlier in the list. Because we’re thinking of you, dear reader.
Without further ado, here are the best movies of 2023 so far, and where to watch them. Our latest update added The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Enjoy!When Evil Lurks
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Demián Rugna
Cast: Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomón, Luis Ziembrowski
Where to watch: In theaters; on Shudder Oct. 27
With When Evil Lurks, Terrified writer-director Demián Rugna doesn’t just break the rules of possession movies, he literally writes his own. Everyone in the film’s rural Spanish farming community and the nearby modern town already knows the seven rules about dealing with possessing demons. But those rules are difficult and inconvenient to follow, and it’s so much easier to just deny the problem exists — no matter how many bodies pile up, and no matter how horribly people die.
Bureaucratic indifference, personal irresponsibility, and denial are major themes in When Evil Lurks, a tremendously tense, shocking story that purposefully ignores the lines most horror doesn’t cross. (People who can’t handle graphic harm to children or animals, this is absolutely not your movie.) But Rugna isn’t torturing his characters with the sadistic glee of an Evil Dead Rises. His film is empathetic and personal, and his characters and their conflicts are well drawn. As rural farmer Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) tries to hold his family together and convince them of the danger, his history with them and his own failings get in the way. But there’s nothing he can do to change the past; all he can do is try to shift the future. It’s heartbreaking watching him try, but it’s also an edge-of-the-seat thriller with moments designed to shock even jaded horror fans. —Tasha RobinsonThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 37m
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley
Where to watch: Netflix
It’s been a busy year for Wes Anderson, and for Wes Anderson fans.
First, Asteroid City came out this summer, which you can read more about if you scroll down. Then, this fall, we were treated to four shorts adapted by Anderson from Roald Dahl stories for Netflix. Each is a strange and delightful experiment in form and adaptation, and all are well worth your time.
The standout is the first (and longest): The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. In this tale, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Henry Sugar, who seeks to learn a skill he just discovered existed: sight without the use of your eyes. Sugar, being a bit of a rapscallion, wants to use it to cheat at gambling, but this is immaterial. Henry Sugar, and the three other Dahl stories Anderson adapts, are opportunities for the director to continue to push his unique aesthetic and approach forward.
Anderson’s recent movies have seen the director continue to push more and more toward recognizing and making bare the artifice essential to filmmaking. These shorts take that even further. Actors recite Dahl’s words verbatim, speaking directly to the camera for asides like “I said” (Dev Patel in particular excels at this). The sets are treated like those on a theater stage, collapsing or building in real time to aid scene transitions. These shorts, and Sugar in particular, are real “movies can be like that?!” moments. It’s not an unfamiliar experience for those who have watched Anderson’s career, but it never ceases to amaze. —PVNo One Will Save You
Genre: Sci-fi horror thriller
Run time: 1h 33m
Director: Brian Duffield
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Elizabeth Kaluev, Zack Duhame
Where to watch: Hulu
No One Will Save You is an exceptional experiment in genre filmmaking, one that takes the tropes of a conventional home invasion thriller and turns them on their head with the introduction of extraterrestrial threat and a personal story of redemption, survival, and self-reflection.
Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart) stars as Brynn, the pariah of a small town who awakens one night to find her home invaded by an apparent burglar. Upon further inspection, Brynn quickly realizes the invader is neither a burglar, nor are they of this Earth, and she must think on her feet in order to survive the encounter and escape to safety. That premise alone offers up a wealth of opportunities for moment-to-moment twists, with the most intriguing being apparent from the opening minutes of the movie: Nearly the entirety of No One Will Save You is devoid of any audible or spoken dialogue.
As far as directing decisions go, it’s a smart and adventurous one on Duffield’s part, relying on Dever’s emotional, wordless performance to convey to the audience what’s going on and what’s most important. She’s exceptional in the role, creating a convincing portrait of an awkward shut-in wracked with guilt over a traumatic past event who nevertheless finds the will to overcome extraordinary circumstances in her stubborn fight to survive. From the creature designs and shrill percussive score to its shocking twist ending, No One Will Save You is one of the best and most surprising horror thrillers to come out in 2023. —Toussaint EganThe Creator
Genre: Sci-fi
Run time: 2h 13m
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney
Where to watch: In theaters
Original sci-fi movies aren’t easy to come by in theaters these days, and great ones are even more rare. But that’s exactly what director Gareth Edwards has brought us in his first movie since his 2016 Star Wars spinoff, Rogue One. The Creator brings classic science fiction questions about what makes us human face-to-face with a modern world of technological warfare and global military dominance.
The Creator takes place in a world where robotics advanced faster than in our own, creating sufficiently advanced AI beings that are human in all but appearance — referred to as Sims. After a Sim detonates a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles, the United States goes to war against the entire concept of AI, vowing to wipe it out of existence, making Sim-friendly countries in Southeast Asia priority target number one. Somewhere along the course of the U.S.-dominated conflict, an AI designer known as Narmata creates an apparent superweapon that could turn the tides of the war. A soldier named Joshua (John David Washington) is sent in to terminate the weapon, which turns out to be the first Sim child.
This premise gives The Creator room to explore all kinds of ideas in its story, like how America responds to threats (both real and perceived) from the rest of the world. But the movie’s greatest strength is simply its filmmaking. The Creator is easily the best-looking blockbuster of the year, and one of the most visually impressive since Edwards’ own Rogue One. It’s full of gorgeous shots of smoke rolling across jungles, menacing U.S. Army tanks crawling across remote villages, and gunfights and bombs that feel terrifying due to their sheer scale and firepower.
Despite all of its ruminations on the horror of warfare and destruction, and the terrifying completeness of its violence, The Creator isn’t some depressing slog. In the fundamental mold of ’90s blockbusters, The Creator is, at its core, a deeply optimistic and hopeful movie, with an ending that’s beautiful and keeps its eyes toward the future. The Creator may start out with two hours of Apocalypse Now, but it has an ending that would make Amblin-era Spielberg proud. —Austen GoslinBad City
Genre: Action
Run time: 1h 58m
Director: Kensuke Sonomura
Cast: Hitoshi Ozawa, Tak Sakaguchi, Masanori Mimoto
Where to watch: Hoopla, or for digital rental/purchase
Japanese V-cinema legend Hitoshi Ozawa stars in this hard-boiled crime thriller boosted by some of the best action choreography of the year. Veteran movie and video game action choreographer Kensuke Sonomura steps back into the director’s chair after 2019’s Hydra and delivers one of the year’s standout crime thrillers and action movies.
Bad City first and foremost delivers breathtaking choreography, evocative sound design, and strong leading performances. A particular standout: watching one of the great screen fighters of our time, the former professional street fighter Tak Sakaguchi, operate with Sonomura’s excellent choreography. Oh, and if you want to know what it’s about: A disgraced police officer is freed from prison to help stop violent gang warfare. But the plot is a secondary concern to the movie’s exemplary action, including breathtaking knife duels, explosive shootouts, and so much more. —Pete VolkShin Kamen Rider
Genre: Tokusatsu
Run time: 2h 1m
Director: Hideaki Anno
Cast: Sosuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuku Emoto
Where to watch: Prime Video, under the title Shin Masked Rider
Hideaki Anno is back with his latest movie in the Shin series, which has seen him make massive blockbusters from many of Japan’s biggest IPs. After directing the masterful Shin Godzilla, he wrote (but didn’t direct) Shin Ultraman. The latest, Shin Kamen Rider, might not reach the soaring heights of Shin Godzilla, but it’s an incredibly fun time bolstered by terrific costume designs, inventive action sequences, and a delightfully bizarre tone, all while looking gorgeous throughout.
Sosuke Ikematsu is the young motorcyclist Takeshi, who gets transformed by a sinister organization into a human-grasshopper hybrid. Along with his allies, he must hunt down the organization and take out the many different human-animal hybrids they’ve created along the way: There’s a bat hybrid, a wasp hybrid, a chameleon hybrid, and many more.
It’s the best superhero movie of the year, and certainly has the best depiction of super-speed powers. —PVThey Cloned Tyrone
Genre: Sci-fi comedy
Run time: 2h 2m
Director: Juel Taylor
Cast: John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, Jamie Foxx
Where to watch: Netflix
Juel Taylor’s They Cloned Tyrone is as hilarious as it is inventive; it’s a Black-centric sci-fi comedy-thriller that channels the pulpy Blaxploitation-inspired humor of Black Dynamite and Undercover Brother with the cerebral identity crises of Jordan Peele’s Us and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You.
John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris deliver a powerhouse trio of performances as Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo, respectively — a drug dealer, a pimp, and a prostitute who find themselves unexpectedly thrust into a nightmarish situation when they accidently uncover a clandestine government cloning facility deep below their neighborhood. Upon learning that the dilapidated condition of their community is not solely attributable to institutional neglect but to outright malice and surreptitious manipulation, the three band together to expose the conspiracy at the heart of their neighborhood to reclaim their autonomy, identities, and future.
They Cloned Tyrone stands out as one of the most unique and entertaining films to be released on Netflix in recent memory. A wild, weird, and genuinely funny comedy anchored by strong leading performances (especially in the case of Jamie Foxx’s charismatic and foul-mouthed turn as Slick Charles) and surprises that only merit further appreciation upon rewatching, Taylor’s directorial debut signals the arrival of a promising new voice and hopefully even more ambitious stories in the future. —TEBarbie
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 1h 54m
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell
Where to watch: Available for digital rental or purchase before streaming on Max.
Perky, playful, and deceptively caustic, Barbie falls into a category with a limited number of previous films (1995’s The Brady Bunch Movie and 2007’s Enchanted among them) that gleefully satirize a cultural staple while also treating it with real affection. Margot Robbie stars as Barbie, one of many Barbies in Barbieland, an imaginary alternate universe where the popular toys hang out together in an endless idyll of pink plastic palaces, frequent wardrobe changes, and happy pastel parties. But whoever’s playing with this Barbie in the real world is sad, and it starts to affect Barbie — which leads her and Ken (played to perfection by Ryan Gosling) to take an Enchanted-style trip to the real world, where they’re both surprised at what they learn about real-world gender stereotyping.
Any description of Barbie’s big themes (toxic masculinity, how Barbie branding affects young girls, women as playthings, the commodification of girl power) makes it sound preachy and stilted. But writer-director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach bypass any feeling of sitting through a Gender Studies 101 class. They package up all these ideas within a giddy satire full of meta-humor musical numbers, bright and winning performances, pointed jokes aimed at Mattel and the corporate world, some terrific casting (Issa Rae as President Barbie, Simu Liu as a rival Ken, and Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie are standouts) and endless cultural gags about everything from the worst Barbie marketing decisions to the terminally online. It’s a high-speed joke-fest that doesn’t take Barbie any more seriously than she deserves — but does pay solemn homage to all the ways, positive and negative, that Barbie fandom makes people feel. —Tasha RobinsonOppenheimer
Genre: Biopic
Run time: 3h 0m
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh
Where to watch: In theaters before streaming on Peacock
Is there much left to say about the United States’ criminal, moral compromise in dropping the atomic bomb or the obviously tortured psychology of the bomb’s creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer? Maybe not, but as Christopher Nolan proves in his biopic on the life of the theoretical physicist, there’s plenty left to feel. Cross-cutting through time at lighting speed, and smashing together facts in ways its source material, the exhaustive biography American Prometheus, can’t in bound form, Nolan’s action-movie sensibilities split the very atoms of his subject to understand not the what, but the how and why.
Bouncing from the early days of a daydreaming scientist to the congressional hearings of his eventual political confidant to Oppy’s eventual time at Los Alamos, his $2 billion built-from-the-ground-up research base, Nolan litters the drama with factual detail ripped straight from the book. Yet at every turn, he ditches the Bohemian Rhapsody school of explanation to handwave away complicated mathematical explanation and legalese that might tie a complicated situation up in knots. Like in everything from The Dark Knight to Dunkirk, stakes do the talking — Oppenheimer must end the war. Throughout time he wrestles with turbulent family life, the burial scrutiny of a blacklist-giddy government that wants names of his Communist pals, and the heartbreaking fact that the Jewish people, his people, are under attack… but it all comes back to the bomb. There’s a ticking clock, and yet again, Nolan takes full advantage.
Part heist movie, part courtroom drama, part dreamscape, the swirl of Oppenheimer is at constant crescendo thanks to a kinetic camera, Ludwig Göransson’s humming score, and what might be the most stacked cast in movie history. Every IMAX-sized close-up of Cillian Murphy reveals layers to Oppenheimer that are easily assumed. Robert Downey Jr. takes the right lessons from Tony Stark to imbue Oppenheimer’s political adversary, Lewis Strauss, with swagger. Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh. Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, and so many more all show up to deliver — and yet there’s still room for The Santa Clause’s David Krumholtz to be the MVP. They all fire off life-or-death lines, sweat under the pressure of the job, stagger backward when they realize what they’ve done, and under the eye of Nolan, reach the quantum realm of impossible choices. Oppenheimer has a magnitude worthy of the Trinity tests, but most admirable is that it never fetishizes the accomplishment of the bomb. The end will leave a person absolutely furious, as it must. —Matt PatchesEarth Mama
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 37m
Director: Savanah Leaf
Cast: Tia Nomore, Erika Alexander, Doechii
Where to watch: Available for digital rental/purchase
I hadn’t heard a word about Earth Mama before watching it in a nearly empty theater, and was surprised to see the A24 banner ahead of its opening credits. In hindsight, the film doesn’t fit with its distributor’s brash-arthouse aesthetic. It’s smaller and more challenging than something like Talk to Me, which played in the theater right next door, and whose bass could be felt during Earth Mama’s quietest scenes.
Gia, a pregnant single mother in the Bay Area, seeks to recover her two children from foster care while considering adoption for her unborn third child. She’s barely old enough to legally drink, but her life is already burdened with more obligations than hours in a day. She balances a job at a mall photography studio, mandatory drug sobriety courses, and check-ins with Child Protective Services, perpetually rushing from one to the other. The history of cinema isn’t wanting for films that gawk at poverty through the dehumanizing eyes of wealthy, typically white male directors, but Earth Mama isn’t that. With her debut, director Savanah Leaf displays a bottomless compassion not just for her lead, but for each character who passes the lens.
Everybody has their moment to be more than a supporting character. In the middle of the film, Leaf drops the film’s naturalism for poetry, taking the men who hang outside Gia’s apartment catcalling her after a long day and placing them in front of drab portrait studio backdrops. To camera, they talk about their childhoods in and out of the CPS system. Leaf pulls in close, letting us see the wrinkles of their faces, every tiny flinch of their performances.
The close-up is Leaf’s flex. She uses the shot with a confident abundance that few other directors dare. On each character, she moves in close, like a friend at a party with a secret to tell under the loud music. When that intimacy is shared with Gia herself, what differentiates Earth Mama comes into focus. We are not observing this woman from a distance; we are sitting beside her, listening closely and hoping for the best. —Chris PlanteAsteroid City
Genre: Comedy, drama
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, and many more
Where to watch: Peacock, or for digital rental/purchase
To people who don’t know Wes Anderson’s work well, he’s a known quantity that’s easily replicated and parodied: If you’re watching one of his films, you’re going to see a lot of fast-talking people responding with unemotive calm to extraordinary events, against a backdrop of meticulously designed pastel sets. But fans see a lot of nuance within that formula, as Anderson’s voice (especially his sense of humor) develops from film to film.
In Asteroid City, his ridiculously meta story-within-a-story sci-fi film about an alien encounter, that voice hones in on the question of art and creativity — who it’s for, what it brings the artist and the audience, why any form of recognition or acclaim is good enough for one creator while another strains to find connection and resonance in their work. It’s the kind of film that moves so quickly, and with so little attempt to hold the audience’s hands and tell them what to feel, that it takes some work to scratch the surface.
But it’s worth diving into the movie’s connections and themes, as a who’s who of actors — many from Anderson’s usual stable, and some debuting here — bounce off each other, looking for meaning in an isolated desert setting. The cast (including Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Jeffrey Wright, Sophia Lillis, Edward Norton, and many, many more) navigate familial death, meaningless plaudits, and that alien visitor with the same straight-faced aplomb. This may not be a movie designed for passionate emotional response, but as usual for Anderson, it’s remarkably specific, idiosyncratic, beautifully assembled, and absolutely intentional. —TRPast Lives
Genre: Drama, romance
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Celine Song
Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
Where to watch: Available for digital rental/purchase
In the immediately captivating first scene of Past Lives, Nora, a Korean Canadian woman, sits at a New York City bar with her husband, Arthur, and her childhood sweetheart, Hae Sung, intermittently translating their words to one another.
The movie follows Nora’s life in 12-year segments: her childhood, right as she leaves Korea and goes on her first (and last) date with Hae Sung; her young adulthood, where as a graduate student in New York City, she reconnects with Hae Sung, but that happy reconciliation slowly is undermined by distance and technological struggles; and then the present day, where after years of not talking, Hae Sung visits a married Nora in New York City. It’s beautifully bittersweet, a poignant meditation on growing as a person, and how that affects the people we meet at various stages in our lives.
At one point in the movie, Nora and Arthur lie in bed together and Arthur remarks that in this story, he sounds like the villain — the American husband keeping away two estranged lovers. But this is not such a movie. Writer-director Celine Song takes great care not to villainize anyone. Both men love Nora, but neither of them is the bad guy. They were both the right person at different times, and as the movie’s title suggests, the right person in another life. —Petrana RadulovicTalk to Me
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 34m
Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Cast: Sophie Wilde, Joe Bird, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen
Where to watch: Available for digital purchase
Talk to Me is like the horror-movie version of a perfect comedy sketch. It’s got a perfect premise, a brilliant turn you saw coming from the start but that hits even better than you expected, and it ends before it wears out its welcome. It helps that it’s also one of the most stylish and shocking horror movies of the last few years.
The film brings a twist to the more traditional demonic possession narrative: A few kids have acquired the hand of a dead person, and if you say the right words and grasp the hand, you can summon a spirit back from the dead and even invite them into your body. So like all good teens, the kids immediately use possession as a party drug.
