The 10 best movies of 2023: ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘Saltburn’ and more
Oppenheimer”).During the simultaneous Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes, the sagging box office was boosted, like NFL ratings and the economy of East Rutherford, New Jersey, by Taylor Swift.Marvel Studios, which used to be the surest thing in Hollywood, began to underperform (“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”) and then downright flop (“The Marvels”).And DC was revealed to actually stand for Dud Central, with all of the studio’s comic-book films of 2023 (“Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle”) turning out to be financial failures.In a win for Gen Z, studio execs determined Zendaya’s star wattage is so huge now that two of her movies — “Dune: Part 2” and “Challengers” — were delayed a year due to the strikes, so she can promote them to her hoards of fans. And baby boomers were dinged by the big-time tanking of the nostalgic “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” starring a now 81-year-old Harrison Ford who schlepped around New York and Europe.Despite all the madness — and a sea of schlock — some excellent films hit theaters this year.