After barely surviving a mandatory shutdown in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the executive class running some of the largest film studios in the world decided that they weren’t quite ridiculously rich enough yet and furthermore they hadn’t taken enough liberties – financial, creative and moral – with those employed by them.

And so the actors and writers collectively said no and downed tools for five months in a dispute over pay (including residual payments in the age of streaming), working conditions, and especially the increasing threat of artificial intelligence being used to not only write screenplays based on algorithms but to steal the likenesses of actors (living and dead) and store them in perpetuity without just compensation.

With Hollywood productions quiet for half the year and none of the “talent” allowed to promote those movies that were completed prior to the strikes, we ended up with a more limited and less enthusiastically received slate of major releases. Not even superhero movies or franchise sequels fronted by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise were guaranteed hits anymore.

Despite all this, 2023 ended up being a pretty good year for cinema, with plenty of examples of not only memorable blockbusters but of distinct filmmakers leaving their mark and under-represented communities providing vibrancy and freshness to a myriad of new stories. Based upon UK release dates, these are my 10 Best Films of 2023.

Follow me @SSPThinksFilm on X (Twitter).

10. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Review

2023 has been a great year for films about how Gen-Z processes their major life experiences, and this delightful, hilarious little film starring most of the Sandler clan (including Adam as an adorably schlubby dad) is up there with the very best.

As she approaches her her 13th birthday and the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) is determined to make her Bat Mitzvah the most perfect and memorable of her peer group, including that of BFF Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). But things get a lot more complicated as hormones, teenage crushes and petty but damaging psychological manipulation via social media enter the mix.

Five years ago, Bo Burnham made his memorable feature debut with Eighth Grade and told one of the most connective, visceral stories about becoming a teenager in years. Sammi Cohen’s film has the same aim but demonstrates how seismically culture has changed in just half a decade, all through a Jewish cultural lens. There may have never been a more challenging time to be growing up in an always-online age, and Alison Peck’s insightful script in addition to the across-the-board wonderfully naturalistic performances help to make this an unexpectedly profound crowd-pleaser.

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 Review

#JusticeforJamesGunn incarnate, the final chapter of the unlikeliest a-hole superhero team’s story shatters expectations and satisfyingly delivers on almost every level.

After years of defending the countless worlds together, the Guardians team has reached a precarious place. Their leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) has slumped into a depressed, alcoholic stupor after losing the love of his life Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), and Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) past as a bio-engineered test subject comes back to haunt him in a very real way. Can the team come together one last time and save the galaxy, and themselves?

Marvel is seen as a pretty risk-averse studio and certainly much of their recent output has been received with a shrug from many viewers, but Guardians Vol 3 shows what happens when one of the best directors they partnered with is left to finish the story he wanted to tell. The action has never been more polished and visually dazzling, the performances from people and animated raccoons alike so honest and full of pain, Gunn’s love of animals so prominent as the team go up against a truly detestable figure who causes pain for the hell of it.

Recommended for you: MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked

The nominees for the 81st Golden Globe Awards were announced on Monday 11th December, with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie the most-nominated of the films chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Warner Bros’ Barbie was nominated across 7 categories, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Lead Actress and Supporting Actor, with 3 nominations in the Original Song category for “Dance the Night Away”, “I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?”.

Justine Triet’s multi-time European Film Awards winner and the recipient of the 2023 Cannes Palme d’Or, Anatomy of a Fall, was nominated in both the Best Motion Picture – Drama category as well as the Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language category, as was Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. The latter was also nominated in the Best Original Score – Motion Picture category alongside The Boy and the Heron, which is a leading name in the Best Motion Picture – Animated category beside Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

The 2024 Golden Globes will take place on 7th January 2024, and will be broadcast in the CBS in the US and in the UK on Paramount+.

The nominees for the 81st edition of the Golden Globe Awards (2024) are as follows:

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Anatomy of a Fall
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
The Zone of Interest

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Air
American Fiction
Barbie
The Holdovers
May December
Poor Things

Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language
Anatomy of a Fall
Fallen Leaves
Io Capitano
Past Lives
Society of the Snow
The Zone of Interest

Best Motion Picture – Animated
The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Suzume
Wish

Best Director – Motion Picture
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Greta Gerwig (Barbie)
Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things)
Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Celine Song (Past Lives)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Annette Bening (Nyad)
Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Greta Lee (Past Lives)
Carey Mulligan (Maestro)
Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple)
Jennifer Lawrence (No Hard Feelings)
Natalie Portman (May December)
Alma Pöysti (Fallen Leaves)
Margot Robbie (Barbie)
Emma Stone (Poor Things)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer)
Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple)
Jodie Foster (Nyad)
Julianne Moore (May December)
Rosamund Pike (Saltburn)
Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Colman Domingo (Rustin)
Barry Keoghan (Saltburn)
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Nicolas Cage (Dream Scenario)
Timothée Chalamet (Wonka)
Matt Damon (Air)
Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Joaquin Phoenix (Beau Is Afraid)
Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
Willem Dafoe (Poor Things)
Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer)
Ryan Gosling (Barbie)
Charles Melton (May December)
Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Justine Triet, Arthur Harari (Anatomy of a Fall)
Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach (Barbie)
Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Celine Song (Past Lives)
Tony McNamara (Poor Things)

Best Original Score – Motion Picture
Jerskin Fendrix (Poor Things)
Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer)
Joe Hisaishi (The Boy and the Heron)
Micachu (The Zone of Interest)
Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse)
Robbie Robertson (Killers of the Flower Moon)

Best Original Song – Motion Picture
“Addicted to Romance” by Bruce Springsteen
“Dance the Night” by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, Caroline Ailin, Dua Lipa
“I’m Just Ken” by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt
“Peaches” by Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Eric Osmond, John Spiker, Jack Black
“Road to Freedom” by Lenny Kravitz
“What Was I Made For?” by Finneas O’Connell, Billie Eilish

Cinematic and Box Office Achievement
Barbie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
John Wick: Chapter 4
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1
Oppenheimer
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

For the full list of television nominees, please visit the Golden Globes website.

Sony’s Spider-Man (2002) is unquestionably one of the forefathers of superhero cinema as we know and love it to be, and Sony’s further Spider-focused films (plus several major spin-offs) are some of the most popular and influential blockbusters of the 21st century.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are counting down each Spider-Man Universe feature-length theatrical release from worst to best, judging each inclusion by its own artistic merits, critical reception, and importance to its genre and cinema as a whole.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

13. Morbius (2022)

Morbius Review

Very little was expected of Sony’s Spider-villain-verse entry Morbius when it was revealed to be hitting our screens in 2020, but when it finally arrived after mass delays the low bar for “acceptable” superhero/villain cinema was… barely met.

Jared Leto worked hard to carve someone interesting out of a character with little by way of development, and the pacing was rapid (which is particularly impressive as a lesser Spider-Man entry), but Morbius ultimately felt like the best moments from other films thumb-tacked into a CGI mess that left said moments absent of meaning or purpose.

A lot seemed to happen in this 2022 film, yet very little gave us a reason to care for the characters, and the feature’s almost complete absence of threat only compounded this issue. It would be a stretch to claim that Morbius was trying to say anything about anything – it certainly wasn’t allegorical of past or present human issues like most vampire films, nor presenting a particularly obvious audience fantasy like other superhero movies – and it did little-to-nothing to make it look, sound or feel unique within its franchise.

Like Venom before it, Morbius was a film that seemed to be made for audiences of the mid-2000s, and yet unlike Venom it lacked all of the charisma needed to carry its more corny or less inspired moments. Even the post-credits’ mildly exciting previews of other films to come couldn’t save this one from the title of “worst Spider-Man movie”.

12. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was bad. The sad, grim reality is that this Marc Webb-directed film was so badly received critically and at the box office that Sony finally caved in and brought Marvel Studios back to the table, in effect admitting their own inadequacies as regards their treatment of the character and thus sacrificing some of their multi-million-dollar profits to rival studio Disney in an attempt to fix their mistakes.

The major issue with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is its woeful screenplay, written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci of Transformers, Star Trek and The Mummy (2017) fame. In this fifth live-action franchise entry, focus shifts from a sub-par, by-the-books plot surrounding Peter Parker (and particularly his on-and-off-again relationship) to the life of his hard-working Aunt May, the reason apparently being to ensure Sally Field got her share of the run-time, the amount of space given to prominent comic book characters elsewhere in the film sacrificed as a result, the run-time dragging on to a tiresome 2 hours and 22 minutes.

Despite featuring a stellar cast including star Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Sally Field, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Felicity Jones and Paul Giamatti, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 features some of the most ridiculous cases of over-acting in the entire franchise, every highly paid professional seemingly acknowledging the standard of movie they were in even ahead of it being released. This, mixed with a woeful narrative, worse dialogue and a Spider-Man 3 level problem of filling up the movie with characters for an expected “Spider-verse”, make The Amazing Spider-Man 2 one of this beloved franchise’s certifiably lesser releases.

11. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

A considerable improvement on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the film that preceded it, The Amazing Spider-Man, a feature that made a new-look Spider-Man franchise feel viable once again; Marc Webb’s inexperienced but grounded take on the web-slinger being refreshing enough to earn the film a number of favourable reviews and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man a number of fans.

Inevitably, the creative decision to just re-do the Peter Parker Spider-Man origin story we’d seen just 10 years prior (that’s like seeing Iron Man rebooted in 2018…) was not the smartest idea, and even though director Marc Webb and company managed to effectively avoid revisiting a lot of the tropes established in Sam Raimi’s franchise, the dye was cast for what would come to be diminishing returns for the series.

A more sarcastic, some would say millennial, take on Peter Parker was the film’s shining beacon, but the studio’s obvious hesitation to try anything entirely new was evident, this 2012 release feeling every bit as much of a part of the preceding decade as its Sam Raimi-directed brethren, only with less charm and less to offer in terms of visual awe, unique scenarios and social commentary.

The Amazing Spider-Man makes for a good, although mostly irrelevant, watch; one that does just enough to keep you engaged but never once takes a stride towards creating something special.

The Spider-Man franchise has gone through more reboots than any other comic book character since Sam Raimi first brought him to the big screen in 2002. Over that time, whoever currently fills out the spandex has faced a variety of crazed scientists, criminals and rivals brought up to Spider-Man’s level by advanced technology, superpower-bestowing industrial accidents and cunning exploitation of the hero’s secret identity.

4 iterations of Spider-Man, 10 movies, many bad guys to fight, but which were the biggest threat to him and his nearest and dearest? A web of spoilers lies ahead in this edition of Ranked from The Film Magazine: Feature Film Spider-Man Villains Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

16. Aleksei Sytsevich / Rhino – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

“I am the Rhino! I told you I’d be back!”

A Russian mobster embarrassingly foiled by Spider-Man during a heist involving an armoured truck and a lot of plutonium, Aleksei is only too happy to don a rhinoceros-shaped mech suit (like you do) gifted by Oscorp’s Special Projects division to get his own back.

Aleksei is small-time, a wannabe tough gangster shown to be humiliatingly inept in his two fights against Spidey that bookend The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The usually-excellent Paul Giamatti is outshone by his forehead tattoo and is reduced to shouting in an outrageous accent straight out of a terrible Cold War action movie as he is webbed up and pantsed in his civilian clothes and then defeated in freeze-frame in his stupid robot rhino form.

15. Harry Osborn / Green Goblin – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

“You don’t give people hope, you take it away. I’m gonna take away yours.”

Peter Parker’s childhood friend returns to New York to say goodbye to his terminally ill father and discovers he carries the same genetic blood disease that makes you grow talons and turn green. Harry discovers that Spider-Man’s altered blood may somehow offer a cure but, when the hero refuses him, he takes an untested spider venom formula that warps his body and mind, leading him to take vengeance against the Wall-Crawler.

We’re told rather than shown that Peter and Harry have a history here and expected to buy Dane DeHaan’s twitchy take on the character’s rapid physical, mental and moral decline simply because we know a Green Goblin has got to show up in this Spider-Man universe some time, somehow.

In the race to set up a Sinister Six spin-off movie that never happened, all of Harry’s characterisation seems to have been excised so we’re left with a petty arch-nemesis who meets the Webslinger precisely twice and decides to kill his girlfriend on a whim because it took him a ridiculously long time to remember his company had made a battle suit with a bodily repair function and only used it after he’d already taken the uglifying spider-formula.

14. Eddie Brock / Venom – Spider-Man 3 (2007)

“Oh! My spider-sense is tingling… if you know what I’m talking about!”

A shady and arrogant photographer and rival to Peter Parker at the Daily Bugle who gets taken over by an alien symbiote and plans to take revenge on Parker for the part he played in Brock losing his job.

Before Tom Hardy took the role down the schizophrenic antihero route, Topher Grace brought a very different version of Eddie Brock to life. First he’s just a jerk competing with Peter for a staff photographer job before his faked photos get him blacklisted. Then, coincidence of coincidences, he goes to pray at the same cathedral where Peter is trying to separate himself from the personality-altering symbiote in the bell tower above. The symbiote jumps to Eddie and he immediately goes all the way bad and hatches a plan to make Peter/Spider-Man suffer.

Very obviously a late addition to Spider-Man 3’s plot by a reluctant Sam Raimi, Venom is only really in the film for the final action scene and is a very simplistic, weirdly camp take on the character who fails to leave any real impression.

Recommended for you: 10 Best Moments from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy