With the Barbenheimer phenomenon, new movies from masters like Martin Scorsese and Hayao Miyazaki, and less reliance on comic book IP, movies were back in the cultural conversation for the first time since Avengers: Endgame. It didn’t hurt that you could craft a top 20 as strong as most year’s top tens, either.
The 10 best shows of 2023.
The movies are kind of back? After filmmaking was ravaged by legitimate concerns for cast and crew safety, pandemic protocols, and studio delays, 2022 brought a breadth of excellent films, the quality of which hasn’t been seen since at least 2019.
The 10 best shows of 2022.
As Hollywood continues its systemic eradication of the mid-budget movie, most of what remains is micro-budget indies and mega-budget blockbusters. Some incredibly talented filmmakers managed to make the best of an increasingly binary industry in 2021.
The 10 best shows of 2021.
2020 saw an unprecedented number of titles delayed to 2021 and 2022 in response to COVID-19. Bond, Black Widow, and a host of other films that don’t feature European superspies were pushed to greener ($$) pastures. What remained was a surprisingly robust group of movies.
Santa Monica-based game developer Naughty Dog released The Last of Us in a nearly unrecognizable world in 2013. President Obama’s second term provided a backdrop of optimism—a serendipitous juxtaposition for austere art. Players controlled Joel (Troy Baker), the survivor of a zombie outbreak, as he trekked across the country with Ellie (Ashley Johnson), a girl immune to the pathogen. Joel and Ellie journeyed from Boston to Salt Lake City to deliver Ellie to a medical team that could turn her antibodies into a cure.
2020 was abysmal across the board. Well, except for television, of course. Because the one thing we all needed was more television.
The end of a console generation usually signals a wave of indelible experiences. After years of learning a system’s capabilities, resourceful game developers craft the console’s grandiose swan songs.
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