2023 was a banner year for off-beat, unorthodox sci-fi. Barbie took the world by storm with the power of marketing and a manufactured enmity with its release date neighbor Oppenheimer. It was surprisingly philosophical for a film whose subject has become synonymous with airheadedness — whether that accurately describes Barbie or not. Writer-director Greta Gerwig took the title character from symbolic ideal to earnestly-human entity, all while delivering a pared-down treatise on patriarchal prisons, the burden of existence, and the fraught bonds between mothers and daughters.
