I’m a couple of weeks late to the party, and what a couple of weeks they have been! Coming out of COVID, we had two certified “The Movies are Back!” blockbusters in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun: Maverick. But we really had not had a huge cultural moment in the movie world…until now. The twin openings of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer truly took the entertainment world by storm. Prior to their opening, no two movies had ever each grossed more than $80 million in the same opening weekend. Barbie’s domestic opening of $155 million and Oppenheimer’s $82 million led to the fourth biggest box office weekend of all time (behind the two Avengers Infinity Saga movies and Star Wars: The Force Awakens). Together, they cleared half a billion dollars worldwide in three days. And, to make it all the better, they are both very good movies. So let’s review them both. We’ll start with the pink-painted juggernaut that is Barbie.

Continue reading “Barbenheimer, Part One: “Barbie,” Robbie, and the Beauty of Reality” →