2023 will probably be remembered as the year that Barbenheimer reigned supreme. But the pop culture phenomenon borne of memes pitting Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer together was actually a great representation of what made this year such an exciting one for movies.

This was the year that a biopic about the creator of the atomic bomb was not just a critical success but a box office smash. This was the year Barbie had an existential crisis, Wes Anderson pondered our place in the universe, and John Wick fell down a lot of stairs. Auteurs like Yorgos Lanthimos, Hayao Miyazaki, and Martin Scorsese delivered some of the wildest and most visually stunning masterpieces of the year. Godzilla proved himself king of the kaiju once again.

Here are the 25 best movies of 2023, according to the Inverse Entertainment team.

Love him or hate him, Zack Snyder is the undisputed king of what can only be classified as a “trailer moment.” In his latest effort, Rebel Moon, those moments are myriad, complete with the speed-ramped, stylized violence that made Snyder the most divisive auteur of the 21st century.

As with his previous efforts, Snyder paints the world of Rebel Moon in big, bombastic strokes. The characters therein aren’t fully fleshed-out beings so much as they are vessels for this supersized, galaxy-spanning legend-in-the-making. Rebel Moon infamously started off as Snyder’s pitch for an earnest, R-rated Star Wars story, and in the broad strokes, the film plainly evokes the galaxy far, far away. But despite its well-publicized Star Wars parallels, Snyder’s sci-fi epic is still very much its own thing.