2023 Hit Gets Named the 'Most Universally Beloved Movie Masterpiece' Since 2020

While 2020 doesn't seem all that long ago, the amount of incredible movies released over the last six years tells a different story.

Collider recently highlighted some of the best, most beloved films that came out after 2020. According to the May 2026 ranking, "the 10 most universally beloved movie masterpieces of the last 6 years," include hits likeEncanto (2021), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and Sinners (2025). The publication named 2023's Barbie as the top "most universally beloved movie masterpiece," released in the current decade.

Barbie, directed and co-written by Greta Gerwig, has a rating of 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 80 on Metacritic.

Greta Gerwig Discussed Writing 'Barbie' in a 2023 Interview

While Barbie features plenty of silly moments, the film undeniably has an emotional core. In a 2023 interview with Extra TV, Gerwig discussed how she and her husband, filmmaker Noah Baumbach, came up with the plot of the film, based on the Mattel doll created in 1959. Gerwig said that "it was such a head scratcher to figure out" what story they wanted to tell, partly because the toy is somewhat polarizing.

"She was invented in 1959, and she exists until now. And she's gone through so many different iterations," said the Ladybird director in the 2023 interview. "And my mom did not like Barbie. And so, I had all of that in front of mind of like all the the ways in which she's a complicated icon. And I thin instead of rejecting all of that, we just sort of ran towards it like all of the complications and all of the things that felt thorny was like, 'Let's start there.'"

She also told the publication that she had always intended the film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, to be unexpectedly tear-inducing.

"I always had this dream that at the end you'd be like, 'Why am I crying? What's going on? How is this possible?' And I just said that I wanted it to be able to sneak up on you," shared Gerwig to Extra TV.

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This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 3:53 PM.