After years of superheroes, petrol heads and space cowboys dominating the box office, 2023 might be the year when traditional cinema finally bit back.
2023 will be remembered as the year of 'Barbenheimer'.
Greta Gerwig's comedy 'Barbie' stormed the summer box office in a blaze of pink, surpassing box office expectations.
Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' also benefitted, riding its coattails to become even more surprisingly, the third most popular film of the year.
2023 was also a year when audiences started to show signs they were tiring of franchise films - particularly superhero films.
It was also a year when a quirky, martial arts dominated, indie multiverse movie blew its rivals aside during awards season and triumphed at the Oscars.
'Barbenheimer,' though, was the quip on everyone's lips when Warner Bros and Universal Pictures decided to pitch two eagerly awaited movies against each other with a July 21 release.
Greta Gerwig's 'Barbie' had been brilliantly hyped on social and mainstream media.
But so too had Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'.
The Blur versus Oasis approach of simultaneous releases whipped social and mainstream media up into a frenzy, generating huge interest among cinemagoers in two very different films.
Of the two, Gerwig's 114 minute comedy about a popular toy venturing into the real world was always going to have the greater mass appeal.
However no-one predicted how popular 'Barbie' would become, as it surged to the number one grossing movie of the year.
'Barbie's' rising tide lifted Nolan's boat, with 'Oppenheiner' ending up surpassing the $1 billion mark too.
That was remarkable and unlikely result for an intense, three hour epic about the man who invented the atomic bomb.
Not only was it refreshing that two movies which did not conform to the usual studio fare did so well but both were worthy of the hype as well.
'Barbie' was a whip smart comedy, brilliantly written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.
It featured pitch perfect performances by Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferreira, Adrianna Greenblatt, Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon and Michael Cera.
In fact Cera was so funny, some fans even demanded that his character Alan should get his own origin story.
Gerwig's joyous film also spawned a hit song 'Just Ken' performed by Gosling - a boyband pastiche that could well wind up as a contender for Best Original Song at the Oscars.
Wouldn't that be great?
'Oppenheimer' finally gave Ireland's Cillian Murphy a heavyweight lead role in a major studio movie.
Effectively a huge budget Hollywood arthouse epic, it was dazzlingly shot by Hoyte van Hoytema and edited by Jennifer Lame.
While Murphy dazzled, Christopher Nolan also extracted the best performance Robert Downey Jr has given in years as the movie's Salieri, Peter Strauss.
He also got a top notch supporting cast that included Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, Dane De Haan, Rami Malek and Josh Hartnett to deliver.
In a year of three hour plus films, the sheer spectacle of Nolan's film combined with a solid screenplay and great acting didn't make sitting through it feel like a chore.
The same was true for Martin Scorsese's wonderful 'Killers of the Flower Moon' - an epic from the veteran director about a devious, murderous campaign by white men to seize control of oil rich land owned by the Osage Indians in Oklahoma.
Featuring terrific performances by Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cara Jade Myers, Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser, the movie marked the tenth collaboration between Robert de Niro and Scorsese.
Like Downey Jr, de Niro delivered his most substantial performance in years.
Playing the movie's chief villain,he was catapulted into the front rank of candidates for next year's Best Supporting Actor awards, with many observers believing it could well earn him a third Academy Award.
Not all three hour epics convinced, though.
Ari Aster's surreal horror comedy 'Beau Is Afraid' whuch starred Joaquin Phoenix as an agoraphobic mummy's boy intrigued but often dragged.
At times, it was deeply frustrating.
Phoenix also starred in another sprawling epic as Ridley Scott's 'Napoleon' alongside Vanessa Kirby but handsome visuals were not enough to prevent the film from facing cannon fire over the liberties taken with historical events.
Away from these epics, 2023 was a year where audiences were spoon fed a third 'Guardians of the Galaxy film,' a seventh 'Mission Impossible' movie, a tenth instalment of the 'Fast and Furious' franchise, another 'Ant Man' sequel, another Captain Marvel led movie and a fifth 'Indiana Jones' adventure.
Very few of these films lived up to hype.
Christopher McQuarrie's 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One' with Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Esai Morales was one of the better ones, giving Ethan Hunt fans a thrilling adventure.
The same could not be said for James Mangold's 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' with Mads Mikkelsen and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, which didn't quite turn out to be the swansong that Harrison Ford fans hoped it would be - even with digital de-ageing.
A bloated running time and Waller Bridge's irritating sidekick did the film no favours and while it was an improvement on 'Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,' it was still significantly below the standard of the archaeologist's first three adventures.
Animation continued to perform well in cinemas, with 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse' notching up ticket sales and reviews that were as impressive as its Oscar winning original.
Disney Pixar's 'Elemental,' a romantic comedy drama set in the world populated by basic elements, enjoyed success with critics and audiences.
Earlier in the year, the very inventive 'Marcel The Shell With Shoes On' charmed those who saw it.
Occupying second slot, however, on the global box office chart was Aaron Hovarth and Michael Jelenic's animated adventure 'The Super Mario Bros Movie' which demonstrated the enduring popularity of the Nintendo video game series.
With Chris Pratt playing the Brooklyn Italian American plumber, Charlie Day as his brother Luigi, Anya Taylor Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Seth Rogan as Donkey Kong and Keegan Michael-Key as Toad, the film captured the imagination of young audiences.
An animated feature franchise beckons.
Pratt scored another hit with James Gunn's well received 'Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol Three' alongside Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Will Poulter and Sylvester Stallone which attempted to reboot a franchise whose charm had started to wear thin.
Rhe same could not be said for Peyton Reed's 'Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania' with Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly which saw a 70 per cent drop in box office receipts in its second weekend.
Nia DaCosta's 'The Marvels' with Brie Larson, Teyonnah Parris and Iman Vellani also recorded the lowest ever opening for a Marvel movie in November.
DC Comics' stable of films fared even worse.
Despite a lot of buzz on social media around Michael Keaton returning as Batman/Bruce Wayne in Andy Muschietti's uneven 'The Flash' with Ezra Miller, Michael Shannon, Sasha Calle and Ron Livingston, the film didn't come anywhere near the global box office top ten.
Keaton was easily the best thing in Muschietti's adventure but it was not enough to elevate a scrambled egg of a movie.
Audiences barely batted an eyelid at David F Sandberg's sequel 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' with Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Adam Brody, and Djimon Honsou, Helen Mirren.
Angel Manuel Soto's 'Blue Beetle' with Xolo Mariduena, Adrianna Barraza and Susan Sarandon also stuttered.
A Christmas release for 'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' underwhelmed.
All of this suggested audience fatigue is setting in with superhero movies which have reached saturation point - thanks to TV spin-offs on streaming services.
Studios like Disney/Marvel and Warner Bros will be watching nervously in 2024 to see if that trend continues.
With Disney+, Amazon Prime and other streamers spewing out spin-offs like 'Loki,' 'Secret Invasion' and superhero franchise wannabes like 'Gen V', is it any wonder they're jaded?
Multiverse movies have almost become a huge bore - something 'The Flash' rammed home when Keaton's Bruce Wayne tried to explain the concept using spaghetti.
The awards season success of Daniels Kwan and Scheinert's 'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once' may well prove to be the zenith for the multiverse adventure.
Scooping seven Oscars including three of the four actor categories, Best Director and Best Picture, it swept aside the competition while netting Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis Academy Awards.
However when we look back in 10 years time on its success at the expense of films like Martin McDonagh's 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' Sarah Polley's 'Women Talking,' Maria Schrader's 'She Said,' Edward Berger's 'All Quiet On The Western Front' or Charlotte Wells' 'Aftersun,' will it really stand the test of time?
McDonagh's film shamefully went home empty handed from the Oscars despite its stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan all landing their first ever Academy Award nominations.
Irish language cinema scored a major breakthrough, however, when Colm Bairead's gorgeous 'An Cailin Ciuin/The Quiet Girl' secured a nomination in the Best Foreign Language category.
Bairead's film lost out to Edward Berger's terrific Netflix movie of the classic World War One novel 'All Quiet On The Western Front' which also did well in other categories, picking up Oscars for Best Cinematography, Original Score and Production Design.
Berger's film also landed Best Picture at the BAFTAs.
In the end, the island of Ireland had one thing to celebrate at the Oscars.
Northern Ireland Screen's 'An Irish Goodbye' directed by Ross White and Tom Berkeley grabbed a win in the Best Live Action short category.
Its star James Martin became an instant celebrity back home and was even serenaded by some of the biggest names in cinema during the ceremony with a rendition of 'Happy Birthday'.
Brendan Fraser emerged triumphant in a hotly contested battle for Best Actor, edging out Farrell and Austin Butler for Baz Luhrman's 'Elvis'.
Paul Mescal was also nominated in this category for 'Aftersun' but Fraser's showy role as a gay overweight man in Darren Aronofsky's overcooked melodrama 'The Whale' proved irresistible Oscar bait for Academy voters and gave the industry the career comeback story they sometimes like to embrace.
Steven Spielberg's enjoyable autobiographical drama 'Meet the Fablemans' didn't make the awards impact many thought it would.
Lila Nuegebauer's nicely judged Apple TV+ indie film 'Causeway' landed a deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination for Brian Tyree Henry but should also have seen Jennifer Lawrence contend in the Best Actress category.
Lawrence would staggeringly go on to feature in one of the industry's badly misjudged comedies of the year 'No Hard Feelings' in which she played a young woman tasked by a rich family to seduce their teenage son in return for a car - although the bad taste film did make a profit at the box office.
Todd Field's intense classical music drama 'Tar' looked to be on course for a third Cate Blanchett Oscar win but like 'The Banshees of Inisherin' got swept aside by the surge of support for 'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once'.
Jamie Lee Curtis' win in the Best Supporting Actress category also pushed aside Angela Bassett who many thought would triumph for her performance in the Marvel movie 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever'.
While Sarah Polley picked up a deserved Best Adapted Screenplay award for 'Women Talking,' its stars Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy and Ben Whishaw had good reason to feel snubbed in the acting categories, turning in terrific performances in a gripping film about abuse in a Mennonite community.
Sam Mendes' gorgeously shot 1980s English cinema drama 'Empire of Light' with Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Toby Jones and Colin Firth divided critics and didn't get the awards attention it deserved, while Damian Chazelle's ambitious but flawed early Hollywood tale 'Babylon' underwhelmed and never really gained traction.
Tom Hanks' pleasant but anaemic remake of a Swedish movie 'A Man Called Otto,' in which he played a grumpy old man, never really took off in the Oscars race either.
There was controversy, however, when Andrea Riseborough landed her first ever Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category for her performance as an addict in Michael Morris' low budget indie film 'To Leslie' after a social media campaign in support of her performance.
Her nomination came at the expense of Danielle Deadwyler, who many thought would be rewarded for her excellent performance in Chinone Chukwu's US lynching drama 'Till'.
It seems unfair, though, to single out Riseborough who gave a performance that was worthy of a place on the Academy Awards shortlist.
Over the course of the year, thoughts have inevitably turned to next year's awards with 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' 'Oppenheimer' and Bradley Cooper's 'Maestro' leading the charge.
But in a world where box office talks, 'Barbie' cannot be ruled out either.
However keep an eye out for Celine Strong's touching drama 'Past Lives' with Great Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro, Sophia Coppola's 'Priscilla' with Cailie Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, Andrew Haigh's fantasy drama 'All of Us Strangers' with Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal , Cord Jefferson's racial comedy and Toronto Film Festival winner 'American Fiction' with Jeffrey Wright and Yorgos Lanthimos' fantasy 'Poor Things' with Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.
Ava DuVernay's 'Origin,' Todd Haynes' 'May December,' Jonathan Glazer's Holocaust drama 'Zone of Interest,' Michael Mann's 'Ferrari' and Blitz Bazawule's musical version of 'The Color Purple' also can't be ruled out.
David Fincher delivered his best film in years, with a quirky Michael Fassbender lead performance as a Smiths obsessed hitman in 'The Killer' for Netflix.
Emerald Fennell's social climbing satire 'Saltburn' divided audiences with its shock tactics but in this blog's opinion it was a compelling dark comedy that featured great performances from Jacob Elordi, Alison Oliver, Rosamund Pike, Richard E Grant and especially Barry Keoghan who really pushed boundaries.
Because they sharply divided audiences, Fincher and Fennell's films may not get the awards season attention they deserve.
As always, a film's awards season prospects depends on momentum.
With the US film critics circles lists of the year's best films firing the starting pistol, the shape of the race will become clearer as we head into the Golden Globe nominations, the Critics Choice, the SAGs, the BAFTAs and, of course, the Oscars.
Next year's ceremony will again be hosted by US chat show host Jimmy Kimmel who did a decent job this year, inevitably making fun of the previous year's Will Smith slapping Chris Rock incident.
There were a few ill judged Irish stereotype jokes at the expense of 'The Banshees of Inisherin' but twas ever thus in Hollywood.
The movie industry said goodbye to a lot of famous faces this year.
Among those who passed away at the start of this year were 'One Million Years BC' actress Raquel Welch, 'Chariots of Fire' director Hugh Hudson, Italian screen legend Gina Lollobrigida, songwriter Burt Bacharach, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' actress Melinda Dillon, 'The Banshees of Inisherin' producer James Flynn and ''Goodbye Columbus' screenwriter Arnold Schulman.
'American Graffiti' actress Cindy Williams, Indian director TP Gajendran, 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Relic' star Tom Sizemore, 'The Poseidon Adventure' star Stella Stevens also died between January and March.
Between April and June, 'Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome' star and music legend Tina Turner, 'Les Patterson Saves The World' star and Australian comedian Barry Humphries, Oscar nominated 'Barton Fink' actor Michael Lerner, 'Vanishing Point' star Barry Newman, American Footballer and 'Mars Attacks!' cast member Jim Brown, novelist and 'Saturn 3' screenwriter Martin Amis, 'Kill the Irishman' and 'RRR' star Ray Stevenson, South African 'Cry The Beloved Country' cast member Patrick Ndlovu and 'She's Gotta Have It' and 'Do The Right Thing' composer and musician Bill Lee died.
Italian actress Iza Barzizza who starred in 'The Two Orphans', 'Prince of the City' and 'The Punisher' actor Treat Williams, 'No Country for Old Men' author and 'The Counselor' screenwriter Cormac McCarthy, Italian film director and comedian Francesco Nuti who made 'Stregati' and 'Son Contento,' 'Scorpio Rising' experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, film editor Glenn Farr who worked on 'The Right Stuff,' Chinese actress Zheng Zhenyao of 'Shanghai Story,' fame, Oscar winning actress and former British Labour MP Glenda Jackson, 'One From The Heart' actor Frederic Forrest of 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Falling Down' fame, 'Catch 22' and 'Little Miss Sunshine' Oscar winner Alan Arkin also passed away.
Other significant figures to leave us between July and September included singer songwriter Sinead O'Connor who played the Virgin Mary in 'The Butcher Boy,' Czech-French author of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' Milan Kundera, The Guardian journalist and film critic Derek Malcolm, Anglo-French singer and film actress Jane Birkin, British chat show king and film critic Sir Michael Parkinson, Canadian singer-songwriter, member of The Band and Martin Scorsese collaborator Robbie Robertson, 'Scarface' and 'Pi' actor Mark Margolis, Irish acting great and second person to play Dumbledore Michael Gambon and Indian actor RS Shivaji.
The acclaimed director of 'The Long Day Closes' Terence Davies, 'Shaft' star Richard Rowntree died between October and December, as did 'The Whole Nine Yards' and 'Friends' star Matthew Perry, American horror movie director Jeff Burr, 'Nothing Personal' star Suzanne Somers, English documentary filmmaker Dick Fontaine, The Hustler' and 'Children of A Lesser God' Piper Laurie, 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' star Jake Abraham 'Glory' and 'Get On The Bus' star Andre Braugher, 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' and 'My Beautiful Laundrette' actress Shirley Anne Field, Ireland, 'Love Story' and 'Barry Lyndon' actor Ryan O'Neal, 'The Likely Lads' star Brigit Forsyth, 'Parasite' actor Lee Sun-kyun and twice Oscar nominated 'The Full Monty' and 'In The Bedroom' star Tom Wilkinson.
2023 was another good year for documentary features.
Ireland particularly excelled at these with Sinead O'Shea's 'Pray for Our Sinners' and Margo Harkin's 'Stolen' powerfully confronting the scandal of the Catholic Church's mother and baby homes.
Des Henderson's 'Lost Boys: Belfast's Missing Children' raised important and disturbing questions about the disappearance of children from the streets of the city during the height of the Troubles.
Davis Guggenheim's Apple TV+ doc 'Still: A Michael J Fox Movie' not only celebrated one of the biggest stars of the 1980s but was also unflinchingly honest and unexpectedly humourous about the pressures of fame and the ravages of Parkinson's Disease.
Matthew Heineman's 'American Symphony' also earned widespread acclaim for its focus on a year in the life of the musician Jon Baptiste in which he starts to compose a symphony but is also confronted with his wife's leukemia diagnosis.
Chris Smith's 'Wham!' documentary also charmed on Netflix.
With the row over transgender issues raging, D Smith's stylishly shot 'Kokomo City' shone a light on the experiences of four African American transgender sex workers in New York and Georgia.
As the world's attention switched to the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov's '20 Days In Mariupol' powerfully reminded cinemagoers of what his country was going through by chronicling the time he spent with colleagues in the besieged city while Russian troops committed war crimes.
Laura McGann's 'The Deepest Breath' was one of the year's stunning documentaries, capturing jaw dropping images of the highly dangerous sport of free diving.
A touching story about an Irishman and an Italian competitor, it moved Netflix audiences who were grimly fascinated by a sport where divers risk their lives swimming without oxygen tanks to the depths of the ocean.
British and Irish indie films continued to delight, with a titan of the arthouse circuit Ken Loach bowing out with one last movie.
'The Old Oak' was typically topical taking on anti immigration sentiment but also focusing on the deprivation experienced abandoned mining communities. It was a stirring way for Loach to exit stage left.
Some new voices also came to the fore with Molly Manning Walker's 'How To Have Sex' creating quite a stir winning the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes and with its star Mia McKenna-Bruce commanding a lot of attention in a drama about teens on a package holiday in Crete that focused on consent.
Charlotte Regan's 'Scrapper' with Lola Campbell and Harris Dickinson was a touching tale of an East End of London 12 year old girl connecting with her estranged father after losing her mum.
Raine Anne-Miller gave us a fresh twist on the London romcom with 'Rye Lane,' setting her love story starring Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson in Peckham.
Both leads were so good in what should be potentially star making roles and there was also a really delicious cameo as well from a veteran of the English romcom in a film that was genuinely funny.
Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton delighted in Hettie MacDonald's redemption tale 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry'.
Maggie Smith, Laura Linney, Kathy Bates and Agnes O'Casey starred in the rather plodding Dublin to Lourdes comedy drama 'The Miracle Club' which also featured Stephen Rea.
Pierce Brosnan found himself playing a 92 year old D Day veteran in Terry Loane's inoffensive road movie 'The Last Rifleman'.
Although the film was rather eclipsed by Michael Caine and the late Glenda Jackson in what was purported to be their final screen roles in 'The Great Escaper' which was inspired by the same true story of a war veteran legging it from a care home to attend D Day commemorations in Normandy.
O'Casey also starred in Lisa Mulcahy's very dark Irish period drama 'The Lies We Tell' with David Wilmot, Holly Sturton and Chris Walley - an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Uncle Silas'.
Fresh from his Oscar nomination success with 'Aftersun,' Paul Mescal played Emily Watson's son in Saela Davis and Anna Rode Holder's bleak Irish fishing village rape drama 'God's Creatures'.
Arguably the most pleasant surprise of the year was comedian Patrick Kielty's excellent big screen debut as a haunted man learning stand-up comedy in Prasanna Puranawajah's Northern Irish tale of lost souls 'Ballywalter'.
As good as the chat show host was, the film really belonged to Seana Kerslake who was superb the broken Belfast taxi driver who comes into his life.
Mia Goth became a bit of an indie queen with two very good leftfield performances in two very good quirky horror films, Ty West's 'Pearl' and Brandon Cronenberg's 'Infinity Pool'.
Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei and Anne Hathaway also turned in amusing performances in Rebecca Miller's delightfully unconventional New York romcom 'She Called Up'.
James Morosini's cringefest 'I Love My Dad' in which he co-starred with Patton Oswalt and Claudia Selewski took a real story of catfishing and turned it into an uncomfortable but very funny comedy.
Like Ken Loach's 'The Old Oak,' Babak Jalili's touching black and white film 'Fremont' saw the West through asylum seekers' eyes with a great central performance by Anaita Wali Zada and Jeremy Allen White thrown into the mix for good measure.
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman teamed up very effectively for Todd Haynes' absorbing contemporary melodrama 'May December'.
Sydney Sweeney was also superb as the real life whistleblower Reality Winner in Tina Satter's gripping interrogation drama 'Reality'.
Liam Neeson churned out another needless action film 'Retribution' in which a bomb was placed under the driver's seat in his car on Berlin.
Even when Neeson teamed up again with the great Irish director Neil Jordan, playing the legendary private eye Philip Marlowe in 'Marlowe' with Jessica Lange, Diane Kruger, Alun Cumming and Colm Meaney, it didn't lift the roof.
Adam Driver failed to set the box office alight with '65' - a space horror movie about a man from an advanced civilisation and a young girl landing on prehistoric Earth and battling dinosaurs.
Ben Wheatley's 'Meg 2: The Trench' with Jason Statham and Elizabeth Banks' 'Cocaine Bear' both vied to be the most over the top horror films of 2023.
Both were really enjoyable, embracing their outlandishness and really milking the comic potential.
They also performed well at the box office.
Aside from releasing high profile movies from the likes of David Fincher, Martin Scorsese and Bradley Cooper, streamers continued to also churn films of various quality.
One of the best was Jon S Baird's Russian video game caper 'Tetris' with Taron Egerton, Toby Jones and Roger Allam playing the media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
Zach Galifinakis and Elizabeth Banks starred in Apple TV+'s other business tale 'The Beanie Bubble' which was okay.
But in a year where movies about big business were a bit of a trend, neither eclipsed Ben Affleck's 'Air' - a really enjoyable, star studded account of how Nike muscled its way into the basketball shoe market with Matt Damon, Affleck, Viola Davis and Jason Bateman.
After delivering the rather disappointing, typically quirky and star studded feature 'Asteroid City' with Tom Hanks, Scarlet Johansson and Steve Carrell, Wes Anderson came roaring back with a series of short films adapting Roald Dahl.
'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,' 'The Swan,' 'The Ratcatcher' and 'Poison' featured Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel and Richard Ayoade in various roles and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker turned up very briefly as well.
Irish filmmaker John Carney took his musical romcom formula to Apple TV+ with 'Flora and Son' - a charming story with Eve Hewson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Oren Kinlan and Jack Reynor about a working class Dublin mum trying to keep her teenage son away from crime by creating music.
With 'Nyad,' Annette Bening tried to muscle her way into awards season contention in a Netflix film about the marathon swimmer Diane Nyad but was arguably upstaged by her co-star Jodie Foster.
Colman Domingo may well figure on the Best Actor shortlists for his lead performance in the otherwise stodgy Netflix civil right story 'Rustin'.
The always watchable Emily Blunt joined Chris Evans, Andy Garcia and Catherine O'Hara in David Yates' opioid crisis movie 'Pain Hustlers' which was somewhat overshadowed by the far superior Hulu TV series 'Dopesick' and Netflix's 'Painkiller'.
'Boiling Point' director Philip Barrantini delivered the so so social media lynch mob thriller 'Accused'.
Just in time for Christmas Eddie Murphy trotted out a not very memorable Festive family comedy for Amazon Prime 'Candy Cane Lane'.
Melissa McCarthy, Pappa Essiedu and Alun Cumming starred in the equally underwhelming Richard Curtis penned comedy 'Genie' for Peacock, SkyCinema and NowTV.
Netflix went to its usual dark place with a dystopian thriller 'Leave The World Behind' starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Kevin Bacon which had some good touches but felt a bit bloated like a lot of films this year.
Nicole Holofcener's 'You Hurt My Feelings' on Amazon Prime with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies was a lot of fun.
We're long past the point now of grumbling about the increasing influence of streaming platforms on cinema.
If anything, streamers have freed up high profile directors to make the films that they want without too much interference.
However it remains to be seen if that largesse will be extended to up and coming talent.
If streamers and studios can do two things in 2024, they should offer more variety in their output (more grown up cinema, please).
They should also pare back the running times to two hours or under.
Save the three hour epics for the streaming versions, please. That would be really nice.
Ten Best Films of 2023
1. Past Lives (Celine Song)
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
3. Women Talking (Sarah Polley)
4. Barbie (Greta Gerwig)
5. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
6. The Deepest Breath (Laura McGann)
7. Reality (Tina Satter)
8. Ballywalter (Prasanna Puranawajah)
9. Rye Lane (Raine Allen Miller)
10. Pray For Our Sinners (Sinead O'Shea)
Dishonourable Mention: No Hard Feelings (Gene Stupnitsky)
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