Dublin People’s Top 10 Movies of 2023

In a year dominated by strikes and streaming services eating their own tail, it is easy to forget the big picture.

The films themselves are what matters, and great films are made in spite of bean-counting executives, not because of them.

2023 was an exceptionally strong year for cinema, and we are marking the 10 best films of 2023.

2023 was so good, we have to apologise in advance to Steven Spielberg as The Fabelmans just narrowly missed our 10, as did Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Michael Mann’s Ferrari and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.

We have no qualms about leaving Saltburn out, however. That movie knows what it did.

For the purposes of this list, we are going by Irish release date – mainly as an excuse to give Babylon the love it didn’t get at the time.

Without any further ado;

10) How To Blow Up A Pipeline

A truly great film is one that is in sync with the public mood or captures a specific feeling, and this taut eco-thriller will go down as a snapshot of where the climate movement stood in the early part of the 2020s.

Climate anxiety is an incredibly potent feeling for a film to capture, and this film captures it in the same way Don’t Look Up completely botches it.

This crackerjack thriller is a modern analogue of Sorcerer or the French film that inspired it, The Wages Of Fear, and this one will leave you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

That, or it will leave you wanting to cycle everywhere.

9) Asteroid City 

Wes Anderson became an unlikely social media star earlier this year with people making pastiches of his style and aesthetic, but the auteur reminds us that only Wes Anderson can do Wes Anderson.

The 1-2 punch of The French Dispatch and Asteroid City reminds people that Anderson is a people person, and is the heir to Jonathan Demme when it comes to painting portraits of multi-faceted, complex people.

Asteroid City has a simple premise – a town in the desert goes into quarantine – and then digs down to show how people react in the face of life-altering circumstances.

With the playfulness of Wilder and the pure imagination of Tati, Asteroid City is perhaps Wes Anderson’s finest hour as a filmmaker.

8) May December

May December is the film that should put Todd Haynes in the conversation as one of cinema’s finest directors.

Any director that can bounce from Carol to Dark Waters to a documentary about The Velvet Underground and then make the finest film of their career is a testament to Haynes’ prodigious talent.

Like Tár, how you read May December is a great litmus test of how you perceive cinema; the fact that it could be read as both a comedy or melodrama is a testament to how much of a genius Todd Haynes is, and how terrific Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore are.

The biggest shock of the year may well be Riverdale star Charles Melton waltzing into the film and stealing it right from under the noses of esteemed Oscar winners Moore and Portman.

A great actor changes the temperature of a movie when they enter – think Ray Liotta in Something Wild or William Hurt in A History Of Violence – and Melton’s performance is one of the highlights in any film this year. 

7) BlackBerry

No one expected a film about the rise and fall of the BlackBerry to be this good. 

BlackBerry is an often hilarious and always sharp analysis of how the Blackberry briefly became the hottest ticket in town until the iPhone changed the world as we know it.

Writer, director and co-star Matt Johnson manages to mine pathos and drama out of the inevitable – we know the bubble is going to burst but we can’t look away.

The desperation of Jay Baruchel as he attempts to save the sinking ship is cringe comedy in the best possible way.

Add in a career-best performance from Glenn Howerton and you get the most surprisingly brilliant film of 2023.

6) Anatomy Of A Fall

Nothing brings people together like a good mystery, and Anatomy Of A Fall is one of the most deceptively simple but layered mystery films in quite some time.

After her husband is found dead at their chalet, a woman is accused of murder, but the only witness to the incident is their blind son.

Similar to last year’s similarly brilliant Decision To Leave, a simple premise soon spirals into a twisty conspiracy that will keep you guessing right until the very end.

Sandra Huller has been one of Europe’s finest acting talents for quite some time, and this film, with any justice, should launch her career into the stratosphere.

Director Justine Triet has a masterful command of tone and pacing, and Anatomy Of A Fall is as brilliant as mystery cinema gets.

Hitchcock himself couldn’t have constructed a better thriller.

5) Babylon

We mentioned it in the preface and we are going to say it again – this movie did not get the love it deserved. 

Babylon is both a love letter and divorce notice to old Hollywood, and manages to fit wit, imagination, soul, excess and depravity into the 3-hour running time. 

Damien Chazelle used the cache and clout he got from directing Whiplash and La La Land to make the film that may prove as ruinous to his reputation as Heaven’s Gate did to Michael Cimino, but in both instances we got legendary films out of the deal.

Chazelle can take comfort in the fact that history will be kind to him.

10 years from now when the latest franchise slop is clogging up streaming or your local cinema, you will wish a film this original and daring was still being made.

4) Past Lives

Was it that pandemic that made all of the filmmakers write heart-breakingly brilliant films about love?

Past Lives is an achingly brilliant, swooning picture that captures a feeling we’ve all had in our lives – what if we ended up with that person? How different would our lives be?

The genius of Past Lives is how it distills the “what if?” fantasy we have all had in our lives, and distills it into a lyrical, poetic piece of cinema that is as low-key as it is brilliant.

Past Lives captures the longing and waiting of relationships in the same way The Graduate did back in 1967, and we are all the richer as a culture because films like this can still connect and play with audiences.

3) Tár

Is it about cancel culture? Is it a dark comedy? Is Cate Blanchett our living greatest actor?

The genius of Tár is that it serves as a cinematic Rorschach test and every person who watches this movie can come away with a different interpretation. 

Todd Field’s portrait of a genius, but flawed composer is a true miracle of a film, and one that will only grow in esteem as the years go by. 

Cate Blanchett gives one of the best performances of her career as the titular character, and yet as the world around her comes crumbling down Blanchett manages to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat through sheer charisma alone.

Heady, genius, intoxicating, Tár would be film of the year in any other year, but alas.. 

2) Killers Of The Flower Moon

50 years into a career that defies hyperbole, Martin Scorsese pulls off his greatest miracle yet. 

Killers Of The Flower Moon is as ugly, brutal and downright depressing as mainstream filmmaking gets, yet there is a genuine catharsis and almost spiritual release in knowing that the greatest director to ever pick up a camera is shining a spotlight on one of history’s greatest injustices.

It goes without saying that Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro turn in brilliant performances under the direction of their dear friend, but the true revelation is Lily Gladstone.

Her naturalistic and soulful performance serves as a nugget of empathy in a film that is otherwise devoid of it, and you cling onto her humanity like a life raft.

The long running time is fully justified by what may well be the greatest ending Scorsese has ever gifted us with. 

Once again, in another year this would have been a shoo-in for our number one slot, but one film went that extra mile.

And our number one film of the year is…

Oppenheimer 

There is no point being coy or contrarian about it; there was no better film this year than Oppenheimer.

Christopher Nolan achieved the impossible in making a complex, multi-layered portrait of one of the most influential people in history and turning it into a summer blockbuster.

Oppenheimer has enough ideas and plots to create 10 movies, yet Nolan manages to mix it all together in a way that seems impossible.

Nolan has often talked of his adoration of Stanley Kubrick, Michael Mann and David Lean, and with Oppenheimer he has made his signature film that puts him on the same level as those legendary directors.

The film hinges on the audience buying Cillian Murphy as a tortured genius, and the first time you lay eyes on him and look into his haunted Irish eyes and witness the majesty of his gaunt cheekbones, the film has you in the palm of its hand.

The supporting cast, such as Robert Downey Junior, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon are fully dialed-in, and the cast further down the roster like Florence Pugh, Alden Ehrenreich and Jason Clarke help flesh out the ensemble in that classical Altman or Lumet style.

Oppenheimer is a capital G Great film like Lawrence Of Arabia or Amadeus, and is one of those films that will probably outlive us all.