Okay, let’s be clear about this: I keep lists. I’m not ‘admitting’ it, mind, so don’t think that … because admission would imply some sort of ‘guilt’ and I’m deffo doing no such thing.
I like lists. I like keeping a note of what books or comics I’ve read and giving them a rating. The same goes for any form of live performance. And absolutely goes for films too.
When The Other Half and I started seriously going back to the cinema in 2016, after a long time away (different story and all my ‘fault’), I started creating lists of what we had seen. A short while later, I started adding stars (up to five).
In terms of movies, because the times are a changin’, I now also include films that we have streamed relatively recent to their release, on channels that we pay for.
So, even allowing for COVID, if we include those streamed movies, 2022 has been a prolific year for us, with 23 films seen – 17 of which were viewed in a cinema.
Personally, I think it’s been an exceptional year in terms of the films – and the broadest range of films that we have ever viewed in a single year.
So here is an attempt to list my top … well, let’s wait and see how many.
But we’ll start with the worst and that, by a country mile, was The King’s Man. I had it pinned for a cinema visit, because The Other Half and I had enjoyed the earlier ones in the franchise.
I am not a humourless so-and-so – and nor do I object to fantasy/action takes on historic events. An excellent illustration of this is Kim Newman’s novel, Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron, which I have thoroughly enjoyed.
But The King’s Man, despite a huge talent roster, so far missed the spot that it was a cringeworthy experience. And let’s waste no more time on it.
Now to the other end of the spectrum. Best film of the year, for me – is a tie between The Banshees of Inisherin and Glass Onion.
Totally different movies, but both superb, with the latter being one of a number of offerings this year that sent up the über rich (see also Triangle of Sadness and The Menu, but which did it better than any other).
Glass Onion is arguably even better than Knives Out – it’s funny, but also deeply satirical; still a puzzle and with wonderful performances.
Daniel Craig is also even better, second time around, as Benoit Blanc, and while the entire ensemble case is wonderful, this has surely ensured that Janelle Monáe is regarded as a serious and major star of our times.
On Banshees … where does one start? It’s almost criminally funny, in the deepest, darkest, darkest way possible – but also deeply, deeply moving and tragic.
I know that many viewers have decided that you have to choose ‘sides’ in it, between Pádraic and Colm (pic at top).
Personally, I think that a huge part of the tragedy is that they’re BOTH tragic and understandable and you can sympathise with them BOTH.
Having just turned 60(!) I can, for example, utterly understand Colm’s existential crisis and his sense of impending mortality.
But Barry Keoghan’s performance as Dominic – well, that’s brilliantly bleak as all fuck too.
Now I’m setting aside the conventional rules next in not making my next choice a conventional third, given my joint winners, but a second.
And it is Living – Kazuo Ishiguro’s extraordinary reworking of Akira Kurosawa’s iconic 1952 film, Ikiru. Difficult to imagine anyone else who could understand and ‘do’ English strait-jacketed, life-limiting cultures better than the Remains of the Day genius Ishiguro. And he does it absolutely superbly here.
Then there's Bill Nighy’s performance, which is simply superb. No spoilers, but the last time you see him in the film, given the context, it is quite, quite extraordinary.
Tragic and life-affirming and beautiful all at the same time and it will stay with you for a long, long time. If you don’t cry, you’re possibly not human.
So, third place goes to Pinocchio from del Toro. A beautifully and very carefully calibrated mediation on mortality and fascism that is probably more ‘family friendly’ than his previous films, but no less powerful as a result.
The stop-mo animation is simply sensational, while Alexandre Desplat’s score – while not up with his Oscar-winning one for del Toro’s The Shape of Water – has still already garnered awards.
After that, at four, is Everything Everywhere All at Once, with the magnificent Michelle Yeoh and the wonderful Jamie Lee Curtis having enormous and deceptively philosophical fun, and rather proving that you can do a multiverse without doing it Marvel.
So for a fifth seen late but none the less stunning for that, The Power of the Dog. Superb to look at; astonishingly acted all round, deeply philosophically complicated, still living in my head almost a year later and with a wonderful soundtrack.
And I will restrict this to five, in order to regain some sort of quality, after allowing my top films to count as one.
PS: But I’ll add See How They Run, for its wonderfully geeky and fun approach, and The Woman King, for Viola Davis’s incredible performance along with the history lesson as illustrations of just what a great year this has been. Oh ... and I don't care about it's faults, but Amsterdam, as a deeply anti-fascist movie, has so much going for it! And Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is balm for the soul ... and Nope!
What a great year for film!
