Another year over, never the wiser!
Let’s start off with my watchlist of new releases in 2022:
- The Souvenir Part II
- The 355
- Licorice Pizza
- Scream
- Belfast
- Nightmare Alley
- Sing a Bit of Harmony
- 2025-The World Enslaved by a Virus
- Torn
- A Journal for Jordan
- Moonfall
- Belle
- Jackass Forever
- Parallel Mothers
- You are Not My Mother
- Keep it a Secret
- The Duke
- Cyrano
- Studio 66
- The Island
- Futura
- Three Minutes a Lengthening
- The Batman
- Playground
- Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest
- Nitram
- Cop Secret
- You Resemble Me
- Nö
- Evolution
- Dark Horse of the Wind
- The Drover’s Wife, The Legend of Molly Johnson
- Turning Red
- Skies of Lebanon
- Honey Cigar
- Young Plato
- Red Rocket
- The Phantom of the Open
- X
- Hive
- Wolf
- Ambulance
- Umma
- The Worst Person in the World
- The Cellar
- Coppelia
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Morbius
- Coast Road
- Bound to Work
- Ito
- The Pursuit of Perfection
- The Bad Guys
- The Outfit
- One of these Days
- The Lost City
- The Northman
- Operation Mincemeat
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Happening
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnes
- Three Floors
- Prayers for the Stolen
- Firestarter
- Everything Everywhere All at Once
- Murina
- Casablanca Beats
- Swing Ride
- A Girl Returned
- Europa
- The Tale of King Crab
- The Great Silence
- Ennio
- Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers
- The Quiet Girl
- The Velvet Queen
- Top Gun: Maverick
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Vortex
- The Bob’s Burgers Movie
- Benediction
- The Adam Project
- Men
- No Exit
- 365 Days-This Day
- Jurassic World Dominion
- Better Nate than Ever
- Lightyear
- Elvis
- The Black Phone
- Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
- Leave No Traces
- Pompo the Cinéphile
- The Princess
- Thor Love and Thunder
- Brian and Charles
- Bergman Island
- The Princess
- Everything Went Fine
- Where the Crawdads Sing
- Joyride
- The Good Boss
- The Deer King
- The Gray Man
- Bullet Train
- Norte Dame on Fire
- The Girl and the Spider
- Nope
- Fortune Favours Lady Nikuko
- Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
- Beast
- The Next 365 Days
- Robust
- The Invitation
- Where is Anne Frank
- Three Thousand Years of Longing
- Blackbird
- The Crossing
- Both Sides of the Blade
- Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
- The Forgiven
- Hole in the Head
- The Cry of Granuaile
- Bodies Bodies Bodies
- See How They Run
- Róise & Frank
- Fire of Love
- Crimes of the Future
- Kimi
- The House
- Do Revenge
- Official Competition
- After Yang
- Moonage Daydream
- Don’t Worry Darling
- Juniper
- Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
- Vengeance
- Nothing Compares
- My Son Hunter
- After Blue
- Smile
- Vicky
- The Lost King
- The Woman King
- Halloween Ends
- It Is in Us All
- Emily
- The Banshees of Inisherin
- Flux Gourmet
- Barbarian
- The Last Client
- Huesara: The Bone Woman
- Candy Land
- Pussycake
- The Leech
- The Lake
- Something in the Dirt
- Wendell and Wild
- Cult of VHS
- Bros
- Neptune Frost
- Clerks 3
- Decision to Leave
- Call Jane
- Aisha
- Man on Earth
- Metronom
- Unicorn Wars
- Nocebo
- Retrograde
- Aftersun
- Watcher
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
- Enys Men
- Last Dance
- Piaffe
- How to Save a Dead Friend
- If You are a Man
- Calendar Girls
- Blue Jean
- Into the Ice
- Battleground
- Karaoke Paradise
- Cesária Ėvora
- The Gates
- Empire of Light
- A Perfect Day for Caribou
- Terroir to Table
- Nightsiren
- The Menu
- Black Mambas
- Armageddon Time
- Glass Onion
- Guillermo Del Toro Pinocchio
- Aisling Trí Néallaibh: Clouded Reveries
- Matilda the Musical
- She Said
- Strange World
- Nanny
- Three Day Millionaire
- How to Tell a Secret
- Violent Night
- Bones and All
- Triangle of Sadness
- The Silent Twins
- Ghosts of Baggotonia
- North Circular
- Avatar: The Way of Water
- Prey
- Below Dreams
- This Much I Know to be True
- The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes
- Comets
- Blonde
- RRR
- The Wonder
- Looking for Venera
- We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
- Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
- The Scary of Sixty First
- Mad God
- Fresh
- Pleasure
- Fire Island
- They/Them
- The Tinder Swindler
- White Noise
- Mass
- “Sr.”
Now let’s start with my honorary mentions-movies I loved but didn’t quite make the best list:
Barbarian: Baller 3-beat horror flick with great social commentary twists around every corner and a killer performance from Justin Long-never thought I’d consider him a highlight in a film
The Batman: The Caped Crusader certainly is overshot in film but with a voice this distinctive for the character and a cast this great I’ll take all the Batman all the time
Belle: It’s only crime is reminding me of a better film but don’t let that deter you! Great mystery and commentary on VR that seemed pertinent when people assumed Meta would be a thing
Benediction: Poetic and emotionally resonant film about the struggles of gay identity in the early 20th century and the traumas distilled by the so-called Great War
Bergman Island: Exploring a filmmaking couple at the etch of a really ugly personal discovery of themselves in the world of Bergman-the worst director possible to help reflect on these issues-great stuff!
Blonde: Controversial for sure, but this is a hard to watch and incisive blow at patriarchal standards, forging images out of women to profit, and using one of the most famous one of them all. I get the concerns around this but I was gripped throughout
Bones and All: It’s great to see Guadagnino back even if this didn’t wow me like his others. Still a great showcase of strange love and the burden of the outsider, as well as a killer performance from Mark Rylance
Both Sides of the Blade: It’s Clare Denis, it’s a love triangle-it’s bound to be fascinating and ugly all at once. Great commentary interlaced with this nightmare of a situation too
Brian and Charles: A man makes a robot and they become a family. Some confusing choices with the framing device, however this was still really funny and utterly charmingly earnest.
An Cailín Ciúin: Fantastic outing for Ireland with this nearly-entirely as Gaeilge film that manages to balance social realism with an immense amount of heart, not a dry eye in the house by the end
Candy Land: A fun and earnest depiction of sex work in a 90s American truck stop peppered in with manic terror and possibly the best needle drop of any movie I’ve seen all year
Decision to Leave: This only really loses points for me because I didn’t love it like I was hoping but to be honest mid Park Chan-wook is like the best movie most filmmakers will ever do. Lean, slick and incredibly engaging thriller with an amazing ending
Enys Men: I loved Bait so this follow up having all of the staples of that but taking it in this quiet unnerving folk horror direction was right up my alley-I can’t wait to see this again
Europa: A cleverly framed and achingly tense and frustrating thriller highlighting the horrors of the refugee crisis entirely from the perspective of a man fleeing for his safety-portentous and truly resonant
Evolution: Has one of the strongest openings I’ve seen all year, and while it never reaches that height again it’s a subtle and harrowing drama from the director of White God and Pieces of a Woman
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Benoit Blanc is back! And here with another fun mystery with the political savviness of its predecessor yet flashier, sillier and a hell of a lot of fun start to finish. I wish I could enjoy myself as much as Craig does in this part
Good Luck to You Leo Grande: This honestly would have hit my best if not for how much I do not like the conflict in the third act and I have some issues with its attitude towards sex work (watch this vid for more context). Otherwise it’s excellently written and beautifully performed and I liked how much they made the limited setting of mostly being in this room work for them
Happening: Sadly very relevant and maddening depiction of a woman trying to terminate a pregnancy in 1960s France. It’s wonderfully told and got a good sense of ramped up tension I just wouldn’t watch it if you don’t want to feel like breaking something afterwards
Karaoke Paradise: I love karaoke so I gravitated to this doc immediately, a powerful treatise on isolation and the revealing passions of belting out a track
Licorice Pizza: Paul Thomas Anderson rarely fails to delivers and this love letter to the LA of his childhood is permeated through one of the most fascinating if utterly destructive pairings in cinema
Mad God: Phil Tippett slaved away on this idea for about 3 decades and the pay off was all the worth it. An insanely detailed and lovingly gross world as we descend into hell with some of the best stop motion animation ever put to screen
Nanny: Another subtle treatise on immigration, this one a lot more horror focused. Excellent central performance and some truly disturbing imagery makes this one of the most tantalising debuts of 2022.
Nö: Insanely clever and creative comedy-drama focused on the difficulties of maintaining a relationship in contemporary times told with bizarre and cutting imagery. Very Roy Andersson in tone and truly underrated
Nocebo: Vivarium was great, and this manages to be better being another intricate and psychologically exhausting thriller but examining privilege global exploitation and what it means to be dependent on those you cannot even trust. Some of the most striking and horrifying visuals I’ve seen all year
The Northman: Robert Eggers does such deft and fascinating explorations of gender roles and this time taking that lens to Viking settings truly brings out some exciting tones and a dismal, shocking physicality you don’t get in a lot of other films. Another one that barely just missed my best list
Parallel Mothers: Pedro Almodóvar’s usual panache for soap-level melodrama and colourful yet grounded aesthetic akin to a more restrained Jacques Demy is at full force here with some of Penelope Cruz’ best work only to be matched by co star Milena Smit. I don’t really care for the direction the ending goes in otherwise I fucking loved this
A Perfect Day of Caribou: Mesmerising exploration of generational trauma the general malaise of contemporary America in a humourous, stark and quasi-avant garde way, like if the Coen Brothers collabed with Jim Jarmusch
RRR: Telegu adventure like no other, manages to be uncompromisingly political (though maybe not in the way us Westerners are presuming) while also being dementedly fun with one of the best bromances ever put to film
Something in the Dirt: Two dudes mess around during COVID and appropriately make an insular film about conspiracies really demonstrating what rabbit holing idiocy it can lead you down. Fascinating and unafraid to be convoluted and messy, like any good theory.
The Souvenir Part II: Another one that barely missed the best list, and while I don’t like it as much as the first one, it depicts the drive and passion of filmmaking better than so many others that have attempted. Hogg’s incredible attention to realistic-feeling filmmaking really captures this struggle in an unsentimental matter
Unicorn Wars: Hilarious skewering of war and prejudice by using childlike whimsical characters in brightly coloured, cutesified animated form and playing this deadly seriously, blood and guts and hardship galore. Manages to take a pitch this ridiculous and be a really adept character study about how wars warp people.
Where is Anne Frank: The director of Waltz with Bashir has another strongly political and sadly relevant film, exploring how we turn tragedy into artifice and ignore the real life displacements that happened in history, rationalise them and will not see the severity until it is way too late
Wolf: An allegorical Irish tale about people who believe they are animals and the horrific conversion treatment they go through. Extremely relevant and layered with tension, with an excellent performance from Paddy Considine one of the best of the year
X: Tai West hits us with a nutty (ha) deeply kinetic horror flick with gory creative awesome kills galore enveloped on a truly evil concept American fundamentalism.
Okay now onto the movies I thought were entertaining as shit but not actually good list!
2025-The World Enslaved by a Virus
If there is something that really rose to absolute hysterics during the pandemic it was conspiracy theories. Doubly so for conspiracy theories about the pandemic everyone was living through. Here’s one of them, and it’s dogshit politics and incredibly smug Christianity-based preachiness doesn’t turn you off maybe the fact these guys act like they’ve never held a camera in their lives. I cannot understand any person who thinks most of the world’s governments took COVID this seriously.
365 Days-This Day
365 Days is the most baffling and gloriously stupid sex dramas ever made, and also bizarrely successful, so it makes sense we get a sequel. Oh man-if you can get passed how mind numbingly boring it is to watch them struggle to do something with the lead in the first half we go into some goofy fucking shit by the second! Have fun with the needle drops every 6 seconds and none of the songs are good.
And yes I watched the sequel make of what you will that it’s not on this list as well.
Ambulance
This is really fun and really stupid-so it’s perfect Bay! It’s amazing you get an actor as good as Gyllenhaal and have him mug for so much of the run time. It’s gloriously excessive and really tests your patience in the baffling character stuff but that’s the ride I signed up for.
Beast
Idris Elba fights a lion. Everything leading up to this is ridiculous and pretty boring except for some incredibly baffling set pieces and how terrible the effects look. But Idris Elba does fight a lion. I had fun with this once they got away from the turgid family drama and allowed the movie to be goofy.
Blackbird
Michael Flatley’s long delayed opus was an absolute talking point amongst my friends and I gotta say it did not disappoint. Holy shit what an absolute train wreck! Like I don’t know why filmmakers keep on thinking they can do Cassablanca, but I’m presuming some of them have talent. One of the absolute cinema going highlights of the year for me-bound to be a so-bad-it’s-good classic.
The Invitation
This flick is absolute trash and it gets trashier the more you realise what it’s being a quasi-spiritual sequel too (yeah they keep the inspiration pretty close to chest until the end despite it being the most obvious thing on planet Earth). Yet it’s my trash! My trash! Hot as hell lead who gives a pretty game performance in nonsense (also hot as hell love interest dot dot dot so they sizzle together)? Spooky gothic shit layered in some of the most unsubtle class commentary I have ever seen? A movie that at times has no idea what it’s doing but gotta get those pages in so we can drag the reveal out as painfully long as possible? An insane third act? Dunno my guy-the movie sucks but it ticked my boxes so fair play.
Moonfall
I really dug Roland Emmerich for just going balls to the wall conspiracy garbage by just, as far as I can see, making one up from whole cloth. I will not give away the reveal at the end of this movie, but I cannot express enough how mind-bogglingly batshit it is and truly elevates what’s a standard flick of his overall. The Elon Musk praise has also…..uhhhhh aged.
Morbius
The meme that launched a studio to push a failed movie back into cinemas just for it to fail again. It’s about as bad as you imagine it being, but I like being transported back to 2005 cinema every now and again with one of the most painfully understated lead performances I’ve seen in quite some time. Leto is a lot of the wonk of this movie but from head to toe with bad effects a weak (if massively entertaining) villain and some of the most painful world building known to humanity-nobody knew what they wanted from this but I had my fun, that’s all that matters.
Studio 666
The Foo Fighters made a horror movie people thought was them promoting their new album (it wasn’t they just wanted to make a movie). None of them can act. Like. At all. The music’s good but they got John Carpenter so yeah. It’s incredibly cheesy and self-indulgent. But I dug that with some surprisingly decent effects and the pure hangout vibe it has being surprisingly infectious. Don’t get me wrong though-how much Grohl mugs in this one is truly inspiring. As is the absolutely out of nowhere cameo-you know what I mean if you’ve seen it.
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