GARY'S TOP FILMS OF 2022
These are my faves of the films I saw this year. It’s been a mad year and I was hoping to catch up on Elvis, Bodies Bodies Bodies and more over Christmas but I’ve been ill so these are the films I saw from last Christmas Day to this Christmas Day.
1. Aftersun - just perfection
2. The Power of the Dog - should have won the Oscar
3. Nightmare Alley - just a perfectly told gorgeous looking carnival noir (if that is a genre) with the best ending of the year
4. Drive My Car - this three hour film was so real, raw, honest and fascinating it could have gone on forever and I’d have lapped up ever second.
5. The Worst Person In The World - a sort of magical mundane Woody Allen esque very European romantic drama with touches of dry comedy and flashes of fantastical visual sequences. Renate Reinsve is wonderful as a complex young woman moving through life and men.
6. The Lost Daughter - this too real dipictionmof motherhood is exactly the sort of first picture you’d want from Maggie Gyllenhaal.
7. GDT’s Pinnochio - a dark and mature childrens fable with a focus on death and grief with perfect stop motion animation
8. Triangle of Sadness - funny, sharp, well put together satire that lands its punches whilst it shocks and entertains.
9. Glass Onion - sillier, tricksier, less stary and oddly with more explosions and CGI than the gloriously classy first film this is LOADS of fun showing Daniel Craig was born to play comedy and campery. Brilliant cameos.
10. Scream (2022) - good, interesting, fun. Gory but not scary.
11. West Side Story - a really very well made musical almost derailed by Ansel Elgort (possibly the world’s worst actor) and lens flair
12. The Tragedy of Macbeth - a quality well acted great looking but uninvolving adaptation.
13. Nope - I liked a lot of it but it was undercooked, the first half dragged, the characters were thin and there were scenes that were actually poorly shot and confusing. Not quite the slam dunk transition into blockbuster bjg budget filmmaking for Peele but there’s a version of this film that really would have been. Gotta admire the originality and ambition though.
14. The Black Phone - more interesting than scary and with the overdone Stephen King kids on bikes vibe that is so played out these days. Fun characters and charamtic child actors but a slightly too camp silly villain from Ethan Hawke. But it looked great and the vibe was quality.
15. The Northman - a more straightforward Eggers where gonzo weirdness is traded for budget and epicness and falls between the two making it neither things
16. Everything Everywhere All At Once - I feel like if I rewatched this I could really like it but currently I didn’t think this was as cohesive as swiss army man but it was just as inventive.
17. Being the Ricardos - is frozen cat faced botox enthusiast Nicole Kidman born to play laughter lined guerning comedy genius Lucile Ball? No. But this still works so well. Maybe I just like this era and the Sorkin inside baseball workplace drama transported to McCarthy blacklist era Hollywood
18. King Richard - interesting story with a quirky angle on the sports biopic (viewed through the determined Dad/coach rather than the sport star sisters) and some well shot court scenes and undeniable performance from slap happy Will Smith but something just didn’t hang right with this film. Felt like Williamses had final cut and stopped the sharper, rougher edges of the family poke through.
19. CODA - gorgeous lead and supporting performances with some transcendental scenes poking through the plain One Tree Hill direction and straightforward script that holds this interesting, really good film back from being great
20. Titane - I liked the start and end of this a lot. The donestic drama stuff in the middle was not really what I signed up for.
21. Fire Island - fun but slight and not quite funny enough but queerer than expected gay rom-com.
22. Spiderman No Way Home - fun but emotionally slight relying on fans recognising things rather than a proper plot to get your teeth into. Dr Who does this sort of multiple version of the same hero stories much better.
23. Turning Red - I think this might have been a little too annoying for me plus why do all Pixar films (see Onward) end with these big battle scenes these days - we get enough of those in Marvel films
24. Licorice Pizza - bitty 70s yarn nowhere near close to his last film
25. X - there was a better and scarier and more fun version of the 1970s porn/body horror pastiche in this film but this bafflingly missed the mark
26. Prey - again a better version was in there somewhere. A more interesting concept than execution. So much CGI blood
27. Thor Love and Thunder
28. Dr Strange in the Mutliverse of Madness - utter dross. Somehow a Sam Rami film that looked bad. How the mighty have fallen. Spiderman 2 this is not. Cheap and meaningless even by Marvel’s standards.
29. Belfast - Derry Girls as told by a boomer talentless director thesp type.
30. Don’t Look Up - possibly not actually a real film. Manages to convince Meryl Streep (the woman who gave us Madeline Ashton) to turn in an unfunny comedy performance alongside other stars also improvising not funny “lines”.