Best of 2022 - End of Year Report

Sayonara 2022, it's been a pretty good year for film. This top ten list comes from a neat 100 films (80 first time viewings) and 55 trips to the cinema. It's down a touch from last year but it was harder to complete, with some fine films missing out. So here are my favourite 10 films seen in 2022:

[Click on the titles for links to full reviews]

10. Paris, 13th District (2021)

Jacques Audiard's monochrome ode to the multicultural 13th arrondissement of Paris is light on story but heavy on atmosphere. Lucie Zhang is fantastic in her breakout film - she's one to watch - and Noémie Merlant is top drawer as well. This tale of young Frenchies aimlessly searching connection is probably the most joyously optimistic film on the list.

9. Belfast (2021)

Here's a film I figured would be sentimental and a bit dull, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed this autobiographical story from the point of view of young Ken/Buddy, played by newcomer Jude Hill. It tells of his family living in Belfast through The Troubles and the choices they must make. Ma (Caitríona Balfe) and Pa (Jamie Dornan) are amazing, and the whole film hums with spirit. A film that eschews cynicism and dares the audience to care, successfully for my money.

8. The Innocents (2021)

A Norwegian unsettler, the innocents of the title are presumably the kids that are left to their own devices on a quiet high-rise estate. But are they so very innocent? You be the judge, I'll only say that events take a bit of a turn when they begin to realise they have certain special powers that might be fun to mess about with. Creepy, awkward and unpredictable - not the best traits in a baby-sitter but perfect for a psychological drama like this.

7. Nope (2022)

A fine hat-trick of features for Jordan Peele, this coming on the heels of Get Out and Us. Nope is hard to classify - part thriller, part social commentary, part horror, part comedy.... but all mint. The lensing, by Hoyte Van Hoytema, is gorgeous, be it dusty vistas or creepy night skies and the cast are note perfect - Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yuen, all tear it up. The Jaws riff is great fun too.

6. The Forgiven (2021) / The Menu (2022)

This is unprecedented, but I couldn't settle on the top ten, so I've sneakily lumped these two excellent
Ralph Fiennes starrers together at number six. The former sees Lord Voldy as a bigoted snob taking a trip to North Africa for a bacchanalian party, but a car accident on the way scuppers plans a bit. Great cast here (Jessica Chastain, Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Saïd Taghmaoui) and a nicely askew view of classism, plus a top notch arc for Fiennes. Quite taut and tense in parts as well.

The latter film is a class-based satire mixed with foodie culture that actually has the bollocks to commit to its final resting point. Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult are more than able support (Taylor-Joy is more the lead, in fact) and the dialogue is first rate. Blood, haute cuisine, shocks and comic timing all play a part in The Menu. Fiennes is terrific in both of these, though in wildly different roles.

5. You Won't Be Alone (2022)

Here's a ripping folk/horror tale from Macedonian/Aussie Goran Stolevski, starring Sara Klimoska, Anamaria Marinca and Noomi Rapace. It tells the story of Old Maid Maria, a child-thieving witch who, in fairness, has had a tough old time of it in patriarchal 19th Century Macedonia. It's lovely to look at, shot by Mathew Chuang, and the editing (Luca Cappelli) gives us the sense of a lazy kind of foreboding, something's not quite right here. All the viscera and heavy themes notwithstanding, there's a feeling of calm hope to this fine debut feature.

4. Sundown (2021)

Tim Roth shines in this mysterious, sundrenched resort drama about a man who seems to be excelling at doing bugger all. Quite shocking events occur on his periphery, even involving him, yet he has a happy knack of shrugging it all off. Why? What the fuck is going on here? I'm not about to tell you, but I will say that Charlotte Gainsbourg is in it (also excellent) and the unpicking of the whys and wtfs is one of the joys of the film.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Martin McDonagh is on song with this tale of 1920s Irish island life, specifically the relationship between Colin Farrell's Pádraic and Brendan Gleeson's Colm, as well as Pádraic's sister, Siobhán, played by Kerry Condon. The three leads are amazing, the dialogue dances out of their mouths and the scenery of the island (west cost of Ireland) is gob-smacking. The McDonaghs have two film in this list (brother John Michael directed The Forgiven), and like Audiard, they're 'hooks' for me - a new film by any of that lot, and I'm in.

2. The Quiet Girl (2022)

This film was a sublime knockout, so quietly affecting that the key moments have stuck with me for months now. The story is simple - a young girl in 1980s rural Ireland, neglected by her family, goes to live with some elderly relatives for the holidays. What director Colm Bairéad does with this rudimentary outline is not much short of magical. Everything clicks into gear with The Quiet Girl. The lead, Cáit, is played by newcomer Catherine Clinch and she's a special find. The rest of the cast are equally fantastic, the editing is spot on, blimey, nothing here is found wanting. Wonderful filmmaking.

1. Hatching (2022)

Hanna Bergholm's debut feature about a young Finnish girl with a domineering, 'influencer' mother is a stupendously satisfying little gem. It's a satirical body-horror, not too many of them around. Sophia Heikkilä and Siiri Solalinna play the mother/daughter dichotomy at the centre of the film, but on the periphery is the crux - an egg with something inside that may or may not be malevolent. Everything is leading to a resolution of sorts and it certainly delivers on its promise. An immensely watchable film about family pressures and the horrors of growing up. Great stuff.

The odd spoiler or two within this podcast....!!!

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All We Imagine as Light

This meditative exploration of the lives of women in Mumbai has a lot to say about class, religion, poverty, the patriarchy and the strictures of Indian society. This could be a tinderbox of themes but writer/director Payal Kapadia treats the characters and situations with a mild, sympathetic, even phlegmatic touch. We meet a nurse, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and her younger colleague and housemate, Anu (Divya Prabha). The two of them have relationships, tangible and nebulous, as well as interactions with people like Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) a cook at the hospital, and the temporarily placed doctor Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who yearns after Prabha. Anu has a secret Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) and workplace rumours paint her as a bit of a trollop. Prabha's 'arranged' husband married her and then promptly upped sticks to Germany (the arrival of a German rice cooker is loaded with meaning). The desperation and sadness of the people, especially the women, seeps through th...

High and Low

I caught this at the Luna back in November as part of the Akira Kurosawa retrospective and was happily gobsmacked to find screen one nearly full. It was the biggest crowd I've seen at the cinema for a long while. Kurosawa still packing them in! It's actually the first non-samurai film of his I've seen but it has his stamp of lingering, physically moving mid-shots and busy action within the frame of the wider shots. The setting is Yokohama, Japan in the early 1960s (the film was made in 1963). A shoe company executive, Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is planning a share takeover when his son's friend, mistaken for the son, is kidnapped. The kidnapper demands roughly the same amount of money required to finalise the financial coup, putting Gondo in quite the tsukemono! Mifune is commanding in the lead (odd seeing him in a suit) but detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama) is the standout. He looks like so many of the oji-sans hanging out at the horse tracks of Jap...

Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard makes a feature film roughly every three or four years, and at the age of 72, at this rate, he may not have too many left. For me, this is one of the tragedies of modern cinema. This bloke can do almost no wrong (his first film, See How They Fall was his only misstep). So here he is with his tenth (!) feature, Emilia Pérez . It's a pretty bonkers story about a Mexican drug cartel boss who hires a young, marginalised lawyer to help him transition to a woman. The film tackles some important themes - the transitioning element, but also racism and the disappeared population of Mexico. The twist is that it's all performed as a musical, and the balance between fantastic and ludicrous is stretched throughout. Most musicals live or die by the music and luckily, there are some great numbers in this (one of them, El Mal , just took out best song at the Golden Globbies). On the other end of the scale is a song about the details of transition surgery, where a doctor warbl...

Best of 2024 - End of Year Report

Ho ho, yo yos. Here's my rundown of films in 2024. By my best count I saw 124 films last year, 115 of them new watches (though not necessarily made or released in 2024), and 61 of them at the cinema. Of those cinema trips, 28 were at Luna Leederville , 14 at Palace Raine Square and 10 at the Backlot Perth , with 6 other cinemas making up the numbers. So here are my 10 favourite films from 2024, with a top 5 pod down the bottom... [Click on the titles for links to full reviews] 10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) George Miller's follow-up to Fury Road tells us the story of how Furiosa got to where that film started. I reckon this was the best blockbuster of the year, certainly the most entertaining, with one epic action sequence and a couple of fine performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Great fun. 9. The Taste of Things (2023) Don't go in hungry! This is a foodie's shan-grill-ah, the high culinary masterwork of the last decade or more. Juliette Binoch...

Nosferatu

The best looking film of the year, this has a gorgeous array of visuals that elicited a number of quiet 'wows' and intakes of breath from yours truly. Big praise to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, production designer Craig Lathrop, art director Robert Cowper, set decorator Beatrice Brentnerova, and of course, director Robert Eggers for getting this crew together - he seems to use a lot of the same folk for his films, and fair enough, when this is the final product. Eggers has adapted the script from Henrik Galeen's original for F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, itself none too subtly ripped off from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula . This is Eggers' fourth feature after The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman and while I haven't yet seen the first two, I didn't care much for The Northman , typically wondrous images aside. He flirts with the pomposity that affected his previous film but here it matches the gothic tones and source text, that is until Aaron Tayl...

Anora

Sean Baker has been making low budget, grungy-looking films for a while now, so it was probably a bit of a surprise when he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Anora . The first third of this stripper/sex worker story pings along at a nice pace. It begins to go slightly baggy in the middle third but recomposes itself for the home straight. Mikey Madison plays Anora (or Ani), an erotic dancer in a club where it looks like the majority of the dosh comes from private lap-dances - she has issues with her boss not paying health insurance and holiday benefits. Madison is a natural in this medium (my notes for this say "Is she an actual stripper? Check.") One night, Ani is requested to translate and maybe dance for, a young Russian guy, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), who immediately takes a shine to her and invites her to come to his place the next day. Ani realises she's hit pay dirt when she arrives at his mansion, and his goofy, sweet nature endears him to her even more. Post-sha...

Tatami

Tatami is the semi-spongy flooring you might find in an old Japanese house. Or in a judo dojo where competitors try to stay off their backs while trying to pin or throw the other (I'm hazy on the rules, as you can tell). That's how tatami is used in this Iranian/Israeli coproduction of the same name, directed by Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Iran) and Guy Nattiv (Israel). The film opens with Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her teammates on their way to the world championship of judo in Tbilisi, Georgia. We peg Leila immediately as a bit of a rebel as she's listening to hip-hop on her headphones. We also see her coach, Maryam (Zar Amir, see above) eyeing her suspiciously on the bus ride. When we arrive at the stadium, Leila bumps into fellow judoka, Shani (Lirr Katz), and they have a natter like fellow competitors do. But Shani being Israeli complicates matters slightly. Bout-wise, Leila is in the groove, dispatching opponents with relative ease. And here's where things get murky. The h...

The Monk and the Gun

This Bhutanese comedy drama is part of the Perth Festival and it follows the country's attempts to move from a monarchy to a democracy in 2006. In the small town of Ura, a novice monk, Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) is tasked with finding two guns for his Lama, played by real life monk Kelsang Choejay. He's not told why but he gets on with the job. At the same time, a 'fixer/tour guide' from Thimphu, Benji (Tandim Sonam) gets a gig driving a newly arrived American, Ronald (Harry Einhorn) around the country in search of a particularly valuable US Civil War rifle. You might be able to see where this is going... This is satire in deep cover. It might even be satire adjacent, such is its mildness. This is not a bad thing. At times I felt like I was experiencing an old Ealing comedy, or maybe a low-key Ken Loach. The government sends officers around the country to run a mock election to show people how to vote, and one of them, Tshering Yangden (Pema Zangmo Sherpa) wanders through...

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

This will be a quickie review as there's a pod to follow that gets into it more. But I'll say right now, I loved this doco. It's an excellent cold war history lesson pieced together from fascinating archive footage, much like Asif Kapadia's films, Senna and Diego Maradona (I guess his other feature docs Amy and Federer are a similar style, but I've not seen them). This film, directed by Belgian, Johan Grimonprez and edited by Rik Chaubet, is about the murky removal and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the (Democratic) Republic of Congo. It's a panoply of found footage, mostly newsreels and old interviews, interspersed with a jazz soundtrack and band visuals that really fit the era. Honestly, this sifting and compiling must have taken a fecking age, so big props to Chaubet and Gimonprez (who has some experience with this form of doc - Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y. , for example). The 'stars' include the likes of Nikita Khrus...

Ghost Cat Anzu (Me & Kid)

Here's a nice surprise. I find Japanese anime to be hit and miss, and the first look at this boof-headed feline didn't promise too much, but Ghost Cat Anzu knocked the bails off. It riffs on the Ghibli theme of children being forced to grow up quicker than they should, with 11 year-old Karin (Noa Gotô) as our focus. Her dad's a bit of a scally and he does a runner while visiting his father at his temple home in a sleepy town, leaving Karin alone with kindly grandad and huge, anthropomorphic cat, Anzu, voiced by Mirai Moriyama. Karin wanders the town, waiting for dad to return and meeting various locals, while being casually monitored by Anzu. The pace is a little pedestrian but the shenanigans make up for this. Anzu is pulled over by the police and told he needs a license to ride a scooter, though he protests that he's not actually a human, so surely these rules don't apply. He works as a masseur but also takes a gig to scare birds away from the river, roping Karin...

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