Worst of 2022 - End of Year Report

2022 was a fine year for film...but some stinkers crept through and gummed up the piping (in fairness, many of them were not actually from last year). Enjoy.

[Click on the titles of the bottom three for links to full reviews]

10. The Gray Man (2022)

The Russo Brothers tried to bring their money-bagging to Netflix and seemed to be doing ok, until the film apparently dropped off a cliff after the first week - though it's very hard to trust the 'box office' returns of streamers. At any rate, this wasn't great, wasting the star wattage of Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling and specifically Ana de Armas and Jessica Henwick. It was positioned as a franchise with an open ending but let's hope they reconsider. Not the worst (obviously, there are nine to come) but a solid disappointment.

8. Moonfall (2022)

Nobody should be surprised that Roland Emmerich has made a dud here, but the cast maybe should have known better. Halle Berry is a fine actress and Patrick Wilson is underrated, even Donald Sutherland pops up for a cameo (I say 'pops up', in fact, he's in a wheelchair for his few seconds of screen time). The cast isn't the issue, it's just a flat out stupid story. The Moon is getting closer to earth and perhaps there's a sentient being involved. So the plan is to nuke the lunar mutha! I can't think of anyone who might have liked this, outside of some QAnon fruit baskets.

7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

The first Venom in 2018 was bad enough. This one added another symbiote in the human form of Woody Harrelson to try to raise the stakes. Tom Hardy has some fun and he's the best element to the film, but the whole thing is paced badly, it can't find a consistent tone and crucially, it's boring.

6. Wild Wild West (1999)

I hadn't seen this late 90s flop but someone (Parizad) had it in their top 5 a year or two ago, so I thought I'd give it a crack. Well, the best I can say is that it's 'of its time'. Kevin Kline is a solid comic actor, Ken Branagh goes fatally over the top and Big Willy Smith is at the peak of his zeitgeist. But it has either aged very badly or it was never any good. I'll plump for the latter. When the annoyingly nostalgic song is the best thing about a film, you know something went wrong along the way.

5. The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn't Kill (2021)

This is an odd one. Perhaps it lost me in translation but this Japanese film about an almost mythical assassin who is obliged to not kill for a year (due to storyline considerations) is interminably dire. It tries to be funny and sure, some of the humour works better for the local audience, but wow, it's rubbish. The acting is broadly broad, most of the set pieces are workmanlike at best and the plot has zero initiative or originality. It only sneaks in one spot higher than its predecessor (see below) thanks to a passable scaffolding fight scene.

4. The Fable (2019)

The original and the worst (just) of the Fable 'canon'. Stupidly unfunny lead character, played irritatingly by Jun'ichi Okada, nonsensical plot contrivances, and shoddy acting all around. This is based on a manga but how it got a sequel greenlit, I can't begin to fathom. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

3. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Taika Waititi has a lot of credit in the bank, with the refreshingly odd Ragnarok adding to his Kiwi stuff (Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, etc). What happened with this 4th Thor film, then? Probably hubris, I'd reckon. It's tonally all over the place and smug, with overcooked sentimentality and attempts at zany set pieces unbalancing the dish. Only Christian Bale comes out with any kudos. This is maybe the bottom of the bag for the MCU - the only way is up?

2. After Blue (2021)

What an oddity. Usually, I'm all over nutballs films but this French sci-fi muddler with student filmmaker sensibilities boiled my piss no end. The story, if it can be called that, sees a young woman and her mother tasked with hunting down 'Kate Bush' on a planet with no dudes but stacks of cheap looking landscapes, peopled with pretentious antagonists. At a tad over 2 hours, you really need your wits about you to stay awake.

1. See How They Run (2022)

It's a shame to put this at the top (bottom) of the list, as it stars two of my favourite actors in Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell, but it's so pedestrian and dull that I really had no choice. Set around a murder during the original run of The Mousetrap, the story had potential. Sadly, the 'creatives' behind it either didn't have the chops or things broke down in production, though going by the credits of the director and writer, I'd favour my first guess. Not at all funny, boring and annoying is a fine hat-trick of shite.

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The Magic Faraway Tree (Me) (Kids)

I probably read these books as a kid (can't remember) but I certainly read them to my kids a few years ago, so the whole family took a trip to the Palace cinema to check out this new film version. It's adapted from the Enid Blyton book(s) by Simon Farnaby, the writer of Paddington 2 , Wonka and Mindhorn , and directed by Ben Gregor, a British TV journeyman. The cast is chock-full of screen dignitaries, from Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, to Python Michael Palin, to Dame Judi Dench as a talking fridge (!). Modernising this classic kids' book series from the 30s and 40s means adding some stuff about screen (over)usage, the splintering of the family unit, and the desire to get back to the basics of life. In this case, the Thompsons go rural in a rundown barn with old tractors, and chickens living on the stove. The family is made up of Tim and Polly (Garfield and Foy), and the three children, Beth, Joe and Fran, played by Delilah Bennet-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche and Billie Gadsd...

Amrum

The preview film for the 2026 German Film Festival is a sombre little drama about a child's perspective of the end of WWII. Jasper Billerbeck plays Nanning, a 12 year-old doing his best to look after his pregnant mother and younger siblings in the tiny farming/fishing island of Amrum in Northern Germany. The opening scene shows German planes flying overhead, indicating that even this lonely outpost of the Reich is not untouched by war. The story really acts as window dressing for the suppression of emotions and trepidation related to the very probable approaching end of hostilities. We find out early on, in a clever moment in the family library, that Nanning's (absent) dad is a high ranking Nazi, and his mum, Hille, is fully on board with the doctrine. Auntie Ena lives with them and is much more pragmatic, and as anti-Nazi as she can be in the circumstances. The two sisters are played by Laura Tonke and Lisa Hagmeister respectively, and they're fantastic. Diane Kruger, who...

The Talented Mr. F.

Screening at the German Film Festival, this is a mind-boggling tale of a 'you-tuber' dickhead who nicked a short animation film off a couple of German university students and passed it off as his own work. The thief, or the 'talented' Mr. F. of the title, is Samuel Felinton, a ubiquitous pud with a probable case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This diagnosis has been mentioned on Reddit but his baggage is weighty so fucks knows what's wrong with him. We open with Moritz and Julius, who made a cute little robot anime, uploaded it to YouTube to see if anyone liked it, and when it gained loads of hits and positive comments, took it down. Emboldened by this public favour, they then started to enter their short, Butty, into various film festivals. When the replies came back that it couldn't be accepted because the film was already doing the festival circuit, the lads freaked out. Turns out Butty 's brief online life was enough time for Felinton to d...

The Monkey

What's this then? Modern horror, I guess. Or just another addition to the relatively recent spate of animal-titled films: The Lobster , The Crow , The Whale , Pig , Lamb , First Cow , Black Dog , Red Dog , Dog Man , Monkey Man , Wolf Man , Cuckoo , Cocaine Bear , and Hundreds of Beavers . Whatever the reason for its existence, this Stephen King adaptation is a curious beast. Osgood Perkins (son of old Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins) writes and directs here. He also has a pretty funny cameo. The story starts with a bloke in a pilot's uniform (Adam Scott) trying to sell a windup drumming monkey toy (DON'T CALL IT A TOY!!). A bloody event occurs, not for the last time in the movie. Cut to 1999 where we meet Hal Shelburn and his twin, Bill (both played by Christian Convery), who live with their mother, Lois (an in-form Tatiana Maslany). The pilot of the opening scene is the dad/hubby who has done a runner, leaving the cursed monkey for the lads to find (though, to b...

Case 137

Here's a police procedural drama from the Alliance Francais French Film Festival with a minor key change. Case 137 is based on true events from 2018 during the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests in Paris. The case (or dossier in the version originale) involves a young lad who was shot in the head with an LBD riot gun (basically rubber bullets) and then left on the street. He survived, but with life changing injuries. The IGPN internal affairs department are brought in to investigate. Léa Drucker takes the lead as Stéphanie, a single mum dealing with resentment from her ex-husband, his new girlfriend, and most other members of the force, who believe the cops should look after their own and not 'police the police'. Her teenage son is also concerned that everyone he talks to hates 'les flics'. There's a slight hitch in the case when it's discovered that the injured guy and his family come from Saint-Dizier, also Stéphanie's home town. Director, Dominik M...

The Quiet Girl

This is a great film, especially in the way that it manages to create something interesting out of a reasonably mundane synopsis. A young girl is sent away to a relative's house for the summer where she is treated better than at home. Sounds like it could have a bit of Rohmer-style youthful awakenings? Or maybe some gritty Loach-ian societal comment? Even perhaps a revenge tinged 'fear the youth' theme? Well, it's none of the above, and more power to its style. The Quiet Girl herself (Cáit) is a newcomer, Catherine Clinch, and she was apparently found via an Irish language school call out. She's incredible - meek, direct, no airs nor graces whatsoever, with a clear-eyed awkwardness. She's almost like a little female Bowie in The Quiet Girl Who Fell to Earth (no, not a film but I thought I'd italicise anyway). There are orbiting performances that complement her perfectly. Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet play Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach, the couple who tak...

Franz: Becoming Kafka

In this fractured, somewhat unconventional biopic, various characters take on the role of narrator, breaking the fourth wall within the story. As curious as the method of delivery here is, the bones of the film itself still function to paint the picture of one of the 20th century's most lauded writers. We witness Kafka's less than perfect childhood with unloving father and powerless mother; his possible spectrum hovering; his near-crippling insecurities; his tricky relationships with women; and eventually the illness that brought on his early death. Director Agnieszka Holland is still firing at 77 years old, she's quite happy to lean towards experimentation and, along with her co-writer, Marek Epstein, she imbues the film with a surrealism similar to Kafka's work. Aside from the 'to camera' narration, the timeline jumps around, even bringing in elements of 21st century Kafka tourism with French, Japanese and American tour guides, who may or may not be on the lev...

Arco (Me) (Kid)

This is the first feature length film from French writer/director Ugo Bienvenu. It tells the story of futuristic kid, Arco, voiced by Juliano Crue Valdi in the English dub, and Oscar Tresanini in the French original - here I'll explain that I saw the preview of this with the English voice cast, so I'll mention them from now, unless I spy a notable Frenchy. Anyway, Arco is too young to fly to the past like his family do, but like any young ding-a-ling, he decides to chance his arm, and ends up in 2075. This is a more recognisable future for us than Arco's time, as we see climate change writ large on society. In this time-zone, Arco meets Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra) and her domestic robot, Mikki (voiced by a strange combination of Iris's parents, Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo). Iris wants to help Arco return to his time, but they're thwarted by a missing jewel that he needs in order to travel, as well as a trio of bumbling goons (Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg and Flea...

The Rivals of Amziah King

This final film at the Lotterywest Film Season for the Perth Festival is a surprising gem. It combines a great musical opening scene with a fine entrance from Matthew McConaughey. Writer/director Andrew Patterson knows who he's got on his hands here. McConaughey has fun with this role of Amziah King, his first real starring part since The Gentleman in 2019, and in fairness, the film probably wouldn't have been made without him. The story goes thus: a honey maker (or beekeeper, apiarist, professor of bees, call him what you will) is coopted into helping the police identify a stolen batch of honey barrels. After a frankly incredible (in the good sense of the word) honey heating procedure that goes off the rails, Amziah finds himself at cafe, where he bumps into Kateri, a young woman who used to foster with him when she was a kid. A star is unearthed here in Angelina LookingGlass (what a name!), in her debut film role, and the rest of the cast is fittingly grubby and grungy. Kur...

Hesitation Wound

This film was shown at the Revelation Film Festival programme launch for 2024. It's a Turkish legal drama that leaves a lot unsaid, unexplained, with plenty of scope for interpretation. Tülin Özen plays Canan, a lawyer tasked with defending a guy on a murder charge, Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu). At the same time, she is dealing with the slow demise of her old mother, hospitalised in a coma. The minutiae of life in this small Turkish town is fascinating. There's one simple, prosaic scene where Canan stops by a chemist to buy a razor so Musa can shave for the hearing. The shopkeeper asks what kind, she tells him she doesn't know, he selects for her, then explains that she can't use her debit card for that amount, so she buys some pretzel sticks. Completely normal, yet for some reason, I've remembered this scene weeks later. Maybe it's the unusualness of seeing a Turkish store on screen, but I think the on-point pacing of the film has a lot to do with it. Another odd...

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