2023 Film Review: Till (12A)

 Now I want America to bear witness.

Gist: In August of 1955 a 14-year-old African American lad named Emmett Till left his home in Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi. It was the final time his mother Mamie Till-Mobley would see him alive. While in the Delta, young Emmett died at the hands of a lynch mob, having been accused by a white woman of inappropriate advances. Till is the story of Mamie's efforts to achieve justice in the aftermath of her son's vicious torture and murder, a struggle that would act as a major catalyst for the US Civil Rights movement.

Juice: This film is a compelling watch and a difficult one, as, realistically, it should be. It only alludes to the central act of violence, but lingers on the consequences - both the emotional devastation wrought by Emmett's death and the appalling image of the boy's body that his mother shared with the world's news outlets. It's a tough and unflinching drama that doesn't seek a way to soften the black American experience in that era. At its heart (and wrenching those of the audience) is a performance by Danielle Deadwyler that's nothing short of extraordinary. She portrays a mother's love and grief, for sure, but also a fierce, controlled rage and steely courage as the story progresses, the camera fixing on her and refusing to cut away in protracted moments of intensity. 

Nor is hers the only noteworthy talent on show. Nigerian-born director Chinonye Chukwu makes some striking decisions, not least to have the film shot in vivid colour, giving it the warmth of a Normal Rockwell painting at odds with the ordeal endured by the protagonist and her extended family. She also keeps the story's racist tormentors shoved to the periphery, focusing instead on both the grief and the endurance of its black characters, and aided all the while by the elegiac depth of Abel Korzenioski's score. The support performances are strong too, not least that of Jalyn Hall, who with limited screen time invests the precocious Emmett with a naive likability that only rubs salt into the story's emotional wounds.

Judgement: 9/10. Co-written by Keith Beauchamp, director of a 2005 documentary on Emmett's murder, Till is a terrifically made film underpinned by a sense of authority and carried home by Deadwyler's remarkable performance. That the Academy failed to nominate its lead for a Best Actress Oscar this week suggests that many of its members simply haven't seen the film, resulting in one egregious oversight. Till is one of those movies that once seen may prove too painful for a rewatch. But its ongoing relevance, its accomplished direction, and that frankly astonishing central turn deserve your time. They'll certainly have your attention.

2022 Catch-up: The Wonder (15)

 I live on manna. From Heaven.

Gist: In post-Famine rural Ireland a girl named Anna O'Donnell has seemingly gone four weeks without eating, yet without starving. Enter Florence Pugh as Elizabeth Wright, an English nurse come from the Crimean War and summoned to Ireland specifically so she can observe young Anna. Locals are calling the girl's condition a miracle, but Elizabeth, along with London reporter (Tom Burke) originally from the locality, are understandably skeptical. The truth behind the fasting girl's situation, however, may prove more haunting than either believers or dissenters could fathom.

Juice: Based on Emma Donoghue's 2016 novel, The Wonder is a film where characters clash on multiple fronts, the lines of division either explicit or merely implied. Faith versus science, Irish versus English, community patriarchs versus a female outsider - relations are complex and strained, with slim chance of common ground as the odd and secretive Anna's fate plays out. It's a finely tuned screenplay, with input from both director Sebastian Lelio and Succession writer Alice Birch, who supplied lines for Pugh in the equally bleak and windswept Lady Macbeth. 

For all the cross-currents of conflict, this is a dramatic slow-burn. Lelio is restrained in his direction, letting the story get its hooks in elsewhere. Like in the austere, perfectly lit cinematography of Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog and - again - Lady Macbeth) and Matthew Herbert's creepily mesmerising score with its evocative, unsettling female vocals that insinuate their way right under your skin. Pugh is - no big shock - terrific, gradually exposing depths of empathy under a brittle exterior. Her chemistry with the amiably cynical Burke is a welcome counterpoint to the grimness elsewhere, and the support cast, including Ciaran Hinds and Toby Jones (he gets everywhere these days), provide additional weight. But it's relative newcomer Kila Lord Cassidy who gives the other standout performance as Anna, embodying the peculiar, otherworldly girl with enough humanity to get you fully invested in her increasingly precarious fate.

Judgement: 8/10. The Wonder deals, among other things, with the stories we tell ourselves to explain the inexplicable, the heartbreaking, or the just plain scary. That helps explain the film's strange third-wall-break framing, and just maybe the events of the final act, where all that simmering emotion pays off in ways you won't necessarily expect. While presenting a very different mystery from fellow period drama The Pale Blue Eye, it could work well as a companion piece, with both movies' chilliness - environmental and otherwise - ultimately countered by the intensity of complex human passions. At any rate, it's a lovingly crafted and affecting tale, with a further knockout turn from unstoppable Florence. Yet she's only one one of many reasons behind the film's stealthily creeping power. 

2022 Catch-Up: The Pale Blue Eye (15)

 The heart is a symbol or it is nothing.

Gist: The year is 1830, the place West Point military academy, New York, and world-weary detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) has been summoned to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a young cadet. A verdict of suicide is rendered problematic by the fact that the corpse has been mutilated in macabre fashion. Senior officers want the mystery solved swiftly, but are perturbed when Landor enlists the help of a young private, with a poetic turn of mind, named Edgar Allan Poe. And as the truth unfolds, it proves as dark and twisted as anything of which young Poe's literary imagination will ever conceive.

Juice: The Pale Blue Eye is a snowbound January treat from director Scott Cooper, one best watched by a fire warm enough to thaw its icy Gothic chill. West Point in winter is a beautifully bleak setting for this morbid tale of human frailty and evil, the uniform blue of the cadets standing out against the crisp white backdrop. It's down to stark and spectacular camerawork from the sure hand of Masanobu Takayanagi, complimented by Howard Shore's epic lamentation of a score. The performances are chilly too. Christian Bale is at his most gruff and contained as the damaged detective, while a coterie of great character actors - Timothy Spall, Simon McBurney, Toby Jones - populate the military command with frosty skepticism. Lucy Boynton, meanwhile, is all pale reserve as a focal point of several characters' romantic attention, and Gillian Anderson delivers an altogether more gregarious and enjoyably scenery-chewing performance as the doctor's wife. But it's Harry Melling who stands out as the theatrical and morbidly romantic young Poe, adding humanity to the proceedings along with greater warmth (albeit a mite creepy) than all the ale he downs with Bale. The lad has come a long way from the Dursley household in Harry Potter, and his portrayal of the burgeoning literary genius is a big step along his road to acting greatness.

If the film has a drawback, it's the slow and meandering mid-section, one that pushes the story beyond a two-hour running time and loses along the way some of the plot momentum so briskly established in the opening. Compensation comes in the form of sheer melodrama in the movie's final stages, which deliver more plot layers than the snow blanketing West Point. This includes a twist you'll either embrace completely or dismiss as too damn much. I chose the former.

Judgement: 7.5/10. Director Cooper is no stranger to bleak stories - his western Hostiles, again with Bales, portrayed a brutal landscape - but The Pale Blue Eye has a specifically desolate beauty to it, while spinning a tale worthy of Edgar Allan himself. The film is an especial treat for lovers of American Gothic, leaning hard as it does into influences that might have shaped the writer of The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart. It takes its bitterly cold time, for sure, but makes it worth the while. So - throw a few extra logs on the fire, settle down with a snifter of something warming, and enjoy.

Filmic Forays 2023 Preview - Twenty Most Anticipated Films

I set about writing this feature with some trepidation. The last time I listed my most anticipated films of the forthcoming year was January 2020, three months before all of the UK's cinemas closed. When they opened again during the summer I was too covid-phobic even to go see Tenet, one of titles that had enthused me the most pre-pandemic. (I finally saw it when it came out on blu ray the following year, and it was almost worth the wait.)

Anyway, barring further global catastrophe - and were in the Reaming Twenties, so let's not tempt fate too far - I intend to view and report back on all the titles listed below. Here's hoping that the greater part of them live up to my expectations, and that their combined success provides the film industry and all our favourite movie theatres with the cash transfusion they continue to need. In case you're wondering, the first few of my picks were all released in North America and elsewhere during 2022, hence their inclusion. Enough said. Let's leap right in. 

1. Till (6th January)

This promises to be uncomfortable New Year viewing, focused as it does on the fight for justice in the aftermath of the notoriously racist crime from 1950s Mississippi. Danielle Deadwyler plays the campaigning mother of murdered Emmett Till, with Chinonye Chukwu as co-writer and director. The film has garnered critical praise and high audience scores, but hasn't scored the kind of box office that makes a hit. Let's see if the imminent awards season can create some additional buzz around around this weighty drama. Either way, it's on my early-2023 radar.

Verdict: TBA

2. Tár (13th January)

Tár has got all the buzz for which an arthouse movie could wish, most of it due to a front and centre performance that many people are calling the best of Cate Blanchett's career. This from the actress who gave us Kathryn Hepburn and Galadriel, Blue Jasmine and Carol, to name-check a mere handful of her greatest hits. Here she's in the spotlight as Lydia Tár, celebrated composer and glass ceiling-shattering conductor of a major European orchestra, the sins of whose past are threatening to unravel all the success in her present. It's written and directed by Todd Field, who's yet to do anything less than really, really good, so count me in for this character-based ride.

Verdict: TBA

3. Babylon (20th January)

Sad to say, filmmaker Damien Chazelle has already crashed and burned with this one. Riding high on the twin box office successes of Whiplash and La La Land, and the critical plaudits won by First Man, he's gone for broke with Babylon, a period epic depicting the excess and debauchery of silent era Hollywood. At three hours plus, however, this has turned out to be a project very few people want to see, on the big screen at any rate. Seems I'm one of those few. Everything I've watched of Chazelle's I've more than enjoyed, and First Man (his emotional Apollo 11 space odyssey) was my favourite film of 2018. Babylon may ultimately go down as the director's great cinematic folly, but with Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and a host of others spiralling into hedonistic 1920s destruction, I'm up for every last minute of this courageous theatrical bomb.

Verdict: TBA

4. The Fabelmans (27th January)

In his mid-seventies, Steven Spielberg goes from the expansive genre storytelling of the past few years (Ready Player One, West Side Story) to the most intimate and personal film of his fifty-year-plus career. It's not actually called The Spielbergs, but with the mirror it purportedly holds up to his family background and formative years as an aspiring young filmmaker, it might as well be. The trailer hints at all kinds of cinematic magic, and since 2021's awards-baiting Sharks and Jets reboot showed this maestro at the top of his game, we can expect something of insight and beauty, and doubtless with a good sprinkling of sentimentality. The pairing of Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as those Spielberg-y parents is likewise no bad sign. Get ready, this side of the Atlantic, to be charmed.

Verdict: TBA

5. The Whale (3rd February)

I won't lie - I approach any Darren Aronofsky film with as much apprehension as anticipation. While it'll no doubt be made with technical finesse and carry a heavyweight dramatic punch, The Whale will very possibly leave a residual taste in my mouth that'll ensure I never watch it again. I'm always glad I ran the newest Aronofsky gauntlet, for sure, but those evenings simply don't exist where a re-viewing of Requiem for a Dream or Mother! seems like a good plan. The Whale is proving as divisive as everything else the director has done (you've got to admire that commitment to envelope-pushing content and execution), but Brendan Fraser is being hailed as a comeback hero in his role as a reclusive and dangerously obese academic, in process of facing up to the consequences of his life choices. It's also got Stranger Things star Sadie Sink and The Menu's Hong Chau for added dramatic clout. I genuinely am keen to see this one. If I end up wanting to repeat the experience, I'll let you know.  

Verdict: TBA


6. Women Talking (10th February)

Which women? Mara. Foy. Buckley. McDormand. Among others. And this isn't any old chit-chat. Women Talking is based on the novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, in which a devout female group in an isolated religious community confront deeply ugly truths about their existence there. Canadian Sarah Polley wrote the screenplay and, from the look of anything I've seen, has directed the hell out of it; her 2012 documentary Stories We Tell is excellent, which also bodes well. Embraced by critics, this has been so far ignored by US cinema-goers, arguably due to a Christmas release. (Festive subject-matter this is not.) There's also the matter of that uninspiring title for those not familiar with the book. Here's hoping it surmounts these obstacles on its UK debut, finding a more enthusiastic audience. I'll be there for sure.

Verdict: TBA

7. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (17th February)

Will 2023 be the year in which I resume my love affair with the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It's not that I actively disliked any of the content aired by the studio over the past twelve months, but there was an undeniable sense of market saturation and of quantity at the expense of both quality and overarching narrative coherence. Well, my Spidey sense tells me that the MCU is about to steady its course with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Director Peyton Reid has steered the Ant-Man franchise through two entertaining heist/caper movies and is now taking it into epic micro-territory with one of Marvel's more heavyweight and layered casts. To the weaponised likability of Paul Rudd and to-die-for pairing of Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas is added Jonathan Majors in a potentially magnificent villainous turn as Kang the Conqueror. How much fun can an audience have in the Quantum Realm? Hopefully macro amounts.

Verdict: TBA

8. 65 (10th March)

I really like the look of this film - there's something about the colour palette in the trailer that I find really appealing. From all appearances it's a stripped down survival story (cast-wise at any rate) with Adam Driver and a young girl/daughter surrogate(?) struggling to stay alive, somehow having travelled 65 million years into a prehistoric past. Okay, maybe I just want to see a quality dinosaur pic following the travesty that was last year's Jurassic World: Dominion. But Driver is always good value, and the writing-directing team of Bryan Woods and Scott Beck originally conceived and drafted the screenplay that became A Quiet Place. So that's got to be a good sign. Hasn't it?

9 and 10. Pearl (17th March) / MaXXXine (TBC)

Ti West's X was one of my favourite horror films from 2022, and gosh darn it if he isn't in the latter stages of turning his '70s-style slasher into an unconventional trilogy. Pearl was released forever ago in North America, but over here we have to wait till March to see Mia Goth play the girlish version of her decrepit antagonist X role. This time the Texas Chain Saw milieu has been replaced with something more akin to an MGM studio-era classic (a twisted Wizard of Oz springs to mind), and Goth's performance has been widely hailed as breathtaking. As for MaXXXine, that one - release date included - remains shrouded in secrecy. All we know is that Goth will reprise her other X character, wannabe adult-movie starlet Maxine, into the 1980s. I have little if any idea what to expect and, with the same gifted team in charge, that's just how I like it.

Verdict: TBA

11. John Wick: Chapter 4 (24th March)

Did ever the killing of a house pet result in so much carnage as within the John Wick franchise? It seems a long time since Keanu Reeves' killing machine came out of self-imposed assassin's retirement to wreak vengeance on the perpetrators of that senseless dog-murder. Four films in and expect to find our antihero mired in the kind of glossy, balletic, high-octane violence that has become his trademark. The John Wick universe and its gloriously over-the-top mythology has expanded with each episode, production values escalating together with the choreographed mayhem's complexity. On realising at the end of part three that the film's Parabellum subtitle meant 'Prepare for war', I beamed, happy in the assurance that there would be more. Now that I've seen the trailer, I'm smiling again. We're mere months from re-immersion in this crazy world, and I for one couldn't be more glad.

Verdict: TBA

12. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (5th May)

In all honesty I'm not a huge fan of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. I sensed, for much of the running time, that James Gunn's efforts to rebottle the first film's lightning simply weren't working. It was bigger and brasher, sure, but the humour felt forced and at points unnecessarily mean-spirited. Since then, however, the characters have been enjoyably developed elsewhere in the MCU, and the recent Guardians Holiday Special recaptured much of that original magic. The recent Vol. 3 trailer supplied both the lols and the feels while suggesting additional dramatic weight. This is to be the final outing for the disparate band of heroes and their dysfunctional-family dynamic, so consider my hopes renewed and my anticipation stoked.

Verdict: TBA

13. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2nd June)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse wasn't on my radar back in 2018. While I enjoy the live-action Spider-Movies as much as most people, comic-book animation isn't my bag at all. It's a measure of how much I was impressed by this film's narrative imagination and wealth of creativity that its sequel has made this list. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse promises to advance on its predecessor's spectacular visual craft, while spinning its multiversal myth-making into a significantly more complex web. With the cast list including a stupid amount of voice talent and the trailer exhibiting the same visual ingenuity and wit as first time around, I'll be surprised if this chapter doesn't out-smash the first on every conceivable level.

Verdict: TBA

14. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (14th July)

Tom Cruise may be a divisive figure, but no one can deny his commitment to one film project after another and, frankly, his willingness to risk his own sky-highly-insured neck in service to quality mass entertainment. Top Gun: Maverick remains my unexpected favourite film of last year, and I've loved the previous two Christopher McQuarrie-directed Mission: Impossible episodes, so based on that alone the odds of a top blockbuster experience are strong. Add an impressive trailer, the addition of Hayley Atwell to an already crackling cast, and an on-set featurette involving the franchise's most inadvisable stunt to date, well - what reason not to salivate?

Verdict: TBA

15. Oppenheimer (21st July)

Christopher Nolan continues to alternate between fiercely conceptual science-fiction and 20th century historical drama. (Let's face it, the guy's unlikely ever to give us a romantic comedy.) Regular Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy is this time is front and centre as the so-called Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and from what glimpses we've seen so far should be a mighty subatomic fusion of guilt and hubris in the role. He's not going to be left out to stew on his own, though, surrounded as he is by a support cast that includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, and Gary Oldman, along with Robert Downey Jr. in a turn that might redefine him post-Ironman. Of course the ultimate reason to get excited is the broad and start cinematic vision of the director paired with subject matter of such moment. Even in the trailer the sense of tragedy and awe is palpable. 

Verdict: TBA

16. Barbie (21st July)

No, I wouldn't have considered myself target audience for this one either. But then it turned out that Greta Gerwig - fresh from her Little Women success - is directing, having co-written the screenplay with partner Noah Baumbach of Marriage Story acclaim, and that Margot Robbie is starring as the iconic plastic heroine. There's also Ryan Gosling as Ken, which is fun. The nature of the film's concept remains an enigma, but a stand-out teaser trailer parodying Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (think evolution of the doll') suggests that this will be as riotous in its entertainment value as the colour scheme is pink. Life in plastic might just prove - in this case at least - to actually be fantastic. It should be a blast finding out. (Barbie is due to open the same day as Oppenheimer, so I'll watch the Oppenheimer blast first. I might find myself in need of some platinum blonde optimism afterwards.)

Verdict: TBA

17. Dune Part Two (3rd November)

Did you see Dune Part One? Have you read all of the book? If the answer to both those questions is 'Yes', then I scarcely need to explain why this is my most hotly anticipated film release of 2023. Denis Villeneuve (he doesn't do rom coms any more than Christopher Nolan) shouldered the challenge of adapting Frank Herbert's science fiction tome for the big screen with Sisyphean levels of commitment, and while he achieved an epic creative success, he's had to begin all over again, the story's halves not having been shot back to back. Unlike Sisyphus, however, he's got a whole lot of help with the task. That includes technicians capable of making gargantuan sandworms and insect-like ornithopters appear utterly real, the stirring musical contributions of Mr Hans Zimmer, and an already fine cast that's been bolstered by the likes of Florence Pugh (yup, her again), Christopher Walken, and Elvis himself, Austin Butler. How excited am I? Enough to read the book a second time - or at least listen to it on Audible. It's long, so November should come around just in time.

Verdict: TBA

18. Beau is Afraid (TBC)

Having proceeded in order of release date, I now come to a dicey trio of choices - insofar as their arrival in theatres isn't carved in granite. Of course, most of 2020's solid dates had to be rechiselled, so let's not get hung up on such petty details. Beau is Afraid - I know all of three things about this project. 1. It's written and directed by Ari Aster. 2. It's the life story of a (probably) fictional entrepreneur. 3. Its crazily talented cast is headed up by one Joaquin Phoenix. To take those each at a time... Aster, whether you loved or hated Hereditary and Midsommar, is one of the most exciting newer filmmakers around today. The fact that he's branching out from horror to embrace a story this enigmatic is fascinating in itself. And 'The Phoenix' doesn't sign up for any old crap. Frankly, if Ari and Joaquin made a Christmas Hallmark film together, I'd watch it gladly - this film all the more. Whatever it damn well turns out to be.

Verdict: TBA

19. The Killer (TBC)

The big 2023 hitters continue - hopefully - with David Fincher's The Killer. Sadly, this does suggest that there's no third season of criminal psychology drama Mindhunter on the horizon, but with a talent like Fincher, we're glad of what we get. And this film promises to hark back to cold steeliness of crime films like Panic Room and Zodiac in its subject matter, while drawing on the writing skills of Andrew Kevin Walker, with whom the director worked on the ever memorable Se7en. Adapted from a French graphic novel series about a ruthlessly efficient assassin having a psychological crisis, it'll be headed up by Michael Fassbinder and Tilda Swinton. That's one great combination of elements. Now just let it happen this year...

Verdict: TBA

20. Killers of the Flower Moon (TBC)

Let's round things off with a forthcoming opus from that other latter day great, Martin Scorsese. 2019's The Irishman was a mammoth achievement and an elegiac companion piece to movies like Goodfellas and Casino, and Killers of the Flower Moon feels like it'll carry similar dramatic heft. Based on a non-fiction book about murders of Osage tribespeople linked to big business interests, and the very birth of the FBI, it sounds like Scorsese is digging deeper into the forces of violence and corruption that have helped shape the modern US than ever before. The cast (DiCaprio, De Niro, Jesse Plemons) is as heavyweight as you'd expect, Dune writer Eric Roth is on screenplay duties, and Scorsese has only developed his visual mastery of storytelling on an epic scale. Now in his early eighties, he's still fighting the good fight on behalf of mature American cinema. It's a privilege to have him still working at this rate, so bring on another magnificent creation.

Verdict: TBA

Inevitably it's the most fiercely promoted films that grab attention, and the titles that make up my end-of-year favourites might look very different to this one. Terrific smaller films will show as if from nowhere, while some of the supposed heavy hitters will fail to land any punch. This is always the way. But so long as the public buy more film tickets and keep those cinema doors open, I'll be happy enough for now. Here's to some great theatrical movie experiences along the way. 

Happy New Year, and happy watching. 

Top Twenty Films of 2022

The universe is so much bigger than you realise; Everything Everywhere All at Once

2022 was a year where cinema continued to redefine itself in a post-lockdown world. That's one where multiple streaming platforms offer new home-viewing opportunities, while certain film production companies (I'm glaring at you, Warner Bros.) have continued with dubious same day cinema/TV release strategies. As a result of the above, cinema chains and independent theatres continue their struggle for survival with their target audience's viewing habits still in flux. 

It's a miracle, therefore, how much original writing and filmmaking has been showcased on our bigger screens over the past twelve months. Many examples on my list are based on original screenplays with no connection to any existing property. Okay - there's a scattering of very recognisable IPs (that's intellectual properties) too, but those are required to buoy up a flagging industry in its latest hour of need.

All my choices were released in the UK during 2022, and either showed up in a cinema close by me, or on streaming sometime later. Thus titles such as The Fabelmans, Babylon, The Whale, and Tar don't feature. As for Avatar: The Way of Water, I haven't mustered the enthusiasm to go see it yet, but by all means tell me if you think I'm missing a treat. Also, neither Wakanda Forever nor Bullet Train have made my list, somehow, which is a shame. I really enjoyed them both. 

Enough caveats. Here goes.

20. See How They Run

The first of two whodunit mysteries in my list, See How They Run is an underrated gem. While riding unashamedly on the coattails of 2019's Knives Out, the film is ingeniously meta in its own right, dealing as it does with a 1950s murder investigation on the set of Agatha Christie's London stage play The Mousetrap. Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan are an enjoyable detective pairing, the latter's knowledge of crime fiction tropes adding much of the knowing humour. The period production design is sharp and the script is crafty, and if the energy sometimes lacks, there's still much here to enjoy.

19. Smile

In a great year for horror, Smile is a deliciously scary first feature from writer/director Parker Finn. True it wears its influences (like 2014's It Follows) quite openly, but it has enough gutsy drama at its heart to work on its own terms. And while the film delves deep the big scary-movie box of tricks, it uses them with an expertise of which many filmmakers can only dream. Everything about Smile gets its audience shuddering and squriming, while Sosie Bacon (grown-up daughter of Kevin) makes for a sympathetic and thoroughly harrowed protagonist.This is some of the most fun I've had this year being frightened.

18. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Someone wrote that The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was for Nicholas Cage fans only. I couldn't agree less. I'm not any kind of Cage fan, but by the end of this film I felt way better disposed towards this opinion-splitting actor. Here he plays Nick Cage, a caricatured version of himself whose career is in freefall. How far has it bombed? To the extent that he's willing to take payment for a showing up at the birthday party of a billionaire playboy super-fan (played by Pedro Pascal). With a screenplay that makes good-natured fun of Cage's career and media persona, this is clever without being smug and frequently hilarious. It even turns exciting as crime thriller elements take over, Cage forced to become the hero he only play-acted in films like Con Air. Also, his relationship with Pascal rapidly becomes movie bromance of the year, in a film that still makes me smile when I think about it.

17. Decision to Leave

What kind of romantic drama do you get from Korea's provocative Park Chan-wook, a filmmaker notorious for his stylishly brutal tales of crime and vengeance? Turns out, something that's elegant and restrained but still truly twisted. Park Hae-il is an insomniac cop investigating the death of a climber who pitched headfirst off a vertiginous clifftop. Tang Wei is the woman suspected of lending said climber (her husband) a helping hand. Cop falls haplessly for widow - so far, so noir. But Park frames events in his own oblique style, adding layer upon layer to the psychological drama. The cinematography is luscious, the editing style fascinates even as if frustrates, and the performances run deep - painfully so. If you expect this to end happily, you haven't seen Park's other films.

16. The Woman King

Director Gina Prince-Brythewood (best known for 2000's Love and Basketball) brings us this satisfyingly tough and rousing historical epic, inspired by the all-female warrior guard of West African kingdom Dahomey. Viola Davis is all kinds of muscular as the guard's leader General Nanisca, while young South African actress Thuso Mbedu excels as Nawi, the trainee warrior through whose eyes the story is told. There are great roles for rising Ugandan star Sheila Atim and Marvel/James Bond alumnus Lashana Lynch, while John Boyega puts proper distance between himself and his former Star Wars self as the young Dahomey king. However historically accurate this may or may not be, it's got grit and spirit aplenty.

15. Barbarian

Did I mention horror's great year? Here's an example that plays with all your genre expectations from the beginning and scarcely lets up. Delivered fresh from the mind of another first-time feature writer/director, Zach Creggar, it stars Kentish gal Georgina Campbell as Tess, who finds herself sharing an isolated Airbnb apartment with the vaguely creepy Keith (Bill Skarsgard) due to an unfortunate double-booking. 'Do I look like some kind of monster?' he asks, whereupon every audience member who recognises Skarsgard as Pennywise from the recent IT movies thinks Hell yes! Things, however, won't necessarily go like you're expecting. They might turn out much worse. And if your tastes in horror are similar to mine, you totally love it.

14. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Please don't confuse this with Disney's live-action Pinocchio remake, of which I have heard nothing good. This is a stop-motion adaptation of the original fairytale, created with love and ingenuity by the man who most recently brought us Oscar-contenders The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. In fact, according to the Mexican filmmaking genius it forms the final part of a thematic trilogy he began with The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. This version is as dark as it is beautiful, dealing as it does with love, war, and mortality. Gepetto the carpenter is maddened by grief, Pinocchio's nemeses include Benito Mussolini himself, and the Blue Fairy has a terrifying sphinx-like alter-ego, both characters voiced by Tilda Swinton. In other words, it's an undiluted del Toro vision of the living wooden puppet's story and all the better for it.

13. X

The final 'pure horror' entry in my countdown is X, Ti West's terrific evocation of the era that spawned 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is what happens when you make a grubby grindhouse slasher but put love into every frame. The sleaze and gore is elevated in the way that only the A24 entertainment company can do, helped by West's clever script and a clutch of great performances by the likes of Wednesday's Jenna Ortega, Virgin River's Martin Henderson, and the just plain awesome Mia Goth. (We in the UK have to wait till March 27th, 2023 to see Goth in X-prequel Pearl, which is nothing short of outrageous!!!)

12. All Quiet on the Western Front

Not a horror film as such, yet ultimately more horrific than Smile, Barbarian, and X combined. This is the third adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel and, directed by Deutschland 83's Edward Berger, the first one made with a largely German cast and crew. It's a grimly superb war movie on a par with Saving Private Ryan and 1917. James Friend's cinematography is haunting in its beauty, a counterpoint to the Great War terrors that ravage the mind and soul of naive schoolboy protagonist Paul (a heart-rending performance by newcomer Felix Kammerer). Deserving of a theatrical release, you'll probably have to make do with watching it on Netflix - once you've steeled yourself for a hellishly convincing trek through the trenches of World War One.

11. Licorice Pizza

Licorice Pizza, a UK January release, is another sojourn by cinema wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson in '70s California, his first having been 1997 tour de force Boogie Nights. If anything, this latest film is even more of free-wheeling odyssey - full of the offbeat, the eccentric, and the just plain weird. It's the tale of an awkward and stumbling first love between precocious teen go-getter Gary and his object of desire, 25-year-old cynic and misfit Alana. Their odd-couple adventures amid the casual madness of the San Fernando Valley, 1973, are unpredictable and freakily funny, while never less than stunningly captured on camera. Feature first-timers Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman are strikingly authentic in the lead roles, and it's particularly touching to see the son of tragic Philip Seymour Hoffman making a movie with the director who helped propel his father to acting greatness. 

10. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

According to Rian Johnson, his love of the murder mysteries stemmed from watching those big starry Agatha Christie film adaptations from the '70s and '80s with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. With that in mind, Glass Union gives more than a nod to 1982's Evil Under the Sun. Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc character, the Knives Out franchise's Kentucky-fried Poirot homage, is this time basking in Greek island sunshine among a group of tech billionaires, online influencers, and fashionistas, one of whom is feeling murderous. It's a hugely entertaining second outing for the detective, in a Bond villain location befitting Craig's other famous role. Knives Out may inevitably be the fresher of the two, but Glass Onion is both funnier and more stylish - with its predecessor's satirical edge and a deviously structured narrative that begins as a masterpiece of misdirection and then doubles back on itself to pile twist upon gleeful twist. Craig is terrific, but it's Janelle Monae who truly shines. Long may these Blanc investigations continue.

9. Living

Bill Night fan alert! This is probably his best ever performance and a contender for the most beautiful film in which the laconic actor has ever starred. The story is inspired by Akira Kurusawa's 1952 drama Ikiru about a Japanese bureaucrat who reassesses his existence when his doctor gives him brutal news about his health. Living alters the setting to post-war London, with Nighy funny and touching as Mr Williams, the stuffed-shirt civil servant who embraces life as never before in response to his dire diagnosis. Sex Education's Aimee Lou Wood provides great support as Williams' unlikely friend, office temp Margaret. It's all shot with the look and feel of a technicolour '50s classic, has a gently satirical screenplay courtesy of novelist Kasuo Ishiguro, and, while melancholy, is ultimately a life-affirming treat. 

8. Elvis

No other director could have re-envisaged the life and legacy of Elvis Aaron Presley Jr. quite the way Baz Luhrmann does. For a conventional biopic, look elsewhere. This is about Elvis as superstar and icon, and the Aussie auteur brings his divisive directorial wizardry to bear on the subject matter, crafting some of the most electrifying film sequences of the year. In the same way that he summoned the spirit of fin de siecle Paris in Moulin Rouge and America's Roaring Twenties in The Great Gatsby, so he conjures the raw energy of Presley's live performances like no literal form of filmmaking ever could. It doesn't hurt either that Austin Butler, in the title role, contributes the most stunning breakout performance of the year. 'Colonel' Tom Parker's insidious influence on the rock-and-roll prodigy's career provides the film's narrative spine, and, while Tom Hanks' performance in the role hasn't proved to everyone's taste, this is an all-round dazzling piece of cinema - for fans and Elvis agnostics alike.

7. The Batman

Not another Batman movie? Yes - exactly that, but unlike any of the others. Director Matt Reeves accesses a hitherto untapped aspect of the comic books' 80-year lore - that of Batman as detective noir. In this murkily lit opus Bruce Wayne is an embittered and vengeful gumshoe (gumboot?), Gotham is corrupt like the 1940s Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe, and the Riddler is a Zodiac-style serial killer taking out the city's great and less-than-good one nasty kill at a time. It helps that The Batman exists in isolation from any wider cinematic universe. Thus its production and sound design, its pithy screenplay and its brooding score are all very much the movie's own. This is a properly cinematic comic book film, with Robert Pattison giving us more antihero that the super kind. It's also got a killer Catwoman in Zoe Kravitz, and Colin Farrell's prosthetic-laden second-best performance of the year. (His absolute best is at No. 3.)

6. Nope

On a single viewing Nope doesn't quite rival Get Out in my affections where Jordan Peele's films are concerned. That said, this is a flipping huge movie, both in the way it bursts free of the horror genre to embrace epic science-fiction, and in the sheer number of fascinating ideas with which it bristles. The brand of alien activity experienced on the Haywood horse ranch run by Daniel Kaluuya's and Kiki Palmer's brother-and-sister-act is initially reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters; when things get properly close, however, this movie's extra-terrestrials are like nothing you've experienced before and all the scarier for it. Even more disturbing is a tangentially related subplot involving a recognisably Earth-bound creature. Did I say this breaks from horror? Let me rephrase. This isn't just a horror film - but it does know how to frighten in that unique Jordan Peele way. The more I think about it, the closer it gets to matching Get Out in quality. Time for a rewatch.

5. The Northman

You may think you've seen Viking dramas, but until you've watched The Northman, I venture to suggest you haven't. Filmmaker Robert Eggers proved his devotion to historical accuracy back in his 1630s-set horror The Witch. Here he achieves, if anything, an even greater sense of authenticity, delving deep into 9th century Nordic culture and myth to craft this brutal but mesmerising revenge tale. Rooted in the Viking saga that spawned Hamlet (and by extension The Lion King), The Northman stars an unfeasibly ripped Alexander Skarsgard as the one-time Prince Amleth, hell-bent on avenging the father-murder and mother-abduction both carried out by his uncle. Refusing to soften the tribal ferocity of the time, Eggers lets the story play out with a savagery only tempered by the presence of Anya Taylor Joy's Slavic sorceress Olga. Yes - there's mysticism too, adding a fever-dream trippiness to the violence, and the drama plays out against the stark beauty of Northern Irish locations (aside from one crazy sequence with an exploding volcano). The film is only accessible by Eggers' crazy standards, but damn is it magnificent. Plus there's Willem Dafoe and Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke. Basically, the cast is as formidable as Skarsgard's manly torso.

4. The Menu

Just look at that poster. The Menu is a delectable prospect that should have you salivating. Set almost entirely in an high-end island restaurant run by a renowned chef (Ralph Fiennes) and his devoted staff, it's a charcoal-black comedy with the most uncomfortable of laughter blended into its horror-thriller aspects. Fiennes is at his deadpan best as the gourmet genius on a bizarre culinary mission, and Nicholas Hoult heads up the array of hilariously pretentious foodies, critics, and assorted elitist assholes dining at his prestige establishment. Only Anya Taylor Joy's accidental guest casts a skeptical eye over the increasingly unsettling proceedings and well she might; this night's dining is only going to turn more sinister, and not in any way you might expect. The Menu is dark and delicious chamber piece that never gets an ingredient wrong on the way to an extraordinary climax - the flavour of which will stay with you long after you've finished watching.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin

Back in 2008 Martin McDonagh brought Colin Farrell together with Brendan Gleeson in a modest little film named In Bruges. Anyone acquainted with that cult classic will likely have rushed to see the Irish trio's reunion - darkly comic drama The Banshees of Inisherin. Set on a fictional island off the west coast of Ireland in 1923, it concerns a conflict between lifelong friends Padraic and Colm - smaller-scale than the Irish Civil War that rages on the mainland, but just as keenly felt. The humour is more bitter than a pint of plain, the overriding mood one of impending doom, and the characters' humanity only serves to heighten that sense of approaching catastrophe. If that all sounds too bleak, then let me stress the lyricism and nuance of McDonagh's writing, Farrell's and Gleeson's crackling chemistry, beautifully judged support performances from the likes of Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan, achingly gorgeous cinematography, and one of the year's most evocative scores from Carter Burwell. All that and a donkey named Jenny. I can't promise you a happy tale, just a strange and hauntingly brilliant one.

2. Everything Everywhere All at Once

Empty your thesaurus of every synonym for 'bizarre' and you still haven't got enough words to describe this film. It's made, after all, by the Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), whose previous film Swiss Army Man starred another Daniel - Radcliffe - as a floating, flatulent corpse. Everything Everywhere All at Once is in essence about Evelyn, a middle-aged Asian-American woman questioning every life choice she's ever made - as her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and her laundromat business, co-owned with her husband, all take a turn for the worse. This standard mid-life crisis is explored through the very non-standard prism of a science-fantasy multiverse narrative. Evelyn's reality splinters into countless alternative versions of herself, all of whom must combine to save - well - everything from obliteration. You have to see it to believe let alone understand it. And even then... Okay, look, Everything Everywhere mightn't be to everyone's taste, but it's undeniably a herculean achievement of storytelling in terms both of technical achievement and of frequently unhinged imagination. The lunacy is grounded - barely - through amazing performances from Michelle Yeoh (goddess of Chinese cinema), Ke Huy Quan (you know, from The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom before he vanished for two decades), and Stephanie Hsu (in a multiverse-shattering breakout role). It's a modern movie wonder, and a huge success story for cutting-edge independent cinema. Let this defiantly unique film melt your mind.

1. Top Gun: Maverick

I was going to try and be cool, and choose something artsy and obscure for my top pick, but sod that. No other film this year has given me the euphoric buzz of Top Gun: Maverick, and I'm not even a big fan of the original! It's not just the awe-inspiring practically shot flight sequences, though they go a long way to making this a special movie experience. It's the expertise with which the screenplay engages nostalgically with Top Gun '86, while achieving a fresh identity of its own. It's the way the action is rooted in character, resulting in swells of emotion you just didn't expect to feel. It's the knowledge that even a big crowd-pleasing blockbuster legacy sequel can have heart and humour wrapped in masterful storytelling, enough to banish all cynicism and carry its audience on an adrenalised thrill-ride seldom matched in modern cinema. If for nothing else, I love this film for dragging us Gen-Xers out of our pandemic-induced Netflix stupor and back to actual theatres to gasp and laugh and cheer and well up with emotion as part of a large group. The global film industry needed Top Gun's speed even more than Capt. Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell did, and I'm glad that this big, supremely entertaining movie provided.

That's it for 2022, although by the time you've read my review, I may have seen something else from the year that's vying for one of those twenty places. Let me know your favourites of the year, and let's all raise a glass to cinema's continued fightback in 2023.

Happy New Filmic Year. 🍻🎦