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. 🍻🎦

Top TV Seasons of 2022

The post-lockdown explosion in streamed entertainment has left all fans of TV drama struggling to keep up, as one 'must-see' show overtakes another. I haven't seen enough this year to give a definitive guide, so the following Top Twelve (one for each Day of Christmas) is basically Shows I Saw And Liked. If you notice any glaring omissions, there's a good chance I haven't seen them yet. (I haven't even got around to The Rings of Power or House of Dragons, so that shuts me out of lots of conversations.) Take my choices on that basis and let me know what you think I should have been watching.

All of the following TV was first broadcast or streamed in 2022. I'm judging based on the individual season, not necessarily on the show as a whole. I've included some limited series (what we used to call 'mini-series'), because... my list, my rules. Also I'm using the US 'season' for all the shows rather than the UK 'series', because it makes more sense to me. 

12. Ms Marvel

There's been much debate over the wisdom of creating so many interlinked Marvel shows for Disney+, and this isn't a year where I've out and out loved the MCU's overall content. (Moon Knight had great performances, most notably from Oscar Isaac, but it all got a bit too mythos-heavy by the end.) For me the freshest of the bunch - both visually and in terms of story - was Ms Marvel. This vibrant coming of age story saw a superhero-fangirl stumbling into her own powers amid the conflicted responses of her baffled but endearing Muslim-American family. Iman Vellani was delightful in the lead role of Kamala Khan, an awkward and well-meaning girl with a familial history rooted in the 1947 Partition of India. While there was a sprinkling of the usual slam-bang CGI-enhanced theatrics, this was a super-tale that truly departed from genre norms and told a story with interest and heart. It got a bit teen-mumbly at times, to the extent I had to add subtitles, but I'll let that slide.

11. The Crown - Season 5

It's true this season didn't attain the dramatic heights of 4, the one with the Windsor/Thatcher face-off as portrayed by Olivia Coleman and Gillian Anderson. What it did achieve was more of the most handsomely mounted television drama ever produced in the UK, a sometimes provocative reassessment of recent royal history, and the best of British acting talent easing into the roles vacated by Liv, Tobias Menzies, et al. While Imelda Staunton morphed convincingly into the more matronly Queen Elizabeth with whom many of us grew up, and Jonathan Pryce added notes of warmth and humanity to Philip, it was Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki who stole the limelight as a crisis-point Charles and Diana. Aided by the nuance of Peter Morgan's writing, they achieved a greater balance of sympathy between these two struggling, fallible humans than viewers might have expected. Props too to Lesley Manville, my favourite out of the show's impressive trio of Princess Margarets, whose episode with Timothy Dalton's ageing Peter Townsend was arguably the season's most heartbreaking.

10. The Walking Dead - Season 11

I stuck with this show through every one of its 177 grisly episodes, and the final handful made me glad of it. While a number of limited series offshoots are firmly in the works, pursuing some of The Walking Dead's most beloved survivors beyond the finale, the mother-series itself ended in largely satisfying style. Having moved on from asking whether anything beyond survival was possible in the zombie apocalypse, this final season dealt with post-apocalyptic government and the daunting prospect that even after humanity's near destruction, greed and entitlement would threaten to poison any newly formed society all over again. For all the heartbreak and despair this show has visited on its fans over the past twelve years, TWD ended on a hopeful note, with some of its longterm characters not being chewed by the dead or bludgeoned by the living, but rather making the most of their shot at creating something better in walker-ravaged America. A few redemption arcs even made it to completion along the way. I loved this beleaguered crew and I'll miss them (except those who show up again in the side-shows).

9. Ozark - Season 4

The Byrde family, Ozark's morally compromised cartel money launderers, waved bye-bye to the possibility of redemption some time ago. All that remained to be seen, in this taut and sometimes darkly amusing final season, was whether or not Marty and Wendy (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) could escape prison, destitution, or death, protecting their frequently annoying kids along the way. The show's creators made the excellent choice of wrapping the story before it outstayed its welcome, in fourteen tightly plotted episodes, during which our tightly would antiheroes never seemed more than a pace ahead of all-consuming disaster. Bateman was an understated delight once more as the grimly stoic Marty, and Julia Garner slam-dunked her bid for another Emmy as the lovably homicidal Ruth Langmore. For me, though, it was Linney who blazed most brightly this time around. Her final outing as Lady Wendy Macbyrde attained Shakespearian heights of tragedy. As for the ending, the show that owed a debt of gratitude to Breaking Bad for its existence found its own ending to accompany its own look and style - and it was a dark-hearted doozy.

8. The Handmaid's Tale - Season 5

As of writing, I have yet to watch the finale of The Handmaid's Tale season 5 (it lands on UK television Christmas Day - how festive!), so its place on this list may either fall or - hopefully - rise. As of now, this show remains one of the most engrossing and thought-provoking dramas around. Even if it's lost the early seasons' compelling claustrophobia and given way to dramatic convenience in the writing, there's still much that marks it out as top quality. The production values remain among the most remarkable on TV, so that she show's look is as gorgeous as Gilead's patriarchal dystopia is ugly. There are moments of heart-pumping power and wicked twists that subvert all expectations, while the complexity of the story's politics develops in fascinating ways. As for the performances, they're still next level; all screen time shared by Elizabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski as June and Serena is off the charts, and I always crave more of Ann Dowd's Aunt Lydia. With one season (and that one forthcoming episode) to go, I can't wait to see how the show dovetails into the forthcoming adaptation of Margaret Atwood's sequel novel The Testaments. 

7. Derry Girls - Season 3

The greatest thing about Derry Girls is that the humour is unashamedly Northern Ireland and yet totally universal. This final season has lost none of what makes this flawed and irreverent bunch a joy, while intensifying the emotional connection felt by viewers. My love for the characters extends beyond the 'girls'. So beautifully drawn are the grown-ups that creator Lisa McGee wrote a whole extra backstory episode to explore their 1970s-set schooldays. The backdrop of the 1990s later-era Troubles is deftly woven into the episodes, never overshadowing the comedy, but adding touches of pathos that culminate in a moving final episode. (It's that kind of show; even the moment when Sister Michael shared a whiskey and a moment of unexpected companionship with Father Peter brought a lump to my throat.) The celebrity cameos are nicely judged too; a conversation between Kevin McAleer's delightfully boring Uncle Colm and a certain gruff RUC Chief Constable achieves a joyous series high point. Another high - and a truly poignant moment for those of my generation in NI - was the visit to Barry's amusement park in Portrush. Oh our vanished childhoods... captured, one way or another, in nineteen all too short episodes of comedy gold. 

6. Under the Banner of Heaven

This one is intense. Based on a true crime book of the same name, Under the Banner of Heaven is a disturbing reflection on what happens with religious faith becomes infected by human frailty and hubris. It chronicles the investigation into the horrific 1984 murders of Mormon wife Brenda Lafferty and her infant child by extremist members of her own faith community. Andrew Garfield takes on the fictional role of Jeb Pyre, a Mormon detective, family man, and church elder, whose own beliefs threaten to buckle under the weight of the crime he is investigating. A complex triple timeline follows his pursuit of the truth in parallel with the twisted family saga that led to the killings, and the founding events of Mormonism itself. It's a darkly absorbing story, anchored by Garfield's terrific performance, and leavened (a bit) by the comradeship that develops between him and his Native American police partner (played with a wise gravitas by Gil Birmingham). Daisy Edgar-Jones stands out from the fine supporting cast, her performance serving as tribute to the bright and spirited, if ill-fated, Brenda. Not a popcorn watch, but a very rewarding one.

5. Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

For those who like their crime fictional and lite, the return of Only Murders was a treat. Season one established the central trio of showbiz veterans Charles and Oliver (Steve Martin and Martin Short) and their deadpan Millennial associate Mabel (Selena Gomez) as true-crime podcast fans turned sleuths. Now in this even funnier, even sharper second season, these characters feel like old dysfunctional friends, and the Arconia Hotel where they all live, detect, and broadcast, has become an increasingly mysterious and labyrinthine home-from-home. Each episode of this comedy drama is a lovingly honed gem, changing character viewpoint and narrative style as required for some new angle on the unfolding investigation. There are welcome returns by S1 supporting players (like Nathan Lane), intriguing newcomers (like Cara Delevigne), and splashy star cameos (like Shirley flipping MacLaine!). It's cunning, heart-warming, a little bit macabre, and - above all - laugh-till-the-tears-roll hilarious. When the final episode tagged on a set-up for season three, I cheered. This is a truly happiness-inducing murder drama, and I can't get enough.

4. Stranger Things - Season 4

I really liked season 3 of the science-fiction nostalgia-fest phenomenon, but the show unarguably needed a creativity injection to offset the possibility of staleness. Well, following the long lockdown break, season 4 of Stranger Things arrived pumped full of the new and the entertaining. It's geographically bigger, for starters, breaking free of its small town so that while half the characters are solving the traditional Scooby-Doo mystery back in Hawkins, Indiana, others are on the run from sinister government operatives, or fighting for their lives in Russian gulags, or plunged into traumatising psychodrama in some desert-based research facility. It ups the scale in every other sense too, drawing from a wider range of retro pop-culture, so that Carrie, Cheech and Chong stoner movies, and Dungeons and Dragons all get referenced in the same episode. But more than all, it leans into '80s horror, ultimate villain Vecna leeching parasitically from Freddy Kruger, Pennywise the Clown and Hellraiser's Pinhead, to come out his own (make that the Duffer Brothers') special creation. It's rip-roaring, gleefully scary, and the purest shot of televisual fun I've had all year.

3. Sherwood

Move away from genre entertainment to Sherwood, a limited BBC drama that begins under the guise of a based-on-fact police procedural, before turning into something much more profound. David Morissey heads up Brit-cast of the year as DCS Ian St Clair, digging into the murder of a trade unionist in a Nottinghamshire mining town circa 2004. The real drama stems from the wounds reopened in a town riven two decades earlier by the nationwide miners' strike. Lines are redrawn between committed strikers and those who continued to work, the situation exacerbated by suspicions that a police spy stuck around in the locality, having infiltrated the militant union members back in the day. Several episodes in and the killer's identity matters less than that of the covert operative, and both are thrown into shadow by the turmoil of a community that has never managed to heal from political traumas of the past. It's a terrifically woven tapestry of interlinked human stories, with that jostling crowd of UK acting talent - Robert Glenister and Lesley Manville among them - proving why they're in such demand. Catch up on this one. It'll be six hours of your life well spent.

2. Severance - Season 1

This dystopian satire's delights are too many to list. The premise of Severance is fabulous in itself - a company that can separate the workplace and non-work memories of its employees through a surgical procedure, effectively dividing them into two identities, neither one with any recollection of the other. Take Mark (Parks and Recreations' Adam Scott), who knows that his 'innie' self is employed by the mysterious Lumon Industries but nothing beyond that. That's until a deranged man purporting to be his one-time work friend shows up to tell him that Lumon is insidiously evil and that Mark needs to act on the knowledge. Cue a science-fiction drama that combines pulse-racing paranoia with a weirdly hilarious parody of corporate culture, where each episode has you spinning increasingly complex theories about what in suffering hell is going on. Meanwhile, the writers feeds out just enough clues to keep you thoroughly intrigued. Severance is an exquisite slow-burn of a drama that gets right under your skin, unsettling you even as it makes you laugh. It's a masterpiece of design too, with a soundtrack as stealthy as the painstaking (if often surreal) plot developments. As for the season finale, call it forty minutes of sustained, jaw-dropping payoff that makes you doubly glad you began watching, and just as infuriated that season 2 hasn't yet been completed. Marvellous from start to finish, Severance's inaugural run would top this list most years.

Just not in a 'Saul' year.

1. Better Call Saul - Season 6

So - is Better Call Saul better than Breaking Bad, the drama that spawned it? It's the clever-clever thing to say, but I wouldn't be so bold, not without watching all of both shows over again (and that so wouldn't be a chore). What I will say is this... However good a show Breaking Bad was, and it was a 'contender for best TV drama series of all time' kind of good, it's been made better by Better Call Saul. BCS's final season confirmed that notion, concluding the prequel element of the show with four episodes left over to dig into sequel territory (a noteworthy creative choice in itself). This Bad-straddling structure enabled viewers to compare the tragic story arcs of aspiring drug lord Walter White and his moral shell of a lawyer Saul Goodman, aka Jimmy McGill, in a unique way. Was 'Saul' doomed to double/triple/quadruple down on his mistakes like Walter did, till there was none of Jimmy's decency left at all? And would he take everyone he'd ever loved down with him? This keenly observed, superlatively executed character drama kept us guessing till the last, ending in a manner we'd not predicted, even if on some level we maybe should have done. Along the way it delivered weekly masterclasses in how to craft high calibre TV. It also made us care about a clutch of deeply flawed human beings, understanding why they persisted along some excruciatingly bad choice roads. And we remained ready to forgive them all their manifold sins, if they'd just throw us a bone. Don't get me wrong - Brian Cranston as Walter is still probably the greatest sustained TV acting performance of all damn time. But after six seasons of BCS brilliance it's Bob Odenkirk's Jimmy McGill (and this show) that has my heart.

That's your lot. Now please torpedo all my hyperbolic enthusiasm with other contenders. I'll have time between Christmas and New Year to check out at least some of your suggestions.

Merry Christmas, everyone. 

Film Review - Nope (15)

What do you call a bad miracle, huh? Is there a name for that?

Modern cinema needs Jordan Peele. If it didn't do so pre-pandemic, it certainly requires his unique movie-making sensibilities right now. In a Hollywood more wedded than ever to sequels, reboots, and adaptations of well-established intellectual properties, thank God there's someone within its system writing and directing mainstream work on their own terms. 

In a career that draws comparisons with the early work of M. Night Shyamalan, Peele has, with his three features to date, become an event filmmaker for this era. His brilliant and provocative debut, 2017's Get Out, viewed racist America through the prism of horror in a way that both chilled and enthralled. He followed up with Us, a macabre doppelganger nightmare, boasting striking visuals and a terrific double-performance from Lupito Nyong'o (even if for me it didn't hold together conceptually). And now he's given us Nope - a sidestep from horror into summer blockbuster territory, but with his idiosyncratic style fully intact. Result - a dark but exhilarating theme-park ride like no other you'll have ridden.

Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya play Emerald and OJ, sibling inheritors of the Haywood Ranch, 'the only black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood', as Emerald proudly states. But with a lucrative contract falling through and the business subsequently flagging, sister and brother seek financial salvation - looking to the sky rather than the plain. Strange phenomena are afflicting the ranch, and both Haywoods suspect they're experiencing a close encounter of that much debated third kind. What they need is proof - the kind that might provide them with an 'Oprah moment', propelling them and their business into fame and fortune. But attaining such evidence is problematic, especially if the extra-terrestrials in question turn out not to be the cuddly kind...

That's all I'm saying plotwise, with reluctance to reveal even that much. The more that Nope retains its enigma, the more entertaining you're likely to find it. Just be prepared for Peele to take a genre you feel you know and put several spins on it, none of which you'll see coming. If the film starts out paralleling one classic holiday mega-movie of old, you may be well be recalling a different one by the end, thoroughly taken aback by how you got there. 

With this third movie, certain traits are apparent that might be described as 'Peeleian'. This is an artist forging his cinematic destiny, taking familiar movie tropes and spinning them into fantastical creations all his own. You may be reminded of this movie or that director, but his films - however your rank them in quality - are all Jordan Peele. That's true in terms of narrative shape and visual style, along with the lack of compromise in how these stories play out, and the viewpoint from which they're told. 

It's not simply that the director is putting non-white characters front and centre in the kinds of film that traditionally had white protagonists, or that he's telling old tales from a new perspective. The stories themselves are almost reckless in terms of imagination and where this teller allows them to go. Nor is it a question of genre-splicing; Nope has the epic qualities of both science fiction and western with liberal splotches of horror along the way, but it's more than the sum of these familiar parts. The ideas that develop are ones you've never thought of before, and the visuals are ones you've never seen.

Think of Get Out, with Daniel Kaluuya dropping into the 'sunken place' as Catherine Keener torments him with a teacup and silver spoon. Or the mirror-image family of 'others' in Us, wearing their red boiler-suits and terrifying rictus expressions. There are a good half-dozen images from Nope so striking that they'll stay with me long after having watched the movie, none of which I'm going to flag up here (even if the telltale trailers do). Some are horrific in their implications, some are surreal, some are just plain awesome. But all demonstrate the freshness of Peele's vision and the reason why his work is rapidly acquiring the tag of 'must-see'.

As in his earlier films the acting talent helps. Palmer as Emerald is an irreverent whirl of energy, while Kaluuya's OJ is a stoic contrast, a taciturn cowboy whose dry delivery in moments of tension provides some of the funniest moments. There's great support too - Brandon Perea's tech salesman becomes a likeable central player, The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun is a local showman with big ambitions, and the gravel-voiced Michael Wincott is just great to listen to. Some of the dialogue is muddy - frustrating in early moments of plot exposition, thought that may be IMAX-related. I had a similar problem with Bullet Train the week prior - amazing ambient sound that you often felt in your bones, but reduced clarity in the actual characters' speech. Whatever the reason, it was a notable irritation in an otherwise great experience. But let's focus on the greatness.

Because in a week where news broke of the Cineworld theatre chain's imminent bankruptcy, great film experiences are what the industry needs. Movies that remind mainstream audiences, post-lockdown, why cinema is able to deliver something that home viewing, however advanced, never can. Nope is that kind of movie - visually crafted with verve and technical expertise at every point; telling an old story in a new way, one with sharp intelligence, visual wit, and an iconography all its own. Its current $118 million global box office is pretty solid, enough to reaffirm Jordan Peele's status as a modern auteur filmmaker, making original movies aimed at a big audience. He's to be applauded - and the best place to do that is in a cinema seat enjoying the latest fruits of his ambition. Go see Nope. In terms of both artistry and commerce, it's this kind of film that will keep the modern film industry alive. 

Gut Reaction: The most suspense-based clenching and flinching I'd done since A Quiet Place - Part 2, with added squinting at the screen to check if I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Memorable Moment: Gordy goes bananas in the film's frankly mental subplot.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. While retaining the elements of horror and satire that made his name, Peele broadens his scope, creating the most unusual and original big budget entertainment of the summer, one that deserves - along with films like Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis - to be seen on the biggest screen available. Like, yesterday. 

Film Review - X (18)

 ...one goddamn f***ed up horror picture.

'Suitable for those aged 18 and over.' That's how X-certificate was defined by the British Board of Film Censors (later changed to Classification) back in the 1970s. What the term suggested to the public was a certain brand of grainy, sordid, sex-and-violence-steeped movie that showed exclusively in so-called grindhouse theatres. Belfast's Strand cinema became one such venue during that era; check the listings, my older brother assured me, and it won't be showing Close Encounters - well, not of the Third Kind at any rate. Ti West's X evokes the spirit of those grungy Seventies exploitation movies, but with a twist, the kind you might expect from a film bearing the A24 production company logo. The result is memorable, and likely to remain 2022's most dubiously enjoyable cinematic treat.

Rural Texas 1979, and a sheriff-who's-seen-it-all is musing with his deputies over how a remote farm might have been turned into the scene of a blood-soaked massacre. Jump back twenty-four hours to a group of game young filmmakers, venturing into the sticks in a beat-up transit van. Their intention, to shoot The Farmer's Daughters, a porn movie that will rival in success - so they hope - the infamous Debbie Does Dallas. When the elderly couple from whom they're renting the property discover the project's adult nature, however, their day takes a dark turn, with spectacularly bloody consequences.

Sex and sleaze, violence and gore, with a setting and outcome more than slightly reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But to describe X as such and no more undersells it in a big way. Ti West does more than pay homage to Tobe Hooper's 1974 filmic slaughterhouse. Much as the hapless young director of The Farmer's Daughters aspires (not unlike Burt Reynolds' character in Boogie Nights) to shoot cheap porn with artistic value, so West devotes cinematic craft to every aspect of his deliberately tawdry subject matter. In doing so he shapes it into something more than purely tawdry.

A24's art-horror is regularly derided by more traditional gore-lovers as pretentious, particularly when the term 'elevated horror' is used to categorise it. X might be best described, however, as the point where shlock and arthouse horror meet. It may follow the 'horny youngsters get slaughtered' template, but it does so with a striking degree of technical care. In terms of framing and lighting its cinematography frequently stuns. The details of its set design are forensic. The sound design is eerie, mixing in neatly curated rock tracks of the era. And the shot transitions mirror the quirks of Seventies B-movies, while serving the filmmaker's own very contemporary intentions. Because even West's screenplay displays a wit and thoughtful subtext that exceeds the demands of a conventional slasher flick. 

X doesn't overplay its hand in this regard, but it does dare to be about something more than unlucky youths getting butchered as a kind of punishment for being wrong place/wrong time or for expressing their sexuality. The motives behind the murders run to a deeper, more existential place than you might expect. This grimy movie, in other words, has actual themes - ones it bothers to take seriously. 

It also has characters sufficiently three-dimensional to summon your empathy, rather than the traditional rack of obnoxious fresh meat you don't much mind seeing sliced and diced. However you're disposed to regard their lifestyles and choices, they're a fun bunch to hang out with, clothes off or on, and it's a real shame to see any of their lives cut short. The girls alone are sassy, daring, and aspirational by turns, and the actors playing them are capable of way better than cheap stereotypes. Pitch Perfect's Brittany Snow owns her scenes with style, Jenna Ortega endears while showing why she's already a modern scream queen (not least due to Scream 2022), and Mia Goth, who's excelled in everything from edgy independent dramas to Jane Austen's Emma., takes a dungaree-clad stroll further down the road to stardom.  

The boys don't let the side down either. A tip of the stetson is due to Grey's Anatomy's Martin Henderson, channelling pure Matthew McConaughey as the group's older, self-appointed producer. Actor-rapper Kid Cudi is every inch the laid-back retro porn stud, and Owen Campbell goes on a particularly interesting journey as the would-be avant garde director. Neither are the group's ageing nemeses reduced to stock villain status. Their story is part of what makes this slasher unique, the wife of in particular deserving close scrutiny.

The point I'm labouring is this - X may be a film with a down-and-dirty B-movie premise, but West's able cast and dedicated crew have treated it with A-grade respect, working from a script that meets and subverts expectations in equal measures. The writer-director, who's made a career out of imaginatively reconstituting horror conventions, has a clear affection for this murkiest of sub-genres, but wants to do more than just pastiche it. The outcome... all the grindhouse vibes and guilty X-certificate thrills you'd expect, plus humour, personality, a grubbily beautiful aesthetic, and a good sprinkling of provocative ideas. Now that's a movie with more than one kind of X factor.

Gut Reaction: All the responses you'd expect to this kind of nasty fare, but a bunch of others too, all some weird kind of positive.

Memorable Moment: Unlikely bed buds...!!! 

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. X is a lot of what you expect, and a lot of what you don't, and the finished product is an instant genre classic. Call it elevated or post or meta - however you choose to label it, this is a damn fine horror film.