Top 5 0f 2022

Well there goes another year of inactivity on here (but who's keeping count or reading this anyway)
Not sure I've watched a whole lot this year or at least not as much as I'd have liked to. Here's my five favourites that I saw, released in the UK in 2022.

5. Del Toro's Pinocchio - the attention to the details and the craft in which this film is lovingly made makes it an easy top 5 position. A lovely take on the tale with some surprising melancholia

4. Violent Night - nice to have something festive in the list this time of year, I thought I'd throw it in for fun. Unashamably a love letter to Die Hard and Home Alone yet being its own thing in its own right.

3. Everything Everywhere All at Once - sometimes amongst the art films and the popcorn movies you need something that fuses/blends the 2 cinematic ends of the scale to excite and surprise you with something new or different. Nutty, multiverse, OTT extravaganza. Everyone plays their part brilliantly. False ends, alternate realities and talking rocks (amongst many other things...) leads to the most creative film of the year

2. Top Gun: Maverick - a few years ago 2 films were, perhaps unjustly, held up with the responsibility of 'saving cinema' due to the terrible impact of Covid. Neither No Time to Die or Tenet could pull off the lofty expectations put upon them by the culture at large but this year we saw the potential of having a film succeed in reinvigorating the box office AND be a worthy and exciting watch. Top Gun pulled the mammoth task off. A true cinema experience to be seen big and loud and multiple times! Brilliant stuff

1. The Banshees of Inisherin - hitting all the emotional range possible, this film is extremely funny, poignnant, sad across the course of its tale. Amazing performance from everyone (and a donkey). The drama plays out in and around beautiful Irish scenery and leaves you with a mixed bag of feelings. Beautiful film making...

Some honourable mentions to Trainwreck Woodstock '99 (an indepth and in some ways morbidly interesting look at how an event can go oh so wrong), Brian and Charles (brilliantly english in the best and most sombre ways), All of Us are Dead (love me some zombie action coming out of Korea) and The Batman, of which has been my favourite job to have worked on so far.

As usual I happened across some stuff I was not keen on; three of which are below 1. The Reef: Stalked 2. Disneys Pinocchio 3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre