29.1.23

Top 10 of 2022

The best of 2022! Pure and simple. Impossible to argue with! No one can disagree with these choices. Right? Right! Let's get into it, but first....

HONORABLE MENTIONS

I decided to only do a Top 10 this year, so I have to include a few honourable mentions.

Millie Bobby Brown is once again an absolute delight in the fun Enola Holmes 2 (2022). The pitch perfect rebooted Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) almost made the list. As did the record-breaking Oscar-nominated documentary Flugt (2021). I had a blast with Fall (2022), and enjoyed freezing my nuts off in Infinite Storm (2022).

THE LIST

10) Ambulance (2022)

Granted, this film should probably not have snuck into the top 10, but how often do you get a chance to put a Michael Bay film on a year-end top list and piss of the Movie Snobs? Right?

The sheer audacity of taking a small, Danish film - that probably cost less that Michael Bay's weekly hair product budget and runs barely 75 minutes - and turning it into a full on Bayhem action extravaganza! But it works! The original Danish film worked (shout out to director Laurits Munch-Petersen), but this works too. It's the perfect way to do a remake. Admittedly the Bay's version could do with a trim, but when all is said and done I loved the HELL out of this film! I hope Bay remakes Babette's Feast next! Can you image the carnage he'll dish out?!

9) Svart krabba (2022)

Secret mission with a deadline. A post-apocalyptic world. Snow. Noomi Rapace. Seriously this film was made for me! Love this kind of stuff. Epic, grim goodness from start to finish!

8) X (Ti West) (2022)

Although he should be punched in the balls repeatedly for that 1 letter title, everything else Ti West does in this throwback slasher is on point. From the sleazy 70's porn film crew vibe, with some surprisingly engaging personal drama, to the slow boiling horror, to the blood-soaked finale. This is going to be a film I return to again and again, I can already tell.

7) Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

If you've never seen the original Marcel the Shell shorts on YouTube, do yourself a favor and check them out right now.

The simple premise of the original shorts didn't seem substantial enough to support a feature film, but Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate have found a story that makes sense in the longer format, without loosing the charm from the shorts. With a tiny stop-motion animated shell this film brings more relatable drama than most live-action movies. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a delightful, touching and heartfelt little story, the kind you really should take the time to sit down and enjoy. Your soul will thank you.

6) Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019)

The first ever movie from the country of Bhutan to be nominated for a Best Internation Film Oscar. It's the story of a young teacher sent to the most remote school in the world to teach the kids from a small village, as a sort of punishment by the government. It turns out that the residents of the tiny community are deeply grateful for his presence, and their attitude makes him reconsider his own.

The film is shot on location and most of the participants are not professional actors, but this allows Lunana to hit the perfect kombination of drama and documentary feel. Director Pawo Choyning Dorji guides this story gently to pure perfection without ever hitting a false note or forcing any emotions out of us. Having said that, you will cry like a baby at the end.

5) The Outfit (2022)

Hiding behind an unassuming setting and ditto lead character, this gem turned out to be a deviously clever little story. At first it's just a simply story about a tailor. Then it turns into a gangster drama, and then it takes a really sharp turn. Mark Rylance is monumentally cool in the lead as the soft spoken tailor, sorry, cutter (he doesn't like being called a tailor), who sees nothing and hears nothing - except of course when he does. I love one-location movies like this, I love the razor sharp focus of the story, I love the classy vibe that runs through every moment of this film. Pure perfection.

4) Nordsjøen (2021)

I can't get enough of those Norwegian disaster movies, and this one was the best so far. It takes place in an interesting location (an oil rig), it features some very cool tech (an underwater robot snake thingy) and it brings us a really kick-ass lead (Kristine Kujath Thorp) that it's impossible not to root for.. On top of that the story is built on a very scary disaster scenario, which the movie backs up with some stunning effects. The Americans could learn a lot from the Norwegians when it comes to disaster movies. They should start by watching Nordsjøen on repeat!

3) Nightmare Alley (2021)

William Lindsay Gresham's novel was already filmed once in 1947, as an ice cold, highly effective black and white movie that unfortunately couldn't punch quite as hard as the book, due to the Hollywood censors. Guillermo del Toro's take isn't bound by such foolish limitations, so he can go all in on the darker aspects of the story, and so he does! This is the perfect combination of director and material. The clever con man, the traveling circus setting, the devious plan, Del Toro was made to bring this stuff to life. Even the gorgeous 1947 black and white images are bested by this modern take, thanks to cinematographer Dan Laustsen's Oscar-nominated work. Stunning. Dark. Impossible to shake. Especially that last scene.

2) She Said (2022)

The story about how journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey wrote the New York Times article "Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades", and lit a fire under the #MeToo moviement, is both a sobering reality-check and an intriguing detective story.

Director Maria Schrader keeps everything super-serious and on the level. She shies away from the conspiratorial threads of the novel, and she reduces Weinstein's voice as much as possible, making sure to focus on the women, and their voices, a perfect choice for this story that could easily have turned into a sensational screech.

Just watch the moment where Megan confronts Weinstein and his entire team. Filmed through a glass window, with Weinstein's back to the camera, squarely focus on the determined reporter, who knows she's listening to a monster's death rattle, while the actual sound of Harvey and his lawyers are reduced to a faint murmur. They no longer have a voice. Highly effective filmmaking.

1) Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

"The end is inevitable, Maverick. Your kind is headed for extinction."
"Maybe so, Sir. But not today."


A Top Gun follow-up seemed both unnecessary, doomed to fail and destined to disappoint. Little did we know that Tom Cruise, The Last Movie Star (™), had a few tricks up his sleeves and a completely different plan. Top Gun: Maverick hits the perfect combination of update, nostalgia and fan service. It strips away all the cringy bits from the original and adds heart and perspective in just the right measure. It's not a deep film, but I wouldn't expect or want it to be either. This is just a good, solid to the core, fun and engaging, kick-ass film that delivers the goods from start to finish. Turns out that's all you have to do, to make it to the top.

WRAP-UP

ALL done! I already have a couple of titles ready for the 2023 lists. Check back in for those in about 12 months time.

Bottom 10 of 2022

Well, here we are, back at it again, with the - counting on my fingers - 15th annual list of my best and worst movies experiences from the last year. In 2022 I took a deep dive into the films of the 1930's, as a result I had fewer new films to pick from for the lists, so I've decided just to do Top 10s this year. Learn to love it.

First a few titles that didn't make it to the actual list....

SPECIAL MENTION

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Had this list been longer, it might have crept in at the bottom, but honestly Avatar 2 is too aggressively meh to warrant an inclusion in any list.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Jordan Peele's Nope (2022) almost made the list, a bit of class kept it off. His other project, the unlikable stop-motion animation Wendell & Wild (2022) only avoided the list due to sheer sympathy for the style. Uncharted (2022) avoided the list only because I decided to stop at 10.

THE LIST

10) Bullet Train (2022)

I found this movie profoundly annoying. The characters, the story, even the always likable Brad Pitt was annoying. Sure, there was a bit of cool action here and there, but I just hated the premise and I wanted everyone in the film to die. Make World War Z 2 instead, Brad!

9) The 355 (2022)

Hardcore action movies led by kick-ass ladies? Yes! Can't get enough of those! Unless they're as uninspired and badly written as The 355. Nothing makes sense, the whole plot revolves around chasing a magical tech thingy, and it's got zero heart.

8) The Gray Man (2022)

Soulless and witless $200 million action spectacle. And with that single sentence, I've already wasted more time on this film than it deserves.

7) Black Adam (2022)

Sorry The Rock, but this dull, pompous superhero (Or is he a villain? No, of course not) movie did absolutely nothing for me. The best part was the always delightful Sarah Shahi, but every time YOU showed up, you drained whatever sympathy and interest she had managed to build up from the film. At least they wasted so much money making this that a sequel is unlikely to materialise.

6) Skyggen i mit øje (2021)

The accidental bombing of a school in Copenhagen during World War II by Allied forces would have made for an interesting and harrowing movie. If director Ole Bornedal didn't have his head so far up his own ass, he would have been able to make that movie. He's a capable filmmaker, but he doesn't want to listen to anybody, and apparently has a habit of sidelining anybody who tells him he's wrong, and then acting all surprised and indignant when the public and the critics reject his films.The end result is predictably off key. Bornedal is too preoccupied with subjects that frankly have no place in this story. He also gets the most basic historic facts wrong, and he doesn't seem to care. So why should we care about the film?

5) Hellraiser (2022)

I didn't mind the idea of doing a modern take on the Hellraiser story, the original from 1987 is rather scrappy. This pile of garbage, though, is not the way to go. Hellraiser 2022 gets almost everything wrong from the first frame. There's no sense of danger, the plot is almost incomprehensible at times, and the lead actress looks like she's been on a 3-day bender before shooting every scene. But at least they checked the woke-box with a female Pinhead. Wait, are you still woke, if everybody in the audience fell asleep and missed it?

4) WarHunt (2022)

This is one of those it-could-have-worked kind of movies. The low budget restructions and the increasingly grotesque looking Mickey Rourke aren't even deal-breakers, but the script and the direction is. Honestly a quick rewrite and a new helmer could easily have moved this from the top of the bottom list to the bottom of the top list (next time guys, call me). As it stands now, WarHunt is a fascinatingly shapeless, bumbling, incoherent mess. Much like Rourke!

3) Blonde (2022)

Blonde is, of course, a different kind of bad than the other entires on this list, but it still is quite bad. Strapping Marilyn Monroe’s cold, dead corpse to the old Hollywood wagon and taking it for another ride around the Tinseltown circus is questionable at best. Robbing Marilyn of her own voice by simply making up life altering events throughout the movie is downright disgusting. Some films have that "based on a true story" text in the beginning. This one should have another text entirely. How about: "Not to be confused with a true story. We made most of this shit up.

2) Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

This one made me MAD. Furious even. That rarely happens, But this remake/reboot - or whatever the hell we're calling it these days - is so spectacularly detached from anything resembling reality and logic that it's hard to believe. This film is almost the exact opposite of what the original was in every way, shape and form. This year we learned that it's possible to simply NOT release a film, even if it cost close to $100.000.000 and is virtually finished. If only the laughably incompetent filmmakers behind this film had been the ones to teach us that lesson.

1) Moonfall (2022)

There are dumb movies and then there's Moonfall. Roland Emmerich usually makes big dumb movies, but this one is his dumbest yet. It's almost like he said to himself... "Independence Day: Resurgence was my worst film yet, but dammit, I can do worse!" And so he did. Moonfall looks like a shitty fan cut of the last couple of decades of disaster movies, with some cheap CGI slapped on top. It has a finale so ludicrous that it manages to make the "let's hack an alien spaceship" ending of Independence Day look downright clever.

WRAP-UP

2022 - what a year, eh? Luckily I had some good movie experiences too. We will get to those next.

1.1.23

2022: The Stats

It's that time again! Time to look back at the previous year to determine how well we did, when it came to movies and TV-shows.

This year I completely fell in love with the pre-code period (1928-1934), so almost 1/5 of the films I watched came from that brief period. But enough chit chat, let's get on with it...

Number of films watched in 2022:

262

Comparison:
- 2021 (292) - 2020 (329)
- 2019 (263) - 2018 (290) - 2017 (263) - 2016 (288)
- 2015 (307) - 2014 (331) - 2013 (401) - 2012 (405)
- 2011 (343) - 2010 (338) - 2009 (302) - 2008 (361)

Breakdown:
- Films watched for the first time: 142
- Re-watched films: 120

Films in play for the top/bottom lists:

76

Quality distribution (of new films):

Good: 38
Meh: 19
Bad: 19

Format distribution:

4K: 34
Blu-ray: 116
DVD: 22
VOD: 88
Cinema: 2

Decade-of-release distribution:

1920's: 1 film
1930's: 49 films (42 from the 1930-1934 period)
1940's: 5 films
1950's: 3 films
1960's: 5 films
1970's: 6 films
1980's: 17 films
1990's: 31 films
2000's: 29 films
2010's: 34 films
2020's: 82 films (2020: 3 / 2021: 26 / 2022: 53)

Most watched film:

None.

(several movies were watched twice, but it takes more than that to get on the list)

TV-SHOW STATS

Well, this year I finally got to Game of Thrones! I watched the whole thing (73 episodes in 3 months flat). I've also been really good about watching at least one episode of something most days - last year I only managed 219 episode, so I have much better TV stats this year.

Number of TV-show episodes watched:
(not counting game shows)

349

Number of different TV shows watched:

38

Complete seasons watched:

32

Best Shows of the Year:

Game of Thrones
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Ragdoll
Reacher
Rick and Morty
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Obi-Wan Kenobi

FINAL THOUGHTS

That's it! And now, with the stats out of the way I can get down to what really matters: The lists of the best and worst films from last year. Stay tuned.