Top 10 Films of 2022

1. "Stars At Noon" (Claire Denis, France)

2. "Women Talking" (Sarah Polley, United Artists)

3. "The Son" (Florian Zeller, USA)

4. "The Whale" (Darren Aronofsky, A24)

5. "Triangle Of Sadness" (Ruben Ostlund, Sweden)

6. "No Bears" (Jafar Panahi, Iran)

7. "Athena" (Romain Gavras, France)

8. "Tar" (Todd Field, USA)

9. "Bones And All" (Luca Guadagnino, MGM)

10. "Bardo False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths" (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mexico)

Other great films:

Aftersun (UK)

Alcarràs (Spain)

All Quiet On The Western Front (Germany)

Argentina 1985 (Argentina)

As bestas (Spain)

Au grand jour (Canada)

Avatar: The Way Of Water

Babysitter (Canada)

The Banshees Of Inisherin (Ireland)

The Batman

Chien blanc (Canada)

Chronique d'une liaison passagère (France)

Les Cinq diables (France)

Close (Belgium)

Decision To Leave (South Korea)

Elvis

En corps (France)

EO (Poland)

Everything Everywhere All At Once

The Fabelmans

Falcon Lake (Canada)

Fire Of Love

Geographies Of Solitude (Canada)

The Good Nurse

I Like Movies (Canada)

Imaculat (Romania)

L'Innocent (France)

Lightyear

Living (UK)

Mascarade (France)

The Menu

Navalny

La Nuit du 12 (France)

Persuasion

Rien à foutre (France)

Saint Omer (France)

The Sea Beast

Sharp Stick

She Said

Tell It Like A Woman

Top Gun Maverick

Turning Red

Viking (Canada)

Where The Crawdads Sing

White Noise

The Wonder (Ireland)

Top 10 Guilty Pleasures of 2022:

1. "Babylon" (Damien Chazelle, Paramount)

2. "Blonde" (Andrew Dominik, Netflix)

3. "Competencia oficial" (Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat, Argentina)

4. "Deep Water" (Adrian Lyne, 20th Century-Fox)

5. "Un Ete comme ca" (Denis Cote, Canada)

6. "Kaymak" (Milcho Manchevski, North Macedonia)

7. "All The Beauty And The Bloodshed" (Laura Poitras, USA)

8. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, UK)

9. "Crimes Of The Future" (David Cronenberg, Canada)

10. "Grinders" (Ricky Greenwood, USA)

Top 3 Shorts:

1. "Haulout" (Maxim Arbugaev, Evgenia Arbugaeva, Russia)

2. "Aspirational Slut" (Caroline Lindy, USA)

3. "Nu" (Olivier Labonte LeMoyne, Canada)

Other great shorts:

Lap Around The World In 14 Days

Top 3 Music Videos:

1. "Therese" (Brady Corbet, Maya Hawke)

2. "Made You Look" (Meghan Trainor)

3. "Showed Me" (Lauren Dunn, Madison Beer)

Other great music videos:

As It Was

Coconuts

Sweat

Top Commercial:

"Don't Miss Out" (FTX)

TV Top 10:

1. "Wednesday" (Tim Burton, Netflix)

2. "Euphoria: Season 2" (Sam Levinson, HBO)

3. "Irma Vep" (Olivier Assayas, HBO)

4. "Better Call Saul: Season 6" (AMC)

5. "The Crown: Season 5" (Netflix)

6. "The Playlist" (Per Olav Sorensen, Netflix, Sweden)

7. "Love And Anarchy: Season 2" (Lisa Langseth, Netflix, Sweden)

8. "Ancient Apocalypse" (Graham Hancock, Netflix)

9. "The Marvelous Mrs Maisel: Season 4" (Amazon)

10. "The White Lotus: Season 2" (Mike White, HBO)

Other great TV shows:

1923: Season 1

Evil: Season 3

Minx

My Brilliant Friend: Season 3 (Italy)

Stanley Tucci Searching For Italy: Season 2

Swimming With Sharks

Top 3 Cartoons:

1. "Ice Merchants" (João Gonzalez, Portugal)

2. "The Flying Sailor" (Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby, NFB, Canada)

3. "Lilith And Eve" (Samuel de Ceccatty, UK)

Other great cartoons:

An Ostrich Told Me The World Is Fake And I Think I Believe It (Australia)

When Billie Met Lisa

Zen - Grogu And Dust Bunnies (Japan)

Top 3 VR films:

1. "L'Horizon de Khéops" (Emissive, France)

2. "Red Tail" (Fish Wang, Taiwan)

3. "The Man Who Couldn't Leave" (Chen Singing, Taiwan)

Other great VR films:

All That Remains (Taiwan)

Top 3 Stand-Up Comedy Shows:

1. "Ricky Gervais: SuperNature" (John L. Spencer, Netflix)

2. "Christina P Mom Genes" (Ryan Polito, Netflix)

3. "Bill Burr: Live At Red Rocks" (Mike Binder, Netflix)

Weak films of 2022:

All That Breathes (India)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Broker (South Korea)

Bungalow (Canada)

Cairo Conspiracy (Sweden)

Causeway

Don't Worry Darling

The Eight Mountains (Italy)

The Elephant Whisperers (India)

Empire Of Light (UK)

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Good Luck To You Leo Grande (UK)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Holy Spider (Denmark)

A House Made Of Splinters (Ukraine)

The Inspection

Lignes de fuite (Canada)

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

The Martha Mitchell Effect

Master Gardener

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris

Inu-Oh (Japan)

Noemie dit oui (Canada)

The Northman

Nouveau Quebec (Canada)

Pacifiction tourment sur les iles (France)

Puss In Boots The Last Wish

The Quiet Girl (Ireland)

Respire (Canada)

Rodeo (Canada)

RRR (India)

Strange World

To Leslie

Tori et Lokita (Belgium)

Viens je t'emmene (France)

The Woman King

Weak shorts:

Night Ride (Norway)

Le Pupille (Italy)

Stranger At The Gate

Weak cartoons:

The Boy The Mole The Fox And The Horse

My Year Of Dicks

Weak TV shows:

Bridgerton: Season 2

House Of The Dragon

Westworld: Season 4

Top Musical of 2022

"Elvis" (Baz Luhrmann, Warner)

Women Talking (2022) *****

A masterful portrait of humanity at its most vulnerable and at its most brave. Also, a superlative example of feminism at its most intelligent, generous and biting.

Stars At Noon (2022) *****

Enigmatic, mesmerizing and sensuous drama set in totalitarian Nicaragua during the Covid lockdowns. A masterpiece of "exotic/erotic" cinema. But instead of an Emmanuelle-style fantasy, we have a realistic portrait of a real woman forced to humiliate herself and to sell her body in order to survive and escape from a totalitarian nightmare. Winner of the Grand Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and Margaret Qualley's most memorable acting performance to date.

Bardo False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (2022) ****

Uneven, but often brilliant film that explores Mexican history and identity in a deeply allegoric and personal way.

The Whale (2022) ****

Almost every film review of this film describes it as a story of an overweight man and his problems. It is not. It's a story of an angry young girl lashing out at the entire world and coming to terms with a traumatic event from her childhood when she was eight and abandoned by a father whom she adored. One of Darren Aronofsky's best films.

Tell It Like A Woman (2022) ****

An impressive achievement. Not so much for the technical craft or the directorial vision (except for the Lucia Puenzo's episode, which is indeed superbly directed). There is a thematic coherence between the first five episodes. But what really stands out is the simplicity and the emotional rawness, especially in the first two episodes. They are incredibly moving and touching in the most visceral way. The first story especially serves us a gut punch on many levels. What makes it stand out is how completely it makes us identify with a mentally challenged woman undergoing a psychotic crisis and how she manages to get out of it. The tension is unbelievable. The next two episode also deal with mental illness, but in a softer manner. The second episode is also memorable, and has some unexpected moments of subtle humour. The fourth segment is about ordinary life of a single mother raising two young children. Nothing dramatic, just everyday routine. And the fifth is a more conventional thriller about a veterinarian who discovers that the woman who brings her dog to her clinic is a victim of abuse. It's a very tense story, well handled. The last two segments are completely different from the first five. The shift in tone is jarring. The sixth episode is a Bollywood extravaganza with musical numbers. The seventh is an experimental animated film that is very difficult to decipher. On their own, they are quite interesting. But they have nothing in common with the first five episodes which are very realistic and emotionally charged. The sixth segment tackles transphobia. That's also a social issue, like in the five previous segments that deal with mental illness (the first three), single motherhood and abuse. But the treatment in the sixth segment isn't realistic at all. It's pure spectacle.  There's actually something very interesting in that tonal shift - a refusal to let women's stories be pigeonholed into just social realism, and insisting on a full range of cinematic expression. 

Segments:

"Pepcy And Kim" (Taraji P. Henson)  *****

"Elbows Deep" (Catherine Hardwicke)  ***

"Lagonegro" (Lucia Puenzo)  ****

"A Week In My Life" (Mipo O)  ***

"Unspoken" (Maria Sole Tognazzi)  ***

"Sharing A Ride" (Leena Yadav)  ***

"Aria" (Lucia Bulgheroni, Silvia Carobbio)  ***

No Bears (2022) ****

Another excellent film from Jafar Panahi. It's about an Iranian filmmaker trying to direct (via Skype) a movie filmed across the border in Turkey while residing in a small village on the Iranian side of the border, and getting involved in a serious conflict in that village over a photograph of a young couple. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The Menu (2022) ****

It is everything that "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" (which it superficially resembles) isn't, namely clever, well-directed, thoughtful, suspenseful and effective. A minor masterpiece.

The Son (2022) ****

Superb drama, incredibly deep and profoundly moving.

Triangle Of Sadness (2022) ****

Winner of the Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival. A brilliant satire about modern life, loosely inspired by Cecil B. DeMille's "Male And Female" (1919). Directed by Ruben Ostlund.

Tar (2022) ****

A very surprising film that strongly denounces the excesses of the "cancel culture" while making it abundantly clear that its main character is guilty of sexual abuse on a Harvey Weinstein scale. 

Athena (2022) ****

Superbly directed war movie co-written by Ladj Ly ("Les Miserables").

Bones And All (2022) ****

A film about cannibals which is unlike any other film about cannibals.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022) ***

A fine adaptation of D.H.Lawrence's literary masterpiece. Way better than Sylvia Kristel's version from 1981 and almost as good as the French version from 2006.

Babylon (2022) ***

Watching this film makes one realize, once again, what a great masterpiece of Hollywood cinema is "Singin' In The Rain" (1952). As for "Babylon", it's an uneven effort, occasionally brilliant, but way too long and way "too much", especially when elephants, rattlesnakes and alligators show up. Brad Pitt plays a character based on John Gilbert, while Olivia Hamilton gets Dorothy Arzner and Margot Robbie has a lot of fun with Clara Bow. 

Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022) ***

Not as good as "Waterworld" (1995), but close.

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (2022) ***

A documentary about Nan Goldin and the Sackler Family.

Fire Of Love (2022) ***

White Noise (2022) ***

Persuasion (2022) ***

Innovative adaptation of Jane Austen's best novel.

Navalny (2022) ***

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) ***

The first 13 minutes of this film are quite misleading (although essential to understand the rest of the movie). 

Sharp Stick (2022) ***

Top Gun Maverick (2022) ***

Impressive sequel to the 1986 classic.

She Said (2022) ***

Excellent film about New York Times investigative journalists exposing Harvey Weinstein's rapes and sexual abuses.

Elvis (2022) ***

Fine Elvis Presley biopic, but more conventional than Baz Luhrmann's many earlier films.

Turning Red (2022) ***

Pixar animated film set in Toronto. 

Deep Water (2022) ***

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The Fabelmans (2022) ***

A portrait of the most successful Hollywood film director as a young man, growing up in America from 1952 to 1965.

Lightyear (2022) ***

Excellent "Toy Story" spin-off. Fast-paced, exciting fun.

The Good Nurse (2022) ***

Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne give fabulous performances in this tense suspense thriller based on a true story.

The Sea Beast (2022) ***

Where The Crawdads Sing (2022) ***

Blonde (2022) ***

The Assassination of Hollywood (and JFK) by the Coward Andrew Dominik. But Ana de Armas deserves the highest praise for her superlative performance as Marilyn Monroe.

The Batman (2022) ***