With lockdowns behind us (for the moment), and cinemas enjoying their first uninterrupted year’s business since 2019, there has been an encouraging rebound at the box office.
Jurassic World Dominion, a bad sequel, has chalked up close to a billion dollars at the box office, while Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a shabby Marvel offshoot, has done even better. Leading the pack is Top Gun: Maverick, which has done astonishing business in the US and worldwide, with a gross of almost $1.2bn and counting.
People are going back to the cinemas, which is good, but breaks in production during the Covid years have led to a dearth of new big-budget films. Choices at the multiplex are noticeably lacking.
Odd, then, that 2022 should have managed to produce a startling number of genuinely excellent films already — some of them pandemic hangovers, others ingeniously cobbled together during lockdowns.
Here’s our pick of the best, all worth seeking out if you missed them first time around.
Licorice Pizza Stream on Google TV/iTunes A disaster at the box office and overlooked at the Oscars, Paul Thomas Anderson’s wry comic drama offers fascinating insights into the lost world of Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Singer Alana Haim is astonishingly good portraying a bad-tempered 25-year-old photographer’s assistant who allows herself to be wooed by Gary (Cooper Hoffman), a 15-year-old child actor with smooth chat-up lines and big ambitions. A wise, witty, unique and heart- warming film.
Memoria Google TV/IFI@Home Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a kind of visionary, and in previous films has half-persuaded me that the dead walk among us. Up for any kind of spooky challenge is Tilda Swinton, who in Memoria plays Jessica, an Englishwoman living in Colombia whose peace of mind is derailed by a curious sound: she’s having coffee with a friend when she hears an ominous sonic boom. Memoria unfolds at a stately pace, and its style won’t be for everyone, but I loved it.
Belfast Google TV/iTunes In this sumptuous film, Kenneth Branagh evokes the fleeting intimacy of his Northern Irish childhood, which is about to be shattered by riots, bombs and cross-community gangsterism. Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench are outstanding as 10-year-old Buddy’s kindly grandparents, while Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan are his incredibly handsome parents. But perhaps that’s how Branagh remembers his own parents, and the special childhood that was so abruptly ended.
Parallel Mothers Google TV/iTunes At 72, Pedro Almodóvar has lost none of his fire, and in Parallel Mothers attaches a telenovela-style melodrama to a deadly serious theme — the hidden graves dotted around Spain containing the bodies of those killed by Falangist death squads during the Civil War. Janis (Penélope Cruz) is a Madrileña fashion photographer who is very successful, but haunted by a loss in her family’s past. Janis comes from a small town not far from Madrid, where local lore has pinpointed a mass grave in a nearby field — one of thousands dating from the Civil War and containing the bodies of Franco’s Republican enemies. Among them may be Janis’s great-grandfather. A lush, thought-provoking film.
The Souvenir: Part II Mubi/Google TV/iTunes In Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical 2019 film The Souvenir, Honor Swinton Byrne played Julie, a film student who falls in love with a man called Anthony (Tom Burke), who claims to be a diplomat but is actually a drug addict. He died, Julie carried on, and in this fascinating sequel she tries to get her life back together. She’s traumatised by Anthony’s death, attends a therapist and receives financial help from her posh and well-meaning parents (Tilda Swinton and James Spencer Ashworth). Hogg’s film is a study of class on one level, but also an exploration of the artistic process, and an examination of resilience, and character.
Concept of home: Flee uses animation to tell the true story of a refugee
Flee Disney+/Google TV/iTunes Part documentary, part dramatised memoir, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee uses haunting animation to highlight the plight of stateless refugees through the experiences of one man. Rasmussen builds his story around ‘Amin’, a teenage friend who came to Denmark from Afghanistan, enduring a protracted nightmare on the way. When Amin is a boy, his father is arrested by the Mujahideen and murdered. Later, he and his family flee Kabul just in time to avoid the murderous attentions of the Taliban. By this stage, Amin has realised he is gay. Flee explores the fraught concept of home and is a gripping, troubling film.
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The Beatles: Get Back Disney+ Apparently, The Beatles were still unsure about the idea of playing on the roof of Abbey Road Studios just minutes before they did so. Was it a good idea, or some species of lunacy? No one could decide. Then John Lennon said, “F*** it — let’s do it.” Within nine months of the show, the band had split, but what you get in Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back is a fleeting sense of how extraordinarily good The Beatles actually were. Paul McCartney in particular is imperious, roaring through songs he had invented just days before.
The Batman Google TV/iTunes While it would be hard to top the portentous, funereal tone of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Matt Reeves just about manages it with this grungy but brilliantly made thriller starring Robert Pattinson as a young and raw Bruce Wayne. He has only recently started haunting the meanest streets of Gotham, dispensing rough justice, when a new and dangerous villain emerges. The Riddler (Paul Dano) kills his victims in ever-more baroque, horrific ways, and seems to have mistaken Batman for his friend. An extraordinary-looking but relentlessly grim blockbuster.
Murina Google TV/iTunes Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s outstanding debut feature is a coming-of-age story without sentiment. Julija (Gracija Filipovic) is a handsome, clever teenager who spends most of her time swimming and diving in the crystal waters beside her Dalmatian home. She is sick of her overbearing father, Ante (Leon Lucev), and blames her mother, Nela (Danica Curcic), for not having left him. And when his old friend Javier (Cliff Curtis) turns up for a visit, buried tensions flare. The ensuing psychodrama plays out against the steely blue backdrop of the Adriatic, and newcomer Filipovic is outstanding as Julija, a sea nymph with a will of iron.
An Cailín Ciúin Google TV Based on a novella by Claire Keegan, Colm Bairéad’s Irish-language drama An Cailín Ciúin is set in the early 1980s, when Irish people had large families and thought little of it. When her harried mother falls pregnant with her fifth child, 10-year-old Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is sent to stay with a cousin, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), who lives with her husband, Seán (Andrew Bennett), on a remote farm. She’s a sad-eyed, watchful girl who has grown used to being forgotten about, but, under the loving care of Eibhlín and Seán, Cáit begins to blossom. Quite possibly the best Irish film ever made.
Vortex iTunes At the start of Gaspar Noé’s bleak, compelling drama Vortex, a young and incandescently beautiful Françoise Hardy sings a song about death. “You admired me yesterday,” she says, “but tomorrow I will be dust.” The human condition is laid bare by a pop song, and also by the slow deterioration of an elderly couple, identified only as Father (Dario Argento) and Mother (Françoise Lebrun). Noé, famed for his taboo-busting films, here tackles the ultimate one — mortality.
The Innocents iTunes If horror’s job is to unsettle, The Innocents does so masterfully. Eskil Vogt’s film is set in a high-rise Norwegian housing estate, which doesn’t initially seem like too bad a place to live. There’s a wood nearby and a little lake, and when nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) moves into an apartment with her family, she quickly makes friends. Ida’s older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) is non-verbal and autistic, and when asked to take Anna for walks, Ida abandons her and plays with Ben (Sam Ashraf), a bright but worryingly spiteful boy with telekinetic powers. The Innocents finds horror in the everyday, and really gets under your skin.
Benediction Google TV Of the Great War poets, Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most significant, but his wealth could not protect him from the psychological trauma of war, as Terence Davies’ elegiac drama makes clear. Jack Lowden plays the young Sassoon, who tries to come to terms with all he has seen during a forced convalescence. Siegfried is gay, and endures several unhappy relationships with men before retreating to a convenient marriage. And Peter Capaldi is the older Sassoon, dried up and disillusioned, struggling with his Catholic faith.
