Another year of film watching done. Back to the cinema for a lot of this, but also a bunch that were first/early release at home. Seems like a lot of low to mid budget films are skipping cinemas entirely these days.
As per the caveat every year, Film Fight is done in a (non particularly serious) knock-out style: it can pick my favourite film of the year, but nothing else. (Also the very idea of a single favourite film is a bit silly.)
First up is the honorable mentions: films that weren’t good enough to win their own month, but still worth seeing.
- Licorice Pizza
- Swan Song
- The Eyes Of Tammy Faye
- Petite Maman
- Belfast
- Lamb
- The Tragedy Of Macbeth
- After Yang
- Titane
- The Northman
- All The Old Knives
- Emergency
- Pleasure
- Top Gun: Maverick
- Nope
- Rogue Agent
- Three Thousand Years of Longing
- I Came By
- The Woman King
- The Banshees Of Inisherin
- Emily The Criminal
- Clerks III
- The Menu
- The Wonder
- Bones And All
- The Stranger
- She Said
- Glass Onion
- Corsage
And now the monthly winners:
- January: The Lost Daughter
- February: CODA
- March: Kimi
- April: Mass
- May: Everything Everywhere All At Once
- June: Men
- July: Thor: Love And Thunder (no, I wasn’t happy about it either)
- August: Prey
- September: The Forgiven
- October: Barbarian
- November: Pearl
- December: Decision To Leave
We have a decent enough list of winners with only July really letting the side down.
CODA and Mass were excellent character and performance driven films, with important but very different messages.
There’s more horror on the list than in previous years, with Barbarian being the best of three, but Pearl being pretty close, especially for that monologue at the end. Men was fine, but I don’t see myself going back to it much.
The Forgiven and Decision To Leave have you sitting in a feeling considering what you might do in this situation, which makes for great, lingering cinema.
I’m quite torn. I saw Decision To Leave a few days ago so it’s still quite fresh, but I also remember the fairly emotional experiences of watching CODA and Mass.
I think I’m going with Mass as my film of 2022. It’s a simple setup, mostly four people in one room talking about a tragedy, but you feel every bit of it.