Films of 2022

1. Everything Everywhere, All at Once
2. Avatar: The Way of Water
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. The Northman
5. Love and Leashes
6. The Batman
7. The Woman King

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8. Thor: Love And Thunder
9. Don’t Worry Darling
10. Jurassic World: Dominion
11. D.E.B.S.
12. The Half of It
13. Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
14. Elvis

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15. Licorice Pizza
16. Don’t Look Up

I only saw 16 films this year, that includes two that are old films that I caught up on. I have a few lurking on my Netflix list to watch as well that I will get around to eventually. That’s not the lowest number of films I’ve seen since I started this list, but it is way down. There are a mix of reasons for that, changes in my domestic life, fewer films I want to see (there are some really long gaps between good films being released at the cinema this year) and, like a sizeable chunk of people, I’m not so good at sitting down at home to watch a movie. I’m much more likely to watch an episode or two of whatever the latest show I’m hooked on might be. Two episodes might be the same time commitment, actually more likely three or even four these days, and I think that’s a significant part of the problem. I will sit down to watch a film that way (Love and Leashes, D.E.B.S. and The Half of It and I think I rewatched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once as well) but it’s not common for me to do so - that averages out nicely to once every three months after all.

The good news is that, when I went, or stayed in and put the effort in, I generally really liked what I saw. In years gone by I’ve often had five or more categories with only five or so more films, this year only three groups. My top seven are all in the “would make the effort to watch again” category. The next seven are in the “would watch again happily” category. I might not make the effort to, but if someone said “here, I’ve got this on DVD, or it’s on my iTunes account” or whatever, I wouldn’t complain. Sadly that leaves the last two that are “OMG no, poke my eyeballs out now.”

In my top seven, 1-3 are pretty set in stone, while 4-7 are a bit more fluid depending on how the mood takes me. That’s how I feel today, and it hasn’t moved for a few days, but it could slide around still.

In the next group of seven it’s really pretty fluid. I can look at all bar Elvis and see (at least one) big enough flaw to make me say “no” on any given day but, with the exception of Elvis, I can see a big enough attraction to make me say “yes” on the right day too. Elvis is more a case of there’s nothing that really offends me but there’s nothing too compelling to make we want to watch it again either. I wouldn’t object if someone else put it on, I wouldn’t make any effort to do so myself though.

I really disliked the last two films. They both felt a hot mess for different reasons. One offended my perceptions of every woman scientist I’ve ever met (quite a few) with lazy tropes, the other tried to smash too many genres into one mashup and while there are people who can manage that, this just wasn’t written by one of them.

With respect to my tests, 87.5% passed the Bechdel Test. The Northman possibly had excuses for failing (although there were enough named women characters it could have contrived a scraped pass), Elvis had even fewer excuses. For the Ko Test, two films were marked null (one was in Korean with subtitles, one had everyone with blue skin) or the rest 85.7% passed. Finally, for the Russo Test 43.8% passed.

This is the first year I scored a big budget Hollywood film (Dr. Strange) as a pass on the Russo Test. It was borderline, it relied on America’s gay mums, but I felt that they just crossed the threshold into being important enough to her backstory to make them important enough to the whole film to pass all the stages of the test. It’s worth comparing that to something like D.E.B.S. which very clearly passed the test, kicked the door open and danced all over it, in a very gay way of course. To Erasure and A Little Respect of course.

These numbers are a little down on last year for two tests where 90.9% passed the Bechdel Test and 50% passed the Russo Test, but they’re broadly within the limits of error (if one more film this year and one fewer last year had passed this year’s values would be higher than last year’s). The results of the Ko Test are appreciably higher than last year’s value of 65. 5%, and that is larger than a simple sample error as described above. It’s not clear if that is a change in what I saw, a change in Hollywood or something else going on.

Although I don’t track it (because it’s not very easy to do reliably) I recently heard an interview with Gillian Anderson who said that there was a huge change in representation behind the camera over her career. There is still work to be done, but when she started you very rarely saw women, and never in important positions. Now there are always women on set, and they’re common in all the positions. Director for Hollywood Blockbuster is the last holdout, but even there it’s changing. An interview on a different episode of the same podcast with a woman director (sorry, I don’t remember her name) said when she started about 20 years ago, it was common for her to go months between phone calls, let alone actual jobs in the industry. It’s part of the reason she clubbed together with some friends and set up her own (small) film company - so they could all get work. She sees women now that they want to come and work for them who are so busy that they are in a position to turn down the work - on one hand she hates that, because she wants to have them work with her, on the other hand she’s delighted that Hollywood has changed so much that these DPs, sound recorders and the like are so busy they can turn down job offers.

On a personal note, I don’t know what 2023 will bring in terms of my cinema going, we shall have to see. I need to feel motivated and some of that is around work and the like. But some of that is around the Hollywood machine. There just haven’t been a lot of films I’ve looked at and gone “yes, I want to invest the time and effort to go and see that” released this year.

A quick closing note. While, technically, Avatar and Top Gun are franchises I guess, leaving decades between instalments is hardly your typical movie franchise strategy. Although there are only four movies in my list that really fit the classic franchise mould, only one (The Batman) is in my top seven. Although being in my second seven is hardly the mark of “I hated it.” Now, it’s fair to say that I’m usually tougher on MCU/DCEU movies than many other people - they don’t deliver what I want in general (Wonder Woman and some of the Thor films being wonderful exceptions), and none of the blockbusters fell into my OMG no list but, as is so often the case, my positive or pretty positive response means, with the exception of The Batman wider fan response is between divided and poor. I haven’t seen Wakanda Forever yet, and may not - the trailers fail to grab my interest - but it’s been a rough year financially for the MCU and in terms of critical and fan response. (There’s not enough content that appeals to make me subscribe to Disney+ but the same is true of their TV shows in terms of viewing figures and responses from the data I’ve seen.) At the box office and in many fans hearts it seems, stories outside the superhero sandbox are finally hitting back - Top Gun and Avatar are squabbling for top of the box office this year. They’re both comfortably >50% higher than the MCU/DCEU offerings. Top Gun did that in 17 weeks, Avatar might not quite depose it within 2022 but is going to be super-close within 17 days! It will beat it out overall and may have the legs (fins?) to hit up into $2bn territory.

Hollywood hasn’t quite worked out what to do reliably yet but it’s clear that the will to go and see good films is there. The capacity to make good films though? Maybe not so much. That is definitely a problem going forwards.