For a start, we got the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, which saw audiences crowding into theatres in a post-pandemic frenzy to soak up the two biggest films of the year.
It felt like a real cinematic event, but if anything, the more prevalent trend was the continuing rise of streaming services at the expense of theatrical distribution. Yet, as any addict will tell you, it’s tough to stop chasing that dragon.
These are the movies that got Jeremy Quinn high on cinema again this year.
This United States production, shot in New Zealand, came about when the cast and crew of the excellent horror pastiche X found themselves quarantined during lockdown. A follow-up was quickly conceived and a new horror classic was born, telling the origin story of X’s axe-wielding villainess as she graduates from mildly psychopathic farmgirl to full-blown murderer. Pearl’s main selling point is Mia Goth’s brain-meltingly brilliant performance, which, I kid you not, is the finest piece of horror-movie acting since Janet Leigh took a shower at the Bates Motel. And being set in 1918, the whole thing’s a metaphor for Covid. Outstanding.
What are the odds that my two favourite films of the year would be horror movies starring Mia Goth?
Let’s just say, I know what I like.
Brandon "Son of David" Cronenberg has body horror running through his veins, and outdoes himself with his third feature, combining a premise that would be rejected by Black Mirror for being too outlandish, with the trippiest imagery this side of an Alejandro Jodorowsky flick. I’ll keep quiet about what happens, although it may involve cloning, surgery, masked orgies, drug-induced psychosis, and just about every type of bodily fluid imaginable. In other words, it’s a twisted, blood-soaked, psychedelic masterpiece.
The third and (I promise) final horror movie on my list, although you wouldn’t have known it from the marketing, which promised a touching little indie flick to tug at your heartstrings. Umm, no ... The Whale is terrifying, and I think what perhaps got lost among all the (deserved) awards buzz surrounding Brendan Fraser’s performance is the heavily pronounced sense of utter dread that it latches on to without you even being aware of what it’s doing. I’ve always been hit and miss with Aronofsky but this is, to my mind, his best film to date.
The master of twee pulls a blinder with his existential sci-fi comedy, asking the question, if we were to be visited by aliens would it really change anything? Perhaps it might help us discover the meaning of life, but isn’t that what art is for? Maybe it might help us to fall in love more easily? And just what is Asteroid City anyway? OK, so none of these questions are ever really answered, and yet life goes on ...
A donkey wanders through the Polish and Italian countryside, encountering the good, the bad and the weird of humanity, while seemingly headed to his ultimate doom. It’s a parable on how we treat other animals, and it accomplishes something that only cinema can do — it literally lets us see the world through the eyes of another being. Don’t believe the hype however — the ending is ambiguous but I like to think it’s a happy one (optimist that I am).
While now is definitely not the moment for a jingoistic war movie extolling the virtues of the United States military, thankfully, The Covenant is not that film. Just as Sergio Leone’s Westerns were often set against the backdrop of the Civil War, Guy Ritchie’s overt homage uses the US-Afghan conflict as the location for its boy’s-own tale of male friendship and survival under the most unforgiving of circumstances. Hands down the best dad movie of the year.
The Finnish virtuoso of bleak, deadpan comedy finds his return to form in this anti-romcom, set in Helsinki, where the horrors of the Russia-Ukraine war are ever present on the radio.
A lonely supermarket worker and a lonely alcoholic meet at a bar, go to a movie and struggle to find anything to say. Will they find true love? Or will their depressing circumstances ultimately work against them?
Kaurismaki channels Jim Jarmusch’s brand of extreme minimalism, explicitly quoting him in the couple’s choice of first-date movie, the not-so-romantic zombie-com The Dead Don’t Die.
This tense and riveting thriller tells the true story of Reality Winner, a US government translator, who was charged under the Espionage Act for leaking classified documents on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The gimmick is that this 80-minute film takes place in real time, with the dialogue taken verbatim from FBI recordings and transcripts of her interrogation and eventual arrest. It’s impossible to take your eyes off the screen and a big part of that is due to Sydney Sweeney’s amazing work in the lead.
A West Texan single mum wins the lottery and proceeds to spend the next six years on a drink and drug bender, before returning head-in-hand to a community that now hates her, not least because she selfishly abandoned her young son along the way. Andrea Riseborough is compulsively watchable but the film itself is a great example of a small indie flick done right — a sweet little comedy disguised as a drama that shies away from being a statement on addiction to instead have a giggle at the absurdity of trying to be a perfect human.
My final choice is something of a booby prize (pun intended), but I couldn’t help but love this throwback to the dodgy sex comedies of the ’80s, featuring a dazzling comic effort from Jennifer Lawrence as a late-stage party girl who replies to an ad from two well-meaning parents looking for a woman-of-the-world to deflower their 19-year-old son. They say the sign of a good comedy is that you will laugh out loud at least four times. I counted over a dozen, so put your brain in neutral and enjoy.
