Critical Week: Summer holiday vibes

It's been a very sticky week in Britain, so I've enjoyed the chance to cool off in some air-conditioned cinemas. Screenings are still a bit thin on the ground, seeing as it's holiday season, but there are plenty of things to be watching. Bob Odenkirk is back in action for Nobody 2, in which the violence is perhaps a bit too gleeful. But it's also hilariously entertaining, expecially when a villainous Sharon Stone is chomping on the colourful scenery. Joaquin Phoenix leads the sprawling cast of Ari Aster's epic Eddington, a very dark satire about us-vs-them attitudes set in the pandemic-era Wild West. It's riveting, complex and very important. Costars include Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Together • Materialists
ALL REVIEWS >

Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi and Will Poulter lead the cast of the nuanced romantic drama On Swift Horses, a beautifully made film that explores hidden desires in 1950s America. Orlando Bloom is a tough-guy boxer in The Cut, which rather unevenly shifts from gritty drama to psychological horror. Matilda Lutz leads the charge as Red Sonja in a new take on the comic heroine. Even with flashes of wit, it's too serious for its own good. And the adult-aimed animated comedy Fixed has a lot of fun with its raunchy premise about a dog getting the snip, but there's not much else going on.

This coming week I'll be watching Helen Mirren and an all-star cast in the whodunit The Thursday Murder Club, Peter Dinklage in a new take on The Toxic Avenger, the Irish care-system drama Christy, the fact-based epic Chinese WWII action film Dongji Rescue, and the animated racing-mice action romp Grand Prix of Europe.

The Best of 2022: 42nd Shadows Awards

After the first few months of trailing pandemic chaos, 2022 felt much more normal for film critics, as we saw most major releases on the big screen. Oddly, the same can't be said for audiences, who seem happy to watch movies at home now, reserving cinemas for event blockbusters only. The ripple effects on the industry are already beginning to be felt, and it's scary to think that fewer and fewer truly inventive films will be able to be seen in theatres. No home cinema will ever replicate the feeling of watching something with a crowd immersed together in projection and sound.

So here are my favourites from 2022, a mixed bunch that I saw in cinemas, at home, at festivals and even on airplanes. Much more extensive lists are ON THE WEBSITE >

BEST FILM:

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once 
2. No Bears
3. The Quiet Girl 
4. The Inspection 
5. The Banshees of Inisherin 
6. Living
7. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
8. Decision to Leave 
9. She Said 
10. Elvis 

DIRECTOR:

1. Park Chan-wook - Decision to Leave
2. Romain Gavras - Athena
3. Charlotte Wells - Aftersun
4. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert - Everything Everywhere All at Once
5. Sarah Polley - Women Talking
6. Iryna Tsilyk - Rock. Paper. Grenade.
7. Baz Luhrmann - Elvis
8. Georgia Oakley - Blue Jean
9. Maryna Er Gorbach - Klondike
10. Lila Neugebauer - Causeway

SCREENWRITER:

1. Kazuo Ishiguro - Living
2. Martin McDonagh - The Banshees of Inisherin
3. Jafar Panahi - No Bears
4. Marie Kreutzer - Corsage
5. Sarah Polley - Women Talking
6. Elegance Bratton - The Inspection
7. Rian Johnson - Glass Onion
8. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert - Everything Everywhere All at Once
9. Dimitrij Schaad, Alex Schaad - Skin Deep
10. Lena Dunham - Sharp Stick, Catherine Called Birdy

ACTRESS:

1. Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Letitia Wright - Aisha, The Silent Twins, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
3. Ana de Armas - Blonde, Deep Water, ​​The Gray Man
4. Catherine Clinch - The Quiet Girl
5. Penelope Cruz - Official Competition, Immensity, On the Fringe, The 355
6. Cate Blanchett - Tár
7. Danielle Deadwyler - Till
8. Florence Pugh - The Wonder, Don't Worry Darling
9. Zar Amir Ebrahimi - Holy Spider
10. Jessie Buckley - Men, Women Talking

ACTOR:

1. Colin Farrell - The Banshees of Inisherin, After Yang, The Batman
2. Bill Nighy - Living
3. Jeremy Pope - The Inspection
4. Paul Mescal - Aftersun
5. Mehdi Bajestani - Holy Spider
6. Brian Tyree Henry - Causeway, Bullet Train
7. Park Hae-il - Decision to Leave
8. Oleksandr Yatsentyuk - Pamfir
9. Brendan Fraser - The Whale
10. Austin Butler - Elvis

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

1. Hong Chau - The Whale, The Menu
2. Samantha Morton - The Whale, She Said
3. Nina Hoss - Tár
4. Dolly De Leon - Triangle of Sadness
5. Frankie Corio - Aftersun
6. Gabrielle Union - The Inspection
7. Judy Davis - Nitram
8. Kiyohiko Shibukawa - Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
9. Lashana Lynch - The Woman King, Matilda the Musical
10. Jamie Lee Curtis - Everything Everywhere All at Once, Halloween Ends

SUPPORTING ACTOR:

1. Diego Calva - Babylon
2. Barry Keoghan - The Banshees of Inisherin
3. Ke Huy Quan - Everything Everywhere All at Once
4. Ben Whishaw - Women Talking
5. Andrew Bennett - The Quiet Girl
6. John Boyega - The Woman King
7. Anthony Bajon - Athena
8. Brendan Gleeson - The Banshees of Inisherin
9. Russell Harvard - Causeway
10. Thomas Wodianka - Skin Deep

WORST FILM:

1. Samaritan
2. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
3. Padre Pio
4. Dear Zoe
5. Where the Crawdads Sing 
6. The 355 
7. The Bubble
8. Moonfall
9. Mr Malcolm's List
10. Death on the Nile 

N O N - F I L M   D I V I S I O N

TV SERIES:

1. This Is Going to Hurt (BBC)
2. Heartstopper (Netflix)
3. The White Lotus (HBO)
4. Derry Girls (C4)
5. Hacks (HBO)
6. Welcome to Chippendales (Hulu)
7. Acapulco (Apple)
8. Ozark (Netflix)
9. His Dark Materials (BBC)
10. The Great (Hulu)

SINGLE:

1. Break My Soul - Beyoncé
2. Firebabe - Stormzy
3. Boyfriend - Dove Cameron
4. About Damn Time - Lizzo
5. Child of God - Chance the Rapper
6. Lift Me Up - Rihanna
7. Overthinking - Mabel & 24kGoldn
8. Oh My God - Adele
9. Bam Bam - Camila Cabello & Ed Sheeran
10. Psycho - Anne-Marie & Aitch

Critical Week: Driving home for Christmas

I seen many films this week, largely due to work required prior to the announcement of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards nominations yesterday. This involved compiling my own ballot, then counting all the others that came in, tabulating the results, giving nominees a heads-up, working on a press release and preparing the announcement event, which was hosted by young actors Ellie Bamber (Willow) and Fionn O'Shea (Handsome Devil) at the May Fair Hotel as a low-key Christmas party. The nominations are listed HERE if you're interested in comparing them with all the other awards spiralling around at the moment.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Living • Corsage • Women Talking
ALL REVIEWS >

Now things are calming down for the holidays. Whew! Of the films I saw this past week, the most ambitious was Noah Baumbach's White Noise, a busy and somewhat unfocussed comedy-drama about a family dealing with a range of big issues. The cast is excellent, led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, and it ends with a fabulous burst of choreography. Will Smith plays a real-life historical icon in Emancipation, set at the end of the Civil War as an escaped slave faces brutal trackers and ends up fighting on the battlefield. It's ambitious and admirable, but the themes get a bit lost. Christian Bale leads the cast of Scott Cooper's moody period mystery The Pale Blue Eye, playing a detective who works alongside a young Edgar Allan Poe (a superbly wide-eyed Harry Melling) to investigate a murder at West Point in 1830. It's mesmerising but ultimately a bit thin. And the animated adventure The Amazing Maurice, based on the Terry Pratchett novel, has some wonderful thematic depth beneath the usual slapstick wackiness and slick digital imagery.

This coming week I will continue to catch up with movies before writing up my year-end lists. There's quite a pile-up of these, and I have a list of about 10 priority titles, plus eight more if-time ones. A couple of them are forthcoming releases, such as Kore-eda's film Broker and the documentary Wildcat.

On the Road: Where's the party

Another week of sunshine in Southern California, spending rather too much time in the car driving up and down the 5 from Orange County (where I'm staying with family) and Hollywood (where awards-consideration screenings take place). My main purpose for this trip is to see friends and family, so it's a bonus to be able to take them to screenings with me. The biggest movie this week, screened right on the Paramount lot, was Damien Chazelle's 1920s Hollywood epic Babylon. There's so much going on that it's understandably uneven, but it's also dazzling, with a series of breathtaking set-pieces that need to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

Steven Spielberg is also exploring the nature of filmmaking in The Fabelmans, his autobiographical film about growing up in a messy family while developing a love of storytelling. There's a lot to love about this film. Florence Pugh gives yet another powerfully involving performance in The Wonder, a provocative period drama set in Ireland and directed with style by Sebastian Lelio. The often outrageously over-the-top adaptation Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical is a lot of fun, with some darkly pointed themes and a scene-stealing Emma Thompson. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a little more difficult to love, even if its stop-motion animation is wonderfully designed. As artful and passionate as it is, the dark story and dull songs are tricky to engage with. And Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider is far more than a scary thriller based on the true story of a serial killer in Iran's holiest city; it's also a knowing, almost terrifyingly timely look at power dynamics in a nation where women are sidelined.

Films coming up this week include Noah Baumbach's White Noise, the spinoff-sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Disney's Strange World and the doc All That Breathes. I'm also travelling back to London next week - annoyingly missing the Avatar 2 screenings both in London (on Sunday) and Los Angeles (on Tuesday). I'll catch up with it later...