The 2022 Oscar The Grouches

Last year I spoke of being down but not out, having hope and searching for a new beginning, and 2022 lived up to that. The first half I spent unemployed but happier than in the past and divided my time between watching films, falling back in love with reading, growing despondent, actually seeing friends (in some cases for the first time since the beforetimes). Then in the second the old adage about buses transferred to the employment of a odd man in the South of England and two positions came along at once. The first - an admittedly well-paid (at least to me) role in pensions and insurance - I still don't know how I got. Even the thought of the 90 minute interview seemed far-fetched, I don't know that I have that much material on a subject I like let alone something as dull as myself and customer service. But it happened. Then literally a day later a friend aware of my situation and who also runs my local independent cinema called to say his long-term projectionist had handed in his notice and he was looking at hiring someone who could work across several different departments, and my enthusiasm and foul-mouthed ramblings soon became a career. I'm not entirely sure how this happened either, or how I'm six months in in a field I'm passionate about that rarely feels like a job to me. I'm very lucky.

Everything is better now and that in itself feels entirely strange somehow but it has happened. I'm happier and have prospects, I'm living again, my mental health is better, in cinematic terms I've also watched more films this year than I have in several (182) and I've even written, including a review out of the blue on here. My list reflects this as does my list of the best films not from this year. On TV I've loved the twisty, talk-heavy meta-self analysis Irma Vep (despite not loving much else Olivier Assayas has ever done) and Lars Von Trier's absurd apocalyptic hospital horror The Kingdom: Exodus while online MUBI and the Arrow Video app have been providing the streams of my dreams (and a lot of Meiko Kaji).

I genuinely don't know what 2023 holds but the trite platitude 'anything can happen' seems more true and more plausible than I ever considered. Here's to it...

2022
Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg - USA)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Thailand/Colombia/UK)
Gangubai Kathiawadi (Sanjay Leela Bhansali - India/Hindi)
Vortex (Gaspar Noé - France/Belgium/Morocco)
Hold Me Tight (Mathieu Amalric - France)
Oye Makhna (Simerjit Singh - India/Punjabi)
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar - Spain)
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh - Ireland/UK/USA)
Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook - South Korea)
Taste (Lê Bảo - Vietnam)
KGF: Chapter 2 (Prasanth Neel - India/Kannada)
En Corps [Rise] (Cédric Klapisch - France)
Earwig (Lucile Hadžihalilović - Belgium/France/UK)
One Second (Zhang Yimou - China)
Hit The Road (Panah Panahi - Iran)
Official Competition (Gastón Duprat/Mariano Cohn - Spain/Argentina)

Not 2022

Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini - Italy)

Out Of The Blue (Dennis Hopper - Canada)

Chess Of The Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani - Iran)

The Blood of Hussain (Jamil Dehlavi - Pakistan)

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (Toshiya Fujita - Japan)

Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale - USA)

Egomania: Island Without Hope (Christoph Schlingensief - West Germany)

Bérénice (Éric Rohmer - France)