2022 in Film Part 3: The Favourites and the Turkeys

 Well here it is again, the time to make my list of my favourite and turkey movies of 2022 and let’s start with the Turkeys and clear out the trash.

 

5. Amsterdam: David O Russell returns with his first film since 2015’s Joy that starred Jennifer Lawrence this time has a big all star cast with people like Christian Bale, Rami Malek, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon and Robert De Niro among others.

 

And this has a fascinating historical story at its core but the way O Russell tells this story is so haphazard and so messy that more often than not it feels like both a pale imitation of Knives Out where Christian Bale is playing an even wackier detective than Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc but also a sketch comedy where all these big stars are wheeled out like their on Saturday Night Live or something “Tonight its this person, coming up next this person, after the break please welcome this new person” and it goes on and on like this and despite some nice production values in that first half you just sit there waiting for this thing to find any story momentum.

 

And when it does get around to that historical story that really had me fascinated well it all feels too little and too late the movie has lost you and it feels like you are being dropped into a completely different one to the one you’ve just spent the better part of 70 minutes watching and given recent events in the US I sorely wish this movie had been so much better than it was.

 

Speaking of movies I wish were much better:

 

4. Jurassic World Dominion: Now my hopes for this one weren’t overly high, I really only rate the original Jurassic Park film from 1993 by Steven Spielberg and like the Matrix and Ghostbusters really should have been just a one off in hindsight but it was a defining film for that generation so we got a whole bunch of other films including this one.

 

And given the way 2018’s Fallen Kingdom ended and the time gap between that film and this one it felt like you could go in any direction your heart desires:

 

- A Mad Max esque direction where the Dinosaurs have taken over the Earth and have asserted themselves as the dominant species with humanity struggling to survive hell you even could’ve gotten Sam Neill to do an opening montage narration about how it all went wrong like the opening of Mad Max 2

 

- A Planet of the Apes scenario where the humans are now slaves to Dinosaurs (“Get your sticken claw out of my face you damn dirty Raptor”) and the only danger for our cas members is trying to survive that terrible Planet of the Dinosaurs.

 

Wait a minute, Statue of Liberty/Big Ben/The Sydney Opera House

 

IT’S OUR PLANET,

 

THEY FINALLY REALLY DID IT,

 

YOU MANIACS,

 

YOU ATE IT UP!

 

DAMN YOU!!

 

DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!

 

- Or a situation like the animated cartoon Dino Riders where Dinosaurs are the dominant species and the military are going to harness the power of the dinosaurs to fight back and take control of the world giving us awesome T-Rex vs T-Rex action scenes

Think of those possibilities but instead what did we get, a story about fucking locusts, BUGS in a movie where DINOSAURS are on the damn poster but instead most of their scenes are in the various previews for the film and the 147 minute movie you go to see only barely extends those moments and it feels like a damn ripoff.

 

What also doesn’t help is the return of the original cast and the films villain, Campbell Scott first of all is a good actor and is capable of playing an asshole (he plays a good one in the 1991 film Dying Young with Julia Roberts) but here he plays a boring villain and not much of an asshole and I am so fucking sick of these big movies constantly doing nothing of any sort with their villains.

 

As for the returning cast members, both Sam Neill and Laura Dern clearly look as though they really don’t want to be there and given this movie’s production was interrupted by the COVID pandemic part of me doesn’t entirely blame them as a movie set was probably the last place they’d want to be at that time as there weren’t a lot of vaccination or medicine treatments then and the script gives their characters no real memorable moments while Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard were fine but nothing special.

 

Time for this series to go extinct I think as since 2015’s Jurassic World which took the world by surprise at how well it did this and Fallen Kingdom were not very good at all and at least Fallen Kingdom had some good direction this one doesn’t.

 

3. Halloween Ends: Ah Halloween like Jurassic World the 2018 reboot made more money at the box office than people and pundits expected and because of that we got a sequel 2021’s Evil Dies Tonight-sorry-Halloween Kills which was laughably bad with its treating Michael Myers like he’s the Terminator to Anthony Michael Hall essentially talking like Kyle Reese from T1 and its lack of scare moments and the constant chanting of Evil Dies Tonight over and over and over again to the point where it became a joke.

 

But hey a third film was to come and the only way is up right?

 

WRONG! This was also a bad film, now it wasn’t laughably bad like Halloween Kills was this was just good old fashioned Steak, Mash and Peas bad.

 

Firstly so much of this movie is focused on this young kid named Corey and I didn’t give a flying fuck about him at all, he comes across as such a whiny, whingey little dipshit that I just want to see Michael Myers kill him so I didn’t have to look at him and instead just read about the words that rhyme with Corey.

 

Like Gory,

 

Story,

 

Allegory,

 

And Glory of the kind watching him get what he deserves.

 

Then there is this idea of Laurie Strode writing a book about her experiences with Michael Myers and the trauma that has haunted her ever since but is there any real payoff to the book, do we see her finish it at the end of the film and then her giving a speech about what writing this meant and how cathartic it was to put this all down into words and be able to move on with her life in her remaining years?

 

No its barely touched on throughout the film and gets no real tangible payoff at all and that also speaks for the supposed final battle between Laurie and Michael which didn’t feel final or definitive at all it just felt like another showdown where Michael won’t really die he’ll come back like all these other horror slasher people do because they carve up the box office well thankfully this one didn’t and I hope this is the last Halloween film ever though the team behind this series is moving on to the Exorcist and save for a glorious Mark Kermode rant I have no interest in seeing it one bit.

 

2. Morbius: Ah Morbius a movie that I think everyone had more or less written off before it even hit cinemas, delayed from 2020 due to COVID, not a lot of previews for it and starring a man in Jared Leto who is fast becoming a joke given his propensity to be nothing but cartoonish in all of his recent film roles.

 

Well sorry Columbia Pictures it was not Morbin Time as the kids like to say this was simply a dud, firstly for a movie about the Living Vampire there is barely any blood or horror type kills, its all done with this blue liquid and red goop it looked like from what I saw and it cuts away from any hint of horror moments.

 

Also this movie like a few other blockbusters released this year was so dark looking, when I was watching it I kept looking at the darkness on the screen and thinking “TURN THE LIGHT ON” and “You know what that is over there, it’s the light switch not a sculpture from a first time artist okay”

 

And also Leto himself was boring to watch and he clearly wanted this to be his equivalent of the Venom movies with Tom Hardy but at least those films had Tom Hardy’s 115% commitment to the dual personality of Eddie Brock and Venom and it’s never been boring so far hell I’d happily watch a 90-100 minute road comedy of just the two of them on a holiday talking to themselves and getting drunk in bars and sun tanning on a beach with Venom fixing any sunburn Eddie might get I would watch that whereas I don’t want another Morbius movie sorry Jared perhaps you should’ve gotten Super Mario Brothers instead that film would get both brothers for the price of one actor.

 

And now we come to my number 1 turkey of 2022 and that is no question:

 

Lightyear: Oh boy oh boy talk about a movie that makes just about every wrong movie a movie can possibly make.

 

Now this is firstly supposedly the movie that Andy saw in 1995 that made him want a Buzz Lightyear toy well I don’t believe that for a moment because the story here is so dull and maudlin and sombre that any kids that did see it (and given its box office not many did) would’ve probably hated the film and any adults that went with them would’ve also been bored by it all.

 

Us 90s kids loved movies like Jurassic Park or particularly Independence Day (I myself wore out that video in 1997 and still think of it in widescreen as a different film) this should’ve been much much more in that vein an exciting action sci-fi romp where Zurg launches a full scale invasion of Earth and Star Command led by Buzz has to rally the troops and save the day and the Galactic Alliance.

 

But it wasn’t that instead we get a semi serious sci-fi story that seems more concerned with time travel and fixing mistakes and those are all good messages but they were boring and boringly told, speaking of which Chris Evans who I love as Captain America I thought would make a good Buzz but does he get to play a noble and heroic Buzz like he did as Cap?

 

No he plays a dullard that sits around for most of the movie moping and miserable about how he failed everyone and couldn’t complete this one mission and after a while I got so sick of it and I also got very sick of his goddamn sidekicks who aren’t heroic at all their just unfunny slobs that the film throws these endless amounts of jokes at and your laughing AT them instead of WITH them which was definitely the case in the best Avengers moments that utilised humour very well.

 

And speaking of the films messaging now I am not in any way against family movies having a homily or a moral message in them not at all but all too often with Disney Animation and Pixar nowadays it feels like the messaging and need to be representative (again another goal that I am not in any way against) is coming first and the storytelling and characters and villains are coming second, third and fourth in that order and it is really hurting their films at the box office but also seeing them lose to their rivals in Dreamworks and Illumination who are still proving that animation can still be a viable genre for audiences and I don’t like it I want Disney Animation back on top but if its going to do so it needs to put its priorities into a different order.

 

Now that the turkey cooking is done let’s turn course to the favourites of the year and this was I think my favourite year of movies since 2018 and it was a rough start to the year for me but after May it picked up steam and never looked back.

 

But before I reveal my 5 favourites list I wanted to touch on my 2 honourable mentions that were on the list but fell off with the end of year movies coming on the scene:

 

3,000 Years of Longing: George Miller steps outside of the Mad Max series to give us another strange yet unique film.

 

And although the previews for this film sold it as another wild ride from the Mad Genius that is Dr. George Miller this movie was more than that for me and I liked it a whole lot more than I liked his last Mad Max film Fury Road.

 

And firstly this movie had more of an emotional core to it as it is as much a love story between Tilda Swinton’s narratologist and the genie she frees from the bottle he lived in for many many many centuries played by Idris Elba as he tells her the tales of his imprisonment over the centuries.

 

And in these scenes you get the wild imagination that Miller made his name giving us while also developing this sweet love story between this strange genie and this solitary narratologist content to live on her own and do her work for the rest of her days and Swinton is great as this character and the way a narratologist in this movie weaves history and mythology with storytelling was really appealing to me and it grew on me a lot after seeing it.

 

Minions the Rise of Gru: I know I know no sensible or right-minded movie fan would dare to have a movie like this on their list.

 

But it isn’t on my list it just missed out and I had a lot of fun with this movie and laughed a lot out loud in the cinema, the way that Kevin, Stuart and Bob were used was great fun and those characters have lost none of their charm from the first Minions film while Gru is wisely back as the central character this time, this series works best I feel when he is at the centre of it and this movie is better than Minions 1 because of that.

 

And also the Vicious 6 are really fun villains and it makes me wish along with Balthazar Bratt from Despicable Me 3 that Disney Animation would get back to giving us great villains again, they’ve stopped doing that and I sorely wish they hadn’t as it hurts as a longtime fan of theirs.

 

Now with those out of the way time to reveal my 5 favourite films of 2022:

 

5. She Said: This move the more I have thought about this movie the more I’ve liked it and I couldn’t bare to leave it off my favourites list of 2022, the movie concerns Jodi Kantor and Megan Twoey the two New York Times reporters who helped expose decades of abuse by Harvey Weinstein.

 

Now this movie could’ve gone horribly wrong in the wrong creative hands with multiple sex scenes, an emphasis on the wrong place and the reporters feeling glamorous or being treated like Woodward and Bernstein in All the Presidents Men but director Maria Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz don’t do that.

 

These 2 ladies firstly adapt the book this movie is based on very well by placing the emphasis firstly on the victims and letting them tell their stories in all their messy and at times tough to watch way, as someone who loves dark movies even I winced a couple of times during the interview scenes.

 

And also Schrader and Lenkiewicz take you into the private lives of the 2 reporters, these 2 ladies who are brilliantly played by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan were salt of the earth ladies juggling their day job with their young families, Mulligan’s character in particular comes back to work from maternity leave just as this story gets going and has been struggling with post natal depression after the birth of her baby and it makes their accomplishment feel all the more amazing given their background.

 

And lastly this movie treats Harvey not as an all powerful empresario but as a shadowy Jabba the Hutt type figure who’s reach is long and deep and the film wisely never lets you see his face or his body and after seeing the movie I had to look up the cartoon Mark Knight drew for the Herald Sun of Harvey as Jabba the Hutt from Return of the Jedi, it was a great cartoon that felt very apt after seeing the movie.

 

4. The Menu: This was one of those films for me that was a nice surprise.

 

I didn’t expect a lot going into this film but I had a really fun time watching it and it grew on me more and more after I saw it and firstly I have to mention Ralph Fiennes as the chef he is deliciously good in this role and its nice to see him play a villain after doing so many buttoned up gentleman type roles and being M to Daniel Craig’s Bond in his last couple of films as 007.

 

Also very good is Anya Taylor-Joy as the one guest the chef can’t work out when he sees her in his Hawthorn island restaurant which is catered to down to the exact detail where the chef knows who every guest is and how to cater their meals specifically to them and the way that the courses intersect with the guests was great fun and this movie will make you very hungry for a certain food in particular when its over.

 

This was definitely a slice of dark twisted fun that took even its own new parent studio Walt Disney Pictures by surprise as I don’t think even they knew what they had in this movie but audiences did and helped make it a surprise success, sometimes some studios can be their own worst enemy at times.

 

3. Elvis: This was a movie that I was very keen for given it was the new film by Baz Luhrmann who I am a big fan of with his Red Curtain series of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge as well as his 2013 adaptation of the Great Gatsby (the less said about 2008’s Australia the better frankly.)

 

And boy did this movie deliver the goods as this was a great time at the cinema and yes its Baz doing what Baz does along with his wife and chief collaborator Catherine Martin but the whole time I was watching this I just kept thinking to myself “Ah Baz, don’t ever change” as I just ate up his direction and editing choices and yes it’s too long and a good 15 minutes should have been cut out but I didn’t care I was really caught up in the film.

 

And Austin Butler as the King himself WOW what a performance, it’s a hard task to carry a BazMark production and when you do it well like Leo in R+J or Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge it is stardom and success that awaits and here is no exception as Butler carries this movie with sheer utter gusto brilliantly capturing the King of Rock and Roll in all his glory from his breakout younger years to his brilliant live performance of If I Can Dream to his tempestuous relationship with Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks.)

 

Speaking of Tom Hanks who caught COVID during the making of this movie he’s playing a villain here and while a lot of the time he comes across as a cross between Gru’s Dad and the Penguin from Batman he’s actually not that bad here now he cannot compete with Butler but nobody can and Hanks holds his own well enough.

 

2. Top Gun Maverick: This along with the number 1 movie on this list were my most anticipated movies of this year, June 25^th 2020 we were meant to get this movie but then the dark times the coronavirus set in and it was delayed time and time and time again but on May 25^th 2022 we finally got to see this long awaited and delayed sequel.

 

And my goodness did this movie more than live up its Mighty Wings of expectations, right from the beginning when the logos come up and the theme kicks in those expectations vanished in a puff of jet smoke and then Captain Loggins and the Danger Zone starts blaring on the soundtrack and I was literally fist pumping in my cinema seat talk about setting the mood and servicing the fans right out of the gate.

 

And firstly Tom Cruise was insistent that much of this movie be done for real as much as humanly possible and the flight sequences especially in the IMAX framing are simply spectacular, awe inspiring even especially the dual climax where Maverick and his flight team fend of SAM missiles and then he and Rooster (Miles Teller playing the son of Goose from the first film) stealing a plane behind enemy lines as if it was out of Clint Eastwood’s Firefox from 1982 is equally gripping.

 

But this is backed up by an excellent script I feel that was heavily rewritten by Cruise’s chief collaborator of recent years Christopher McQuarrie ticks along like clockwork, no scene or moment feels wasted and the film has an excellent tight pace that gives you the thrills but also allows for time between the characters and the love story and its nice to see Cruise and Jennifer Connelly play older people falling in love plus the film really movingly handles Val Kilmer as Iceman in a scene that shouldn’t have worked but does so wonderfully well.

 

But lastly I have to talk about the new group of Top Gun pilots and they are different to their 1986 counterparts but no less memorable, I particularly love Glen Powell’s Bagman (Hangman), Monica Barbaro’s Phoenix and Lewis “Son of the President” Pullman’s Bob they along with Jon Hamm’s Cyclone, Charlie Parnell’s Warlock and Teller’s Rooster are a great group that you love to watch either succeed for Maverick on their dangerous mission or have Maverick throw egg all over their faces for doubting he still do it, in an era where so many sequels fall flat on their ass this sequel more than delivered the goods.

 

As did another big sequel and my favourite film of 2022:

 

Avatar the Way of Water: James Fucking Cameron.

 

That’s all I need to say for the intro because when I was sitting in the cinema watching this I just kept thinking “How does he do this?”, “I wish I knew how he did it” and “I wish there were more making movies like him” as this movie was simply a stunning achievement that like Aliens and Terminator 2 far exceeds what was done on the first film.

 

And firstly the visual spectacle here is simply remarkable, once more we find ourselves in the world of Pandora and this time visiting the ocean lands of the Metkayina Clan and they are amazing with their Maori esque facial tattoos to the stunning underwater motion capture work to the reems of life and creatures that exist in those lands and ever since seeing the film I have been feeling that Pandoraitis effect that people felt after seeing the first film in regards to the Whale characters the Tul’Kun and when the Whale watching season returns next year I will be eager to see the real life Whales come home as they swim south.

 

But also I think this time the storytelling was a lot better here in large part thanks to co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver coming in to share the workload with Cameron on this front and wisely Jake Sully is not the focus here, his children are and they are a great young group from Britain Dalton’s Lo’ak to Sigourney Weaver’s Kiri who has a mysterious past and even Jack Champion’s Spider a human child left behind on Pandora who feels heavily inspired by the Feral Kid from Mad Max 2.

 

Also Stephen Lang as Quaritch once more is an excellent villain, he was great in the first film and he is equally good here and he and his squad get their own Avatar bodies and it makes them fierce opponents for Jake and his family and the last hour of the movie is spectacular with huge scale action, riffs on the Abyss and Titanic and battle scenes that leave everyone else in the dust, this and Top Gun Maverick not only should be the standard for sequels but also for blockbusters in general.

 

These 2 films show how movies of this kind can and should be done, they should be the standard film fans accept from now on as everything else just feels like small scale bananas compared to these and I am so fucking sick of sitting through so many big films that either look dark and dreary or cheap in terms of their effects, that sacrifice good storytelling and the importance of their villain for cheap fanservice and nostalgia baiting and just treat the movies as just constant teases for what’s to come, it isn’t good enough anymore and it shouldn’t be good enough from now on not after what Avatar and Top Gun which to be fair has those nostalgia and fanservice moments but does them very well.

 

And so that is it another movie year comes to a close and it was a big one to say the least we saw movie going really come back this year and set the scene for a big 2023 in the cinema with lots of movie goodies for audiences to come back for in a way they can’t get at home on their TV and although there are causes for concern such as COVID and the broader unknown of how these movies will turn out to be I for one am very excited for what’s to come and let’s do this list all again at the end of next year.

Film Review - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Glass Onion is the sequel to 2019’s Knives Out and this time Netflix is making it instead of Lionsgate/StudioCanal who relinquished the rights to the series in 2021 but both Rian Johnson the writer/director and Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc are back and this time Blanc must solve the mystery of who murdered tech genius Miles Bron (Edward Norton) and his small group of friends (Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr, Jessica Henwick and Madelyn Cline) are the prime suspects but murder cases are never quite what they seem on the surface.

 

I was very keen for Glass Onion as I was a big fan of the first Knives Out film, it was a great time at the cinema with an audience that seemed to get what the film was going for and I had high hopes that despite having to watch it at home along on my TV that this sequel could be a worthy successor and not a stinker like a real Onion can be.

 

Well its sadly a little bit of both as this sequel isn’t a bad movie but it falls pretty short of the first film for me and before I peel back those layers I want to talk about what I do like and that is primarily Daniel Craig and Janelle Monae, Craig was a lot of fun as this Foghorn Leghorn sounding detective in the first film and he’s just as good here delving more into the southern drawl and clearly having a better grasp of the character and how he thinks this time around and much like his James Bond it makes for a great character turn.

 

Monae meanwhile is easily the standout of the new cast members and she has a very good role here, I won’t delve into too many more details but it is full of surprises that were nice to discover as I was watching it and she handles it all very well.

 

But this film has a big problem that makes it smell like an Onion:

 

And that is I hated all of the new cast members outside of Monae, much of the films first half centres on introducing them and where they are and their connection to Bron and I didn’t care for any of it, they all came across as vacuous vapid nini’s and I didn’t give a flying fuck whether either of them lived or died during the course of the film.

 

And the way that Johnson writes these characters as well as Bron to some extent makes his allegory and metaphors a little too transparent as if the film is winking at you saying “Get it, do you get it, huh huh huh huh” and I sat there thinking “Yes Rian I get it, I’m not an idiot Kapiesh” and the Last Jedi had a similar problem in a lot of its scenes for me as well where what he was metaphoring and allegoring towards felt a little too on the nose.

 

And when that is compared to the fun of the family in the first film where you hate some of them and love others it makes it all feel like a big stepdown in that department and as someone who is a big fan of Johnson’s as a writer and a director it was a little disappointing to see, sometimes getting notes from studio executives benefits some talent and it definitely helps bring out the best in Johnson when he gets that constructive feedback instead of being given carte blanche like here and on the Last Jedi.

 

And lastly this movie takes much longer as a result of the character work to get going into its central mystery whereas in the first film you were thrown into it right away with the discovery of Christopher Plummer’s character and the family interviews beginning not long after, that doesn’t happen here and I was very impatient for it all to find its feet and get going.

 

And so that is Glass Onion and its not a bad sequel but in a year that gave us Top Gun Maverick and Avatar the Way of Water this one is a very distant third and a step down from the first film, 2 and a half out of 5.

 

2022 in Film Part 2: The State of the Studios

 Continuing with my look back at 2022 in film I wanted to take some time to detail something I’ve had in my head for a while now given that movie going really came back this year.

 

And that is what I like to call The State of the Studios and here I want to examine how each of our big film studios did this year and my hope for 2023.

 

And look there is no beating around the bush as to who the winner is:

 

1. Paramount: The mountain of Hollywood had a simply fantastic year this year and after so many years where they were struggling to cut through and suffered through multiple box office failures the year they have had this year it is fantastic to see them have a roaring come back.

 

They started the year well with Scream and then came Jackass Forever, The Lost City, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Smile all of which also did very well at the box office and their ending the year with a major Best Picture nominee in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon.

 

And all of those are good but they are bolstered by the enormous success of Top Gun Maverick which buzzed just about every box office tower you could ask it to do and had a strangehold in a good way over almost everyone who saw it, the film was thrilling, emotional, had those core fanservice moments and continued the story of Maverick very well while also giving us a new group of pilots who were memorable in their own right.

 

The only real failure they had was Paws of Fury an animated film but that was one of those that I think even they knew wasn’t going to get lots of pats from audiences but given where Paramount has been the last few years they more than deserve top spot but given that the studio heads that helped to bring it back from the brink are now gone I have my doubts that this momentum can continue but I sincerely hope it does.

 

2. Columbia/Tristar: Now some will be surprised that they are 2^nd place here not Universal or Disney or Warner Brothers but I have my reasons as to why and I know their called Sony by many others but I can’t call them that as Sony is the parent company that owns Columbia/Tristar and its those studios that make the movies.

 

First of those is that they didn’t have a bad year this year not at all they had Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Bullet Train, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Woman King and Uncharted to name a few and all of which were solid hits at the box office and with audiences but while they didn’t have a big hit on their hands they held the line and treaded water.

 

But they are about to end the year with I Wanna Dance with Somebody the biopic about the late great Whitney Houston who like Freddie Mercury has a lot of love but whether this can do the kind of numbers Bohemian Rhapsody or even Elvis made that remains to be seen.

 

Their also ending the year with signing Legendary Pictures to their roster as well who were a big co-finance company with Warner Brothers for many years and that should be a big boost to them going forward into 2023 and beyond.

 

However they did have a major dud on their hands this year with Morbius and it wasn’t Morbin’ Time as the kids like to say but again its one of those where deep down even they knew it wasn’t going to do well nor build on the success of Spider-Man No Way Home which bled into the beginning of this year.

 

3. Universal: Ah Universal the other half of the old CIC Video group along with Paramount book ends the top 3 this year.

 

And that is mainly due to the financial success of Jurassic World Dominion and Minions the Rise of Gru both of which brought in nearly 2 billion dollars to the studio which may have been the house that Amblin built many years ago but they built it to last and Comcast as their parent company owner has been a smart owner to stay out of the way and let those in charge run the race.

 

And also like a good studio should they have leveraged the success of those 2 brands to finance other fun stuff like Violent Night, The Black Phone, Nope, Ticket to Paradise and Beast to name as some examples and which had been either okay or solid at the box office.

 

However it hasn’t all been ham and plaques for the globe with the most this year as they have also had some big failures such as Bros a gay romcom despite good reviews, Armageddon Time by James Gray, She Said about the exposing of Harvey Weinstein and Halloween Ends which did not end this new Halloween series very well at all.

 

But they will end the year with a potential Best Picture winner in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans which could either win the top prize at next year’s Academy Awards or net Spielberg a third Best Director Oscar after Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan.

 

4. Roadshow: Now initially the Big V was going to be third on this list but given the big brand success Universal had they had to go third and this bottom half of the list is not great for these studios.

 

And sadly the Big V was let down not just this year but also the last couple of years and as someone who loves this studio it is nigh on heartbreaking to say but aside from some solid films like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Fall they had a fair few failures this year with Moonfall, 3,000 Years of Longing, Seriously Red and Good Luck to You Leo Grande to name a few.

 

And also the studio I feel has never really recovered from the catastrophic decision of losing the distribution rights to the Warner Brothers films here in Australia at the end of 2020 and while Roadshow Entertainment kept the home video distribution rights the theatrical rights now with Universal were the studios main financial pipeline and losing that has stripped them of a lot of reach in cinemas and money to make and I have never forgiven WB for making this decision and I sincerely hope they reverse it.

 

As for 2023 well things are starting to look up with Force of Nature the follow up to the Dry and the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes the Hunger Games prequel about a young Coriolanus Snow but whether that film will be a hit I don’t know but at least they have those 2 films going for them.

 

5. Disney: How the mighty have fallen.

 

There was a time when Disney reined supreme, when they could do very little wrong, and audiences lapped up almost everything they put out even if they dismissed it a few days later.

 

But now they have really struggled to bounce back from COVID and the after effects of the pandemic which hit not just their movies but their theme parks and to have that double whammy hit is very bad.

 

But just this year none of their MCU films hit a billion dollars worldwide and Phase 4 on the whole has been very polarising for a lot of fans, Lightyear and Strange World were humiliating failures losing hundreds of millions of dollars while the once great studio of 20^th Century Fox was essentially strip mined for parts in terms of their library for Disney Plus, their intellectual properties such as Avatar, Alien and Predator and then Fox Searchlight Pictures so they can get some awards recognition at Oscar time.

 

Not to mention the near complete utter mess at Lucasfilm where there is no real word of a new Star Wars movie anytime soon and persistent stories about the fate of its head Kathleen Kennedy a woman who has given many years of loyal service to this industry and if she is to go deserves the dignity of going on her own terms not being fired or dismissed to satisfy the bloodlust of some grumpy fans.

 

But their ending the year with the Banshees of Inisherin which looks to be a big awards contender and Avatar the Way of Water the long awaited sequel to the big smash of Avatar in 2009 and if there is as sure a bet that you can ask for it is James Cameron.

 

Plus Bob Iger the head of Disney studios from 2005 to 2020 is now back at the top after the stunning surprise removal of Bob Chapek who led Disney during the COVID years but I have my doubts about Iger’s ability to turn the ship around given that so many of these problems started on Iger’s watch but if he can choose a proper successor this time then perhaps he can but we will see.

 

And that leaves not so lucky last the bottom of the pile:

 

6. Warner Brothers: Oh dear oh dear.

 

Where do I even begin with this once magnificent studio well I’ll start on the bright side (or should that be dark side) with the Batman in march which was their first proper theatrical release since the day and date HBO Max release strategy of 2021 of that entire slate going to theatres and HBO Max the streaming service simultaneously and despite a dark tone and 3 hour runtime it was a hit for them and well received.

 

As was Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic with Austin Butler and Tom Hanks which has been the one biopic that came anywhere close to the huge numbers Bohemian Rhapsody made in 2018 and Don’t Worry Darling despite its off screen gossip did eventually became an okay hit same with DC League of Superpets.

 

But WB aside from those films has had a bad year and firstly Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was a miserable failure for them back in April and that came about just as the studio changed hands to Discovery and became Warner Brothers Discovery led by David Zaslav.

 

And the Axe of Zaslav came out soon after and its effects were brutal from many projects and deals being shut down to an entire Batgirl movie being cancelled for a tax writeoff just as it was nearly finished for release and a lot of animated projects and TV shows being axed and/or being taken off HBO Max as that service is due to be shutdown and relaunched under a new banner.

 

Then there is the underperformance of Black Adam which had Dwayne Johnson who is a steady and reliable money maker at the box office in a role he was waited a long time to play has been a bad failure for him and is most likely the final straw for this new studio leadership to try and salvage the DC brand from its current mess none of which was their fault but the fault of previous incompetent leadership that was impatient and rushed the development along to compete with Marvel only to be caught with their pants down and a pee stain on their jox.

 

And WB is also reeling very badly from that day and date HBO Max strategy in 2021 which saw the previous leadership essentially burn a lot of bridges with not just talent but also financing partners like Legendary and Village Roadshow who along with directors like Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve made their displeasure known with this strategy and Nolan is now at Universal and giving them Oppenheimer next year, Legendary is now at Columbia/Tristar and Village Roadshow who had been a production partner since the late 90s and had distributed WB films in Australia since the early 70s was hung out to dry especially after Matrix Resurrections was pushed up into 2021 to be part of that strategy.

 

Now whether Zaslav and his new heads of DC in James Gunn and Peter Safran can restore the studio to prominence I don’t know but WB has Magic Mike 3, Barbie, Blue Beetle, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Shazam: Fury of the Gods next year which should seem them through okay they also have the Flash but even they know deep down that that film cannot be salvaged but they have to put it out due to its big financial cost.

 

But both Disney and Warner Brothers will have to work very hard to restore themselves back to prominence as those 2 studios more than the others have struggled to bounce back from the effects of the pandemic and the pivot into streaming especially when they had a number of movie pundits essentially saying movie theatres are dead, let them die, kill them if you have to and streaming is now the future.

 

Well that has not turned out to be the case as movie theatres have bounced back strongly this year and streaming is now on the back foot with HBO Max being dismantled, Disney Plus losing $1.5 billion dollars and Netflix not only in huge debt without a parent studio to help shoulder the load but also badly mishandling the release of Glass Onion the long awaited Knives Out sequel which went to theatres for one week and then pulled it from them when they were begging Netflix to let them keep it and that kicking of the theatres when they were down is not something they will forget in a hurry.

 

And so that was Part 2 of my look back at 2022 in film and this was a lot of fun to write as it was something I was thinking about a lot as the year began to wind down and movie going bounced back despite some potholes along the way and with 2023 looking to be a big year I am optimistic that the momentum 2022 started with cinema going will continue and build from here.

Film Review - Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Avatar the Way of Water is the long delayed sequel to 2009’s Avatar and is once again directed by James Cameron but here he shares scripting duties with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and this story takes place about a decade or so after the events of the first film and the sky people have returned to Pandora to now colonise the planet and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is someone their keen to have their vengeance against at the same time so he, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their young family make their way to the Metkayina clan on the oceans of Pandora led by Tono’wari (Cliff Curtis) and Ro’Nal (Kate Winslet) but the sky people are hot on their trail.

 

This was my most anticipated movie of 2022 mainly because despite its traditional story I am a big fan of the first Avatar film as it is a world class spectacle and James Cameron has 2 of the finest sequels ever made on his CV in Aliens and Terminator 2 but could Cameron deliver the goods as he always does or is now after so many years the time to bet against James Cameron.

 

Well as usual folks bet on the winning team as James Cameron has done it once again and I think this sequel is much better than the first film and a big reason for that is the script, Cameron/Jaffa/Silver throw you right into things straight away there’s no recap or reintroduction they assume you’ve seen the first film and will jump on board right away and it works very well.

 

Plus they make full use of the 3 hour runtime to structure this film in a way that you can have the exciting action and spectacle of Pandora but this time Jake and Neytiri’s kids take up the core focus and they anchor it very well, Britain Dalton is very good as Lo’ak Jake’s second son wanting to prove his worth to his father and older brother Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) who is also good, another 2 characters I really liked are Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion) who are also great characters though at times Weaver’s performance was a little off putting mainly because she’s playing a young girl and Weaver is not that.

 

As for Spider I think his story was very interesting and reminded me a little of Emil Minty as the Feral Kid from Mad Max 2 and I hope I see more of his character in future movies.

 

Also as with the first film we learn the new ways of water this time instead of the forest and my goodness do I love these moments especially the bonding of Lo’ak with a Pandora whale and that storyline really got to me and as someone who lives and has grown up on the coast which has whales visiting the harbour every year as they migrate south I was like “I am so going to want to do that next year when they come back” but alas it won’t be possible.

 

And also this movie has a great villain in it, HALLE-FUCKING-LULLAH I mean I am so thoroughly and very sick to the death of so many of these big movies dropping the ball time and time and time again when it comes to their villains, so often they either feel like an afterthought or are done through gritted teeth even though you can clearly tell the creative team really doesn’t want to do one but not here, not here Stephen Lang returns and like in the first film he is captivating and ruthless and so much fun to watch and it is about fucking time.

 

But lastly I have to talk about the last hour of this movie as James Cameron once again shows why he is such a master of action spectacle, while it is not to the same size as the end battle in the first film it is no less enthralling, tense and exciting with battles on sea and a giant ship that recalls equal parts the Abyss and Titanic but I loved every single moment of it.

 

And all of this just kept me thinking “I wish there more like him” and “Why aren’t there others doing it like him” and I get that Cameron’s storytelling tends to fall on the simpler side but in every one of his movies not only is it very effective but it always feels like there is this personal drive at the core of them all be it young love in Titanic, familial love in Aliens and the Terminator movies, husband and wife love in True Lies and the Abyss or a deep love of the environment in the Avatar films.

 

This also extends to the other core theme of Cameron’s work and that is the folly and overreach of man be it Nuclear War in the Abyss and the Terminator films, the hubris that a ship of man can’t be sunk in Titanic, not understanding your enemy in Aliens or encroaching on the natural world in the Avatar films and the fact that Cameron combines this folly of man with the love between humans with amazing action and state of the art technology and filmmaking it just feels so refreshing after seeing so many big films just feel soulless and heartless and just resting on pointless cameos and nostalgia baiting and jukebox soundtracks and sugar hit fanservice.

 

There is one thing I’m not a fan of with this movie and that is the 3D, I saw it in both 2D and 3D and the 2D will be okay for most, don’t get me wrong the 3D in this movie is very good, excellent at times but as someone who wears glasses full time I found it a struggle to wear both my own glasses and the 3D glasses and there were a few times where I had to take the 3D glasses off and this movie looks great without the 3D, very bright and colourful with terrific visuals.

 

And so that is Avatar the Way of Water and I couldn’t recommend this movie highly enough, I loved this film, I think Cameron has delivered a 3^rd great sequel, I wasn’t bothered by the 3 hours and though I don’t love the 3D it’s the only real knock I have with this movie, 5 out of 5 all the way.