Looking back: the best films of 2022 – Charlotte Wells, Guillermo del Toro and Luca Guadagnino in top 10
From Paul Verhoeven's erotic religious drama Benedetta to Luca Guadagnino's cannibal romance Bones and All starring Timothée Chalamet, here are the best films of 2022 (UK release dates)
10. Benedetta, dir. Paul Verhoeven
Director Paul Verhoeven is no stranger to erotic thrillers, Basic Instinct being a defining example of the genre. Benedetta is a different sexual beast, one that’s out to provoke while making a profoundly pointed comment on religion and theocracy.
Set in a 17th-century Italian convent, the story follows the real-life account of Sister Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira) as she experiences bizarre visions and miracles, often carnal in their nature. She causes a schism within the Church between those who believe and those who doubt, the latter represented by Charlotte Rampling as Sister Felicita.
The new arrival Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia) enters the convent in order to escape her abusive father. She and Benedetta form a relationship that turns brilliantly sexual, kept secret from homophobic authorities. The scenes between them are the steamiest of 2022, one of which involves a wooden dildo carved from a Virgin Mary statuette.
Photo: MUBI
9. Happening, dir. Audrey Diwan
Perhaps the toughest watch of 2022. Abortion dramas have always been relevant, but the release of this Golden Lion-winning film is especially evocative in the year that Roe v Wade was overturned. The prioritising of potential babies over the women carrying them is a devastating construct, one captured so fiercely in Happening.
Based on the autobiographical novel by Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux, the film follows the English lit student Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) in 1963. She and her colleagues enjoy the passive, unspoken sexuality in their environment while obeying the patriarchal rules that govern their limits. But when Anne falls pregnant, she's provided little help in finding abortive methods – submitting to dangerous means. In a society where abortion is illegal and women must decide between careers or children, it’s a gruelling world that Anne defies in silence.
Photo: Picturehouse Entertainment
8. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, dir. Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson
It’s hard to think of another filmmaker who’d twist a classic children’s story (inseparable from Disney) into an existential adventure through fascist Italy. Guillermo del Toro has had a hell of a year: kicking off with his ambitious neo-noir Nightmare Alley and then releasing his excellent horror series anthology Cabinet of Curiosities in October. His stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio is the dark and beautiful cherry on top.
Del Toro, predictably, goes as bleak as possible for a family film: Geppetto (David Bradley) builds Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) from the tree under which the former's 10-year-old son is buried. The sister of Death (Tilda Swinton) gives life to the aloof and confused and impressionable puppet. And with Ewan McGregor voicing the self-interested cricket living in Pinocchio's head, you can’t go wrong with this poignant and unforgettable interpretation.
Photo: Netflix
7. Vortex, dir. Gaspar Noé
You never leave a Gaspar Noé film without a part of it seeding and growing inside you. His bleak themes and transgressive style secure him inside the New French Extremity movement, and his latest project still writhes in that nihilistic arena. But Vortex also finds an unusually touching, tragic and non-violent intimacy: showing the auteur in a different shade of horrible.
The film follows the later lives of elderly couple Lui (Dario Argento) and Elle (Françoise Lebrun), the latter of whom struggles with dementia. Noé severs the screen in two: capturing the differing perspectives of the couple at the same time in split-screen. Their mundanity hypnotises and sucks you in – your eyes tracking from one screen to the other like a pendulum grabbing your consciousness. It’s a deep, depressing experience, close to a work of genius.
Photo: Picturehouse Entertainment
6. Everything Everywhere All At Once, dir. Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Depending on your point of view, it’s either fortuitous or inconvenient for Everything Everywhere All At Once to arrive in the thick of multiversal madness. Marvel movies are full of it at the moment, defining themselves around several iterations of individual superheroes – largely popularised by the success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. But this surreal indie action-drama from the Daniels shouldn’t be placed in the same category, as their madness is wonderfully boundless. They fight the polite sensibilities of modern Hollywood with phallic nunchucks and well-drawn characters.
Michelle Yeoh stars as a Chinese-American matriarch of a laundromat, plunged into the centre of an eroding multiverse dependent on her to find order. Along the way, she finds rare love and humanity in a vast, black sea of pointlessness.
Photo: A24
5. Aftersun, dir. Charlotte Wells
Here’s to the quiet films. Often the medium is tarred by exaggerated explosions, operatic emotions, and a need for action at every possible moment. Charlotte Wells’ debut film Aftersun is a perfect and heartfelt antithesis, delighting in the calm of a father-daughter holiday that hides a dark, buried layer underneath.
Normal People’s Paul Mescal stars as Calum, a young divorced dad to 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio). The adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) watches old footage of their 90s holiday to Turkey, and casts her mind back to the sunlit hotel, the sapphire Mediterranean, and the parent she craves. She tries desperately to understand her father, clearly a depressed man hiding the bleaker parts of himself.
There are no melodramatic revelations here, just gentle moments of love, friction and sadness: in scenes as simple as swimming together or taking a photograph or dancing to David Bowie. Weaving in and out are the older Sophie’s abstract anxieties about her father and her loneliness without him. Wells crafts rare beauty out of simple humanity, dwelling on things left unsaid. Aftersun will hug and rip your soul.
Photo: A24
4. Moonage Daydream, dir. Brett Morgan
Still not over it. The death of David Bowie – mere days after releasing his mournful last album Blackstar – catalysed an infamous year of celebrity departures. Many Bowie documentaries have since been made (as well as a vacuous biopic starring Johnny Flynn), but Brett Morgan’s galactic effort Moonage Daydream is a moving, wondrous, hallucinogenic tribute.
The film plunges into a fevered tapestry, stitching together many hours of archive footage from concerts to interviews – rifling through various stages of Bowie’s stardom. Given that his music and personas possessed a surreal, subconscious flair, Morgan edits the film with much the same elegance and giddiness.
Unlike most documentaries, Moonage Daydream doesn’t admit to actually knowing its subject but unravels them for interpretation. If even Bowie says, ‘I’ve never been sure of my personality’, why should Morgan or the audience be any more certain?
Photo: Universal
3. Matilda (2022), dir. Matthew Warchus
The adage goes that you never feel like a grown-up, just a kid pretending. That’s part of the reason why the song When I Grow Up hits so hard, and why Matthew Warchus’ glorious film adaptation of the Matilda musical is so affecting and entertaining.
Movie versions of on-stage successes often waver in quality, drifting into the dissatisfying apathy of ‘filmed theatre’. Warchus and screenwriter Dennis Kelly avoid this classification entirely, the kinetic visuals and astounding choreography uniting for a fun and wholesome story about a young bookworm with telekinetic powers.
New student Matilda Wormwood (Alisha Weir) faces the grey and fearful Crunchem Hall – run by the child-hating, dictatorial headmistress Miss Trunchbull (Emma Thompson). Thankfully, Matilda has the lovely Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch) as a teacher, inspiring her love for literature. This is a spectacular movie musical that you'll watch and rewatch for years to come.
Photo: Netflix
2. The Banshees of Inisherin, dir. Martin McDonagh
Like his masterful directorial debut In Bruges, Martin McDonagh’s fourth (and perhaps best) film unfolds in a purgatorial locale – a place from which, seemingly, there’s no escape. Not even after the credits roll. Inisherin, a fictional island off the Irish west coast, spreads acres of empty land against a sun-soaked sea. It wields a close-knit community, where the residents often know each other’s business.
This tiny part of the world embraces best friends Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson)… well, they were best friends. In a nightmarish scenario for the socially anxious, Colm suddenly ghosts Pádraic. Reluctantly, Colm declares to his ex-friend's face that he no longer likes him. ‘But you liked me yesterday,’ replies Pádraic. Another perfect dual performance from Farrell and Gleeson.
The Banshees of Inisherin turns into a dark, funny, absurdist tale of bandaging a broken friendship, despite violent warnings from Colm to stay away. The film encapsulates the stiffness of male relationships as well as their ridiculous and dismissive reactions to mental health issues.
Photo: Disney
1. Bones and All, dir. Luca Guadagnino
Trust Luca Guadagnino to make a cannibal movie that focuses on love and loneliness. Like his underrated Suspiria remake being more about postwar psychologies than a witches' coven, Bones and All chews through its horror-movie skin and discovers a delicate heart.
The YA romance between marginalised carnivores Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) evolves into a road trip across the American Midwest. Blue and purple skies hang over vast rural landscapes, punctuated with brilliant snapshots of small-town Americana – scenically unfurling like Terrence Malick's Badlands or, more recently, Chloé Zhao's Nomadland.
Their alienation pulses them forward, bonding their personalities together while severing them from everyone else. Attempts to assimilate are doomed: they can’t run from themselves. Despite being set in Reagan’s America, that disconnectedness reverberates into the present like the piercing score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Once again, Guadagnino proves a maestro of mixing genres with the beauty and harm of human nature.
Photo: MGM