These are films which are incredible, they’re just not among the best I’ve ever seen. There’s some great stuff in this section, most years, these would be among the best, but 2022 was actually an INCREDIBLE year for cinema, as will be proven in the next entry.
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Ups: Very funny.
Some great deaths.
So damn clever at the end.
Downs: You might get frustrated before it gets to the end.
Characters are a bit unsympathetic.
Pete Davidson could tone it down a bit.
Best Moment: The ending, easily.
Worst Moment: The sub-plot about the texts. Could have been done better.
Best Performer: Maria Bakalova
Opening: Bee and Sophie are travelling to a hurricane party. The fact they’re travelling to a hurricane party says everything you need to know about those characters. Perfect.
Closing: I don’t want to spoil it, but trust me, it’s good. It changes the entire film and is everything an ending should be.
Best Line: “I’m not escalating you’re holding the knife and you’re moving your hands while you talk.”
Original Review here
Boiling Point
Ups: The fact it was made. A technical masterpiece.
Downs: It’s supposed to be a very busy night, but never really feels like it. Feels very low-stakes.
Best Moment: Chef Carly bringing one of the front of house staff to tears just through words alone. It’s a long-ass speech and it’s delivered perfectly.
Worst Moment: The ending. Seems a bit too reminiscent of the original ending of Clerks, like they didn’t know how to end it.
Best Performer: Graham. Easily.
Opening: The main character walking to work whilst on the phone, and then meets an environmental health officer. Does a great job of setting up him and the situation. Then the health officer starts criticising people, “I know that’s regulation temperature, but ideally I want it lower”, so he essentially marks them down for following the rules. Sets up the conflict.
Closing: He cries on the phone to his estranged wife, getting her to tell their son that he loves him. He then promises to get into rehab. He then keels over, possibly dying as we fade to black. That’s…….brutal.
Best Line: The aforementioned speech. It’s cutting, and perfect. Can’t type the whole thing here.
Original Review here
Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers
Ups: Very funny
Very meta
The animation differences actually work.
Lots of cameos.
REALLY dark.
Downs: A bit predictable
Some of the characters from the original series are sidelined.
If you’re a child, are you going to understand all the references and cameos?
Best Moment: When one of the characters uses a Rescue Rangers episode to indicate they’re in trouble. The code is not picked up, but another one with the same message is. Very funny.
Worst Moment: The cheesemonger moment feels a bit of a waste of the performers talent.
Best Performer: Samberg. His child-like enthusiasm is perfect for this.
Opening: Voiceover, showing how the two met. Cliche, but works, also adds some great jokes in there “you’re not Donald Duck, you have to wear pants”
Closing: They decide to release a reboot of the Rescue Rangers TV show. Works. Suits the style of the film.
Best Line: “What’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say Chip N Dale? I’m willing to bet it’s Thomas Chippendale, the london cabinet maker. I bet the second thing is these guys *shows the chippendale dancers*“
Original Review here
Confess, Fletch
Ups: So damn funny.
A compelling mystery.
Great ensemble cast.
Downs: Other mysteries have been better.
Terribly marketed.
Could be smarter.
Best Moment: The scene with the neighbour, chaotic comedy.
Worst Moment: Some of the police scenes undermine their characters a little bit.
Best Performer: Ayden Mayeri. Tempted to go with Hamm, but he has enough recognition, Mayeri doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. So just mentioning her now so that when she inevitably becomes a huge sitcom star, I can point out I was a fan of her first.
Opening: The lead is sent by his girlfriend to recover stolen paintings. Might have set up the character more if we caught him at the end of a previous job so we get more of an indication of how good he is. But I respect how quickly it leaps into the main story.
Closing: The redistribution of the stolen paintings. In a lot of films, I would criticise this as being too “look, this character is likeable”, but in this, it kind of makes sense with the way the character is written.
Best Line: “We obtained surveillance footage from a store around the corner.”
“Where the fudge is made?”
Original Review here
Fall
Ups: Effective, to the point it almost made me nauseous watching it.
Likeable characters.
Simple story, done in the best possible way.
Downs: “so it’s just them on a small platform?” If you can’t get past that, you’re not going to like this.
Visuals in the opening are a bit weak.
Might not be able to stomach it more than once.
Best Moment: When the ladder breaks. You know it’s not real, and you know the characters won’t die that early. But you can’t get past the “holy shit, that should not happen” part of your brain. Plus, when it happened in the screening I was at, a guy immediately shook his head, stood up, and loudly exclaimed “nope, fuck that”
Worst Moment: The ending.
Best Performer: Grace Caroline Currey. The film is anchored around her performance, if she fails, she drags the film down and it sinks. Kind of regret saying “anchored” now, feels like it clashes with the metaphor.
Opening: Becky, Hunter, and Dan (Becky’s husband) climb a mountain. Dan makes a quick dismount, by which I mean he falls and dies. The weakest visuals in the whole thing, the backgrounds look incredibly fake.
Closing: Obvious ending. But it happens way too quickly and feels like they cut a 5 minute scene out filling in some things.
Best Line: “If you’re scared of dying, don’t be afraid to live”
Original Review here
Orphan: First Kill
Ups: Actually adds to the mythos.
Great use of practical effects.
Incredible plot that rewards rewatching
Downs: A bit too many “this is a reference to the original” moments.
Best Moment: The reveal. Trust me, it’s glorious.
Worst Moment: “Esther” finding a missing child who looks like her, is like a needle in a haystack. May have worked better if she saw news about the missing child, then decided to make most of the opportunity.
Best Performer: Julia Stiles.
Opening: Leena/Esther escapes an institution by seducing and killing a guard. It’s weird the guy was sexually aroused by someone with a disease that makes them look like a child, right? Very slasher movie, and works well.
Closing: The original film starts. Good to see.
Best Line: What was I supposed to do… put my surviving child in prison over some sibling rivalry shit?
Original Review here
Scream
Ups: Very clever.
Tackles the darker side of fandom.
Good kills.
Has the best use of Red Right Hand in the franchise so far.
Likeable characters
Downs: Wastes some good potential killers.
The twist could have been foreshadowed slightly better.
Best Moment: Dewey’s death. Truly shocking.
Worst Moment: The hallucinations of Billy are an acquired taste that doesn’t fully work.
Best Performer: David Arquette.
Opening: It’s a Scream movie, you know how it’s going to start: ghostface stabs someone. Major difference in this is they survive. It’s a good way of saying “yes we know the conventions, but we’re going to swerve away from them”
Closing: Gale decides to not write about the killers, leaving them anonymous. Good ending, but might have worked out better for the fourth.
Best Line: “See, you can’t just reboot a franchise from scratch anymore. The fans won’t stand for it. Black Christmas, Child’s Play, Flatliners, that shit doesn’t work. But you can’t just do a straight sequel, either. You need to build something new. But not too new or the Internet goes bug-fucking-nuts. It has to be part of an ongoing storyline, even if that story should never have been going on in the first place. New main characters, yes, but supported by, and related to, legacy characters. Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel, like the new Halloween, Saw, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, fuck, even Star Wars. It always, always goes back to the original!”
Original Review here
See How They Run
Ups: Compelling mystery
Saoirse Ronan is a ball of energy.
I like that I know there are many Agatha Christie references I missed out on.
A classic throwback to a genre.
Once you realise where the ending is going you’ll laugh your ass off.
Downs: Loses momentum going into the third act.
Some wasted time.
One of the misdirect attempts really doesn’t work.
Best Moment: The murder reveal is executed (pardon the pun) perfectly.
Worst Moment: The dream sequence.
Best Performer: Saoirse Ronan
Opening: Pan down from the theatre down to the eventual murder victim as he monologues.
Closing: Two characters sit down to watch The Mousetrap. Weirdly nice and quaint. Plus it allows the film to end in a thematically suitable way.
Best Line: “What’s next? A caption that says Three Weeks Later” *caption saying Three Weeks Later appears on screen*
Original Review here
The Banshees Of Inisherin
Ups: Darkly hilarious.
A lot of beauty in the shots.
Tremendous attention to detail for the sets and costumes.
Incredible performances.
Downs: Relentlessly bleak, which stops the emotional moments from hitting quite as hard as they should.
Repeats narrative beats.
Best Moment: When Colm actually cuts his fingers off, brutal.
Worst Moment: Dominic dying, only because it’s handled very quickly.
Best Performer: Colin Farrell. Could easily be Gleeson though.
Opening: Pádraic goes to see his friend Colm, who ignores him. That’s it. That’s also the opening 30 minutes or so. It works though.
Closing: The former friends aren’t so much at loggerheads anymore, but definitely won’t can’t be friends again. It’s good as it shows you although this is the end of the film, it’s not the end of the story.
Best Line: “Look at this I found. A stick with a hook. What would you use it for, I wonder. To hook things that are the length of a stick away”
Original Review here
Turning Red
Ups: Likeable characters.
Has something to say, you can tell this is a writers dream project and is deeply personal to them.
Downs: The animation isn’t as good as Pixar usually is.
The characters are slightly obnoxious at times, but then again, they are teenagers so….
Best Moment:
Worst Moment: The furore about “sexualising children” that surrounded the release of this.
Best Performer: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, brilliantly deadpan.
Opening: Mei doing the usual “so this is me” opening. Instantly sets out who she is, and her relationship with her family. She’s incredibly likeable and her personality shines through.
Closing: The family relationship is fixed, and the red panda is now a tourist attraction at the temple. Kind of obvious was going to end that way, but allows some sweet moments.
Best Line: Honoring Your Parents Sounds Great, But If You Take It Too Far, Well, You Might Forget To Honor Yourself.
Original Review here
Probably the most intense and thrilling film of the year, and not one shot is fired and not one car is chased, it never goes beyond people just talking (and screaming). Set in three real-time acts spread across the 1970s-1990s, this film gets to the heart of Steve Jobs the man/the character (he was quite a dick it turns out), and the heart of what it means to be innovative and push the boundary of what technology can be for people. Thrilling, heartstopping, emotional, and surprisingly beautiful to look at, Steve Jobs is a breath of fresh airconditioned air for the Biopic genre…and the fact it made less that jObs is just depressing.
lifetime mess, but director Tom McCarthy made the wise choice of keeping everything restrained, realistic, and beautifully drab (never has a cast of A-listers looked so normal), all so the facts can speak for themselves, and they scream.
Already talked about this in our 2015 Film Awards, where it was one of the films awarded with best picture, but I’ll talk briefly about it here. It’s a funny and heartfelt road movie that meditates on fame, creativity, and loneliness, through the indepth and witty conversations of its protagonists. Whether you know David Foster Wallace’s work or not, this is an accessible and great film.
Follow a mesmerizing Reese Witherspoon on a thousand mile hike as she flashes back to the different traumatizing points in her life that led her to the hike. It’s a compelling character film of the purist nature, and with a combination of a great soundtrack, editing, and sound-editing, is the best film I have ever seen capture the feeling of fleeting thought.
The second Nick Hornby script on this list (the first was Wild), and it just shows you the versatility of his writing. In 1950’s an Irish immigrant moves to Brooklyn (go figure) where she finds love, life, and a future, but then finds herself torn between the life she wants in America and the life everyone else wants for her back in Ireland. Much more a classic Hollywood romance (in all the right ways) and less the love triangle bollocks the trailers made it look to be, this is really a beautiful film about striving to achieve your own happiness, and who you’re willing to hurt to keep it.
Troubled Productions 