Some very quick picks indeed this year, for a couple of reasons.
First of all, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic the major streaming platforms — Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple, Disney+ — all sought to entrench their position in the film food chain, with many major releases going direct to people’s homes. This didn’t affect me too much, as I’ve only been in a cinema a couple of times in the last decade. However, the other thing about a lot of direct-to-streaming releases is that they never come out on DVD. As time goes on, I suspect this is a situation that will only get worse, as cinemas and DVDs both become fossilized cultural artefacts. But then, so are blogs. Social media itself might soon be going the same way.
Second, I didn’t get around to seeing many new releases even on DVD, and those I did see were mostly crap. Or, to be a bit more charitable, movies that I thought might be at least passable but turned out to be somewhat below that. I’m starting to think that new movies just don’t interest me all that much, which shouldn’t surprise me since new fiction doesn’t interest me as much as it used to either. I usually try to plow through as many new releases as I can in November and December in order to prep for this post, but this year I just couldn’t be bothered with what I saw on the shelves.
In any event, here we are with the 2022 releases that I watched in 2022.
The Batman
Blacklight
Bullet Train
Crimes of the Future
Death on the Nile
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Gasoline Alley
Infinite Storm
Men
Moonfall
Morbius
The Northman
Scream
Thor: Love and Thunder
Just you try picking some winners out of that field of beauties!
Alex on Film 