Best of 2022 in film

A few months back, I got an unusual notification on my email – and by unusual I mean literally anything besides corporate advertisements and updates from the bank. Having caught me in the middle of an even more unusual dry period at work, I was just bored enough to click on the tab and see what had popped up. To my bewilderment, the email said someone had liked my post on wordpress, which left me confused for a minute, until I suddenly remembered I had once had a film blog. I know it’s pretty cliché now to say that the last 3 years feel like they dragged on for a lifetime, but it took my absolutely forgetting the existence of my blog – its life slowly flickering out on a server somewhere across the planet – to realize just how much.

Best of 2019 in film – An excellent year for cinema.

It’s been over 2 years since I last visited this blog, an unfortunate consequence of having started work and having to pick between this and my other passion – illustration. However, with every new film I saw in 2019, I got that tingling feeling to write again, what with the long list of amazing films the year has gifted us, from all around the world. Especially at a time when the real world seems to be diving headfirst into the apocalypse – whether that be through genocide, disease or climate change – cinema as our most powerful art medium serves an important purpose, not just in opening up windows of escape, but also to make us feel more connected to each other.

‘Blade Runner 2049’ review – A genius sequel to a groundbreaking film.

Ridley Scott made the original Blade Runner back in 1982, loosely based on Philip K Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’, taking as many creative liberties as he could to give us the influential masterpiece it is today. It was also a decade which saw the rise of many unique cinematic visionaries, and Hollywood was not quite the franchise-churning machine it is today. While it is difficult to find modern visionaries in the rubble of superhero films and nostalgic sequels, there is one I have been keenly following for a while – Denis Villeneuve. Standing miles ahead of his peers with his previous films like Prisoners, Sicario and last year’s Arrival, he has just ventured into sequel territory (which usually means creative death), but comes out all guns blazing, with Blade Runner 2049. Unfortunately, Blade Runner does not enjoy a pop culture fan following à la Star Wars and Ghostbusters, a compromise it made when it opted for thematic depth over blockbuster entertainment. This was made evident when I saw that I was one of only 10 people at the screening, and the pitiful box office response.   

Recommendation – ‘Blade Runner’ (1982 Final Cut)

“More human than human is our motto.”

‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’ review – But authors do.

There is a moment of suspended animation in Manuscripts Don’t Burn where a character nonchalantly places a laundry clip over the nose of another, watching the latter suffocate to death slowly from having both his mouth and nose sealed. It is a chilling moment, and one that strikes the viewer exactly where the director intends the film to strike. Mohammed Rasoulof’s 2014 film is a fictional retelling of the infamous Chain Murders of Iran, a series of murders and disappearances of Iranian intellectuals who had been critical of the then government. Starting with the lead character – the man commissioned by the government to carry out the extortion – the film makes choice after interesting choice in its narration of the hunt for a banned manuscript. Taking its time with each moment and lingering on the seemingly mundane bits of daily life, the silence of the film and its observers is deafening.

‘Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum’ (Evidence and the Eyewitness) review – The film you must watch.

I don’t usually review non-English language films on this blog, and I have many reasons for it, one of the biggest ones being the smaller audience for these films. Writing a review is a pretty time-consuming task, and with my readership being as low as it is already, writing one for a non-universal language just doesn’t seem worth it. (The few Indian language films I have reviewed are also the result of requests by my friends.) But last night, I saw a film called Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum – in my own native language of Malayalam – which changed my previously held opinion and reminded me of why I started doing this in the first place. This film, the title of which roughly translates to ‘Evidence and the Eyewitness’, is one which deserves to be seen by a larger audience: and that is the purpose of this review. With excellent cinematography by Rajeev Ravi, and featuring Fahadh Faasil, Suraj Venjaramoodu, and Nimisha Sajayan in lead roles, this Dileesh Pothan film is a real-life masterpiece in its truest sense.

‘Loins of Punjab Presents’ review – Cringe masala.

When my friends sat me down and told me that we would be watching a film named Loins of Punjab Presents, I certainly wasn’t expecting much. But having just arrived in the scorched city of Delhi after a long flight, I was in no mood for complex character dramas, and this didn’t seem the type. And while the movie is definitely no mockumentary as claimed by its Netflix page, it does stay true to the tone of its title and packs quite a few laugh-out-loud moments. Though an Indian film, it is almost entirely in English and follows the organizers and participants of a ‘desi’ singing competition held in New Jersey. Stuffed with characters that satire popular Indian stereotypes to the extreme, this turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable film for a setting similar to the one I watched it in.

‘Wonder Woman’ review – A triumph for superhero cinema

Diana Prince had several tasks to carry out: she had to get accustomed to the world outside her bubble of Themyscira, fulfill the mission of the Amazons, and most importantly, lay the foundation for female-led superhero films, or even films, in Hollywood. And while following in the footsteps of such flops as Catwoman and Elektra isn’t difficult, Patty Jenkins and her team more than had their hands full with the expectations going in. Wonder Woman faced the inevitable (and more than anything, petty) backlash from male audiences who cannot fathom female fans let alone a female superhero, and on top of that, it came within the DCEU, a franchise which has only received mixed opinions so far. Owing to all this, I walked into the film with uncertainty and fear, both of which were converted to hope for not just the future of the DCEU, but also of a Hollywood which can think beyond white males to helm their films.

‘Get Out’ review – The most important horror film of our time

The reason many classic horror films fail to chill audiences today is the fact that the scariest ones of the time are rooted in the mindset of the people of that time. If you look back at the history of the horror genre, both in films as well as literature, patterns start to develop. Now while this is clearly because of the trend that got people in the cinema seats, there is a deeper reason for the popularity of each variant of fear. The popular fear of alien invaders in the films of the ‘50s can be traced to the fear of the American society which was constantly under the threat of foreign invasion, threatening their all-American values. The ‘60s and ‘70s saw an American population glued to their televisions which shocked them with stories of psychopaths and mass murderers such as Ted Bundy, and Hollywood responded with movies such as Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, realizing and heightening their fears. Get Out is the debut film by Jordan Peele, of Key & Peele fame, who subverts his usually comedic type for a far darker story that is too realistic for the times we live in.

Recommendation – ‘Unbreakable’

“You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here…. That’s just an awful feeling.”