TL;DR – This is a list of not what we think will win in the 2023 Academy Awards but who we would give the awards to if we could.
Article –
It is Oscars time again, and thanks to some well-timed leave, I get to watch them live this year. So here we will be going through all the nominees and picking which ones we would have chosen if we were a voting academy member.
I should preface this with the notice that we have not seen every film nominated, so we will only pick from those we have seen. We will only cover the categories where we have seen at least three nominees. Also, if you want to see our reviews for said films, you can click on the links to be taken to them. So without any further prattling on, here are the nominees.
However, in this last entry into our Best of 2022 awards, we crown our Best Film winner of 2022.
All films are subjective, so our list might look completely different from yours. Of the 102 films we revied last year, 92 had their Theatrical/Streaming in 2022, which is the list we draw our entries from. You can see the complete list of movies HERE.
Much like last year’s list, we have had many staggered releases towards the end of the year. So we may have films here that were released in 2021 for you but 2022 for us, and there may be some omissions here because we won’t get those films until later in 2023.
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s dive into the first entry in our list of Best Films of 2022.
As I have gotten older, I am not afraid of having a good old-fashioned ugly cry in the cinemas when the time calls for it, and hell, I probably got emotional just writing this list (Spoiler: I did). Sometimes they are tears of grief, sometimes, they are tears of joy, and even still, sometimes, they are tears of anger.
Emotion is a core part of the cinema experience. If you can’t get us to respond emotionally to your characters and/or the situation, I am sorry you failed to make a great film.
So without further ado, these are the films of 2022 that emotionally wrecked us. Be warned that there will be significant spoilers for the films in question.
Animation is a form of filmmaking that is often related to second-tier status, something just for kids. This is by both the organisations giving out the awards and the guilds meant to promote their members’ work. However, they are not second-tier films; in many ways, animated films push the frontiers of filmmaking and what is possible, and they should be championed for their work.
Animated films can be hand-drawn, stop/clay motion, or computer-generated, it does not matter, but all of them show the unique techniques of hundreds of artists that bring the work to life.
So without further ado, these animated films showed us the glory of animation in 2022. Be warned that there may be slight spoilers for the movies in question. Also, click on the banners/titles to go to the full reviews of each of the films
TL;DR – A work of art that hits on every emotional level from start to finish.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene
Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Review –
Some names instantly intrigue you when you hear they are attached to a project. Which is entirely what happened when I heard that Guillermo del Toro was going to make a Pinocchio film. This alone was enough to interest me. Then you discover that it will be an animated film, not just that, a stop-motion animation film, and the masters of puppets, The Jim Henson Company, will produce it. Well, that is a combination that could not be missed, and I am fundamentally glad I watched it.
So to set the scene, master craftsman Geppetto (David Bradley) lost his only child Calro (Gregory Mann), during the Great War when he was only ten years old. A stray bomb destroyed the church that they were working in, and it is a loss that he has never recovered from. Sometime later, Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), a travelling cricket, came to live in the tree planted at Carlo’s grave and watched as a drunk Geppetto laments over his lost son. But as that is happening, some old spirits from the forest who typically ignore humanity hear the pleas of the grieving father and when he cuts down the pine tree that was planted at the grave to turn it into a puppet. So The Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) looks over the creation and then brings that puppet Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) to life.
TL;DR Movie Reviews and Analysis 