After two years of a pandemic, 2022 was meant to be a year of recovery for the movie industry.
It was. Although it wasn't quite the recovery everyone imagined.
As society gradually returned to something approaching normality, cinemas welcomed more people through their doors with films like Joseph Kosinski's 'Top Gun: Maverick,' Colin Treverrow's 'Jurassic World: Dominion ' and Sam Raimi's 'Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness' leading the way.
But while box office receipts were undoubtedly healthier than the previous two years, they were still considerably far off what they were in 2019 - running at about 80%.
The movie industry had to adjust to changing customer behaviour as customers went to see some movies in cinemas and chose to stream others.
Unfortunately, some cinemas were forced to close their doors as the harsh economic reality of a pandemic and its lockdowns, changing viewing habits and a recession exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine hit hard.
The situation was so tough that cinema chains like Cineworld struggled on both sides of the Atlantic.
Theatrical windows also continued to shorten as studios like Paramount joined streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu and Apple TV+ in vying for audience attention, launching their own platform.
2022 was the year, however, when a streaming service finally broke the studios' grip on the Best Picture Oscar.
That streamer wasn't Netflix, though.
Despite boasting an early Academy Award frontrunner in the shape of Jane Campion's superb 'The Power of the Dog,' Netflix watched Sian Heder's heartwarming high school drama 'CODA' make history by taking the top prize for Apple TV+.
However just like 'Moonlight,' the Oscar underdog's night of glory was overshadowed - this time thanks to an extraordinary meltdown by Best Actor winner Will Smith during the ceremony.
Following a joke at the expense of his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith by Chris Rock, the actor stormed up onstage and struck the comedian.
At first, confused viewers thought it was a stunt.
But when Smith continued to angrily heckle Rock from his seat, it became clear he had been outraged by the comic's reference to his wife's alopecia.
While Smith triumphed, as expected, on the night in the Best Actor category for his performance as the father of Serena and Venus Williams in 'King Richard,' it was clear he had ruined what should have been the greatest moment of his career.
Viewers were forced to watch a rambling, embarrassing, teary five minute Oscar acceptance speech where he pointedly didn't apologise to Rock.
The apology came days later but the damage had been done.
Smith was forced to resign his Academy membership before being handed a 10 year ban.
Throughout the year, he would continue to explain his behaviour, appearing on Trevor Noah's Comedy Central show 'The Daily Show' in November to avoid it damaging the release of Antoine Fuqua's worthy Apple TV+ slavery movie 'Emancipation'.
A Netflix project was, however, put on hold and plans at Sony for a 'Bad Boys 4' sequel too.
Smith's career will survive the controversy, though - even if his public image as a happy go lucky entertainer has taken a massive dent.
With Rock signed up for a Netflix comedy special next year, the world will be watching to see what the comic may have to say on the incident - if he says anything at all.
'CODA' was the big winner on Oscars night, notching up a Best Supporting Actor win As well for deaf actor Troy Kotsur for his performance as the fisherman father of a daughter who can hear.
The film also won for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Netflix and New Zealander Jane Campion had something to celebrate, though, walking away with the prize for Best Director for 'Power of the Dog'.
As charming as 'CODA' was, Campion's film or Guillermo del Toro's wonderful 'Nightmare Alley' were much more daring and visually inventive films and either should have captured Best Picture.
Best Director nominee Kenneth Branagh racked up his first ever Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay for his delightful, autobiographical drama 'Belfast' whose cast members Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench picked up nominations in the supporting categories.
Hinds had a strong claim for the Best Supporting Actor prize, while Dench was a surprise nominee in her category, usurping her co-star Caitriona Balfe who many felt deserved to be nominated instead.
The Best Supporting Actress race was won by Ariana de Bose for Steven Spielberg's vivacious remake of 'West Side Story' and in doing so, she made history by becoming the first openly Queer actress of colour to take home an award.
Jessica Chastain deservedly won Best Actress for her portrayal of the tele-Evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker opposite Andrew Garfield in the 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye'.
Questlove from The Roots earned the Best Documentary Feature prize with his excellent Hulu film on the Harlem Cultural Festival 'Summer of Soul (Or.. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised')', while Japan celebrated a Best Foreign Language feature win with Ryusuke Hamaguchi's terrific 'Drive My Car'.
Hagamuchi saw off competition from Joachim Trier's Norwegian movie 'The Worst Person in the World,' Pawoc Koyning Dorj's 'Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom' from Bhutan, Paolo Sorrentino's charming Italian coming of age movie 'The Hand of God' and Jonas Poher Rasmussen's gripping, animated real life Danish migration tale 'Flee' in a typically strong year in the category.
2022 saw the trend of foreign language films breaking into mainstream Oscar categories continue, with Hamaguchi's film landing Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nominations and 'Flee' also picking up a Best Animated Feature and Documentary feature nods, losing to Disney's much more conventional 'Encanto' in the animation category.
'The Worst Person in the World' secured a Best Original Screenplay nomination as well, while Pedro Almodovar's entertaining Spanish drama 'Parallel Mothers ' earned a shot at Best Actress for its star Penelope Cruz despite not making the Foreign Language Feature shortlist.
Guillermo del Toro's wonderfully Gothic film noir conman tale 'Nightmare Alley' was among those films that went away empty handed on the night despite featuring great performances from Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett.
Paul Thomas Anderson missed out too despite delivering the excellent 'Licorice Pizza' which saw newcomers Cooper Hoffman and Alanna Haim hold their own alongside veterans like Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper and Tom Waits in a nostalgic tale of young love and entrepreneurship in 1970s Hollywood.
No sooner had the 2022 race ended, the 2023 Oscar race started to take shape during festival season.
At Cannes, Ruben Ostund's cruise ship feature 'Triangle of Sadness' took the Palme d'Or.
However his acclaimed satire isn't a Best Picture frontrunner.
That honour has fallen instead to Steven Spielberg's most personal movie to date, 'The Fablemans' with Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano and Seth Rogan.
Spielberg's film earned rave reviews in Toronto where it captured the coveted People's Choice Award and got two standing ovations.
But as Taikia Waititi, Lenny Abrahamson and Kenneth Branagh will tell you, winning the People's Choice Award might be good for Oscar exposure but it doesn't necessarily guarantee a Best Picture win.
One of Spielberg's biggest rivals for the main prize would appear to be Martin McDonagh's brilliant Irish fable 'The Banshees of Inisherin' which, if there is any justice in the world, should earn Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson their first Academy Award nominations for playing feuding former friends in an island off the coast of Galway.
Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan delivered performances as well that could and should merit awards season attention and all four got exactly that as McDonagh's feature scooped eight Golden Globe nominations in December.
'The Banshees of Inisherin' was a huge hit in Venice where it earned a remarkable 15 minute standing ovation.
It went on to perform impressively in arthouse cinemas on its release in October - earning Gleeson a 'Saturday Night Live' guest hosting slot.
Despite his terrific performance for McDonagh and topping a number of critics groups' Best Actor lists, Farrell will do well to prevent Brendan Fraser from achieving a clean sweep of the major awards for playing a 600 lb man trying to connect with his teenage daughter in Darren Aronofsky's 'The Whale' with Sadie Sink and Samantha Morton.
Donning prosthetics to play the part, Fraser's performance secured a six minute standing ovation in Venice - even if some critics were lukewarm about the movie itself.
Cate Blanchett received tonnes of praise for her performance as an egomaniacal music conductor in Todd Field's acclaimed 'Tar' with Julian Glover and Mark Strong, earning her a Best Actress award in Venice.
Ana De Armas drew plenty of plaudits in Venice for her portrayal of Norma Jeane Baker/Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik's grim but undeniably stylish Netflix movie 'Blonde'.
Austen Butler catapulted himself onto the awards radar with an eye catching, charismatic and energetic breakthrough performance as another showbiz icon, Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann's overrated 'Elvis'.
Luhrmann's film performed impressively at the summer box office despite a disappointingly hammy turn by Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker.
Away from the festival circuit, the Daniels' unconventional and undeniably inventive action fantasy 'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once' with Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis has developed into a dark horse worth keeping an eye on during awards season.
The film's mix of high octane action and irreverent humour helped it become the indie hit of 2022, with Ke Huy Quan picking up several critics awards for Best Supporting Actor.
If there were any justice, though, Liverpudlian actor Stephen Graham would be a Best Actor contender for his superb performance as a chef struggling to keep his sanity in Philip Barantini's nerve shreddingly intense, one take movie 'Boiling Point'.
Not only did the British indie film announce Barantini as a filmmaker of considerable talent but it secured a TV spin off at the BBC after having one of the most heart crushing final scenes of any movie this year.
None of the potential awards contenders, though, quite generated the media noise that Olivia Wilde's dystopian mystery 'Don't Worry Darling' achieved when it premiered in Venice.
With legions of Harry Styles fans talking up the film's Oscar chances and their pop idol's hopes before it had even screened, rumours were rife about a major fallout between its lead, Florence Pugh and Wilde who also appeared in a supporting role.
Those rumours centred around Wilde's relationship with Styles and when Pugh didn't take part in the press conference in Venice, a critical head of steam started to build up against the film.
The Venice premiere generated a controversy to rival Will Smith's when footage of Styles taking his seat sparked claims on social media that he spat on Chris Pine - a rumour which both stars and the director were quick to deny.
A majority of critics, though, hammered Wilde's movie while singling out Pugh's performance for praise.
While it was a brash allegorical tale that certainly wasn't perfect, it was much better than some critics claimed.
Indeed most of the criticism for 'Don't Worry Darling' seemed over the top and undeserving.
Taking over £80 million at the box office, it significantly outperformed all the dire predictions that were being made about it.
As his romance with Wilde fell apart by the end of 2022, Styles cemented his reputation as a pop star who could act with a decent performance in the stodgy Amazon Prime love triangle drama 'My Policeman' with Emma Corrin, Gina McKee and Rupert Everett.
Irish singer Imelda May also branched out into acting, appearing in the sequel 'Fisherman's Friends: All for One' - comfortably making the transition to cinema acting in a rather underwhelming film.
Florence Pugh, meanwhile, turned in one of the performances of 2022 in Chilean director Sebastian Leilo's daring Irish fasting girl tale 'The Wonder' which featured impressive work too from Tom Burke, Niamh Algar and newcomer Kila Lord Cassidy.
After the disappointment of his science fiction movie 'Ad Astra,' director James Gray came back to Earth with an intimate growing pains drama set in 1980s New York.
'Armageddon Time' with Jeremy Strong boasted some of the best acting onscreen this year - particularly from Anne Hathaway as a worn out Jewish mother and Anthony Hopkins as her frail father.
The same could be said for #MeToo drama 'She Said' - an 'All The President's Men' style movie about the New York Times bringing down the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein by exposing his sexual predatory and violent behaviour.
Featuring blistering performances from Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as the New York Times reporters whose diligent reporting broke the wall of silence around Weinstein's crimes, it saw Ashley Judd playing herself which enabled her to tell audiences directly how the sex offender ruined her career.
Samantha Morton, Jennifer Ehle, Patricia Clarkson and Andre Braugher turned in impressive performances too but the film fell victim to a release strategy in the US which hurt its Oscar chances, going for broke with a huge opening instead of following the old template of gradual distribution and building word of mouth like 'The Banshees of Inisherin'.
Around the same time as 'Armageddon Time' and 'She Said' hit cinemas, up and coming Irish actor Paul Mescal enhanced his growing reputation as a movie actor following the pandemic success of BBC, RTE and Hulu's 2020 TV drama 'Normal People'.
The charming indie drama 'Aftersun' turned out to be one of the best movies made in recent years about mental health.
Scottish director Charlotte Wells' film was also one of the most visually stunning debut features of recent times and was certainly one of the most haunting this year, with images and sequences which lingered weeks later.
Its use of David Bowie and Queen's classic track 'Under Pressure' was one of the most intelligent choices of music in a movie this year.
Caleb Landry Jones starred in another film whose treatment of mental health issues impressed, Justin Kurzel's Tasmanian mass shooting drama 'Nitram' which featured terrific performances from Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia and Essie Davis - having earned him a Best Actor prize in Cannes last year.
Meanwhile Mescal's 'Normal People' co-star Daisy Edgar Jones continued to build a promising movie career, scoring a major hit alongside David Strathairn in a sturdy adaptation of the publishing phenomenon 'Where The Crawdads Sing' with Garret Hedlund.
Earlier in 2022, Jones starred in a fleetingly enjoyable, grisly, yet pretty disposable Disney+ cannibal horror tale 'Fresh' with Sebastian Stan.
The popularity of big and small budget horror continued to endure.
Director Scott Derrickson scored a critical and commercial hit with 'The Black Phone' which starred Mason Thames, Jeremy Davies and Ethan Hawke.
William Brent Ball's 'Orphan: First Kill' drew audiences to the slasher film franchise, while Parker Finn's sinister debut feature 'Smile' packed audiences in over the autumn with its take on the trauma plot.
By far the best of the lower budget horror films was the 'Predator' prequel 'Prey' which saw director Dan Trachtenberg thrillingly fuse the Native American Western with an alien movie and deliver one of the most exhilarating action performances of the year from newcomer Amber Midthunder as a Commanche warrior.
Towards the end of the year, Ralph Fiennes joined Anya Taylor Joy and Nicholas Hoult in the amusing horror satire 'The Menu' which saw director wickedly send up the pretentiousness of the restaurant trade.
Taylor Joy stole the show in one of the most visceral movie experiences of 2022 'The Northman' - a savage Viking tale shot on both sides of the Irish border with Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe that drew inspiration from the same Norse legend that inspired 'Hamlet'.
Jordan Peele's long awaited follow-up to 'Get Out' and 'Us' was the supernatural sci-fi horror tale 'Nope' with KeKe Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya and Steven Yeun.
Essentially a thrilling love letter to the films of Steven Spielberg and other formative filmmaking influences, the scale of Peele's film demanded that it be seen in cinemas.
It certainly drew audiences - though not on the scale of his previous two films.
Colin Trevorow brought back the original 'Jurassic Park' gang of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum to join Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard for a disappointing conclusion to the 'Jurassic Work' trilogy entitled 'Jurassic World: Dominion '.
It still performed well in cinemas, though.
Other blockbusters underwhelmed but drew audiences anyway, with superhero tales continuing to rule the roost.
Marvel gave us Sam Raimi's 'Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,' Taika Waititi's 'Thor: Love and Thunder' and Ryan Coogler's 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' which had to negotiate the death of its previous start Chadwick Boseman.
Serial over actor Jared Leto took another critical mauling for his superhero tale 'Morbius' while Marvel continued to expand its franchises with spin-off TV shows like 'Hawkeye' on the Disney+ streaming service.
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's pull as a box office titan was enough to persuade audiences to see the DC Comics tale 'Black Adam' with Pierce Brosnan despite iffy reviews.
But the pick of the bunch was 'The Batman' with Robert Pattinson donning the batsuit as Bruce Wayne, Paul Dano turning in a creepy performance as The Riddler and Colin Farrell physically transforming into a Damon Runyonesque gangster as The Penguin.
A hit with audiences and critics, Matt Reeves' film paid its dues to David Fincher's serial killer thriller 'Seven' and boasted great performances from Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright as Commander Gordon and John Turturro as a Mafia boss, while also hinting at great things to come from Barry Keoghan as The Joker with a brief cameo if the director's version of the franchise is allowed by Warner Bros to proceed.
It was a great year for Farrell who notched up terrific performances in Ron Howard's Thai cave rescue drama 'Thirteen Lives' and Kogonada's haunting sci-fi film 'After Yang'.
Sylvester Stallone dabbled in the superhero genre but away from cinemas with Amazon Prime's 'Samaritan' which really played to his strengths as an underdog by giving him the role of a binman who was haunted by his past and reluctantly drawn into saving his city.
The Russo Brothers eschewed their normal cinema release route for their so-so Netflix spy action thriller 'The Gray Man' with Ryan Gosling, Billy Bob Thornton, Ana de Armas, a very wooden Reggie Jean and a frankly irritating villain's performance by Chris Evans.
Ryan Reynolds turned to streamers again for his big movie releases, playing a cocky, time traveling space warrior from the future meeting his teenage self in 'The Adam Project' on Netflix.
He also teamed up with Will Ferrell for the Apple TV+ Christmas movie 'Spirited'.
The year ended with James Cameron's long awaited sequel 'Avatar 2: The Way of Water' with Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet.
A bloated spectacle, it performed reasonably well at the box office but at a pace that could not match 'Top Gun: Maverick'.
Joseph Kosinski's air force pilot action drama with Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm and Ed Harris traded on 1980 nostalgia and boasted wonderful fighter jet sequences.
It proved a hit not just with fiftysomethings but people of all ages despite a rather thin plot.
It was nonetheless an improvement on Tony Scott's original and made Tom Cruise an outset bet for awards season recognition.
As the studios continued to fret over box office takings, all eyes next year will be on James Mangold's fifth and final instalment of the Indiana Jones saga and the third film of James Gunn 's 'Guardians of the Galaxy' saga to see if the blockbusters ' incomes can return to the heights they achieved pre-pandemic.
2022 continued to see speculation about who the next James Bond will be, with a host of British and Irish actors linked to the part including Tom Hardy, Aidan Turner and Idris Elba all featuring in the speculation.
Although by December, the rumour mill seemed to be coalescing around Aaron Taylor Johnson to replace Daniel Craig.
Johnson possibly boosted his action credentials starting alongside Brad Pitt, Brian Tyree Henry, Hiroyuki Sanada, Joey King and Michael Shannon in David Leitch's hyperactive, flashy, trashy, gory Japanese set action thriller 'Bullet Train' which was also notable for its gratuitous West Ham football club references.
Meanwhile Craig and Rian Johnson's new 'Knives Out' murder mystery franchise made the leap from cinemas into a Netflix tentpole feature, initially receiving a limited theatrical release.
Appearing as the big Christmas movie release on the service, 'Knives Out: Glass Onion' boasted a typically starry cast that included Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae and Edward Norton and really lived up to expectations, tapping into the same sense of fun as the original.
In February, Kenneth Branagh reprised his role as Agatha Christie's sleuth Hercule Poirot while directing a visually sumptuous but very stodgy, star studded version of 'Death On The Nile' with Gal Gadot, Annette Bening, Armie Hammer, Sophie Okenodo, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright and Russell Brand.
Disney+ released in November 'Disenchanted" - the long awaited sequel to 'Enchanted' with Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Idina Mendel and James Marsden reprising their roles from the original - but it too fell way short of expectations.
Ana De Armas and Ben Affleck teamed up for a trashily enjoyable Adrian Lyne Amazon Prime erotic thriller 'Deep Water'.
Affleck turned in avuncular performance too on Amazon Prime as a philosophical barman in the coming of age movie 'The Tender Bar'.
Meanwhile his Mrs, Jennifer Lopez was just awful in one of the worst movies of 2022 'Marry Me' - in which she really stretched herself by playing a Latino pop queen who randomly marries Owen Wilson's constipated looking maths teacher.
In normal years, you might have expected a toss up between 'Marry Me' and Carrie Cracknell's 'Fleabag'-esque Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Persuasion' with Dakota Johnson for the title of worst film.
But no-one counted on Michael Flatley's pet project 'Blackbird' making it into cinemas in what must surely be a nailed on candidate for a cult classic?
With acting and a script so bad even Tommy Wiseau might scoff at it, this weird attempt to make the Lord of the Dance a cross between Sean Connery and Humphrey Bogart was like watching Michael Scott's 'Threat Level Midnight' in the US version of 'The Office' actually become a feature film.
Fortunately, there were plenty of strong documentary features to distract us from the worst movies of 2022.
Brett Morgan's 'Moonage Daydream' brilliantly fused unseen footage of pop music's greatest innovator David Bowie with archive interviews to create one of the most exhilarating moviegoing experiences of 2022.
Kathryn Ferguson's Sinead O'Connor documentary 'Nothing Compares' also sparked a remarkable response in cinemas in Ireland where audiences at screenings often burst into spontaneous applause for the way it reclaimed the rock singer's place as a significant and powerful advocate for the rights of women and Catholic Church sexual abuse victims.
Ferguson's film depicted O'Connor as an artist who was way ahead of her time, convincingly arguing she was unfairly maligned for being a woman in the music industry who was prepared to speak her mind and was punished, in particular, for ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on US TV.
Alison Millar's superb documentary feature 'Lyra' about the Belfast journalist Lyra McKee, who was gunned down while working in Derry in 2019, was a touching and intimate portrait of an activist reporter who wasn't afraid to push boundaries.
Jono McLeod's 'My Old School' hilariously resurrected the story of a teenager who never was, mixing animation and an Alan Cumming lip synch with amusing interviews with his former classmates and teachers at Glasgow's Bearsden Academy.
in a year which saw the UK celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee and then mourn her passing months later, the late Roger Michell's 'Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts' amusingly reflected on her 70 year reign by assembling together behind the scenes footage and other clips that emphasised her influence on British culture at home and abroad.
Michell's final feature film 'The Duke' also delighted audiences this year, with Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren amusing in a true life tale as a couple embroiled in a 1960s scandal over the theft from the National Gallery of a painting of the Duke of Wellington in a protest over pensioners being made to pay their TV licence.
It was a good year for quirky British independent cinema.
Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins and Rhys Ifans amused in another underdog tale 'The Phantom of the Open' about a docker who became a golfing legend by shooting some of the worst rounds in the history of the Open Golf Championship.
Bill Nighy staked his claim as a strong awards season Best Actor contender for his performance in 'Living ' - remake of the classic 'Ikiru'.
Jim Archer's touching comedy 'Brian and Charles' saw David Earl take his eccentric hoarder Brian Gittins from Ricky Gervais' Netflix sitcom 'After Life' and turn him into a robot inventor in rural North Wales.
Lesley Manville was a pleasure to watch alongside Ellen Thomas, Alba Baptista, Lucas Bravo, Isabelle Huppert, Lambert Wilson and Jason Isaacs in Anthony Fabian's post Second World War comedy drama 'Mrs Harris Goes To Paris'.
Two of the best screen performances this year came from Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrooke in Clio Barnard's touching Bradford inter-racial romance 'Ali and Ava'.
It was a great year for Irish language cinema with Colm Bairead's touching 'An Cailin Ciuan/The Quiet Girl' breaking the £1 million barrier for a film in the Gaelic tongue at the UK and Irish box office and becoming a real contender for Best Foreign Language Feature at next year's Oscars.
There was also a sweet Irish language shaggy dog story 'Roise and Frank' which amused audiences while touching on the impact of grief.
Not everything that emanated from the Emerald Isle was quality.
We've mentioned 'Blackbird' already but Emer Reynolds' Co Kerry road movie 'Joyride' finally disabused cinemagoers of the notion that Olivia Colman could do no wrong.
2022 also saw Disney Pixar lose its infallibility as its 'Toy Story' spin-off 'Lightyear' and Robert Zemeckis' live action and CGI animation version of 'Pinocchio' with Tom Hanks underwhelmed.
It all began so promisingly with Domee Shi's 'Turning Red' which cleverly wove a story about menstruation into an enjoyable animated family film.
2022 ended with Don Hall's 'Strange World' struggling at the box office after lukewarm reviews despite having Disney Pixar's first animated LGBTQ hero.
If Zemeckis' version of 'Pinocchio' disappointed, Guillermo del Toro's long awaited stop motion animated version for Netflix didn't, thanks to some clever political commentary and spirited performances from David Bradley, Ewan McGregor and Christoph Waltz.
As ever, 2022 saw some major giants of the industry pass on.
The year began with two giants of the cinema dying.
Sidney Poitier and Peter Bogdanovich both made their mark in front of and behind the camera and both died within 24 hours of each other.
January also saw the passing of the Oscar winning lyricist of 'The Way We Were' Marilyn Bergman, stand up comic and director of 'Dirty Work' Bob Saget, up and coming 'Saint Laurent' and 'Hannibal Rising' star Gaspard Ulliel, 'Hatari!' and 'Flight of the Phoenix' actor Hardy Kruger, 'Bat Out of Hell' singer, 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' and 'Fight Club' actor Meat Loaf.
The following month German actor Dieter Mann, 'L'Aventurra' and 'La Notte' star Monica Vitti, Bollywood singer Lata Mangeshkar, Egyptian actress Aida Abdel Aziz, Portuguese movie maker Lauro Antonio, Croatian film director Borivoj Dovnikovic, 'Blade Runner' special effects artist Doug Trumbull and the 'MASH' and 'Pret A Porter' star Sally Kellerman passed away.
In March, Hammer Horror actress Victoria Carlson 'Loch Ness' and 'Victoria and Abdul actor John Stahl, Ukrainian actor Pasha Lee was killed after joining his country's territorial defence force following Russia's invasion of his homeland, Lynda Baron who appeared in 'Yentl' and 'Carry on Columbus,' Oscar winning documentary filmmaker John Zelitsky, 'The Bank Job' star Peter Bowles and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.
Estelle Harris who played Mrs Potato Head in the 'Toy Story' franchise, Bollywood film director Sarath, 'Bye, Bye Birdie' star and singer Bobby Rydell, Jacques Perrin of 'Cinema Paradiso' fame died in April.
The deaths were announced in May of 'Tremors' and 'The Right Stuff' star Fred Ward, 'Five Easy Pieces' director Bob Rafelson, 'The Omen' star David Warner, 'GoodFellas' star Ray Liotta, 'The Railway Children' star Bernard Cribbins qnd 'Star Trek's' Nichelle Nichols.
In June character actor Philip Baker Hall of 'Magnolia' and 'Zodiac' fame and 'Blade Runner' actor Joe Turkel died, with English film and theatre director Peter Brook, 'The Godfather' and 'Misery' star James Caan, Mexican actress Susana Dosamantes, Italian director Maurizio Pradeaux, British comic actor Brian Jackson.
In July 'GoodFellas' and 'Nixon' star Paul Sorvino passed away along with Hong Kong director Alex Law, 'The Pick Up Artist' and 'Romeo Is Bleeding' cast member Tony Sirico, Hong Kong screenwriter Ni Kuang, Russian actor Sergey Sosnovsky, 'My Life As A Dog' star Lennart Hjulstrom, Russian filmmaker Yuriy Fait, Indian director Tarun Majumdar, 'The Wild Bunch' cast member LQ Jones, the 'James Bond Theme' composer Monty Norman, German actor Christian Doermer who appeared in 'Oh! What A Lovely War', 'Winter Kills' director and occasional actor William Reichert, Irish film director Tom Collins who made 'Kings' and 'Elvis' actress Shonka Dukureh.
In August, we said goodbye to US filmmaker Amy Stechler and the Hollywood actress Anne Heche.
The following month, French New Wave director Jean Luc Godard, French film director Just Jaeckin, the actress Marsha Hunt, Greek actress Irene Papas and Oscar winning actress Louise Fletcher who was Nurse Ratched in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' died.
October saw 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' and 'The Manchurian Candidate' star Angela Lansbury, 'Nuns On The Run' and 'Harry Potter' legend Robbie Coltrane and English comedy screenwriter Raymond Allen pass away, while 'Carry On' and 'Venus' star Leslie Phillips, 'Fame' and 'Flashdance' singer and actress Irene Cara died in November.
'Look Who's Talking' star Kirstie Alley lost her life in December, as did Brazilian soccer legend and 'Escape to Victory' star Pele.
All of those industry figures made their mark on cinema and will be greatly missed.
As we said goodbye to them and as we celebrate a decent year in cinema, we hope for a year of further recovery in 2023 - even in the toughest of financial conditions.
Admittedly, that is written more in hope than expectation.
But if we can get a year with the same kind of quality as 2022, that will be a big comfort.
Pomona's Top Ten Movies of 2022
1. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
2. Boiling Point (Philip Barantini)
3. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
4. The Wonder (Sebastian Leilo)
5. All Quiet On The Western Front (Edward Berger)
6. Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro)
7. An Cailin Cuan/The Quiet Girl (Colm Bairead)
8. Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
9. Nitram (Justin Kurzel)
10. Ali and Ava (Clio Barnard)
Worst Picture: Blackbird (Michael Flatley)
Honourable Mentions: Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar); She Said (Maria Schrader); Nothing Compares (Kathryn Ferguson); Lyra (Alison Millar); Prey (Dan Trachtenberg); Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson); The Batman (Matt Reeves); Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgan)
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