MaG draws up its 2022 film review!

Your eyes on the year 2022?

Hard to talk about cinema without talking about production and media that go together to highlight different films. It's been a year and a half since MaG cut his way into the murderous niche of the cultural press. Media more mourned every day by the closure, if not the purchase of large sizes. The team of Gamekult kindly dismissed by the reworld media ogre, an ever tougher competition by the YouTube algos, kickstarters blooming on cemeteries for specialized sites condemned to alms, the team of tracks licensed manu militari... All with a smile.

Pop culture and the independent press in general accuse the crisis blow after crisis in the face of an increasingly concentrated media landscape, courted by great fortunes and gridded by merchandise. Above all, do not frown the spectator, before any consumer...

The year 2022 for my part was largely dedicated to film festivals (six in total). Although the dark rooms were able to reopen their doors in the spring of 2021, the sanitary measures still weigh on the attendance of the rooms today, even though this is just one of several factors of the changes in usage at work. To put it frankly, the closure of the rooms was an aberration taken by decision-makers more interested in growth than the preservation of culture.

Some nuggets like X There were only very few slots in the cinema...

Paradoxe obliges, so many of the films that I loved made ovens this year and that no French production is in the top 10 of box-office 2022, all is not black. I had a totally overturned report at these festivals where all the venues were crowded. I remembered a Korean session in the suffocating heat when closing the fantastic festival in Strasbourg. As a glimmer of hope in the face of fantastic films sometimes sadly confined to streaming platforms.

How many award-winning films this year have been released? Ego and Blaze have not had this privilege despite the number of titles taken. Some of them Mad God, seen as a preview in 2021, will only be released in 2023, probably the fault of a post-VOCID output carnage. Still, a simple overview of the available sessions of the last Marvel Black Panther against a film like X is revealing; on the same day: 10 to 1. And yet it is a UGC in Strasbourg, a city flooded with European funds and thus largely spared from certain campaigns.

Discovered in 2021, Mad God is expected on 26 April 2023 in France

All this to say that you probably have to look for the audience with your body and register in festival events much more visible in front of the Gargantuan advertising campaigns of Disney and assimilated. A well-organised festival has a solid comm, « fantastic village » where to exchange with actors and directors in Strasbourg, retrospectives, concerts, conferences and signings in Annecy, etc. France still has the chance to finance festivals everywhere and not just in the big cities. This is my next goal in 2023: to target lesser-known festivals.

In short, it is urgent to make the dark rooms live to grab the hooks of the couch that swear only by the combo Netflix Deliveroo. It seems hollow said like that, but cinema exists only through its audience. And I've never been as surprised as I've been by taking the trouble of going to a festival to trust multiple selections in Strasbourg like Annecy, Paris, Brussels or Montreal.

Avatar: Waterway uses state-of-the-art technology that has even made some movie projectors crash!

All these festivals behind which teams experiment and try to make artists from all over the world visible. A step to be taken which certainly takes a little more time (and squatting the apartments of buddies outside Strasbourg), but so much richer. Even Avatar Wins to be seen in the room of what I could read! Going to the movies is as much a political act as going to get a baguette in the bakery rather than the local Super U. And what's better. So as they say in the jargon, get your fingers out of the c**Go back to the movies and support independent media!

THE FIVE FILMS WHO MARKED YOU IN 2022?

If I've seen a lot of great things this year, I've missed tons too, for lack of time. Amongst resolutions 2023, catch up Everything Everywhere All at Once, Pacification, Pinocchio, EO, Leila and her brothers, Night of the 12th, Cairo Conspiracy, No filter, Glass Onion and Avatar: Waterway even if I will go backwards for the latter, being not sensitive to the often Manichean vision of Cameron and his « ecological fable » Supposed.

From festival to festival, it is naturally a largely indecent selection that I decided to highlight. I could also have quoted in bulk the trick X, the fascinating Diabolik, curiosities Demigod and Inu-Oh, the thriller As Bestas despite his last third and even disturbing Egodiscovered in the cold of the Vosges.

Blaze child rape

If I have a regret in 2022, it is not taking the time to publish an article on Blaze. "In witness to the violent aggression of an unknown man, Blaze takes refuge in an imaginary world populated by a dragon." These few lines of synopsis are not revealing the beauty of this film, which goes through all stages of victims of sexual violence from the perspective of the attackers.

This first feature film by plasticist Kathryn Barton never falls into overbidding. Still on the peak line, it is the suggestion that guides the viewer towards the revelation of malaise. Each plan obeys its own grammar of childhood imagination while allowing the spectator to guess the lavish traumas of the victims. Beautiful from end to end, Blaze knows how to grasp the issue of child rape with intelligence, strength and courage. A film unrivalled in his approach to this societal scourge all social classes combined.

Speak No Evilhostages of our propriety?

Speak No Evil is an essay on politeness, a home inverted invasion that, like Funny Gameswill immediately deprive the spectator of all hope. Tafdrup's feature film perfectly illustrates the expression « Getting into the wolf's mouth ». Like any Home Invasion that respects itself, when we have opened the door of our private space abroad, how can we backtrack? A glacial film that probably dethrones Haneke by its power and elegance of raw staging. A masterpiece of the genre to be reserved for an informed audience and a film sadly condemned to VOD despite its presence in Sundance and Fantasia.

⇒ My review

The Innocents, candid cruelty

Children discover paranormal powers that add up and combine when they come together. Another form of awakening is then emerging, faced with the power to adjugate death. The Innocents eskyl Vogt is an example of Nordic cinema and the cruelty of childhood. Sober and elegant in its staging, The Innocents is clean and offers an eight enclosed between four HLM where childhood experiences the limits of power. Again, tension is queen from beginning to end. A Scandinavian film with Speak No Evil Remember that the North has been at the forefront of genre cinema in recent years.

⇒ My review and Blu-ray test
⇒ Interview with Eskyl Vogt

Nights of Mashhad, a movie before custody

Iranian cinema is gaining even more interest as the facts they denounce are at the forefront of the current Iranian revolt. Before the Islamic revolution of 1979 and despite the existence of strong censorship under the Shah regime, Iranian cinema still managed to produce varied works covering all genres.

But since the advent of the Islamic Republic and today the Iranian youth revolt, producing a film with exploitative visas is a puzzle that requires to demonstrate a crazy inventiveness as foreign supporters. A power at the end of the reign increased pressure on artists and sought to make cinema an ideological vector of propaganda. While actress Taraneh Alidoosti revealed by Leila and her brothers has just been arrested, supporting Iranian cinema finds a special resonance today.

After Tehran Law Saeed Roustayi or Black market d-Abbas Amini, Nights of Mashhad Iranian (and Danish) director Ali Abassi particularly moved this year. "A father of a family embarks on his own religious quest: cleaning the holy city of Mashhad from prostitutes". A journalist will then conduct the investigation to reveal the origin of the killer while the police are not in a hurry to resolve the investigation. Nights of Mashhad reveals all the fractures of Iranian society, some of which will not hesitate to make the killer a martyr. Drawing from a true story, the film is a heartbreak on the transmission of deadly values by fundamentalism and religious fanaticism. A striking film from beginning to end.

The Batman, a long halloween twilight

Let's finish with a blockbuster and not the least: The Batman. Returning to the sources of the greatest private detective, camped here by a twilight Robert Pattinson, Batman's vampirical figure is the most prominent. The blundered complexion, the angular face and the hair in battle, young Bruce Wayne lives in the pain of eternal mourning: that of his parents shot by the mafia in a dark alley like Gotham is full of it. In light years of the billionaire's insurance and bragging over its quarantine in the previous stages, it is a much less assertive and seductive Batman who dominates here.

Quasi gothic with its slow gait and leather boots, Robert Pattinson looks depressive in this feature film - a little long and far from perfect - but so bold in shape. In light years of Marvel, DC has been borrowing since Joker a much more marked authoring path that proves that one can very well make a superhero movie (more) intelligent while respecting comics.

⇒ My review and 4K Ultra HD test
⇒ 20 comics to tame the bat

The real one « eco-friendly fable » of the end of the year is Spanish and it is called... Unicorn Wars !

Well... I cheated I added a sixth film that I had unjustly forgotten as I discovered a moment ago in Annecy... I would have felt a rag not to talk aboutUnicorn Wars, while he just came out at the end of December as a late Chronopost gift from a Santa Claus avenged at Christmas Eve. What better way to end the year 2022 than cubs who wage a holy war against unicorns?

Under his mescaline-lighted bisounours, Unicorn Wars is much more than an anime gore. The director Alberto Vázquez uses the art of subversion to better serve us an intelligent fable and directly questions our relationship to Other as to Nature. By alternating the registers to better cover up the codes, Unicorn Wars goes from comics to slashers to tragedy. Unicorn Wars is a powerful pamphlet against Man and his relation to otherness, but also against the domination of Nature. An instant classic that shows a radicality that I don't like Cameron.

⇒ My review with the interview with Alberto Vázquez

Your 2022 decision?

If Matrix Resurrections for calendar reasons, I could have cited the waste Jurassic World: The World After (unjustly rewarded at the box office), but that would have been dishonest, since who says disappointment says hope. But there is nothing more to expect from the franchise after the second part. Same for Buzz That was really bad for Pixar. Far from being a bad film, the last James Gray also left on my hunger by his academicism and lack of emotional involvement. So thinking about it and even typing in the anthill, I'd say Dune that I found much too smooth despite a quality realization.

DuneThe cold desert?

While Blade Runner 2049 is a monument and a film so free in approach, I found Villeneuve more locked by Hollywood codes with Dune. If the realization remains good, the film is rather flat, sadly predictable (hucking the death of Uncle Dadass) and so unviolent. For a desert supposedly invivable, not a drop of sweat on the characters. Never.

Everyone is clean and on his 31 even in the middle of the box. We're a few light years away from an organic film like Alien where it sucks until almost make us feel the smell of sweat dying the screen. This is a pity because the verses are successful and general aesthetics remains under control, but there was room to do something less academic and otherwise warmer. Laying down your universe is good, telling something is better. Maybe for the next few?

THE FILM THAT YOU NOTE ON YOUR CALENDAR IN 2023?

If we see a lot of the spielbergian sect paluching on Twitter on the very promising The FabelmansI'm as curious as I'm afraid to see what an American like Ridley Scott can do with Napoleon, a figure so politically marked. However, the director had already shown what he was capable of with the excellent The Last Duel and with Joaquin Phoenix at the casting, hard not to pack. To a lesser extent, for the French this time, it must be recognised that large-scale production The Three Musketeers Shut up!

Apart from indecisive surprises that will not fail to train the festivals, I wait firm foot Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The first was a slam in the world of animation and the extract that I saw in front of first eight closed at Annecy is super promising. This is the film that I expect most in 2023.

⇒ My first impressions since Annecy

Waited for 2 June 2023, Spider-Man: Alone against All Will he live up to my expectations?

To relax, I'd go see that good old man. John Wick who should still kill a bunch of mobsters to avenge his dog. I secretly hope that the next one Evil Dead will be at the level of the last, still unmatched in terms of the bloody house special effects. I am also intrigued by Mario's arrival on a large screen and waiting for a bit of daring for the second Dune. Because you have to laugh a little in this world of bullies, I also wait Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey who doesn't look like flying high, but is intriguing with such a synopsis.

YOUR RESOLUTION FOR 2023?

Even if the world turns into chaos sauce Mad Max in the Soviets, I guarantee you that MaG will cover the last festivals of the apocalypse, in the joy of the end of the world and the smell of a last peasant schnapps. I'm already glad.

I always knew that a bear that didn't wear briefs wasn't frequentable.