While the Guardian’s Top 50 countdown, as voted for by the whole film team, announces its No 1 today, here are our chief critic’s personal choices, in no particular order
• Read the US Top 50 movies of 2022• Read the
UK Top 50 films of 2022• More of the best culture of 2022
It is time once again for me to unveil the Braddies – my strictly personal awards (distinct from the film section’s collegiate best of the year selection) for the calendar year.This time last year, I somewhat naively said that the industry was emerging from its pandemic woes. And in fact, there was some optimistic talk this year about the industry resuming its pre-pandemic annual turnstile target of 200m admissions. Big films such as Doctor Strange and particularly Tom Cruise’s barnstorming blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick filled cinemas to bursting. (A cinema manager told me excitedly: “Why on earth should we schedule anything else when Top Gun will always pack out our venue?”)
But maybe the movie world is still suffering the effects of Covid. The
American Cineworld chain, which owns the Cineworld and Picturehouse sites in the UK, filed for bankruptcy this year, citing the Covid downturn. And even more pressingly, the Edinburgh film festival (EIFF) was shut down this autumn, along with the historic Edinburgh Filmhouse cinema and Aberdeen’s Belmont Filmhouse, after the Centre for Moving Image charity which controlled them ceased trading – again, citing energy costs and the Covid effect on
box office.