2022 is finally over!

So, what did I think of Empire's Top 20 Films of 2022?

Considering first the overlap between Empire and The Guardian, there are eleven films that appear on both lists and, of these, I liked eight of them which isn't a bad hit rate at all - The Woman King, The Souvenir Part II and Licorice Pizza are the ones they both think are great and I'm not that fussed on.  

This means we have nine films on this list that The Guardian didn't have - of these, I think that Prey (way better than I was expecting) and EEAAO (bonkers but great) are definite contenders for any "best of 2022" list, Turning Red (what I was expecting) and Nope (not entirely clear what this was!) were both definitely worth a watch, Avatar - The Way Of Water was dreadful and the rest were mostly watchable.

Of my top sixteen films from The Guardian list, six made the Empire list and, considering the ones that Empire missed out from their year end list, they gave Flee, Playground and Living (I really liked this) five stars (they're obviously fans of single word titles), The Wonder three stars (a wrong decision), they didn't review Everything Went Fine and Official Competition (this feels a very Empire kind of film!) and everything else got four stars - so no obvious duds in their opinion.

Summing the rankings across both lists, the top five with the lowest totals were Decision To Leave (28), RRR (23), The Banshees Of Inisherin (16), Licorice Pizza (13) and, our clear winner, Aftersun (7) - a decent enough selection, but not my top five of the year.  It's also kinda odd that Top Gun: Maverick came second on Empire's list and second from bottom on The Guardian's.

And with that, we're finally done with 2022 (provided we ignore all the TV stuff that I'm very unlikely to get round to watching!) so I can get on with 2023 - it's well into February '24 and I'm only halfway through the first film!

#1 - A spectacular film to end the list
#50 (2023 Guardian) - A really good film to start the list
#20 (2023 Empire) - Impressively grim, but overly long

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