Films

Other than family films, I saw only two films in the cinema this year, and one of them was a fifty-year-old classic. But all the same, my film of the year is the rereleased Don’t Look Now (Nicholas Roeg, 1973). For superstitious reasons I’d avoided watching it until now since becoming a parent, but in my current phase of life and on the big screen it had an even greater impact on me than ever before.

My favourite film released recently was Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022), which I found devastating, partly due to its quietness and obliqueness.

My biggest discovery is also a shameful admission – despite loving several David Lynch films and Twin Peaks, I’d never seen Eraserhead (1977). Now I have, and I found it nothing at all like I’d expected, being both funnier and more directly about something than I’d imagined.

Other films from 2022-23 that I loved included Iranian family road-trip drama Hit the Road (Panah Panahi, 2022), the overblown yet darkly funny Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund, 2022), downbeat folk-horror Enys Men (Mark Jenkin, 2022), patiently building body horror Hatching (Hanna Bergholm, 2022), the surprisingly witty and auteurish, Benedict Cumberbatch-starring The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (Will Sharpe, 2022), and the equally surprising Roald Dahl adaptation The Rat Catcher (Wes Anderson, 2023).

And some more older films I watched for the first time this year and thoroughly enjoyed: tender documentary The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000), complex family epic Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000), scuzzy realistic drama Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1982) and an excellent documentary about early electronic music, Sisters With Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020).

TV

For me, there were three TV shows that stood above all the others this year. The first series of pro-kitchen-drama The Bear was a revelation in terms of confounding expectations scene by scene, and while the scale ramps up in the second series and characters’ obstacles became less unsurmountable, the beating heart and sometimes unbearable tension remains intact. Shane Meadows’ The Gallows Pole is a startling adaptation of Ben Myers’ terrific historical novel, its anachronistic music and rambling improvised dialogue adding to rather than diminishing its impact. The Rehearsal is the show I think about the most, due to its bleeding of reality-TV conventions and the increasing suspicion that it can’t be real. The fact that the narrative gradually becomes as absurd as it does without abandoning its conceit of being 100% real is frankly incredible.

Similarly woozy is comedy special A Whole Lifetime with Jamie Demetriou, a Lynchian approach to sketch comedy that I must rewatch soon. Succession ended well, and at the right time. Colin from Accounts was the warmest comedy I saw this year. And the TV offshoot from the excellent film also titled Boiling Point brings us all the way back to intense kitchen action.

Videogames

I bought a PS5 this year, having missed out on the previous generation, but the games I’ve enjoyed on it weren’t the AAA adventures or indie gems that I expected. The game that most impressed me is Returnal (Housemarque, 2021), a 3D action roguelike on a cosmic scale. Not only is its gameplay loop reminiscent of earlier Housemarque arcade classic Super Stardust HD, one aspect I particularly enjoyed was the conveying of story through incidental worldbuilding details, with barely any of the cutscenes that have made AAA franchises (e.g. God of War, Uncharted, Horizon) close to unbearable.

Another big surprise was revisiting the 2020 remake of Demon’s Souls (FromSoftware, 2009), a game I played just before abandoning gaming for a long while. Whereas I hit the wall hard in 2009, this time I persevered with a Royalty build, improved steadily, and to my astonishment beat the game. I followed this up with Elden Ring (FromSoftware, 2022), a bigger and far more beautiful game – and dedicated myself to it to finally beat it too, after 90 hours. Like Returnal, I appreciated its complex lore being conveyed through observation and very limited conversation rather than cutscenes.

The other games I loved were Dysmantle (10tons, 2020), a top-down post-apocalyptic scavenging game with a relatively calm gameplay loop, and Metroid Prime: Remastered (Retro Studios, 2023), still one of my all-time favourite games, and now looking and playing like I remember it looking and playing in 2002.