Author: Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley

Check out previous installments here.

2022 was a long, dreary year that overstayed its welcome many times over and we’re glad to see the back of it. But it had its highlights. Dean fell in love with James Whale and Claude Rains, fell back in love with superheroes and finally got 2001: A Space Odyssey after seeing it on the big screen. Ciara got Cruisepilled by Top Gun: Maverick, Bazpilled by Elvis and Brian Trenchard-Smithpilled by the films of Brian Trenchard-Smith. We saw My Chemical Romance live (!!!) and Dean accidentally bought two tickets to Michael Flatley’s Blackbird, which isn’t good, but is funny. Ciara watched all the Fast and Furious movies in February and Dean watched a bunch of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff films in October.

We released a load of really good episodes of our podcast, The Sundae Presents, and published excellent essays on Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road and Anglophilia, the death of the Queen and Herman’s Hermits by guest contributors Jennifer O’Callaghan and Will Shaw. We appeared individually on The 250 podcast to talk about It Happened One Night and Modern Times, and together to talk about The Conversation. Ciara got published a bunch of different places and Dean genuinely came up with around 200 original superhero and supervillains just for fun.

We’ll have our piece to say about the films released this year when we do the Sundae Film Awards in March, but suffice it to say, despite the bright spots, now more than ever, we’ve found our greatest joy in cinema past. Eras when the medium seemed full of potential instead of peril. This year, we’ve watched films famous and infamous, forgotten and forsaken, celebrated and slandered, from around the world and across time. Over a hundred for Dean, and over four hundred for Ciara. These are just some of our very favourites, and we highly recommend all of them.