The number of Australian bums on velour-clad cinema seats in 2022 bounced back to around three-quarters of pre-pandemic levels, and there was even a home-made film in the top 10 local grossers (albeit one set in Memphis and Vegas). Sadly our next placed entry, the less-than-wonderful Wog Boys Forever, is way down at number 55.
True to form, we produced a slew of quality movies, but more of us paid to see Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank than we did for all but one of them.
So, if all you saw in the last 12 months was a 60-year-old climbing back into a fighter jet, a déjà vu dino retread and a few MCU kerfuffles, here are 10 you really should make time for.
10. Bosch & Rockit
Director: Tyler Atkins
Streaming on: Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play
The Grand Jury Prize winner at California’s Mammoth Film Festival, this amiable hunk of nostalgia is breezy and entertaining, but not for the cynical. As troubled pot farmer Bosch (Luke Hemsworth) and his surf-mad son Rockit (pro surfer Rasmus King) go on the run in Byron Bay from corrupt cops, they squabble, bond, squabble some more and then surf under lingering sunsets a lot as soaring violins weep.
First-time director Tyler Atkins’s semi-autobiographical tale is awash with sentimentality but has a quirky charm, and King shows that, should his big wave career ever wipe out, he has palpable leading man potential.
For fans of: Every surfer dude flick apart from Surf’s Up
9. Pieces
Director: Martin Wilson
An affecting doco-style drama commissioned by the WA-based mental health support group Helping Minds to showcase the unsung work done by carers and stigmas still attached to so many conditions. Screenwriter Monique Wilson plays the teacher of a troubled art therapy class who bare their souls about the isolation, discrimination and stereotyping they face.
Director Martin Wilson made it for just $150,000 as a tribute to his brother, who’s lived with schizophrenia for 50 years, and his impressive efforts earned him nominations at both the Australian Directors Guild Awards and the AACTAs.
For fans of: Movies of real compassion that shine a light on the unheard
8. Three Thousand Years of Longing
Director: George Miller
Streaming on: Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play
Before he cranked up the volume to direct Furiosa, the $180million Fury Road prequel, George Miller made this unashamedly old-fashioned fantasy with not a fire-breathing Honda GoldWing in sight.
Tilda Swinton is an anti-social literary scholar who buys a glass bottle not realising it contains Idris Elba – well, a lonely genie played by the former future James Bond, who as genie playbooks dictate, grants three wishes.
As it turned out, one of her wishes should have been for a better box office result. This is a warm-hearted, touching fable that deserved an audience.
For fans of: Genie yarns that don’t contain Will Smith
7. The Cleaning Company (aka Clean)
Director: Lachlan Mcleod
Streaming on: SBS On Demand
Sandra Pankhurst was a trans woman and former drag queen who’d drifted between being a sex worker and funeral director before finding her true calling: running a cleaning business in Melbourne specialising sprucing up murder scenes, meth labs, hoarder homes and other sites where most mop-wielders would fear to tread.
Director Lachlan Mcleod teases out the humanity of the cleaners and the vulnerable people they try to help. Sandra herself, on a heartbreaking journey to track down her mum, is an extraordinary central character – a fractured survivor with a brutal backstory.
For fans of: Kenny, Priscilla and other stories of human dignity
6. Sissy
Director: Hannah Barlow & Kane Senes
Streaming on: Shudder
A satirical Mean Girls slasher comedy centred around a hen weekend in a remote cabin that ends badly… and bloodily. Former schoolgirl chums Emma and Cecilia had fallen out years earlier, but conveniently run into one another just in time for Emma’s pre-nuptials jaunt.
Fatuous influencer Cecilia finds herself trapped in a catty Get Out-like fix in a satisfyingly graphic gorefest. Sissy kinda has something to say about being true to yourself, but mainly it’s an excuse to wallow in some deliciously crafted, tongue-in-cheek depravity.
For fans of: Scream, Cherry Falls, The Craft and other self-aware teen horrors
5. Nude Tuesday
Director: Armağan Ballantyne
Streaming on: Stan
A screwball laughathon about a middle-aged couple gifted a weekend at a retreat where a cultish sex guru could just save – or destroy – their marriage.
A collaboration between the Australian and New Zealand film commissions and conceived by Kiwi auteur Armağan Ballantyne, this is an unabashed orgy of outrageousness, but doesn’t actually contain much clothes-free action.
All the dialogue is spoken in a made-up language that sounds like The Muppets’ Swedish chef reading a Volvo parts catalogue that’s written in Elvish. Witty subtitles are courtesy of British comedian Julia Davis. A deranged joyride of ridiculousness.
For fans of: Taika Waititi at his most leftfield
4. Elvis
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Streaming on: Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play
Baz Luhrmann’s flamboyant musical cavalcade shoe-horned the entire Elvis story into a rip-roaring, unflinching 159 minutes. Austin Butler mesmerises as Mr Pelvis morphing from wide-eyed bluesman to sweat-soaked lounge room crooner, all under the tutelage of Tom Hanks’ grotesque Colonel Parker.
Shot on The Gold Coast with a largely Aussie supporting cast, this is Luhrmann at his unchained best, pulling out the stops to conjure an unapologetically energetic tribute framed by Hanks’ Deep South-tinged Dutch drawl. It’s not exactly an intimate character study, but a terrific greatest hits package – that swept the board at the AACTAs – nevertheless.
For fans of: Blues-tinged, hip-wiggling, lip-quivering, soul-enhancing rock’n’roll
3. The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson
Director: Leah Purcell
Streaming on: Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play
A pitiless outback western set in the late 19th century wastelands around the Snowy Mountains where a pregnant mum of four defends her family from unsavoury locals, wild bulls and the extreme cold. Written, directed by and starring Indigenous filmmaker Leah Purcell, it was nominated for multiple awards including 13 AACTAs – Purcell scooping the Lead Actress gong.
Purnell originally adapted Henry Lawson’s short story into a much-lauded stage play before penning a novelisation and now, finally, a feature film. She’s outstanding as the titular feminist stalwart, and her screenplay doesn’t shy away from the violence and intimidation Aboriginal women faced in the emerging frontier towns.
For fans of: Sweet Country, The Man from Snowy River and Tracks
2. The Stranger
Director: Thomas M. Wright
Streaming on: Netflix
An intense psychological murder mystery featuring a career-best turn by Joel Edgerton as an undercover cop masterminding a sting to get a suspected child killer to confess.
Very loosely based on an actual police operation, The Stranger is a dark, uncompromising insight into the devastating reality of painstakingly unlocking the mind of a psychopath.
Writer and director Thomas M. Wright’s previous work includes 2018’s much-lauded, but largely unseen biopic of artist Adam Cullen, Acute Misfortune, which is also well worth a look.
For fans of: Unvarnished crime yarns like The Dry, Blue Murder and Two Hands.
1. You Won’t Be Alone
Director: Goran Stolevski
Streaming on: Apple TV, Google Play
Australia’s official entry for Best International Film at next year’s Oscars, this audacious 19th century witching horror set in Macedonia from first-time Aussie director Goran Stolevski is a simple tale of a young girl who inhabits the body of a peasant she’s killed to understand what it feels like to be human.
A breathtaking, grimmer-than-Grimm fairy story that subverts gender identities and chucks convention out of the window in a sometimes baffling but always captivating ride that’s littered with satisfyingly surreal plot twists.
For fans of: Clever, disturbing horror that doesn’t need jump-scares to terrify.