Would the real winner of the 3rd place trophy at Jeddah please stand up?

At time of press, Fernando Alonso was still the holder of 3rd place at the Saudi Grand Prix but that might change again, because, quite frankly I put nothing past the stewards at this point. 

What was a reasonably interesting race has been completely overshadowed by some very bizarre decision making on their part. 

What was looking like a half decent weekend for Ferrari was ruined by one of the odder safety car decisions of recent memory. Admittedly, given Leclerc's luck is looking like Webber's luck of old, I have no doubt that something else would have happened if they hadn't decided to use a full safety car to retrieve a car that wasn't even stopped on track (Chapeau to Stroll for parking it that well in an emergency. Did we ever find out what caused the emergency "stop the car now Lance" message?). 

Two failed ECUs and a half-decent Ferrari strategy shout getting ruined by non-Ferrari mistakes, all in two races, I'm not going to say Lady Luck is against us, but it's as good an explanation as any. 

It's particularly annoying because there are the green shoots of possible Ferrari recovery. 

Whisper it quietly, but, were it not for the safety car, that Ferrari strategy might have worked, and Ferrari had the fastest pit stop in Bahrain. 

Everything except the results seems to be coming together.

Formula 1 - Did the fastest lap and sprint points make any difference in 2022?

Last year, I looked at whether the fastest lap points and sprint race points had any effect on the 2021 Championships. The answer was no, as it had been for the fastest lap points for the 10 years previous. I’m feeling decidedly justified in declaring them a gimmick. 

I would expect them to have had very little effect in 2022 either, not least because of the size of Red Bull’s victory margin.

The fastest lap points winners from 2022 can be found below.    

7 different drivers and 4 different constructors won fastest lap points which is in line with an average season. 

The final standings for the Constructors' Championships, with and without the fastest lap points. Removing the fastest lap points makes no change in the Constructors Title. 

How about in the Drivers's championship? Once again, the fastest lap points lead to no changes. 

That means if we put together the calculated total points if there had been fastest laps from 2009-2018, and the actual results in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, 0 constructors results out of 149 have been affected by fastest lap points. 

In the drivers’ championship, the number of results affected is 11/327 (3.36% of all results), and none of those are in the top 3 of any given year. 

Let’s look at the sprint races, maybe they had an effect, especially with the extra points available in 2022, after the damp squib the sprint races had been in 2021. 

The sprint race points were as follows: Because there were points available for more sprint race places in 2022, I've also made tables for which constructors and drivers got points.  

Do the sprint race points have an effect on either championship?  

* and ¶ = teams whose positions swapped.

   

*, ¶ and § = drivers whose positions swapped. 

Giving points to almost half the field 3 times a year changes the position of 6 of the drivers. Only 2 of those drivers are really at the pointy end of the championship. 

So, what have we learned 

• The 1 point for fastest lap is too small to affect anything. I think that’s also why the top teams don’t really go for extra pitstops just to get it. 

• The increase in points for the sprint races in 2022 meant they did affect things. 

• But probably not enough to justify the extra time and effort 

• Plus it’s not like they actually produce more racing, either during the sprint or the main race 

• Help, I am agreeing with Christian Horner about something.

I hereby dub the Ferrari SF-23 "the Fretful Porpentine"

Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik 

Why am I calling it that? 

Because it too sheds spiky parts and is concerning. 

Possibly I am over-reacting to one race but I had my concerns after testing. 

Some of them were, I grant, less sensible than others. I like the Ferrari to be the prettiest car on the grid, but I fear the Alfa Romeo may be the prettiest car this year (https://twitter.com/F1/status/1622886779136184321). This year's Ferrari looks like this - https://twitter.com/F1/status/1625456362997129216 

(I am intrigued by the different shape of the rear wing for the Alfa Romeo and the Alpha Tauri versus the other cars on the grid - https://twitter.com/F1/status/1629425434109652992) 

Some of them were more wide-ranging. I see that Ferrari have a new team principal, which is normally a sign that Ferrari have run out of ideas. I have nothing again Frederic Vasseur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Vasseur), and I think he'll do a good job, but I don't think most of the problems last year were Mattia Binotto's fault. Maybe the changes Vasseur has already made will help, but time will tell. 

I was expecting more of a gap between testing and the first race. I expect F1 to kick off around St. Patrick's day; I think I've forgotten that there are more races per season now. This means I didn't post any of that before the first race in Bahrain (it also means my 75% finished post on the Tour de France Femmes is going to be delayed further). 

So qualifying in Bahrain starts, and Leclerc's car decides to shed aero parts causing a red flag. I rechristen the SF-23. Ferrari do something interesting with tyre strategy, and, I am happy to give them the benefit of the doubt here, because Leclerc made it sound like strategy, not an oversight, and we all know that he has no poker face. 

Then there's the race. 

I can live with Alonso getting past Sainz because Alonso was just having one of those races, because he's Fernando Alonso having one of those races. I am less happy with Perez blasting past Leclerc because Ferrari will hopefully be fighting against Red Bull this season and the ease of the pass does not bode well. 

Then ... then ... I am choosing to blame Channel 4, who were literally in the middle of saying there had only been one retirement when Leclerc's Ferrari went pop. Cue Leclerc making one of those anguished noises. Or, to quote Channel 4 after Leclerc's post-race interview, "I don't remember what happy Leclerc looks like." Which is a pretty damning statement. 

In response to that, because I can cope with people hating Ferrari or fearing Ferrari but not with them pitying Ferrari, I am bringing back the bingo card. Post-race inquest revealed that it was an engine failure, which is why that's been dabbed. 

I think Leclerc's post-failure radio message definitely counts as "that noise". 

Guys, it's first race in and there's already been three boxes dabbed. This is not promising. 

On the other hand, it could have been worse, either driver could have had Estaban Ocon's horror of a race.

The King; his Heir Apparent...and The Pharaoh waiting in the wings - Shearer, Kane and Salah, games and goals per season.

This started as either a drunken conversation, a disagreement or a follow up to a Match of the Day stat. How vague my memory of parts of it is suggests one option above the others, but it has also been some time since the conversation happened which might also explain it. 

Some time ago, Harry Kane missed a couple of matches due to an ankle injury, again. The "again" was the problem. It had become clear that if Kane had a weakness, it was his ankle not his game. Cue L saying that the thing that would stop Kane reaching Alan Shearer's goal-scoring records would be injuries, because once you start having to miss games due to recurring injuries to the same body part, the number of games missed because of it is only going to increase. 

L wanted to know whether the games per season Kane played up to this point matched Shearer's or not. 

I raised an objection, which is that Kane, playing for a decent Spurs team, probably has more chance of playing more games than Shearer had while at Newcastle, because while every team plays the same number of league games, there's cups and European games to consider as well. (Shearer at Newcastle, excellent example of 'the things we do for love'.) 

So, it was agreed to calculate percentage of possible games played for Shearer and Kane. Alongside their stats, I was asked to include Mo Salah because he was scoring at a ridiculous rate and might have beaten Kane to any given record. 

I used TransferMarkt's data for all the players. 

When Kane was 27 and Salah was 28 the data looked like this - dotted lines are polynomial lines of best fit.

  Obviously, for Shearer (blue dots and dotted line) we had stats for his whole career. The noticeable thing is that even at the end of his career, he was playing in a high percentage of Newcastle's games (in his last year he played in 85% of Newcastle’s games), but this might have been because Newcastle really never had a replacement for Shearer ready at the time. 

There is a reason he has a statue outside of St. James's Park.  

For the other two, the dotted lines are predictions and the lines look pretty different. 

Let’s look at it if we only use the data up to the age of 27, the maximum age all had reached at that point.  

The curve for Shearer is heavily affected by his lack of games at the age of 27 (due to a long injury layoff). 

You can see Shearer's curve is a very different shape to the other two. 

At the start of this year, when there was an extra year's data, the percentage of games played with extrapolation looked like this:  

You can see the addition of that extra year's data changes the shape of Kane's curve a lot. His curve was being brought down by one low percentage season. I don't think the difference is an artifact, because if you look at the shape of the curves from actual data, not extrapolated (below), the shape hasn't changed with the extra data.  

Okay so we have the data, but the point of a striker is to score goals, so how does goals per game look for the three? 

Looking to the projected stats at 27, they look like this: The two lower blue dots for Alan Shearer, at 27 and 30 years, reflect the years he had his worst injuries, which does suggest that injuries also reduce potency as you come back. 

If we look at goals per game only up to 27, it looks like this: The really interesting thing is that Salah's curve has a completely different shape to the other two, possibly reflecting his change from winger to striker, whereas the other two have always been strikers.

After the figure was updated to include the data once Kane was 28 and Salah 29, the goals per game curve (predicted) looks like this: The shape of the three curves is quite different, Salah's constantly increasing, Shearer's a parabola, but a fairly shallow one, while Kane's is a much sharper parabola. I'm not sure if that's because of low goals per game last season skewing the whole curve, that frankly ridiculous season he had at 18 or a side effect of Spurs playing him slightly deeper now. 

Looking only at data up to the age of 28 does suggest it's an effect of Kane's excellent year at 18, because in this view, his curve and Shearer's are very similar, while Salah's continue to show an increase, possibly due to him moving from wing to striker.  

It makes sense to combine the two analyses and provide the goals per possible games, because yes, Shearer had fewer opportunities. On the other hand, it may make Kane and Salah's data look worse unfairly, given the modern tendency to squad rotation. 

The extrapolated version at 27 looks like this: which is unexpected. I would have expected deleterious effects to hit Kane and Salah equally but Kane's curve really is warped by the poor year at 27. 

I think it's mostly the extrapolation going haywire, because if you look just up to 27 without it (below), Kane's curve and Shearer's again match. Salah's remains different (possibly reflecting that Klopp doesn't really do squad rotation).  

I updated this at the end of last season. The extrapolated curve from Kane being 28 and Salah being 29 looks like this: While it could be Kane's production dropping precipitously, I think it's the extrapolation because the curves without extrapolation look like this: Where can this go? Well, there are 3 possible future things I'm thinking of looking at. 

Going from most obvious to least obvious: 

1 - Yearly updates of this data, to find out a) how good the extrapolation was at predicting what will happen, b) find out if Liverpool's 'orrible year this year has any effect on that stunningly straight curve shape of Salah's, and c) see if the drop for Kane in the prediction is just a blip. 

2 - Include Wayne Rooney's data. He'd act as a nice control, retired player, whose position shifted from striker to something deeper. 

3 - Add Haaland. This is another suggestion from L. I don't think it's because he wants to drive me round the twist but I fear it's going to weird things to my graphs. 

@mixed_knuts for @statsbomb once gave a talk where he discussed the effect that year Burnley really outperformed expectations had on Statsbomb's analyses. Burnley's data was so different to everyone else's that after every analysis they had to check whether any outlier was a bug or just Burnley being Burnley. 

I think Haaland would cause the same thing. His goalscoring for his age is ridiculous. On the other hand, he's young enough there's no saying he'd be able to keep it up. That's the one advantage to the above comparison being Kane and Salah, they were already in the middle of their careers when I started it, there was a solid amount of data. Even from that, the very basic extrapolation done by Excel has problems fitting the data. I dread to think what it'll do to Haaland's data.

Benford's Law - From February 2021 to the end of August 2021

I never actually drop projects, I just don't update them for a while. So let us return to the Benford's Law project, with information about the first digits in the top news article on the BBC website on 26 out of the 31 days of August 2021. 

In those 26 articles, there were 398 numbers with leading digits. That's ~ 15 per day, which about the same as June, but more than July. 

 Most of those numbers came from the article on the 8th of August (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/58112331) which was about the performance of different sports at the Tokyo Olympics compared to their funding.  

No number appeared exactly as often as expected, 5 was the closest, but even that was 1% away from expected. 1 and 2 are the most different to their expected values, both are over-represented. 

If you add together the sum of all the values of (observed-expected)squared, all divided by the expected, the calculated test statistic is 8.5, the highest since February itself. 

The critical chi squared value for 9 items with only one line is ~ 15.507 The test statistic smaller than the critical value therefore the difference is not significant. This data does not disobey Benford's Law. 

If we look at the rolling total from February to the end of August, there have been 2258 numbers with leading digits.  

No number exactly its expected value, 5 is the closest. 1 is the number furthest away from its expected value and remains over-represented. 

If you add together the sum of all the values of (observed-expected) squared, all divided by the expected, the calculated test statistic is 3.00, not reducing the way it should do with the addition of more first digits that obey Benford's Law. However, as the critical chi squared value for 9 items with only one line is ~ 15.507, the test statistic smaller than the critical value therefore the difference is not significant. This data does not disobey Benford’s Law. 

The test statistic continues to fluctuate rather than reduce which is interesting.

Film Review - Blinded by the Light

The year it came out, I named "Blinded By The Light" my favourite film of the year. I stand by that. 

I have no idea if it's a good film mind you, because it just blows past good, straight past all my critical faculties. 

It captures that teenage feeling of no-one understanding you except your band, in all its melodramatic glory. I mean it, that windswept scene, who hasn't felt precisely that? 

Maybe that's why I love the film - the way it reflects so many of my experiences. Not just "my favourite band are the only people who understand me", but the town in economic distress ('Luton is a Four-Letter Word' indeed), the friend you shared your music with, Leicester being the escape from your rundown town, so much of it. 

That's before we get to Roop looking so much like A who was my mate who shared his music with me. (No, seriously, that was uncanny, and means I get guilt for not keeping in better touch with A every time I think of the film.) 

The whole thing is filled with so much love, from Javed on down. Everyone is trying to get tomorrow and helpd each other as best they can (except Eliza's parents and the National Front, and fuck the National Front). 

The love is everywhere - find me a scene more filled with love than the one where Javed's Mum dyes Javed's Dad's hair. 

It would have been so easy to make Javed's Dad the boo-hiss disapproving Dad of legend, but he's not. He disapproves, yes, and he doesn't understand, but he's trying so hard and it's clear throughout that he loves his son. Even if he's terrible at showing it. 

The other thing I really like is that Javed is not over-idealised. As it's based on an autographical book, it must have been so tempting to make Javed super-sympathetic and always right, but he isn't. He gets to be mean, thoughtless and selfish at times. He's a teenager and feels like it. I also like that, unlike a lot of other Bildungsroman-type films, Javed grows through his own experiences and not the suffering of others. 

In short, I loved it.

Women's Rugby League World Cup - Thoughts and Network Diagrams

This is what the network diagram for the group stage of the Women's Rugby League World Cup 2021/2 looks like.  

Even if you don't know anything about rugby league, you can probably guess which teams are the major forces in international rugby. 

The Cook Islands are the national team closest to the centre with a number of club teams possibly being closest to the centre. 

The club teams with the most players represented are: 

12 - Brisbane Broncos 

11 - St Helens 

10 - Gold Coast Titans, Deesses Catalanes (who might win best name) 

More of the national teams have players in just a few teams than in the men's competition. 

Other things you might have noticed: 

1 - There are only 23 Brazilian players. Like some of the smaller men's teams, the Brazilian team is made up of several players borrowed from rugby union, and I think that was as many as they could bring together. 

1b - Note the NZ player who's club team is the NZ Sevens national team. 

1c - Even the juggernaut that is the Jillaroos (Australian Women's Rugby League team) had players that couldn't turn up because of work commitments. 

2 - Canada only gave information about the region the players play for, not the team the players play for. For the two players playing outside of Canada, the information give was the country they played in. Those players are both labelled as "other". One I am reasonably sure plays for London Broncos. 

What were my views of the women's group stage? 

Franciny Amaral of Brazil tackles like a demon. I would welcome her on any Saints team. 

Yes, I wanted England to win, but some part of my heart will always belong to the PNG Orchids. 

Now, a brief side step before we continue on through to the rest of the women's tournament - why is there no wheelchair World Cup diagram? 

There is no data available. 

At the last World Cup (which was men's and women's running at the same time) I had the same problem with a lack of data on the players in the women's world cup. Having seen how much the women's game has grown since then I am hopeful that next time, I'll be able to have three sets of diagrams. 

Women's Semi-finals 

Not unexpectedly, the 4 semi-finalists were from that central cluster of 5 teams in the group stage diagram. The semi-final diagrams look like this:  

No national team is definitely closest to the centre while Newcastle Knights are the club team closest to the centre. 

Brisbane Broncos remain the club team with the most representatives (12), followed by St Helens (11).  The Cook Islands players being removed from the diagram mean there's now 5 club teams with 8 players left in the competition (Leeds Rhino, Newcastle Knights, St George Illawarra, Sydney Roosters, Gold Coast Titans). 

Much like the men's tournament, women's international rugby league needs to reduce the gap between the good teams and the not-good-yet teams, but I think more NRLW and Women's Super League (damn it soccer it was our name first) expanding and going professional will help that. 

As is traditional, the Black Ferns's haka is significantly more terrifying than that of the menfolk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuZ1ExXUgFY 

I did like Amy Hardcastle's look of "well bring it" in response. Unfortunately, New Zealand then did bring it and beat England (bah humbug). 

If anyone ever wants the best "image of dejection" I think Jodie Cunningham, pigtails drooping with sadness, with two black eyes, apologising for the loss, takes some beating. Don't worry, you'll get them next time. 

On the other hand, Mele Hufanga, playing for New Zealand in the absence of a Tongan team, is absolutely lovely and I love her.

 <3 diagrams="" final.="" for="" her.="" lj-cut="" moving="" on="" text="Two last network diagrams" the="" to="">  

<3 diagrams="" final.="" for="" her.="" lj-cut="" moving="" on="" text="Two last network diagrams" the="" to="">Both teams equally close to the centre, somewhat obviously, with Brisbane Broncos or Gold Coast Titans the nearest club team to the centre. 

Brisbane Broncos have the most players representing them in the final with 12, followed by the Sydney Roosters and Gold Coast Titans on 8 and Newcastle Knights and St George Illawarra on 7. 

As you can imagine, all the English teams got wiped out when England got knocked out - the women's game hasn't reached the stage where the Super League is the NRL's retirement home. 

People were looking forward to this final because the group stage match between New Zealand and Australia had been so close, 2 points in it, same number of tries, the difference being a penalty. 

It might be close this time ... 

Australia had apparently lulled us all into a false sense of hope because the final was an annihilation. 

Even with Ali Brigginshaw suffering from the same problems that every Australian and New Zealandish kicker seemed to have had. 

Ali Brigginshaw winning player of the match in a World Cup final for the second time has gone remarkably under-remarked upon, which might also demonstrate how all conquering this Jillaroos side is. We can only hope that someone gives them more of a fight next time (I might want that to be England, but I would be happy with anyone giving them more of a fight).

Film Review - Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Spoilers throughout, along with guest commentary from L (in purple).

This film does not hang together well.

If that's a problem for you; this is not the film for you.

This said, if you came into a film co-billing Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson & Jason "The Stath" Statham, and were really needing a film that hangs together well…you have unreasonable expectations, and need to have a word with yourself.

No, run along and have a word with yourself; the rest of us have other business to which to attend.

Whether by accident or design, it feels like an otherwise unrelated film, a buddy cop film along the lines of Tango and Cash was shoehorned into a Fast & Furious shape.

Add to this the first half an hour or so where we have two unpleasant characters being unpleasant to each other and generally acting like they've got testosterone poisoning and you've got a film that quite quickly teeters over onto the "no" side of the "yes/no" pile.

Sudden unexpected Ryan Reynolds does not help its standing.

It does settle down after the first half hour and becomes watchable if your pleasures are CGI action adventure-y.

There are some nice character touches. Vanessa Kirby and Helen Mirren are their usual excellent selves, and Eddie Marsan's not-so-evil scientist going HAM with a flamethrower stirs something deep in my soul, but the film's basically a waste of Idris Elba which is a terrible shame.

Come to think of it, when was the last time Idiris Elba wasn't wasted? Thor 3? Maybe?

Having read up on the film to write this, I have discovered that the film was David Leitch-directed goodness which explains why the fight scenes are so good.

The stunt people earned their money, there's a motorbike stunt towards the start in particular that is just *chef's kiss*.

The continuity department did not earn their money. I'm not just talking about the part of the film where the characters are said to be landing in one country but the on-screen sign is for a city in another country, but also mid-scene watch switches that are so obvious even little old me, infamously oblivious to that sort of thing, notices.

There's lot of little moments that destroy believability, not least that Hobbs & Shaw takes place in a post-apocalyptic hellscape of augmented super soldiers, nanoviruses, and Samoa apparently never having discovered rugby.

One of these things is more unbelievable than the others, and it's not the super soldiers.

Now probably part of that is that none of the film was filmed in Samoa, it was filmed in Hawaii. While I am aware that the concept of Samoan brotherhood espoused by the film's characters is about people not places, and the large Samoan diaspora in Hawaii, if you're going to have characters spend so much time talking about the glory of Samoa, at least help their economy out by filming there.

Overall, the bits that don't work are the bits that connect it to Fast and Furious, which I think strengthens my feeling that it was based on an unrelated script and they've just smooshed it in.

The main problem is [Jason Statham's character's name] Deckard Shaw He gets a name when he stops basically being Jason Statham. I will never forgive him for killing Han, and I don't care how they have since retconned that. At the time, he was still responsible and it remains unforgivable.

If you like mindless explosions, it's not bad, but even in that genre, it's at best mid-range.

If you want to watch The Rock, watch "The Rundown/Welcome to the Jungle"; if you want to watch Jason Statham, watch "Hummingbird" (which proves he can act if he's bothered to).

In neither of those films are we subjected to a hellscape where Samoa doesn't have rugby.

My top 9 films of 2022 - Once more, with explanations

You'll notice this top 10 is lacking one film.  That's because I didn't see 10 new releases in 2022.  The cinema had two things working against it in summer, excellent weather and the Commonwealth Games, and then the end of November/start of December when I would normally have caught up, I was taken out by the cold that knocked me sideways for 3 weeks (yes, it was just a cold, no, I have no explanation).

This means I've not seen Black Panther 2 yet, which I aim to remedy shortly.  I doubt we're going to have excellent weather two years in a row, so hopefully 2023 will see me watching more films in the cinema.

I am applying my usual 4 criteria:

a – did the film do what it set out to do?

b – did it use its resources to its best ability? A £250,000 film is not going to have as good explosions as a £25,000,000 film, or it shouldn’t, and if it does, there’s something wrong with the £25,000,000 film. Basically, it's a technical merit score.

c – Intellectual satisfaction – does the film’s plot pull some really stupid move at the last moment? Does the plot rely on characters being more stupid than they are?

d – Does this work as a whole? Did it work for me? I am aware that this is the most subjective of subjective criteria!

1 - Cyrano

I cried for three quarters of this film.  I am not sure I can recommend it more than that (matters were not helped by me knowing what happens next).

Sure, I have opinions on some of the changes and the marketing, but it's a joy.

(Also, I will never forgive various awards ceremonies for not giving "Wherever I Fall" something - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHo3w5ORcdY)

2 - Parallel Mothers

The thing I like about Almodovar is he writes woman who are real in all the best, jagged ways.  I have no idea what they'll do next.

I know some people find him a little too much but this is one of his good ones.

3 - Bad Guys

This is an absolute joyous delight of a film.

I love Snake the most, of course I do, and this deeply stupid joke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_inDxb7wQ-Q) got the second biggest belly laugh of the year out me.

I'm cheating slightly, because I saw this on an aeroplane, but despite a 24 hour delay to the flight, it still made me smile so much.  The lady who sat next to me would also like to add her vote.

That's how good it is - it makes jetlagged strangers talk to each other.

4 - Bullet Train

D wanted to see a stupid film to keep him amused for a couple of hours.  This filled that gap.

Is it good?  I don't know.  But it is enjoyable.

The Boomslang's character card got the biggest belly laugh of the year.

5 - Everything Everywhere All At Once

This one is actually probably me being the problem.  Like, I love the idea of it, and the execution of it (and the rock universe), but mindless positivity annoys me as much as mindless negativity.

6 - Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Skipping all my spoilery comments, this was a fun film, even if it's yet another example of Strange being used as the springboard for other people's films rather than getting one of his own.  (I still want Strange vs Mordo.  I am never getting Strange vs Mordo.  I refuse to accept this.)

7 - Spiderman: No Way Home

I am the problem with this.  Nine tenths of this is solid, it's just the remaining tenth annoys me to beyond reason.  And yes, it's to do with the not-quite-avunculicide.

8 - Thor: Love and Thunder

I appreciate Taika Waititi's attempt to do a Brechtian superhero film.  Even if it didn't work, I appreciate the attempt.  I am also deeply amused that, the things I didn't like about Thor: Ragnarok, that I got told I was being a spoilsport about, are the things everyone else who loved Ragnarok hated about Love and Thunder.

Also - killer bunny!

9 - Uncharted

This was just bad.  At some point, Hollywood will have to realise that a tragic backstory does not equal characterisation.

It's a film that features a battle between airborne pirate ships and it's still the worst film I saw in the cinema last year by some way, that is how bad it is.

My top 9 films of 2022

Normally I start with just a before posting the explanations a week later because I'm running out of the door to get home for Christmas.  Due to everything, this is a list only for the time being because I am rushing back from Christmas.

I am reasonably sure that when I write the full version, none of the numbers will change.  

I recommend everything down to 3.  4 and 5 require you to be in the mood.  6 is passable (actually enjoyed it more than Everything Everywhere All At Once but it's also a much easier film to watch).  7, I am probably the problem.  8, I know what they were going for, they missed.  9 is just appalling (except one bit).

1 - Cyrano

2 - Parallel Mothers

3 - Bad Guys

4 - Bullet Train

5 - Everything Everywhere All At Once

6 - Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

7 - Spiderman: No Way Home

8 - Thor: Love and Thunder

9 - Uncharted