LWLies’ favourite line read­ings of 2022

The pecu­liar­i­ties of mem­o­ry are such that the human brain doesn’t retain cin­e­ma as front-to-back nar­ra­tives, but as indeli­ble frag­ments: a shot, a scene, a cos­tume, a song cue, or per­haps most fre­quent­ly due to the sim­ple plea­sure of drop­ping a movie quote to some­one who gets it, a sin­gle line of dia­logue. Whether fore­ground­ed in a trail­er played ad nau­se­am or imprint­ed by an unfor­get­table view­ing in the the­ater, speech sticks with us long after the mem­o­ries of what actu­al­ly hap­pened in a film start to fade.

Here at Lit­tle White Lies HQ, our mot­ley crew of con­trib­u­tors have spent the past year with snip­pets of script flap­ping around in their brains like so many bats in a dank cave. And so in an effort to free our­selves of what­ev­er we might call the spo­ken equiv­a­lent of an ear­worm dit­ty, we’ve shared the stick­i­est line-read­ings of 2022, from the erot­ic come-ons we can’t unhear to the accent work we can’t quite parse.

“Suck me,” Stars at Noon

Claire Denis is famed for her abil­i­ty to find effort­less sex­i­ness in actors who elec­tri­fy her films with a nat­u­ral­is­tic erot­ic charge. And so it was like lift­ing a plate cloche to find a slab of spam where we expect­ed filet mignon when, dur­ing a sex scene in Denis’ Stars At Noon, star Joe Alwyn turns to Mar­garet Qual­ley to deliv­er the immor­tal instruc­tion of ​“suck me.” Joe Alwyn’s attempt to down­play the line in a growl only draws atten­tion to the fact that ​“suck me” is a line that can­not be down­played. Just as the sun shines a lin­ing of sil­ver from behind a cloud — and, by the way, Qualley’s got anoth­er bit of howler dia­logue involv­ing clouds — the command’s awk­ward­ness is unde­ni­able. As deliv­ered by Alwyn, ​“suck me” is so pow­er­ful­ly unsexy that it makes one briefly won­der whether any Claire Denis dia­logue has ever tru­ly been sexy, or whether it has sim­ply always been in French. Are there oth­er ​“suck me”s scat­tered across her fil­mog­ra­phy? – Sophie Monks Kaufman

Drop­ping the F‑slur, Bar­bar­ian

Bar­bar­ian reserves as much men­ace for the dif­fer­ent shades of implic­it and explic­it rape cul­ture as it does for the mon­ster lurk­ing under a Detroit rental home. With two ends of the spec­trum occu­pied by the awk­ward yet well-mean­ing Bill Skars­gård and the mon­strous Richard Brake, Justin Long stands smack in the mid­dle. As a Hol­ly­wood direc­tor accused of rape by an actress, Long acknowl­edges his character’s vile actions with mun­dane shal­low­ness, punc­tu­at­ing a reas­sur­ing phone call with his moth­er by answer­ing his next call with a bois­ter­ous ​“What up, fag­GOT!” As his lips curl into a smug smirk, his pitch drops at the last syl­la­ble to give the slur extra oomph. With one word, Long lets the mask drop. He may not be the worst mon­ster in the film, but with that casu­al utter­ance, he reveals him­self as some­thing just as vital to the misog­y­nis­tic spec­trum: the piece that bridges the two ends into a cohe­sive whole. – Car­ol Grant

“Yummsville”, Bri­an and Charles

A voice with the android flat­ness of a com­put­er soft­ware text-to-speech func­tion echoes from with­in a sev­en-foot robot with a dis­card­ed mannequin’s head and a wash­ing machine body. ​“Yummsville,” it says. Charles, the robot in ques­tion — played by a near­ly-suf­fo­cat­ed, half-blind­ed Chris Hay­ward — is refer­ring to fresh cab­bage, his favourite food. Of all the wit­ty quips and one-lin­ers that grace Jim Archer’s cult-clas­sic-to-be Bri­an and Charles, this is the one that sticks. A sin­gle word, so deli­cious­ly sil­ly, deliv­ered through the monot­o­nous (yet nev­er dull) auto­mat­ed voice of a lit­er­al­ly life­less char­ac­ter can still feel as joy­ous­ly alive as any­one can be. – Rafa Sales Ross

“Okay. Let’s shoo the ele­phant from the room: ​‘What the hell hap­pened to her face? Did she, uh, sched­ule a nose and eye job and bail before the sur­geon fin­ished the oth­er half?’ No. I was, uh, I was attacked. Thank you.”, TÁR

Lydia Tár deliv­ers this line to the mem­bers of her orches­tra after arriv­ing to work with a bat­tered face; in real­i­ty, the injury result­ed from chas­ing her young groom­ing vic­tim into an aban­doned apart­ment com­plex, get­ting scared by a dog, and slip­ping on some con­crete in an attempt to flee. Blanchett’s deliv­ery demon­strates sev­er­al of the character’s dimen­sions, from her prac­ticed friend­ly charm as she imi­tates the orchestra’s thoughts, to her grave announce­ment of the lie which she hopes will gar­ner pity. By this point in the film, her more sin­is­ter manip­u­la­tions have been made so obvi­ous that this less-con­se­quen­tial lie comes off as com­i­cal, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing her refusal to offer more details on the event beyond the vague claim of hav­ing been ​“attacked.” Blanchett’s deliv­ery is per­fect­ly pathet­ic. She’s out of breath, as though she’s in a hur­ry to get past the pho­ny sto­ry in fear no one will buy it. If you haven’t cot­toned on to the fact that Tár is a com­e­dy by this point in the film, this line should make it clear. – Esther Rosen­field

“Dumplings, suck­ers!”, Armaged­don Time

Maybe it’s because James Gray’s stylised dia­logue doesn’t work for every­one that he doesn’t real­ly get enough cred­it for his sense of humour. In his hyper-per­son­al Armaged­don Time, a chaot­ic din­ner scene sees impetu­ous 11-year-old Paul – expert­ly depict­ed by new­com­er Banks Repe­ta – announce to his fam­i­ly that he doesn’t want to eat the spaghet­ti and fish that his moth­er has pre­pared for din­ner (which: fair), instead choos­ing to order Chi­nese food with a casu­al air that implies this is a reg­u­lar occur­rence. The pièce de résis­tance comes when the defi­ant Paul exclaims ​“Dumplings, suck­ers!” over the yelling from the fam­i­ly gath­ered around the din­ing table as he calls the take­away. It speaks to an almost impres­sive audac­i­ty that occa­sion­al­ly rears its head in pre-teens, in line with Paul’s soon-to-be-chal­lenged notion that he’s untouch­able. It’s also refresh­ing to see a film­mak­er cre­ate a cine-mem­oir in which he’s quick to admit he was a lit­tle brat, rather than some doe-eyed mop­pet whose only con­cern was grow­ing up to be a great cineaste. Me? I’m off to order Chi­nese. – Han­nah Strong

“I don’t think these mashed pota­toes are gonna work”, Don’t Wor­ry Darling

Don’t Wor­ry Dar­ling owes a lot to genre TV series like Black Mir­ror and The Twi­light Zone, but a cook­ing calami­ty is straight from the sit­com play­book. Sport­ing his wife’s cutesy apron, try­ing to mash unboiled pota­toes using a whiskey decanter, Har­ry Styles is giv­ing I Love Lucy as seem­ing­ly dreamy hus­band Jack. Flo­rence Pugh’s Alice is suit­ably dis­ori­ent­ed, and her quizzi­cal expres­sion after sur­vey­ing the kitchen mess match­es my own as I won­der if this movie is about to lean into com­e­dy. Yes, but only briefly: Jack leans in to con­fess, but instead, a punch­line comes. Styles speaks in an accent with a whiff of his actu­al Cheshire inflec­tion, dab­bling in slight transat­lantic tones that caused an avalanche of com­ments before the film even came out. ​“I don’t think these mashed pota­toes are gonna work,” he mur­murs. I add a laugh track in my head every time I think about this line — maybe Wilde should’ve done this too. – Emma Fraser

“Oh, give over. He might have come back any minute. I’d have looked a right Char­lie!”, Mrs. Har­ris Goes to Paris

There aren’t many films for which I’m will­ing to leave my critic’s hat in the foy­er, but for Mrs. Har­ris Goes to Paris, I did just that. Les­ley Manville seemed to be imi­tat­ing my nan, a woman with the warmest heart, but who will also pick a fight with any­one she thinks might be doing her wrong. For all her charm­ing tus­sles with Isabelle Hup­pert, it was this retort when an offi­cer tells her she’s been enti­tled to a war widow’s pen­sion for sev­er­al years that still stands out in my mind. Her out­rage at the notion she might have remar­ried, along with the Cock­ney slang ​“Char­lie,” feel so specif­i­cal­ly British. I told dear Nan to see the film, and she phoned me up after: ​“What did you think of it, Nan?” ​“Well it was a bit far-fetched, wasn’t it? Fan­cy going all the way to Paris for a bleed­in’ dress!” ​“Mrs. Har­ris remind­ed me a bit of you.” ​“Oh, you cheeky mare!” – Lil­lian Crawford

Call and response, Nope

With Nope, Jor­dan Peele assem­bled a coterie of hot young stars for an old school block­buster, but because the man also has capital‑T Taste, he also cast two of the most leath­ery-voiced lif­ers in Hol­ly­wood. Armed with a vel­vety bari­tone that makes him sound like he’s per­ma­nent­ly accom­pa­nied by a cel­lo, Kei­th David is a down-on-his-luck horse wran­gler opti­mistic that if ​“we real­ly put on a show, you know they are gonna bring us back from the sequel.” Where­as Michael Win­cott, who sounds like he gar­gles glass each morn­ing, is a renowned cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er lament­ing that ​“the dream you’re chas­ing, where you end up at the top of the moun­tain, all eyes on you? It’s the dream you nev­er wake up from.” The deep purrs from David and Win­cott are at either end of the Hol­ly­wood Art Ver­sus Com­merce debate, but also proof that line deliv­ery can rival aliens in terms of pure spec­ta­cle val­ue. – Leila Latif

“NO ONE IN THIS ROOM IS AN ARTIST”, Fun­ny Pages

Owen Kline’s first fea­ture Fun­ny Pages is a dif­fer­ent kind of com­ing-of-age film, one in which our young hero grad­u­al­ly real­izes that he’s cho­sen a path of per­ma­nent imma­tu­ri­ty. Robert (Daniel Zol­ghadri) is an aspir­ing under­ground car­toon­ist whose pre­co­cious obscu­ran­tist inter­ests bring him into con­tact with the kind of crate-dig­gers and out­siders who would be (niche, minor) leg­ends if drawn by R. Crumb, but are hope­less­ly unfit for real life. The film cli­max­es with a Christ­mas-day draw­ing les­son — paid for by mom and dad — com­mis­sioned from Wal­lace (Matthew Maher), an emo­tion­al­ly volatile, prob­a­bly neu­ro­di­ver­gent, def­i­nite­ly pre­car­i­ous for­mer inker, who final­ly cracks: ​“NO ONE IN THIS ROOM IS AN ARTIST!” The entire movie — the poignan­cy and hor­ri­ble blurt­ing hilar­i­ty of a mar­gin­al per­son; the moral naïveté of the know-it-all-teenag­er who sets out to dec­o­rate his life with such fig­ures; the star­tling chas­ten­ing lone­li­ness of a life in thrall to the cul­ture of the past — is crys­tal­ized in Maher’s child­ish rage and tragi­com­ic lisp. As a semi-pro­fes­sion­al film crit­ic, I could hard­ly relate per­son­al­ly, of course, but I felt some­thing nonethe­less. – Mark Asch

“I will not leave my don­key out­side when I’m sad”, The Ban­shees of Inisherin

Much of the plea­sure and pow­er of The Ban­shees Of Inish­erin comes from the refram­ing of right­eous­ness; tee­ny-tiny griev­ances are giv­en an enor­mous stage in a way that only makes sense once you’ve spent a minute with them. One of these is Pádra­ic Súilleabhán’s (Col­in Far­rell) stead­fast deter­mi­na­tion to keep his ani­mals close to him at all times, the most mean­ing­ful com­pa­ny in a lone­ly life his sis­ter Siob­hán (Ker­ry Con­don) doesn’t quite under­stand. So when Far­rell final­ly huffs and puffs as Siob­hán sug­gests for the bil­lionth time that Jen­ny the don­key should maybe hang out out­side, like nor­mal don­keys do, the deter­mi­na­tion in his voice is breath­tak­ing. ​“I will not leave my don­key out­side when I’m sad,” he says, putting a full stop on this log­i­cal, fair and well-mer­it­ed sit­u­a­tion. It has the wish­ful­ness of a child but the force of a man who could make you chop off all your fin­gers. Just let them live, for God’s sake. – Ella Kemp

“Save the moon, save Earth”, Moon­fall

“THE MOON IS NOT WHAT WE THINK,” declares the tagline for Roland Emmerich’s wack­adoo Hol­low Earth The­o­ry pro­pa­gan­da pic­ture and box-office megabomb. The film itself strives to strike that same chord of absurd self-seri­ous­ness to vary­ing lev­els of suc­cess, com­ing clos­est when our man Patrick Wil­son gets his ​“Today we cel­e­brate our Inde­pen­dence Day!” moment. He’s a good actor who’s done a lot of good work, but he doesn’t let that stop him from giv­ing all of him­self to a deeply — know­ing­ly? maybe! — ter­ri­ble film. He intones the mis­sion brief of ​“Save the moon, save Earth” with the same con­vic­tion he brought to Joe Pitt in Angels in Amer­i­ca, plow­ing right through the beau­ti­ful silli­ness of the con­cept of sav­ing the moon. For that mat­ter, isn’t sav­ing Earth kind of a ridicu­lous notion too? Has any­one ever actu­al­ly saved the entire plan­et from any­thing? This, I sus­pect, is the mag­ic of the movies. – Charles Bramesco