Top Ten 2022

Film is suffering an existential crisis. Screens, audiences, and the number of film studios are shrinking. Vultures herald the death of the medium, just as vultures have done during every other major shift in form.

Film has responded with an outburst of spectacle. The megaconglomerates keep churning out lazy movies 'too big to fail,' but they are countervailed by a resurgence of passionate films of substance. RRR, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Nope, even Moonfall are populist films whose artistry demands the biggest screen possible. To be sure, they can be enjoyed in miniature, but part of you may walk away pondering what you could have had...

A medium develops in conversation with itself, and we are blessed to be shepherded through these tumultuous times by the guiding hands of Steven Spielberg, Jordan Peele, Todd Field, David Cronenberg, and all the other great masters of the motion picture.

Some films I missed:

Jackass Forever; The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent; Ambulance; Marcel the Shell with Shoes On; Mad God; Bodies Bodies Bodies; Blonde; The Woman King; Wendell and Wild; All Quiet on the Western Front; Aftersun; Babylon; Women Talking; Inu-oh; Pinocchio (Del Toro); After Yang; This Place Rules; White Noise; Bullet Train; Mr. Harridan's Phone; Apollo 10 1/2

Untoward Awards

Most Disappointing: Men
Most Inane: Morbius
Most Nonsensical: Moonfall
Most Generic: Emancipation
Most Infuriating: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Most: RRR

Most Improved: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Sophomore Slump: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Can't Remember: Day Shift
I Wept: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Opening Shot: Crimes of the Future

Best Final Shot: The Fabelmans

Kindred Spirits: X + Pearl
Kindred Names: Men + The Menu

Best Names:
3. Tár
2. Nope

1. Moonfall

Worst Names:
3. Emancipation
2. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
1. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Worst Superhero: Morbius
Worst Adaptation: Morbius
Worst Sequel: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Worst: Morbius

Honorable Mentions

Barbarian - Barbarian is profoundly, gleefully uneven. The film sets out to characterize an ecosystem, a broad emphasis that can lose sight of its characters. This fractious narrative tells the story of predatory Airbnb housing practices in Detroit. It's far from pristine, but Zach Cregger's cinematic treatment of endless catacombic hallways makes the experience worth it.

Rothaniel - It's hard to pin down what exactly Rothaniel is. Bo Burnham directs Jerrod Carmichael's meandering stand-up comedy-- or is it an autobiographical tell-some confessional-- or is it a piece of long form poetic improvisation? For pushing the form of what stand-up can be, and always reaching for earnestness, Rothaniel earns all the accolades it has received.

The Northman - Robert Eggers has reinvented his style with each of his three major film projects so far. His complaints about working in the miserable studio system probably foreshadow yet another reinvention for his fourth. What I find most dynamic about Eggers' work is the way he injects us into the subjectivity of a historical era, a task far more onerous than the typical mapping of modern sensibilities onto the aesthetics of the past. The Northman inserts us into the frenzy of battle, the desolation of vengeance, and the coursing influence of the gods.

Top Gun: Maverick - There's so much to mock in Top Gun: Maverick. The over-the-top jingoism. Maverick's habit of staring wistfully at young people having fun from a distance. Goodness gracious great balls of fire flashbacks. Despite its dreamy sentimentalism, the real juice of Maverick comes from Cruise's ongoing partnership with Christopher McQuarrie. Though his Mission: Impossible creative partner only writes and produces here, their collaboration has kept substantial action films on life support in the era of green screen and its various incarnations. The climactic setpiece of Maverick is obviously incredible, but the thrilling essentialism of Cruise + McQuarrie's partnership is best demonstrated in the film's screamingly simple Mach 10.1 sequence.

The Batman - BUUUHHHHHH BUH BUHH BUHHHH. Matt Reeves' Batman take doesn't reach the high heights of Nolan's work on the character, but he has always been a director adept at teasing out the most compelling elements of his inherited franchises. Pattinson's emo rich kid / brick wall golem duality, Colin Farrell's grotesque yet sympathetic Penguin, Michael Giacchino's surly score, Greig Fraser's aggressively murky cinematography. It's too long with too many loose ends, but Reeves has made space for greatness to emerge.

Three Thousand Years of Longing - George Miller blasts us with a phantasmagoria of stunning compositions, historical fantasy, myth and legend... and couches that narrative in a tedious conversation between an academic and a djinn in a boring hotel room. This juxtaposition is certainly intentional, and certainly puzzling! The film revels in its contradictions, some of which are more productive than others, but I will take an ambitious mess over a safe mediocrity any day.

I watched 37 films released in 2022. Here are my top 10.

10. Smile

It was her face, the way she looked.

Smile is The Ring. Smile is It Follows. Smile is Lights Out. It's not even the best manifestation of its premise, but originality is less important than execution. Smile finds its voice in Cristobal Tapia de Veer's score, which itches under your skin the way a grin encroaches when you're trying to be angry. This creeping undertone melds with Charlie Sarroff's unsettling compositions, exemplified by the protagonist's first encounter with the smiling thing in a hospital room dominated by negative space. The effective performance and FX work pricks at one of our oldest fears: a smile that does not belong.

9. The Menu

It wasn't cod, you donkey!

The Menu is a love letter to foodies everywhere! If you adore trawling poverty-stricken market districts for that new exotic flavor, assembling those ingredients in a paean to unsustainability, and having the result delivered to you by a walking embodiment of subservience, The Menu is right up your throat alley!

Come for Ralph Fiennes and Hong Chau's expertly modulated performances, stay for the tortilla of your darkest secrets.

8. Nope

Nope.

Jordan Peele has swiftly risen to the pedestal of our preeminent social horror director. His third film reveals this to be the kind of lazy categorical limitation that constrains so many breakthrough artists, Black artists in particular. Nope does feature one incredible sequence of carnivalesque body horror, but it could just as well be called a sci-fi film, and it is a mythic Western at heart.

Peele is determined not to be reined in by these hovering expectations. Nope sheds the shaggy high concept of Us and the self-conscious cultural commentary of Get Out to deliver a straightforward story that blooms into complexity at the periphery. His insights on gaze and spectacle are very welcome, and wonderfully unforced. Best of all is the way Peele and Hoyte van Hoytema shoot the wide, mottled sky in long drifting takes of languid tension.

My Review.

7. The Fabelmans

Guilt is a wasted emotion.

Somehow, despite being the most recognizable filmmaker on the planet, Spielberg has become underrated. The new wave were not weaned on his movies. The old heads take him for granted. He hasn't had anything to prove in decades. In any case, the most influential director of our times doesn't get the buzz he used to.

Pity, that. He's still throwing 100mph fastballs. The Fabelmans is the quasi-autobiographical story of Spielberg's childhood that has been percolating for the better part of a century, put on hold out of respect for his parents (the latter of whom, Arnold Spielberg, died recently at the ripe old age of 103). Spielberg portrays his self-insert as quite unremarkable, bland even. Our protagonist is notable mainly for the way his art moves him, moves through him, and moves into others. The Fabelmans is a rare piece of art-about-art that doesn't so much concern the nature of the artist as it does the nature of art itself. What is this thing that invades us, commands us, rips us to shreds, breeds passion, cultivates compassion? This fable about the selflessness of selfishness ends with a perfect cameo leading into a perfect shot, a reminder of how loved we are when we are watching a film by Steven Spielberg.

6. Tár

Time is the thing. Time is the essential piece of interpretation.

Tár may have been the film released in 2022 to produce the most dirt-tier takes, but this is the video to convince me that Cate Blanchett delivered the finest lead performance of the year. Tár is not a film about the depths of love, it is a film about the love of depths. In stark contrast to The Fabelmans, Lydia Tár (a cheeky anagram for Daily Art) purports to be all about the art, but the film lays her narcissism bare. Tár leaps into the choppy pools of discourse about identitypolitik cancel culture without coming off tinny or contrived, a miracle among many miracles in Todd Fields' monumental screenplay.

5. Crimes of the Future

The creation of inner beauty cannot be an accident.

Crimes of the Future is a rare sci-fi piece that doesn't present an easy allegory for the current moment. Rather, it looks at our world as an ecosystem, sees where that ecosystem is trending, and speculates via fully fleshed out worldbuilding. Emphasis on 'fleshed.' In Crimes of the Future, surgery is the new sex, and the human organism is rapidly adapting to a new era.

How wonderful that this story is told so intimately through a love relationship between two performance artists, and a love/hate relationship between a person and his own body. Cronenberg's psychosexual insights come off here as more of a caress than a stab. Ultimately, despite omnipresent repression suppression and oppression, people will always find a new way to be.

4. The Banshees of Inisherin

I just don't like you no more.

I love movies that trap characters in impossible relationships. Ed Wood: what if an artist is no good at art? We Need to Talk about Kevin: what if a parent hates their child? The Banshees of Inisherin: what if your best friend doesn't like you no more?

Such a simple question, so many inconceivable ramifications. Banshees explores the inaccessible bigness of these emotions by starting small, quaint even, and slowly shifting into the register of parable. Martin McDonagh was wise to shift away from moralizing politics for his reunion with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. The well-worn particulars of their characters' relationship are so distinct that they universalize the pain of aging and the loss of change.

3. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Fear me, if you dare!

They made a decade-later sequel to a half-assed spinoff to a dead franchise about a farting ogre? And it was incredible??

I like Shrek and all, but Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the very first entry in that franchise to not be butt ugly. Somehow, some way, The Last Wish manages to be one of the most visually vibrant animated films of the 2020s so far: ecstatic colors, expressive lighting, dynamic character models, masterpiece-caliber action, and an experimentally variable framerate that captures differential movement in a visceral way. It's also a solid story well-told about coming to terms with mortality, and as with all solid stories well-told, it thrives on the back of its delightful characters. Despite hitting so many familiar beats, The Last Wish is a film that constantly surprised me, never more so than in its terrifying depiction of Death.

2. RRR

We shouldn't be scared anymore, we should surge forward.

RRR is orgasmic. Typically when something is orgasmic for more than three hours, you should see a doctor. In this case, you should see a dentist, because the movie feeds you so much damn CAKE.

The heights of excess, the joys of brotherhood, the terrors of colonialism, and the thrills of divine violence work so well because they are undergirded by the steel beams of strong dramatic structure. We understand character, motivation, goals, and conflicts so clearly that when tigers get punched, we cheer rather than roll our eyes. Shout out to two sequences that would be special even in a far worse movie: the one vs. one thousand masterclass in mass blocking, and the dance scene so ecstatic that it breaks the world wide open.

My Review.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once

So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.

Everything Everywhere came out on top in 2023. The buzz of Michelle Yeoh's career victory lap, Ke Huy Quan's triumphant return, and the Daniels' soaring achievement was enough to carry it to Best Picture-- at which point a whole lot of folks tried to take it down a few pegs. Many of the criticisms I've seen boil down to some version of it's not as original as people say it is. Part of that vague feeling stems from its early 2022 release date; we've had a whole year to acclimate ourselves to its massive impact. In any case, criticisms of unoriginality slide off a film that is explicitly pastiche. It would gladly wear the mantle of 'unoriginal' so long as we also acknowledge how much it moves the conversation forward.

Everything Everywhere is the masterpiece of the multiverse subgenre, simultaneously its pinnacle and its strongest refutation. Nihilism, postmodernism, multiplicity, hyperindividualism: the multiverse is the result of these social sicknesses. Most multiverse stories involve a confrontation with infinite fantasy that reaffirms who we were in the first place. What if instead of eradicating the self, or enshrining the self, we forge our way through oblivion to see what perseveres? Everything Everywhere posits that our other selves need not be obstacles. They can be traveling companions who shake hands with us on the path to decisiveness, contorted exaggerations that can teach us something vital.

These convergences and transferences are represented by bountiful montage (a titanic achievement in editing and production design by Paul Rogers and Jason Kisvarday, respectively). But it's the subtle ensemble performance work that pinpoints the humanity that emerges where the Self persists. Everything Everywhere is a story on the verge, and wherever we go next as humans, we will need to carry its lessons forward with us.

My Review.