The Top Ten Films of 2022
10. Tar (dir. Todd Field)
There’s a scene early in this excellent film where the titular famed conductor Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) admonishes a young Julliard student for his resistance to embracing Bach as a problematic patriarch rather than for his skills as a composer. This infers that a look inside the life of an eccentric genius (be it Bach or in this case Tar) fascinates because they are flawed and problematic, not because they are good people. The visual style of director Todd Field (in his first film since Little Children, my favorite narrative film of 2006) has evolved into static shots worthy of Chantel Akerman, voyeuristically focusing on Lydia’s every move in the event it will all explode at any second. He also smartly writes Lydia as someone who talks around topics, avoiding somebody else to benefit instead of her. But it's Cate Blanchett’s performance that shows how virtuoso musician Tar is always performing for other people, trying to maintain an outward persona that is not naturally hers. A surprise sequence at the end alludes to a tragic downfall, but I saw it as a subversively beautiful new beginning.
Streaming: Available to rent on various platforms
Stupid Punny Tagline: “Don’t be TARdy to catch this one!”
9. Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)
Mainstream auteur Jordan Peele has the unique ability to churn out genre pics with sociopolitical resonance as well as a provocative sense of pacing and style that is all his own. Peele goes all in on the spectacle in his latest, and uses every classic filmmaking technique worthy of an alien invasion film. Below the surface is a story of black family’s horse ranch, forced to hold their ground as the industry as well as UFO’S try to force them off their land. There is the theme of “preservation”, especially if that means preserving an image of an extraordinary phenomenon like a UFO, a horse galloping, or a chimp terrorizing. There is a story of a tragedy on the set of a 90’s sitcom that just never seems to have a clear connection with the overall arc. However, these are the kind of traits that make a Peele film worthy of lengthy discussion after the movie ends. While popcorn movies often invite the audience to lean back, Peele often invites them to lean forward. In the end, he has created a one of a kind work of art worthy of debate AND praise.
Streaming: Peacock
Stupid Punny Tagline: “Nope is dope!”
8. Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells)
A common theme of great films is memory, largely because cinema is the perfect medium to capture the way key images flow in and out of people’s consciousness. The memory here involves the “last” vacation 11 year old Sophie (Frankie Corio) takes with her troubled father Callum (Paul Mescal) at a budget resort in Turkey. Wells manages to create a nuanced relationship between the two leads while also maintaining a fascinating sense of mystery between them. The audience learns more about Callum’s troubles as the film progresses, but, at the end of the day, they are seeing this from a young girl’s lens who doesn’t always know all the facts. The power of the story comes from the need for these two to connect, but are slightly out of step with each other, a revelation all the more devastating in retrospect. Wells also offers a rich visual palette, showcasing ephemeral imagery similar to the disappearing bookstore in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sans the gimmickry.
Streaming: Now playing in select theaters; available to rent on various platforms
Stupid Punny Tagline: “Aftersun is after my funds, and can take all my money!”
7. Funny Pages (dir. Owen Kline)
Great comedies have been few and far between the past few years, and even fewer could survive outside of direct to streaming purgatory. However, this delightful outsider indie found a place in my Terry Zwigoff loving heart. Like its heir apparent American Splendor, 18 year old Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) witnesses the glorious idiosyncrasies of the real world, adapting them into underground comic form. But whereas Harvey Pekar simply existed in this world, Robert seeks this world out, rejecting his privileged middle class background at every turn. He seeks a reluctant mentor in Wallace (Matthew Maher), a mentally ill former assistant colorist at Image comics. The film deftly captures young artists’ desperate need for relevance, but this journey is anything but melancholy. Where there are idiosyncrasies there is incongruity, and director/writer Owen Kline (son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) creates some of the most hilarious moments of the year as young Robert awkwardly inserts himself in a world he desperately wants but ultimately resists him.
Streaming: Available for rent on various platforms
Stupid Punny Tagline: “The script is full of FUNNY PAGES!”
6. You Won’t Be Alone (dir. Goran Stolevski)
Though labeling this film as Days of Heaven meets The Witch is objectively accurate, it also discredits just how unique this genre film is on its own terms. The theme of an alternative being experiencing the up’s and down’s of being human has certainly been done before (Wings of Desire, Meet Joe Black, Brother from Another Planet, etc.). However, while those films rely on a certain sense of zen as characters inhabit other vessels, this story of a body hopping witch in 19th century Macedonia is not afraid to embrace the viscerality of this experience. Her embodiment of a male body, for instance, does not skimp on all the awkwardness of virginity as she makes love to a woman “for the first time”. The audience goes through a similar body switch as they are forced to embody this unique lens of the world, one that sweeps through the wind before an inevitable capture.
Streaming: Available for rent on various platforms
Stupid Punny Tagline: “You won’t be alone in your love of this movie.”
5. All that Breathes (dir. Shaunak Sen)
Movies about animals were about as abundant this year as movies about movies. Filmmaker Shaunak Sen only needed to show off his low and high angle shots of the speckled black kites (a breed of birds literally falling from the polluted Dehli sky) to make a film worth seeing. However, a mere aesthetic experience would discredit the truly unique story of philanthropic amateur veterinarians, working to heal these black kites (a sacred animal in Islam) from injury and pestilence. As if the hearts of the sibling subjects Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad weren’t enough, the film creates empathy through the intimate treatment of these birds. It emphasizes that they are delicate lives worth saving and do not merely exist to bring value to the lives of their human saviors. However, while its ideas make it memorable, its poetic imagery make it unforgettable.
Streaming: TBA
Stupid Punny Tagline: “Anything is else is for the birds.”
4. EO (dir. Jersey Skolimowski)
Those in cinematic donkey withdrawal after the surprise dearth of them in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio should feel more than appeased at this equine themed celluloid wonder. A clear successor to Robert Bresson’s Balthasar Au Hasard, 84 year old director Jerzy Skolimowski presents the titular donkey EO (Polish for “hee-haw”) through the warped lens of the circus, draped in red lights at unstable low Dutch angles. Luckily, this imagery does not cease, but evolves as EO hits the road across Europe, enveloped in the visceral darkness of nature and humanity. A year's best score from Paweł Mykietyn adds to the maddening imagery, featuring a zig-zag assortment of strings and organs that jerks the tension backwards and forwards. Also, Skolimowski does not hold back in showcasing the cruelties of the world, and the “No animals were harmed. . . “ disclaimer in the credits has never felt less convincing. However, this is no family movie, and the horrors of the world feel all the more palatable through EO’s innocent eyes.
Streaming: Now playing in select theaters
Stupid Punny Tagline: “This movie kicks ASS!”
3. Benediction (dir. Terence Davies)
Like his forename equivalent Mr. Malick, every progressive film from the great Terence Davies feels like an event. Maybe because his style is so singular that one can savor it knowing it will be a few years before witnessing it again. Davies is 77, so if Benediction is his swan song event, what an event it is. His impressionistic style is on full elegiac display with this portrait of queer WWI poet Siegrfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden). Though the focus is more on poetry (visual and verbal) than narrative, Sassoon’s life journey from decorated war hero to accomplished poet to oppressed homosexual to a genial old codger (Peter Capaldi in old codger form) feels like a fully fleshed out arc. It chronicles a life that was tumultuous yet passionate devolving into a devastatingly ordinary denouement. However, as with Davies’ other work, the beauty of this biography is manifested like a string of memories that emote both dramatically and visually. Davies’ masterwork is not mere eye candy though; it also sports some of the year’s cleverest dialogue, worthy of Wilde and Shaw.
Streaming: Hulu
Stupid Punny Tagline: “Benediction is a Benedict-FUN!”
2. Hit the Road (dir. Panah Panahi)
The shoes that Panah Panahi had to fill for his debut feature were so big, his esteemed father might as well have been Bozo the Clown. Luckily, the giant cinematic feet of Panahi the younger, son of Jafar, fit like a glove in these shoes, and his cinematic feet create a great cinematic feat. Panahi is himself a wizard of the mise en scene; he uses static medium/long shots of the back seat of a car that play like stoic versions of the crowded cabin scene in A Night at the Opera. Also, Panahi’s long shots capture the beauty of the surrounding environment while characters look small from a distance, creating a beguiling sense of ambiguity. However, Panahi deserves credit for not merely cloning his father’s style, and some stylized images in the last act take the audience into another world much like 2001: A Space Odyssey (referenced in this film as well). Furthermore, the fluidity in the sense of place shows that this family, driving their eldest son to the Turkish border to escape persecution, will never quite be settled anymore, having to move from one place to another so often that their car becomes their natural habitat.
Streaming: Showtime
Stupid Punny Tagline: “This film’s a HIT. . . The Road!”
And the best film of 2022 is. . .
1. Mad God (dir. Phil Tippett)
The beauty of stop motion animation is in its imperfections. Through the form, stationary objects come to life, but not fully. Even the best stop motion presents a slight distortion in movement, almost like some outside force is manipulating their every move. Its movement is unnatural which also makes it fascinating to watch. In Phil Tippett’s (stop motion animator on films like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Robocop) surrealist magnum opus, he creates characters that are effervescently barely alive, but so is the world that surrounds them. Filmed over the course of 39 years, the film depicts a world ravaged by carnage, where every grotesque monster is vulnerable prey to a larger monster and any new life is destroyed almost as soon as it is created. It's a dying world that festers and curdles, and Tippett dives winningly into a stunning surreal nightmare. About as visceral and abstract as film can get, Mad God is primarily an emotional experience. However, the film can also be viewed as a metaphor for stop motion itself. It’s a world full of chaos where there used to be control, and stop motion creatures destroy other stop motion creatures, but harvesting whatever might still be useful from the dead. Ironically, the film mourns the death of the stop motion era while fervently celebrating it at the same time. But this is just one interpretation, and the real beauty of Mad God is its commitment to cinema derived from dreams and the unconscious. Simply unlike anything I have ever seen, and, therefore, the achievement of the year.
Streaming: Shudder
Stupid Punny Tagline: “Mad God is mad good!”
Runner’s Up (in no particular order):
Top Gun: Maverick
Babylon
Official Competition
Amsterdam
Bones and All
Mothering Sunday
RRR
Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Blonde
Banshees of Inisherin
No Bears
Descendant
Vortex
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Hold Me Tight
Cow
X
After Yang
The Batman
Something in the Dirt
Pleasure
Bros
Cha Cha Real Smooth
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Confess, Fletch
Pompo the Cinephile
Terrifier 2
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
Apollo 10 ½
Ambulance
Leonor Will Never Die
Nitram
Broker
Most Underrated
Pompo the Cinephile
From Leonor Will Never Die to The Fablemans to Babylon, it was a great year for movies about movies and the people who make them. One film that got a bit buried within all these great titles was an anime about a diminutive studio head Pompo (it is unclear if she is a young looking adult or an actual little girl) in the fictional Nyallywood. After a prolific career producing B movies, she embarks on a serious prestige picture about tortured artistry with an enigmatic lead actor. She also takes a chance on a talented but novice director, giving an extra shake to the loaded dice. Despite the basic plot, what makes the film stand out is the histrionics of the anime style, endowing it with the same energy and fervor that it would for a giant robots picture. The film is also an effective metaphor for growing up and maturing, as Pompo transitions from a focus on frivolous entertainment to serious art. However, the fact that this story is told in the adolescent focused form of anime shows that there is clearly room for both. A fun yet poignant film that deserves respect.
Most Overrated
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
A stop motion film worthy of A24 will always have my attention, and my ninety minutes spent with the diminutive anthropomorphic shell weren’t without their charms. For instance, I could watch little Marcel walk across the wall on feet of honey for hours. However, eventually Marcel’s quest to find his lost family becomes a cloying tribute to social and broadcast media, not far off from watching a large scale projection of Tik-Tok clips. There are times the film feels indistinguishable from a CNN station identification. Also, any moment featuring director Dean Fleischer Camp feels like just another mediocre white man desperately trying to relate his average life experience to the much more compelling one of the character he’s supposedly trying to help. The universal praise of this film referred to it as something “that made them feel happy.” While there’s nothing wrong with that sentiment, a film that tries so hard to do this in nearly every frame yields more annoyance than contentment.
Most Pleasant Surprise
Terrifier 2
Even dedicated fans of horror films will admit the ratio of good to bad is not particularly high. For every Hereditary, there are five Devil Inside’s. I wasn’t super thrilled with the prospect of yet another generic clown slasher film, let alone a sequel to a generic clown slasher film I had not heard of. However, what director Damien Leone lacks in originality, he makes up for in execution in every sense of the word. The onscreen kills are about as grizzly and over the top as movie violence gets, yet villain Art the Clown’s (David Howard Thornton) jovial grin and spring in his step almost makes one believe it’s all a big joke (not that his mere presence isn’t also incredibly terrifying, pun very intended). The film also creates some effective dream sequences, brilliantly treading the line between visceral terror and family friendly pastiche. Even its liberal running time of 138 minutes ups the tension by forcing the audience to spend even more time with this horrifying monstrosity. It’s the rare horror film that takes a disturbing amount of joy from its nightmarish violence but winks at the audience just enough to make them feel safe enough to walk home afterwards.
Worst of the Year
Crimes of the Future
Another year, another identical disclaimer: I am not the best judge of this category. I have no financial obligation to sit through obvious vitriol. I also tend to grade genre films like Blacklight and Ambulance on a curve, and will offer a pass to them as long as they are not boring. However, seeing as many movies as I do guarantees that not all of them will hit, and I can’t think of a bigger miss than David Croenenberg’s abysmal latest feature. It somehow manages to make a film about a masochistic performance artist who removes extraneous organs from her partner’s body as bland and milquetoast as possible. The film also resorts to shameless exposition almost any time the mostly bored cast opens their mouths (save for Kristen Stewart’s quirky performance that is a rare highlight). Croenenberg is a director who can get away with leaning on the laurels of his aesthetics to compensate for a lack in content. However, the medium shot heavy Crimes proves that he took a day off in that respect as well. A mess would be interesting; this is a blank white wall.
