The Top 10 Movies of 2022 (That I Saw)
Glass Onion and The Way of Water got edged out of this one.
Nope || Jordan Peele
Nope delivers as an original sci-fi thriller, highly speculative about the meaning of images we've seen in the history of film. There are moments of genuine, old-school movie tension that Peele and his team expertly execute. And the movie's use of satirical imagery engaged me as a viewer, keeping me interested to see what came next.
There was a fanbase expectation that this could surpass Get Out and Us to truly cement Peele as a thinking-person's auteur who also makes crossover hits. I think that was unfair. Nope is Peele's reflection on this system he's currently operating in. He also happened to have a couple million dollars to spend on creating the particularly antagonistic force here.
This struck me as a movie that's most about feeling your way through the plot rather than having strategic expository shots and dialogue in the way Us provided. But would I rather sit through this metaphor about the film industry and what it does to both its subjects and its audience instead of, say, another remake of War of the Worlds, but this time it's about COVID? Yes, I'll watch Jordan Peele's metaphors every time.
See How They Run || Tom George
Saoirse Ronan is a comic genius.
And everyone else in this talented ensemble cast is charistmatic, which a special nod to Adrien Brody, who hasn't made me want to see him get punched this much since 2003.
I've never seen The Mousetrap and haven't read much Agatha Christie since high school, but the fandom on display here for both theater and film is infectious. Surely, Glass Onion will inspire some studio executive to greenlight another one of these subversive whodunnits. Looking forward to it.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever || Ryan Coogler
Ryan Coogler and director of cinematography Autumn Durald really took advantage of the grand space the Black Panther franchise holds in the MCU. The opening funeral procession, the flashbacks to Mesoamerica, and the return to the liminal spaces one can find seeking the Ancestral Plain are some of the most beautiful work done in this mega franchise.
I don't think there is an MCU movie quite like this one which manages to be contained and focused on its smaller stakes, certainly not with one of their follow-up movies. The story functions as a direct sequel to Black Panther with relatively few mentions to The Blip or any of the other nonsense happening in the larger continuity.
The characters reminding you of Feige's master plan are Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' Val and, to a lesser extent, Everett Ross. The latter is experiencing a full-blown Foreign Agent arc to try to wash some of that CIA stink off of him (granted, he refers to the plunderers on the boat scene as "friends"). And JLD is a little more believable as this version's Amanda Waller than in her over-the-top debut in FATWS, but it's still their scenes that briefly gum up the emotional arc of the film. Otherwise, the focus on Namor's backstory and the emotional processing the Wakandas are experiencing are top-level franchise filmmaking from Coogler. I loved this one.
Top Gun: Maverick || Joseph Kosinski
Yes, it's the Death Star run. That's why it's awesome.
You know what's even more awesome? Seeing these kids struggle with the mission through practical effects, bringing Maverick down to his lowest possible point, and setting him up for an electrifying return to action. That's called, if I may add an obnoxious flourish here, screenwriting.
Everything about Maverick is more substantial than the original Top Gun, including the musical composiion. The interpolation of "Danger Zone" in the Hans Zimmer style floored me.
Sidenote: Everyone's asking where Jennifer Connelly gets her money. The movie very clearly tells us she has an ex-husband who can afford to live in Hawaii with a new wife. Penny Benny probably took that man to the most generous divorce court her Rear Admiral father's money could buy. And you know what? Good for her.
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On || Dean Fleischer-Camp
This movie time-warps Marcel, who initially came on the scene more than 10 years ago into the 2020's. His viral moment happens in 2021. Appropriately, Marcel, who is now the avatar of anxious thirty-somethings versus adventurous twenty-somethings, feels overwhelmed and has a period where he just doesn't want to be perceived.
I felt that.
Prey || Dan Trachtenberg
The trickeries of aging have me subconsciousl ybelieving that nobody knows how to write a tight action movie anymore. All Prey needed to do to impress me was scale back the ambition of franchise films and focus on executing on the technicals. It surpassed this benchmark by presenting the raw talent of its filmmaking team, including new actors dialing into substantive roles.
I was skeptical about Prey during its marketing campaign and that's because of my negative experience with Shane Black's The Predator, a movie which was antithetical to this one in many respects. While the 2018 release was lore-twisted, ironically self-aware, heavy-handed in its attempts at representation, tonally disjointed, and confused in its action, Prey is direct, unburdened, sincere, and focused.
Prey mostly bucks the pressure to get gnarled into the Predator lore. The Predator itself is just the latest in a series of challenges Naru's family has faced. It's frightening and it's more sadistic, but it's all part of a long line of animistic dangers that the tribe has to overcome to keep surviving. Within the parameters of this backdrop, Prey operates efficiently and energetically, and yes, to this day, I am still annoyed that I didn't have the chance to see this in theaters this summer.
Three Thousand Years of Longing || George Miller
This is a beautiful reflection on attachment and isolation. A triumphant two-hander expertly delivered by Tilda Swinton & Idris Elba, transfixing the viewer into one, universal story presented as an anthology of thematically related vignettes. It was visually amazing, on par with anything Miller accomplished in Mad Max: Fury Road. Tom Holkenborg even collaborated again to make an amazing film score.
Unfortunately, Three Thousand Years of Longing completely bombed at the box office, one of several casualties of mid-pandemic movie theater struggles, but one of some historical note, given the success of Miller’s previous film.
I know that one of the many lessons of this movie is that I can’t get attached to my idea of what cinema can be. I have to let it go. I have to love the fact that movies like this existed at all, for a time. Like tears in the rain, if you will. And I can’t let myself be imprisoned by the unstoppable march toward the singularity of spectacle. Something like this will come along again in my lifetime. And I just have to breathe in between these fleeting moments.
Everything Everywhere All At Once || Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwan
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the story of Generation X processing the trauma of growing up without the unconditional support prescribed to their millennial siblings and then reaping a meager harvest in an age of instiutional collapse. They do their best to raise their children amidst all their failures and their kids get hooked on a nihilism that is both imparted on them and enhanced by all-consuming technology. This screenplay is about how to reconcile the need to both push ourselves and our loved ones toward self-actualization, while remaining bonded to them so they have us when they need us.
It also has dildo nunchucks in it.
9/10, I would have altered the screenplay a little to have less exposition entirely through dialogue. I loved every performer, especially Stephanie Hsu.
Aside: I was the only person who audibly laughed when Ke Huy Quan quotes "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" and I doubted whether I remembered the lyrics correctly...until they started playing covers of the song.
Don't Worry Darling || Olivia Wilde
Okay....let me try to explain myself.
After the horrific press tour this movie had, this movie just had to be servicable to surpass my expectations. But it ended up enveloping me in an interesting experience, because it was an original screenplay dealing with sign & simulacra in the vein of many of my favorite movies.
Yes, this is being well-fed by other movies. It's not pushing past boundaries its predecessors haven't broken through. But I still love the movies it's influenced by. I love what they make me think about our society past and present. And I think in our world of social anxieties, it's a genre with a lot of untapped potential.
Beyond the expectations of the genre, Don't Worry Darling is just a great visual and auditory experience, with my biggest kudos going to cinematogropher Matthew Libatique. This leaves me with the strong impression that he was chosen for his work on Black Swan. He conveys that same sense of sanity slippage, playing with reflections and with the dancers' body movements.
It's certainly a crime that Florence Pugh was mistreated in this movie's production, regardless of her acting talent. But she did not let that impact her performance. She is a favorite for a reason and I assume the reason this final cut of the movie focuses so much on her is because she's so such a vessel of the emotions this movie requires of her.
A lot of critics are disdaining the screenplay because it's not focused on being a tight science fiction allegory. But the movie isn't structured in a way where you need the allergory to be airtight. Alice Ward doesn't have all the answers. She has baffling questions. She's caught in a labyrinth and fighting her way out. The movie was truly centered on sharing her experience and her terror at discovering what was robbed from her. I feel like Don't Worry Darling would have been operating in jarring fits and starts if we paused earlier for more exposition on how exactly Project Victory works.
Don't Worry Darling is a fascinating case study in how discourse impacts perception of a movie. People went in expecting a sideshow and it sounds like they got what they carried into the movie. I saw it far enough removed from all the viral talk that I was impressed by the professional work on display and really left feeling that this is a rare movie that isn't out there constantly looking over its shoulders, scared of CInemaSins Jeremy. It was confident in telling a feminist allegory and it managed to scratch at many implications about our capitalist hellscape. This movie simply got overexposed, probably due to Wilde's own statements and behaviors, but also because....well.
I think if we stop to reflect, we know why people were dunking on this one with such particular glee. I think we know.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent || Tom Gormican
This movie seemed to dissipate after high levels of trailer-led anticipation, so I nearly let it miss me. But watching it on VOD apparently was the experience for me.
This is almost straight-up a sequel to Adaptation. If you're into the meta of Nicolas Cage's work, even a little bit, it was made for you. If you like metafiction, it was made for you. If you're a fan of a comedy with stakes, the lost art of comic timing, and a core relationship that you're rooting for, it was made for you.
This is my hole. It was made for me.