"To find something, anything, a great truth or a lost pair of glasses, you must first believe there will be some advantage in finding it."
-- Jack Burden, All the King's Men (1949), Dir. Robert Rossen
"Big things have small beginnings...."
-- T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dir. David Lean
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It's happening.
It began slowly enough, tentatively at first, just a few smatterings of "lines" and "crowds" [Aside: if we stretch the meanings of those words a little, I suppose] beginning to gather at the local multi-screen movie theaters. In the days, weeks, and months during the height (or low-point, if you'd rather) of the COVID-19 pandemic, movie theaters resembled haunted ghost towns more than they did the sprawling, colorful, bustling home of communal movie-watching that we perhaps remembered from days gone by.
Movie theaters stayed open during the pandemic--most of them anyway--and being the cineaste that I am I kept sniffing them out, checking online every week to see what was currently showing. During the days, weeks, and months of COVID-19, theaters were half-staffed (if that)--still open...but barely. At the time, your local movie-house was offering a few new films (made and released before the industry was shut down, obviously), as well as a few second-run offerings (a chance to catch a movie that you perhaps didn't see when it was initially released).
In a few instances, as well, theaters were showing revivals of some older classics: Perhaps it was Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942); or Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959); or Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941); or Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971); or Ridley Scott's Alien (1979); or Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949); or Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962); or Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939); or Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); or Hiyao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2002)....
Not bad.
I remember one such weekend I was sitting in the semi-darkened theater shortly before the start of William Friedkin's 1973 The Exorcist--along with, literally, two or three other people [Aside: obviously two other sad, pathetic, boring "cineastes" such as myself, with nothing better to do, I guess, on a Sunday afternoon]--and I had a fleeting moment of thinking: "What in the hell am I doing? What is going on here?"
Still, movie theaters survived. It might have seemed like they were on life-support at times--intubated, themselves--but in one form or another they pulled through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first signs I saw of the EKG's little heartbeep-blip for movie theaters was with the 2021 release of the less-than-spectacular Godzilla vs. Kong. Though a ridiculous movie, it was still kind of fun in its over-the-top, "we-know-this-is-terrible-but-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-yourself-anyway" sort of way. For the first time since the pandemic began and the theaters saw a precipitous drop in business, there was a legitimate crowd at the theater for this movie.
[Aside: Leave it to two of the greatest classic movie monsters of all time to drag audiences back into public space, back to the movies. As bad as Godzilla vs. Kong was--and it was bad--there was something about what it accomplished that couldn't help but put a smile on your face.]
In the meantime, of course, many things were happening around the world on the movie-watching front--and all of it outside and away from the local movie theaters. As if to build on Aristotle's classical theory of physics, horror vacui (or "plenism")--which has something to do with nature hating a vacuum (otherwise known as "an empty space") and thereby nature rushing in to fill it--online streaming services have exploded in popularity and availability. Everyone's home is now literally a personal movie theater: practically anything you want to watch, at anytime, is merely the click-of-a-button away. It could not be easier.
There is even the weird hybrid these days, too, of movies being released in theaters and on streaming services concurrently, or else released in the theaters for a few weeks and then released on streaming.
And while it's true that even though something is gained from this easiness of staying at home and watching movies in your sweatpants and your recliner, something is inevitably lost, as well. Many of the movies that I list below were watched at home. (So, I get it.) But several of the movies were watched in the theater, too. Not just because I'm some kind of annoying purist romanticizing the big-screen, communal experience found at the local movie-house (although there is something to all of that.) I still have maintained my love for "going to the movies" at the local movie theater simply because....
Well, just because.
And I don't seem to be alone in that passion for the "going-to-the-movies" experience. It seems to be making a drastic comeback, this idea of returning to the movie theater. We seem to be returning to at least that sort of "normal," anyway. At least a little bit. It may never return to what it was in pre-pandemic days (because at-home movie-streaming is here to stay and will only continue to grow), but with huge recent hits like Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water movie theaters are crowded again, and showings are filled and/or sold out, and the buzz around seeing certain extravaganzas on the biggest screen possible with the greatest sound possible is once again a thing.
Who knows what direction all of this is going? But enthusiasm seems to be back for the movies. Either that or it never went away. Regardless, as audiences wanting and needing and loving to fill up on movies, we seem to be getting our share--one way or another. And one way or another, either by literally "going to the movies" again or by staying home and letting the movies come to us, we are finding our way back.
* * The following list is in two parts--favorite films I saw in 2022, as well as a handful of others that I liked a great deal for reasons of their own.
* * The following movies are ordered alphabetically by their titles.
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(1). 2022 Films: "Best Of"
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) -- Dir. Edward Berger
Erich Maria Remarque's timeless 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front possibly created the whole "anti-war" genre with the desperation, sadness, despair, futility, and death running through its brutally realistic scenes of the insanity and horror of W.W. I trench-warfare fought along the "western front" bordering Germany and France.
The novel has been adapted for the screen--large and small--many times (sometimes more successfully than others). Berger's film is visually and emotionally stunning. It is devastating, of course, as any film carrying this title should be.
I was struck, though, by just how different this adaptation is from Remarque's source-material: While Berger's film keeps many of the same characters and certain key scenes and plot points of the novel, much of it really isn't Remarque's novel at all. Through most of the film, I felt this All Quiet on the Western Front had more in common with Sam Mendes' 2019 W.W. I masterpiece 1917 than the original novel of which it is loosely based and shares a title.
None of this is a criticism or a complaint, however, merely an artistic observation. In the end Berger's film is a creative re-molding/re-telling of Remarque's famous book; it maintains the spirit of the written source, and by its close you will feel the same horror, the same emptiness, the same revulsion, the same sense of waste, the same hatred of war that Remarque wanted you to feel in his original work. This is an All Quiet on the Western Front for 2022. Many of its scenes and images will linger with you long after the film is over. It will have an effect on you. You may be shocked. You may find yourself sickened. And by its inevitable, inescapable closing scenes you may even cry.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) -- Dir. Martin McDonagh
The son of Irish parents, Martin McDonagh was raised in London and first made his name as a young, burgeoning playwright on the London theater scene. With plays like The Lonesome West (1997), The Cripple of Inishman (1997), and The Pillowman (2003) he gained notice for his wordplay, his wit, and his ability to turn his stories and his characters on a dime, revealing uncharted depths not yet explored.
He soon made a name for himself in the movies as well, writing and directing his own screenplays, including In Bruges (2008), Seven Psychopaths (2012), and the Academy Award-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).
2022's The Banshees of Inisherin is his first film since Three Billboards, and (seeing as how I thought Three Billboards was ridiculously overrated) this is the far superior film--perhaps his masterpiece, in fact.
The unique McDonagh dialogue--the sharp Irish wit, the turns-of-phrase, the joy, the sadness, the ability to leave an audience wanting to use the word "feck" in all of its wonderful grammatical forms--is just right throughout the film. The stunning cinematography. The performances--leading and supporting--as well as the music by Carter Burwell all set the stage for a warm, menacing, uplifting, tragic, funny, sad rumination on the nature of friendship, of community, of love, and longing, and loss, and faith, and revenge, and war.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) -- Dirs. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Full disclosure: When I first saw this movie, I wasn't sure I liked it. I wasn't sure what to think of it, to be honest. I wasn't sure what I was thinking at all, really, particularly during my initial viewing.
So much comes at the viewer so quickly, without let-up, without time to catch up on whatever plot development or character development you might have just missed, there is no time to process, to fully absorb, to think even. Images, ideas, movement, sound, all coming at you--literally--everything, everywhere, all at once (to coin a phrase).
I've heard it said that this is possibly the first feature film to fully attempt replicating the experience of what being on the internet is like. (If we want to go back a bit further to 1999, it could be argued that The Matrix might have been the first film to seriously scratch the surface of this idea, possibly....)
Don't get me wrong: I like this movie. I wasn't sure that I did at first, but on a repeated viewing--after having some time to think about the film, and to talk about it with others, and to process it, the film began to take on a shape for me--it clicked into place, more and more.
The movie is kind of like the experience of being online, to be sure, which is a very strange thing for these bright, young filmmakers to have accomplished. And then to do all of the technical/editing wizardry while at the same time telling a very human, ultimately moving family drama. (This is, in fact, the movie's most impressive accomplishment, I think. For example: The quiet, meditative scene with the rocks overlooking the canyon is on a shortlist of one of the greatest film moments of the year.)
What brought the biggest smile to my face at the movies this year, though, was the return of Michelle Yeoh (garnering the most glowing reviews of her esteemed career), the return of veteran actor James Hong (always a delight), and the celebrated return of Ke Huy Quan ("Short Round" for fans of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as well as "Data" for The Goonies fans)--and all of them sharing moments onscreen together.
The movie can be exhausting (it's true), but it is finally, also, exhilarating. That is a rare combination.
[Aside: But, then again, see RRR below.]
The Fabelmans (2022) -- Dir. Steven Spielberg
It is no secret that over the long course of his career, Steven Spielberg has threaded personal elements of his own life into the body of his work, addressing various memories, thoughts, emotions, fears, angers, and anxieties, working them out onscreen, and resolving them with a Hollywood ending at times--a full emotional outpouring of grace, forgiveness, hope, and redemption, eliciting a sense of closure and meaning that, let's face it, usually only happens in the movies.
Themes of divorce, broken families, lost children, abandonment, the saving grace of one's imagination, of one's dreams, the power of hope. This is all in the fabric of his films over the years: The Sugarland Express (1974); Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977); E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982); The Color Purple (1985); Empire of the Sun (1987); A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)....
I could go on.
He is certainly no stranger to incorporating autobiographical elements into his art. But never before has Spielberg so intentionally set about detailing (albeit still a shadowy "fiction," of sorts) the story of his youth--his growing up in Arizona, and his parents' splintered marriage, and their eventual divorce, and his early love of movies, and his grappling with his Jewishness and the pervading anti-Semitism of his teenage years, and always his preternatural gifts of experimental, homemade filmmaking beginning at an early age. A form of escape for him, yes, but also--and more importantly--a way for him to control the uncontrollable and to fashion the world the way he wanted it to be.
This is a uniquely personal movie--even for a filmmaker like Steven Spielberg who has spent his life making unique, personal movies.
Fleishman is in Trouble (2022) -- Prod. Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Journalist/editor/novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner published this, her first novel, Fleishman is in Trouble, in 2019, and I loved it. At the time I was reading it I felt she had either been looking over my shoulder since my divorce in the long-ago days of 2004 or had somehow found a way to tap into my mind--my thoughts, my memories, my bank of feelings regarding the whole expansive universe of divorce: rejection and pain and sadness and loss and lostness... I thought the book was extraordinary. I thought it was an honest and revealing contemporary take on a tricky subject matter.
But it's what Brodesser-Akner accomplishes about 2/3 of the way through her novel that impressed me even more--a "flipped-script" meta plot-twist that I did not see coming and that (as a reader) changed my perception of everything that preceded and followed it.
Brodesser-Akner oversaw the movie-adaptation of the novel and decided on the long-form storytelling approach. (When I was young, classics like Roots, and Shogun, and The Winds of War created the template for something called the "mini-series." Now, in today's streaming world, the same thing is more commonly referred to as a "limited series.") Whatever you want to call it, this 8-part, episodic retelling of her novel is fantastic.
The writing, carried out by Brodesser-Akner herself, is brilliant. The directing--from various contributing filmmakers--is spot on. And the casting is perfect. The film's three leads shine--Jesse Eisenberg (giving some of the most heartfelt work of his career), and Lizzy Caplan (whom I had to look up because I wasn't familiar with her), and most notably Claire Danes (whom I have always loved and who impresses me here in ways she's never done before; she is exceptional in her turn as Rachel Fleishman, and I hope she is recognized for her work at awards time).
I know this isn't the typical sort of film normally mentioned this time of year in the same breath as most movies rounded up for "best-of" lists. But all the same, I'm including it. (And come to think of it, Ingmar Bergman released some of his finest late-career films--including Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander--originally as multi-episode series on Swedish television. So if those movies are accepted as "great films," in whatever form they take, then maybe the rulebook can go out the window.)
Regardless of whatever type of movie we want to call it, Fleishman is in Trouble moved me, made me laugh, made me shake my head knowingly, made me cringe, made me care, played upon my expectations, played with filmic structure, and--put simply--was one of my favorite movie-watching experiences of this past year.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) -- Dir. Rian Johnson
Rian Johnson's Knives Out (2019) was one of my favorite movies of that year. A wickedly fun tribute to the classic Agatha Christie murder-mystery template, Johnson's first contribution to Christie's original world saw a typically dysfunctional group of crackpots assembled in a country mansion, an untimely murder, followed by Johnson's own Hercule Poirot, Daniel Craig's wonderful Shelby Foote-by-way-of-Foghorn Leghorn world-class detective, Benoit Blanc.
Johnson's follow-up three years later (delayed by the pandemic) is an unsurprisingly fun return to the files of Benoit Blanc and its exaggerated milieu of madness, murder, and mayhem.
I'm not sure this one is quite as much fun as the original film, but I'm also not sure if that's because Knives Out came out first and has the benefit of originality bias. Whatever the case, this is a wonderful return to Johnson's take on the "Whodunnit?" genre. As long as Rian Johnson is willing to churn out these stories and Daniel Craig is willing to return as this great comedic sleuth, I'm all in.
Nope (2022) -- Dir. Jordan Peele
This is a thought-provoking and mysterious meditation from Jordan Peele on our popular culture of passive audiences quietly feeding on a steady diet of "spectacle" via the media, the internet, and even films themselves. Peele is hitting his stride here as an insightful, challenging filmmaker--a provocateur, in every sense of the word.
With Nope, only his third film, he is in fine form. In his brief filmography, Peele really hasn't hit a wrong note yet. 2017's Get Out surprised everyone with its razor-sharp satirical take on race relations in America in the guise of a slow-burn, old-fashioned horror tale. Us (2019) upped the ante a bit, perhaps--wider in its reach yet no less lacerating in what it had to say about a fractured modern society, all in the guise, again, of contemporized terror.
This time, the horror is front and center, hitting us hard from the film's shocking opening and not letting up with its growing sense of hovering (literally) dread and unease. This is a movie about the weight of trauma, the inability to elude memory, and our attempts to control the modern-day terrors of our everyday world. Peele is on a roll.
The Northman (2022) -- Dir. Robert Eggers
You don't just watch a Robert Eggers movie, you live in it for a while. You get used to its rhythms, its paces, it ways of talk, its movement, its mannerisms, its compositions, its colors and shadings, its music, its melodies, its whispers, its screams, its heavens, and its horrors....
And then you come out of it and you suddenly are forced to re-enter your own world again.
Like Jordan Peele above, here we have another young filmmaker with this, only his third feature, following the remarkable one-two debut punch of The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019). Put simply, Eggers makes movies today that are distinctly his own; it is safe to say that his filmography, to date, is not quite like any other living director's.
His scripts and production designs are deeply and thoroughly researched into the histories and the locales and the cultures of the stories he tells. They are detailed, and dense, and you need to pay attention, and you need to follow closely, and you definitely can benefit from watching them more than once.
The Northman, his "Viking epic," is no exception--it is extraordinarily rich. And Eggers is supposedly following it with a retelling of F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent German-expressionist horror classic Nosferatu. (This sounds to me like a perfect fit of story and storyteller.)
RRR (2022) -- Dir. S.S. Rajamouli
I really had no idea what to expect with S.S. Rajamouli''s RRR, beyond the positive buzz I'd heard and read leading up to seeing it.
I had no way to predict how much fun this movie would be, how entertained I would be from beginning to end, and how much I would smile during its 182-minute runtime.
And the moustaches... Did I mention the moustaches?
This movie is unlike anything I saw this past year. [Aside: Hell, I think this movie is unlike anything I've ever seen....] Part historical period-piece, part romance, part bromance, part family drama, part coming-out-of-nowhere "Bollywood" musical, and full-on 120% action extravaganza, RRR is like a pure shot of adrenaline directly to the heart.
I don't recall the last time I've been this surprised by a film, nor the last time I've had so much fun with a three-hour epic, nor the last time I've bothered all my friends with repeatedly saying, "I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but...you've GOT to see this thing to believe it!"
TAR (2022) -- Dir. Todd Field
A recurring theme among some of this year's better films seems to be: A brilliant filmmaker releases a great third film to the world in 2022....
Add writer/director Todd Field to the list. With a film resume' like In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and now what I think is his masterpiece, TAR, a few things are apparent: Todd Field is certainly eclectic in the subjects of his films; he is not (obviously) going to be hurried to make his art; and he damn well knows what he's doing.
TAR is another one of those movies that is mysterious, and humorous, and disturbing, and intriguing on its first watch, and on its second watch you notice things, see things, hear things that you either missed before or weren't able to piece together before. (I imagine this only increases with each repeated viewing.)
Much has been said about Cate Blanchett's celebrated Lydia Tar, and deservedly so. It's been called her "best work" and a "career-defining performance." Such accolades are not wrong. She is phenomenal here--it's fun (and also frightening) to watch her sink her teeth in this role. Blanchett is a seasoned actor--one of the greatest that we have-- digging into character, fully committed, fully giving all of herself for the dark, twisted performance of a lifetime.
(2.) 2022 Films: Honorable Mentions
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022) -- Dir. Richard Linklater
If all one knows of contemporary American filmmaker Richard Linklater is his 1993 breakout hit, Dazed and Confused, which follows the graduating class of 1976 on the last day of school in Austin, Texas, that would probably be okay. But then you would be missing out on Linklater's amazing catalog of filmwork--a catalog of movies ranging from his indie-defining debut three years earlier, Slacker (1990), filmed on a 16 mm Arriflex camera with a budget of only $23,000, to his "Before" Trilogy (1995-2013), starring Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy, to his ambitious, 12-years-in-the-making intimate epic Boyhood (2014), etc.
Linklater is a chameleon of a filmmaker; he is comfortable in various genres, exploring different types of films, and expanding his already expansive oeuvre. As a result, then, he is often misunderstood. He has--from the beginning--been a film artist concerned with profound things: the notion of time, the passage of time, and our perception--unfixed and changing--of our passing through time, as well as our memories of it.
This "little" film--his latest--is a delightful and touching bit of animated autobiography (to a degree) from Linklater, reminiscing about a Texas boyhood, and big dreams of a world away, all set in the summer of the Apollo moon landing.
The Batman (2022) -- Matt Reeves
When I first saw the trailer for this--the inevitable latest iteration of Bob's Kane's midnight vigilante--I thought, "Oh my God, another one? Again? So soon?"
I was not entirely looking forward to this. Even though Robert Pattinson has come into his own in recent years and is impressing me as an actor who can hold his own with anybody onscreen (i.e. Robbert Eggers' 2019 Persona-esque masterpiece The Lighthouse). And even though I have been a fan of Matt Reeves' work, going back to 2008's Cloverfield. And even though this new Batman's trailer looked kind of interesting and even pretty cool...still, I had reason to be hesitant.
And then I heard that Cat Woman would be played by Zoe Kravitz. And The Riddler, played by Paul Dano. And The Penguin, played by Colin Farrell. [Aside: Colin Farrell--let's just say it--had one hell of an impressive year at the movies. Go ahead...Google it. Not only this film but also The Banshees of Inisherin (see above), Thirteen Lives, and After Yang. Remarkable.]
But along with an impressive cast like this, though, I also heard that the film's proposed running time would be close to 180 minutes, which prompted my next thought: "No movie with the word 'Batman' in the title needs to be three hours long."
And then the movie came out. And (although I still stand by my rule on the relationship between the word "Batman" and a film's length) I was more than pleasantly surprised.
Blonde (2022) -- Dir. Andrew Dominik
This is undoubtedly the most controversial film on my list this year, and I would be surprised if it is mentioned among others' favorite movies of 2022.
And yet...here it is for me.
It is an imperfect film: It is too long; there are scenes and sequences that could be trimmed (if not cut altogether); I have questions about some of the film's pacing, as well as questions regarding one or two particularly notorious shots/edits. (Yes...those.)
But still.... I think the storm of controversy that exploded around the film is unfair and misplaced. I think what Andrew Dominik was setting out to do was brave and brilliant. And for the most part I feel he succeeded.
Based on the 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the film intimately portrays the sad, tortured life and career of Marilyn Monroe (a.k.a. "Norma Jean"). For me, the movie is a post-#metoo takedown of patriarchal, chauvinist, sexist, privileged, power-elite, Harvey Weinstein Hollywood. Though criticized for its supposedly unfair handling and "male-gazing" treatment of its star subject, I find the accusations to be off-the-mark.--particularly attacks against Ana de Armas and her portrayal of Monroe. She is strikingly brave in her performance here. (Though the film may have its flaws, she is not one of them. She is wonderful as Monroe and deserves to be recognized for her work.)
Dominik's 2007 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a great movie, one of my favorite films of that year. He has shown before an inclination to explore themes of the cult of fame and the nature of celebrity--what it is, what some will do for it, and what it will inevitably do to them. He is still chasing after those themes.
Crimes of the Future (2022) -- Dir. David Cronenberg
It's fair to say there are not many directors like David Cronenberg. At 79 years old, he is still hard at work and still just as polarizing a filmmaker as ever. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Cronenberg emerged from "the Great White North" with some arty student films in the early 1970s but soon made his name (sort of, for those who saw it anyway) with his first feature release Shivers (1975).
From the beginning, his films were known for their low budgets, their weak "acting," and their cheap-looking effects. But despite that, his films were also known for their innate ability to create an incomparable feeling of dread and disgust--what would later come to be known as its own underground genre of "body horror."
Bigger, more expensive, more expansive, and more successful films would soon follow: Scanners (1981); Videodrome (1983); The Dead Zone (1983); The Fly (1986); Crash (1996); A History of Violence (2005); Eastern Promises (2007); et al.
Like every artist, over the years some of his work has "landed" and some has not. But over the course of his career Cronenberg has never swerved from his dark, brooding, "body horror" vision. And this past year he returned in full glory with a film that only could have come from the mind of David Cronenberg.
[Aside: Reportedly, Cronenberg would even be considered (briefly) by George Lucas to direct Return of the Jedi (1983). That would, of course, not come to pass...which is probably for the best. For David Cronenberg's career, not to mention for Star Wars, as well. (Dear God...can you imagine?)]
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) -- Dir. Guillermo del Toro
Literally decades in the making, if this film doesn't define the terms "life's commitment" and "determination," I'm not sure what does.
Guillermo del Toro set his sights on the classic 1883 novel from Italian writer Carlo Collodi many years ago, knowing that he wanted to do his own movie-version of the famous, often-told tale.
And...wow...when Guillermo del Toro puts his name to the title of a film, he is not kidding.
Visually stunning, yes, as you would expect from del Toro. But perhaps the most amazing thing about this stop-motion animated film--almost an impossibility, really--is that while watching it you are able to momentarily forget the famous (and infamous) screen iterations of Pinocchio over the years, and you feel, strangely, as if you are watching it all for the very first time.
All told, that is quite an accomplishment.
