2022 was a step up for movies over the past couple, and I hope this list reflects that.
I've done a terrible job at keeping up on writing any kind of reviews for the movies I've been watching over the past few years, but even though I'm a little later on this than I would usually aim to be with a 2022 countdown, I'm still happy that I've gotten this done at all. I watched about 90-100 movies from this last year, and these are my favorite ones. At least, as I see them right now. I really want to start doing a series of redos on these lists that show how much my opinion has changed over the years, but that's for another time. Anyway, here is the list.
Also, there are too many movies for me to cover in honorable mentions, so if your favorite isn't on here, just pretend it barely missed the cut if that helps you sleep at night.
25. Nope
Directed by Jordan Peele
24. Drive My Car
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
A 3-hour character drama that's bound to bore most people to tears, unless they have a particular weakness for long-ass melodramas and/or Uncle Vanya. This isn't the kind of movie that might hit you right away, but as it went along and long after it was finished I found myself returning to it again and again in my mind. It may be very long, but it didn't feel tedious to watch at any point for me. The performances are great, the cinematography, editing, etc. were all top-notch. Not really much to say about this one, apart from it being very good.
23. The House
Directed by Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza
Anthologies are very hard for me to judge, as they're by design quite inconsistent. But luckily, while this one has peaks and valleys, with only 3 stories and a dark, whimsical tone that remains throughout, I found this to be an overall very strong anthology. The first part is the most straight-forward "horror", but I always think back on the next two parts when I replay the events of the movie in my head. Overall, though, I think it's the third, non-horror, but very solemn segment that I enjoy the most. There's a feeling of melancholy that I admire, and the world it manages to create is beautiful, twisted, and somehow hopeful. It's a really cool stop-motion film.
22. Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp
And we've got ourselves some more stop motion! But unlike the last one, this is an incredibly adorable movie that manages to make you feel a whole load of emotions that often are rooted in the fact that it's just so very cute. This is a heart-warming movie that focuses on a central character that you can't help but to love and often feel quite bad for. Jenny Slate's vocal performance is great and works perfectly in unison with the animation. While I disagree with this movie getting an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film (large portions of it are very much live-action), seeing it find its way into the awards circuit was still a very lovely surprise. It's difficult for me to imagine anyone watching this movie and disliking it.
21. The Pale Blue Eye
Directed by Scott Cooper
I sometimes feel like I'm alone in liking this movie as much as I did. I'm not the world's biggest Christian Bale fan, but I think he gave a pretty solid lead performance here, but he's not even close to the film's strongest attribute. The production design is beautiful, the atmosphere, cinematography, music, costuming, etc. all do an excellent job at placing you firmly into this setting, which makes the central mysteries all the more compelling. Watching the story unfold in not always the most surprising ways didn't bother me, but some of the twists (that probably bugged a lot of people) actually worked for me, particularly the one with [REDACTED]. Maybe not a masterpiece, but I really liked it.
20. A Love Song
Directed by Max Walker-Silverman
Almost objectively the most boring movie on this list, A Love Song is a beautiful character study starring Dale Dickey, a very unique career supporting performer who finally is given room to give all she's got, and it does not disappoint. This is a very quiet movie all about an aging widow trying to fill the gaps left by others. It's a very slow, melancholy film that most people will probably find tedious, but I found wholly captivating. Dale Dickey and Wes Studi are both terrific, and the subtle emotion behind their performances are genuinely incredible. Not a movie for everyone, but it deserves to be on my list.
19. The Northman
Directed by Robert Eggers
It's been a year since I saw this movie and I'm still not sure how I feel about it as a whole, but when I think back on it I don't generally have negative thoughts pop up in my noggin. There are a few weird/awkward scenes near the beginning, Nicole Kidman (despite giving a solid performance) doesn't fully mesh, and some of the fight choreography is a bit stilted at first, but it doesn't take long before all of the filmmaking aspects drown out all that, and you're left with a very simple revenge story with an awesome setting, loads of violence, and some pretty epic set pieces. This is a weird movie for Eggers, but seeing as his last film was The Lighthouse, I'd say by most people's standards it's not very weird at all. Either way, I need to watch it again before I totally decide where I land on it. It's a really cool visual experience, and has some scenes that I can't get out of my head.
18. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish
Directed by Joel Crawford
The most recent viewing that's made it onto my list, this 11-years later sequel to a ho-hum Shrek spinoff wasn't exactly something I had high on my list of priorities, but those lowered expectations definitely aided in making this one of the most surprisingly entertaining and lovely movies I saw from 2022. There are some weird visuals during action sequences (jury's still out for me on that), but the overall look and feel of the movie is very impressive, and I loved how often the jokes actually landed. It took a little bit for me to get totally invested, but by the time the main adventure was underway, I was already fully immersed. It's a fun, exciting, sweet little movie, and I'm just as surprised as anyone else that it wound up this good.
17. Beavis And Butthead Do The Universe
Directed by John Rice, Albert Calleros
And another sequel I didn't expect to enjoy has found its way onto my list. What's even happening? I've never been the world's biggest Beavis & Butthead fan, not for any particular reason apart from relative lack of exposure, but of what I've seen I think I enjoyed this as much as anything else featuring these characters. The plot is silly and a bit thin, but that's not really anything surprising, mostly just finding new settings for these two goobers to interact with things in new and interesting ways. There are a lot of bits that had me laughing my ass off, and the gap between jokes was never too long. This is a fun movie, but I would never recommend to anyone who isn't already familiar with Beavis & Butthead.
16. Triangle Of Sadness
Directed by Ruben Ostland
15. The Worst Person In The World
Directed by Joachim Trier
This isn't a fun movie to watch. In fact, it's pretty devastating, but sometimes that's what you really need out of a movie. The fact it's able to get you so emotionally invested in the story and characters is definitely one of its strengths, but it goes deeper than just the writing. All aspects of this film from a technical perspective work beautifully, and the performances are among the best of the year. I suppose some people might consider this a 2021 movie (it was even up for the Oscars for the 2021 year), but since I wasn't able to watch it until several months into 2022, I'm counting it here. Great movie, but not one I could recommend to everyone -- as per usual.
14. Cha Cha Real Smooth
Directed by Cooper Raiff
I went into this one expecting a pretty bland and forgettable comedy-drama, and left it absolutely amazed. Usually these indie darlings come and go by the end of the year without really leaving much of a mark, and while this one was definitely forgotten by most people by the time year-end lists rolled around, I still found it very noteworthy and enjoyed every minute of it. It's a surprising movie in a lot of ways, and one of the big ways it delivers is in its treatment of certain supporting characters, with major arcs not playing out the way you would expect them to. Dakota Johnson was a huge highlight for me, once again proving that she's one of the best actresses of the past decade, but she is by no means the only strong performance. This movie is sweet, funny, emotional, ticking all the boxes for an effective coming-of-age dramedy.
13. Kantara
Directed by Rishab Shetty
Let me start by saying this movie is incredibly dumb, too long, a huge vanity project for the director/star, weirdly sexist, and overall not really good by most metrics. But I kinda loved it. In spite of running almost 3 hours, this movie found ways to entertain me throughout, offering little bits and pieces of the kind of cultural mysticism I can't help but to find fascinating. There are tons of entertaining action scenes, some hugely over-the-top sequences of a different ilk, and the plot took enough turns to keep me from ever getting bored by it. This is the kind of movie you replay in your head, skipping through to find all the good parts, of which there are plenty. I don't want to spoil a big chunk of what I love about this movie, but let me say the final act offered so much raw entertainment for me, it would have been worth watching for that portion alone -- but it helps that I liked the setup as much as I did.
12. Bodies Bodies Bodies
Directed by Halina Reijn
If I were to simply name the most entertaining movies of the year without going into anything more detailed than just how simply fun it was to watch, this would land even higher on the list than this. Watching a trailer for this one will do a great job in preparing you for exactly what you should expect from the way the characters in this one act/speak/interact, but if you're turned off by the type of dialogue they have, it helps to realize this movie is meant as a pseudo-mockery of this kind of person. Fun performances across the board (yes, even Pete Davidson), the mystery is an interesting one to watch unravel, and the ending wraps the whole thing in a perfect, hilarious bow. This isn't really a pure horror movie as some people might hope, but I got everything I hoped from it, and much more.
11. The Sadness
Directed by Rob Jabbaz
This is a very disgusting, brutal, violent, psychotic movie that I would never recommend to anyone who doesn't have a thick skin. That being said, if you like very bloody, gory, messed up movies, this might scratch an itch for you in ways few things truly can. There isn't much for me to say about this one outside of that, but even though it is a deeply disturbing and twisted movie, I still found it very entertaining and at times weirdly funny. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did, and as far as I'm aware I'm still not on any kind of watch list.
10. The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
Directed by Tom Gormican
I love a good buddy comedy, which isn't the kind of thing I would have expected to say to start off a segment about a meta-Nicolas Cage movie, but that was a very welcome surprise. Since the rise of the Nic Cage meme, his career has gone in even more interesting directions than ever before, resulting in some of the best movies in recent years (see: Mandy, Pig) and some of the worst (don't see: Willy's Wonderland). So when I first saw about this movie and read the description before there was any footage released to the public, I was equal parts worried and excited. The results were a lot less psychotic, and a lot more funny, focused, and palatable. The big surprise for me was Pedro Pascal, who I'd not really seen in anything outside of his brief appearance on Game Of Thrones, but who managed to totally steal the movie away from Cage himself. Together they make for a very entertaining pair, and make this movie something truly special.
9. Babylon
Directed by Damien Chazelle
If you're a fan of the excess of something like Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street, this might be your new favorite movie. Everything about it is loud, brash, in your face, over-the-top, ridiculous, and stunning to behold. I'm not the world's biggest Brad Pitt fan, but I really enjoyed his performance here, and Margot Robbie is of course difficult to ignore, as she really is the driving force of a great deal of the plot of the movie. While the crassness might be a bit too much for some people (you should know within the first 10 minutes if this is a movie you won't be able to stomach), but for people who just want to enjoy an entirely different, wild, and borderline psychotic experience that equally glamorizes and criticizes the excesses of the Hollywood lifestyle, give it a go. It may be 3 hours long, but I thought time flew by watching this one, and apart from Whiplash, it's the best thing Chazelle has done.
8. Mad God
Directed by Phil Tippett
Among all the top-motion movies I saw this last year (I think there were about 5, actually), this one easily takes the top spot as my runaway favorite. In spite of some minor nitpicks about the brief inclusion of live-action performers (which I acknowledge as being as much of a narrative choice as an aesthetic one), this might be the most visually impressive movie of the past several years. Phil Tippett poured so much time and effort into this film, working on it for something like 30 years, and while I'm sad to say not many people seem to have seen it, I like to think that time wasn't wasted, considering how absolutely awesome it is to those of us who have given it a look. Narratively, there isn't much to say about this one, but this isn't the kind of movie where you even care if there are characters, dialogue, or anything like that. It's very atmospheric, and a lot more about the visuals and world-building, which I definitely appreciate from time to time. Maybe it's not quite the 10/10 masterpiece I was hoping for, but it's really close.
7. Bones And All
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Luca Guadagnino has had a very odd sort of career as a director. Going from more high-brow dramas like 'I Am Love', into slightly more pulpy but still very classic material like his Swimming Pool remake 'A Bigger Splash', into one of the great romantic dramas of the past decade in 'Call Me By Your Name'. This trajectory isn't the strange part, but what he did next in reinventing the Italian horror classic 'Suspiria' by basically completely transforming the source material in every way, and then to this: a coming-of-age road trip romance about cannibals. I'm not a big Chalamet fan, but he's solid here (as he was in Call Me By Your Name), and Taylor Russell is also pretty great, but in a lot of ways it's the supporting performances that make this movie stand out and give it the sense of progression the story needed -- Mark Rylance and Michael Stuhlbarg in particular are incredible. This is a weird movie that reminded me a lot of Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark, but dare I say it's a far better film. It may not be for everyone, but the same can be said of a lot of the best movies out there.
6. RRR
Directed by S.S. Rajamouli
This is one of the biggest movies of the year, in more ways than one. It's over 3 hours long, it's got action, comedy, drama, music, history, and pretty much does everything it possibly can to entertain you the entire way through. I really didn't know what to think going in, as I've never really given Bollywood (or any other major foreign blockbusters of any type) much of a chance, and even though I suppose this isn't "technically" Bollywood, I'm still going to count it as the first one I've ever watched. Maybe the huge runtime, foreign language, and inherently silly and over-the-top nature to it will turn a lot of people off, but if you're apprehensive, I still think it's worth giving a go. Just watch it in small chunks (like you would a TV show), flip the audio to English if you can't be bothered to read subtitles, and give yourself in to a movie so excessively macho, there was a point in the movie one of the main characters was bitten by a venomous snake and I fully expected him to flex the venom out of his veins. It's big, stupid, and fun in pretty much every way.
5. The Menu
Directed by Mark Mylod
If you ever find yourself irritated by smug art critics, the rich and entitled, people who would frequently refer to themselves as "intellectual", or just people who find ways to turn food into an obnoxious art piece, this might be the film for you. It does a great job at skewering pretense in a way that's both hilarious and satisfying to the audience, all while telling a story that, though not truly pushing any boundaries, is sure to entertain fans of the horror genre. It's a very dark, sarcastic sort of movie that works largely in part to the cast. Anya Taylor Joy is great in the lead, Nicolas Hoult is super annoying and funny, Hong Chau is terrific (even better here than she was in her Oscar-nominated performance in The Whale thsi same year), but it's really Ralph Fiennes who steals the show. There is so much intensity and mystery surrounding his enigmatic chef character, and it makes the plot revelations all the more fun to watch unfold. His arc, while simple enough, does a great job at wrapping both the story and the themes of the film in a lovely little bow.
4. Aftersun
Directed by Charlotte Wells
In spite of the fact that I arguably don't have a soul, this movie devastated me to watch. It's one of the most sad, genuine, and powerful dramas I've seen in years, and it all relies so heavily on the main performances that it becomes even more impressive to me that it worked so well in spite of one of the lead actors being only like 10-12 years old. I make special note of that fact since child actors are usually terrible and drag everything down with them. But that doesn't happen here, and watching Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal's chemistry here really makes you feel like you're just watching a real life father-daughter relationship. It's so filled with love and compassion, which makes the more emotional bits hit all the harder. While some of the Best Actor nominations this year were quite good, and I was totally fine with Brendan Fraser winning for The Whale, to me it wasn't even a question who was the best of the bunch, as Paul Mescal gives one of the best performances I've seen in years in this movie. This movie hits like a hammer, and I can't say enough positive things about it.
3. Decision To Leave
Directed by Park Chan-wook
In spite of the fact that there are other more emotional movies out there, there's something unavoidable to me about the filmmaking style of Park Chan-wook. This guy is one of the greatest directors ever, and it seems like anymore when he releases a movie, it's bound to be one of the best things to come out that year. While it took me a couple watches to fully appreciate The Handmaiden, this one struck me instantly, helped in part by my more recent infatuation in the film noir genre, as this one of the best neo-noirs I've seen in years. The main performances are terrific, the plot keeps you guessing, and there really isn't a single thing about it that I could ever criticize. This is a fantastic mystery, an amazing character study, and a surprisingly effective romance. From beginning to end, it had its hooks in me, and the way it all wraps up works perfectly to match the sort of tone you might expect out of him based on his previous films. If you've got a decent amount of time and the patience to read subtitles, this is an excellent crime film that deserves even more praise than the already-massive amounts it received upon release.
2. The Banshees Of Inisherin
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh, at least up to this point in his career, seems incapable of releasing a bad movie. That being said, while I didn't enjoy Three Billboards quite as much the second time around (I gave it a perfect score the first time around, to put it in context), Seven Psychopaths is still a very solidly enjoyable movie, and In Bruges is probably bound to always be my favorite of his due to very nostalgic, personal reasons, this might well be the best thing he's ever made. It's a fantastic character drama that would have worked perfectly fine being just that, but it's also one of the funniest movies I saw all year. Colin Farrell has never been better, and Brendan Gleeson is just about as great here as he's ever been. I also have nothing but praise for Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan, not to mention all the other supporting performances in the movie that I can't be bothered to name. This is a bleak little movie about friendship, isolation, meaninglessness, and ambition when facing your own mortality. Sounds like a lot of fun, right? Well, it's not meant to make you feel good. In fact, I've heard this referred to as a feel-bad movie, so keep that in mind if you feel like popping on a movie for a fun little time -- this isn't the kind of "funny" that you'll probably ever find "fun". But I loved it.
1. Everything Everywhere All At Once
Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Guess what? The Oscars got it right this year! The actual best movie of the year won Best Picture, and while I'm certain that will mean people will start to use that as a reason to start hating this movie now, that isn't likely to happen with me because I'm not an easily influenced nitwit who can't enjoy something just because it's gotten popular. This is an absolute wrecking ball of a movie that flies all over the place, offering entertainment on every level with its chaotic action, sci-fi/fantasy concepts, emotional character drama, absurdist comedy, and some very dark themes that touch on mental health, familial pressure, and suicide. The fact I can say I was basically crying for the last 45 minutes of the movie and still walked away from it feeling uplifted is very impressive to me, especially considering some of the things it did to get me feeling emotions that strong. If you found yourself moved at all by the Daniels' previous movie 'Swiss Army Man', you'll probably understand a little better, but it still feels almost like a magic trick the way they're able to control your emotions like they do. But it's not just the way this film is able to pull on your heartstrings, it's also a very interesting multi-verse story that does more with parallel timelines than any other movie I've seen. Their take on Ratatouille and the hot dog-fingered people are some pretty great examples of the ridiculous directions this movie takes, but they never have that annoying "LULZ RANDOM" quality that so many things had 10-20 years ago. Oh, and the performances are great. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis were all wonderful, 3 of these 4 even going on to win Oscars in their categories -- even if JLC's win did feel especially odd. I really have nothing but praise for this movie, and it's the first perfect score I've given to a new movie since Parasite. So, pretty much by default this is the best movie of the decade for me, and I'm not disappointed by that at all. I love this movie, and I want people to still keep watching it and appreciating it for all the lovely things it has to offer.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment