Notable Films of 2022

I noticed something while going over the 10-best lists of other critics I know, something arguably not too extraordinary on the face of it maybe. That is, the presence of films that I had not only not seen but that I had not even heard of. From the very beginning of my year-end movie list making days, which were only ever in a professional context, I had a sense that my colleagues and I more or less covered the same beat, the same waterfront such as it was, and that a certain homogeneity would result across the board, for better or worse. This year there seemed a kind of palpable break from that, albeit one that's been a long time coming. The reasons for that? We all know some of them already: the overall fragmentation of movie viewing/cinephilia, its exacerbation due to the pandemic, the perfidy of streaming, all that. That's the overall situation. For me personally, it's that I'm reviewing films in a narrower range at times, and I'm reviewing less. I'm invited to fewer screenings as just a matter of course, and I don't chase stuff unless I really feel I have to have an opinion before the year is out. (And so it came to pass that I saw Babylon, my most dire viewing experience of 2022.) Sometimes a viewing omission just boils down to my own old and ornery inclinations; I've dragged my feet seeing Neptune Frost because I still remember Slam, and you may chastise me in comments for that. What follows is not ranked, and doesn't necessarily follow the chronological order of viewing. At times I've added a movie to my Evernote file weeks or even months after viewing. Was it a weak year for movies/cinema? Yes, and in a way that's more disturbing than most weak years; the great movies I saw this year felt more and more like acts of defiance, minor blows against an encroaching empire.

TOP STUFF

The Cathedral (Ricky D'Ambrose)

For Ebert.com I wrote: "director Ricky D’Ambrose’s carefully composed Academy-ratio frames, evoking not just Bresson but staged family snapshots, depict traps that the fractured families of the film can’t escape. D’Ambrose is, I should say, someone I know and have worked with, having appeared briefly in two of his prior films. It’s not partiality that compels me to say that with this feature he vaults from an interesting talent to a major voice." I have a funny story about this movie. As some of you may already know, prior to The Cathedral, I had acted — or perhaps it's more accurate to say I made my corporeal presence known — in two other films directed by D'Ambrose, the feature Notes on an Appearance and the short The Sky Is Clear And Blue Today. Aside from the fact that he likes to put New York based writers and critics in his films I have really no idea why I was cast but I was happy to be of service and the money was unbelievable. In any event, when I got word that his new project had been selected to be completed by the Biennale College I was delighted. But also a little concerned. It would look weird, I thought, to be in a film that I'd be assessing and discussing in a live panel. So I wrote to Ricky and explained my position and bowed out of acting in the movie before I was even asked. And of course he was fine about it. Although as it happened he'd already mapped out a part for me. When I saw the movie in Venice I was overwhelmed; I think it's a truly great picture and honestly, as such, I'm a little sorry not to be in it. In conversation with Ricky I mentioned that I had an idea of the role he'd wanted me to play, a small part to be sure. And he said no, the part he'd actually had me in mind for was a drunk uncle on the couch. 

Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen)

Kimi (Steven Soderbergh)

From Manohla Dargis's 10 best list: "There isn’t a false or wrong note in this witty thriller about a woman facing multiple challenges, including her own (well-founded!) anxieties about the world. Set very much in the now — our heroine, a resourceful tech worker played by a terrific Zoë Kravitz, wears a mask when she goes outside — the movie touches on a number of intersecting subjects, including isolation and surveillance technology as a means of oppression. But it’s Soderbergh’s supremely assured filmmaking that has repeatedly brought me back to this playful delight."

Deception (Arnaud Desplechin) 

I don't even know that this got a proper U.S. release — I saw it at the Walter Reade as part of some compendium. Desplechin has been doing the virtual twist with Roth for so long that one can't be blamed for thinking that once he actually got around to making an Official Adaptation of one of the man's books it would be a real barn-burner. This is not — it's consistently low-key, restrained, mature. But equally assured. 

The Worst Person In The World (Joachim Trier) 

Does this count for 2021 or 2022? I dunno. I saw it in 2022, under the pressure of a particular recommendation. It went like this: in spring I made a lunch date with a reasonably prominent American filmmaker to discuss a potential book project with him. He was in New York, a town he has little affinity for, to pick up a couple of awards. I met him at his hotel, which was near the restaurant I'd booked. When he appeared, some of the mooks I had noticed swarming around a nearby bench descended on him for autographs. Professional collectors, they were, and my lunch date grumbled that they weren't actually interested in him anyway; as it happened, Will Smith was staying at the hotel. We went and had lunch and it was great — this filmmaker and I get along and converse well, and have since 1997 — even though no resolution was reached with respect to the project. It was a pleasant day and walking back to the hotel my lunch date saw a couple with a baby sitting at a sidewalk booth by another restaurant, and cried out with delight. For this was his friend, Joachim Trier, with his wife and their new child. They too were in town to pick up some awards. Trier was a very pleasant guy and noticed my date was carrying two books: Tom Milne's Losey on Losey, and my own Made Men. Of the Milne he said, "Oh, that's a great book" and of Made Men he said, "Oh someone wrote a book about Goodfellas, fantastic!" These books were provided by myself to my lunch date to give him an idea of what I had in mind for the proposed project. And here I am, standing there like a doofus, having not seen The Worst Person in the World. I sheepishly apologized for this, explaining that I wanted to see the film with my wife and that she was out of town and my lunch date said, "No, you cannot sleep on it, it's the most fantastic film" and so on. So the very next day I went and I saw it and it is really good. Trier as a filmmaker knows his stuff, I intuited traces of Renoir and Cassavetes and more but also felt the whole thing had a daring all of its own. As it does. Check it out. 

The Automat (Lisa Hurwitz) 

The Tale of King Crab (Alesso Rigi de Rigi and Matteo Zoppis)

Petite Maman (Caline Sciamma)

Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis)

Vortex (Gaspar Noe)

Lux Aeterna (Gaspar Noe) 

Does the poison-pen-letter-to-cinema thing that Chazelle's wretched Babylon thinks it's doing, and to actual galvanic effect, and in less than a third of the Chazelle movie's running time. Thus underscoring how rank an amateur Chazelle is — in the arena of contempt and pretty much everything else. Not that I think this was Noe's point. Call it added value.

Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland)

Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)

Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe (John Rice and Albert Calleros) 

Murina (Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic)

Mad God (Phil Tippett)

Some form of this movie has been in my head since I was about six; Tippett has my eternal gratitude for making it a corporeal reality. 

Emily the Criminal (John Patton Ford)

Saloum (Jean-Luc Herbulot)

Three Thousand Years of Longing (George Miller)

A Couple (Fredrick Wiseman(

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Another one that didn't get an official U.S. release, but made an impression when I saw it at the NYFF. An impression as in "what on earth is he really on about here?"

The Whale (Darren Aronofsky)

Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino)

The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

Tár (Todd Field)

Dan Kois' consideration of the movie in Slate is worth considering, especially given all the stuff in an early trailer that didn't make it in to the finished film. 

Armageddon Time (James Gray)

See K. Austin Collins' review in Rolling Stone. And particularly how he draws the important distinction between guilt and shame. 

Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)

Dazzling and enigmatic; what's darting about below its surfaces is impossible to grasp and impossible to put aside. 

Petrov’s Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov)

Whoa. 

EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)

It's all they say it is. 

Utama (Alejandro Loayza Grisi)

The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)

From the Ebert.com 10 Best of the Year summary:

Contrary to its advertising, this is not a picture celebrating the "magic" of movies or completely espousing them as "dreams." It's a picture about falling under a certain spell, to be sure. The opening scenes, in which a wide-eyed little boy is overwhelmed by a fake train wreck in what most of us now dismiss as a cheesy Cecil B. DeMille movie, make the case that the theatrical experience once was, and still can be, a sensory steamroller. But once out of that theater, "The Fabelmans" goes into an affectionately recreated and vividly acted late-20th century real life and a story of a kid who joyfully learns a craft. And then, as his family and social life fall apart, he uses that craft to keep the world at arm's length or to create worlds one likes better than one's own. 

The emotions at play in Steven Spielberg's autobiographical story are rawer and sometimes more unpleasant than we've seen from the filmmaker in such concentration for a while. We admire Sammy Fabelman's inventiveness and stick-to-itiveness even as we see him become a kind of voyeur in his own life. His feelings about his passionate mom and his kind but buttoned-down dad yo-yo like crazy, as his moviemaking provides something he can actually control. And then he learns that something he controls himself can also be used to manipulate others. As is common in every Spielberg film, every shot here is a kind of miracle, a celebration in and of itself. But don't mistake this for an uncritical cheer for image-making. It's worth remembering that at the end, when Sammy visits "the greatest director who ever lived," that director is cooling his heels without a project in an office across the hall from that of "Hogan's Heroes." Like Sammy's uncle says, art will tear you apart.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)

Causeway (Lila Neugebauer)

One Fine Morning (Mia Hanson-Love)

Nepo baby my ass. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson)

Sr. (Chris Smith)

The Treasure of his Youth (Bruce Weber)

Broker (Hirokazu Koreeda)

No Bears (Jafar Panahi)

HONORABLE MENTION

The Duke (Roger Michell) 

The Torch (Jim Farrell)

The Long Walk (Mattie Do)

The Unknown  Man of Shandigar (Jean-Louis Roy, 1967)

Men (Alex Garland)

A form of special pleading pulled off with...brio?

Miracol (Bogdan George Apetri) 

Faith (Valentina Pedicini)

Prey (Dan Trachtenberg)

Gets the job done. 

Hustle (Jeremiah Zagar)

Ditto. 

The  Princess (Ed Perkins)

Costa Brava Lebanon (Mounia Akl) 

A Love Song (Max Walker-Silverman)

Rated it kinda low initially. A grower.

The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)

Conversely, this might belong in the upper list. I do think of it — fondly, I assure you — as Art House Amicus. 

Barbarian (Zach Creggar)

One of those movies that kind of cannot win, in a way. The first forty-five minutes were the most uncomfortable ones I've spent in a movie theater in years if not decades. The midpoint break certainly is a relief but also, Justin Long's hilarity notwithstanding, a winding-down and weakening. Still pretty hot. 

Athena (Romain Costa-Gavras) 

Super virtuosic filmmaking in the service of a relatively crude (albeit certainly sincere) vision.

Saint Omer (Alice Diop) 

Moderately confounding to this viewer — a film of remarkable tension and restraint that collapses into a conventional semi-sentimentality at the close. 

Confess, Fletch (Greg Mottola)

About ten minutes in my wife and I remarked to each other how great it was to finally watch a real Greg Mottola movie again. Hope the next one follows soon. 

Adopting Audrey (M. Cahill) 

My cousin Britt executive-produced. And the acting is first-rate. 

Amsterdam (David O. Russell)

Neither as noxious nor as simplistic as the winky-wink trailers made it seem. Not entirely successful either, I should add. I thank Richard Brody for convincing me to check it out. 

White Noise (Noah Baumbach)

Don DeLillo, a married author with no children, does not ultimately embrace hope. Noah Baumbach, a married writer-director with a couple of children and maybe one more on the way, seems to feel as if he has to ultimately embrace hope. Feh. Lots of good scenes in here though. I'm sorry, for a variety of reasons, that Michael Almereyda didn't get to do his version of the novel. 

Hold Me Tight (Mathieu Amalric)

Thanks for ruining a perfectly pleasant evening at home with my wife, Mathieu and Vicky!

Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron)

Cameron's a real filmmaker and it's never not interesting to watch him grapple with what he believes the future of cinema ought to/has to be. 

The Biennale College films of 2022, all outstanding, were Come Le Tartarughe, Mountain Onion, Palimpsest, and Banu, and are considered here. 

NICE TRY

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniels)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: for all its energy and inventiveness it ultimately devolves into treacly (and frankly disingenuous) "Ohana means family" pablum. 

The Northman (Robert Eggers)

About an hour and ten in it hit me: "He's not the guy." 

Comments

[partisan]

Not a fan of Benediction?

[MK]

"the great movies I saw this year felt more and more like acts of defiance, minor blows against an encroaching empire"

I watched my two favorites ("No Bears" for the first time and "Benediction" on a revisit) the same week when the Supreme Court heard 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Watching how those lives on-screen and in real life have been shaped by brutal and reactionary laws, particularly laws created under a dubious sense of religious morality, it made the future seem even more bleak.

[Glenn Kenny]

I missed a lot of highly regarded pictures — "Benediction," "Aftersun," "Women Talking" are the first that spring to mind. I hope to catch up, of course.

[Oliver]

'Everything Everywhere All At Once' ultimately reminded me of the latter volumes of Moore & O'Neill's 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' -- there comes a point when you have to ask the creators to stop showing off how many narrative/allusive plates they can keep spinning, and just focus on SOMETHING, anything, for crying out loud! Immense props to Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan though.

[Blake]

I will be curious to hear your thoughts about Aftersun at some point. I found it heartbreaking and technically accomplished.

Regarding The Fabelmans, I am not sure if you have noticed, but I have been taken aback by the way some detractors ignored the antisemitic abuse in the movie. They have suggested Spielberg’s only struggle was his parents’ divorce but not the bigotry in high school? It baffles me when I notice it.

By the way, I credit your review of Murina for exposing me to the film. It was great.

[MK]

"Everything Everywhere All At Once" fell short in a lot of ways, but to be honest, I wasn't expecting much more than a wacky martial arts-inspired sci-fi fantasy when I went to see it (a friend's choice, not mine) so it was actually a welcome surprise in some respects.

It does suggest some dark, tantalizing ideas - unexplored perhaps, but seeing a more traditionally-minded elder demand that his daughter kill her own daughter/his granddaughter brought to mind some harrowing experiences I witnessed as an outsider, ones that were never settled, much less resolved with "Ohana means family." (I realize the plot sets it up so that the scene feels logical and innocuous as fantasy, but given the context of intergenerational trauma, it suggested bolder possibilities - to be fair, such possibilities are probably best explored in a different kind of film.)

[Titch]

Some more horrible hours you'll never get back, besides Babylon? Worst films of the year lists are just as fun. Elvis gave me a migraine.

[george]

Well, I've seen Barbarian and The Northman. Barbarian was my favorite moviegoing experience of the year. Of movies Glenn didn't list, I liked X, Nope, and Bodies Bodies Bodies. Worst movie I saw in a theater in '22: Don't Worry Darling.

Glenn's comment on Everything Everywhere All at Once is the first negative take I've seen on that movie.

The divide between what critics (and film buffs) like and what the public pays to see continues to widen. Most people are unaware of any movies except for big franchise films. Not even The Fabelmans could draw audiences.

[Titch]

Glenn's perspective on The Menu would be welcome. The critics are all over the place on this one (Rex Reed loves it! David Jenkins hates it!) and it's a surprise box office success, despite it not being a big franchise film.

[george]

Variety reports that Babylon "bombed with $3.6 million from 3,343 venues over the weekend and $5.3 million through Monday. The film’s especially terrible start, as well as its C+ CinemaScore from audiences, suggests that even with winter blues, the 3-hour and 9-minute long Babylon may not have resonated on the big screen."

I sort of admire Chazelle for getting a studio to lavish a substantial budget (a reported $80M) on a movie that's not based on a comic book, a toy, a video game or a YA novel. Haven't seen it, but based the opinions of people I respect -- Glenn, Thomas Doherty, Stephanie Z, Farran Nehme -- I'll stay away.

[george]

I've already read "Hollywood Babylon," which seems to have been Chazelle's main source for his film. Is there a scene where the Clara Bow stand-in takes on the USC football team?

[Robert Horton]

"I've dragged my feet seeing Neptune Frost because I still remember Slam" - I thought I was the only person with this sentence, word for word, in my head. (Great list.)

[MK]

I'm not really a fan of Chazelle's work - he's great at making spectacles, but what he has to say about anything usually seems really wrong or simply asinine. It's still a shame his film is doing so poorly - it's not getting easier for auteurs to make personal films on a larger budget, not unless they're already sci-fi spectacles themselves. Between "Babylon" and "Amsterdam"'s failures, it's only going to make things tougher for everyone.

[Glenn Kenny]

On "The Menu:" well I certainly don't think it's a major film but I was pleasantly surprised by the first hour and twenty minutes, in that it managed to hold its frankly goofy conceit together, and be funny and reasonably tense and occasionally startling about it. I processed it largely as a kind of Amicus film (again!) only with food. In the mode of "Tales From the Crypt," only without actually cutaways to the stories sins of those who are being punished. I like Anya Taylor-Joy in just about any context and that helped. It fell apart for me, though, once it got into that whole sentimental "you lose your soul when you give up doing it for love" business. Phooey.

[george]

"Between "Babylon" and "Amsterdam"'s failures, it's only going to make things tougher for everyone."

Scott Tobias tweeted that it felt "warm and toasty" to see Chazelle "set fire to Paramount's money."

There's speculation that this could be the last time an R-rated movie will get such a large budget.

[Titch]

Thanks for your thoughts on The Menu, Glenn. I'll have to see that now. And I'm getting more and more intrigued by Babylon, graded F. It's coming out on a 4K UHD.

[Andrew Del Monte]

Great list. I say run don't walk to Hong Sang-Soo's "Walk Up," one of his best films if you ask me.

[John Keefer]

Thank you as always for my yearly list of things I need to see. I will also say thank you for the heads up on Babylon. It has been moved from the back burner to the shed out back, despite playing at the historic Colonial theater which is literally right next door to me. Don't worry, they're playing The Fablemans too (not in my preferred theater) so they'll get my money. Beware the Blob!

[Titch]

Yep - just saw the 4K UHD of Tár this evening. It hasn't yet been released theatrically, over the pond. What a gripping two and a half hours that was! If Cate Blanchett doesn't stagger home with an Oscar, then the Oscars can just pack up and go away. Anyway, it will sound much better in a well-calibrated home theatre with a decent sound system, than it will in a cinema. Like you wrote in your review: fantastically well-directioned sound design. Jumped out of my skin, every time the neighbours banged on the door in the film, as well as when Mahler kicked in at 59 minutes. A+, as you write, in your Consumer blu-ray and 4K UHD guides.

Banshees Of Inisherin blu-ray tomorrow night.

[george]

I finally saw Babylon, and ... it worked for me.

I knew it was a fictionalized version of real people and events, so I was able to approach it as a work of fiction. If you want to know the facts about John Gilbert, Clara Bow and other stars from that era, there are books to read. I recommend David Stenn's "Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild."

It might be best to regard Babylon as a fantasy. It has as much to do with the real 1920s as Grease has to do with the real 1950s.

But does it work AS A MOVIE? For me, it did. It held my interest for more than 3 hours. Movies half as long have put me to sleep.

[Titch]

I attended the Norwegian premiere of Babylon this evening and really enjoyed it - probably enjoyed it even more than I should have, due to the fact that it completely tanked in the States. The film, inevitably, ran out of steam from Toby Maguire onwards, but it gave a lot of bang for the buck up until then, watching it on a 40 foot screen. It's been a long time since I saw anything so delightfully vulgar.

In the olden days, I used to show the Ride Of The Valkyries segment from Apocalypse Now, or the beginning of The Right Stuff, or the trailer from The Abyss, if I wanted my friends' jaws to drop, when showing them what a LaserDisc and surround sound could do. I will be running the bacchanalian pre-title sequence as demo material when I get my mitts on the 4K UHD. The production work on Babylon are the very best money can buy - the propulsive music soundtrack was incredible; like the end of Zatoichi, but pumping all the way through. This is going to be a reference-quality 4K UHD.

[george]

Still amazed that Chazelle got a major studio to finance and release Babylon.

[Titch]

Ah yes - but Chazelle had completed a hat trick and was a sure bet. He is just following in the footsteps of fellow American iconoclasts Martin Scorsese (New York, New York after Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver), Steven Spielberg (1941 after The Sugarland Express, Jaws and Close Encounters) and Francis Ford Coppola (One From The Heart, after the two Godfathers, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now). All backed by major studios for "personal projects", after seeming invincible box-office behemoths. None of them ended up in Director Jail permanently after their first major flop.

Babylon has received much more positive reviews in Europe, where critics and audiences aren't as prude as the Americans are.

[george]

"None of them ended up in Director Jail permanently after their first major flop."

Even Cimino came back 5 years after Heaven's Gate with Year of the Dragon. But Elaine May hasn't directed since Ishtar. Is Hollywood less forgiving of women who have flops? Then again, Martin Brest hasn't directed since Gigli flopped in 2003.

Clint Eastwood used to alternate "one for them" (Sudden Impact, The Dead Pool, The Rookie) with "one for me" (Honkytonk Man, Bird, and White Hunter, Black Heart). Alas, it looks like Eastwood's career is over after the failure of Cry Macho. Warner's asshole CEO publicly insulted him, and turned down a project Clint pitched last year.

Good luck to the Paramount executives who may be walking the plank after the box-office failure of Babylon.

[Titch]

Next up, another polarising film. Bones and All hasn't had a theatrical release in Norway, but I'll get the blu-ray - seeing as you feel the same about Luca Guadagnino, as I do.