The Best Films of 2022
As the industry continues to heal (slowly), some provide hope for its future.
10. “Three Thousand Years of Longing” (George Miller)
In a year full of familiar auteurs releasing personal, semi-autobiographical films (“The Fabelmans”, “Armageddon Time”, “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”), leave it to George Miller to make his own personal fable about why we tell stories, and where they come from. Featuring one of the most affecting and unexpected romances of the year, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” elegantly captures the isolating pursuit of love and the way we look to our stories to escape it.
9. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Guillermo del Toro)
No one needed another adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s oft-depicted novel, but del Toro proves to be such an ingenious collaborator, making his stop-motion version feel more like his own original vision than a passionless, commercial product. His usual over-reliance on art direction and pastiche end up being a strength here, subverting our expectations of a familiar story and becoming one of the year’s most unlikely fables about war and death.
8. “Nope” (Jordan Peele)
Plenty of films this year advocated for the theatrical experience, but few prompted conversation the way that “Nope” did. All at once, it seemed to both puzzle and entertain everyone who saw it, and ultimately being about the pursuit of the sublime, managed to transfix us with the same kind of insatiable appetite for answers and immortality as its characters.
7. “Aftersun” (Charlotte Wells)
I don’t particularly want to have children, and Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun”, which chronicles, through extended memories and flashbacks, a loving but estranged (and eventually lapsed) relationship between a young father (Paul Mescal) and his daughter (Frankie Corio), gets to the core of the emotional paralysis that parenthood can sometimes afflict. Subtly told through (mostly) the daughter’s point of view, she slowly begins to piece together her loving father’s reluctancy at the same time the audience does, culminating finally in a stunningly elegant bit of editing, crashing us suddenly and sullenly into the present.
6. “Barbarian” (Zack Cregger)
In a banner year for original horror movies, “Barbarian” stood out from the pack for its startling tone shifts and radical structure, taking a fairly straight-forward haunted house set-up and milking it for all it’s worth. Criticism could be made about the final act, but when horror films are this scary and this funny, it almost feels unfair to bring them up.
5. “Babylon” (Damian Chazelle)
A sweaty maelstrom of unbridled creativity and promiscuity in 1920’s Hollywood, Damien Chazelle’s surprisingly unshakeable “Babylon” is less a love-letter to film and more of a grand, rueful acknowledgment of where film is going. Movies and art have been ceding to the churn of innovation and commerce for a century, we might as well go out with a bang.
4. “Ambulance” (Michael Bay)
Limitations spawn creativity, and for Michael Bay, a director whose work has become toxically mechanical and rote – buried under visual effects with no stakes – a year of COVID-restrictions has liberated this once-renowned pop-action filmmaker. Turning back the clock and shooting on a smaller pandemic scale and budget, “Ambulance” is a director finding their groove again; it’s a blistering, goofy tactile spectacle from a filmmaker re-discovering the juggling-act tension of their previous work.
3. “After Yang” (Kogonada)
When loved ones die, the most painful part of the experience can be in how we have to reconcile with the belongings and ephemera they left behind. In Kogonada’s aching sci-fi drama, in which an adopted A.I. named “Yang” becomes unrepairable, the effect is doubly difficult, as we watch a family (through Yang’s memories and the people he touched) have to reckon with not just his loss, but his humanity; which seems to have eluded them in life.
2. “Memoria” (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
A soothing, meditative odyssey about confronting the reverberations of the past, “Memoria”, with its use of sound and negative space, is a transportive theater experience. (It begins with 10 minutes of silence as we watch stills and sketches made by the filmmaker during production in Colombia.) So much so that right now, in limited engagements, the theater is the only available way to witness this remarkable, sensory piece of work.
1. “Tár” (Todd Field)
Truly great art often demands compromise between the artist and their personal wellbeing. In “Tár”, over the course of its deliberate, textured unpacking of a fictional master composer (Cate Blanchett), we witness the slow deterioration of humanity through power and artistic success. Todd Field’s scalpel-precise character study, ironically one of the great works of art this year, makes the case that, for some, there is no room in this life for both.
Honorable Mentions:
“The Northman” (Robert Eggers)
One of the best theater experiences of the year, Eggers’ Norse epic is buoyed by unbelievable sounds, images, and a complicated, uneasy take on revenge.
“Glass Onion” (Rian Johnson)
For better or worse, Rian continues to make this series about the moment in pop culture. I think setting your sights on Elon Musk is a worthwhile venture, and it doesn’t hurt that this one is funnier than the original.
“RRR” (S. S. Rajamouli)
The crossover Tollywood epic has some of the year’s best scenes and outsized emotions.
“Scream” (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)
Who is a better killer than toxic fan culture?
“Avatar: The Way of Water” (James Cameron)
In an age of messy, made-by-committee studio blockbusters, leave it to Cameron to remind us of the pleasures of coherent visual storytelling.
“Prey” (Dan Trachtenberg)
Brings the authenticity of the series 1v1 tension back in a radical new way.
“Crimes of the Future” (David Cronenberg)
The master of body horror turns his gaze towards the things we put in them.
“The Eternal Daughter” (Joanna Hogg)
How do we remember our parents after they’ve gone?
The usual box-office report will be back tomorrow! Also working on Best Performances and Best Film Music of 2022, so expect those this week.
Happy New Year! Thank you for skimming.