2022: A whale of a year

I'm back in sync with the Oscars.

After two straight years where the pandemic screwed up the unveiling of the Oscar nominations, they're back to January this year -- in fact, dropped just a few minutes ago -- and that means my friend and I who do this together are back to finalizing our lists when the Oscar nominations are announced, as we had been doing for nearly 25 years prior to the last two.

Of course, the January 24th unveiling of the nominations (January 25th in Australia) is still a week later than the arbitrary date we chose last year, meaning that we have again both set personal records. He's up over 370 -- and this from a guy I had write a guess post ten years ago when he had reached the then-astonishing record total of 212.

My record is modest compared to his, but still impressive by my standards, considering that it is indeed the most I've ever ranked: 175 films, which is five higher than last year's record of 170. 

I still want to contract in the future, not expand, but as I've written about previously, the streamers are making it harder and harder for me to do that. The more legitimate talent they attract to making or appearing in their movies, the more I need to make time to see them, while still including eccentric personal choices I've ferreted out or seen at MIFF -- and of course all the big tentpoles that drive the public conversation. 

With so many titles ranked this year, it's good to remind you that just because I've ranked a movie lower than 100, it doesn't mean I didn't like it. In fact, there are films I gave 3.5 stars on Letterboxd that couldn't crack my top 100 -- in part because some three-star films finished ahead of them, due to the quirky nature of this process. So if a film you really liked is in triple digits, just remember that I'm grading on a curve here, and I may have liked it just fine as well.

And as always seems to be the case, there are enough weird personal choices in my top ten to make me wonder if I'm doing this whole thing correctly. Sure I've got my critical favorites like I do every year, but the films in my top two spots in particular seem to have controversy attached to them, controversy that caused some critics and audiences to out and out dislike them. I do have my supporters for these choices, but a large quantity of cinephiles might be looking at me askance as they read them.

But before you read them, here are some you won't be reading about, what I've determined are the five most prominent titles I either didn't or couldn't see in time for my deadline ... though the "couldn't" group is smaller than it's ever been, given the quantity of high-profile releases that were available to me in some capacity prior to January 24th, whether that's a theatrical release here in Australia, an advanced screening, or a U.S. rental.

5. I Wanna Dance With Somebody - I like Whitney Houston. I had access to see this film. But yet another standard-seeming biopic ... I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm for it.

4. Bones and All - I intend to see every Luca Guadagnino film, but this one, released a few months ago, just got lost in the shuffle, and I wasn't willing to buy it for $19.99. 

3. Women Talking - With two previous Sarah Polley films making my top ten, I hated not to find this one, but it just isn't available to me anywhere yet. 

2. Broker - This only got released a few weeks ago in the U.S., so even with my love of Hirokazu Kore-eda, there was just no way for me to catch this. I wasn't even going to consider it part of 2022, but then I heard it mentioned on a year-end podcast, so I guess I need to include it as a regret here rather than kicking it forward to 2023.

1. Weird - A spiritual successor to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story that was free to any American who wanted it was just not available in Australia, because Roku Channel is not available in Australia. Boo. 

Okay here we go with my top ten:

10. Dual - As I mentioned in this post, movies involving clones have been really working for me lately, with one making my top ten last year as well. But just being about clones would not be enough to elevate Riley Stearns' third feature this high, after I really liked Faults (#20 of 2015) but didn't care for The Art of Self-Defense (#110 of 2019). It's the deadpan humor that really does it for me here, which is funny because almost the exact same tone didn't work for me in Self-Defense -- maybe the deliveries of Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul are just superior. In an age largely devoid of comedies, this was some of the hardest I laughed in 2022, though under it all there's a real sort of existential dread and sorrow that combines with the humor to make this a movie that really sticks with you. The premise is that a terminally ill Gillan goes into full remission, but she's already commissioned a clone to replace her and live out the rest of her life. When both can't exist simultaneously, society has determined they must duel to the death. It's a big idea executed with humor that I've already lauded several times now, and Dual has one of my favorite final shots of the year. (Plus the scene in this photo, which I won't spoil.) That's certainly all the ingredients you need to squeak into my top ten.

9. Athena - If I judged movies on technical merits alone, Athena would be my #1 movie of the year. Simply put, this story of a citizen uprising against the police in a French housing project has some of the craziest cinematography I've ever seen in a movie, and I've seen Children of Men. It's not nearly the only example, but let's take the opening 11-minute unbroken take. It starts at a press conference in a police station that gets quickly put to an end by a Molatov cocktail, then descends into the basement of the police station, continues out in a stolen police truck that travels several kilometers away (with the camera viewing from inside as well as from another vehicle) before ending up at the titular housing project, where it is set aloft on a drone to look back on the housing project and splash the title. Romain Gavras is the director here, but the team of dedicated camera operators -- whose thrilling mission was captured in a 37-minute making of documentary, also on Netflix -- deserve special mention, particularly DP Matias Boucard. The story of three brothers torn apart in the wake of the death of a fourth at the hands of police is stirring stuff as well, but maybe not stirring enough for me personally to vault it any higher in my top ten. But for a tense 90 minutes in a cauldron of righteous indignation, you can't do much better than this. 

8. Beast - Baltasar Kormakur first got my attention as more than just a Euro action hack with Everest in 2015, but then took a step backward with Adrift in 2018. For some reason, this rather unassuming man vs. lion movie that was released at the pivot point between the summer movie season and the fall movie season was the thing that pushed him over the top, into the director of a top ten film. One of my favorite genres is the movie where average people try to get themselves out of messed up situations, and Beast delivers big time in this regard. Idris Elba plays a father showing his daughters their mother's homeland, and has to keep them safe from a marauding lion while stuck in a crashed SUV, with only his injured friend (Sharlto Copley) knowing anything about the landscape or the lion. The combination of terror and courage these characters produce feels real at every turn, and Kormakur stages an exciting series of close scrapes and desperate gambits to try to resolve the situation with everyone intact. Sometimes the most satisfying movies are just a tight collection of thrilling set pieces underpinned by relatable themes of trying to keep your children safe. Beast didn't need more than that to crack my top ten. 

7. Elvis - Yes I'm a Baz apologist. I'm not a native Australian so there's no bias there, though I sometimes think the bias against this native son is stronger than the love for him. I just like what the man does. Give me his cinematic jazz hands any day of the week. I liked Elvis enough, despite not naturally being a huge Elvis fan, that I didn't even mind Tom Hanks' performance. I also didn't let the legitimate concerns about Presley's problematic and indebted relationship with the Black community, particularly as depicted here, sidetrack me. I just really like the kaleidoscopic explosion of exuberance that is this movie, grounded by a central performance that is possibly the best combination of Elvis impersonation and essence distillation that has ever been seen. Austin Butler deserves all the accolades he's been getting, and Hanks doesn't deserve the Golden Raspberry nomination he probably just got (I don't know for sure, since I wrote this a few weeks ago upon deciding the movie was a safe enough lock for my top ten). I enjoy this sort of grand narrative design, one that reminds me of my favorite Luhrmann film, Moulin Rouge!, one of two previous Luhrmann films (along with The Great Gatsby) to end its year ranked at #15. Probably my new second favorite Luhrmann, Elvis is his first top ten. 

6. Prey - It's so boring to praise an unexpected hit by saying "Who would have thought that ...," but I guess I'm boring sometimes: "Who would have thought that the fifth movie in the Predator franchise -- seventh if you include the Alien vs. Predator films -- could make my top ten of the year?" I've actually only seen the original and its sequel, but you don't need to see any of the previous movies when this one is set approximately 250 years before they were. I thought the idea of a predator facing off against a tribe of Comanches sounded pretty cool, but I've been burned by similar mashups before (Cowboys vs. Aliens). I had no idea how seriously director Dan Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison would take the assignment, so much so that they actually produced a Comanche language version of the film. (I've seen Prey twice, but the second was to show it to my wife, so I'll save the Comanche version for the inevitable third.) The film gets the 1719 American Plains just right, every respectful detail about this tribe feeling spot on, at times even recalling something like The Revenant. Top it all off with a terrific heroine who also qualifies as one of this year's best introductions of new talent -- Amber Midthunder, who shares a spitfire attitude and a determined stare with Aubrey Plaza -- and you've got one of 2022's tightest and most fun movies, with no guilty aftertaste. 

5. The Banshees of Inisherin - No 2022 movie had I heard discussed more extensively before seeing it than The Banshees of Inisherin. With all the talking I'd heard on several podcasts, it seemed impossible I could still be taken off guard by it -- a necessary component to the cinema we love. Well, I suppose a great film still registers as such even after you know a fair bit about it, and that was my experience with Martin McDonagh's second film to make my top ten after In Bruges. The clipped witticisms of the Irish -- or funny ways of saying things they might not have intended to be funny -- got me off to a good start with the movie, even knowing it would turn a lot darker as it went. And darker it turns, with the very landscape starting to feel post-apocalyptic, occupied only by the ghosts of a promise long gone. As my #1 of 2013, Beyond the Hills, proved, I really like a movie that functions as an extended metaphor for a bad breakup. Like Colin Farrell's Padraic, you ball your fists in impotent frustration as the person who loved you yesterday has decided to shun you entirely today. And when that happens, you just never know what the consequences might be. Banshees explores those consequences, extracting from them a blistering emotional truth even when they seem like things that operate primarily as metaphor and might never actually happen. 

4. Everything Everywhere All at Once - The second Daniels film to make my top ten after Swiss Army Man, EEAAO never spent any time atop my 2022 rankings, even though I saw it back in March. I saw it about five days after my #3 on this list, and their relative positions never switched. But there has always been an argument that this was the film of the year, bursting as it is with so much oddness, so much creative vitality, so many memorable performances, so many laughs, and just so much pure cinematic gusto. I'll admit that all that gusto did leave me exhausted at certain points, so I never entertained any realistic notion that Everything would climb all the way to #1. But it does prove that Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have an absolutely unique cinematic vision, and also a gift for using actors as we would never expect. In Swiss Army Man it was the erstwhile Harry Potter as a farting corpse, and here it's Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis in all their various incarnations -- not to mention unearthing Ke Huy Quan for the comeback we never knew we wanted. If I spent this short amount of space talking about specific things I loved about the movie, I'd be wasting both of our time because you've seen it and you know. (I'll limit myself to one: hot dog fingers.) So instead I'll just say that this may have been the biggest blast I had in a movie theater in 2022. 

3. Turning Red - When I watched Turning Red earlier in the year, I didn't imagine it would finish so high in my top ten. It's probably only just narrowly in my top half of Pixar films. But that just goes to show how excellent a well-made Pixar film really is -- and in a year in which we also had Lightyear, it's a reminder not to take excellent Pixar films for granted. Turning Red benefits from a specificity of time (early 2000s), place (Toronto), character (a teenager from a family of Chinese immigrants) and theme (the metaphor of blossoming into womanhood by becoming a large red panda). While some trolls found that specificity an alienating turnoff, it invigorated me. (And I wasn't one bit grossed out by an extended menstruation metaphor, which also bothered some people.) I love how Domee Shi's film has no relationship to established IP, and how eccentric it got to be. (The focus on boy bands and the influence of anime were both spot on.) And like all of Pixar's classics, the film's final stages put that lump in my throat that brought home the totality of what I had been experiencing. An accumulation of sweet details and nice moments pays off in a truly satisfying climax that's both epic in scale and gentle in its emotional imprint. I think I might have just described what makes a good movie. 

2. Don't Worry Darling - I'm glad that one of the year's most talked about films -- for the wrong reasons -- didn't end up as my #1. Lots of podcast chatter and a second viewing revealed to me the film's imperfections from a story perspective. But I can't and won't forget that when I first saw Olivia Wilde's film, it left me feeling I'd be satisfied if it finished the year as my best. If visuals were the primary artistic merit you were judging, there's no doubt Don't Worry Darling delivers like few other films this year, from its immaculate 1950s production design to the camerawork of Matthew Libatique. But the much-derided story is what actually does it for me -- in addition to the always spectacular work of Florence Pugh, of course. I won't go into detail for those who still haven't seen it, but if you reduce the movie to a critique of [current right-wing movement] or a ripoff of [classic science fiction film] then you miss the ultimately moving analysis of the roles each person plays in a partnership, and what they can and will do to provide for the other -- even when it's woefully misguided as a result of unclear thinking inspired by emotional spiraling. As a husband who has often gotten it wrong about how best to be a partner to my own wife, I got huge resonance from these themes -- and the fact that it also takes a big swing on the concept side is a bonus, even if that swing does not always make perfect contact. 

1. The Whale - It's regrettable when you have to start a blurb about your favorite movie of the year with a defense. But not long after I saw, and was shattered by, The Whale, I learned that some people -- and maybe not a small number of people -- consider Darren Aronofsky's film to be fatphobic. I can't dispute that perception if it's real to them, but to me, this is a case of radical humanism by Aronofsky, one that is knowingly in conversation with our latent instinct to be fatphobic, with the intention of utterly exploding it. As I wrote in my not-yet-published review -- the movie doesn't release here until next week, but I was fortunate enough to attend a screening in December -- this is not a movie about a morbidly obese man, but rather a gay man, a lover of literature, a father who unwittingly abandoned his daughter and his ex-wife after falling in love. This is one of the most intense character portraits I've seen in ages, centered on a truly astonishing comeback performance from Brendan Fraser, but one that wouldn't work so well without the brilliance of the supporting cast, who deserve to be named here: Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton and Ty Simpkins. If this film "manipulated" me, it did it in the ways I want any movie to do it, in the pursuit of the best possible use of Roger Ebert's famed empathy machine. All I can tell you is that I blubbered like a baby multiple times in this film; yes, I was crying ugly. I left the theater quivering, so whatever Aronofsky was doing, it worked on me like gangbusters. And in an accomplishment I will certainly talk about further in the coming days, after The Wrestler in 2008, Aronfosky becomes the very first director to have directed two films I've named my best of the year. 

And before we get to the full list, here are my five worst:

171. Last Seen Alive - If you're hoping for Gerard Butler to make a Colin Farrell-like comeback into critical acclaim, Last Seen Alive is the sort of film that convinces you to stop dreaming. It's a shittily made revenge fantasy film where a man has to save his kidnapped wife from various hick miscreants. Yes, I also thought they stopped making this sort of film.

172. Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Did there really have to be another limp retread of this material with some half-hearted social media age messaging thrown in? This movie was bleak and glum and boring and completely uninspired, not to mention totally ridiculous. 

173. Pinocchio - I usually eat up whatever Robert Zemeckis does. Not this time. This was downright painful to watch, seeming even worse if you waited a couple months and saw Guillermo del Toro's invigorating take on the material. This has disturbing visual effects and the true worst Tom Hanks performance of the year, making his Elvis turn seem Oscar worthy.

174. The Sky is Everywhere - Josephine Decker, how could you miscalculate so totally? This movie farts colors and flowers and twee whimsey at you for the better part of two hours, all in the name of a coming of age grieving story that hits its points about grief repeatedly and with a sledgehammer. I've never seen so many unlikeable characters in a movie that's supposed to be sprightly and magical. 

175. Moonfall - The joke is that Roland Emmerich makes the worst movie of the year every time he makes a movie, but I've supported some of those more typical movies (2012) as well as his big artistic swings (Anonymous). He's well and truly lived down to his reputation with this one, one of the more absurd disaster movie concepts ever committed to film, with a cast of likable actors looking completely lethargic, and everyone charged with saving the world separated from one another by only a single degree. Every moment is terrible, and there isn't even good destruction to distract us.

Okay here's all 175. Do some eye warmups before you start if you think that will help.

1. The Whale

2. Don't Worry Darling

3. Turning Red

4. Everything Everywhere All at Once

5. The Banshees of Inisherin

6. Prey

7. Elvis

8. Beast

9. Athena

10. Dual

11. She Said

12. The Lost King

13. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

14. Nope

15. RRR

16. The Sea Beast

17. Aftersun

18. Spirited

19. Till

20. Emergency

21. Look Both Ways

22. Wendell & Wild

23. Causeway

24. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

25. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

26. Bodies Bodies Bodies

27. Triangle of Sadness

28. Fire Island

29. After Yang

30. Kimi

31. The Eternal Daughter

32. Avatar: The Way of Water

33. The Wonder

34. Fire of Love

35. Hatching

36. Bros

37. White Noise

38. I Love My Dad

39. The Bubble

40. I Want You Back

41. The Black Phone

42. Thirteen Lives

43. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

44. Hit the Road

45. Vengeance

46. Moonage Daydream

47. Muru

48. Luck

49. Flux Gourmet

50. Bigbug

51. Windfall

52. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers

53. Happening

54. Descendant

55. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

56. Our Father

57. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

58. "Sr."

59. Persuasion

60. Emily the Criminal

61. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

62. Ticket to Paradise

63. My Sunny Maad

64. Fresh

65. Fall

66. Lady Chatterley's Lover

67. All Quiet on the Western Front

68. Emancipation

69. Incredible But True

70. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

71. Three Thousand Years of Longing

72. God's Creatures

73. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

74. X

75. We're All Going to the World's Fair

76. Death on the Nile

77. Is That Black Enough for You?!?

78. Barbarian

79. Studio 666

80. Top Gun: Maverick

81. Raymond & Ray

82. The Batman

83. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

84. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

85. Senior Year

86. Samaritan

87. The Integrity of Joseph Chambers

88. Tar

89. The People We Hate at the Wedding

90. The Greatest Beer Run Ever

91. Smile

92. Plan 75

93. Scream

94. The Curse of Bridge Hollow

95. Master

96. The Stranger

97. Spiderhead

98. Sharp Stick

99. The Silent Twins

100. Inu-oh

101. Morbius

102. Men

103. Hustle

104. The Tinder Swindler

105. Day Shift

106. Choose or Die

107. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania

108. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

109. Crimes of the Future

110. A Christmas Story Christmas

111. The Menu

112. My Best Friend's Exorcism

113. Sundown

114. Vortex

115. Enola Holmes 2

116. Nanny

117. Cha Cha Real Smooth

118. The Adam Project

119. The Lost City

120. Decision to Leave

121. Neptune Frost

122. Armageddon Time

123. Poker Face

124. Stutz

125. Troll

126. The Gray Man

127. Strange World

128. The Woman King

129. Babylon

130. Hocus Pocus 2

131. Watcher

132. Gold

133. Everything in Between

134. The Weekend Away

135. Lou

136. The Good Nurse

137. Do Revenge

138. Blonde

139. Ambulance

140. All the Old Knives

141. Where the Crawdads Sing

142. Thor: Love and Thunder

143. The Man From Toronto

144. Father Stu

145. The Bad Guys

146. Lightyear

147. The Fabelmans

148. You Won't Be Alone

149. Marry Me

150. Umma

151. Firestarter

152. Amsterdam

153. Jurassic World: Dominion

154. Uncharted

155. The Perfumier

156. See How They Run

157. The Northman

158. Sissy

159. On the Count of Three

160. Deep Water

161. Stars at Noon

162. Asking For It

163. Luckiest Girl Alive

164. A Madea Homecoming

165. Home Team

166. Violent Night

167. Not Okay

168. Me Time

169. Metal Lords

170. Sonic the Hedgehog 2

171. Last Seen Alive

172. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

173. Pinocchio

174. The Sky is Everywhere

175. Moonfall

And finishing with ten movies I thought required clarification at the spot where I ranked them, so you don't say "What???" and "Huh???" and "Are you crazy???" (You can just think it instead.) "Wait Vance, I thought it was only five movies last year?" It was, but everything was bigger in 2022. 

39. The Bubble - I know this is generally disliked and just scored Judd Apatow a Razzie nomination for worst director, but I laughed a lot. 

43. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On - I know, right? I felt myself urging myself to love it more, but you can't urge love.

78. Barbarian - Everyone told me to love this but there were just too many holes in it for me to give it my full embrace.

80. Top Gun: Maverick - Planes go vroom. A little of that goes a long way for me.

88. Tar - I actually tried to get in a second viewing before my listed closed, but I just couldn't justify another $6.99 rental, on top of my original $19.99 rental, just to not get what all the fuss was about a second time.

101. Morbius - I am very slow to the realization that everyone thinks this movie is awful. I enjoyed it well enough.

111. The Menu - A lot to like at the start, but in the end, this did not tell me anything I didn't already know, or that Pig didn't tell me last year.

120. Decision to Leave - Movies should never appear to be ending 45 minutes before they actually end.

129. Babylon - I could like this more on a second viewing, but will I ever make the time?

147. The Fabelmans - I'm sorry, it just really didn't work for me, and Michelle Williams was awful.

That's enough to digest for now. Leave comments please. Tell me how The Fabelmans was your favorite movie of the year and Don't Worry Darling was your least favorite. Let's fight, in that productive way cinephiles fight to draw the best out of each other.