Film Essay: Top Ten 2022
Although the landscape of movies is still very much unsettled, 2022 will be known as the year film came back. The conversion to streaming that COVID accelerated has now been paused as the Netflix model of making profit has always been dubious. For some reason, companies are just now catching on that as competition grows for streaming services, the cost of continuing to make series and films to keep streamers does not often translate to growth in their consumer base. So, unless they raise prices or offer new packages that include advertising, etc, companies are in financial danger. Warner Brother / HBO even killed the DCU in its current makeup because of their over costs. The reboot will probably not limit films to streaming the way they did Wonder Woman 1984. Even Disney, whose hegemony over media with its dominance in franchises is feeling the pressure. Despite all of that, both independent films (which have been the saving grace for years) as well as surprising blockbusters fueled the industry. It was a surprisingly good year for cinema.
Here are my choices for the ten best films of 2022:
10. God’s Country ****
In a class, Film Composition and Literature, I teach that successful adaptation requires the writer and director to make their own piece of art and not simply transmute the original onto the screen. The pious love of the original piece can be detrimental to an adaptation. Julian Higgins originally faithfully adapted the short story “Winter’s Light” into a short film, but when turning it into a feature, he and his cowriter Shaye Ogbonna made a decision that would shift the entire story to their own. Rather than the story’s main character being a white man in sixties, they changed the protagonist to a Black woman in her forties. The story remains roughly the same in outline. The main character, Sandra (played by Thandiwe Newton in perhaps the year’s best performance), dealing with grief, lives alone in the Montana snow covered wilderness. In her grief, she wants space, but two local men park their truck on her property. As she confronts them, the tensions rise until the police are called. The result is one of the year’s best films dealing with systems of oppression and racism. How Sandra must navigate her dangerous situation while refusing to give an inch is a masterpiece in social commentary and one of the best independent character thrillers since Winter’s Bone.
9. TIE: Decision to Leave **** and Broker ****
These films are hardly comparable, except that they are the continuing work of two extraordinary Asian directors whose every new films seems like a new revelation. Decision to Leave, Park Chan-wook’s latest film, is a Hitchcockian in its execution and tone, but Chan does something extraordinary and all his own with his camera. He moves through spaces, placing characters into scenes to witness things that they are watching elsewhere. The result is a haunting on screen; an inability for a character to leave even though they are not truly present. This makes the film more about characters decisions to stay in places that they are not wanted but makes us wonder when they should leave for their own good.
Broker is Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest movie whose films Nobody Knows (2004), Shoplifters (2018), and The Truth (2019) have been on my previous top tens. Kore-eda like Spielberg, loves melodrama, but cloaks his in a much darker tone and a sense of visual realism that ground the absurdly heightened emotions and convenient plot connections. Here, Kore-eda moves his film from Japan (where all his movies have been set) to South Korea to make a movie that seems impossible in its description. The film is about “baby boxes” where infants that a family cannot care for can be dropped off. These exist in the United States as well. In this film, Song Kang-ho (the father from Parasite), a poor man, develops a scheme to steal the infants and sell them on the adoption market. This is in fact child trafficking, and yet, Kore-eda’s films have almost always been about makeshift families. Here, he pushes that theme to the limit.
8. The Fablemans ****
It is ironic that The Fablemans, the semi-autobiographical film by legendary director Steven Spielberg, really explains my love/hate, admiration/disappointment, entranced/distracted relationship with his art. In first scene in The Fablemans, a young Sammy Fableman (standing in for Steven Spielberg) goes to the movie theater with his parents and falls in love with cinema. The movie that starts Sammy’s journey with cinema: The Greatest Show on Earth. Not one of my favorite Cecil B. DeMille stories, and certainly not one of my favorite films, it makes so much sense that this is the film that inspired Sammy/Steven: over the top, bigger than life, classic melodrama. I now understand why there are so many elements in Steven’s films that drive me crazy. Indeed, throughout his film career, he has channeled Cecil B. DeMille. Yet, Steven also has one of the greatest minds for cinema and in The Fablemans when he is focusing on Sammy’s filmmaking, the movie is one of the best of the year, especially when his uncle played by Judd Hirsch. However, when the film turns to subjects that are less suitable to melodrama like antisemitism, unfortunately the film doesn’t work as well. Even with those issues, The Fablemans is easily Spielberg’s best film since Munich.
7. Pinocchio ****
Speaking of great spectacles, Guillermo del Toro, one of the great spectacle filmmakers currently working, has finally brought his personal version of Pinocchio to screen! (or streaming… but you should see it on the big screen). While Disney’s original Pinocchio remains one of my favorite animated films of all time, del Toro’s Pinocchio is an example of how to successfully personally adapt a legendary story. His Pinocchio is set first during World War I where Geppetto (an incredible nice sounding David Bradley who usually plays evil characters such as Walder Frey from Game of Thrones) loses his son. Years pass and now Italy has been overrun by fascism with Mussolini in charge. It is at this point that a Wood Sprite imbues one of Geppetto’s yet to be finished puppets with life. The story feels like the capstone to an unofficial trilogy of The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, and now Pinocchio. All deal with war, fascism, death, and childhood imagination.
6. Top Gun: Maverick ****
The world only has one movie star left: Tom Cruise. For all of the joking about Cruise’s inability to act (he actually is a great actor), or his religious beliefs (this one is almost deserved), or his strange personal life (I admit I don’t follow that one), Cruise remains the only actor who can sell tickets by starring in your film. In an age where cinema has been transitioning (in really negative ways) to streaming, Cruise can move people into theater seats. That he did this with a reboot of an 80’s film is not a surprise given our current cinema landscape. That Top Gun: Maverick succeeds in being the best of blockbuster cinema was a surprise certainly to me. Here is a sequel done right, not merely a repeat of the previous films, but a new film with a new purpose. We see Maverick having to be rehabilitated and deal with the trauma of losing his best friend and co-pilot, Goose. This movie had me on the edge of my seat the entire film, including the best aerial battle fights of all time. If you did not see Top Gun: Maverick (way better than the original) in theaters, you missed one of the great spectacles of the year.
5. Nope ****
Nope moves away from Jordan Peele’s former film success in the horror genre. Because it was not what people expected, I think hurt the film’s reception and understanding. The key to the film, I think, is that it is a Western, drawing on classic American imagery while being about a Black family, who were often left out of these classic American stories. The other key comes from the importance of film within Nope. The main family has roots in the beginning of cinema, descending from the Black jockey, whose name in reality has been lost to time, who rode the horse in Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion. Peele is symbolically suggesting that Black Americans have always been a part of not only cinema, but the American landscape; however, they have been erased. This connects to the importance of film, of documenting reality. In this symbolic manner, the family seeks to capture photographic evidence of the white monster that is coming to erase them. Playing with complex imagery and themes, Peele has made not his best film, but his most intriguing.
4. Everything, Everywhere All at Once ****
No film moved me more this year than Everything, Everywhere All at Once. First of all, as an Asian American artist, seeing known and unknown Asian actors play characters that are Asian but not stereotypes in an epic blockbuster style movie moved me to tears. Those tears were also earned by the incredibly moving story involving a multiverse jumping Evelyn (played by legendary actress Michelle Yeoh) trying to stop her daughter from destroying the universe. This sounds like a comedy, and indeed it is, but this Evelyn has been chosen because she has led the worst life out of all of the Evelyns in the multiverse. That the biggest “loser” should be the hero is one of the many messages of the film: that we are each special regardless of our powers or decisions. But the film really earned those tears when it dived into nihilism and the temptation of turning inward, caring for nothing. Evelyn’s final rejection of nihilism is the message our world needs. Finally, there were tears from laughter. So, for all of those reasons, I cried in theaters which has happened only a handful of times.
3. The Banshees of Inisherin ****
After conquering the theater with both the Cripple of Inishmaan as well as the Lieutenant of Inishmore (as well as other plays), writer/director Martin McDonagh now completes his Aran Island trilogy with the film The Banshees of Inisherin. The film has almost a fable like quality to it, yet never deviates from McDonagh’s incredible ear for dialogue nor his perchance for combining dark humor and violence. On the surface, the film is about two old friends (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson returning from McDonagh’s earlier film In Bruges) whose friendship dissolves the day that Colm (Gleeson) decides he no longer wants to be friend with Padraic (Farrell). This set up is almost as simple as an Aesop Fable, but for adults. Colm warns Padraic that if he talks to him again, Colm will cut off one of his own fingers and give it to Padraic, each and every time. Knowing McDonagh, this is not an idol threat, but a promise. Blood is spilled and an entire town becomes frayed. Even with the engaging characters, the connection to the civil war in Northern Ireland cannot be ignored, such as gunfire in the distance. McDonagh has crafted a film that not only pushes viewers by being uncomfortable in its humor and violence, but also one that deals with the lasting power of art, the curse of language, our inability to use it well, and a revelation of the stupidity of animosity among neighbors.
2. No Bears ****
There may be no artist more interested in the importance of art than Iranian director, Jafar Panahi. Jafar has put his own life on the line to make art. Jafar writes, directs, and stars in the film as a version of himself; a director trying to make a film while under house arrest. The movie would have been bold to just deal with a director trying to decide whether to make a film or flee across the border into Turkey. But, Jafa is not satisfied just making a fictional version of his own life. Instead, during the production of the film, a picture is taken that becomes gossip amongst the town where the film is being shot. The question of the nature of the picture leads people to question the motives behind the photo as well as the nature of it. Was something more going on? It demonstrates the importance of art as a medium to convey meaning beyond what the artist intends. It also questions how that power should be used. Easily the most important film of the year is also one of the best and most engaging. As an addendum, Jafar is now serving a six year prison sentence in Iran for making this film. We all should see every film he’s made as a small effort to support his protest of censorship and detention.
1. Tar ****
Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children), one of our great independent filmmakers, returns after a thirteen year hiatus with his masterpiece, Tar. Few films can convince you that what you are seeing is real, yet, like Citizen Kane before it, I felt, as I was watching, that Lydia Tar was a real composer I had heard of and I couldn’t quite place my finger on where. She is not, of course, but so real is the portrayal by Cate Blanchett and the writing by Todd Field that she gains an heir of authenticity. Watching the film, I realized how few character studies actually go as far as this film. The other one that I am reminded of is Taxi Driver although the films at first seem so different. Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle is a pathetic man, incapable of making connections and a utter failure. On the other hand, Lydia Tar is one of the great composers of her time, a teacher, married, with a daughter whom she dotes, and is at the top of her career. Yet, despite these differences, the way the films immerse you in the characters is to show you their darker side. Travis is a racist, while Lydia Tar is a sexual predator. They do not ask you to forgive their characters, and yet, these films dare you to feel for their characters as they take both of them through a descent into obsession, failure, and ultimately violence.
Runners up (listed by star rating and alphabetically): Aftersun ****, After Yang ****, All Quiet on the Western Front ****, All the Breathes ****, The Batman ****, The Eternal Daughter ****, Happening ****, KIMI ****, Women Talking ****, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed *** ½, Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood *** ½, Armageddon Time *** ½, Avatar: The Way of Water *** ½, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever *** ½; Bones and All *** ½, Benediction *** ½, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande *** ½, Morsel the Shell with His Shoes On *** ½, Prey *** ½, RRR *** ½; The Woman King *** ½
Best Film Creators and Technicians of the Year:
Best Actor: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Runner Up: Brendan Fraser, The Whale
HARDEST CATEGORY!
There are so many great roles for women this year which is awesome. I hope to continue to see cinema telling women’s stories in a real way.
Best Actress TIE: Cate Blanchett, Tar; Michelle Yeoh, Everything, Everywhere All at Once; Thandiwe Newton, God’s Country
Runners Up: Tilda Swinton, The Eternal Daughter; Emma Thompson, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande; Viola Davis, The Woman King; Michelle Williams, The Fablemans
Best Support Actor: Ke Huy Quan Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Runner Up: TIE: Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gordon Green, Bones and All
Best Supporting Actress: Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Runner Up: TIE: Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything, Everywhere All at Once and Hong Chau, The Whale
Best Cinematography: TIE: (two non-western, westerns) Hoyte Van Hoytema, Nope and Andrew Wheeler, God’s Country
Runner Up: Kim Ji-yong, Decision to Leave
Best Art Direction: Marlie Arnold, Cameron Beasley, Laurel Bergman, Jason T Clark, Ruth E Carter, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Runner Up: Amelia Brooke, Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Best Editing: Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick
Runner Up: Nicholas Monsour, Nope
Best Sound Design: [I do not usually give this award, but it seemed necessary this year because of the brilliance of Tar] Stephen Griffiths, Tar
Best Special Effects: [I do not usually give this award, but it seemed necessary this year because of the brilliance of the special effects in Avatar: The Way of Water]
Best Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Runner Up: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (“The Daniels”), Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley and Miriam Toews, Women Talking
Runner Up: Julian Higgins and Shaye Ogbonna, God’s Country
Best Animated Film: Pinocchio
Runner Up: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Best Documentary: All that Breathes
Runner Up: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Best Director: Todd Fields, Tar
Runner Up: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (“The Daniels”), Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Biggest Disappointment: TIE: Babylon and Empire of Light
Worst Film of the Year: Disney’s Pinocchio
