2022: My Year in Movies - Larry Lee's 10 Best

[Editor's note: Larry Lee has contributed his annual summaries of the best, most notable recent movies

to Notes on Films since 2019.]

                                             

This was a bounce back year for the movies.  No, theater audiences have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.  And,yes, the home streaming experience has grown so large, and with such good quality, that many people choose streaming over physically going to the theater.  And, of course:  Covid.  People coughing in movie theaters, previously just an annoyance, is now a cause for heightened alarm.  But despite all of that, several movies grossed over $200 million domestically, led by Top Gun: Maverick ($718 million), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($436 million), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($411 million), and Avatar: The Way of Water ($401 million).  The worldwide numbers are even more impressive:  Avatar: The Way of Water ($2.2 billion), Top Gun: Maverick ($1.48 billion), Jurassic World: Dominion ($1 billion), Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($955 million). 

And then there is this encouraging sign of the film industry’s good health: three of the 10 films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar were also top-grossing movies (Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick, and Elvis, which grossed $151 million domestically).  Those nominations go a long way to addressing the criticism that the Oscars are disconnected from the movie-viewing public.  Moreover, three largely art-house movies also garnered Best Picture nominations:  Tár, with Cate Blanchett’s tour-de-force acting, Triangle of Sadness, director Ruben Östlund’s satire on the ultrarich, and director Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, a fascinating conversation on women’s relation to men, and their role in society.  The vast scope of the ground covered by these films is indicative of the health of the film industry, both financially and creatively.

   

But that said, many of the studios’ late-fall releases, expected to be Oscar-bait and suck the oxygen out of the room, notably underperformed.  The best of these was probably Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans which, despite an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, largely failed to engage the public’s (or my) attention, likely due to being about too many things: Was it about the budding boy-genius? His mentally unstable mom?  Her affair?  Anti-Semitic bullying?  The redemptive power of cinema?  Director David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, despite palpably straining to be a prestige picture with an amazing star-studded cast (Taylor Swift?), was only mildly interesting, the director failing to recapture the verve of American Hustle or the emotional power of Silver Linings Playbook.  Director Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, despite looking great, never seemed emotionally true.  And director Damien Chazelle’s Babylon was a frenetic hot mess, with some scenes I truly wish I could unsee.

In my mid-summer essay about the best movies from the first half of the year, what I called the Half-Oscars™, these were my Top Ten:

    10. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris                        

    9.  Vengeance

    8.  After Yang

    7. Elvis

    6.  The Sky is Everywhere

    5.  Men

    4.  My Donkey, My Lover & I

    3.  Official Competition

    2.  Everything Everywhere All at Once

    1.  Montana Story

Having gone on the record with these choices, the movies released in the second half of 2022 come freighted with a sort of burden of proof:  Are these second-half movies demonstrably better than the ten movies on my Half-Oscars™ list?  Sadly, for most of them, I think the answer is “no.”  But the task is a difficult one, for one’s mind comes naturally burdened with both primacy and recency bias.  That is, we tend to best remember the things we first learned or decided, and also those things we most recently learned or decided.  The Academy is notorious for its amnesia concerning movies released early in the calendar year, so much so that studios are known to hold back their prestige films so they can be released in the late autumn.  So if a majority of my top ten were released in the first half of the year, it may reflect a kind of karmic readjustment.

The difficulty in winnowing my list down to 10 films is a testament to the overall quality of movies released in 2022, and of the variety of stories told.  It’s like viewing a panorama of a city with ample 10-story buildings, but few skyscrapers.  Here, then, are the movies that just missed my year-end top ten list, that could easily have made the list; are all worthy of your time:

Decision to Leave  (MUBI; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  This wonderfully twisty film noir from Asia will keep you guessing throughout, with outstanding performances by Park Hae-Il as the tortured detective, and Tang Wei as the deadly femme fatale (or is she?).

The Menu  (HBO; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  A thriller with echoes of Murder on the Orient Express—is everyone guilty of something?—this movie is also a biting satire of the ultra-rich and the fetishization of haute cuisine (“Chef, am I getting a hint of bergamot?”).  You would think diners should know better than to eat at a place where the head chef is Lord Voldemort (the wonderful Ralph Fiennes).  Possibly even more entertaining than Triangle of Sadness, which plowed much the same soil.  It was certainly more fun.

Elvis  (HBO; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  This movie was #7 in my Half-Oscars™ list and, although it has fallen a bit in my memory (and is not without its flaws), remains a very entertaining take on the rise of Elvis Presley, a peerless icon, and his depressing fall as a lounge act in Las Vegas.  Thirty years ago, the U.S. Postal Service, wishing to honor Presley on a stamp, held a poll to see if fans preferred the young Elvis or the older Elvis.  Predictably, young Elvis won in a landslide.  I guess I too would have preferred the movie give us more of the youthful, vibrant, ground-breaking entertainer.

Women Talking  (Amazon Prime; rent on Apple TV+)   An amazing story that plays out like a fable of sorts, or perhaps just a flight of imagination, in which women in an isolated religious community debate amongst themselves how to respond to their systematic drugging and sexual abuse and brutalization at the hands of the men in their town.  In fact, the movie is based on a novel that was itself inspired by true events occurring in a Mennonite community in Bolivia.  The film garnered a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and remains a fascinating and thought-provoking movie.    

Till  (rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  Based on the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmitt Till, the teenager who was brutally murdered by racists at the beginning of the Civil Rights Era.  Those arguing that Danielle Deadwyler well deserved an Oscar nomination for her strong performance are not wrong. Very moving.

Saint Omer  (rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  In another oversight, this French movie deserved an Oscar nomination for International Feature Film.  (It was shortlisted but ultimately not nominated.)  A young mother leaves her infant child on the beach to let the tide take him away.  Why?  Her motivations are frustratingly ambiguous: Is she simply a bad mother?  An evil person?  Demonically possessed?  Mentally ill?  Can this even be decided in a court of law?

Don’t Worry Darling  (HBO; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  A fair assessment of this stylish movie was overtaken by the real-life controversies of its stars, Olivia Wilde, Florence Pugh, and Harry Styles, and that’s a shame.  A thriller with a whiff of sci-fi (like in Jordan Peele’s Get Out), this is an entertaining update of 1975’s The Stepford Wives, crossed with The Matrix, and an up-to-date comment on the role of women (and, sadly, men) in modern society.  People struggling with work-life balance will find this both entertaining and thought-provoking.

She Said  (Peacock; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  Spotlight won the Best Picture Oscar for 2015, and She Said probably aspired to the same result, swapping Harvey Weinstein’s sexual crimes for Boston’s Catholic priests, and the New York Times for the Boston Globe.  The movie painstakingly shows how the NYT got the story, yet does not at all feel derivative of Spotlight.  She Said’s  ability to tell the story without actually showing Weinstein (or an actor playing him) is very creative, and its use of an audio recording of an actual assault is devastating.  Entertaining and important.

 

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris  (Peacock; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  This was #10 on my Half-Oscars™ list and falls off my full year list, but remains a charming movie with Leslie Manville’s touching performance as the plucky titular character.  Deservedly nominated for the Best Costume Design Oscar for recreating all those vintage Dior dresses.

RRR  (Netflix)  One of India’s highest grossing movies ever, RRR was also the most expensive movie that country ever made.  The pride not of Bollywood but of Tollywood, from the state of Andra Pradesh, RRR is not in Hindi but the Telugu language.  A crazy, rollicking action movie with anti-colonial themes, this mashup, with its obvious but entertaining special effects, is not really a musical but the dance sequences will knock your socks off.  Nominated for the Best Song Oscar.   

The Sky is Everywhere  (Apple TV+)  This small film has also fallen off my Half-Oscars™ list, but remains a lovely and creative story of a teenager’s grief.  High school senior Lennie is simply shattered by her older sister’s sudden death.  We follow (and cheer for) Lennie, as she navigates her grief, her caring but clueless parents, some potential boyfriends, and her impending plan to leave home to attend college.

All Quiet on the Western Front  (Netflix)  Nominated for several Oscars including Best Picture, this film was the big winner at the recent BAFTA awards.  Realistically brutal and graphic, this is a hard movie to watch or to recommend, but it is admittedly very well done and an important antiwar film.  But let me ask this:  Do we need another movie to remind us of the mindless brutality of war?  After Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987)?  Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)?  Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986)?  Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998)?  Sam Mendes’s 1917 (2019)?  Peter Weir’s Gallipoli (1981)?  Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017)?  Even Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the Best Picture Oscar winner in 1930?  If your answer is “no,” you can probably skip this one.

 

Broker  (rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  The latest film from Kore-eda Hirokazu, the director of Shoplifters, a 2018 nominee for Best International Feature Film.  In this film about people who act as extralegal adoption brokers, Kore-eda continues his theme about the bonds between families created by unrelated people.  As good or better than most of the movies on the Academy’s short list for the International Feature Film Oscar, but strangely not submitted by Japan for consideration.

Argentina, 1985  (Amazon Prime)  This great legal thriller has all the typical elements:  the young, scrappy lawyers (think A Few Good Men), the overwhelmingly powerful defendant (think the Catholic Church in Spotlight, DuPont Chemical in Dark Waters, PG&E in Erin Brokovich), and emotional courtroom testimony (“You can’t handle the truth!”).  The difference is this one is true.  Taking place in Argentina in 1985, the story portrays real people (some of which are still alive), and the kidnappings, torture, and murders at the hands of a military junta affected not just a few people, or a few families, but tens of thousands of people.  The bravery of the lawyers who worked on the case, and the witnesses who testified, despite the many credible death threats, is sad, inspiring, and enraging.  A wonderful dramatization of the only time a civil court has successfully tried a military dictatorship for their crimes.

While any of the above films, as I said,  could easily have landed in my top grouping,  for better or worse, here are  - 

The Top Ten:

10.  Emily the Criminal (Netflix)  This small, intimate movie shows how a regular working person, struggling financially, can take a small, hesitant step over the line into criminality, and that seemingly small and temporary (she thinks) transgression begins an inexorable downward spiral.  Once you compromise your morals, where is the line?  How far is too far?  Eventually, Emily, wonderfully played by Aubrey Plaza, knows she is out of control, but what can she do?  She’s in too deep.  Can one last big score get her out from under?  No spoilers here, but Emily’s journey is fascinating.  

9.  After Yang  (Amazon Prime rental)  The latest from talented director Kogonada, this meditative film stars Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Jodie Turner Smith (Queen & Slim) as parents of a young girl named Mika.  Also in the family is Yang, who at first seems like Mika’s older brother but is in fact an artificial life form.  When Yang malfunctions and Farrell begins his quest to have him repaired (or replaced), we are asked to think about the meaning of family and the value of the memories of a life lived.  When asked what one would save from a burning home, many people say they would save their family photographs, as if those records of memories and past events were of the highest value.  But are they?  What if the participants in those memories were artificial beings?   

8.  Official Competition  (stream on AMC+, rental on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+)  This fascinating movie suffers from being released in the early part of the year, but Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Oscar Martinez have given us a master class about acting, movie making, competitive fire, and how ego can interfere with the creative spirit.  The three become locked in a creative death spiral from which not everyone can emerge unscathed.    

7.  Men  (Showtime, buy on Amazon Prime)  At the risk of being dead wrong in public, I continue to believe this was one of the best movies of the year.  It was certainly one of the most memorable movies for me.  Not for everyone, this is a horror movie with an idea:  What if a woman is placed in a world where everyone else is male.  Jessie Buckley (Women Talking, Wild Rose, Judy, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, The Lost Daughter) is the poor woman, and Rory Kinnear, who plays all the men (and boys) in the village, deserved an Oscar nomination for his masterful work in this movie.

6.  Tár  (Peacock; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  Nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, this movie elicits strong feelings for and against.  No question exists about Cate Blanchett’s performance, which is masterful.  The first third drags a bit, with a little too much inside baseball about the elite classical music world, but then the movie hits its stride.  Maestro Lydia Tár is so sure of herself, her views, and her interpretations of music that it’s unnerving, but I assume the same would be true of Michael Tilson Thomas, Gustavo Dudamel, or other maestros.  But will her feet of clay knock her from her lofty perch?

5.  Vengeance  (Amazon Prime, rent on Apple TV+)  This movie has actually risen in my estimation as the months have gone by.  Appearing at first to be a fish out of water story, with New Yorker Ben Manalowitz (played by B.J. Novak, who also wrote and directed) as the fish and East Texas the water, he finds his preconceived notions about rural Texas and rural Texans do not exactly hold true, and in fact few people are what they at first seem.  The movie is also a murder mystery that twists, and then twists again, and eventually, you might ask yourself:  Where the hell are we?

4.  The Banshees of Inisherin   (HBO, rent on Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime)  The Academy saw fit to nominate this black comedy from Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), for Best Picture and four acting awards.  The comedy may be too black and dry for some, the story too gruesome for others.  Others may find it pointless.  But taking place against the background of the Irish Civil War, I took the story as a metaphor for the meaningless brother-against-brother, neighbor-against-neighbor violence in the conflict, and the larger world in general.  But maybe it’s also about the existential crisis one feels upon getting old.  Or the desire to leave a mark on the world before leaving it.  Either way you slice it, I found it laugh out loud funny at times, although it is not really a comedy.  Full of really wonderful performances by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, and many bit players.  

3.  My Donkey, My Lover & I  (rent on Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime)  I’ve recommended this charming French film to many people and have been met with unanimous gratitude.  Don’t be put off by the clumsy English title (the original title is Antoinette dans Les Cévennes), this is a funny, lovely movie with a quirky heroine for whom you can’t help but root.

2.  Everything Everywhere All at Once  (Showtime; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  This strange but wonderful movie was my #2 for the first six months of the year, and it has steadily gained power since its release, eventually garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.  The wave of adulation has not stopped, with the film winning the SAG cast award, the Director’s Guild award, and the Producer’s Guild award.  It is now to the point where it may be the favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar.  I found that no later-appearing movie has dislodged it from my mind, but it occupies an odd place in the movie universe, for no one I know over 60 years old liked it, and many older viewers actively hated the movie.  Most young people I know loved the movie.  The directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (who collectively call themselves the Daniels) have speculated that Millenials grew up with the Internet and thus take for granted the ability to access multiple and different universes and realities with the click of a mouse.

Perhaps that’s true, I don’t know.  I admit the movie threatens to go off the rails (the raccoon) and in fact later does so (the bagel), but at base, the movie is about living with competing realities, contemplating one’s past life choices, thinking of the life we could have had, and fighting for your family in this existence.  Certainly not for everybody, but then neither was The Shape of Water (2017), Moonlight (2016), or The Artist (2011), all Best Picture winners in the era of expanded nominations.  The Academy now recognizes a wider spectrum of stories and styles of storytelling, and Everything Everywhere All at Once slots comfortably into that new reality.

1.  Montana Story  (Kanopy; rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  It is really impossible to fairly judge a small family drama like Montana Story against a big Hollywood blockbuster like Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans or Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick.  On some level, one’s view of the “best” movie is a function of one’s “favorite” movie.  But with that in mind, I found the emotional impact of this little movie surpassed that of any other movie this year.  Starring Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague as a sister and brother estranged for an unspoken reason, they face the imminent death of a comatose father they hated, and a horse named Mr. T that they love.  Hard decisions must be made, hard truths faced.  Can the siblings reconcile, or at least find a place of grace, before it’s too late?  Recommended.

Slipping Through the Cracks

These four movies are not so much a list of honorable mentions as worthy films that may, for one reason or another, have escaped your notice.

        Causeway  (Apple TV+)  Brian Tyree Henry snagged a well-deserved Supporting Actor nomination for this film, known more for being a vehicle for erstwhile superstar Jennifer Lawrence as she embarks on a well-documented career refocus away from blockbuster films (the Hunger Games franchise, the X-Men franchise) and into more personal, intimate stories.  This movie, about a veteran with PTSD putting her life back together in New Orleans, is a story about people living lives of quiet desperation that rings emotionally true.  Definitely worth your time.

        Call Jane  (rental on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+)  An entertaining (and enlightening) story, based on a true story, about how women obtained safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade, despite the state law criminalizing abortions.  Given the actions of the current U.S. Supreme Court, this is timely story and one that should be widely seen.  Appropriate for older teens.  (Or for the true story, watch the documentary The Janes (HBO).)

        The Outfit  (Amazon Prime)  Sometimes big things come in small packages.  This small movie takes place entirely in the two rooms of a tailor’s shop.  The tailor, played by Mark Rylance, insists he is a “cutter,” not a tailor, skillfully making bespoke men’s suits from scratch.  He also passively lets the mob use his shop as a way station, where messages can be passed, and money can be exchanged.  But the situation cannot remain static forever, and eventually there is a price to be paid.    

        Close  (in theaters; buy on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+)  As far from the bombastic and militaristic Top Gun: Maverick as any movie this year, this is the story of two young boys, Léo and Rémi, in Belgium who are as close as can be (in a non-sexual way).  But as we all know, the middle school years are a time of transition, and when the boys enter a new school, they drift apart just a bit.  The ensuing consequences for them, and to their families, are unpredictable, profound, and tragic.  Intimate and emotionally wrenching, this movie has scenes that will break your heart.  Nominated for the International Feature Film Oscar.