The word of the year is “maximalism.”
As we begin to refer to the pandemic in the past tense and crowds return to theaters (a rebuke of 2021’s conventional wisdom that the industry is a relic, as much as the distributors seem intent on ignoring that), the shows on display appear determined to remind audiences why the theatrical experience is necessary. Big screens deserve big movies. And this year’s movies went big. Among the multitude of “love letters to the cinema” we were subjected to this year, the prevailing sense seems to be that if the theaters have to die, they’ll go out with a bang. Even the sequel to the Agatha Christie knockoff turned up the spectacle.
Some years I’m excited to sit down and make this list because I have no idea what will wind up at the top. That was not the case this year. The hardest part was figuring out which movie squeaks in at #10. But the more I’ve sat with this list over the last week, the better I feel about it. This is a quality batch, and I hope you make time for one or two that might be new to you.
As always, my list is limited to what was actually available to me in a city in the southeastern US. Movies like Aftersun, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and The Other Side of the Blade haven’t found their way here yet. There were also what feels like a larger than normal number of well-received films that I just had little personal interest in, including Bones and All, X/Pearl, and The Eternal Daughter. I’ve been trying to fight the sense of obligation to see movies for completion’s sake, but maybe I’ll get to those for next year. Regardless, here are 10 movies I did see and greatly enjoyed.
Honorable Mentions
Avatar: The Way of Water
If the stock reaction to Avatar was that it’s a technical achivement with a flat story, the sequel doubles that in every facet. It’s maybe the most gorgeous movie I’ve ever seen, blending reality and computer-generated imagery to the point they are indistinguishable, made all the more impressive in 3D and VFR. James Cameron once again single-handedly justifies the existence of those technologies. I do not remember the names of Jake Sully’s kids. Hey, they can’t all be as iconic as “Jake Sully.”
Babylon
Damien Chazelle’s indecorous Singin’ in the Rain fanfic is less a love letter to cinema than a jazz funeral for it. The movies have always been dying, it argues, and therefore the movies are immortal. That may be the most optimistic outlook for the future of the medium the year had to offer.
Confess, Fletch & See How They Run
These form a pair in my mind, because they’re both the type of passable star-driven comedy that those who bemoan the death of cinema are referring to. Also because I got my tickets for them mixed up and drove to the wrong theater once.
Glass Onion
Benoit Blanc’s second outing, while not matching the soaring heights of the first, is a wonderfully enjoyable and eerily prescient puzzle. I hope Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson keep making these forever.
Kimi & The Northman
These two have nothing in common, except they’re both good and came out early in the year and I want to show that they haven’t been forgotten.
Your tears mean nothing. To be a warrior, you must kill your tears.
10 // THE WOMAN KING
dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood // dop. Polly Morgan // TriStar // Trailer
In a year that saw action-packed crowd pleasers return to theaters in style — Tom Cruise almost convinced us Top Gun: Maverick wasn’t a sequel to a 35 year old movie, and Sam Raimi splattered some desperately needed fresh blood into the MCU with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — I have to pick as my favorite Gina Prince-Bythewood’s West African epic. Viola Davis and John Boyega bring the star power, but the film really belongs to Thuso Mbedu, making her feature debut after her revelatory turn in Barry Jenkin’s miniseries The Underground Railroad. Sent out of her home for refusing to marry, she finds a new family among the Agojie warriors, whose athleticism and cunning Prince-Bythewood captures with as much violent glee as monastic sensibility. Yes, the film engages with but definitely still underplays some historical unpleasantness, but it’s a calculated tradeoff. The Woman King is a thrilling affirmation that mid-budget, non-franchise action movies still have a place in the zeitgeist.
Available for rent
The moment you said you loved me, your love is over. The moment your love ends, my love begins.
9 // DECISION TO LEAVE
dir. Park Chan-wook // dop. Kim Ji-yong // Mubi // Trailer
Park Chan-wook’s romantic thriller joins the pantheon of films about cops dangerously in love with their suspects. While investigating a murder, the Park Hae-il’s insomniac detective finds himself in a complex relationship with key suspect Tang Wei, the gifted actress probably most known in the West for Ang Lee’s Lust Caution. Their mutual investigations spiral into a web of suspicion and infatuation.
The nerdier side of me also finds this film interesting as C-tier streaming service Mubi’s first big foray into US distribution (apologies to Ryuichi Sakamoto). The marketing pushes the South Korean connection to Parasite, which is understandable but slightly disappointing; Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho are significantly different filmmakers. But I hope that angle works, because the two deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence. To those for whom Parasite was their first Korean film, I’d highly recommend Decision to Leave as a case study in the breadth of the country’s output.
Now streaming on Mubi
Do you believe it? That a cup of tea can contain a world? That you could taste a place, a time?
8 // AFTER YANG
dir. Kogonada // dop. Benjamin Loeb // A24 // Trailer
Hellooooo, Colin Farrell.
I only just caught up with Kogonada’s tender debut feature Columbus this year and boy do I regret waiting that long. It’s richly empathetic, and the tranquil attention paid to architecture in that film appears tenfold in this delicate drama about a family and their robot.
Following an opening credits sequence that doubles as maybe the second best dance scene of the year, Yang (Justin Min), the android Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith bought as a companion for their adopted daughter, malfunctions. Efforts to repair Yang lead to Farrell exploring his epigrammatic memories. The film becomes a meditation on the relationship between life and technology as well as social connection and Asian-American identity. And the dangers of letting your children learn about Mitski.
Now streaming on Showtime
Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.
7 // MOONAGE DAYDREAM
dir. Brett Morgen // Neon // Trailer
Sure, you could make a straight-forward biographical documentary about David Bowie. You could even give him the Anthony McCarten treatment like Whitney Houston suffered this year. But Brett Morgen wouldn’t dare to make a Bowie documentary that the man himself wouldn’t approve of, and the result is not a portrait of a person so much as a poem.
This is not a film interested in communicating information about the artist’s life. I suspect any Bowie neophytes would not be able to pass a Bowie pop quiz after viewing. Instead it’s, for lack of a better word, a vibe. Bowie’s protean artistry plays out like a laser light show experience for the viewer to bathe in as they consider their own transience. It’s a two hour therapy session with one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Available for rent
All gods and monsters outlive their purpose, and are reduced to metaphor.
6 // THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING
dir. George Miller // dop. John Seale // United Artists // Trailer
Not a movie about movies, a story about stories. This quaint two-hander by Mad Max: Fury Road and Babe: Pig in the City director George Miller may seem at first to work on a much smaller scale than the grandiose odes to the theatrical experience released this year, but it quickly reveals itself to be epic in scope with a story spanning centuries.
Tilda Swinton, as a narratologist visiting Turkey for a conference, discovers the innocuous lamp she purchased as a souvenir in fact contains an ethereal Idris Elba, who grants her three wishes. But Swinton’s character, like us, has heard this story a thousand times in a dozen languages, all cautionary tales. How can I trust you, asks she. Where could this story possibly go that we haven’t seen before, asks the audience.
The bulk of the remaining runtime is dedicated to vignettes describing how the genie came to be in that lamp, in that shop, and then one more about Swinton’s decision and its consequences. They are fantastical romantic visions that wholly gripped my imagination and blind me to whatever flaws somehow made it a critical and financial nonentity. Decades from now, this film will be rediscovered as a key entry in Miller’s filmography.
Available for rent
Intermission
Best Animated Film
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (dirs. Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson)
I was sad to realize zero animated films made my top 10, so I want to highlight this one that barely missed out on the last spot. Del Toro’s long-in-development adaptation transposes the classic story to the 20th century in order to excoriate the enablers of fascism. You know, like a Guillermo del Toro movie. His name is in the title, after all.
Runners-up:
Inu-Oh (dir. Masaaki Yuasa)
Turning Red (dir. Domee Shi)
Nicest Nicecore
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (dir. Dean Fleischer-Camp)
You know what “nicecore” is. It’s Ted Lasso.
Look, I’m not sure where I land on the name “nicecore” or if the concept is good or bad, but there is definitely a trend of stories about characters with minimal interpersonal conflict trying to help each other. It’s easy to roll your eyes at, but I won’t deny feeling heartwearmed watching Jenny Slate’s anthropomorphic seashell struggle to assist his grandmother in a world orders of magnitude too big for him.
Runners-up:
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (dir. Sophie Hyde)
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (dir. Anthony Fabian)
Best YouTube Documentary
Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb (dir. Jon Bois)
The video essay has evolved into quite the sub-genre. This year, Defunctland shone a spotlight on the talented, anonymous artists behind network branding. Folding Ideas almost single-handedly put a dent in the NFT economy. Patrick Willems spun his channel off into a narrative feature film!
So it’s with a small amount of prejudice that I continue to call them “YouTube documentaries.” Sorry, but similar to how Netflix has to be dragged kicking and screaming into theaters for critical respectibility, releasing your work on YouTube is an unavoidable statement of ambition.
I’m not saying this to denegrate. I want to emphasize that these storytellers have the talent to excel with traditional documentaries, but they are choosing the freedom afforded by YouTube.
Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein of Secret Base are the paragons of this trend. Bois has such talent for visualizing data. In Captain Ahab, he turns Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb’s numerous flirtations with baseball’s history books into a sepulchral landscape. The series builds to a fairly convincing appeal for an ex post facto Hall of Fame induction. In Bois and Rubenstein’s hands, even a non-baseball fan will find his story mesmerizing. After all, baseball history is so much more interesting than baseball.
(“Wait a minute, this was released in four parts, I thought you didn’t consider th-” MY HOUSE MY RULES)
Runners-up:
Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery (dir. Kevin Perjurer)
Line Goes Up: The Problem With NFTs (dir. Dan Olson)
Most Movie
RRR (dir. S. S. Rajamouli)
A confession: My knowledge of Indian cinema starts and stops at Satyajit Ray. My understanding, as someone who has never engaged with the modern industry, is that RRR’s extravagance isn’t all that extraordinary for Tollywood or Bollywood. That might be an uneducated take, I genuinely do not know. But Tollywood’s biggest crossover hit yet deserves special attention regardless.
Every dial in production was set to 10. Raju and Bheem, played by Tollywood superstars Ram Charan and N. T. Rama Rao Jr., don’t just become friends, they become the bestest friends in the history of the world ever. The dance scene isn’t just “choreographed”; the dancers throw their weight and limbs violently as the gala becomes a proxy battle for Indian independence.
Stubbornly unapologetic CGI. An original song (on the Oscar shortlist!) and accompanying dance. Love, violence, revenge, for over three hours. This movie contains more movie than Hollywood’s entire output for a month. If we’re lucky, they will learn the right lessons from it.
Runners-up:
Ambulance (dir. Michael Bay)
Elvis (dir. Baz Luhrmann)
Ping’s Top 10 of 2021 of 2022
10. Petite Maman (dir. Céline Sciamma)
9. The Souvenir Part II (dir. Joanna Hogg)
8. Flee (dir. Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
7. The Lost Daughter (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)
6. Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
5. Nightmare Alley (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
4. The Worst Person in the World (dir. Joachim Trier)
3. The Tragedy of Macbeth (dir. Joel Coen)
2. The Rescue (dirs. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin)
1. Drive My Car (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
I was skeptical when I first heard Murakami’s short story was adapted into a three hour film. Incredibly, not only is it surprisingly faithful but not one minute of the runtime drags. I still haven’t found time for Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Hamaguchi’s other and allegedly superior 2021 film, and if it’s actually better let’s just put him in the movie hall of fame now.
Right here, you are going to witness an absolute spectacle.
5 // NOPE
dir. Jordan Peele // dop. Hoyte van Hoytema // Universal // Trailer
Another story about the stories we tell, but with a thick layer of abstraction. Jordan Peele has carved quite the niche in the industry for himself. “Race-centered heavily-symbolic horror-comedy” is a mouthful, so now we can just say “a Jordan Peele movie.”
Here’s my attempt to summarize the film’s plot without giving anything away: A family on the outskirts of Hollywood (both the industry and the location) believe they have discovered a UFO and try to capture footage of it. That’s it, that’s all you’re getting. Nope is concerned with the exploitation inherent to creating a film. Who gets to tell what stories? Who decides which stories are told? Which direction are the cameras even pointed in? In between asking those questions, the film still finds room to squeeze in some images that still haunt my nightmares. If there was any doubt Peele is a master director, Nope should dispel it for good. Hollywood is his.
Now streaming on Peacock
Art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on Earth, but also it will tear your heart out and leave you lonely.
4 // THE FABELMANS
dir. Steven Spielberg // dop. Janusz Kamiński // Universal // Trailer
Two things I’ve been saying consistently for a long time:
1. There is nothing less interesting in film than watching characters watch a screen.
2. Steven Spielberg is the greatest director in the history of the medium.
What happens when these axioms collide? It turns out the unstoppable force does indeed push the unmovable object.
What is it like to know your name is synonymous with an art form? This film, apparently autobiographical in all but name, is Spielberg’s attempt to reckon with his own legacy (as is Ready Player One, which may have gone up in my estimation after this). It’s a level of self-reflection Spielberg has in the past reserved as subtext, intentional or otherwise.
But what’s really made it unforgettable is the performances. Michelle Williams deserves every ounce of praise, and Paul Dano, Gabriel LaBelle, and even Seth Rogen render their characters with such subtle depth. He really is the greatest director of all time.
Available for digital purchase
In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.
3 // EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
dirs. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert // dop. Larkin Seiple // A24 // Trailer
The breakout sensation of the year. At the risk of sounding cliche, I’m struggling to think of something to say about this film that hasn’t already been said by better and worse writers than me. “Ke Huy Quan deserves an Oscar nomination”? Enough people are saying that that it might happen. “Daniels should get a blank check for their next project”? I bet the money people in Hollywood are saying that too.
It’s obviously another movie about Asian-American identity, but I’ve also been thinking about it a lot as a distinctly millennial work. The conflict between cynicism and hope in the face of meaninglessness, regrets about paths not taken, parents who say they’re sorry, an overall message of “niceness”… it all strikes me as very generational. Anyone else?
Now streaming on Showtime
Good luck to you, whatever it is you’re fighting about.
2 // THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
dir. Martin McDonagh // dop. Ben Davis // Searchlight // Trailer
Hello again, Colin Farrell.
On a rural Irish isle, Pádraic is abruptly informed by his best friend Colm (Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, respectively, both at the top of their game) that the friendship is over. Furthermore, Colm vows that every time Pádraic breaches the silence between them he will cut off his own finger.
It doesn’t make sense. Why would a fiddle player who wants to be remembered for his fiddling want to deliberately sabotage his own ability to do so? Because, in my reading of the performance, Colm clearly does want to go through with it. And that’s what works so well about this story for me. Colm’s actions don’t make sense. Most people I’ve met don’t make sense either. The film captures the anxiety of feeling time is running out to achieve something as well as the hopelessness of trying to reason someone out of self-harm. I’ve been on both sides of this pairing.
Now streaming on HBO Max
You must stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.
1 // TÁR
dir. Todd Field // dop. Florian Hoffmeister // Focus // Trailer
A cautionary tale of fame. A family drama. A ghost story. Simultaneously about the relentless pursuit of power and the bare minimum for success. Tár is singular; there was nothing else like it this year.
Cate Blanchett throws herself fully into the character of Lydia Tár, a (fictional) composer and conductor who has achieved seemingly everything there is to achieve in her field. And then, for no apparent reason, everything starts to fall apart.
I say “for no apparent reason” because the film is so firmly entrenched in Lydia’s point of view that it’s impossible to see the events objectively. We know what she’s accused of, but how much is true? I’ve spoken with people who say there’s zero doubt about it. I personally was more sympathetic to Lydia. The film is ambiguous about its own ambiguity, because the viewer is forced to inherit Lydia’s myopia about her own actions. As a result, each viewing gets cast in a different shade. Even the director says no two of his viewings are alike. He’s also said the part was written specifically for Blanchett, so much so that if she had refused then the film would not have been made. That is visible on the screen.
Tár is, simply put, a masterpiece. I don’t use the word lightly. It’s probably the only film this year that deserves it. God willing it won’t take another 17 years for Todd Field to make his next film.
Available for digital purchase
I asked an AI to write a conclusion to this post and this is what it spit out:
“Overall, it was a great year for movies and narrowing it down to just ten was a tough task. However, after much consideration, these ten films stood out as the best of the best. From heartwarming comedies to thrilling action movies, there was something for everyone in this list. We can’t wait to see what the next year brings, but until then, we’ll be revisiting these top ten films over and over again. Thanks for reading!”
Sure, good enough. Maybe next year I’ll offload this whole thing. My new year’s resolution for 2023 is to watch fewer movies. I want to make time for other hobbies, not to mention my pile of unread books and my TV and video game backlog.
The thing is, this was my resolution last year, too. And the year before that. I guess I just love movies too much to quit.