The Yearly Countdown - Fantastic Films of 2022

2022 was supposed to be the year that "the movies were back!" and it. . . kinda was. While there were still several movies pushed back and a few high profile cancellations (pour one out for Batgirl), the year saw the fruits of many a movie that had been pushed back either because of delays caused by the pandemic or by filming under COVID conditions. The resulting buffet led to some seriously good eating.

You know the drill by now. Keeping a "Top 10" list to 10 entries is for quitters, and 2022 was such a treasure trove across so many fields and genres (animation! horror!) that I bend over backwards inventing reasons to list more films.

And what better way to start off than by playing catch-up? 

This One is Cheating:

SALOUM 

(directed by Jean Luc Herbulot)

 

It's tricky to state the reasons why this film should be sought out immediately by genre enthusiasts without giving away too much of the story. It's a little bit horror, a little bit western (or, more technically, a "southern"), and covers a lot of ground in under 90 minutes. Three mercenaries get stuck in a remote village as they're fleeing a violent coup with precious cargo, and then Things Go Wrong.

I'd just as soon not spoil which Things and how Wrong, but fans of "you interrupted my genre movie with a different genre movie!" movies like From Dusk 'Til Dawn will find plenty to love here.

 

Hidden Gem:

THE PRINCESS (directed by Le-Van Kiet)

Look, I'm a simple man. I like Die Hard-a-likes, I like sword fights, and I really like getting chocolate in my peanut butter. The story of a hard-knuckle princess fighting her way out of a tower to kill her would-be Prince Smarming is a thing of such brutal simplicity that its success is all down to execution.

And veteran action director Le-Van Kiet (2019's Furie) delivers with confidence and flourish to spare. Joey King very clearly worked incredibly hard to do a lot of very physical work that's on full display in the numerous action scenes - which are full of clear views of performers' faces and clean geography. The results is something like a golden age Hong Kong actioner crossed with a '90s costume melodrama, with a supporting cast that knows exactly which tone to strike for that balance to work.

When the delivery is this enjoyable, being basic can be a feature.

 

See It To Believe It:

BARBARIAN (directed by Zach Cregger)

Sometimes horror is so potent because it can take social issues and insecurities and societal fears and dress them up as ghosts and goblins in order to explore their fallout with some relatively safe distance.

However, sometimes it just rips the Band-Aid off and points at all that to say "this is kinda fucked up, huh?" and that rules, too. Barbarian is, naturally, the second sort, a bitingly angry exercise in suspense and escalation that explores what kind of obvious monsters we allow to walk among us simply because they wear a face we expect to see in a supermarket or living room rather than a haunted house or primeval crack in the earth. Georgina Campbell gives a star-making turn that would make her a genre fixture in a just world, and Cregger shows that he's got some serious directing chops even in his debut feature.

 

Best Ass Whoopings: 

THE ROUNDUP (directed by Sang-yong Lee)

If you've seen the 2016 film Train to Busan, you probably already looked into other films starring the imposing and charismatic (in equal measure) Ma Dong-seok - or Don Lee, if you're more familiar with him from Marvel's Eternals. Picking up a few years after its predecessor, The Outlaws, The Roundup finds his wrecking ball of a detective Ma Seok-do tracking down ahead of a deadly kidnapping ring from Ho Chi Minh City to his own beat in Seoul. Lee's casual affability and nonchalant badassery make for a delightful combination, and fans of action movies in the vein of the Lethal Weapon films will find a lot to like about the dynamic Lee has with his team and long-suffering captain.

But the name of the category is the name of the category for a reason, and while there are plenty of movies from this past year that whoop ass real good, they don't have Mr. "I will literally slap you unconscious" demolishing buses by beating the stuffing out of people inside.

 

Biggest Surprise:

AMBULANCE  (directed by Michael Bay)

So. . .Michael Bay finally came full circle and made a Tony Scott movie. The influence that the elder statesman of the Simpson/Bruckheimer machine had on Bay has always been apparent (just watch Crimson Tide and The Rock back to back - no really, do it, it's a fun time), but this feels like a switch got flipped in a director long known for films wallowing in misanthropy. Balancing on a carefully-tuned tripod of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Eiza Gonzalez, Ambulance is a white-knuckle chase movie following a pair of adopted brothers after a bank heist gone wrong who's only escape is an ambulance with a wounded cop the paramedic trying to keep him alive.

Bay shoots the action with his trademark freneticism, but he also employs drone cameras to sweep alongside and even underneath vehicles during the mayhem. Even the foot chases make use of the newly-freed camera, a relentless entity able to pursue these characters anywhere they go. Ambulance is still full of the explosive spectacle that you'd expect from Bay, but tightly focused and bound to character in a way that makes me furious he spent so long lost in the franchise weeds. It's also his most heartfelt and optimistic movie in decades, along with being one of the most kick-ass action movies in a very good year for ass-kickings. 

 

Biggest Disappointment:

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER (directed by Taika Waititi)

Honestly, I don't really want to talk about it. After loving Thor: Ragnarok, I was wildly excited for this next entry, and then all the magic that made that previous film seemed completely absent this time around. I should be an absolute mark for just about everything this movie is doing, and yet -

Yeah, I don't want to talk about it.

 

Honorable Mentions:

When I first saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever it was firmly in my Top 5 of the year, so the fact that it slipped to "merely" an Honorable Mention should tell you a lot about how great a year it's been. George Miller's first film since Fury Road gave us the fantastical romance of Three Thousand Years of Longing. Nicholas Cage's turn as "Nick Cage" in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent would be worth the price of admission even if the rest of the film weren't a dynamite meta-comedy (and it is). A24 was on a roll, not just with their "biggie" this year, but also Robert Eggers' The Northman and the charming stop-motion film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. And while we'll cover some dynamite theatrical horror entries from this year, streaming brought the heat with the "Evil Dead meets Blair Witch" bonkers energy of Deadstream and yet another comeback from the seemingly unkillable Scream series. Even DTV ate well, with Accident Man 2: Hitman's Holiday and the Netflix original Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie delivering better action than most of their mega-budget counterparts.

 

Runners-Up:

PREY (directed by Dan Trachtenberg) / THE WOMAN KING (directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood)

While these films may not have much in common at first glance (the former a period soft-reboot of a 35-year-old franchise and the other an original historical epic in the vein of Gladiator or Seven Samurai), but both of these are incredibly engaging examples of action thriller film-making. Both boast insanely memorable characters played by wildly charismatic actors (Prey largely featuring unknown or first-time performers and The Woman King giving several veterans a chance to shine) and accomplish a lot with incredible confidence and elegance.

Having proven his abililty to craft genre bottle narratives with 10 Cloverfield Lane, Trachtenberg nails the "genre movie gets interrupted by a different genre of movie" hook of the original Predator, following young hunter Naru as she attempts to prove herself a hunter to the Commanche in 1719 North America. Naturally, both the arrival of the alien hunters as well as the encroachment of white European fur traders throws more than a few wrenchs into the mix, and Amber Midthunder shows herself exceptionally adept at using said wrenches to beat her enemies to death.

The Woman King is not only a dynamite period piece in its own right with an impressive ensemble anchored by a blistering turn by Viola Davis as Nanisca, the titular Woman King. As impressive as Prince-Bythewood proved as an action director in 2020's The Old Guard, she rises to the challenge of greater scope and variety of action required by the story of the African kingdom of Dahomey and its infamous Agojie warriors. It's exactly the sort of movie that should be an Oscar frontrunner in a half-dozen categories at least - and if it were about white dudes in Europe, it certainly would be.

 

The Really Good Stuff:

And now for the Offical Top 10 - the creme de la creme of 2022 cinema (that I saw) carefully ordered using complex formulae and measures of quality (wherever I felt like) and all very much worth your time.

Roald Dahl's MATILDA: THE MUSICAL (directed by Matthew Warchus)

Like many bookish kids who grew up in the '90s, I had a special affinity for the young girl who loved books, hated fascism, and developed telekinetic powers which she used to help her teachers and schoolmates build a better future. I wasn't familiar with the musical  until the announcement of the Netflix film, but even with such impressive songs I was curious as to what another adaptation to bring to a story.

Fortunately, "some of the best musical choreography this side of Spielberg's West Side Story and a Matilda for the ages in Alisha Weir" were on the docket. Somehow, Lashana Lynch delivers a performance as Miss Honey to rival her turn as Izoge in The Woman King (she's had an incredible year). Not only does Warchus' playful surreal filmmaking ably differentiate itself from De Vito's version, but the film allows truly dark corners to hem in the levity at unexpected times.

If nothing else, you owe it to yourself to check out the "Revolting Children" number.

 

NOPE (directed by Jordan Peele)

Sooner or later, it seems every director makes their movie about making movies. However, in the case of Jordan Peele (hot off the success and acclaim of Get Out and Us), that means making a movie all about the industry's obsession with spectacle and its proclivity - if not active preference - for treating both audiences and creators like something to be chewed up and spit out all over the desert.

And even if the rest of the film weren't great, which it is, the past few years has certainly borne out the truth of this assertion.

But the rest of the film absolutely whips ass, presenting a compelling sibling pair in O.J. (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) Haywood trying to find out what's lurking in the skies above their horse ranch. Peele demonstrates not only his now-trademark talent for building tension in horror set pieces, but also in building to some genuinely dynamite spectacle of his own, pulling from everything from sci-fi horror to westerns to anime. The result is a blistering indictment of the industry while also delivering some of the best the industry has to offer.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK (directed by Joseph Kosinski)

Yeah, I didn't see this coming either. I'm not even a terribly huge fan of the 1986 original, but where that's nowhere near my favorite Tony Scott film (or even top 5), Top Gun: Maverick is handily my favorite film from either director Joseph Kosinski or co-writer/producer Chris McQuarrie. Part of why Maverick works so well for me, apart from me being an absolute mark for "teacher movies" and aside from the smart story choices it makes that I already talked about over at Cinapse.co, is how tightly focused and polished its structure is. At first glance, it's not doing a ton that's terribly new with the military action drama genre, but between the talent assembled and the multiple years they had to fine-tune while it was shelved due to various delays distilled it to a perfect version of its pitch.

But on second glance, there's all the insane stuff the movie does with throwing actors into actual F-18 fighter jets and filming them bouncing around while going several hundred miles an hour. And while I'm no anti-CGI crusader, the tactile thrills of Miles Teller visibly lifting out of his seat while his plan is doing an inverted dive is inarguable. No stunt is a substitute for good story, but when you have both?

That's a potent mix.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (directed by James Cameron)

I may have been pretty surprised by this year giving us Michael Bay making his Tony Scott movie, but that's nothing compared to when I realized that Avatar: The Way of Water was James Cameron going full Hayao Miyazaki.

In almost every way, Cameron's follow-up to the biggest box office hit in motion picture history feels like the movie he always wanted to make when first envisioning the alien world of Pandora. Years after Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) drove the humans of the RDC off their home, they're faced with an even bigger series of challenges to their home and growing family. With a new wave of human invaders and a group of cloned Navi implanted with the memories of human mercenaries (including Stephen Lang's Colonel Quarritch in a brand-new avatar body), Cameron gets to dig into the sci-fi concepts afforded by the world-building of the first film as well as doubling down on the splendid visualization of Pandora's flora and fauna.

But the for all the recognizable Cameronisms on display (handheld crash zooms and dialogue callbacks aplenty), it's the film's deliberate inversion of several of his hallmarks that is so compelling. Quarritch gets a version of the Ripley in Aliens / Sarah Connor in T2 "meet the thing that traumatized you in the previous film head-on" thread with completely flipped audience sympathies. The military hardware and weapons that get so much careful attention in his other sci-fi sequels are framed here as destructive, ugly, and terrifying. Cameron's usually relentless pacing almost entirely ejects plot in favor of story for a nature documentary / hangout movie in Act 2 so that Jake's younger son can make friends with a space whale. And while the finale is a nearly hour-long action set piece with the sort of immaculate execution you'd expect from one of the best action director's of all time, the scale and focus is narrowed considerably to maximize the series of dramatic payoffs that fall into place.

Avatar is a film I admire and enjoy, but not one I'd felt much need for a follow-up from - much less 4 more sequels. After having seen The Way of Water, I can't wait for the next one.

 

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (directed by Rian Johnson)

Given my affection for 2019's Knives Out, I was naturally intrigued by the follow-up as soon as it was announced. However, the challenge of any sequel lies in pulling off the same magic trick twice - and when it comes to mysteries, the way Rian Johnson structured his tribute to classic "whodunnit" stories the first time means not only are people expecting the magic trick, but they're invited to watch closely in order to catch you in the act.

But where the first of Benoit Blanc's cinematic adventures uses the careful dispensation of information to the audience to transforms into a slow-motion chase film in order to keep its approach fresh, Glass Onion's layers peel back to reveal that you were watching a heist film all along. Benoit Blanc's mysterious invitation to the home of an eccentric tech billionaire hosting a murder mystery party for his inner circle is almost a deliberate inversion of his previous film while still delivering on the snappy writing and humor of the original film. Johnson also doubles down on the class-conscious elements that so many memory hole from the Poirot stories, and a timely script had the fortune to become even moreso on the film's release.

For all that, the film's greatest asset remains its use of Daniel Craig's Blanc, a character who was immediately iconic on arrival and has only become more delightful the more we've seen of him. Glass Onion is not as twisty or heady a mystery (very much on purpose) as its predecessor, but is every bit as satisfying in its own way.

 

TURNING RED (directed by Domee Shi)

Around about now, I'm sure some returning readers are asking "when are we going to get to the animated films factory!?" (ask your parents about The Simpsons, kids), and yes - 2022 was yet another stone-cold banger of a year for the medium. While I had a blast with both The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (speaking of long-in-development sequels upping their game), Turning Red arrived as a firm favorite when it dropped on Disney+.

Both due to the way it wore its influences on its sleeve while also speaking with a clearly defined creative voice and the way it pushes against the increasingly rigid Pixar formula, Turning Red shows that the studio still has plenty of gas left in the tank. The thematic depth and emotional punch you'd expect from the creative legacy behind Finding Nemo and Inside Out is on full display, but Domee Shi revels in the freedom of the art form - practically weaponizing animation as a medium to hop between genres as gleefully as Meilin Lee's bouncy red form.

Being both a stealth kaiju film and the best "superhero movie" of the year is just the icing on an already exquisite cake.

 

THE FABELMANS (directed by Steven Spielberg)

It's no accident that Steven Spielberg is one of the great cinematic talents of modern (if not all) time, and that's because he's nearly unparalleled at using his chosen medium to communicate to his audience. And not just in terms of putting the pictures of a story together and running them on a bright wall in a dark room, but in the way he combines his artistic and technical sensibilities to bring his audience into a shared dream.

While on the surface a fairly autobiographical film (covering the life and times of one Sammy Fabelman and his family as he discovers his talents as a filmmaker during school), Spielberg's latest opus explicitly points to an inability to not process the world through cinematic language. Along with screenwriter Tony Kushner, the father of E.T. takes us on a journey through idyllic holidays, tumultuous moves, crumbling marriages, and the inescapable heartbreak of high school romance. Through it all, we see Sammy's instinctive understanding for capturing lies on celluloid so that they look like truth as both an exhilarating combination of artistic and technical talent and a crushing weight on his ability to relate to anyone about anything else.

There's a scene in this film where Sammy is witnessing a family argument and Spielberg uses one of his trademark mirror shots to show Sammy's reflection literally stepping out of himself, grabbing a camera, and filming the domestic squabble - because that's the only way he can "safely" process his world. He has to film the train crash in order to understand it.

 

Guillermo del Toro's PINOCCHIO (directed by Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson)

Ever since I started this blog, every new film by Guillermo del Toro has somehow found a way onto the "Best of Year" list of whichever year it dropped, and if you think that's because del Toro is possibly my favorite living filmmaker? You're wrong.

It's because he's possibly my favorite living filmmaker and he's been on an unbroken hot streak since 2001.

Of course the story of the morally-challenged magical creation who just wanted to be a real person would be a good fit for the man who so capably brought Hellboy to life, but you'd need some serious rejiggering to get the classical version of the morality fable to fit in with the filmmography of the man who made Pan's Labyrinth - so that's what the movie does. Del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson re-contextualize the story immediately by setting it in 1930s Italy during the rise of Mussolini, and centered on a Geppetto who lost a son during a bombing raid in World War I.

It will come as no surprise to fans of del Toro's previous films that there's a serious dark streak in this gorgeously animated stop-motion film, but what was rather surprising was how hilarious it is. The film mixes its bitter medicine with some of the biggest laughs I've had all year, and balances its puckish humor with musical numbers that can be sweet or devilishly satirical as the need calls to keep the audience from getting overwhelmed by the darkness.

2022 was a red-letter year for feature animation, and this was far and away my favorite of the bunch.

 

RRR: Rise, Roar, Revolt (directed by S. S. Rajamouli)

You know what, I've spilled more than enough ink talking about how gotdamn great this movie is. You wanna know why it's on this list at #2?

Here's why:

That's less than 40 minutes into a 3-hour movie (which boasts three of the most kick-ass action sequences of the year before they even drop the title) and the movie literally only gets better from there. RRR is a delightful romantic comedy, a blistering historical adventure, a gripping war film, a rockin' musical, and simply not to be missed.

 

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

Every now and then, you get the chance to see a filmmaking talent truly "become" themselves, to achieve deliver a clear and pointed expression of what they can do. There's no such thing as "the next Spielberg," but even as Spielberg "became Steven Spielberg" with Jaws, so we see Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert fully announce to the world who they are and what they can do.

It helps that they have one of the best performing talents of her generation in the lead role. Michelle Yeoh has been very forthcoming about how she loved this role because of how much of herself it would allow her to be, rather than fitting a stereotype or exploring only a small window of her talents. Yeoh absolutely crushes it as Evelyn Wang on her journey through the multiverse on the worst tax day of her life (it's also about laundry and bagels - there's a lot going on in this movie), but she's also surrounded by a supporting cast that is both written and performed strongly enough to lead their own movies. It's easy to point to Ke Huy Quan's Waymond (because he's perfect) as one of the biggest wins of the film (because it is, and not just because it's good seeing him back after so long), but Stephan Hsu as Evelyn's drifting daughter has to carry a lot of differing bags just to make this movie work, and she makes it look easy.

This whole movie makes it look easy, even while doing incredibly complicated editing and effects (including a lot of delightful practical mayhem) work and some of the best fight scenes this year. It's like the physical commitment and invention of the height Hong Kong cinema with the horizon of digital-age sci-fi and the melancholy reflection of a Sundance drama all rolled into a defiantly hopeful and empathetic package.

It's the everything bagel of movies, and it might be the best film I've ever seen.