Honorable Mentions
Kimi (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
One of cinema’s greatest auteurs of anything goes style cinema returns with a film that takes the now too familiar prompt of a pandemic movie and ratchets it up to a riveting, lean minimalist thriller. With an excellent central performance by Zoe Kravitz, the disconnection works to capture not only the character’s distance from others but serves as a practical look at how we’ve all changed over the past few years.
Catherine Called Birdy (dir. Lena Dunham)
The second 2022 release of Dunham’s return to cinema turns out to be her best work to date thanks to an adaptation of a fairly rebellious source material. It’s a messy, gross, but most of all adventurous tale that seeks to unravel the limitations of chivalry and finds the joys of womanhood buried somewhere in its anarchic approach to the period piece that also ranks as one of the few shameless films to embrace the girlboss ethos without embarrassing itself.
The Fallout (dir. Megan Park)
Whether it be the Uvalde school shooting or the 10th anniversary of Sandy Hook, the decision to make a drama centering around the difficulty of teens living a normal life post-tragedy turned out to be one of the most poignant and nuanced films of the year. Without veering too much into sentimental schmaltz, Park has found a way to allow her characters to be young and flawed, dealing with concepts that forever change their world, remove the innocence, and leave behind a sense of confusion that may never recover.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (dir. Eric Appel)
It can be argued that the master parodist was overdue for a biopic, though nobody could’ve predicted just how perfectly the style of his music dictated the blend of facts, comedy, and out right lies to detail the experiences of a once in a generation musician. It’s a premise made funnier by the real life Yankovic’s humbleness that makes things like dating Madonna or getting involved with violent cartels seem less convincing and makes even the lie that Michael Jackson stole “Beat It" from him a pitch perfect example of why the biopic genre shouldn’t always be trusted even at its most entertaining peaks.
Pinocchio (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
Few animated films in 2022 could provoke as much emotional and existential conversation as this adaptation that took the year’s hot wooden boy and placed him in fascist-centric Italy during World War II for a powerful deconstruction of life’s greater meaning and why it’s important to stand up for your ideals. With stellar stop-motion animation, this take expands any familiar iconography into the dreamlike logic we’ve come to expect from del Toro and results in something that makes you hope he’ll return to the medium sometime very soon.
The Top 10
10. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
Despite the title’s suggestion, many of the characters will only ever meet each other late at night in a lonely chat room online, searching through the esoteric conspiracy theories in hopes of finding greater meaning in life. With a lingering camera on a character’s blank stare, Schoenbrun has managed to successfully capture our relationship with the internet and capture that the real horror isn’t the fear of what a stranger with a fake identity might do, but the fear of being alone when returning to the real world.
9. White Noise (dir. Noah Baumbach)
At long last, the indie pioneer has been given a substantial budget to create a hilarious, panic-driven satire of how a culture driven by consumerism to the point of it seeping into academia would handle a major catastrophe. Adam Driver leads the cast with a pitch perfect false sense of confidence that develops into an absurd epic of a society not ready for what lies ahead but will continue driving through the hellscape traffic until it’s all in the rearview mirror, hopefully.
8. Bodies Bodies Bodies (dir. Halina Reijn)
Few films have come to retroactively depict the Elon Musk era of Twitter quite like this hilarious murder mystery of a bunch of narcissistic 20-somethings so obsessed with public reputation that when it’s all taken away, the humanity and reason goes with. While the ending is sure to be divisive for some, the ultimate message shines through with one of the best casts of the year delivering acidic black comedy as their only defense against the fact that nobody relates to each other as much as they do the Wi-Fi router.
7. The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg)
In a year where Tilda Swinton made some of the best, most meditative cinema about the fragility of life, this ranks above the rest for the eeriness she brings to dual roles as a mother-daughter pairing looking for meaning in a visit to a place that used to bring warmth. With a few quiet reveals, the haunting reality slowly begins to overtake the story and the philosophical nature becomes something greater until a profound third act delivers one of the best twists from an abrupt edit this year.
6. Good Luck to You Leo Grande (dir. Sophie Hyde)
While most films based around sex workers would be more farcical, what’s amazing is how seriously this treats the two leads’ wants and needs throughout their handful of meetings by breaking down vulnerability and finding deep down desires often repressed. By the end, there’s an emotional catharsis in how each of the characters have learned to relate to each other and trust each other, creating some of the best, most unexpected, chemistry of the year.
5. The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh)
Colin Farrell has officially delivered a performance worthy of the best pitch black comedy Irish tragedies in history as he navigates trying to understand if he’s boring while having his good intentions ultimately make things worse. It’s a story that could only really happen in a small town, even on an island, where everyone knows each other and crosses paths often by accident and thankfully this one is populated by some of the most deliciously oddball characters with so much pain underneath their weary smiles.
4. Pearl (dir. Ti West)
In Mia Goth’s second outing with West in 2022, she delivered a performance that created the perfect emotional wallop of a young woman stuck in Smalltown Midwest America and doing everything she can to escape only to find tragedy upon tragedy driving her further into depressive desperation. In a career of amazing performances, Goth manages to turn this villain origin story into something more heartbreaking, reflecting on a life that was never ever able to flourish and by the time she releases her incredible third act monologue, it’s clear that even if Pearl isn’t going to be a star, one can hope Goth will be in the years to come.
3. Everything Everywhere All at Once (dir. Daniel Scheinert, Dan Kwan)
It is rare that a film that embraces the anything goes mentality manages to be one of the most hilarious, thought-provoking, emotional films of the year while delivering a multiverse story that delivers some of the most inspired and symbolic gags of the year. After years of using their juvenile id to make provocative pop art, The Daniels have ascended to the status of auteurs, proving that it is possible to be mind-bending and heart-warming in equal measures while creating one of the few films whose charm can’t be spoiled by any discourse.
2. Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)
Peele goes full Spielberg in the late 70s in this film that centers around an alien invasion but has so much on its mind that it’s likely to be inspiring other kinds of conspiracy theory YouTube videos for years to come. By the time that the central alien comes, so much has unfolded that one can’t help but admire the attention to detail that has created an inspiring grandeur that feels like it holds mysteries we’ll never be able to fully understand but why care when the ride is this exhilarating?
1. Tar (dir. Todd Field)
Just when everyone thought that Cate Blanchett would never be able to top Carol (2015) as career-defining performance, she stands in a music class discussing why she thinks cancel culture is inherently vile and that we should just let talented people be talented. In the scene of the year, it’s a powerful showcase for a character standing before a downfall like no other that starts off feeling mundane but ends by showing the limits of hubris to survive bad personal behavior, ultimately leaving the viewer with one of the most satisfying, ambiguous endings of the year.
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