Best of 2022
A Mid-Decade Check-In on the State of Cinema - Part III
Ten of my Favorite Films from 2022
In 2022, the global pandemic raged on with hot, new variants of COVID-19 dropping; Russia invaded Ukraine; The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Sixth Assessment Report, and things aren’t looking great; Elon Musk blundered into buying Twitter; Astrologists took the first photo of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, but it’s the least of our concerns; nineteen students and two teachers were slaughtered at school in Uvalde, Texas while cops thumb wrestled in the parking lot; Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated; heat waves in Europe killed over fifty-thousand people; Queen Elizabeth II died at age 96, and the world mourned; the global population surpassed eight billion; and movies continued being made.
Let’s talk about ten of my favorites.
10. Barbarian
Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives in the Detroit-Metro area for a job interview, only to discover that her Airbnb has been double booked. The other occupant, Kieth (Bill Skarsgård), looks just as confused as Tess. He is perfectly polite as they attempt to resolve the mix-up, but it’s the middle of the night, and the property managers are unreachable.
Situated within the decaying remnants of working-class suburbia, the Airbnb stands as an island of warm domesticity amid a sea of condemned homes. A sense of dread hangs over the residential ruins, as if the very aesthetics of abject poverty pose a threat to personal safety.
Standing in the pouring rain with nowhere else to go, Tess cautiously agrees to share the space with the stranger. What follows does not resemble what was advertised. Narratively, Barbarian veers off its tracks without ever jumping the shark. It‘s unpredictable but never unwieldy.
Barbarian delivers a frightening experience fueled by a grimy atmosphere, grotesque imagery, and numerous surprises. Twisted and confrontational, the film’s sheer oddity may obscure its thematic focus, but rest assured, it all comes together by the conclusion.
Fans of nightmare fodder should consider making a reservation.
9. Pearl
Writer/director Ti West and actress extraordinaire Mia Goth reunite in Pearl (2022) to craft a prequel borne entirely of circumstance. X (2022) was shot in New Zealand during the pandemic, where the remote island’s government kept cases low by limiting travel. Prior to beginning photography, X’s entire cast and crew were isolated for two weeks.
After completing X, West found himself uniquely positioned. As film production in Hollywood came to a halt, West utilized his already COVID-compliant cast and crew to make another movie. West and Goth began collaborating on a prequel, Pearl (2022), set on the same farmstead sixty-one years before X. Goth, whose collaboration with West on Pearl earned her a co-writing credit, sustains the film with a remarkable performance.
Pearl is a Freudian melodrama rendered in the technicolor pastiche of Hollywood’s heyday, with particular deference to The Wizard of Oz. It’s an aesthetically novel and narratively simple “x-traordinary origin story” that dovetails nicely with X despite divergent approaches: X serves visceral horror, whereas Pearl is a figurative psychodrama about dissatisfaction with rural life and a burning desire to be loved and adored.
In 1918, a global pandemic and WWI rage on. Pearl’s husband, Howard, fights overseas. In his absence, Pearl lives on a farmstead with her stern, German mother and infirmed father who requires constant care. Pearl dreams of soaring over the proverbial rainbow and onto the silver screen. Her mother considers her ambitions stupid and selfish. Upcoming auditions for a touring dance troupe offer Pearl a chance at a better life. Squandering her youth caring for a family she resents, Pearl begins musing, “If only they would just die.”
Pearl, perhaps best described as a Wicked Dororthy of the South, exhibits a desperation for adoration undermined by doubt and self-loathing. Cold and warmth clash within Pearl to create a beguiling tornado of vulnerability that vacillates across emotional extremes.
Pearl’s origins don’t offer any earth-shattering revelations. What makes Pearl a gem is Mia Goth’s acting prowess, deepening its titular character’s monstrous pathos. While violent rage roils under the sunny facade of a dutiful farmgirl, her disturbed psyche is expressed via symbols and metaphors.
Early in the film, Pearl is drawn to a scarecrow hanging in a cornfield. She dons the black hat atop its head, releases him from his post, and begins to slow-dance. Fantasizing about a man she’s just met, she screams, “I’m married!” at the lifeless scarecrow. Then, desire overtakes her. She straddles the scarecrow, riding him until reaching sexual climax.
No, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We’re in Pearl’s world: where windswept whimsy and romantic grandeur are steeped in dark desire.
The film builds to a show-stopping monologue. When, with downcast eyes and runny makeup, Pearl confesses, “I’m worried there may be something real wrong with me,” viewers may respond with a resounding “No duh.” However, Goth’s delivery, dripping with heart-wrenching sincerity, renders the deeply disturbed woman eminently relatable.
While Mia Goth bares her soul, time ceases to be. There is only Pearl, and she’s the most captivating character in contemporary horror cinema.
The above is a synthesis of excerpts from two articles, which you can read in full here:
8. Women Talking
Sarah Polley’s Women Talking is adapted from Miriam Toews’ novel, which is based on a shocking true story. When the women of a Mennonite colony realize they’ve been victims of sexual assault and gaslighting by the patriarchal perpetrators, the Mennonite men are banished for a few days as the colony’s women discuss what they ought to do next.
The answer isn’t as simple as it might seem. Born and raised in a Mennonite community, the women have no connections to the outside world. A combination of fear, faith, and hope that the community’s men will reform their wicked ways constitute the case for staying. On the other hand, years of abuse and gaslighting have made it impossible for some women to retain any trust or hope for their community’s patriarchal leadership.
Women Talking presents the impassioned, captivating debate within a community of women desperate to do right by themselves and their children amidst a clash between the learned helplessness of patriarchal social conditioning and the burning desire to break free of abusive power structures.
Viewers seeking explosive action should look elsewhere.
7. Tár
Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker introduces us to Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the lead conductor of a prestigious orchestra in Berlin, by calling her “one of the most important musical figures of our era.”
Tár and Gopnik proceed to have an in-depth conversation about the intricacies of the classical music genre. The scene runs for over fifteen minutes, and much of the conversation’s content eluded me. One quickly ascertains that Lydia Tár is a bounty of expertise, animated by a profound passion for her craft. She takes her work and herself very seriously.
Despite knowing jack shit about classical music, I found listening to Tár rhapsodize about her craft enthralling. I find passion infectious, even when the topic exceeds my knowledge. The film’s erudite opening interview plunges me into the uncharted waters of classical music. Although I'm in over my head, I’m happy to be swept away by curiosity.
Tár is a film that refuses to hold the audience’s hand through the unfamiliar landscape of classical music. However, despite being set in the world of classical music, it isn’t Tár’s focus. Instead, it is a complex character study of its eponymous subject.
Lydia Tár’s career as a classical music conductor facilitates a nuanced exploration of fame, success, power, accountability, and questions of identity that languish in moral ambiguities. The film’s thematic focus is more important than the content of passing conversations about Mahler’s Fifth or Rückert’s poetry.
That is not to say that classical music is incidental in Tár. As writer/director/producer Todd Field makes clear in his screenplay’s epigram, the form and sensibilities of classical music performance are infused into his film’s DNA:
“Based on this script’s page count, it would be reasonable to assume that the total running time for Tár will be well under two hours. However, this will not be a reasonable film. There will be tempo changes, and soundscapes that require more time than is represented on the page, and of course a great deal of music performed on screen. All this to say, if you are mad enough to greenlight this film, be prepared for one whose necessary length represents these practical accommodations.”
-Todd Field’s epigram in Tár’s screenplay
Ultimately, Tár is a film bound to enrapture some and alienate others. Viewers who engage with the text on a figurative and thematic level will find the “madness” of Field’s film rewarding. For viewers more inclined to interpret the film’s text literally, Tár may read as the story of a pretentious woman whose noisy appliances prevent her from getting a good night's sleep.
The above is comprised of revised excerpts from my full review, which you can read here:
6. Nope
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s third film, Nope, is his most vexatious. It tells the story of two siblings, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) Haywood, struggling to make ends meet as horse handlers for Hollywood productions. However, after spotting a mysterious object in the skies above their ranch, they find themselves on the precipice of unfathomable success… assuming they can prove its existence by capturing it on camera.
Peele’s films transcend the boundaries of any single genre, yet they’ve all dabbled in the sandbox of the horror genre. Suffering is, of course, an inextricable component of the horror genre’s alluring spectacle — a fact that Nope seeks to confront from the start with a biblical epigram that frames the film that follows:
"I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle."
-Nahum 3:6
Upon release, Nope’s reception was more mixed than Peele’s previous two films, Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). Logan Paul, intellectual heavyweight, infamously tweeted:
“‘NOPE’ is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time. I love Jordan Peele and Keke Palmer can act her ass off, but this movie is objectively slow and confusing with stretched themes that don’t justify the pace”
It’s no small wonder that Logan Paul, best known for recording footage of a corpse hanging from a tree in Japan’s “suicide forest” and uploading it to his YouTube channel, couldn’t understand Nope — a film focused on the problematic relationship between the spectacle of suffering and the hunger of wide-eyed viewers eager to bear witness.
In Nope, I sense an artist grappling with the ethical implications of his successful filmography. Peele’s first two films foreground the stories of black characters forced to confront the evils of racism, refracted and rendered through the lens of genre fiction. In the process, Peele’s characters endure immense suffering. Through the spectacle of black suffering, Peele’s work confronts white viewers with unfamiliar horrors extrapolated from agonies of the Black experience.
Insofar as Nope marks a departure from Peele’s horror roots, confidently venturing into the landscape of science fiction, it seems to me that Peele doesn’t want his work to be pigeonholed. So Nope looks to the stars for its primary source of spectacle.
Viewers are offered visuals that inspire awe more than fear, with sights that skew towards beautifully strange rather than viscerally upsetting. The film itself doesn’t revel in the spectacle of black suffering, but it is knowingly situated against a history of black suffering as a spectacle in popular culture. Take, for example, the scene in which OJ rides a bronco while his sister screams, “Run, OJ! Run!”
In the top left corner of the frame, you can glimpse the alien pursuing OJ Haywood. It resembles an eyeball with a dark iris at its center. It is a film (shot using IMAX cameras to maximize visual scale) about the Haywood siblings attempting to capture proof of a spectacular entity on camera that, itself, resembles the eyes of viewers watching Peele’s film.
Nope eschews the relative simplicity of Peele’s first films for a thematic exploration of spectators and their relationship to spectacle. It uses the abstract possibilities of the science fiction genre to recontextualize, deconstruct, and problematize the relationship between the spectacle of black suffering and entertainment. As you watch Nope, it holds up a mirror for its audience, watching you watch. Even if the film seems opaque, it sees right through you.
So when a certified dingus like Logan Paul watches Nope and sees nothing of substance, they inadvertently reveal themselves as insubstantial, unable to grasp the self-reflexive brilliance of Peele’s third feature film.
5. Close
Léo and Rémi are lifelong best friends. The thirteen-year-old boys spend their summer days in rural Belgium picking flowers on Léo’s family farm and sharing a bed during slumber parties in the evenings. None of this raises any eyebrows amongst their families.
However, things begin to change once they return to school. Comments, questions, and slurs from their peers make Léo suddenly self-conscious about the intimacy of his friendship. In Léo’s attempts to avoid homophobic suspicions, things begin to change, and Rémi is devastated to find himself left in the lurch.
Lukas Dhont’s Close is a tender and heart-wrenching portrait of stigmatized homosocial intimacy during adolescence, probing the oppressive nature of masculinity and latent homophobia with subtlety and nuance where it matters most.
4. Aftersun
Aftersun, the auspicious debut from writer/director Charlotte Wells, vividly renders the emotional nuances of early adolescence, individuation, and the ensuing ramifications within parent-child relationships. Well’s displays stylistic restraint, eschewing flashy displays of excess in favor of subtle motifs and a strong focus on its characters.
In Aftersun, Sophie (Frankie Corio) reflects on a childhood trip with her father, Callum (Paul Mescal). Narratively, that’s the whole ballgame. Moviegoers craving the explosive action and narrative propulsion traditional to popular cinema may feel unmoored in Sophie’s memories.
No title cards convey time and place, and viewers are not coddled by expository dialogue. Glitchy, low-resolution visuals shot on handheld camcorders render the film’s temporal setting vis-à-vis the technical limitations of the era.
Such is Aftersun’s approach to storytelling, a film that reads more like poetry than narrative fiction, and that may prove vexatious for audiences accustomed to more conventional fare. Enemies of narrative ambiguity are warned.
However, patient and perceptive viewers are rewarded with a moving exploration of the liminal spaces between childhood and adolescence, anchored by the extraordinarily naturalistic rapport between Sophie and her father.
Sophie’s trip with her father touches upon burgeoning facets of life that portend a rift in their relationship.
After Sophie watches a teenage boy rub sunscreen lotion on his girlfriend’s back, Sophie experiences newfound discomfort when her father offers to help her reapply sunscreen. Sophie isn’t able to articulate why her relationship with her father is beginning to change.
The growing pains of being a tween are deeply resonant. Sexual awakenings and compulsory coupledom made me acutely aware of a longing that didn’t exist before.
Meanwhile, Sophie’s father grapples with a deep melancholy which he hides from Sophie. His silent suffering is not misguided martyrdom nor does his furtiveness obscure any dark secret. Instead, Callum is adrift in an unspecified sorrow, too afraid to say anything lest he drag others down with him.
As Callum compartmentalizes his anguish, and despite his best efforts, he isn’t a perfect father. His failures force him to shed the parental illusion of infallibility, causing Sophie to reckon with the fact that her father won’t always be there for her. He is just as flawed as the rest of us. It’s a lesson in heartache expressed in the film’s most emotionally painful scene. Yet even at its most painful, Aftersun remains tender and understated. Suffering never turns into a spectacle.
Charlotte Wells crafts a singularly subtle and stunning film that captures the complex emotions of a hyper-transient moment in maturation. Every facet of the film’s language creates cinematic synergy: color, cinematography, symbolism, lighting, music, and sound design combine to create a film greater than the sum of its parts.
The result is a cinematic tour de force propelled by the gentle touch of a warm breeze.
The above is comprised of revised excerpts from my full review, which you can read here:
3. Babylon
Babylon, directed by Academy Award-winning director Damien Chazelle, is a sprawling ode to cinema that landed in theaters with a thud. Despite flopping with critics and audiences, I regard Babylon with esteem. In time, I believe the movie will be plucked from the cinematic dustbin, reevaluated, and given its due.
Babylon begins in 1926 and follows a colorful cast of characters navigating the transition from silent films to ‘the talkies’ and beyond. For film freaks and fans of old Hollywood, Babylon is brimming with homages, reverent and irreverent, to the films of a bygone era. It’s a cinephile’s delight: a movie about movies. With its epic runtime and pervasive depravity, it also epitomizes the sensibilities of Acquired Tastes.
For every part of the film that caters to the snobbish cinephiles, there are moments that cater to the lowest-brow sensibilities. Mere minutes into the film, an elephant shits on two people in graphic detail. I find scatological humor uncompelling. Would the rest of Babylon be just as puerile?
Only in fits and starts, and in ways that feel meaningful. Broadly speaking, Babylon employs filth and excess with intention, intellectually operating on a higher level than its vulgarity would typically suggest.
Here is a film in which two Hollywood big-wigs talk in a public restroom. Jack (Brad Pitt), the most successful working actor, asks if the Hollywood executive is certain that audiences actually want sound in their films.
“Sure,” the executive says, “why wouldn’t they?” His answer is punctuated by the loud sound of a man shitting in a nearby stall.
For me, Babylon’s self-awareness is its saving grace. Some parts enthralled me, others alienated me, but I never doubted that Chazelle understood his film’s potential to offend.
At its core, Babylon expresses a wide-eyed passion for early cinema akin to that of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011), smeared with cocaine residue and body glitter a la Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
I struggle to recall a film so explicitly interested in the intersection of high and low-brow sensibilities. So, does Babylon consider film to be high or low art? Babylon’s answer is a firmly ambivalent “yes.”
Consider the following:
As time passes, the cinematic form continues to evolve. Technical innovations enable filmmakers to create movie-going experiences that previous generations could not fathom. Amid the constant change, people are unceremoniously tossed aside as the next generation of talent clamors to take their place.
Conceived as a dark comedy, Babylon highlights Hollywood’s unbridled excesses and inextricable dehumanization. It reveals a world of movie magic bolstered by abuse, exploitation, and unethical work environments. It’s an outrageous presentation of unflinching truths situated within an industry where opportunities to succeed are predicated on someone else’s misfortune. It’s the story of people fighting for their moment in the spotlight, only to find the light fading or the heat unbearable.
This cocktail of desperation and discontent takes many forms, from hilarious to horrendously humiliating, among the film’s varied cast of characters, bolstered by superb performances from a star-studded ensemble cast.
Babylon’s vulgarity temporally orients the viewer, placing us at the precipice of a turning point in Hollywood. It boldly refuses to employ restraint as it probes the constantly evolving form and function of cinema by way of its offensive content.
The above is a synthesis of excerpts from two articles on Babylon, which you can read in full here:
2. X
I think X is a brilliant homage to the exploitation films of the 1970s, with particular deference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). It beautifully weds the three “lowbrow bodily genres”: horror, pornography, and melodrama in a film that argues, “It’s possible to make a good dirty movie,” and delivers on that promise.
Set in 1979, Maxine (Mia Goth) and her friends plan to shoot a porno on a rural Texas farmstead. The horny bohemians run afoul of the farm’s geriatric owners, Howard and Pearl: a randy old woman capable of shocking violence (also Mia Goth, in heavy prosthetics).
For an exploitation film, X is teeming with compassion. Victims are undone by their genuine desire to assist seemingly helpless senior citizens. The characters are not one-dimensional bags of blood waiting to be punctured. Hell, even the murderous old fogies evoke sympathy. In her eighties, Pearl is animated by a fundamental desire for intimacy that, due to cardiac concerns, Howard cannot satisfy.
The horror of X is built upon the realities of aging, a fear whose universality enables West to evoke empathy for Pearl, the film’s monster, in a moment of musical melodrama.
West’s intent becomes evident at the film’s midpoint, right before the film switches from the aesthetics of pornography to horror. The buxom, blonde Bobby-Lynne (Britany Snow) laments to her fellow porn actors, “One day, we’re gonna be too old to fuck,” and, speaking to the root cause of conservative outrage, states, “We turn folks on. And that scares ‘em.”
Bobby-Lynne goes on to sing a moving rendition of “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks while a split-screen montage contrasts the warm potential of bohemian youth with the cold reality of Pearl’s wrinkled skin and withered possibilities.
In X, Pearl’s erotic desires and perverse behavior confront viewers with a corollary to Bobby-Lynne’s assertion: elderly bodies turn you off. To paraphrase the words of Stevie Nicks, “You’re getting older too.”
One day, you’ll be “too old to fuck.” You’ll turn people off, and that fact profoundly upsets you.
The above is a synthesis of excerpts from two articles, which you can read in full here:
1. Everything Everywhere All At Once
If you haven’t seen Everything Everywhere All At Once, winner of seven awards at the 2023 Oscars, including Best Picture, you must rectify that immediately. If you tried watching the film and abandoned it, I implore you to give it another go.
I’ve heard people complain they felt too overwhelmed and needed an Adderall to follow the film. I feel like this should go without saying, but Everything Everywhere All at Once is designed to feel overwhelming.1
Feeling overwhelmed is the entire point, essential to understanding the plight of an immigrant mother and laundromat operator, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), and that of her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), with whom she struggles to connect.
Yes, the film’s scope is sprawling. Yet, as the narrative progresses, Evelyn’s outrageous escapades across the multiverse parallel the challenges of her life and the strain placed on her family.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is an intimate family drama rendered via an outrageous romp through the multiverse, lending the film a novelty that could only resonate within mainstream culture after being inundated by over a decade of superhero movies. In that regard, the film’s expansive scope is the narrative apotheosis of nerd culture’s merger with popular culture.
Yet you need not be a fan of superheroes or nerd culture to appreciate the madcap delights that Everything Everywhere All At Once offers. It is a singular cinematic achievement, well worth your time and energy.
So, if you’re one of the people who felt too overwhelmed, grab whatever amphetamines you need to sit down and enjoy this one-of-a-kind masterwork.
From outside the conventional fabric of time and space, the Acquired Tastes Team wishes you a happy new year!
We hope 2022 treated you well, and we look forward to exploring whatever cinematic surprises await us in 2023.
Until then, take care of yourself, my dear film freak.
Consider the title.
I remember harboring a singular fascination for Barbarian by way of its exploration of feminine and masculine shades of control. I ought to revisit it soon; that and Babylon (a movie I hated the first time I watched it, and adored the second time)
Also, I think you'll appreciate this: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/01/19/the-instrumentalist-tar-todd-field-zadie-smith/
Lydia Tar deserves to be mentioned, "Zelig-like", within the universe of every movie that ever happens from now until oblivion.
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