Another year, another batch of uninspiring movies. Correction: there were some exciting cinematic events in 2022, such as the Dario Argento one-two punch, i.e. one film directed by the great man and another in which he acts, and also the return of Poland’s great Jerzy Skolimowski with what must be counted as one of the most interesting films he’s ever made, as well as two extremely protracted productions—MAD GOD and 5-25-77—that made their respective bows in ‘22.
But getting back to the bad stuff: I know many pundits have been referring to our current period as the “woke era,” and indeed there were quite a few films released last year that can be termed woke. I would, however, select another representative attribute: directorial self-indulgence, which for whatever reason was allowed to run amok in 2022. The overriding assumption among filmmakers like Noah Baumbach, Damien Chazelle, Alejandro Inarritu, Jordan Peele and Ti West appears to have been “What worked for Fellini/Welles/Kubrick will work for me,” which has not been the case.
For the following ranking the usual Year in Bedlam ground rules remain in effect: all the films must have been commercially released in the past year (I’d love to regale you with the joys of SKINAMARINK, but its release has been pushed back to ‘23), and I have to have seen ‘em. Potentially consequential films I didn’t see include THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, HALLOWEEN ENDS, THE WHALE and TERRIFIER II, so they won’t be included. Anyway…
THE BEST
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1. MAD GOD
An astonishing depiction of an otherworldly hellscape, peopled almost entirely with stop motion creatures. MAD GOD was initiated back in 1987 by the Hollywood special effects maestro Phil Tippett, who with help from student volunteers labored on it for the next three decades. (See the Bedlam Files MAD GOD review for video clip.) The finished product isn’t without hiccups (inconsistent lighting, jarring technical contrasts), but in ambition, originality and unwavering dedication to its twisted aesthetic MAD GOD dwarfs any other recent release. Featured is the Assassin, a gasmask wearing individual descending into a nightmarish underworld; there critters of every imaginable stripe, all with homicidal intent, people a landscape of biological mutation and industrial decay. There’s little in the way of a narrative, but the film’s pleasures are in its visuals, which evidence a bewildering variety of influences—H.P. Lovecraft, Hieronymus Bosch, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Dante’s INFERNO, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY—even though the overall vision and attitude are entirely unique. MAD GOD, in other words, is a rare film that not only wears its influences on its sleeve but can actually stand alongside them.
2. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
This indie is an amazing example of unfettered imagination, and an ideal comeback vehicle for Hong Kong’s Michelle Yeoh. One of the top martial arts performers of the eighties and nineties, Yeoh has spent much of the past two decades on a quixotic quest for international stardom (in so-so fare like THE TOUCH and THE LADY), and it seems she may have finally achieved it. In EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE she plays a harried LA based Chinese immigrant thrust into various alternate universes while attempting to deal with an especially unpleasant tax auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis). The multiverse gambit allows Yeoh to assume a number of different guises, including that of a martial arts master, and also allows the writer-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert to unleash an astounding flood of rapid-fire invention whose likes you won’t see in too many other movies (and when you do, as in 2012’s JOHN DIES AT THE END, those movies usually don’t work). What keeps all this from collapsing in on itself and becoming nonsensical (as happened with JOHN DIES AT THE END) is Yeoh’s enormously empathetic and grounded performance, proving she’s not just another pretty fist.
…an amazing example of unfettered imagination, and an ideal comeback vehicle for Hong Kong’s Michelle Yeoh.
3. RRR
A throwback to the good old days of Bollywood moviemaking (and I do mean movie and not film), a heavily fictionalized three hour plus historical epic that mixes action, politics, romance and (of course) music numbers into an irresistible whole. The setting is British run India, where a young girl is abducted by a Brit governor. The girl’s rough-and-tumble brother (N.T. Rama Rao Jr, a.k.a. MTR) becomes determined to get her back, and a dedicated Indian cop (Ajay Devgn) is tasked with capturing him; but Devgn’s allegiance to the Brits isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem, with these two seeming adversaries having far more in common than is initially apparent. Objectively speaking there are plenty of things wrong with RRR–uneven performances, an overreliance on CGI, a fast and very loose attitude toward plausibility—things that would probably sink a Hollywood production, but here the infectious energy and exuberance are what ultimately win out.
A throwback to the good old days of Bollywood moviemaking
4. EO
Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, which viewed human foibles through the eyes of a donkey, was the template for this Polish-Italian co-production, in which Poland’s 84-year-old Jerzy Skolimowski returned to his avant-garde roots. EO, a donkey, is first seen performing in a Polish carnival, under the care of a young woman (Sandra Drzymalska) whose relationship with the animal may (it’s implied) go beyond the bounds of propriety. When financial issues shutter the carnival Eo embarks on an aimless odyssey through Europe, where he’s caged, abused, made witness to all manner of violence, and eventually meets a dark (but not unexpected) fate. Skolimowski presents Eo’s journey in a visually rapturous and oft-impressionistic manner; this donkey is prone to visions and hallucinations, constantly flashing back to his time in the carnival and at one point imagining himself a robot. Not all of it clicks, with a bit in which Eo is taken in by an Isabelle Huppert led family of rich eccentrics being especially interminable, but so long as Skolimowski foregrounds his inert but quite soulful non-human protagonist the film registers as a unique, and uniquely touching, piece of work.
…human foibles through the eyes of a donkey…
5. THIRTEEN LIVES
A surprise: an Amazon made dramatization of the 2018 rescue of thirteen boys from a flooded cave in Thailand that delivers both the thrills and the harsh realism I was sure director Ron Howard would forsake in favor of Hollywood bullcrap. THIRTEEN LIVES is easily Howard’s best film since APOLLO 13, and it also contains the strongest performances Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen have given in some time. Mortensen in particular is quite fine as the cynical British diver tasked with saving the boys, which entails a 4½ hour swim through watery crevasses whose claustrophobic aura is conveyed with unnerving vividness by Howard and his collaborators. So too the clunkiness of the operation, which involved dragging tons of air tanks and supplies, and also the boys themselves, who end up having to be anesthetized and handled like cargo. Admittedly, there are some narrative missteps: it’s never made clear, for instance, how much good is done by the outdoor volunteers who attempt to divert rain from the cave (the rain still gets in, after all), although Howard insists on cutting to them quite frequently and insistently.
…easily Howard’s best film since APOLLO 13…
About this pic two things are certain: 1). it’s arguably the greatest use of the IMAX format in a non-documentary film, and 2). it contains the most dynamic use of 3-D in any movie ever made (meaning that if you’re unable to experience it in IMAX or 3-D you might as well skip AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER altogether). To those two attributes, BTW, I’ll add a possible third: the CGI on display here is very likely the finest ever, imparting a fully artificial yet realistic universe that feels tangible and concrete. As for the story and characters, there’s not much to say, with writer-director James Cameron providing just what he always does: an action heavy epic that’s quite derivative, and in place of a climax offers a succession of escalating crises. Again, though, the film looks damn good.
…arguably the greatest use of the IMAX format in a non-documentary film…
7. TOP GUN: MAVERICK
For those puzzled by the Hollywood definition of a sequel—“The Same, But Different”—TOP GUN: MAVERICK offers up a textbook example of precisely what those words mean. It’s the better-late-than-never follow-up to TOP GUN (1986), with that film’s Tom Cruise played rough-and-tumble fighter pilot hero (you know his name) still getting into trouble well past an age when he should be retired. As in the earlier film, Maverick is derided by his superiors as reckless and impulsive, yet due to the intervention of his old frenemy Iceman (Val Kilmer) is chosen to lead a crew of new recruits on a vitally important mission to blow something up. This is all mostly just as it was in the first TOP GUN, down to the fact that the “enemy” Cruise and co. oppose is never identified, yet there’s a more plot-driven aesthetic that’s very much in line with the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE flicks (and no wonder, as one of their main architects Christopher McQuarrie co-scripted the present film). It all adds up to unpretentious fun with good flying scenes, crisp action and, in a lineup that includes Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller and Jon Hamm, a strong cast.
8. BABYLON
An indulgent folly in the grand tradition of indulgent follies. It takes a truly gifted filmmaker to come up with such an outrageously bloated and self-important film as Damian Chazelle’s BABYLON, which can be viewed as the NEW YORK, NEW YORK of our age—it’s a misfire, in other words, but a worthwhile misfire. Chazelle’s aim was to depict the excess and depravity of silent era Hollywood, which was thrown into a tailspin by the arrival of sound (a subject covered in SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, a film Chazelle makes sure to reference quite assiduously). Caught up in this saga are Diego Calva as a Mexican immigrant looking to break into the film business, Brad Pitt as a Douglas Fairbanks inspired movie star and Margot Robbie as a Louise Brooks based starlet. It’s the miscast but attention-grabbing Robbie who delivers the standout performance (in a role played almost entirely in varying stages of undress), with the momentum lagging any time she’s not on screen. Chazelle’s direction is jazzy and hyperactive a la Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, ensuring that the film is never too boring, although it falls apart entirely in the final scenes, involving Toby McGuire as a creepy mobster who presides over an overwrought freak show that’s straight out of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, and a wholly ill-advised history-of-cinema montage, which serves only to show that this film doesn’t belong in it.
9. VORTEX
Previous to this film I thought Michael Haneke’s AMOUR (2012) was the screen’s starkest depiction of the horrors of old age, but I now stand corrected. In VORTEX France’s sixty-year-old Gaspar Noe airs his anxieties about aging, resulting in a film that’s downright suffocating in its relentlessness. Not a whole lot actually happens, with much of VORTEX taken up with following its elderly couple protagonists (Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun) as they watch TV, muddle around their spacious Parisian flat, shower and sleep, but the overriding gimmick, of presenting virtually the entirety of the “action” in split screen to show what each character is experiencing, helps to stave off boredom—and is dramatically justified in the final scenes (in which, for reasons I won’t reveal, one of the two screens goes dark). Argento plays an eightyish writer and Lebrun his dementia-stricken ex-doctor wife, who no longer recognizes her husband and actively works to do him in, while their drug dealer son (Alex Lutz) attempts to convince his parents to abandon their flat for a convalescent home. Not to give anything away, but things don’t end well for any of these characters.
11. 5-25-77
That title is misleading, as 5-25-77 is the date STAR WARS made its bow, suggesting this film is about that movie and its impact. In fact STAR WARS is but a portion of the whole (it isn’t even brought up until the halfway point), with a more accurate title being 3-4-68, the release date of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which plays a far greater role. 5-25-77’s maker was Patrick Read Johnson, a veteran special effects ace and sometime director (with SPACED INVADERS and BABY’S DAY OUT being his best-known credits), who back in the aughts sought to dramatize his early years as a movie-obsessed youngster in Wadsworth, Illinois. Johnson had some high-profile assistance in the form of STAR WARS producer Gary Kurtz, which was no help in alleviating what turned into a near twenty-year production. That Johnson took so long to get his film up and running isn’t at all surprising given the depiction of his teenage self (played by John Francis Daley), who comes off as flighty, temperamental and easily distracted. The same can be said for the film, which is constantly getting bogged down in arcane subplots (with its unofficial theme being how reality intrudes on the most carefully laid plans), yet it all coalesces into an uneven yet heartfelt whole. In keeping with the reality-based aesthetic, Johnson packs the film with fully convincing 1970s period detail and an atmosphere that, thanks largely to an excellent performance by Daley, feels authentic.
12. FIRE OF LOVE
This affectionate and unassuming doco is far from great, but it is indeed (as one critic stated) “The Greatest Lava-Fueled Love Story Ever.” Katia and Maurice Krafft were French volcanologists whose mutual passion for all things volcano-related led to a most unlikely bond. Their shared existence was cut short by a volcano eruption they were seeking to capture on film, but both lived full lives. As portrayed by director Sara Dosa, the Kraffts were obsessed individuals, dedicating themselves to unlocking the secrets of volcanoes, crafting an outsized personal mythology and capturing great eruption footage. That latter ambition, at least, was fully realized, as the up-close lava streams and bursting ash displayed here (filmed largely by the Kraffts themselves) are eye-popping.
13. CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
The first feature in eight years to be directed by David Cronenberg, and the first in over twenty to be made from an original Cronenberg screenplay. This means he can be forgiven for many (but not all) of the annoyances of CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, which suffers from an exposition-heavy narrative involving a future world where people no longer feel pain, and a performance artist (Viggo Mortensen) who grows mutant organs and removes them for the edification of leering audiences. Sounds gross, and indeed it is, but CRIMES OF THE FUTURE’S fascination is entirely conceptual—meaning it’s a cerebral exercise with little in the way of action or sensation. Technically speaking the proceedings are impressive, with cinematography by Douglas Koch that recaptures the painterly sheen of the now-retired Peter Suschitzky (Cronenberg’s previous cinematographer of choice) and a Mediterranean island setting that complements the apocalyptic scenario extremely well.
14. EMILY THE CRIMINAL
An LA set indie with many good things. Foremost among them is a fully engaging Aubrey Plaza in the title role of a young woman with a checkered past, who unwisely enters a criminal enterprise led by a charismatic scumbag (Theo Rossi) with whom she becomes romantically involved. Writer-director John Patton Ford gives the proceedings a suitably harsh, naturalistic surface, and a supporting cast that (in a very rare occurrence) truly look like the criminal lowlifes they’re portraying. The problem is one that afflicts a lot of action pics, indie and otherwise: plausibility, an issue to which Ford pays shockingly little attention. I had trouble accepting that a robber, after threatening Emily and then making off with thousands of dollars and her pet dog, would subsequently loiter outside her apartment, thus allowing her a golden opportunity to tase him and retrieve her pooch. Even less believable is a subsequent scene in which another scumbag attempts to choke the heroine to death but takes forever to do it—and so provides ample time for Emily to rummage in her pockets and find a weapon to even the score.
15. APOLLO 10½: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD
Wherein the Texas based Richard Linklater, having previously mined his past for DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993), BOYHOOD (2014) and EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! (2016), once again dips into his youthful memories. Visualized via the rotoscope animation style employed in Linklater’s previous films WAKING LIFE (2001) and A SCANNER DARKLY (2006), APOLLO 10½: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD focuses on the young Linklater growing up in Austin, TX in the 1960s. That, of course, was the time of the Space Race, leading to elaborate fantasies of being shot into the wild blue yonder that frequently intersect with reality. The film is a highly unlikely concoction that mostly works, although Linklater lathers on the sixties pop-culture nostalgia (of which there’s enough here to fill an entire season of THE WONDER YEARS) a bit too thickly.
16. GLASS ONION
This sequel to KNIVES OUT re-introduces the southern accented Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), the world’s greatest–and quirkiest–detective. Here he travels to an insanely opulent Greek island paradise owned by a rich asshole (Edward Norton) who’s concocted an elaborate whodunnit scenario; to solve it he’s invited a select group whose ranks include Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista and Kathryn Hahn. Also on hand is Janelle Monae as an aggrieved woman with unsavory connections to Norton and his guests (meaning she essentially takes the place of Ana De Armas in the previous film). It’s all enjoyable enough, with a suitably brainy narrative and a pleasant, evenly paced flow that makes the 139-minute runtime pass without (for once) any excess annoyance.
17. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
A war movie masterpiece? Not quite, but this adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic WWI novel is a standout in the category of combat cinema, not least because the film (unlike previous adaptations) hails from Remarque’s native Germany. Director Edward Berger’s staging of trench warfare is tough and unsparing (if a mite over-choreographed), just as it was in the novel, with a blanket refutation of conventional wartime movie heroism and a scale that belies what by Hollywood standards was a shockingly low budget. Of course, there’s not much in the way of narrative invention or characterization, with the driving home of the “War Is Hell” message being the film’s sole concern.
18. THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING
Intellectually grounded and adult-oriented, this lavish fantasy from the great George Miller deserves to be graded on a curve. Adapted from A.S. Byatt’s 1994 novella “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” the film is about a about a middle-aged woman academic (Tilda Swinton) who conjures up a Djinn (Idris Elba) in an Istanbul hotel room. This entails a succession of ARABIAN NIGHTS inspired vignettes illuminating the Djinn’s three-thousand-year existence, spiced with academic dissertations about the nature of storytelling and innumerable visual quirks, in a film that due to Miller’s skill registers as a smooth and assured viewing experience. But there’s a definite tension, an inevitability given that such academically inclined material was placed in the hands of a filmmaker best known for MAD MAX. THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING lacks the urgency of that and other Miller films, as despite his best efforts at replicating Byatt’s scholarly bent these two sensibilities just don’t jibe.
19. IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?
From film critic Elvis Mitchell, a highly opinionated history of African American filmmaking. Mitchell’s overview tends to play down or ignore those things that don’t support his thesis that the 1970s were a unique, never-to-be-repeated boom period for black performers and filmmakers. Furthermore, Mitchell vastly overrates many of the films he discusses, in an effort to (again) support his thesis, although he deserves credit for illuminating the era’s more unsavory aspects (such as the fact that shockingly little of the money made by those films went into the pockets of their creators). Whatever this film’s shortcomings, the “Blaxploitation” era Mitchell explores was undoubtedly a vital period in movie history, with an output that included revolutionary screeds (SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG), comedies (COOLEY HIGH), actioners (COFFY), horror movies (GANJA AND HESS) and even a feature-length cartoon (COONSKIN), all of which are covered here.
20. GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO
Those calling it a masterpiece are way off, but this Guillermo Del Toro shepherded PINOCCHIO adaptation deserves points for reviving the lost art of handcrafted stop motion animation. Aimed at both children and adults, and fairly horrific in nature, the pic contains moments of genuine wonder, some overtly scary business, and several obnoxiously cutesy elements that belong in another movie. It is, at least, leagues better than the Tom Hanks-Robert Zemeckis 2022 PINOCCHIO that stunk up Disney Plus, although it can’t approach Matteo Garrone’s masterful Italian language version from 2019.
21. STRAIGHT TO VHS (DIRECTAMENTE PARA VIDEO)
A quasi-documentary about the 1988 flick ACT OF VIOLENCE IN A YOUNG JOURNALIST, Uruguay’s premiere straight-to-VHS release. Emilio Silva Torres, an inquisitive Uruguayan, documents his search for info on the film, and the procurement of some home videos made by its elusive director Manuel Lamas. The reality of what we’re shown is an open question in a film that constantly teases its viewers about what’s “true” and what isn’t (the final scenes, in which Torres finds himself caught up in a horror scenario not dissimilar to that of ACT OF VIOLENCE…, are obviously of the latter category). It’s an interesting experiment overall, working best, perhaps, as a feature-length advertisement for the film-within-the-film.
22. BIG BUG (BIGBUG)
A sci-fi satire by France’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet (formerly of Jeunet and Caro) that’s received downright venomous reviews, with “Dreadful” and “Scatterbrained” being among the nicer invectives hurled at it. About that first adjective I disagree but the second is on point, as BIG BUG is indeed scatterbrained–and also vastly overlong and uneven—but its heart is in the right place. Featured are a group of mismatched people trapped in a futuristic suburban house after the robots regulating everything go haywire, leading to much comedic desperation and perversion (the element that more than anything else seems to have set off many reviewers). Jeunet’s overtly cartoony visuals ensure that the film is always eye-pleasing, and have the added effect of integrating the copious CGI quite smoothly.
23. THE GOOD NURSE
A good, if overly arty and affected for my tastes, film. Based on fact, it stars Jessica Chastain as a harried nurse who strikes up a friendship with Eddie Redmayne as a seemingly kind and contented co-worker, only to discover that, as a wave of suspicious patient deaths sweep the hospital, Redmayne may not actually be as nice—or as sane—as he appears. Both actors are top-notch, and the direction by longtime Thomas Vinterberg associate Tobias Lindholm quite focused and stylistically assured, but the film is too self-conscious for its own good.
24. AGAINST THE ICE
This fact-based Danish period piece is tough and unsparing, just as it should be. About two explorers left to fend for themselves in the wake of a botched 19th Century expedition in Iceland, it stars the always-watchable Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who also co-wrote the script) as one of the two protagonists (Joe Cole is the other), who are forced to confront the Arctic wilderness with a bunch of dogs and an ever-dwindling cache of supplies. Impacting, but the intercutting between the desperate protagonists and the cozy meetings held by their minister (Charles Dance) to discuss the fate of the two men deflates the tension considerably.
25. BLONDE
A deeply flawed but worthwhile product. BLONDE conveys the life of Marilyn Monroe (Ana De Armas) through a succession of telling vignettes, interspaced with clips from several of Marilyn’s films (with De Armas composited in and Vanessa Lemonides supplying her singing voice). At one point Marilyn asks, “Did somebody die?,” which accurately sums up the funeral-appropriate tone; throughout, the ambient sound has been muted rather severely, giving the proceedings a dreary solemnity that certainly affects the lead performance of Ana De Armas, which in keeping with the film’s overall gist feels one-note. She is, however, always compelling to watch, and the same can be said for the film as whole. Writer-director Andrew Dominik and cinematographer Chayse Irvin’s visual treatment includes many show-offy techniques on loan from Martin Scorsese and Nicolas Roeg, resulting in a potent depiction of a life told in the form of an extended bad dream. A suitably ethereal, Angelo Badalamenti-esque score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis completes the effect.
26. SIGNIFICANT OTHER
An unexceptional but engaging mixture of horror and sci fi. The setting is the Pacific Northwest, where a young couple (Jake Lacey and Maika Monroe) are on a backpacking trip, unaware that an alien being, who’s emerged from a just-crashed UFO, is also afoot. Sounds a lot like the little-known alien horror fest ALTERED (2006), which had a similar setting and narrative set-up, but SIGNIFICANT OTHER’S writer-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen add in a lot of twists, some of them quite startling (as when one of the protagonists pushes another off a cliff early on). This doesn’t make for anything especially transcendent or profound, but the film did hold my interest.
27. X
A Ti West production that’s typical of his filmography at its best and worst. Set in the 1970s, it’s about a film crew shooting a porno feature in a secluded cabin owned by a creepy old couple (Stephen Ure and Mia Goth—who also plays one of the much younger protagonists), who take to methodically killing off the intruders in their midst. There’s plenty of gore, a great deal of near-hardcore sex and an extremely simplistic narrative with little that’s surprising or unexpected plot-wise (with the most interesting element, the casting of Mia Goth in dual roles, never really going anywhere). That’s in keeping with Ti West’s filmmaking aesthetic, which isn’t renowned for its narrative ingenuity. What West’s films are renowned for is artful and atmospheric filmmaking, meaning pacing that’s quite slow by contemporary standards, naturalistic performances and richly textured visuals, all of which are on display here.
28. PREY
The best of the PREDATOR sequels, but that’s not saying much. About a spunky Native American girl (Amber Midthunder) going up against the big guy (Dane DiLiegro) in the early 1700s, PREY features a heroine who, as is the case with so many action movies these days, is impossibly tough, virtuous, resourceful and intelligent, in direct contrast to her male cohorts (who knew Native American men were such arrogant buffoons?). There’s also the unfortunate fact that, simply, this franchise is a loser, with yet another Predator (the fifth, to be exact) being dropped off on Earth and getting its ass kicked. Yet PREY is never less than fully absorbing, and Miss Midthunder is quite engaging in the lead role; I didn’t find her climactic mano-a-mano with the Predator entirely convincing, but did admire the fierceness and agility she exudes.
29. THE SADNESS (KU BEI)
An insanity plague-themed Taiwanese shocker that works, but solely as an exercise in splatterific excess. Many contemporary issues are covered—pandemic jitters, sexual harassment, medical malpractice, random murder (“Did I break the record?” asks one character after killing several people), etc.—while the kinetic bloodletting, taking place more often than not amid large crowds, is well choreographed and impacting. Those things, however, don’t quite forgive the indifferent storytelling and substandard performances.
30. LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE
An acting showcase for Mila Kunis as a fashion journalist with a dark past. Her secrets would appear to be safely tucked away, at least until an overzealous documentary filmmaker turns up to interview Kunis about her involvement in a 1999 school shooting, causing a most unwelcome resurfacing. The fact that Chiara Aurelia, who plays Kunis in the flashback scenes, looks nothing like her allegedly grown-up self isn’t the colossal annoyance you might expect, as the character’s self-willed night-and-day transformation is crucial to the drama. A strong film overall, but the material would have benefitted from a more imaginative director than TV veteran Mike Barker, and a better ending than the smug kiss-off we’re given.
DVD/Blu-ray Recommendations
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RED ANGEL (AKAI TENSHI)
Yasuzo Masumura’s bleak and brilliant 1966 war drama remains one of this unpredictable auteur’s very best films (IMO, it’s second only to THE BLIND BEAST in Masumura’s filmography), and was given a most welcome 2022 digitization by Arrow Video.
THE CELEBRATION (FESTEN)
The first, and best, of the Danish language Dogma 95 films, a crazed family drama that tonally speaking falls somewhere between Robert Altman and Luis Bunuel. Lots of extras are included on this Criterion release, which must be counted as the definitive home video version of this vital film.
DEATH GAME
This one gets my vote for Blu-ray of the year, a jam-packed release that reveals pretty much everything you’d want to know about this previously mysterious seventies-sploitation classic, and with stunningly remastered sound and image quality. Grindhouse Releasing may not be terribly prolific, but they really went all out.
EXOTICA
Atom Egoyan’s near thirty-year-old classic of sex, dark secrets and bad behavior finally gets the home video treatment it deserves, courtesy of (once again) the Criterion Collection.
THE FARMER
Not a great (or even particularly good) movie, but Scorpion Releasing is to be commended for making this 1977 grindhouse relic, which was long thought “lost,” available once again.
FROWNLAND
Another stellar Criterion release, and one of the very few “Mumblecore” movies that’s actually worth your time: a dark, and darkly funny, exploration of thwarted desire in the form of a young man (Dore Mann) stricken with a rather severe case of social retardation.
MICHAEL HANEKE: TRILOGY
Yet another must-have from Criterion, who offer three films for the price of five. Expensive though it may be, this trilogy by Austria’s Michael Haneke is essential viewing, particularly its first entry, the absolutely devastating SEVENTH CONTINENT.
PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMBILES
It’s not John Hughes’ best film, but PLANES, GTRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES is something of a Generation X touchstone, and the newly minted hour’s-worth of deleted scenes is by itself worth the price of the disc.
THE SPORTING CLUB
A counterculture oddity from 1971, which registers as a fascinating misfire, finally gets digitized—and quite impressively—by Kino Lorber.
THE WORST
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1. THE MUNSTERS
Yes, this Rob Zombie fumble really IS that bad. Purporting to be a prequel to the classic 1964-66 MUNSTERS sitcom, it has the Frankenstein’s monster-esque Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) created in a laboratory by a mad scientist and becoming a punk rock star (who knew there were punk bands in the early 1960s?). As such he’s noticed by vampire babe Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) and it’s love at first sight, although Lily’s father the Count (Daniel Roebuck) disapproves of the union–and so on and so forth. The green filtered illumination, boppy music and exaggerated performances (a style that, for once, suits the emoting of Zombie’s non-actor wife Sheri Moon) suggest a live action Loony Tunes skit directed by Joe Dante or Tim Burton, but not Rob Zombie, who’s made a film that fails as horror, camp and comedy, and succeeds at precisely nothing.
2. FIRESTARTER
The original FIRESTARTER (1984), about a girl who can start fires with her mind, was no classic, and nor, I’d argue, was the 1980 Stephen King source novel (it being a bit too derivative of John Farris’ THE FURY). This means the makers of this remake, starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong as the Firestarter and Zac Efron as her psychically endowed father, had plenty of room for improvement. It’s a shame, then, that director Keith Thomas and screenwriter Scott Teems have come up with an unfocused and cheap-looking thriller that seems better suited to the SyFy Channel than the nationwide theatrical release provided by Blumhouse. The inexcusably perfunctory special effects do the film no favors, although the electronic score by John Carpenter (yes, that John Carpenter) and his son Cody is rather intriguing, and deserving of a better movie (preferably one directed by Carpenter himself).
3. THE BUBBLE
Another shitty Netflix production? Most definitely, in a comedy that may have been derailed by bad decisions on the part of co-writer/director Judd Apatow (who has spoken at great length about the rushed scripting and production) or possibly by Netflix cost-cutting. Either way, THE BUBBLE is a disaster. It attempts to convey the effects of Covid quarantine on the cast and crew of a special effects blockbuster; they all find themselves stuck in a luxury hotel, with infighting breaking out and factions forming. Despite a retinue of talented performers that include Karen Gillan, Keegan-Michael Key, Leslie Mann and BORAT: SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM’S Maria Bakalova, none of the characters are the slightest bit endearing, and even more damning, the film, despite being labelled a comedy, is never very funny.
4. THE 355
Even by the none-too-lofty standards of today’s female centered actioners THE 355 is pretty inexcusable. I’m surprised it even got a theatrical release, as in look and conception it’s straight-to-video fodder all the way. Intended, it would seem, as a female-centric MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, it features four non-action stars—Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Krugar and Penelope Cruz—teaming up to retrieve a cyber-weapon, entailing a lot of thoroughly unconvincing fights and shoot-outs in various exotic European locales. None of these four women (eventually joined by a fifth in the form of Chinese starlet Bingbing Fen) look like they’ve ever fired a gun or thrown a punch, with director Simon Kinberg relying on intricate cutting and poorly integrated stunt doubles to render the violence convincing—quite simply: it doesn’t work.
5. ARMAGEDDON TIME
Writer-director James Grey has been trying VERY hard to turn this autobiographical indie into a political cause celebre (he and co-star Anne Hathaway are still holding press conferences, even though the film came and went back in October), but to no avail. LOVECRAFT COUNTRY’S Banks Repeta plays Gray’s youthful self, a rebellious Jewish kid growing up in early 1980s Queens whose parents (Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) send him to a snooty prep school dominated by people named Trump. A poorly integrated subplot involves Repeta’s friendship with a severely underprivileged black kid (Jaylin Webb) and a misguided attempt at improving his status by pawning a stolen computer; this may have been intended as an example of white saviorism gone awry, but that would probably be giving this achingly simple-minded film too much credit. What ARMAGEDDON TIME has in its favor is the same major attribute of previous Gray films like LITTLE ODESSA and THE YARDS: grit, and had the film focused more on that element, and less on trying to box-check modern-day political concerns, it might actually be worthwhile.
6. TÁR
I’m pleased Hollywood keeps finding the time and money to make Cate Blanchett movies, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit through them. With TÁR I did just that, and was sorry. Written and directed by Todd Field (who I much prefer as an actor), it is very much a “Cate Blanchett movie,” as the title role was written expressly for her, and she even nabbed an executive producer credit. It’s not unlike an upscale arthouse take on NIGHTMARE ALLEY, with Blanchett playing Lydia Tár, a gruff and unpleasant yet quite famous NYC conductor who finds her life and sanity collapsing due to her shady past, eventually winding up in the rich New Yorker’s version of NIGHTMARE ALLEY’S geek show: conducting a cosplay convention. Blanchett, to be sure, is magisterial and commanding, but the film is dull and self-important, with lengthy dialogue exchanges that will be incomprehensible to anyone without a music degree, and a descent-into-madness angle that was far too muted for my tastes.
7. WOMEN TALKING
You have to give writer-director Sarah Polley (another actor-turned-director who I say did better work in the former trade) credit: she wears her good-for-you bonafides on her sleeve. The title tells the story of this fact-based film, an action-less ramble in which, yes, women talk. Those women, whose ranks include Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Sheila McCarthy, are Mennonites looking to fight a gang of rapists being protected by their corrupt elders. The ladies debate various courses of action and their consequences at great length, eventually electing to decamp in mass. Polley provides a very Terrence Malick-like treatment, with much of the dialogue related in voice-over amid highly scenic rural vistas, and evinces a subtle self-awareness of how her film will be taken by most audience members; especially telling is a throwaway bit in which a younger member of the flock interrupts the talking women by blurting out “I’m bored!” Exactly.
8. JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION
I predicted this latest JURASSIC WORLD sequel would be an unruly mess, and was right. It insists on bringing back the stars of JURASSIC PARK (Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) to join JURASSIC WORLD’s none-too-dynamic duo of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, while introducing several new characters (including DeWanda Wise as the requisite female badass and Isabella Sermon as the equally obligatory plucky kid), in addition to the no-longer-confined dinosaurs. What’s surprising is the quality of the special effects, which are about on par with those of the now thirty-year-old JURASSIC PARK, i.e. shockingly perfunctory by modern standards. This brings up another issue: the many cliches this movie employs, cliches that were shopworn even before JURASSIC PARK made its bow (such as the racing-to-make-the-departing-plane motorcycle dash and the rush-to-the-helicopter climax).
9. PEARL
This is writer-director Ti West’s follow-up to X (see above), purporting to explore the early days of that film’s “iconic villain.” Pearl is played, once again, by Mia Goth, depicted here as a young woman looking to escape her rural existence in 1918 by becoming a movie star; she also humps a scarecrow, has sex with a randy projectionist and kills lots of people. Goth delivers an all-stops-out open wound of a performance, but there’s not much of a character there, while West’s heavily stylized filmmaking distracts more than it enchants. I’m all for moviemakers attempting Something Different, but Ken Russell-esque extravagance is something Ti West (a director known for tightly concentrated minimalism) simply doesn’t do very well.
10. WHITE NOISE
A film that admittedly never had much of a chance with me, as it was adapted from a 1985 novel I don’t much like by a writer, Don DeLillo (who also provided the source material for COSMOPOLIS), I don’t much like–and, for that matter, I’ve never been hugely enamored with this film’s writer-director Noah Baumbach. As in the book, Baumbach follows a quirky 1980s suburban family led by Jack (Adam Driver) and Babette (Greta Gerwig), who find their lives upended by a cloud of chemical waste that forces them out of their home. Many critics have enumerated the parallels to our current situation, but the highly exaggerated Coen brothers-like staging and smirky, quasi-comedic tone deflate any real-life parallels. Baumbach also includes many “deep” convos about the fear of death and a ridiculous mass dance in a supermarket, signifying I have no idea what.
11. WINDFALL
This Netflixer takes the stripped-down neo-noir route that since the eighties has proven quite popular with cash-strapped auteurs. It has a criminal (Jason Segal) breaking into the secluded vacation home of a tech billionaire (Jesse Plemmons) and his wife (Netflix “it” girl Lily Collins), only to have them unexpectedly show up while the robbery is in progress. What follows is a three-way battle of wills that may work fine for the noir novice, but whose every beat I was able to predict far in advance. It looks good, at least, and the actors are definitely game, but I’d recommend viewing skipping this film and viewing BLOOD SIMPLE (1984) or RED ROCK WEST (1992), which do their noir right.
12. PIGGY (CERDITA)
Cinema du Brute, which has given us CARRIE (1976), EVILSPEAK (1981) and MAY (2002), gets a 2022 airing in this slickly made Spanish import. Laura Galan plays the morbidly obese Sara, a.k.a. “Piggy,” “Fucking Fatso” and “Miss Bacon,” who’s opposed by a band of skinny schoolmates who torment her incessantly–until one day when Sara sees one of her tormentors crying for help in the back of a van. From there things grow increasingly twisted, though also curiously inert, with a narrative that tiptoes around, rather than directly confronts, its themes. Miss Galan deserves plaudits for offering up a complex and sympathetic characterization that nearly, but not quite, makes up for the film’s shortcomings.
13. DEEP WATER
An adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s similarly titled 1958 novel, DEEP WATER is the first film in twenty years to be directed by Adrian Lyne. He remains best known for FLASHDANCE and FATAL ATTRACTION, movies that demonstrate a certain lack of nuance and subtlety; that lack is a problem here, as the story pivots on psychological complexity. Ben Affleck stars as a retired web designer who blithely allows his sexy wife (Ana De Armas) to screw around on him, with the stakes heightened when one of her lovers is murdered, leading to jealousy, blackmail and, of course, more killing. Acting-wise this is all tainted by the fact that, frankly, Affleck isn’t a skilled enough performer to pull off such a nuanced character. Ana de Armas fares slightly better, and is given extremely flattering visual treatment by Lyne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld, ensuring there’s at least one reason her henpecked hubbie insists on staying with her. Alas, why this vivacious young woman stays with him, even after she figures out his true nature, is much harder to fathom.
14. THE NORTHMAN
From writer-director Robert Eggers, an R-rated Viking saga. Alexander Skarsgård plays a wandering “berserker” looking to avenge the killing of his parents in medieval Iceland, leading to mass bloodshed, arcane sorcery and appearances by Bjork and Anya Taylor-Joy. Where does this film go wrong? First, the story, which as scripted by Eggers and the Icelandic novelist Sjón is steeped in Norse mythology (including the “Legend of Amleth,” which reportedly inspired HAMLET), but couched in a paint-by-numbers revenge-fueled narrative. Another problem is with how the film is visualized: the lengthy takes and swirly camerawork are impressive, but seem inappropriate to the subject matter, as does the too-copious CGI. Quite simply: the film never feels very authentic, and given that authenticity appears to have been one of Eggers’ major concerns, that’s a rather pressing flaw.
15. THE BATMAN
With this, the umpteenth BATMAN screen iteration, writer-director Matt Reeves has turned out a very stylish and brooding film noir-influenced take on the Dark Knight—but then so did Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. Robert Pattinson is adequate in the title role, Zoe Kravitz quite a sight as an uber svelte Catwoman, and Paul Dano a surprisingly memorable Riddler, but the film overall doesn’t bring anything to the table that the previous BATMAN films didn’t, outside a severely inflated run time (three hours?).
16. BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (BARDO, FALSA CRONICA DE UNAS CUANTAS VERDADES)
And to think: I was convinced BABYLON was the most self-indulgent movie of 2022. As it turns out, Alejandro G. Inarritu’s BARDO was by far the most bloated, pompous and self-important movie to be unspooled in ‘22. Admittedly, its opening scenes are brilliant, a Jodorowsky-worthy swirl of undiluted surrealism involving a woman giving birth whose child decides it would rather stay in the womb, a dazzling POV depiction of a man attempting to take flight in the desert (with the focal point being said man’s shadow) and a subway car that gradually turns into a vast aquarium. Topping such a dazzling collection of images turns out to be impossible, even for a director as gifted as Inarritu, with the proceedings settling into a visually dazzling but hopelessly dreary account of a Mexican documentarian (Daniel Giménez Cacho) who after years of living in the US returns to his native land to gauge the political climate (or something). Obviously, this is more than a little autobiographical on the part of Inarritu, who allows his pretentions to override his common sense.
17. NOPE
It was inevitable, I guess, that writer-director Jordan Peele, after writing and directing two enormously successful films (GET OUT and US, if you must know), has grown self-indulgent. NOPE, about a movie animal wrangler (a perpetually exasperated looking Daniel Kaluuya), his wife (Keke Palmer), an inquisitive Fry’s employee (Brandon Perea) and a pesky flying saucer, takes place in the wilds of Santa Clarita, CA, with which Peele is evidently quite enamored. That explains, in part, why the film is so hellaciously drawn out, with various unimportant plot points (such as the setting up of a surveillance camera) taking up unconscionable amounts of screen time. The film overall might have made for an interesting mid-length thriller, but has been conflated to a numbing 130 minutes.
18. SMILE
In an era of mass shootings and widespread anxiety, it’s appropriate that this low budget horror fest, which pivots on madness and reality displacement, should capture the cultural zeitgeist. Certainly, there exist better, more artful examples of cinematic insanity (I wonder what 2022 audiences might make of SHUTTER ISLAND), with writer-director Parker Finn over-relying on loud jolts and it’s-only-a-dream reveals (in which category SMILE nearly outdoes THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE). SMILE is not much of a movie, in short, although I will offer praise for its lead actress Sosie Bacon, who offers a convincing incarnation of sustained hysteria.
19. LAST SEEN ALIVE
An actioner that cribs rather shamelessly from THE VANISHING. It features Gerard Butler as a meathead who loses his hot wife (Jaimie Alexander), from whom he’s about to become separated, at a gas station convenience store. This entails a violent, and very TAKEN-esque, race to find her kidnappers; as in TAKEN, Butler’s tracking down of the bad guys is far too easy, while the specter of THE VANISHING never strays too far (with a strong suggestion that Alexander might have been buried alive). The pic is fast moving and diverting, certainly, holding one’s attention even when plausibility flags (which is all-too often).
20. CLERKS III
With this, the second sequel to Kevin Smith’s no-budget classic CLERKS (1994), the law of diminishing returns asserts itself with a vengeance. I remain a huge fan of CLERKS, and will even admit to liking CLERKS II, but Smith and his now middle-aged cast members have clearly outgrown the material. We’re back with the perpetually down-in-the-dumps Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and his troublemaking pal Randall (Jeff Anderson), who now own the convenience store where CLERKS took place. These two still like to argue about STAR WARS and lament the emptiness of their lives, but they also have to juggle the realities of heart attacks, breakups and memories of the good old days. It’s in the latter category that Smith really gets carried away; I’m all for nineties nostalgia, but having Dante view clips from CLERKS in a spectral movie theater, accompanied by plinky piano music, is a bit much.
21. ELVIS
Given that the director of this film was Australia’s Baz Luhrmann, who tends to emphasize flamboyant spectacle, we shouldn’t be surprised that this Elvis Presley biopic feels so Disneyfied. This film’s Elvis, played by Austin Butler, is a vapid pretty boy who never gets fat and, as Luhrmann takes pains to make sure we understand, has nothing but the utmost respect for the black performers from whom he appropriated much of his act (history suggests otherwise). Left unmentioned is Elvis’ unfortunate preference for underaged girls, and the fact that his wife Priscilla was just 14 when they got together. Tom Hanks pretty much steals the show as Colonel Tom Parker, E.’s famously corrupt manager and surrogate parent; it’s Parker who narrates the film from his own jaundiced viewpoint (he sees himself as the good guy), so the proceedings should really be far more interesting and complex than they are.
22. TICKET TO PARADISE
Yes, this movie, a frothy romcom starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, is every bit as cliched, implausible and pointless as you might expect. George and Julia play a divorced couple who travel to Bali to stop their vacationing teenage daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) from marrying a seaweed farmer, bickering all the way. I shouldn’t have to rehash the rest of the plot, as you can predict exactly how it pans out (the trailer tells the story). But with charismatic stars, attractive tropical scenery, some gags that are actually funny and a welcome absence of political posturing (rendering the pic a definite outlier in modern Hollywood), TICKET TO PARADISE registers as a semi-tolerable time-passer.
23. AMBULANCE
Another case of excess bloat ruining a movie. At 80-90 minutes AMBULANCE could have been a real corker of a thriller, but at a severely protracted 136 minutes it’s an overblown bust. Adapted from the 2005 Danish film AMBULANCEN, it’s a simple and direct account of two criminals (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) commandeering an ambulance in the wake of a botched bank robbery (patterned very closely on the famous heist/shootout sequence in Michael Mann’s HEAT), and leading police on a lengthy chase through the city of angels. Given the portentous nature of the scenery (every other shot appears to have been calibrated for maximum pictorial impact) and the prevalence of dissolves and slow motion, it seems director Michael Bay might have been attempting to use this contrived material to make some kind of statement about modern-day LA. If that was indeed the case, I’d recommend checking out REPO MAN (1984) instead, which does indeed make a statement about LA, and does so in a much shorter and less pretentious manner.
24. DARK GLASSES (OCCHIALI NERI)
For its first hour this Italian chiller appeared to be shaping up as director Dario Argento’s best film in decades, only to implode quite spectacularly. Ilenia Pastorelli plays a call girl who’s rendered blind after a pursuit by a psychopath ends in a car crash–which doesn’t stop the guy from continuing to stalk her. WAIT UNTIL DARK it isn’t, and nor will DARK GLASSES ever be mistaken for anything from Argento’s glory days, but I did find myself investing emotionally in Pastorelli’s character, and in her relationships with Asia Argento as a sympathetic helper and Andrea Zhang as a young boy orphaned in the car crash that took the heroine’s sight. It’s downright frustrating, then, that all this culminates in a thoroughly contrived swamp chase that’s wrapped up in the laziest manner imaginable (with the heroine’s dog tasked, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD-like, with making things right), and topped off with the single most awkward fade-out in recent memory.
Looking Forward…
Back to the top
COCAINE BEAR
One for the too-stupid-to-be-ignored category: an allegedly fact-based horror-comedy about a bear snorting cocaine and going on a rampage. Featured, FYI, is the final film appearance of Ray Liotta.
DUNE: PART TWO
This one certainly has a lot to live up to, with director Denis Villeneuve having promised to outdo DUNE: PART ONE in every aspect. I, for one, will certainly be turning out for it.
FERRARI
A new Michael Mann movie about Enzo Ferrari, the inventor of a certain iconic sports car. Let’s hope it’s better than Mann’s last few movies, which haven’t exactly done his legacy justice.
FRANCIS AND THE GODFATHER
A Barry Levinson directed dramatization of Francis Ford Coppola’s battle with the late Robert Evans during the making of THE GODFATHER (never mind that this story was already told, and quite well, in the ‘22 Paramount Plus miniseries THE OFFER).
HERE
From director Robert Zemeckis: “Set in one single room, (the film) follows the many people who inhabit it over years and years, from the past to the future” (so claims the imdb summary).
THE KILLER
An adaptation of the acclaimed Alexis Nolent graphic novel by David Fincher. The last three words of the preceding sentence are, I feel, recommendation enough.
LIMBO
See my review here of this Hong Kong production that rewrites the rules of dystopian action cinema.
OPPENHEIMER
The teaser trailer for this Christopher Nolan drama admittedly wasn’t too exciting, but the film, about the creation of the atomic bomb, has the potential to be a contender (with the last attempt, 1989’s FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY, leaving much room for improvement).
POOR THINGS
A steampunk drama by Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos, boasting a talented cast that includes Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley.
SILENT NIGHT
A John Woo production that promises to spin a bloody revenge saga with no dialogue whatsoever.
SKINAMARINK
Art-horror that, in the manner of most such films, will either draw you in or bore the shit out of you. I got ensnared, and found SKINAMARINK to be one of the most profoundly unsettling viewing experiences ever.