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Nate’s Belated and Fated Rundown of the Best and Worst of 2022 Film

Welcome back, dear reader, for my once a year look at the best and worst and everything in between in the year of cinema. This was a year of big changes for me personally and it was the year that the public Went Back to the Theaters after the barren months post-pandemic (though is anything really post-pandemic or are we just accepting it as part of our regular lives now?). I saw over 100+ movies released this year, though many of them from the confines of my home out of convenience. This was a year where blockbusters reigned thanks to Tom Cruise and James Cameron. It was a year of daring, inventive indies. It was a year of adventurous and diverting foreign films. It was a year of all-ages animated movies that touch the heart and funny bone. In short, it was a pretty good year.

But before going into all that 2022 had to offer at the theater, let’s turn back the clocks once more as I take another crack at my top ten list from 2021.

2021 Top Ten List 2.0

10) In the Heights (formerly 9)

9) Psycho Goreman (formerly 10)

8) The Power of the Dog (formerly 7)

7) Petite Maman (formerly 8)

6) Space Sweepers (formerly 5)

5) CODA (formerly 3)

4) Mass (formerly 6)

3) Parallel Mothers (formerly 4)

2) Nine Days (unchanged)

1) The Mitchells vs. the Machines (unchanged)

Now, ladies and gents, it’s on with the big show from the year 2022. I will say I have a few notable omissions I’m still intending to watch, such as Avatar: The Way of Water. We’ll see if in 2023 any of these latecomers alter my Top Ten review of this year. That’s a Future Nate issue to deal with.

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PART ONE: BEST/WORST FILMS OF 2022

BEST FILMS

10) Prey

Prey is the kind of Predator movie I have been clamoring for years to make. The franchise was in some major need of a mojo rejuvenation, and instead of constantly repeating the same stories to lesser and lesser effect (see: 2018’s sloppy release), the filmmakers finally saw the obvious and exciting answer. By placing the Predator into different points and places in world history, the producers have finally tapped into the creative potential of the equation of [cultural warriors] vs. alien bounty hunter. The best compliment is that had the Predator never beamed down, I still would have found the story to be interesting. The details are rich and build an authentic picture of life 300 years ago before European colonists would completely upend indigenous life. The Predator series, at its core, has been a nativist underdog tale, where the primitive people of Earth have battled against the technologically superior alien warrior. The dynamic makes it easy to root for the Earthly heroes, but it’s even easier when you have a protagonist like Naru (Amber Midthunder), fighting for respect as a woman already. The character is shown as headstrong but capable, and her mistakes provide opportunities for her to learn and better strategize later. I genuinely gasped when certain indigenous characters died. I’ve never had an emotional response to any Predator film. Prey is a great action movie built upon solid characters and patient, clear plot and action development. Give me more like Prey.

9) The Outfit

What a disarmingly suspenseful movie this was. The Outfit flew under the radar when it was released in the early months of 2022, but it deserves better and is genuinely one of the best films of that year. It’s structured much like a stage play, based in one location with a group of characters under great duress. Set in 1956 Chicago, the movie takes place entirely within the tailor shop of Leonard (Mark Rylance), an expat from Britain’s famed Savoy Road who has a special arrangement with local gangsters. He lets them use his shop for their business and doesn’t ask questions. Then one fateful night a job goes wrong and the surviving criminals hide out in the shop, suspecting one among them is a traitor. Written and directed by Graham Moore (Oscar-winner for 2014’s The Imitation Game), the movie is an ever-shifting game of constant suspense, with new characters coming into the fray and with every person holding their own secrets. I was impressed with how the movie kept upending my expectations while holding onto clarity, as each new combination of characters onscreen meant a different dynamic of who knows what and what angle they’re gunning for. Rylance is our anchor of this shifting game and it’s an open question whether he is hapless victim or manipulative schemer. The writing is so sharp and the ensemble are so refined each in their role that you ignore the rather pedestrian direction by Moore. This little movie is such a sly surprise that can pack a wallop while keeping you entertained and duly satisfied by the end. The Outfit is a well-made yet familiar story but told with pristine craftsmanship.

8) Glass Onion

Now, every viewer vested in this growing franchise is coming into Glass Onion with a level of expectations, looking for the twists, looking for the clever deconstruction, and this time It feels like Rian Johnson is deconstructing the very concept of the genius iconoclast and including himself in the mix. The movie takes square aim at the wealthy and famous who subscribe to the idea of their deserved privilege, in particular quirky billionaires whose branding involves their innate genius. This is a bigger movie with more broadly written characters, but each one of them feels more integrated in the central mystery and given flamboyant distinction; it’s more like Clue than Christie. Glass Onion is about puncturing the mirage of cleverness, and by the end, it felt like Johnson was also playfully commenting on his own meta-clever storytelling needs as well. It’s a grand time at the movies, or as Netflix insisted, a grand time at home on your streaming device. It’s proof that Johnson can handle the rigors of living up to increased expectations, making a sequel that can stand on its own but has the strong, recognizable DNA of its potent predecessor. It’s not quite as immediate and layered and emotionally engaging, but the results are still colorful, twisty, and above all else, immensely fun and satisfying. I’m sure I’ll only think better of Glass Onion upon further re-watching as I did with Knives Out. Johnson once again artfully plays around with misdirects and whodunnit elements like a seasoned professional, and Glass Onion is confirmation that Benoit Blanc can be the greatest film detective of our modern age.

7) Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

It was only mere minutes, I realized that a Puss in Boots sequel was one of the best movies of 2022 and an exciting and heartfelt sequel that proves that with the right artists and storytellers, any old character can still have vibrant relevance. In its opening sequence, it establishes its bold artistic style that enlivens every second onscreen, it establishes its caliber of exciting action that feels akin to wild comic books and anime, and an emphasis on mortality that provides a sense of danger and emotional foundation for what could have been just another shoddy animated sequel drafting off brand recognition. The heartfelt portion of the movie is its emphasis on found families, and it was done so well that I actually teared up at points. Yes, dear reader, Puss in Boots 2 had me on the verge of tears more than once. It’s funny and colorful and exciting and meaningful and heartfelt and everything you would want in any movie, let alone one featuring a talking cat swashbuckler in tiny boots. No matter your mixed feelings on Dreamworks animated movies, or their iffy sequels, or even children’s movies as a whole, I whole-heartedly recommend that everyone give this magical movie a fighting chance. This is superior entertainment and all in about 90-some minutes. It’s the 2022 sequel you never knew that you needed but will be oh so happy that it rightly does.

6) Emily the Criminal

This Sundance indie thriller packs more anxiety into 90 minutes than most Hollywood thrillers combined. It’s a starring vehicle for Aubrey Plaza as the titular Emily, a woman with a prior criminal record who finds herself in debt and struggling to find a better paying job. In desperation, she joins a small-time credit card fraud squad, using stolen identities to purchase expensive electronics and pass along to her employer to resell. At first, it’s a quick and easy fix and she can walk away at any time, but the money is good and Emily begins to take on bigger and riskier jobs. It’s here where I really started sweating as Emily gets into some very serious jams, but she comes back swinging, and it’s a thrill. At the same time, you worry that she’s going too far and there may be no turning back. The movie reminded me a lot of 2016’s Good Time, an electric indie thriller that vibrated with anxiety as well as a surprising but thoughtful cause-effect story flow. Emily the Criminal begins as an indictment on the social mechanisms that trap the poor into poverty but then in its second half escalates urgently, spiraling into a tragic confluence of violence and vengeance. Plaza is outstanding from the first scene onward. Even her posture speaks volumes about her character. It’s a performance where you can see the gears of her decision-making, whether it’s fight-or-flight impulses, swallowing her pride, holding to a façade, or regaining what has been taken from her. The very ending of the movie is perfect and a fitting end of Emily’s character arc. It’s the American Dream turned into a modern nightmare of perfectly perpetual desperation.

5) Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

This is a small-scale but laser-focused character-driven drama with edges of comedy and romance. It’s sex positive, very mature and tasteful given its subject matter, and the general awkwardness of watching two strangers (Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack) combat sexual and personal hang-ups and vulnerabilities melted away thanks to the deftly superior acting, writing, and directing of those involved. Whether a movie takes place in one room or a hundred rooms, you have to make the time spent meaningful whether through compelling characters or a story that keeps you engaged and waiting for more. You need to connect to the characters or be intrigued by the revelations to come, and Leo Grande does both immediately. Its setup is rife with drama and conflict, two people navigating their relationship to physical intimacy, two people who have never met until now for a transactional evening. There are obvious, natural personal conflicts to be explored here, with the novice out of their depth in many senses. There are also plenty of intriguing possibilities, because as these two get to know one another so too are we getting to know each and getting glimpses of who each of them are outside of this room. Both people are putting on fronts of some sorts, trying to settle into a performance of who they could be, and peeling away the layers of this subterfuge becomes even more intimate and engaging. Leo Grande is a grand example of character writing and it’s even poignant and a little sexy. It’s extremely tasteful and nuanced and even empowering for an entire movie about two strangers meeting in a hotel room for sex.

4) Babylon

Damien Chazelle’s mission is to rip apart the cozy nostalgia and hazy romance of the dawning of the film industry, to proclaim that Hollywood has always been a cesspool of exploitation and misogyny and racism and greed. The movie wallows in giddy exploitation but also hijacks the illusion of achieving stardom and asks whether or not the lasting art is worth all of the horror and ugliness of the systems that produce it. Babylon is a wild party of a movie with multiple sequences brimming with pure brilliant filmmaking bravura, and it also ends in a way that just might collapse Chazelle’s righteous fury and contempt. For almost three hours, Chazelle holds the industry accountable on their buzzy, boozy wavelength of high energy and thrills. Babylon is presented as a big raucous party where you’re happy to be a guest but also glad you can go home to your own bed. This isn’t a movie that excuses the misdeeds of its degenerates and hangers-on and the systems of power that enshrined the horrible to be even more horrible. Babylon pushes its many characters into uncomfortable questions of what they’re willing to compromise for fame. It’s a process of assimilation and people cutting free their identity, which can be liberating for some and lacerating for others. Even its overwhelming explicit nature is partly the point, as characters spin round and round, indulging in every debauchery to avoid the march of mortality. Margot Robbie’s high-energy performance is like if a bag of cocaine became a sentient human being. It’s all about sensation and distraction and the many willing to give everything to be part of that, and for almost three hours, Chazelle makes the manic chaos absorbing and horrifying before going soft in the end and arguing that maybe it’s all worth it. Babylon is dazzling filmmaking that will exhaust and nauseate as many as it potentially thrills.

3) RRR

The Indian film sensation that has converted millions across the world has one new convert: me. I’ve been hearing about RRR all year and how outlandish it is, how wild and audacious this three-hour action historical musical can be, and that it’s a celebration of the exuberant possibilities of film, and to every part of that sentence I pump my fist and declare an enthusiastic yes. Think of it as a superhero movie that also happens to be a musical There isn’t a hint of irony in any of the overzealous 186 minutes here. The lead characters act like super powered gods, or burst into song and dance, complete with cover-worthy poses, but at no point does the movie want you to laugh at it; it wants you to get on board and enjoy how perfectly crazy the movie is. It took me about an hour, but I was won over completely by RRR. It’s got spectacular action with more style than a hundred Hollywood movies. The action is so well choreographed and clear to understand that it’s immensely gratifying to watch. The extravagant wire work adds to the grandiose mythic nature of the movie. Not only are these gents buff as hell, and effortlessly charming, but they can and will dance circles around the competition. I won’t pretend I have a deep knowledge of Indian cinema but this seems like an excellent entry for many Western fans to explore the stylistic heights of Indian cinema. This is a wild romp with cheer-worthy heroes, a bromance for the ages, and villains you can’t wait to topple. RRR is a bit exhausting but I was never bored during its different tonal shifts. It might not be the best movie of the year but it’s certainly going to be the most movie of 2022.

2) Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

The Netflix Pinocchio is a lovingly realized stop-motion marvel. It’s del Toro’s first animated movie and his style translates easily to this hand-crafted realm. The level of detail in the Netflix Pinocchio is astounding. There is dirt under Geppetto’s fingernails, red around the eyes after crying, the folds and rolls of fabric, and the textures feel like you can walk up to the screen and run your fingers over their surfaces. del Toro’s imagination is not limited from animation but expanded, and there are adept camera movements that require even more arduous work to achieve and they do. There’s a depth of life here plus an added meta-textual layer about puppets telling the story about a puppet who was given life. This is a funny, whimsical, but also deftly emotive Pinocchio. He points to a crucifix and asks why everyone likes that wooden man but not him. He is an outsider learning about human emotions and morals and it’s more meaningful because of the character investment. The Netflix Pinocchio nails the characterization in a way that is universal and accessible while staying true to its roots. By securing my investment early with Geppetto’s loss, I found more to relish in the layers of his relationship with Pinocchio. With this story, nobody gets left behind when it comes to thoughtful and meaningful characterization. It makes the movie much more heartwarming and engaging, and by the end, as we get our poignant coda jumping forward in time and serving as multiple curtain calls for our many characters, I was definitely shedding a flurry of tears. Hearing Geppetto bawl, “I need you… my boy,” to the lifeless body of Pinocchio still breaks me. Under del Toro’s compassionate lens, everyone is deserving of kindness.

And the best film of 2022 is…..

1) Everything Everywhere All at Once

This is a dozen different kinds of movies, all smashed together, and each of them is utterly delightful and skillfully realized and executed. It’s truly amazing to me that a movie can have some of the silliest, craziest, dumbest humor imaginable, and then find ways to tie it back thematically and make it yet another important thread that intricately ties into the overall impact of the movie. The genius of Daniels is marrying the most insane ideas with genuine pathos. The carousel of surprise and amazement is constant, but the fact that there is a strong emotional core, that all the many stray elements become perfectly braided together, no matter how ridiculous, is all the more impressive. This is stylized filmmaking that is very personal while also being accessible and universal in its existential pains and longing. It’s style and substance and exhilarating and genius and emotionally cathartic and moving and everything we want with movies. It’s the kind of movie that reignites your passion for cinema, the kind that delivers something new from the studio system, and the kind that deserves parades in celebration. Simply put, this is a miracle of a movie, and you owe it to yourself to feel this blessing.

Honorable mention: The Batman, Nope, The Menu, Women Talking

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WORST FILMS

10) Deep Water

Erotic thrillers are easy to fall into camp, or being overwrought, and they skirt the line between exploitation and enjoyably trashy. It’s meant to be tantalizing but that usually just amounts to repurposing the same familiar male gaze compositions. So is there a real reason to dive into Deep Water? Not really, even if you’re a fan of the woe begotten genre of erotic thrillers. It exists in one of those hilariously bourgeoisie universes where everyone is having these unrealistic house parties where dopey rich people canoodle all the time, white wine in hand, and snipe at one another like it’s catty Regency England. What are Lil’ Rel and Tracy Letts doing here? The characters are just flat-out dull and frustrating to watch, and not even in a somewhat fun sexual tension kind of way. Ben Affleck and Anade Armas carried on a relationship after this movie but you’d be hard-pressed to wonder why over the course of 110 minutes of exasperated edging. The structure of this movie is all wrong, which makes it feel so boring, and contrived, and repetitive, and if you’re looking for something smoldering or sexy, well it’s the same old same old, and even that is in shocking short supply. Deep Water works best as a movie to yell at in confusion. It’s also further proof about why the erotic thriller is mostly an artifact of the past and why it should likely remain so. There is nothing deep about this movie.

9) Pinocchio

The Disney live-action Pinocchio is harsh on the eyes. It’s another CGI smorgasbord from writer/director Robert Zemeckis akin to his mo-cap semi-animated movies from the 2000s. When watching actors interact, it never overcomes the reality of it being a big empty set. The CGI can also be alarming with the recreation of the many animal sidekicks of the 1940 original. The fact that this movie looks like this with a $150 million budget is disheartening but maybe inevitable. I suppose Zemeckis had no choice but to replicate the Pinocchio character design from 1940, but it looks remarkably out of step and just worse. When we have the 1940 original to compare to, everything in the 2022 remake looks garish or ugly or just wrong. The expressiveness of the hand-drawn animation is replaced with creepy-looking CGI animal-human hybrids. I suppose several years into the Disney live-action assembly line I shouldn’t be surprised that these movies are generally listless, inferior repetitions made to reignite old company IP. For a story about the gift of life, the Disney Pinocchio feels so utterly lifeless. a hollow vessel for corporate profit that copies the imprint of the 1940 animated film but only more frantic, scatological, and confused. In the year of our lord Pinocchio Two Thousand and Twenty-Two, there is only one movie you should see, and at this point ever see as it concerns this old tale. Guillermo del Toro has harnessed magic, and we are all the better for his bayonet imagination and enormous heart for his fellow outsiders. Ditch this version.

8) Firestarter

Stephen King adaptations have a very wide range in quality, and from other reports Firestarter is one of King’s most straightforward novels. The most interesting aspect of this movie is that the score is provided by legendary horror director John Carpenter, as well as Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies, and Carpenter was going to be the director of the 1984 Firestarter before the studio replaced him after the poor box-office performance of 1982’s The Thing, widely regarded now as a classic of its genre. Otherwise, this is a pretty generic chase movie where people with superpowers are trying to stay hidden from evil government agencies looking to capture them and use them as weapons. The dialogue is quite bad, including one climactic line that had me howling: “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” and she doesn’t even set the person’s pants on fire. The parenting miscues for Zac Efron’s psychic dad character are manifest, and it’s still strange to see the High School Musical star enter the dad part of his career. Efron’s character and his onscreen wife bicker about how best to protect and support their powerful little daughter who could go nuclear and has, in anger, set her mom on fire. Apparently, ignoring a problem isn’t the best solution. Regardless, the father-daughter moments are weakly written and you won’t care about any characters. Even at just 90 minutes, this movie is a boring slog. By the end, I didn’t care who was being set on fire because the big thing that went up in smoke was my patience and my time.

7) Entropy

Entropy leaves a lot to be desired even as a low-budget, lowered expectations chiller thriller. While the movie is labeled as that feature-film-qualifying metric of 80 minutes, in reality it’s 70 minutes, and even within that minimal running time there is plenty of padding and dead air. I have found this fault with many of the Ohio indies I’ve seen, and it’s essentially a case of not having enough material to fulfill the demands of a feature length running time. There are ideas that, with careful plotting and characterization, could sustain a feature film. Entropy doesn’t quite do that, so that’s why we get situations like three minutes of sustained driving or three minutes walking through the woods that’s meant to be moody but is really just padding. My patience was grinding down with all the tedium and padding. Fans of micro-budget horror movies and especially with a taste for the lurid and wild machinations of body horror could be entertained, though it’s a long wait to get to the gory goods. That protracted setup should establish the characters, their dilemma, and most importantly, our interest in what is happening so that when everything goes crazy that we care about what happens next. The characterization, plotting, and dialogue are disappointing and stilted. I credit the filmmakers with striving to make something, working together during such fraught times, and succeeding in getting a level of distribution through the prolific Gravitas Ventures. However, next time, and I hope for the Hale brothers there is a next time, that they work just as hard on creating the core elements that will make people care about what dastardly thing happens next.

6) The King’s Daughter

Originally filmed in 2014, The King’s Daughter is a curiosity as it’s been on the shelf for almost eight years. I don’t know what this Chinese-by-way-of-French production was going for as we follow the court of King Louis XIV, played by Pierce Brosnan in an astounding array of outlandishly bad costumes and terrible wigs. He resembles a Vegas magician set back in time. Anyway, he calls to court the young Marie-Josephine who has been raised by nuns since she was dropped off as a baby. If you can’t already see where this is going, then I can’t help you. But wait because there’s also a mermaid (Bingbing Fan, who in the years since this movie possibly served time in China’s prison for tax evasion) in the basement being held captive because Louis thinks eating her heart will be the key to him becoming immortal. So, yeah, what is this? It’s striving for a fairy tale/storybook sort of feeling but it’s a plot that will only work with the youngest of children. The characters are simplistic and boring, and once the mermaid is introduced it becomes like a costume drama version of Free Willy. Even with being on the shelf for eight years, the finished film still feels rushed, and the special effects for the mute mermaid are a colorful mess. Fun fact #1: the director is responsible for 4 Baby Genius sequels. Fun fact #2: this will be the late William Hurt’s last movie to his career. The King’s Daughter is a movie that makes you ask, “What were they thinking?” quite a lot, and the best decision was to withhold it from mass viewing for eight years.

5) Jurassic World: Dominion

This feels like three different movies inartly slammed together and it is overstuffed with subplots all competing for screen time, so every few minutes feels like a possible off-ramp for another episode of what the opening concept portends. The concept of a world where humans are forced to co-exist with dinosaurs is a genuinely exciting starting point, and it’s a Jurassic movie I would want to see, and I do… for a montage to open and close the movie. It’s a shame that the most interesting part of this movie, the global acclimation of creatures of an older millennium rejoining our ecosystem, is kept as literal background. I suppose by the end nature just took care of itself. Instead, the majority of the movie is split between two less engaging stories: giant locusts and a rich guy’s private dino enclosure. Yes, dear reader, you read that correctly. After five movies of dinosaurs in parks, where we begin with dinosaurs in the real world, it’s back to spending time in another glorified dino park, and would you believe that something goes wrong at this park too? Why even bother setting up an exciting premise if it’s abandoned so completely? Alas, the movie can only work as dumb fun for so long before it just becomes infinitely more of the latter. The franchise is still a colossal moneymaker and Dominion has a chance of topping one billion in box-office, so there will be more adventures cannibalizing the past for inevitably diminished returns, and then we’ll get the special reappearances of, like, Jake Johnson’s character or Guy at Computer #4. Dominion is the worst of the franchise and feels devoid of passion and awe and curiosity. To paraphrase a clever man, the studio execs were too busy thinking about whether they could and less busy worrying about whether they should.

4) My Son Hunter

I’ll never understand the pathological obsession people have with Hunter Biden and what may or may not be on his laptop. This fixation on President Biden’s son seems so unshakably quixotic, hoping that with each new murky examination somehow, magically, there will be impropriety and criminality if you only look right. This dogged obsession with, at best, a tertiary figure to the true target of conservative ire reminds me of the crackpot theories concerning Vince Foster, a deputy White House counsel who took his own life in 1993. It was ruled a suicide by five investigations, and yet there are still enough people that are unsatisfied with this provable reality and want to see something more nefarious, more suspect, and simply more. The target audience watching this won’t likely care about Hunter genuinely getting better as a person. That’s not what this expose is for, trying to better understand his humanity and vulnerability. This is merely a roundabout way to taint Joe Biden, a figure too boring by himself, so the critics have to settle for Hunter and his salacious escapades and work on grimy guilt by association. The attempts at humor are often juvenile and stupid, like an opening scene where Hunter has a psychic conversation with a tiny dog while he’s high on drugs, and this is after a cartoon graphic of Hunter’s heart pops onscreen. The jabs against Joe Biden are mostly of the creepy hair-smelling and loony grandpa variety with groan-inducing malapropisms (“Nothing can threaten my erection;” see instead of “election” the dumb man said “erection”). Nobody cares about Hunter Biden. And nobody should care about this silly and slimy movie trying to make him into the new conservative obsession.

3) 365 Days: This Day

At this point, every viewer turning into 365 Days: This Day is doing so for very specific reasons: either for an erotic charge or morbid curiosity to see how bad this bad franchise can sink. This movie is starched beyond the breaking point, and I’m not even making a pun here. There are twenty-two songs credited to this movie. These songs are like full renditions. That’s why the movie often feels like a collection of music videos and luxury resort commercials. It’s not like all these songs are soundtracking sequences of arched backs and heavy thrusting. There are even more music montages for luxury porn than for the soft-core porn. We watch Laura and her friend shop in luxury. We watch them drive in luxury. We watch them walk along the luxurious beach. We watch them jet ski in luxury. We watch them dine in luxury. This is why the majority of the first half of the movie feels like the raw footage from a commercial shoot for a getaway vacation. It’s padding upon padding because the characters of Massimo and Laura are wafer-thin. I was trying to even come up with adjectives to describe either lover, let alone full sentences, and my efforts sounded like a second grader trying to bluff their way through a book report. The literal second line of dialogue is a reference to the bride not wearing any underwear. I think there might be 200 words spoken in this entire movie and a high percentage of them will make you groan or roll your eyes. While the sequel is less problematic over consent than 365 Days, it’s also more boring and tediously forced to draw out the weakest, basest of stories that was never meant to be more than a wish-fulfillment appeal to people’s baser impulses.

2) 2000 Mules

2000 Mules is a deeply un-serious documentary about a serious subject for people willfully ignorant. The entire rhetorical argument Dinesh D’Souza and his co-conspirators have gathered amounts to a lot of, “Yeah, buddy, trust us on this,” when they’ve earned no such faith except for those who are already desperate for confirmation bias. D’Souza has built a lifetime of bad faith arguments. The votes have been counted, recounted, and in some states and counties recounted again and again, and yet Joe Biden still tops Donald Trump by seven million votes and still serves as president. So in the end, what does D’Souza’s reportedly “explosive” “game-changing” “documentary” actually legitimately prove? It proves how easy misinformed organizations can buy consumer metadata. It proves that there were people around ballot drop boxes in cities. Or it proves that people exist in cities. It proves that D’Souza and his fellow bottom-scraping partisans will keep looking for any fig leaf, no matter how insignificant or made up, to still hold onto their quixotic claim that the 2020 election was stolen. It doesn’t matter that recounts have occurred and confirmed the totals, it doesn’t matter that these recount totals have been confirmed by Republican-led legislatures and committees, it’s become a defacto belief for over half of registered Republicans that the only way Donald Trump, an immensely unpopular president with a lifetime of self-serving bluster, could have lost the 2020 presidential election was because it must have been rigged. Somehow. This new Lost Cause is corrosive and becoming the purity test for modern Republicans.

And the worst film of 2022 is….

1) Blonde

After receiving such blistering and excoriating responses, I went into writer/director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde with great trepidation. The near-three-hour biopic on the iconic Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas, is the first movie to earn an NC-17 rating since 2011’s Killer Joe, and as such, there’s a natural curiosity factor to any movie receiving such hostile reactions. Fans and critics have called the movie exploitative, navel-gazing, misogynistic, and redundant misery porn. One critic even said Blonde was “the worst movie Netflix has ever made.” This movie is so stupendously misguided and cruel and filled with bizarre, outlandish, and maddening artistic decisions. I want to cite de Ana de Armas’ performance as one of the few attributes to the movie. It’s hard to watch this woman suffer and cry in literally every scene, but I also just felt so sad for not just her character but for de Armas as an actress herself. She shouldn’t have to endure everything that she does to play this character. She is undercut by Dominik’s artistic antics and avarice at every turn, like the story jumping around incoherently so every scene fails to build upon one another. There is no genuine character exploration to be found here. It’s a cycle of suffering, and the movie wants to rub your nose in the exploitation of Monroe while simultaneously exploiting her. De Armas deserves better. Marilyn Monroe deserves better. Every viewer deserves better. Spare yourself three awful hours of pointless suffering in the name of misapplied art.

Dishonorable mention: Purple Hearts, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, The Bubble

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PART TWO: VARIOUS AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

Best titles of the year: The Sky is Everywhere, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Titanic 666, Nope

Worst titles of the year: The 355, Sneakerella, Titanic 666, Cha Cha Real Smooth

Titles that could be confused with porn: He’s Watching, Running the Bases, Bones and All, Moonshot

Biggest Disappointment of 2022: Kevin Smith’s Clerks III. The man in his twenties who made comedies I identified with and loved became a man in his forties with different priorities and a different perspective. He evolved. However, I am no static creature, and I too was evolving, and my fanfare for Smith’s comedy sensibility has transformed into more of a pained grimace. My assessment was only reaffirmed with each movie: I’ve outgrown my old influence. I wish the man well but I don’t know if I’ll ever watch another one of Smith’s movies at this declining rate.

Runners-up: discarding a season of character growth for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Thanks For Trying At Least Award: Halloween Kills

Best Lena Dunham Directed and Written Movie of 2022: Catherine Called Birdy

Worst Lena Dunham Directed and Written Movie of 2022: Sharp Stick

Does Tom Hanks Need Help?: The Oscar-winning actor, and beloved Hollywood nice guy, might have delivered two of the worst performances of his career in 2022. In Elvis, Tom Parker is a cartoon of a character especially as portrayed by Hanks. I love me some Tom Hanks, the man is an American treasure, and I appreciate that the man is definitely going for broke, but I don’t know at all what he was going for with this performance (the makeup does him no favors also). The entire acting troupe is all playing under one direction, and then there’s Hanks in his fat suit, who is breaking through the fourth wall, compulsively narrating our story, and acting like a loquacious Loony Tunes figure any second away from his own song and dance. It’s such a bizarre performance of wild choices that I can subjectively say it might be Hanks’ worst and yet it also feels like Hanks is giving Luhrmann exactly what he wants. Then in the Robert Zemeckis live-action Pinocchio, Hanks once again struggles. I don’t know what Hanks is doing with this daffy performance. It feels like Geppetto lost his mind and became stir crazy and this performance is the man pleading for help from the town and from the audience.

Most Accurate Title Award: Women Talking

The Revenant + Glory = Emancipation

The Best 10 Minutes of 2022: RRR provides so many highpoints that it’s hard to decide. How about when Bheem invades the British compound with an entire menagerie of wild animals? How about Raj and Bheem fighting and firing their way out of capture while playing piggyback? How about the epic bromance montages? But I’ll settle on a small little sliver of joy, the Oscar-winning “Naatu Naatu” sequence where Bheem and Raj prove their dancing capabilities and show up snooty British elites.

Runners-up: the mutual first days on set, Babylon; filming with sound, Babylon; Chasing after the Penguin, The Batman; every appearance of Racacconie, EEAAO

Best Time I Had in a Theater in 2022: I saw fewer movies in theaters this year with a lot of busy events happening in my life, as well as the shifting dynamic of streaming availability. With smaller numbers to choose from, the answer would still be the same if I saw 200 different movies in the theater – Everything Everywhere All at Once. I was laughing so hard I was in tears, I was wonderstruck, and I was an emotional wreck at points. It’s the kind of movie that we want to motivate us to return to the theaters.

MVP in an Otherwise Okay-to-Meh Movie: Florence Pugh, Don’t Worry Darling; Vicky Krieps, Corsage; Mia Goth in X; Karen Gillan(s) in Dual

Most Gratuitous Moment of 2022: Nothing else could top Andrew Dominik’s Blonde and the TWO inter-vaginal P.O.V. shots (during forced abortions at that) that made me want to take a bath in salt and write an apology letter to Marilyn Monroe’s estate.

Second Most Gratuitous Moment of 2022: I could select just about any moment from the 365 Days sequel to Netflix’s surprise international sultry hit. I’ll cite the golf scene from This Day (I didn’t even bother watching the third movie). You see, on their luxurious honeymoon, Massimo and Laura spend some time on the links but their kinky foreplay doesn’t take a break. She lays on the green, spreads her legs, and his grips his golf club (do you get it? do you get it?) and then literally putts a white ball across the green and between her open legs (do you get it? do you get it?). As it was happening onscreen, I joked to my wife that it would follow this route, and sure enough, the filmmakers could not resist. It is the comedy high-point of the movie.

Social Media Hysteria Overdrive Award: Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion

Could Have Had the First Hour Cut Award: Purple Hearts, Amsterdam

Ohio Indies Reviewed in 2022: Adeline, Entropy, Isolated, The Other Side of Darkness, Satanic Soccer Mom from Ohio, Social Media Monster, Terror Trips, They/Them/Us

Just Add Your Own Substance Award: Many of my critical brethren went head over heels for writer/director Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, and it left me a little indifferent, as I kept waiting for the “movie” to begin at some point. I think Wells might suspect the narrative on its own is missing that larger significance, so distributed throughout the movie are flashes from a rave with an older woman, and it’s revealed later that this thirty-something woman is actually Sophie as an adult, and a new parent herself. This juxtaposition then serves as an ongoing film-length Kuleshov Effect. This cinematic effect, named after the Soviet filmmaker from one hundred years ago, reasons that placing two objects together forms an implicit connection or reaction, so seeing a picture of soup and then a man looking forward might convey hunger or a picture of a coffin and then a man looking forward might convey grief. By this juxtaposition, we’re left to infer larger meaning and processing, as older Sophie is looking back on these scenes as distant memories. We’re left to deduce what that means to her, what new insights she has as an adult looking back, and what has happened since, and I’m sure some viewers will find this a tantalizing human puzzle to unpack. For me, it felt like extra homework without the key elements to make the depictions dramatically involved.

Worst Use of $200 Million Dollars Award: The Grey Man

Most Ridiculous Plot Element of 2022: The ongoing clone mythology from Jurassic World: Dominion. It was the worst part of 2018’s Fallen Kingdom and it’s the worst part of Dominion. As previously established, Maisie (Isabella Sermon) was the grandchild of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), a retcon character to elbow in another rich co-founder of Jurassic Park that we just never heard about until the fifth movie. Except she was really his daughter but as a clone. Well now we get even more retconning because Maisie’s mom, herself, gave birth to her… self. The adult Maisie impregnated herself with her own clone (because this was the easiest way to have a child?) but she’s also genetically modified her DNA to exclude a terminal disorder killing the adult Maisie. If adult Maisie wanted to save others from having her genetic disorder, why not publicize this valuable information? Why not tell her colleagues? Why leave her clone as the lone evidence? This new info makes me kind of hate the adult Maisie. She brought her clone into the world and made her a target. This seems cruel and unnecessary. It also doesn’t make sense for a person supposedly valuing life or the larger scientific community or even her own child. I’ll say it: she’s a bad mom.

Runners-up: the entire scene of “Liar liar, pants on fire” in Firestarter

Good Luck Marketing Team: Trying to obscure the fact that amateur cannibal Armie Hammer played a significant role in the Agatha Christie mystery, Death on the Nile. There’s also Gal Gadot quoting Cleopatra while being, I guess, dry humped by Armie Hammer against an Egyptian relic. As Hercule Poirot’s mustache, which will be given top-billing in the third film, would say, “Yikes.”

Most Vomit in a Single Movie Award: Triangle of Sadness

Best Onscreen Death: The feast of the spectacle onlookers, Nope. Shudders.

Runner’s-up: the final reveal in Bodies Bodies Bodies; the fiery conclusion of The Menu; Naru takes down the Predator in Prey; up the chimney, A Violent Night

How is Jurassic World like the New Star Wars?: The wild swings and retcons reminded me of what happened with the newer Star Wars trilogy. In 2015, both The Force Awakens and Jurassic World are released to massive success and kickoff reboots of their respective franchises. Both of the movies purposely leaned onto nostalgia for their originals, even repeating similar plot beats and reminders to trigger positive association. Then both directors, J.J. Abrams and Colin Treverrow, left the franchise and the second movies, 2017’s The Last Jedi and Fallen Kingdom, took big swings, tried to be something different from the mold, and were met with divisive responses from the larger fanbase. I appreciate both of these movies attempting to do something different with something so entrenched in formula. Then for the concluding movie, both franchises had the original director return to essentially retcon the retcons, to bring the movies back to what was familiar and ultimately dull. It’s even more interesting when you take into account that Treverrow left the Jurassic series to spend a year of his life developing Episode 9 before being fired and hastily replaced with Abrams.

Best Villain of 2022: Chef Julian in The Menu. Yes chef!

Runner’s-up: The Wolf, Puss in Boots 2; Jean Jacket, Nope; Gorr the God Butcher, the real hero and best part of Thor: Love and Thunder; Jobu, EEAO

Favorite Line From a Review in 2022: The 355: “It’s no better than what you might get from any run-of-the-mill direct-to-DVD effort, and if your movie cost $70 million and it plays no better than Bruce Willis’ fifth movie of the month, that’s bad.”

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PART THREE: OVERALL MOVIE GRADES

I have reviews and mini-reviews for almost all of the graded movies listed below.

A

—–

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

A-

—–

Babylon

Emily the Criminal

Glass Onion

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

The Outfit

RRR

B+

—–

All Quiet on the Western Front

Argentina, 1985

The Batman

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Catherine Called Birdy

The Good Nurse

Nope

The Menu

Prey

Smile

Thirteen Lives

Top Gun: Maverick

Turning Red

Women Talking

B

—–

The Adam Project

Aftersun

The Banshees of Inisherin

Barbarian

Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe

Bullet Train

Decision to Leave

Downton Abbey: A New Era

Elvis

Fall

Fire of Love

Kimi

The Lost City

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

The Northman

Persuasion

The Princess

Rosaline

Scream 5

She Said

Social Media Monster

Tar

Triangle of Sadness

They/Them/Us

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Uncharted

A Violent Night

B-

—–

Black Adam

The Black Phone

The Bob’s Burgers Movie

Bones and All

Causeway

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Do Revenge

The Fabelmans

Father of the Bride

Lightyear

Jerry and Marge Go Large

Men

Satanic Soccer Mom From Ohio

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Thor: Love and Thunder

The Whale

C+

—–

The Bad Guys

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Corsage

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Dual

Emancipation

Good Night Oppy

Luck

Moonfall

Not Okay

Shut In

Strange World

Windfall

X

C

—–

The 355

Adeline

Amsterdam

The Bubble

Choose or Die

Clerks III

Crimes of the Future

Death on the Nile

Don’t Worry Darling

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

The Grey Man

Empire of Light

Halloween Ends

Isolated

The Invitation

Marry Me

Morbius

Orphan: First Kill

River Road

Sharp Stick

Slumberland

Spiderhead

White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

C-

—–

Deep Water

Firestarter

Pinocchio

The Other Side of Darkness

Purple Hearts

Terror Trips

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

D+

—–

Entropy

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

The King’s Daughter

D

—–

365 Days: This Day

My Son Hunter

F

—–

Blonde

2000 Mules