Jenna's Top Ten Movies of 2022

Another year come and gone, another round of trying to watch as many new films as I can despite desperately only wanting to watch older movies. I watched over 403 movies this year – though to be fair, about 30 or so of those were extremely short Stan Brakhage films, who was the focus of an episode of a Cinema60. As a sidebar, we had a great season over at Cinema60 including British anti-Bond spy films, Ukrainian films and Egypt's Golden Age of cinema, so go check those out. 

Roughly 49 of the films I saw last year were new releases. But I'll be honest, I wasn't that impressed with the new releases this year. After I landed on my top three it was a struggle to choose the order of the rest because they all felt about equal. Which isn't a bad thing, I very much enjoyed some part of all of these films even if I didn't love most of them. Notably missing is Triangle of Sadness – a movie I unfortunately found performative and lazy, despite enjoying all of Ruben Östlund's previous films. I was extremely disappointed with All Quiet on the Western Front, which seemingly was allowed to just borrow the name of an internationally celebrated novel without bearing any resemblance to it. Amsterdam I found barely watchable, while Bardo was visually intriguing but vapidly self-congratulatory. 

On the other hand, some of the most fun I had in theaters this year was seeing Sam Raimi's triumphant return to comic book movies with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Sure, it's the same ol' Marvel tripe and I barely cared about what was going on 70% of the time, but whenever hints of Raimi's signature style managed to shine through the cracks it really tickled me – including, of course, having Bruce Campbell get back to his roots by continuously punching himself in the face. That’s cinema! RRR was another fantastic theater experience to go in blind to – see it for the dancing scenes alone! – but it's a bit too nationalistic in a way I don't fully grasp the nuance of as a foreigner so I decided to leave it off my list. Heck, if we're gonna go full lowbrow choices (not that there’s any shame there) I also liked The Batman, which leaned more into comic book pulp instead of just the same ol' gritty super-serious nonsense. 

So without further ado, let's get into it. In general, I try to strive to add things to this list that not as many people have seen or heard of – for example, as much as I enjoyed Aftersun I think it's a bit overhyped at this point. I do have notable mentions at the end that this year I'll call attention to, because after the top four or so all of these films felt kind of equal.  

Nope (Dir. Jordan Peele)

It’s been weird to see most reviews of Nope focusing only on spectacle and the brother-sister drama when I felt this was pretty clearly about empathy for the “monsters” — specifically a mourning for animals who were shot for having turned on their handlers while simply being themselves. Nope isn’t a tale about the people defending the beach, it’s a memorial for the shark. 

It’s a tragedy all around, for senseless violence done to well meaning people to the terrified animals who are having a bad day. You can’t just shrug and call it “nature running its course” when there’s been nothing natural about the situation, let alone the animal’s life. The story of Gordy is key, a parallel to both the story of Lucky and the story of Jean Jacket — yeah okay sure, we automatically have less sympathy for a faceless predator from another planet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve its space and consideration.

What makes the rodeo scene so distressing, or rather particularly depressing, is that it was entirely the product of Jupe having been unable to truly reflect on his own experiences. Even decades later he hasn’t connected the dots on why Gordy reacted to him the way he did. Unable to face his own terror, and lost in the hype and excitement of the myth, he never stops to consider what might have been going through that poor chimps head in that moment — its desire to defend itself clashing with its desire to please. Instead he spent six months trying to tame something even more dangerous without making any effort to understand it at all. And now his entire family suffers a tragic fate he apparently only avoided the first time by mere chance. 

Everybody wants something — their one perfect shot, their moment of truth, their moment of fame — nobody stops to think about what those around them that can’t speak up for themselves want. It’s OJ’s dedication to his horses wellbeing that finally solves “the riddle,” the only person in the entire film that tries to understand the motivations of why instead of merely defining the what. 

But then there’s those interior scenes, a warm, moist suctioning and squeezing of digestion. An automatic, unemotional bodily function against the screaming of wide eyed terror and too much comprehension. There’s Gordy punching and tearing and ripping and clawing the flesh off of pleading once friendly faces. There’s the culmination of miscommunications and missteps and truly ‘nothing personal’ that got all of us there at the same time.

The Eternal Daughter (Dir. Joanna Hogg)

Cinema is awash in characters grappling with the fallout of having come from broken homes, or flawed to abusive parents, but in Eternal Daughter Joanna Hogg examines a different type of parental trauma: the fear of losing those who laid down the basis for your entire sense of reality. The confusion of blurring your needs with their needs, the futile desire to help uplift the person who’s been carrying you. The pain of building an entire life on top of an all encompassing love that will age and die in front of you — slowly if you’re lucky. Or perhaps unlucky.

That Hogg threw it back to gothic horror to tell this psychological tale was the most obvious route, I’d be shocked if anybody couldn’t figure out exactly what was happening after the first ten minutes. And yet this mix of ghostly cliche with Hogg’s patented restraint renders this extremely personal story rather breathtakingly emotional. There’s no pretense, no need for a “twist” here (a “turn of the screw” if you will ha ha I’ll see myself out). It’s a film that builds in repeated patterns, treads ground in loops like a dog trying to get comfortable. Then, like grief is wont to do, right when it finally settles down the world whips the entire floor out from under you.

Elvis (Dir. Baz Luhrmann)

I wrote a whole review of Elvis already but needless to say, this was a tailormade film to my interests and thankfully it did not disappoint. Replete with pink suits and matching Cadillac cars, hysterical hip-shaking highs and slurred, sweat-dripping lows, Elvis ended up being pretty much the best of what it could have been: a glittering frenzy of feverish reverence.

I support Austin Butler’s continuation of the Elvis voice even off screen and I wish him all the best.

The Northman (Dir. Robert Eggers)

A hyper violent, ambiguously dreamlike tale of revenge and spiritual awakening based on obscure history and highly detailed dead religions? Fuck yeah dude, get in we’re going to Valhalla!

Really The Northman is all atmosphere and little else, the characters are interchangeable and the acting is merely tertiary to the mise-en-scene and the costumes and all the bloodlust that borders on psychosis. Think Field in England meets Climax but make it Hamlet — I enjoyed the mix of highbrow and lowbrow in the filmmaking, even if some of its CGI effects come across as cheesy. It’s accessibly simplistic in plot with just enough mystery and unhinged surreal murders to keep me at the edge of my seat, another fun Eggers romp.

The Banshees of Inisherin (Dir. Martin McDonagh)

Never in a thousand years did I think I’d ever like a Martin McDonagh movie after how much I despised Three Billboards, but I have to admit I was charmed by Banshees of Inisherin. I’m a sucker for a well written one-room play and this feels like a hybrid of the best of stage play dialogue but with dynamic filmmaking. It feels too clunky to merely be about morality or a metaphor for the Irish civil war, but as a portrait of the dissolution of a well-meaning man’s life, the journey from contentment into burning resentment, it resonates. It’s the desperate and selfish desire to cling on to what you think is “right” despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. Two sides of the same coin. Basically a how-not-to guide of navigating highly emotional conflict management — even more effective for being about friendship than a romantic relationship.

Fire Island (Dir. Andrew Ahn)

Thank god somebody saved the romcom for us this year, because it was bleak out there. Fire Island is adorable, charming, predictable and fun – everything a modern reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice should be. The casting here is great, with a solid enough group dynamic that you genuinely want to follow each of the characters as the story progresses. The central romance between Noah (Joel Kim Booster) and Will (Conrad Ricamora) has real heart, but the friendship between Noah and Howie (Bowen Yang) is the real selling point; as the stories flow between friends and lovers there’s more than enough to grasp onto in both the ‘rom’ and the ‘com’ categories.

Plus it’s just pure summer, man. Fire Island is such a great location, heck it’s fun just to live vicariously through some of these party goers as they explore everybody’s crazy houses. More low-stakes summer movies about love! We need it more than ever.

Tár (Dir. Todd Field)

I’ve been meaning to write a longer write up on Tár, so for now I’ll just say that while I think it’s a majorly flawed film, I can’t deny it was a blast to watch. An almost three hour drama about the Philharmonic might sound like an instant turn off to some but I could have easily watched another three hours of just the dynamics between players in the orchestra. Then we have Cate Blanchett, who leans so forcefully into this role she almost makes up for all of its glaring flaws. But while I found it had extremely little to say about #MeToo, I did appreciate its hyper focus on a difficult female leader. Lydia Tár is forceful, smug and casually cruel, but it’s hard to argue that she doesn’t deserve her spot at the top in the face of all of her achievements. She’s a perfect embodiment of the difficult truths about what makes for a successful leader in the arts and how hazy the lines look to somebody who’s bought too far into their own mythos.

Funny Pages (Dir. Owen Kline)

A movie that’s so packed full of pencil smudges, sweaty bodies, misshapen heads, and the stench of teenage insecurity that it almost doesn’t matter what the plot is meant to be. I‘m not sure if I’ve ever seen a more accurate depiction of that sort of push and pull between pride and self hatred that every artist unnecessarily tortures themselves with. The way Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) ruthlessly dismisses his friend’s art when it’s clear that his unachievably high standards come from an erroneous inner monologue that does nothing but gatekeep himself out of actually succeeding. The way he’s so desperate to impress whoever he deems the top dog in the room to his own detriment. His need to experience ‘real life’ and ‘true hardship’ as if that’ll counteract his cushy upbringing. So real, so suburban, so late teens-early-20s. Check out Funny Pages.

Nanny (Dir. Nikyatu Jusu)

Here’s the beautifully shot debut film with excellent central performances that I wanna talk about. I had some hesitancy about watching this, as my expectations feel colored by the actual event this was quasi-inspired by — a NY nanny who murdered two children in her care in 2012. Thankfully Nanny takes a much different focus and road, one that’s honestly more interesting than some crass Hollywood vision of a “psychotic break.” Instead we have a film about a trap of the American Dream that many immigrants fall into. Aisha (Anna Diop) lands a well paid babysitting job with a wealthy family, but her employers’ selfish demands of her time quickly overtakes her own hopes and aspirations, leaving her held hostage in their gilded cage. Aisha is left in a precarious situation, if she walks away the only people who would truly suffer are two innocent children and herself.

The direction is atmospheric and creepy, building slowly to an oppressive climax akin to the feeling of diving in the dark, open ocean. Aisha is continuously empathetic and marvelously fleshed out, even when her anxieties and nightmares start to overtake her waking life. It’s the sort of story we need to be telling more often, especially in this current over saturated market of TV and films that claim to satirize rich assholes.

Confess, Fletch (Dir. Greg Mottola)

Normally I wouldn’t rank a movie as simple and breezy as Confess, Fletch but I’ll be damned if I’m not desperate to see more films of this caliber in wide release theaters. This movie is genuinely as charming and fun as I hoped it might have been. Jon Hamm excels at comedy but usually he’s given just the worst material to go off of, so it was a nice break to see him work with such a breezy fun script that basically requires him to just be a slicker version of himself. It’s the Chevy Chase way, really — though I admit I was thrilled to see this movie utilize modern editing techniques to help punch up each one liner. Plus, giving the supporting cast multiple chances to shine alongside.

Honorable Mention:
Sr.
Aftersun
Benediction
The Fabelmans
I’m Totally Fine
After Yang
Catherine Called Birdy
Crimes of the Future
Everything Everywhere All At Once