2022 is in the bag, and I think it was yet another really great year in movies. Just like the previous 2 years, the blockbusters were fine, but the indy films really fucking delivered. Quite a few of my picks have not made other top 10 lists, so I really hope you can seek out the movies on this list that you haven't heard of.
Honorable mentions: Eternal Spring, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, Barbarian, Deadstream, All My Puny Sorrows, The Middle Man, Decision to Leave, Hellbender
10. Fire of Love ****
Fire of Love is in a class of its own of the best volcano romance documentary I've ever seen. The love story between two volcanologists who's ultimate passion in life is showing up to erupting volcanos to film them, study them, and look totally bad ass by standing dangerously close to the lava, which truly made for quite the butt clenching experience, watching this on the big screen. We also know from the beginning that their lives will be taken by a volcano, but these two wouldn't have it any other way. Dying of natural causes? Fuck that shit.
Fire of Love was my favorite theatrical experience. I've seen plenty of footage of erupting volcanos, but never in this level of jaw dropping detail. It was the most overwhelming and immersive experience for both visuals and sound and I really hope that one day this movie returns to a theatre, but until then...whoever I know that has a sick ass home theatre with a giant screen and huge speakers...fuckin invite me over and I'll bring this movie, and some weed, and your minds will be blown.
9. Vengeance ****
The title makes it sound like another Liam Neeson type revenge action movie, but thankfully the writer/director is BJ Novak, and what an ambitious debut film for him. He truly has a lot to say about the current state of America, in one of the funniest movies of the year, that's also a murder mystery, a sorta revenge-ish movie and a satire that has fun poking fun at both Conservatives and Liberals. There's a fish out of water element of a Liberal podcaster who lives in New York City, trying to fit in with a family in a small Texas town. Yes, the movie has a lot of fun with redneck stereotypes, but we grow to love the characters and the bond that develops between the Liberal and the "crazy Texans", as they truly welcome him in as part of their family.
I don't know if politics have ever been as divisive as they are now. There's no reason why Liberals and Conservatives shouldn't be able to get along, and nothing good will come out of the hatred of people with opposing political beliefs.
One last thing I never thought I'd write...Ashton Kutcher deserves a fucking best supporting actor Oscar for the moment he shows up and blows everyone's fucking minds. Who knew that Ashton Kutcher had this in him?!
8. Babylon ****
If I can borrow from Adam Does Movies and modify his metaphor a bit, Babylon is the equivalent of Singin' in the Rain, Wolf of Wallstreet, Once Upon a time in Hollywood, and Barbarian having a giant orgy, and giving birth to a crack baby. I mention Barbarian, because Babylon has a roughly 20 minute stretch that was truly scarier and more suspenseful than any horror movie this year. The trailer is very vague about what to expect, but I did not expect the absolute batshit insanity that Babylon was.
In the first 20 minutes of the movie, we already see an elephant shit on people, golden showers, men snorting cocaine off naked women, and orgies, in an almost X-rated version of the Great Gatsby mansion parties. While this is a love letter to the power of movies, it's also a hate letter to the bullshit of Hollywood. This is no masturbatory movie about the magic of cinema. We see how Hollywood corrupts people, and the rise and fall of actors who reach the top of the mountain, and then their depressing declines. I was not looking forward to a 3 hour movie. I walked into the movie in a tired, pissy mood, but 3 hours later, I walked out energized. I'm going to see this 3 hour epic again in the theatre.
With Whiplash, La La Land, First man, and now this...every movie by Damien Chazelle truly is an event film to look forward to.
7. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes ****1/2
What a strange, whimsical, unique, and incredibly well shot time travel movie from Japan. What would you turned on the TV and then saw yourself...two minutes in the future? What would you want to find out from your future self, and how might you capitalize on this? This is maybe the most low key time travel movie, taking place in real time, giving off the illusion that the whole movie was captured in one take. Where did the cuts happen? No fucking clue; they sure hid them really well.
This movie is fucking hilarious. It's so much fun seeing these every day people trying their best to make sense of this time travel plot they've been thrusted into, and how they can best take advantage of this. It starts with one time travel television 2 minutes into the future, but are they playing with fire when they start adding more time travel TV's, pointing at each other, going further into the future?
The third act is beyond silly and absurd, but the sillier this movie gets, the more fun it is. I think this may be my favorite time travel movie.
6. Stutz ****1/2
I think this is one of the most important documentaries out there. Jonah Hill has long suffered from anxiety and depression going from therapist to therapist, but one day he found Phil Stutz who's methods have greatly improved his life. With that in mind, he decided to make a documentary about Stutz and his methods, in hopes that his tools can help people all around the world. I am curious to hear from other psychologists what they think of Stutz's tools.
It's a fascinating documentary, both in the subject matter and how Jonah Hill puts it all together. If you think you're going to sit through a 90 minute therapy session...Jonah Hill pulls a bit of a Charlie Kaufman, drastically changing the whole experience. At first I thought it was a bit pretentious, but watching it again, no, I think it makes the movie more honest.
What really moved me is the genuine love and friendship between Jonah Hill and Stutz that goes well beyond a doctor - patient relationship. They're both very willing to reveal their vulnerabilities to the world, and the moments in their lives that forever shaped the people they've become. At times, Jonah Hill almost takes over as the therapist, as Stutz talks candidly about his vulnerabilities. As smart as he is, he's still every bit as flawed and insecure as the people he helps, and there's something humbling about that. Nobody has it all figured out. This is the bromance of the year, and you gotta love a therapist-client relationship, where the therapist can joke about banging the client's mom.
5. After Yang ****1/2
I think After Yang is the most human movie ever made about AI, and the most existential AI movie. With 90% of AI movies being about the dangers of robots going rogue and attacking us, here's a movie with quite possibly the most likable AI character ever, being an older brother to an adopted Chinese girl. If AI were given emotions, how would they feel, what vulnerabilities will they have, and how would memories shape and evolve them?
Sadly Yang breaks down, but in attempting to fix him, they're able to access the memories that he deliberately chose to hold on to, some key interactions he had with every family member and we see what he considered to the be the most important moments in his existence. It's such a beautiful movie, filled with just wonderfully written poetic dialogue and this blurb is doing it zero justice.
This movie was directed by Kogonada who also directed the criminally under-rated Columbus. He has such a unique filmmaking style with very interestingly framed shots, and his movies are slow paced, but profound and contemplative and I think they're ultimately about the beauty of human connections. I hope he keeps this exact style of filmmaking and I think he'd be an interesting auteur to study in film academia.
"Did he ever wish he could be human?"
"That is such a human thing to ask. We always assume other beings want to be human...what's so great about being human?!"
4. The Fallout ****1/2
There have been quite a few movies about school shootings, but The Fallout is by far the best and takes the best approach. It does not feel exploitative in the slightest. In fact, the school shooting happens 10 minutes in, completely offscreen. We don't need to see it, because the movie's concern is about the trauma and grief of the teenagers that survive a school shooting and how fucking difficult it would be to simply move on with their lives. Everybody copes with the pain differently, but the sad reality is the PTSD that is likely to follow them for the rest of their lives.
With that said though, it's not all grim, as the movie has its share of fucking hilarious and sweet moments as well. I get why a lot of people would not be in the mood to watch a movie with this subject matter, but for how frequently mass shootings happen and how little is done to fix the problem, I think movies like this are so important.This is the most powerful drama of 2022, and it's a shame that it's getting zero Oscar buzz.
"Did you have the craziest nightmares last night?"
"You have to be able to sleep to have nightmares"
3. The Swearing Jar ****1/2
This is my pick for the best drama of 2022 and the best romantic drama/comedy I've seen in a long time (with such magnetic chemistry between the two leads and fucking witty dialogue writing). It's also in the subgenre of low key realistic musicals (the kind of musical that doesn't have the contrivance of people breaking into musical numbers that doesn't fit in with real life), popularized by the movie ONCE, but I think Swearing Jar is an overall deeper movie. It's unfortunate that The Swearing Jar has an awful trailer that makes it look like a Hallmark romance, but there are key plot elements that the trailer cannot give away.
It's a romance with an unconventional structure of time jumps and a slight puzzle element to it, where the audience needs to put the pieces together of what's going on. By the end credits, I was anxious to watch the movie again with my full knowledge of the entire picture. Despite knowing everything that'll happen 2nd time, it sure as hell didn't stop the water works. Canadian cinema has truly put out some real gems over the past few years.
2. Strawberry Mansion *****
I know that calling a movie the trippiest movie of the year, or the most 420 friendly, may not be the most intellectual reason to have it in my top 5, but I just loved Strawberry Mansion. Surreal fever dream movies can sometimes decline in quality as you sober up, but not with this one. I got so lost into the dream world of Strawberry Mansion that I never wanted to leave. This is a delightfully trippy movie, and I don’t remember the last time I used that phrase.
Utterly mesmerizing, stunningly beautiful to look at, insane, whimsical and, when it comes to movies that deal with dreams, Strawberry Mansion may be the most imaginative. Dreams are often fucked up, free flowing, non-sensical (though they make sense while dreaming), disjointed, sometimes long passages of life can take place when you've only been asleep for 10 minutes, and Strawberry Mansion just captures this better than any other movie I can think of.
There’s a little Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (on LSD), a little David Lynch and a little Black Mirror. But, at the centre of this crazy mindtrip is an unusual, but beautiful romance.
1. Everything Everywhere All at once *****
What’s left to say that hasn’t already been said about this movie; a movie that is so unusual, so unlike anything else that’s come along in the last…well, forever. Calling the writers/directors (The Daniels) outside-the-box thinkers is the ultimate understatement. They are trillions of lightyears outside the figurative box…in another dimension…on DMT. While most Hollywood movies play it safe, The Daniels tossed the rulebook in the garbage; absolutely anything goes and, boy, do they take huge risks. They’ve pulled off a movie that’s wildly entertaining, absolutely bonkers, trippy, absurdly silly, raunchy and, on the same token, mind-blowing, profound, contemplative, philosophical and tear-jerking. Everything Everywhere All At once truly is the most fitting title the movie can have. It kind of is about everything and it has almost every genre (I just wish they could have had a little bit of horror in it. That's my one nitpick).
I've watched many video essays about this movie, and it's nice how everyone kind of takes something different out of the movie. I narrowed my praise to the originality, insanity and audacity of the movie, and just how fucking entertaining, and fucking hilarious it is. I've barely touched on the themes and there's a fuckload of them. I've watched video essays and it's great that everyone kind of took something different out of the movie. There's so fucking much to unpack, and I'm happy to see many different interpretations of what the movie meant to people.
I've seen this movie 3 times and each viewing has felt a little different. But still, one thing that doesn't change is just how wildly entertaining it is, and the family drama has never failed to hit me hard. Michelle Yeoh is great, but I think Stephanie Hsu is the actress who truly seals the deal here. This won't only be on my best movies of the decade list, but it's on my greatest of all time list too.
Other awards:
Best Horror: Barbarian
Runner up: Deadstream
Best Villain: The bounty hunter wolf from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Best Voice actor: Kevin McCann - Moral Conscience Cricket - Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Best opening Credits: After Yang
Trippiest movie: Strawberry Mansion
Runner up: Fire of Love
Best bromance: Stutz
Best Chemistry: Adelaide Clemens and Patrick J Adams - The Swearing Jar
Best Score: Babylon
No runner ups, no other score came close to this one
Best family movie (literally): Hellbender (Directed and written by a team of a husband, wife and daughter, and starring the wife and daughter, while the husband and older daughter play smaller roles in the movie)
Funniest performance: Joseph Winter in Deadstream
Runner up: Justin Long in Barbarian
Best animated movie: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Best villian: The bounty hunter wolf in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Best Screenplay: Everything Everywhere All At Once
No runner ups. This is a landslide win. I can't even fathom what the script of this movie looks like.
Best Original Songs - The Swearing Jar (I want mp3s of all the songs)
Best Dramatic Performance: Everyone is high on Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere, but I'm going with Stephanie Hsu. I was very surprised by her performance.
