Full-disclosure: I’m at a pub on a lazy Sunday afternoon and I doubt I’ll stay up late enough to watch the Oscar’s tonight. They don’t start ‘til 1am here and, based on my start this afternoon, that is far too many Guinness’s from now. So if my spelling or grammar struggles, especially deep into these ramblings, blame Arthur.
I wasn’t going to write these this year, and instead I’ve been working on a pitch to, instead of the current awards season which is mired by recency bias, virtue-signaling and studios putting their thumb on the scale, having a film Hall of Fame with a take on NFL rules (or, more accurately the Rock-and-Roll Hall, but I have a lot of issues with them so I’m using Football), where there is a healthy gap of time before we judge the best and most influential films of a given year. But that’s for another rant.
Anyway, I actually got around to seeing a lot of films in this past year and people are correctly labeling 2022 as a bounce-back year for film, both in quality and box office. So I wanted to give my thoughts on a handful of them.
Another quick note: I did not see the Avatar movie. I have spent the last 14 years not understanding the infatuation with the first one and I have zero interest in the second. How these films are two of the top grossing films ever and yet I’ve never met anyone that gives two craps about them is a mystery.
Loosely based, worst to first… here we go…
Everything Everywhere all at once
I… didn’t love this film. It’s not great. I know that is probably not currently allowed, but I’m in Dublin and good luck sending the genre film-culture police after me.
Both Michelle Yeoh and Short Round/Data are both fantastic in this film. I can’t take anything away from them, because they gave great, deep performances in a ridiculous and uneven film. But I can’t pretend this isn’t a messy, often abrasive film where, the scenes that work best are often derivative and predictable, and the scenes that try and be truly original (hotdog fingers I’m looking at you) range from really nothing special, to outright terrible. Normally I might not be so hard on a film like this, because expectations for a comedy/ sci-fi mashup wouldn’t be so high, but this is the current favorite to win Best Picture. And in a strong year too. If it does win, this one will quickly be lumped in with Green Book, The Shape of Water, Slumdog Millionaire and Crash as the recent mulligans the academy wished they could play back.
Top Gun Maverick
The best unintentional satirical comedy of the year. This is a 2+ hour advertisement for a fictional military where defying orders is met with constant reward and promotion, shot in a parody style of the bombastic Bruckheimer action films of the eighties and nineties. They use high pitch guitar riffs and Highway to the Danger-zone un-ironically throughout the soundtrack. The millennial pilots all bully each other and act like they were taught in the William Zabka school of 1980’s performing arts. And they all know every word to the very current classic by Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire.
The special effects are as good as advertised and I am a sucker for traditional, practical effects. And the film deserves the praise it gets there. But besides that…
Cruise’s Maverick leads them into Durkadurkastan where there are absolutely no consequences for anyone and no stakes whatsoever. If they had just leaned into this and had a digitally de-aged Zabka play Hangman and maybe the principal from The Breakfast Club play John Hamm’s character, shaking his fist in the air at Maverick’s antics, this one would get the chefs kiss.
The Fabelmans
Far too many people that I like and respect the opinions of have praised this film, so it cannot just be a self-indulgent, autobiographical ego-stroke attempting to mythologize Spielberg’s own upbringing.
So I expected some sort of self-deprecating or brilliant twist to come. Something dark and unexpected and affirming of my thought that this couldn’t be a straight forward biopic.
It never came. It really is just a film about his youth. And it just doesn’t work. His experience and his success is just too unique to make relatable in any way.
It is beautiful shot and the acting is superb (Paul Dano and Judd Hirsch are particular standouts), and it has an absolutely fantastic surprise cameo that happens in, by far, the best scene in the film. But it isn’t enough.
This was just not Spielberg’s film to make. In thirty years, if someone came along and wanted to make a biopic about his life and the recipe to what kind of upbringing makes a great director, that would be fine. But this is just an awkward football spike that doesn’t land.
The Menu
This type of dark, satirical comedy seems tailor made for people like me. And there is a lot to like about this film, like the predictably fantastic performance by Ralph Fiennes and the great set design. But there is an angry unpleasantness to this film that goes beyond dark and satirical. It tries too hard to force the point of the film down the throat of the audience. And the topical identity politics tropes shoehorned into the film only weaken the service-class warfare themes and make them feel less earned.
I liked this film, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I should have loved it.
The Whale
I think Darren Aronofsky is arguably the most interesting filmmaker working today. I’ll happily see anything he directs. And The Whale is absolutely worth seeing for yourself, if only for the fantastic performance by Brendan Fraser, the insane makeup and prosthetics and the impressive camera work that makes a film where 99% of the setting is the living room of a small Idaho apartment never seem repetitive.
The biggest criticism I can levy against this film, which is based on a play of the same name, is that it feels more like a play than a film. Aronofsky adds some body-horror elements, the score is great and some of the close-up camera work captures performances that you can’t get on the stage, but this story is made for a theater. Even the structure, where the protagonist has absolutely no character arc, makes it feel less like a film. His journey took place before the film starts, and we get a rare glimpse of a fringe member in our society who is past the point of change. The humanity, which is the focus and why this story is so compelling, is in the changes he creates in the small handful of people in his life.
The Banshees of Inisherin
I loved this film but I am definitely surprised by it’s overall success. If you went into this expecting a dark comedy like In Bruges, I’m guessing you were somewhat surprised. The dark is still there, but the comedy is much more nuanced.
On paper this film is a tough sell: two friends “break-up” in an isolated, quiet community that devolves into junior-high drama and gossip, set adjacent to the Irish civil war. But it is acted and done so well that it is uniquely amazing. Both Farrell and Gleason play their rolls, jumping between comedic timing and high drama so fluidly you can’t believe they are working from a script. They feel so natural. If Martin McDonagh does nothing but this genre and with these actors for his whole career, it would be a life well spent.
Living
This film surprised me in many ways. I expected a great performance from Nighy and a great script from Ishiguro. That’s what all the buzz around this film was saying clearly, and they were both great. I didn’t expect it to be so close of an adaptation or Kurosawa’s Ikiru (I saw that film 23 years ago but can still confidently say it was very close to the source material). But it was also a very accurate period piece, not just for the setting, 50’s London, but the style of film coming out at the time. The art design and cinematography are phenomenal.
It also manages to lean into some of the ideas Ishiguro is known for, like the dignity of work, regret and memory, which are present in Ikiru and I’m sure is what drew him to want to create this film in the first place.
It was highly likely that I would enjoy this film. I didn’t expect it to be, arguably, one of the best films I saw all year. And if this year hadn’t been so strong, this would have been the best film. It certainly would have been in the last few years.
Tár
A couple points to make… This is a film, start to finish, that is about control and the power that comes with it. If someone tries to tell you it is just about #metoo, a complaint about cancel culture, identity politics or anything else then they are missing the plot entirely. The next point is, this is the best performance of the year by far. Maybe in the last 10 years. We’re in Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood territory here. If Cate Blanchett (when Cate Blanchett, sadly) doesn’t win an academy award for this film it will be an indictment of these awards and the probable final nail in the coffin for me to ever take them seriously again.
I… love this film. And it is everything that film used to be able to capture. Deeply flawed, equally admirable (if not more so… again, send the police after me) human characters in a very interesting, human story. And personally, I find it somewhat comforting when great artists are found to be lacking in other areas in life. You should have to sacrifice something for that passion and genius. Maybe the best and ballsiest thing about this film is that it is from Tár’s perspective. The women she “groomed” are shown to have happily excepted the leg(s) up until things turned on them (sorry for the bad pun, I’ve had a few pints). It’s a fascinating and deeply engaging take… a downward spiral that is earned, at times funny, and still heartbreaking because of the gutsy point-of-view. And it is a welcome reminder that the function of a film, and Art in general, is not to pander to the current moral prime-directive, but to show unique and captivating perspectives and to push the boundaries on how we see the world.
Aftersun
Nothing is told, everything is hinted at, and the story is so devastatingly clear. This is a blueprint for future filmmakers. It is insanely personal and specific, which can sometimes weaken a film if the audience can’t relate to the characters, but through the absolutely fantastic performances from the two leads and through the absolutely brilliant visual cues from the director and DP (a blend of home-video nostalgia and soft-filtered, sun drenched memories) this film completely immerses you in this time and place. I loved this film. It feels honest and earnest. It is everything film can aspire to as an art form and everything that big spectacle blockbusters can never be.
This may not be the film to fix the theater crisis and to bring audiences back in droves, but sometimes sparking passion in people to want to make their own artwork is just as, or more, valuable. No one sees Top Gun and thinks “hey I can do that!”, sparking a passion for filmmaking. But this film, Aftersun, I believe could spark the next generation of great artists and the next wave of passionate, personal future films.
Anywho… there they are. You probably disagree completely and that’s fine. Film is somewhat subjective like all art. Let me know what you think, about this list, great films I may have missed, or just about the future of the medium.
I’m at my fourth pub since I started copy-pasting my manic notes on each film and trying to turn them into something that makes sense (though the majority was done at The Old Storehouse in Temple Bar, a fantastic little pub where I have spent a significant amount of time this weekend. But I digress). Ireland beat the Scots in Six Nations, though there were some losses to injury, but the locals went wild nonetheless.
Thanks for reading,
Ryan
