Movies from 2022

This loneliness feels new. Partly because I don't think I've felt deeply lonely in many years. But this feels a bit isolating, like the absence of people manifests itself in a solid mass in your head. It's not just absence of things, it's also the presence of emptiness.

 

Anyway, I recently saw a bunch of movies, somewhat by accident. On planes and things like that. I've added them to my master list of stuff that I think I saw this year (see bottom of this post). At the top is my top 10.

1. Prey (d. Dan Trachtenberg)

2. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (d. Ryan Coogler)  

3. Licorice Pizza (d. Paul Thomas Anderson) 

4. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (d. Rian Johnson)

5. Barbarian (d. Zach Cregger)

6. Nope (d. Jordan Peele)

7. Avatar: The Way of Water (d. James Cameron) 

8. The Fabelmans (d. Steven Spielberg)

9. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (d. Sam Raimi)

 10. Fletch, Confess (d. Greg Mottola)

 

I think my favorite movie of the year was Fletch, Confess. I am only partly kidding. It's the most low-stakes and pointless movie I've seen in years. And yet it is totally internally consistent, and every single person in the movie is there for a reason and acts in a way that is logical. It's like if steak, mashed potatoes, and peas got together and made a movie. I so thoroughly inhabited its world, that for about 90 minutes I forgot that I existed. Also, it was genuinely witty and Jon Hamm was fantastic.

I think my number one could have been Licorice Pizza, which has the funniest scene ever put to celluloid when Bradley Cooper, playing the director Jon Peters, has an insane conversation with one of the younger characters, about his wife, his house, his life. I don't even know. Unfortunately the whole scene is not available on line, just a minute-long section of it, just before Cooper goes insane:

 

 

Other stuff I remember seeing:

 

- Alice (d. Krystin Ver Linden)

- The Batman (d. Matt Reeves)

- Elvis (d. Baz Luhrmann)

- Emily the Criminal (d. John Patton Ford) 

- Everything Everywhere All At Once (d. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)

- Maneater (d. Justin Lee)

- Resurrection (d. Andrew Semans)

- Significant Other (d. Dan Berk and Robert Olsen)

- Smile (d. Parker Finn)

- Thor: Love and Thunder (d. Taika Waititi)

- Top Gun: Maverick (d. Joseph Kosinski)

- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (d. Tom Gormican)

- Werewolf By Night (d. Michael Giacchino)

Weirdly, I also liked every single other film on my list, except Maneater, which may be the worst movie I have seen in my life.

 

I'm going to try and write reviews of each of the top 10 movies in another post.

And then to TV and music of 2022. I'm just starting slow but I will get to it all. These early posts are like unpacking your suitcases after you get to your destination. There will be some sightseeing eventually.

Now, back to loneliness.