I Like to Watch | The Best and Worst of 2022
Oh, the controversy! In the latest Sight and Sound Poll, known to be the definitive determiner of the greatest 100 movies of all time, has displaced some of the films seen as canon. Holy fuck, what will we do!
Sight & Sound voters selected Chantal Ackerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” as this decade’s greatest film of all time. It is the fourth film to ever receive the honor, after “Bicycle Thieves,” “Citizen Kane,” and “Vertigo.” But Paul Schrader isn’t sold on the pick.
The “Master Gardener” director took to his always colorful Facebook page to question the logic of the selection and question if the poll’s voters were committed to judging films by their artistic value.
“By expanding the voting community and the point system, this year’s S&S poll reflects not a historical continuum but a politically correct rejiggering. Ackerman’s film is a favorite of mine, a great film, a landmark film but it’s unexpected number one rating does it no favors. ‘Jeanne Dielman’ will from this time forward be remembered not only as an important film in cinema history but also as a landmark of distorted woke reappraisal.”
Doesn't Schrader know that there was a rogue wave that hit a cruise ship and pulled a woman overboard? Is he aware of the fact the democracy is ending... what? It didn't end? What the fuck? Isn't he in tune with the fact that Twitter will completely implode now that Musk has taken over? There are so many more important things to get up in your cups about than a list of the greatest 100 movies voted upon subjectively by a bunch of industry insiders.
Plus, everyone already knows that This is Spinal Tap is the greatest movie ever made.
What about what I think were the best and worst shows and movies in 2022 (based entirely on the films and series I actually saw and not including stuff on Starz because I ain't paying for one more goddamned streaming service).
Granted, 2022 was more about streaming than sitting in a theater. You know, all that wearing a mask stuff gets in the way of snarfing handfuls of overpriced popcorn and tubs of cola. Once things opened up, I caught a few silver screen experiences because, well, few others were sitting in a theater to watch Jackass Forever. Once my life turned to shit, I found that movies and shows on the iPad were of some comfort if for no other reason than a sense of distraction. The second half of the year has become much more involved in viewing so here are my short list of the best things I saw and worst things I endured in 2022.
BEST
Barbarian
Director: Zach Cregger
"This is a truly imaginative, risky film. The script is great, the performances (especially Campbell) are stellar, and nothing about this smart, idea-driven monster movie is anything but outside the box. I finished it and, instead of then moving on to another movie or streaming show, I just wanted to sit with it, stewing on the concepts, reliving the moments I didn't expect (one of my favorite scenes involves Campbell, having escaped and calling the Detroit police only to have the cops look at her as if she were on crack or nuts rather than rush into the breach like movie cops usually do—her shock at their disbelief feels like reality which is always a solid surprise in a story of fantastical twists), and wishing I could rewatch it for the first time."
WORST
The 355
Director: Simon Kinberg
Kinberg gets five of the most exciting and talented actors available to him (Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, and Lupita Nyong'o) and creates a genuinely dull and overcomplicated spy film.
Anything with Chastain and Nyong'o that leaves you looking at the clock to see how much longer is this thing going to play is a miscarriage of justice and deserving of riots in the streets. I mean, where's Antifa when you need them?
BEST
Andor
Created by Tony Gilroy
A wonderfully slow burn series that combines the galaxy far, far away with the grittiness of Bladerunner,Gilroy's follow-up to the also excellent Rogue One has Diego Luna reprising his role as Cassian Andor prior to his full buy-in to the Rebellion against the Empire.
Both serious and fun, the series brings back the fight against the Empire as central to the story. Not about Jedis or the Force, Andor takes the very reason for the Skywalker clan to engage in a battle against the domination of an authoritarian regime.
WORST
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
Created by Jessica Gao
Gao started her career as a writer on the Nickelodeon shows The Mighty B! and Back at the Barnyard. She continued to work for the network on shows such as Big Time Rush and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, before leaving to freelance on other shows such as Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, Cartoon Network's The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange, and Disney XD's Lab Rats. Gao has also written for HBO's Silicon Valley, the French series Zip Zip, Seeso/Pluto TV's Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, and Comedy Central's Corporate. Also Rick and Morty.
Certainly a talented writer, nothing in her repertoire indicates she'd be qualified to write in either the superhero genre or the legal sitcom genre and this show demonstrates her lack of cred. Neither a truly satisfying storyline involving a super-powered lawyer nor an interesting or credible story of a lawyer who happens to be the cousin of the Hulk, Gao bricks it thoroughly.
Trust me—I wanted to love this show. I ended up finding it tedious to just keep up with the episodes. And given both Tatiana Maslany and her Hulk counterpart are super hot, that is saying something.
BEST
Nope
Directed by Jordan Peele
Peele's Get Out made it on that venerated list of 100 Greatest films but, for my money, this is his best work to date.
A sweeping story involving aliens, a quest, the racism of early Hollywood, and a murderous chimp from a widely loved sitcom, Nope is his most complex film and is, a personal favorite of mine, a movie about making movies. The performances are wonderful, the alien is completely unique (because, c'mon, the idea that aliens will somehow be humanoid is some pretty arrogant stuff after it's all said and done), and the questions asked but not answered make this one of those movies that demands watching over and over again.
WORST
Moonfall
Directed by Roland Emmerich
I'll buy aliens coming to invade the planet, the second ice age, the end of the world based on the Mayan calendar, even Mel Gibson as a Revolutionary War guerrilla fighter, but the moon is a giant spaceship sent to spark human evolution and is being attached by an alien AI?
Fuck yourself, Roland.
BEST
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Directed by George Miller
Tilda Swinton. Idris Elba. A movie about storytelling and stories. A strange and wonderful love story.
I loved this film.
Adapted from AS Byatt's novella, The Djinn in The Nightingale's Eyes, Three Thousand Years of Longing is a profound, contemplative romantic reverie about a literature professor and a djinn telling stories to one another. Whatever George Miller's fans might have been expecting after Mad Max: Fury Road, they weren't expecting that.
It's lovely and sad and beautiful.
WORST
Till
Directed by Chinonye Chukwu
I suppose it's reasonable when making a movie for people who don't remember Ronald Reagan or Gilligan's Island you gotta go with the obvious but I already knew about the lynching of Emmet Till, the open casket viewing for America, and the trial. Given the marketing was about his mother, I expected to get some insight about her work moving the needle towards passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Sadly, no. This is just a retelling of the crime through her eyes.
While Danielle Deadwyler is a beautiful woman and a fine actor, a solid thirty minutes of this film is centered on long close ups of her face looking forlorn. I don't know anything about Mamie Till-Mobley but I know every fucking pore on Deadwyler's face.
The worst thing you can do with such a powerful story is bore. And this is a well-meant snooze.
BEST
Prey
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg
Twenty-five years after John McTiernan’s Aahnold 80's classic introduced us to a high tech race of predatory aliens, the Predator is back hunting another group of warriors. Trachtenberg’s Prey takes us back 300 years to the Northern Great Plains of 1719 flipping the premise on its head and expanding the world to tell an entirely different story. In Prey, he follows a young Comanche woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder) and makes a film about the perception of power and the reality of strength.
The Predator is less advanced but just as bloodthirsty and dare anyone to not stare in wonder as it fights and kills a grizzly bear. Midthunder is remarkable in every single scene. Spectacular franchise building here.
WORST
Thor: Love and Thunder
Directed by Taika Waititi
While the world may be oversaturated with too much MCU, I'm not. I am, however, thinking Waititi might need a break. He is almost the MCU Joel Schumacher. I was looking forward to this fourth Thor film but not quite as enthusiastically as I have been in the past. This has less to do with Taika or too much Marvel and more to do with why I love this universe in the first place.
I love the MCU because I learned to read with Marvel comics. I read them all with The Fantastic Four being my all-time favorite. At some point as I went from latchkey kid hoarding pulp magazines to the new kid who carried around copies of Moby Dick and I, Robot, I stopped reading comics. The switch came as Marvel expanded things and moved further from those superheroes who could be me if I was saturated by some radiation or born with a mutation to magical heroes and aliens. In the post-Endgame, Phase 4 MCU, I prefer Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye over Wandavision and Loki for that very reason. Thor was never gonna be my go-to.
Thor: Love and Thunder made me laugh throughout; it also left me a bit sad. Waititi is crossing over from that beautiful balance into outright nose-thumbing at the more serious side of the stories. Sure, he introduces Jane Foster having Stage 4 cancer but it feels low-stakes. No one—NO ONE—with Stage 4 cancer looks like a slightly sleep-deprived Natalie Portman. The butt of so many of the gags is that, rather than Thor evolving from his earlier pain and incredible loss, apparently he's just stupid. A buffoon like Drax rather than, you know, Thor. Korg has gone from funny side character who is oblivious and cute to insufferable.
I recognize that watching people in LARPing costumes is sort of silly but previous films and streaming shows use color saturation in such a way to de-emphasize the fakeness of the uniforms. Taika films it so that Thor looks like he's wearing an obviously plastic breastplate with a velour cape purchased from a Halloween store. No Thor-nipples on the costume yet but I can see them coming.
In Thor: Ragnarok, Waititi adds a hysterical moment with a theatrical troupe spoofing theatrical troupes and playing out the glorification of Loki. It's a short bit, it's pretty funny, and it forwards the story by underscoring the fact that Loki fucked over Odin and replaced him and Thor needs to make that right. In Thor: Love and Thunder the same troupe, the same gag, gets three times the screen time to do nothing for the plot except to mock the serious moments in the previous film.
That's why this movie left me a little less thrilled, a little less entertained, a little less. It felt lazy and self-congratulatory rather than an earnest approach to the characters. It felt like Joel Schumacher came in and said "Hey. I know the stuff Burton did was good but I really have zero respect for any of that shit. Let's get funny! Let's get a fat Zeus who speaks in broken English and take the opportunity to show Hemsworth's naked ass. Right? That shit is hysterical!"
BEST
Jackass Forever
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
Some people like the Marx Brothers. Others prefer The Three Stooges. I'm a Stooge man.
Thus, when I watched Jackass Forever in the theater, I laughed so hard, for so long, I felt weakened when the lights came up. I hadn't laughed that hard in ages. Knoxville and Co. introduce some younger versions of themselves and grown people getting the shit knocked out of them for no reason but to laugh is golden.
And that's my list. It isn't Sight and Sound but I call 'em as I see 'em, gang.
Rock on!
