#2017 one was also fun but the 2022 one was everything i could’ve hoped for ever

[doyeons]

ugh i miss gorillaz concert 2022…. take me back to gorillaz concert 2022…

[natehoodreviews]

Best Films of 2022

As some of you might have noticed, I didn’t publish many pieces or read many fiction books this past year. The reason for that was that 2022 was a particularly busy year for me in terms of schoolwork and regular old work, specifically my first unit of CPE residency to become a hospital chaplain. Still, though, I did manage to see around 50 movies released this past year. Here are my picks for the best of them.

15)  Armageddon Time – Dir. James Gray

If I had a nickel for every Jewish-American cinematic Künstlerroman released in 2022, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. Jokes aside, Armageddon Time is a fantastic coming-of-age story, and the specter of Anthony Hopkins really helps keep its head above the water of becoming excessively maudlin. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this material could've come across as excessively preachy, but Gray nails the correct tone for making it hit like a sledgehammer. That said, somehow in all the time before watching this movie I'd managed to avoid the news that the Trumps were in it. When I tell you that I felt ice water in my gut when they first appeared, I mean I felt like I cannonballed into the Arctic Ocean. I've said it before, but one of the most obnoxious things about Trump is that he's going to become as ubiquitous in future media as a metonym for everything that's corrupt and evil in the USA as Lincoln is for all that's good and noble. I just want Trump to GO AWAY.

14)  Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe – Dirs. John Rice and Albert Calleros

I cannot believe that this ended up being one of my favorite movies of the year. It begins with one of the cinema’s greatest nut-shots and only gets funnier. A bacchanalia of juvenile stupidity.

13)  Nope – Dir. Jordan Peele 

We as a society need to do whatever it takes to keep Jordan Peele making his intensely unique, intensely bizarre flights of cinematic fancy. This damn thing was a slow-burn horror film, a heist movie, a thriller, and a creature feature rolled into one.

12)  Top Gun: Maverick – Dir. Joseph Kosinski

The best male weepy since ONLY THE BRAVE (2017). Light years better than it had any right to be, and not really as toxic as I expected. Some of the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater all year. Not the MOST fun, but it’s definitely way, WAY up there.

11)  32 Sounds – Dir. Sam Green

I've been a fan of Sam Green and JD Samson after seeing one of their Live Cinema shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music several years ago. I am thrilled to report that Green's new film 32 SOUNDS is probably the best translation of their specifically mind-blowing, tender, and intimate live performances that we'll ever get. With only 32 sounds, Green captures a kaleidoscope of the human experience in ways at once amusing yet profound, devastating yet hopeful.

10)  The Batman – Dir. Matt Reeves

“I don't know if that was the BEST Batman movie, but it was definitely the MOST Batman movie. That said, it was refreshing to see a Batman film that remembers that he's a world-class detective. I have issues with this film, but almost all of them fall away when I think about how we finally got a superhero film that truly, deeply cares as much about images as it does the characters and stories. The Batmobile emerging from a wall of fire, muzzle flashes illuminating dark hallways like bolts of lightning, Batman leading a spiderweb of survivors through floodwaters while holding aloft a flare—these are IMAGES that are going to stick with me for a long time. Also, that opening sequence of petty criminals getting scared by the sight of the Bat-Signals leading up to Batman emerging from the subway tunnel... #chefskiss“”

[Full review at http://www.unseenfilms.net/2022/03/nate-hood-on-batman.html]

9)  The Fabelmans – Dir. Steven Spielberg

An extraordinary work of compassion, contrition, and grace. So much more than an autobiography—it's a Rosetta Stone for one of the cinema's greatest artists. I am have no idea how Spielberg and Kushner can explore feelings and emotions of such byzantine complexity while making it seem so effortless and natural. Pure wizardry.

8)  Elvis – Dir. Baz Luhrmann

The first half is pitch-perfect rhinestone gaudiness and the second half almost Shakespearean tragedy. It's equal parts pathos and bathos, wrapped in silk and slicked with pomade. Baz Luhrmann has been preparing his entire career for this one movie and it shows. I'm honestly mystified by people dunking on Tom Hanks' performance. Was it an accurate depiction of Colonel Tom Parker? Probably not, but Hanks created perhaps the greatest ghoul in popular American cinema since J. K. Simmons' Terence Fletcher. And finally, the early sequence juxtaposing a young Elvis spying on a blues joint and attending a gospel revival ranks up there Bheem attacking the British gala with his animal friends in RRR and the opening scene from THE BATMAN as my favorite so far of 2022.

7)  The Banshees of Inisherin – Dir. Martin McDonagh

This one absolutely gutted me. I spent the last forty minutes of that film scarcely breathing because I kept waiting for The Bad Thing to happen after the banshee made her prophecy. Also, this film was like watching an autistic person's worst nightmare made real. I'm serious. You want to know the one thing an autistic person fears the most? The people they love suddenly deciding one day for no apparent reason that they just don't like you anymore.

6)  RRR – Dir. S. S. Rajamouli

“After years of Hollywood franchise glut—of reboots and remakes, spin-off miniseries and bloated two-part finales—watching S. S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language epic RRR is like taking that first breath of outside air after being cooped up all day in an office building with no air conditioning. It’s like taking a long, cool sip of ice water after days in the desert with nothing to drink but lukewarm Diet Coke. It’s like being reminded for the first time since you were a child amazed by the moving pictures on the television that movies can truly do anything, say anything, and be anything. It’s not just the most triumphant, crowd-pleasing blockbuster in years, it’s the best, most exhilarating action movie from any country since George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).”

[Full review at: http://www.unseenfilms.net/2022/06/nate-hood-on-epic-masterpiece-rrr-2022.html]

5)  ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS: Boku no Natsuyasumi – Dir. Tim Rogers (YouTube: Action Button)

The Ross McElwee/Lester Bangs of video game journalism returns with another 6+ hour opus on a video game most gamers outside of Japan may never have heard of before. Somehow, it’s his best yet. An exhaustive yet somehow never exhausting autobiographical examination of nostalgia, loss, and memory, Tim Rogers somehow finds in the act of playing a video game about a young boy’s summer vacation in the Japanese countryside a simulacrum for the universal human experience.

4)  We Met in Virtual Reality – Dir. Joe Hunting

Talk about a dark horse pick for one of the best movies of 2022. I've said it before and I'll say it again: my favorite kind of art is the art that makes me feel more human. WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY is a stunningly moving and sincere look at how humans have begun creating social ecosystems in virtual spaces. It would've been so easy for director Joe Hunting to play the things he found for laughs—and in fairness, it's easy to chortle at the idea of an anime couple proposing to each other after meeting in an exotic dancing class or a group of furry avatars talking about their sexual orientations around a campfire—but he looks for the human beneath and within his subjects.

3)  Mad God – Dir. Phil Tippett

A Voynich Manuscript of stop-motion blasphemies; a compendium of Švankmajer nightmares and H.R. Giger fever dreams. Hieronymus Bosch wept. If your reaction to this movie was that it didn't have enough plot, I hate you. If anything it had TOO MUCH plot. Don't be fooled by the stop-motion animation—there's more Stan Brakhage in this film's DNA than Hieronymus Bosch. I can say with no exaggeration that this film was one of the most overwhelming aesthetic experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. I could feel myself frozen to the seat for its entire runtime.

2)  Everything Everywhere All At Once – Dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

As a film critic, I've seen literally thousands of movies. But only a handful have ever given me an experience close to approximating Stendhal syndrome. I can say with some certainty that EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is the only one to involve a sex toy kung fu fight.

1)  Glass Onion – Dir. Rian Johnson

GLASS ONION left me in a near-constant state of shock and disbelief for its last hour. I have no idea how Rian Johnson was able to outdo KNIVES OUT, but here we are. It's smarter, funnier, nastier, and proves that the first film's populist overtones were no fluke. That it wrapped BEFORE Musk bought twitter is one of the greatest acts of cinematic prognostication maybe ever? But it's so much more than just a furious defenestration of billionaire tech bros, it's another condemnation on how the uber-rich close ranks to protect their own. That whole scene where Miles' "friends" joined in Janelle Monáe's destructive rampage—but only for a little bit!—is such a powerful statement on how celebrities will performatively ape leftist politics in between private jet flights to cross union picket lines. But my favorite part of the film was watching it with my mother. She originally had no interest in it when I chose it (it was my turn to pick the movie!). I LOVED watching it cast the same spell on her that it did on me until by the end she was LITERALLY on her feet cheering! I'm sorry, but I don't know how you could look at Rian Johnson's last three films and NOT consider him one of the best filmmakers working today. I don't know if any director since the heyday of Spielberg has more perfectly mastered the art of the crowd-pleasing genre film. THE LAST JEDI then KNIVES OUT then GLASS ONION back-to-back-to-back? Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is a friggin' cinematic pedigree.