2022
YEAR IN REVIEW
Going Back to the Movies
Covid has steamrolled us for the past two years and counting. During that time, we’ve lost loved ones, bitterly quarreled with family, friends and strangers, in person and on-line, and spent way too much time at home, staring at the walls and, occasionally, climbing them, too.
Though far down the list of losses, going to the movies quickly became yet another casualty of the pandemic.
Being more cautious than most, I went from early March 2020 to April 2022 without seeing a single movie in a theatre. F*ck you, Covid!
When I finally let my wife talk me into going to the local multiplex, we saw, “The Lost City.” The movie was stale, but the soft pretzels weren’t – mmm, delicious.
Are Movies Getting Longer?
My answer – I have no idea. What I am certain of, though, is that there’s an epidemic of movies that are slim on ideas and fat on running times.
Kevin Hart is funny. “The Man from Toronto”, though, is way too long. I was born and raised in Leafs’ Nation and even I thought TMFT could lose fifteen to twenty minutes and not miss a beat.
“Amsterdam” – two hours and fourteen minutes?!? A wannabe Coen brothers flick that’s light on laughs and botches its climax. Why is this longer than 90 minutes? No idea.
“Don’t Worry Darling” clocks in at two hours and three minutes. Perfect 50s suburbia is secretly a nightmare? How many times do we have to see this film? Florence Plugh, as usual, is terrific, but this needed to be tightened up.
“Jurassic World: Dominion” – two hours and twenty-seven minutes?!? Why?!? We know the soulless suit we’re introduced to, right off the top, is up to no good and we also know that it’s just a matter of time before the dinosaurs break loose and gobble up the humans – why prolong things?
Who’s Hollywood Ripping Off Now?
Music Composers
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/the-ugly-truth-of-how-movie-scores-are-made
Special Effects Companies
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/vfx-industry-downward-spiral
Tom Cruise?!? Sandra Bullock?!? That’s the final straw!
Good News In The Film World!
Justice!
New films from Ari Aster, Alice Rohrwacher, Martin Scorsese and Yogors Lanthimos due out in 2023!
https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/ari-aster-beau-is-afraid-cast-plot-release-date-trailer
https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/6/25f0u1ziyyy7z8eycyz70zu66xvwsq
What I Saw and Loved in 2022 (alphabetically)
“The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022)
Odd, at times hilarious, ultimately moving tale about what happens when amateur fiddler Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) suddenly stops talking to his dim bulb of a pal, Pádraic Súlleabháin (Colin Farrell).
Set in a fictional Irish island town, just a short hop, skip and a jump away from the bombs and blood of the Irish Civil War, TBOI takes its slender premise and fattens it up with plate after plate of hilarity & heartache.
Gleeson and Farrell ping pong off of each other like champs and Kerry Condon, as Pádraic’s lonely, restless sister, Siobhan, is equally as good.
Barry Keoghan, though, walks away with the film as Dominic Kearney. Slow of mind, grubby, yet instantly likable, Keoghan’s a hoot and a half as the dirty-faced angel Kearney, who has rocks in his head and a wounded bird for a heart. He’s half-Chaplin/half-James Dean, whose need for love is buried under non-stop goofy talk and the boyish bafflement at the way the adult world denies him the companionship and affection he so desperately craves.
Writer-Director Martin McDonagh has given us something special here. Be sure you see it.
“Claudine” (1974)
Single mom Claudine (Diahann Carroll) is living on welfare in a too small apartment with her five kids. On the side, she makes a few bucks working as a maid to a well off white couple whose house is on garbage man Roop’s (James Earl Jones) route. He charms his way into her life, but her kids are a much tougher nut to crack.
Funny, clear-eyed view of life on a lower income aims its laughs and caustic commentary at black stereotypes, the cruelty of the welfare system, the pitfalls of growing up too fast and the absence of black men in the lives of their kids.
Carroll and Jones are terrific and the kids are hilarious. Wonderful mix of comedy and drama clicks from word go.
ELVIS (2022)
Dazzling, frantic and fantastically overstuffed bio-pic of “Elvis the Pelvis” speeds its way through the tumultuous life of the “King of Rock n’ Roll” like a race car taking the final lap to victory at the Indy 500.
Austin Butler’s channeling of Elvis grounds a film that, at times, threatens to launch itself into space. On the flip side, Tom Hanks’ take on Elvis’ slippery manager, Colonel Tom Parker, is a go-nowhere, plastic pose of a performance. More comic book villain than flesh and blood human being, Hanks plays the self-professed snowman as if he’s wandering around Gotham City looking to bump off Batman.
Director Baz-a-ma-tazz Luhrmann hits more than he misses, stretches the truth until it snaps, crushes the concert sequences, botches Elvis’ transition from rock n’ roll rebel to cheesy star of even cheesier movies, and, for some reason, bails on showing a very young Elvis Aaron Presley’s early visits to Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios. Those very same visits, in which Presley, almost as an afterthought, transformed himself from shy, just okay crooner to mesmerizing rock n’ roll phenom.
Still, it’s too crammed with sizzling showmanship to deny.
“The Fabelmans” (2022)
Sammy Fabelmen is a barely disguised Steven Spielberg – a quiet seven year-old, suburban kid who falls head over heels for the movies after his parents take him to see “The Greatest Show On Earth.”
We see Sammy (Spielberg) grow from a child to a young adult as his gradual understanding of the power of moviemaking is paralleled by his equally gradual understanding of the complicated and contradictory relationship between his literal minded, tech wiz father and his fun loving, free-spirited mother.
Spielberg and co-writer Tony Kushner effortlessly bury the film lessons in the overarching drama of Sammy’s family life with startling results.
“He Even Has Your Eyes” (2016)
A young black French couple apply to adopt and, months later, end up with a white baby boy. Cue parental meltdown.
Funny, charming and, yes, a little over-the-top, it pushes all the right buttons and coasts on the likeability of the two leads, Lucien Jean-Baptiste (Paul) and Äissa Maïga (Salimata), and Paul’s hilarious, and loopy friend, Manu (Vincent Elbaz).
A feel good film that I couldn’t help but feel good watching.
“I’m All Right Jack” (1959)
Ian Carmichael is perfect as Stanley Windrush, an upper class innocent who becomes a pawn in the cynical battle between executives and workers at a missile manufacturing company named, you guessed it, Missiles Ltd..
Peter Sellers climbs into a character named Fred Kite, the union rep at Missiles Ltd.. Kite makes up for the power he doesn’t have at home by stomping around the workplace like some kind of Fascist dictator in training. He even has the same toothbrush mustache that a certain lunatic f*ck wit stole from the great Charlie Chaplin.
Though it’s as cynical as it gets, Carmichael’s Windrush balances all that out and, by doing so, saves the picture from being a one dimensional misanthropist wet dream. Oh and it’s funny, too.
“The Lobster” (2015)
In the Land of Lanthimos, things are a bit different.
In some hellish near future, single folks must find a partner within 45 days or else they’re turned into an animal of their choosing. What?!?
Deviously clever comment on the lunacy of extremism, the lengths people will go to find “the one” and our society’s treatment of single people as freaks in the circus of life.
“The Lobster” is unlike anything you’ve ever seen and it’s brilliant.
“Melody” (1971)
Nearly plotless, adorable and funny, peek into the lives of a group of British school children feels so real, at times, you’d swear it was a documentary.
What plot there is – two kids, Daniel (Mark Lester) and Melody (Tracy Hyde) fall in love and tell their parents they want to get married – doesn’t kick in until very late in the film.
In the meantime, you get what looks and feels like the spontaneous moments of joy, frustration, hilarity and heartbreak of childhood leaning into adolescence.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
“Nope” (2022)
Deeply disturbing, thematically audacious horror film is Jordan Peele’s best yet.
Following the death of their father, Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David), siblings OJ Haywood Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) take control of the Hollywood horse wrangling business started by their pops. The sh*t hits the fan when Jr. witnesses some strange goings-on while at the family ranch just outside of LA.
Writer/director Peele laments the forgotten black man atop a horse in Edward Muybridge’s famous early experiments with pictures that move, while embedding all of that anger and sorrow in a deeply disturbing and visually remarkable tale.
“Nope” is that rare species – a personal horror film. A deeply felt righting of a wrong not only done to that mystery black man on that horse, way back when, but to the black artists who were left on the sidelines as the movies became the most dazzling art form of the 20th century.
This is what taking chances and succeeding looks like.
“What’s Up, Doc?” (1972)
Director Peter Bogdonavich’s “Howard Hawks” movie.
WUD is a delightfully silly comedy that reveals what happens when a wise-cracking, wild & sexy free-spirit disrupts the life of an uptight dweeb who has a thing for rocks.
Streisand & O’Neal make a great pair.
A real treat of a movie.
“What We Wanted” (2020)
After yet another failed attempt at in vitro fertilization, a young couple, Alice (Lavinia Wilson) and Niklas (Elyas M’Barek), head to Italy in hopes that a little r&r will ease their disappointment and bring them closer together.
Quiet, subtle, moving drama explores what happens when we mistake our wants for our needs and calculate our happiness based solely on what we lack, rather than what we already have, in our lives.
Honourable Mention (alphabetically)
“Bros” (2022)
“Murder Ahoy” (1964)
“Road Games” (1981)
“Two Way Stretch” (1960)
Happy Holidays & Happy New Year!
First, thank you for stopping by. I put a lot of work into this blog and it makes me happy knowing that there are folks out there who are taking the time to read my work.
Second, all the best to you and yours. Here’s hoping 2023 is kind to all of us.
See ya next year!
