We’re back with Part Two, baby. This time, we’re going to take a look at my favorite new releases from 2022. I’m not going to wax poetically about how lists are meaningless and futile this time around. You want that? You go back to Part One. You just want a list that makes you look like this Matthew McConaughey meme…you stick around.

Tár

If you asked me if I wanted to watch an almost-three-hour-long movie about a conductor’s fall from grace, I’d vehemently say no, get that out of my face. And then I’d probably get on my li’l soapbox about how movies these days are too long and that if you want to make a three-plus-hour-long movie, you have to make a flawless 90-minute film first. Then you can make a five-hour-long movie for all I care. Anyway, back to the original hypothetical question. If you asked it again but said that Cate Blanchett was playing the conductor, I’d be there. No further questions. The original teaser for this movie was just Blanchett blowing smoke at the camera for a minute, and I was entirely in. That’s all Tár needed to convince me to see it, and what a sight it is.

Fire of Love

I used to hate documentaries. I think everyone did. For a long time, a documentary, to me, was the grainy, noisy VHS played on a rolling TV by a substitute teacher. And for the purpose they served at the time (getting out of schoolwork), documentaries were beautiful. As for the greater purpose of being entertained, they were awful. However, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to enjoy the medium. Granted, I still have trouble focusing on docs that are just talking heads and text on plain backgrounds. And don’t even get me started on those true crime “documentaries” all the streaming services are putting out. But, every once in a while, a documentary just grabs onto me. Fire of Love is that. It’s informative, aching, and, most importantly, a love story.

Decision to Leave

Noir is back!!!! Director/co-writer Park Chan-wook might sound familiar if you’ve seen movies like The Handmaiden or Oldboy. He’s got quite a reputation for making movies that take a wild left turn somewhere near the middle, and Decision to Leave is no exception. The film belongs in the same sentence as classics like Body Heat and Double Indemnity, but is more exquisitely visual. Every scene looks like a painting and it’s Stunning. Also, apropos of nothing, if a pretty lady wanted to hire me to kill her husband, I’d consider it.

Aftersun

I love it when I’m sitting there, peacefully watching a movie, minding my business, and then BOOM. I’m greeted with a little twelve-year-old girl in baggy gray Adidas shorts and I’m like, “well, that’s a tiny little lesbian if I’ve ever seen one.” Most of the time I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s because I’m wrong. I think it’s because there still aren’t a lot of lesbian characters in the mainstream world, y’know? However, it is so lovely to be validated like I was in Aftersun. Sure, there’s also the most achingly sad scene set to “Under Pressure” and the overarching idea that kids will never fully understand their parents, but let’s just focus on me being right.

Everything Everywhere All At Once

This is another movie where I was like, “hmm, now that sure looks like a lesbian.” It also speaks to the way film criticism needs to be diversified! It’s a hate crime that not a peep was said about Joy (Stephanie Hsu) being gay after the first round of press screenings. However, it was the first thing I told everyone I knew. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a queer story, but that narrative was entirely nonexistent until the film got a wider release. And sure, maybe I’m part of the problem and not following the right people who did talk about it after the press screenings, but my sentiment still stands. Diversify film criticism.

A Love Song

I’ve been very blessed to have had the opportunity to interview a handful of filmmakers in my little lifetime, and my chat with writer/director Max Walker-Silverman continuously floats around in my brain. He was so soft-spoken and earnest, clearly passionate and in love with the film he’d made. And he has every right to be in love with it. A Love Song gives center stage to two actors who usually play supporting roles: Dale Dickey and Wes Studi. We spent the entire Zoom interview talking about mushy things like memories, people we love, and how impossible it is to fully explain this weird life of ours. I loved that he said he felt like it was a burden he’s forced to carry to tell love stories because of how deeply in love he’s been with people and the world around him. A truly lovely, quiet piece of tenderness in the American west.

The Quiet Girl

Speaking of quiet pieces of tenderness: The Quiet Girl. It’s ambitious to tell a story as simple and earnest as this one. It’s fairly easy to tell stories about big explosions and world invasions because those are easy things to capture. We see entire cities being leveled by villains or otherworldly forces and we get it. We understand the stakes are massive here, our way of life is in jeopardy. It’s the small stuff that’s difficult to capture on film. In The Quiet Girl, it’s a biscuit left on the table. That says just as much as a massive explosion would in another movie. A biscuit can be as fundamentally life-altering as a super-villain invasion, and if you don’t understand how that can be true, then you don’t understand life.

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Cooper Raiff is back, baby. The only writer/director to be on both the best-of first watch list and this list. I saw this back in March at the Cleveland International Film Festival and quietly sobbed through a good portion of it. Raiff has an immense talent for self-reflection on life events he’s just lived through and synthesizes those feelings into compelling films. With Shithouse, he’d just dropped out of his junior year of college and bet it all on this film about a freshman. It’s unclear if Raiff based Cha Cha Real Smooth on his own experiences as a Bar/Bat Mitzvah party starter, but the youthful concoction of anxiety and confidence he manages to convey is pitch perfect. Also, let me get on my Dakota Johnson Can Act soapbox (similar to my Kristen Stewart Can Act soapbox) and say that it’s a crime she’ll be forgotten come award season. Granted, awards are a scam, but still. This is a hill I shall die on.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Look. Sometimes you go see a movie alone on a Monday at 4:55 p.m. in July and just cry your tiny little tear ducts dry. That’s just life, man. Sometimes you gotta let a tiny little shell voiced by Jenny Slate into your heart and allow it consume you. Again, that’s just a totally normal moment in life that we’ve all experienced. And if you haven’t, you don’t need to wait for a July afternoon to roll around to let Marcel the Shell take you on a lovely journey.

Elvis

Elvis is an overload. It’s the first time I’ve felt like Baz Luhrmann’s wild directing style matches up perfectly with the film’s subject matter…until the final thirty minutes. I have no idea what made him decide to become a regular biopic director for the film’s last little bit, but he did and the movie suffered for it. Elvis, the film and the person, was all about excess. He spoke to something much larger than himself. A bygone era, a cosmic superstar level of fame that will likely never be reached again. Harry Styles can wiggle his hips all he wants, but it simply won’t have the same earth-shattering effect that it did when Elvis did it. I’ve got issues with how they cast one of my favorite young actors (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) as B.B. King and didn’t let him sing, and how disinterested the movie was in the way they treated the other people of color. It’s not a perfect movie, but Elvis is ambitious and audacious.

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Best of 2022 - Part Two

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