Another deep roster of movies that made it difficult to rank them for this year's list. As always, there were some notable omissions due to not being able to see them in time--chief among them, The Zone of Interest and The Boy and the Heron, not to mention a slate of domestic and foreign art house titles that received no distribution in my neck of the woods and will have to wait until a streaming release later in 2024. But that said, still a terrific year for movies.
Enjoy!
[Spoilers for the rankings below. Watch the above video first.]
From Once to Moonlight, from Only Lovers Left Alive to The Farewell, from Me and You and Everyone We Know to Lost in Translation, my pick for the top movie of the year more often has an air of melancholy--quiet, pensive movies you'd more likely see at the arthouse than at the multiplex (though that distinction feels weirdly dated). But for most of the year, I was prepared to write about how the top of my 2022 list would be a bit of an outlier, as I had two maximalist crowd-pleasers, two box office smashes (at least in relative terms) topping my list. Everything Everywhere All at Once and Top Gun: Maverick were my top 2 movies until very late December since having seen both of them before June. After watching Aftersun earlier in December, I "only" slotted it at #3. But in the intervening weeks, I haven't stopped thinking about it. The movie haunts in the same way the memories haunt its protagonist, Sophie. It's a shattering debut from director Charlotte Wells and as I was compiling this list, it felt inevitable that I had to place it at the top.
There were many movies I wished I could have caught up with before making the list: Armageddon Time, Women Talking, Jafar Panahi's No Bears (though his son Panah makes the top 10 with his moving debut!), All That Breathes, Pearl (the prequel to my #22, X), EO, Return to Seoul, and countless others.
As the Bowie clip at the beginning of the video suggests, a list of the best movies of the year is less an objective statement about the greatest films in any given twelve-month span than it is a story of how I traversed the movie year. It's a micro look at film history, a snapshot of one person's point-of-view. But the end of November gave us the opposite, a macro look at the art form, when the once-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time Critics' List was revealed by Sight & Sound magazine. There are better analyses out there than anything I could write and I'll link them below. But in some circles (to which I will not link below) will use the topping of the list by Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as an excuse to rail against political correctness, identity politics, and some vague and as always unformed idea of "wokeness", as an excuse to argue that the broadening of the voting base unfairly spits in the face of the traditional canon. To this I will only say that I disagree with this assessment and that even if these assertions are true, so what?
And by completely unpopular demand, here's my hastily considered list of the greatest movies of all time if I ever should be so dared to submit:
Not much to say. It was nice to finally get back into a movie theater this past year. Much like the previous year, it was difficult to see how the 2021 movie year would turn out. And as late as December, it looked like it would be a pretty weak year. But a flurry of movie watching in the last month brought me many of the year's best, an eclectic mix of American indies, foreign art house, direct-to-streaming titles, and Hollywood blockbusters.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video. Happy New Year!
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| Richard Harbaugh / ©A.M.P.A.S. |
Every year there is a movie that I feel would place higher had I more time to consider it. It was the movie I screened the latest among the entries here and I only got a chance to see it once. Most of PTA's work gets richer with multiple viewings and this is no exception. But what's there at first blush is a craft as meticulous as his Reynolds Woodcock, the fashion designer at the center of this story, whose world is sent akimbo after wooing a pretty young waitress. Daniel Day-Lewis is... well, Daniel Day-Lewis and a great (and perhaps last) performance is to be expected. But, like her character, Vicky Krieps matches him blow-for-blow, and the result is a delicious unraveling of her sparring partner. It's crazy and at times hilarious, thoroughly unbefitting the apparent stuffiness of its subject matter.
12. Good Time (Josh and Benny Safdie)
11. Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes)
7. Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
The feature debut from respected video essayist Kogonada proves that his eye for creating his own images is as strong as his eye is for curating those of the filmmakers he examines. His tale of two people torn between familial obligation and personal ambition has the pacing and tone of the best Ozu. Yet while his aesthetic owes a great deal to that titan of 20th century cinema, his thematic concerns are firmly of the present. That dichotomy is mirrored by its setting--Columbus, Indiana--a place so quiet and seemingly middle-of-nowhere that somehow also became a locus of modern architecture. Haley Lu Richardson graduates from the supporting roles she's mainly played in the past to play a young woman who can't decide if doing something greater is needed or even wanted. John Cho, in one of the rare leading roles for an Asian American man, is pulled in the opposite direction: forced to come "home," when all he's ever cared about is staying away.
3. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)
