2022 Nutshelled: Best Movies

Alright people, here we are! This what we lurch forward and get excited about all year! We'll take all the cultural force and magical experiences we had at the cinema and distill them all into a big dumb Top Ten List. More and more I think this is stupid. That's why I made like five this year. We will likely change this all around when we take another look next year, and I know there was a handful of films that I did not see that could penetrate this list next year. But for now, let's look at the best movies that I personally watched in 2022:

#10: Don't Worry Darling

I've looked at a lot of lists from around the whole Internet and reputable critics and people, and I was most struck by how much my list doesn't match up with them at all. We had such great films in the sweet spot this year of engaging, competent genre action. Or just really weird like Don't Worry Darling. I was so into the trailers, and I like Olivia Wilde as a director. This just got shat on for behind the scenes nonsense. No one really seemed too harassed or anything as far as I can tell (if I suck please let me know, I did not get into the gossip much beyond the headlines), but the amount of cheating, spitting, and chaos was unbelievable.

And it really should further show just how good of a job Olivia did to get ANYTHING out of anyone to make this movie. It's definitely got its source inspiration from a few places, but it still pulls off a satisfying story. At some point you just wait for the other shoe to drop and you know it's going to be either satisfying or a let down. And it's really satisfying! The acting and mind-fuckery is great and motivated here and it's also surprisingly one of the better-looking films of the year. Truly gorgeous, and what looks like mostly natural sets. This movie got a lot of crap, I wonder if we'll forget about all the nonsense in time and re-evaluate how good this is.

#9: Barbarian

There might not be a movie I've thought about more. AirBnB horror! What a concept! Some of the decisions are a little contrived, but man this movie gets so many points for being the most unexpected movie of all time. I love how much it spins from a basic story and then dramatically re-shifts but all in service of the same story. Justin Long steals the show as the worst human being to ever live and when he seems like he's redemptive, he's even worse. It's awesome. There's again some legit fucked up shit here and the delicate house of cards that's assembled never topples.

#8: Prey

I feel personally slighted by how much hype all these movies got when they came out but how little anyone seems to be talking about them at the end of the year. PREY was the perfect Friday night movie, a tight, coherent, legit action movie that advances the themes of an existing (and well-trodden IP), goes the mid-budget competent route but succeeds in its effort to remain interesting, and survives as a deserved work in its own right. There's also a message here but it's very slight and in service to the story. Everything works.

#7: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

All hail Roku! Of course the Weird Al movie comes out on the most obscure service possible. The funniest movie of the year with absolute zero pretensions, we don't get enough of these kinds of films anymore. It's unreal. What's more unreal is how quickly it descends into having no interest in representing reality at all. It succeeds in being a parody of biopics but staying far away from being a direct parody of the genre like Walk Hard (2007) but is instead interested in exceptional silliness. I'd watch it every day if I could.

#6: Glass Onion

Written, produced, filmed, and released all in November, 2022! Knives Out (2019) was tremendous but this somehow pushes everything further, mostly from being completely disinterested in being a direct sequel. It's an incredible achievement to re-invigorate one of our oldest genres, but find a way to keep things interesting even after Knives Out did the same thing a few years earlier. The characters are vivid and dynamic, the lighting and cinematography is dynamic, bright, and in service of the film, but most importantly the film makes you hang on every word of long dialogue and monologue strings. It's consistently hilarious as well, while also punching for the gut. What's wrong with giving Rian Johnson more Star Wars again?

#5: Banshees of Inisherin

Maybe the saddest movie ever, I didn't really believe the hype until I watched this and was like oh damn! It's also the most Irish movie of all time, with equal parts wryly funny and deeply depressing. Everyone is acting at full speed here, and it finds the perfect line between the trivial and tragic. It's shot simply but lets the setting do the work for them. Martin McDonough has his credentials by now (I forgot he did Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri [2017], which people seem to care about a lot less than In Bruges [2008] in hindsight), but seems to be much more in his element here.

#4: Everything Everywhere All At Once

The Top Four are pretty interchangeable and I foresee these being the immutable candidates for future reconciliations of this year. This got a lot of hype when it came out and has wormed its way into a lot of lists. For some reason this has been the year of the multiverse, and ends up being the best use of the concept. We get to see many fully realized and silly universes (Hot Dogs) but at the core is a relationship between mother and daughter that takes some significant effort to un-fuck. It's funny, original, thrilling, and explores a deep and fulfilling interaction between all the principal characters. Even Jamie Lee Curtis' tax specialist, who would be insufferable in another picture. This is one of the great ones.

#3: Nope

Jordan Peele's best film, I said it, Nope has thematic richness regarding our relationship with nature, animals, spectacle, exploitation, Hollywood, and filmmaking. It's quite a bit, all in a cinematic package that makes it look easy. It's authentic and fantastic all at once. I don't really actually like the SPOILER revelation that the spaceship is an alien or how it transforms at the end, but those are both thematically sound. Like so sound it makes me angry. Add to all this the genuine tension in a handful of scenes (ironically the fake-out scene is the most insane) and absolute horror from chimps and digestion and there is a lot to love here.

#2: RRR

It would seem somewhat improbable that a random Bollywood movie would become one of the biggest global phenomenon of the year. But for one, it's Tollywood, and second, it got some buzz on Netflix, man. Now, I'm aware that there is some problematic cultural stuff here. Oh no! Yeah, read up on what this all means for Indian and Telugu cinema here. It's pretty thorough.

But sticking to the film itself, this is at every moment a revelation. Watching as someone who has gotten very used to and jaded by Western blockbuster filmmaking it feels like an unbridled explosion of creativity, limitless expression, and truly dynamic action. All of that is wrapped up with revolutionary ideals (anti-colonialist, but also very nationalist) and what amounts of historical fiction with the greatest bromance of our era. Every scene seeks to top the one that came before it, all symbolized by the fire and water of our two heroes that echoes into mythology. RRR is insane. Watch Baahubali too.

#1: The Northman

And here we are. My pick for the Top Film of 2022 I saw in theaters and knew it would be tough to beat. I don't know why this hasn't gotten much of any love since its release. I watched it twice this year. I love every part of this. On the surface its a brutal action film. Deeper it's full of authentic filmmaking techniques, majestic vistas, and a classic story. But deeper than that it exposes the bullshit of its own story and undercuts the hypermasculinity that seems to possess its whole deal. It really is an incredible experience. Naked lava fight!

Honorable Mentions: Greenland, Pinocchio, KIMI, The Batman, Ambulance. I was also close to adding Elvis and Blonde. Elvis is so damn maximalist and serves as an incredible companion to Weird. Like literally Walk Hard if it were a straight biopic, to the point where it feels on purpose. I keep thinking about Blonde, too. I wish it were shorter so I could watch it again to unpack. It feels like a dream and is either the most brilliant film of the year or the worse. I disagree with accusations of exploitiveness, it just seems like it couldn't be more obvious that what everyone is doing to Marilyn (including the viewer's eye) is horrendous.

Have not Seen yet but might get on this list next year:

After Yang

No Bears

The Hustle

TAR

Triangle of Sadness

Eternal Daughter

White Noise

I probably won't watch all of these. I've had plenty of opportunity. I just missed TAR and White Noise, ran out of time. That's why these are all meaningless, baby! Check in next year when I confess to being really stupid and completely refine this list.

Until then, Happy New Year and here's to 2023!

2022 Nushelled: More Random Crap

We will drop our heavily vaulted Best Movies of 2022 list soon, but in the never-ending lead-up, we need to talk about all the other wonderful trends and everything of the year. Now, in general this year was fantastic for films. There were a ton of weird and amazing experiences to be had, and I think 2022 will be fondly remembered for many years. Maybe even like a 1999, 2007, or 2014.

That being said, I found it tough to recall particularly great singular defining moments or scores, or music. I really only point out things that are truly great. Not everyone gets a prize every year, people! I kept coming back to the same well. I think 2022's highs were pretty high but definitely in just a select few movies that really struck gold.

Actors of the Year:

I had a few nominees on the men's side, but somehow improbably it's no one but Colin Farrell. Yes, Colin Farrell won 2022. Mostly by appearing as a gonzo cartoon figure in The Batman (2022), a deep and thoughtful competent rescue worker in Thirteen Lives (2022), and then an amazingly sad Irish fellow in Banshees of Inisherin (2022). It's not only the volume here but shocking range of characters and genres that shows that this dude is the real deal. Called it!

Is it kind of weird that we even divide this? Like, what is it about gender that differentiates anyting with acting? Well, we do have a lot of nominees. Nicole Kidman seems to be every where all of a sudden and Jamie Lee Curtis showed range from horror icon to wacky hot dog finger lady! Anya Taylor-Joy and Margot Robbie keep flirting with over-exposure and Ana de Armas is showing that she's more than a pretty face, even if her biggest profile work Blonde is mostly about her being a pretty face.

But let's go with the long-deserving Florence Pugh! Don't Worry Darling (2022) was her big work but she also appeared in Hawkeye at year's end last year, and added The Wonder and Puss in Boots to show her credible range. There isn't really anyone acting like she is in addition to her overexposure and we're here on the Pugh train to stay!

Moments of the Year

Spoilers for the first couple here because it's a few endings: WEIRD: The Al Yankovic's story quickly shows that it has no desire coming anywhere near the true story when Al is gunned down at the Grammys by Madonna. This is really a thing that happens. I also was shook by the donkey eating Brendan Gleeson's fingers in Banshees of Inisherin. I'm sure there's more.

This category was always about highlighting great moments in otherwise dull movies. I don't know if we had a lot of that this year! Or it's about a sequence in an otherwise forgettable superhero film. We have some of those for sure.

Non-spoiler favorites:

The house covered in blood in NOPE

Wanda vs. the Illuminati in Multiverse of Madness

HAVE SEX! In Morbius

Zoey Kravitz gains the upper hand in KIMI

The Family faces their destiny trapped in the earth in The Bob's Burgers Movie (hands down funniest scene of the year)

Barbarian switches to The Adventures of Justin Long

Best Ending:

Dude this movie is not good in anyway, but almost worth sitting through the entire slog to see that in the end the impetus for the entire murder mystery in Bodies, Bodies, Bodies is Pete Davidson being an idiot. It really is worthwhile. Not another movie this year with a worse first thirty minutes and a better last thirty minutes.

Movies Where Every Scene was the Best Scene:

RRR, Ambulance, and Glass Onion are really hard to pick just one. Most are going with the musical dance number (that definitely wins down below!), but I just need to go with the intro. Such a hook.

Ambulance just kept going. Not enough love for what Gyllenhaal does here. Somehow the most Michael Bay-protagonist of all time.

And Glass Onion, it's got to be when everything comes together with the Mona Lisa at the end, right? Phenomenal work here.

Trailers

NOPE or Pearl made me want to see both without spoiling anything. And I'll give Bodies, Bodies, Bodies again a lot of credit for making a great trailer that sold an amazing attitude that the movie couldn't have been farther away from.

Musical Moments

C'mon, man. You know it's RRR for the best bro-down of the year. I mean, all standard Tollywood stuff, but blew our stupid minds.

The best use of other songs probably go Nirvana in The Batman. That just fits so improbably well. And it kept coming back! I thought it was part of the score.

Other Stuff:

Copshop (2021) is a terrible movie that no one should see. It also didn't come out this year. But I'm not going to have another chance to talk about this, dammit. Toby Huss is amazing and in an entirely different movie. A better movie.

We'll get into my top pics on 12/31. Obviously that's when you need to highlight the top movies, people. I watched a lot of movies this year, and not all of them were good. No one's talking about 3000 Years of Longing (2022), which I was very excited for and deeply disappointed by. Same with The Bubble, which might be one of the worst films of all time.

I was also really bummed by Bros. It was just not really a good movie at all, but worse than that, really wanted you to think it was good and different than every other rom com. But it was totally just like every other rom com. I'm sorry, Billy. I really wanted to like this one.

This was just sort of a disappointing year, maybe I got too hyped for directors I like and we got boned. Oh well. Plenty of good things around, too, which you'll see in just a little bit!

52 for '22: Baahubali: The Beginning

Movie: Baahubali: The Beginning (2015)

Method: Netflix Streaming

Riders of Rohan! To Meeee!

Why Did I watch this?

Listen folks, I know. This is getting weirder and weirder and we've gone off the beaten path quite a bit into some films that weren't in our original line-up. There are a lot of reasons for that, but we've decided to take a full dip into Bollywood. I watched RRR (2022) after seeing it on Twitter and then stumbling on it as the #6 film on Netflix this week and when I looked it up I saw that it was among some of India's highest grossing films. RRR, by the way, is spectacular and I highly STRONGLY recommend a viewing! But the same director, SS Rajamouli directed even bigger Indian films, the Baahubali series. Obviously we had to watch those, and it works as part of this posting series!

What Did I know ahead of time?

I knew it was a big Indian blockbuster movie, relatively recent, which means likely dodgy CGI. I knew it was an epic long movie, so probably a historical film, although to be honest, Bollywood films can spend three hours dancing in a romantic comedy movie, so hard to tell exactly. I really didn't know too much except that I liked the director from RRR and it was a big time Indian film.

How Was It?

So, to be fair, this is only the first part. I'll watch Baahubali: The Conclusion (2016) tonight and let you know how that goes maybe, but it does end on a dedicated cliffhanger. So it's hard to judge the exact story as a whole. But I really liked what I saw.

And I'm going to tell you right now, I am going to make zero effort in remembering anyone's name. I barely refer to Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) as anyone other than Tom Cruise. so, let's roll with this.

The film jumps in it right away, with a mother protecting her baby from dudes with swords, and then getting caught in a river, but praying to Shiva to save her son. The son grows up in a small river village next to a giant mountain that he is forbidden to climb, but oh what a rascal, he grows up and climbs it anyway! At the top he finds a whole other Kingdom, finds out he might be heir to the throne and then hilarity ensues.

It is both refreshing and odd to dive into Indian versions of blockbuster epics. Yes, the CGI is dodgy as hell. But it's also stunningly creative. The story isn't all that innovative, it's basically some version of Hamlet, but there are also twists and turns as you find out who exactly is related to whom and whose kingdom is up for grabs. It was really engrossing for a two and a half hour epic in a language I didn't understand.

There is this sincere fantastical element, too. Rajamouli in RRR made his historical figures into straight up superheroes, and the same goes for this movie. The eponymous Baahubali can hoist himself up waterfalls and fire precise arrows and swords, and his counterpoint, the evil kick can punch bulls and throw soldiers for yards. It's all played straight, though. And there's singing of every plot point. You couldn't do this kind of stuff in an American blockbuster, we're too literal, too cynical, and too snarky. There is a real earnestness to the filmmaking here that I appreciated.

I really just kept thinking about what would happen if Chris Evans and Robert Downey, Jr kept breaking into song during CIVIL WAR (2016). That's basically what you got here. This doesn't have the REAL big typical dance scenes, but there are enough big singing breaks to have a good time.

One is maybe the most problematic scene I've ever seen in a movie. And I mean that in the proper way, it's not like an outright awful horror-filling scene, but...assuredly problematic. We're introduced to a badass lady warrior at the top of this mountain, who Baahubali draws henna on without her consent while she's sleeping with her hand in the water. He then distracts her with a snake while drawing on her shoulder. There is a surprising amount of unconsensual drawing. And it almost costs her her job!

Then he woos her and rips her clothes off while dancing, pushes her under a waterfall, and even puts make-up on her. Then they bang. It's a straight up taming of a wild wonderful warrior woman into a beautiful elegant flower wife. And she's into it. It's so damn weird. It's not really Mask of Zorro (1998) level sexy dress cutting, more like an 80s transformation montage that the dude is imposing on the woman. It's....pretty rough.

Towards the last third of this film it just becomes a completely different movie, and I mean this very literally. Kattappa the slave tells an extended flashback of Baahubali's father and the current evil King and how they were trained together and had to prove their valor in competition and war against, okay, let's again call them a problematically depicted group of darker, more savage Indians (picture somewhere on the level of King Kong [2005]'s generic natives) in order to be named the next king. This is really where the film earns its epicness, and the shots and strategy of a massive war are actually really cool. It goes into depth of minute by minute action and reaction on a grand scale and earns every moment it delivers.

The flashback is constructed almost as its own little mini-movie, and something that again, you'd just never see in an American blockbuster. This film takes incredibly bold swings and risks (or maybe it doesn't and just doesn't have the pressure or precedence of a western film to live up to). It's really fun and really weird.

The film steeps itself in myth and mirth, and I did immensely enjoy it. RRR works better as a straight action film and historical film, but jeez, it's hard for any film to compete with that. This is a true historical epic and I'd recommend for anyone trying to get into Bollywood.

Check out more 52 for '22 right here!