2022 Year in Review

Happy New Year! 2022 was a big one for my writing — I’ve contributed a number of pieces to Entertainment Weekly, and also wrote tons of articles at Ampersand LA. I finished my Master’s program at USC, so I now have a degree in Specialized Journalism – the Arts. If you have any leads or connections to jobs or editors that specialize in pieces about entertainment, send them my way if you get the chance!

Immediately below are all my published works from 2022. After all the links, you’ll find my top 22 movies of 2022. Thanks to everyone for reading, sharing, and supporting my work!

2022 was a fascinating year for film. Since we’re still transitioning out of the pandemic era, there was an unusually low number of franchise blockbuster releases, which allowed a wider range of genres and smaller movies to find more success than they might have in a more crowded year. At the same time, viewing habits and modes of release have shifted so dramatically in the past three years that it’s become even more difficult to predict which kinds of movies audiences will make time to see. Since the streaming wars’ victors remain uncertain and studios are continually reconfiguring their spending strategies, 2022 may very well be the last significant wave of big-name directors taking large-scale creative risks within the American studio system. I hope not, but who’s to say what the future holds! 

There were a number of fantastic movies that came out this year, on both a large and small scale, so narrowing it down to this handful was a difficult task. There may have been other movies that I enjoyed or appreciated as much as these 22, but these are the ones that I’d recommend most strongly at the time of writing. I’ve grouped them into pairs based on genre, style, or thematic similarities. 

Aftersun / After Yang

Two of the year’s most affecting films fixate on memory, parenting, and the minute details that make up our relationships. They’re both somewhat subdued and quiet, but they’re tremendously rewarding watches once you get on their wavelength.

Charlotte Wells’ intimate coming-of-age story Aftersun meditates on the bittersweetness of childhood memories by celebrating the quiet mundanity of a relaxed ‘90s vacation and mourning the suppressed difficulty of young parenting. It’s a eulogy for a relationship that, for whatever reason, cannot be rekindled, despite the film’s movingly poetic glorification of the tiny details and gestures that comprise it. The use of the crude shakiness and fuzzy texture of home video footage perfectly embodies the film’s strengths: it catches and relishes the smallest moments of a memorable experience, solidifying them in immortality without glancing over the sadness underneath the sunny exterior — and its replayability allows new revelations with hindsight.

Kogonada’s quiet little sci-fi movie After Yang contains multitudes in a compact runtime. It has an optimistically mundane vision of the future, and cares deeply about the people that populate it, even if they’re not people as we understand them today. It’s concerned with the importance and beauty of memory, history, family, art, and recording, and shows how inextricably linked they all are. As in Columbus, Kogonada presents beautiful locations and allows us to drink them in with long, static takes. It uses aspect ratio changes creatively and effectively, and stages a ridiculous dance sequence in the opening minutes.

Ambulance / Top Gun: Maverick

The year’s two best action movies hinge on outstanding vehicular mayhem with staggering technical precision and surprisingly moving character work. These are probably the two movies that I’ll rewatch the most in the coming years.

Michael Bay’s Ambulance takes a very simple premise — a heist goes wrong, and robbers take an ambulance as a hostage/getaway car — to every possible conclusion with one of the most logistically impressive screenplays I’ve ever seen in an action movie. There are so many characters with rapidly-shifting motivations, allegiances, and goals, and all of them make total sense as they evolve from one minute to the next. There’s also a ridiculous amount of locations and vehicles to keep track of, but everything is crystal-clear despite the sheer volume of information and action. Michael Bay shoots everything elegantly and energetically, using a constantly-roaming camera to add to the controlled chaos — and the slickness of the bursts of drone photography twisting through the LA skyline and zipping through parking structures feels like a giant leap forward in action filmmaking.

It’s obvious that the year’s most triumphant blockbuster has fantastic aerial action, but Top Gun: Maverick’s real victory is the emotional character drama. Tom Cruise gives his best dramatic performance in at least twenty years as an anxious, regretful loner haunted by his past. Maverick’s relationship with Rooster, and how it builds on his friendship with Goose, is deeply affecting and cathartic — it somehow makes you like Cruise and Miles Teller more despite the lunacy of their offscreen antics. And it’s ridiculously romantic, not just in Mav’s relationship with Jennifer Connelly’s character but as an overall disposition — toward camaraderie, technology, filmmaking, and the human spirit. I wrote much, much more about Maverick and its use of Tom Cruise’s star power for Flickering Myth.

Everything Everywhere All at Once / White Noise

These excellent oddities fuse ridiculous comedy with existentialist drama and familial tension, all while delivering some of the funniest and most exuberant moments of the year. They’re both refreshingly stylish, boasting colorful visuals and off-kilter performances that are funny and dramatically effective in equal measure. 

The Daniels’ sci-fi-action-comedy-drama Everything Everywhere All at Once is stylistically forceful, thematically poignant, and narratively unparalleled in ambition and scope — so overwhelmingly maximalist in every sense that it effectively transcends genre and its multitude of influences. It is constantly referential and rarely reverential — self-aware but unabashedly earnest. The film steadily builds dense sci-fi rules and multiversal lore, but never requires a comprehensive understanding of its mechanics to fully appreciate the humor, action, and emotion at its core. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan deliver two of the year’s most exhilarating performances, elegantly shifting between physical comedy, romantic drama, and energetic action while speaking multiple languages. Read my full review on Ampersand LA. 

Noah Baumbach’s wacky disaster movie White Noise is one of the first great pieces of Covid-era comedy in the mainstream, as it uses source material written long before the pandemic to speak to the bizarre dynamics of the last few years. It capitalizes on the humor of a disaster spinning out of control by mocking the privileged, naive people who assume misfortune is destined to avoid them because the excess of their culture has left them feeling invincible. It also unpacks typically Baumbach-esque relational and existential neuroses understandably onset by near-cataclysm. Eventually, it settles on a strange, cynical note of optimism that feels somewhat self-contradictory but also inevitable and ultimately lovely. Baumbach’s visual style has never been better, the dialogue is hilariously over-the-top, and Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle all excel as motor-mouthed weirdos on a downward spiral.

The Fabelmans / Babylon

The isolation of the pandemic led many filmmakers to create highly personal projects about their relationships with film, including Belfast, Licorice Pizza, and Empire of Light. Two of the year’s strongest, from Steven Spielberg and Damien Chazelle, stand apart from the rest because they’re pointedly not love letters to cinema — instead, they’re complex, introspective lamentations about the loneliness of creativity and the power of the moving image.

Steven Spielberg’s movies have always felt at least partially impacted by his troubled childhood and personal familial strife, so it’s extremely satisfying to see him finally confront his past head-on by making an overt autobiography with The Fabelmans. Spielberg doesn’t take sides, instead highlighting the pain and sadness of everyone involved. He’s unflinching in his depiction of his parents’ failures, yet also provides detailed accounts of their strengths, generosity, and charming idiosyncrasies. It’s also a fascinating mediation on artistry — he explores film as a tool for capturing memories, an investigative process for recontextualizing them, and a means of exerting power over personal image and narrative. Spielberg’s unparalleled directorial prowess and his usual collaborators — composer John Williams, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and editor Michael Kahn — assure that it’s one of the best-looking and best-sounding movies of the year.

Damien Chazelle’s dizzying Old Hollywood epic Babylon is a nasty, hilarious tragicomedy about the chaos of cinema’s early sound era. Like La La Land and Whiplash, it makes creative ambition feel like a prison that leaves even its most talented artists broken and lonely. Yet it also has a bittersweet reverence for popular art, highlighting the value of great movies despite all the lives they destroy as technology advances and tastes evolve. Margot Robbie has never been better, Diego Calva is a phenomenal lead, and the smaller parts of the ensemble are fantastic across the board, bringing a manic comedic energy that makes almost every scene ridiculously funny. Justin Hurwitz’s brassy score might be my favorite of the year.

Memoria / Moonage Daydream

These disparate projects were two of the most abstract moviegoing experiences I’ve had in recent memory. They both hinge on immersive sound design and hypnotic images that draw you into a trancelike state, making for utterly unique theatrical experiences that eschew typical storytelling conventions.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria follows a woman (Tilda Swinton) as she investigates the origins of a mysterious sound that awakens her in the night and subsequently surprises her in intermittent bursts. It’s not a wonder of visual aesthetics or performances, as its compositions are mostly naturally-lit and static, and its actors move softly, quietly, and slowly. Instead, it’s a film of concepts and tones—a poetic work of cinematic existentialism, seeking to be felt rather than enjoyed or even understood. Through complex soundscapes, the film meditates on its central fixation: the ways that humans try to contain, manipulate, and understand the natural world in order to make sense of their place within it. It suggests that through science, art, and sound, perhaps we can begin to inch closer to appreciating our place in the natural universe, understanding the ties to our primal history, and genuinely connecting with our fellow humans—if we’re willing to sit still and listen. Read my full review on Ampersand LA.

The David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream is undoubtedly one of the best music docs in recent memory. There are no talking heads or contemporary commentary — just intimate archival footage, old interviews, and performances, with some cosmic psychedelia and old sci-fi B-roll thrown in for good measure. It’s not revealing of personal details, relationships, or even major events in Bowie’s life. Instead, it creates an intimate portrait of an artist through his philosophy, feelings, and values rather than any kind of material evaluation. The editing builds to several climaxes at the end of each loose chapter that are transcendent unions of sound and images — controlled chaos united in theme, emotion, and rhythm that yields a sublime sense of cohesion and artistic power.

Decision to Leave / Kimi

These two films both borrow heavily from Alfred Hitchcock’s playbook, delivering tense thrillers with fantastic technical control and a dark sense of melancholy. They’re Vertigo and Rear Window, respectively, for the digital age.

Park Chan-wook’s somber mystery Decision to Leave features some of the most invigorating cinematography in a movie this year. In nearly every scene, the camera swerves and shifts focus in ways that feel impossible, heightening the dizzying world that the story creates. It’s a bittersweet, swooning semi-romance/noir between a lovably ignorant detective and a femme fatale with unpredictably evolving motivations. There are tons of hilarious moments, bursts of kinetic action, wonderful visual transitions, and puzzling mysteries — it’s one of the most well-rounded films of the year.

Zoë Kravitz gives a career-best performance as the detached agoraphobe at the heart of Kimi, imbuing pain, frustration, and understanding into a thorny character with a ton of interior baggage that could easily feel hokey or clichè. Steven Soderbergh’s direction and David Koepp’s script combine to make a minor key The Conversation/Rear Window riff for the age of Alexa and Siri, crafting a tight little thriller about surveillance, digital voyeurism, and corporate corruption. It visually juxtaposes the security of the central apartment with the chaos of the outside world, and moves at a brisk pace.

Wendell & Wild / Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

These two movies both use stop motion animation to tell moral tales with funny characters, gorgeous designs, and impressive attention to detail.

Henry Selick’s anti-incarceration adventure Wendell & Wild, cowritten by Jordan Peele, features some of the most gorgeous stop motion animation ever committed to American film. The sheer amount of innovation and creative detail is astonishing, and that’s not to mention the unbelievable textures of every surface, object, and character — I’ve never seen this medium look so smooth or fluid. It certainly feels a little rushed, but its designs are so magnificent across the board that the plot fades into the background. And the thematic crux of the story is both laudable and impressively digestible for young audiences. I hope Netflix bankrolls more of these.

With a fixation on fantasy world-building and moralistic storytelling, Guillermo del Toro is a perfect fit for both fairy tales and stop-motion animation. With his updated take on the classic fable Pinocchio, he adds new thematic layers and unlocks old ones that tamer adaptations like Disney’s tend to undermine. There’s overt antifascism, existentialist musings, and meditations on mortality that all amplify the sobering, educational tone of many uncorrupted fairy tales. And the creative artistry of the stop motion ranks among the medium’s strongest, with gorgeous character designs and engrossing location work (particularly in the brief glimpses of the afterlife). 

RRR / Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical

These two films depict very different revolutions overthrowing cruel, oppressive regimes — and feature the year’s best dance sequences.

S. S. Rajamouli’s historical action epic RRR explores the relationship between two Indian revolutionaries as they fight against British imperialism in the 1920s. It’s got incredibly charismatic, multifaceted lead performers that are equally comfortable singing, dancing, and jumping headfirst into some of the most outlandish action sequences in modern cinema. There are fantastic musical numbers that develop the themes and characters while also providing their own spectacle. And it’s all rooted in tender, earnest relationships that are impossible to root against. Every scene is full of stunning images that make the central figures look like mythic sculptures, and the choreography and music are sublime from start to finish.

Netflix purchased the rights to the majority of Roald Dahl’s catalog a few years ago, and its first move was to adapt the lovely stage musical Matilda into a movie. Excellent songs by Tim Minchin, energetic choreography, charming performances, and a fascinating exploration of storytelling’s power all breathe new life into Roald Dahl’s tale of whimsical melancholy. Its musical numbers are a sight to behold (one of them went viral on TikTok long before the movie’s release), bursting with cleverness and color that most modern musicals lack. 

The Woman King / The Northman

This historical epics use sweeping revenge narratives and beautiful locations to transport you into unfamiliar cultures. They also both have ridiculously stacked casts and exhilarating action sequences. 

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film follows the all-female military of the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the 1820s. Though the film generated a minor controversy for supposedly ignoring or overlooking its subject’s complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, I suspect most of the suspicion came from people who didn’t actually watch the movie, as it confronts these issues head-on within 15 minutes. In many ways, the film is the platonic ideal of a modern studio historical drama. Everyone in front of and behind the camera is firing on all cylinders without anyone outshining anyone else. There’s colorfol cinematography, gorgeous locations, elegant costumes, stellar music, exciting action, and an amazing cast of charismatic performers who have excellent chemistry with one another, including Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega, and Thuso Mbedu. 

In his viking drama The Northman, director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) finally marries his hyper-detailed anthropological fixations to a more straightforward narrative, resulting in his most entertaining and well-rounded film to date. It’s not quite as formally daring or immaculately designed as his previous two films, but there’s still a plethora of memorable surreal imagery and immersive period worldbuilding. It’s got a simple but effective focus on cyclical violence, and the whole thing feels like a dream of a myth. Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe are the performance MVPs, though Anya Taylor-Joy and Björk are fantastic as well.

Crimes of the Future / Three Thousand Years of Longing

These oddball films from veteran genre directors use sci-fi and fantasy concepts to build tender, unusual romances between bizarre characters. They’re both full of ridiculous ideas taken refreshingly seriously.

David Cronenberg returns from his longest-ever hiatus to deliver Crimes of the Future, his first project that fuses the body horror science fiction of his early work and the contemplative human drama of his later career. It’s one of his most thoughtful pieces to date while also bursting with some of his most inventive visuals — grotesque organic objects stick out in the dystopian, grimy monotony of the set design. The main performances are all distinct but exemplary — Viggo Mortensen is a quiet, slow-moving creative goof, Kristen Stewart is so tic-heavy and unpredictable that she sounds like Molly Shannon doing a Kristen Stewart impression, and Léa Seydoux grounds the whole thing in emotional realism. It’s a strange, often silly meditation on the artistic process, particularly as it intersects with political statements, personal emotion, and restrictive hierarchical collaborations — broadly easy to read as allegory, but opaque enough in its enumerated details to leave a lot to discover.

In Three Thousand Years of Longing, his first film since Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller tells the grandiose yet subdued story of an ancient djinn (Idris Elba) who’s awakened by a lonely academic (Tilda Swinton) and shares tales of his mysterious adventures through multiple ancient civilizations. It’s a wacky mythic romance where layers of contemplation of storytelling and human connection stack up into something utterly strange and intermittently powerful. It’s a lovely, uneven, unpredictable journey across time and space that channels the magic of oral tradition into cinematic form, and it nails most of the moments that count.

She Said / Women Talking

Two of the year’s most thoughtful dramas center on women confronting assault and domestic violence from distinct perspectives. They’re powerfully performed and full of excellent dialogue.

Maria Schrader’s She Said follows the New York Times journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein abuse scandal as they communicate with sources and piece the story together. It’s a tidy journalism movie with excellent performances and thoughtful writing. It really nails the awkward emotional calculations that journalists face as they confront their subjects — how much can you appeal to pathos and see them for their genuine humanity, and how much of that does it take to convince them to let you use their story for your career? The line between personal and professional should be clear, but it’s practically nonexistent, and becomes even trickier in sensitive situations like the ones depicted in this film. How do you avoid reducing people to the worst thing that ever happened to them, and how do you bear the responsibility of telling their story with integrity? It’s a messy, manipulative profession that complicates worldviews and relationships, yet it also has tangible power.

Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel is an excellent piece of writing and boasts an impressive collection of performances. The film follows women in a Mennonite community who discuss how they should respond to repeated instances of domestic violence. It ponders the uncomfortable ways faith and love impede justice and progress, as the imbalance of gendered society combines with familial and fraternal fondness to muddy the moral waters when it comes to accountability. Moving past atrocities and violence proves much more difficult than it sounds in theory. It’s a tense, thoughtful, troubling movie with no easy answers and an abundance of challenging questions.

A few more movies I enjoyed this year: Turning Red, Cyrano, Vortex, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Batman, Bros, X, Nope, Tár, The Eternal Daughter, Athena, Descendant, Confess, Fletch, The Outfit, The Menu, Marry Me, Elvis, Halloween Ends, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion, All Quiet on the Western Front, Men, and Apollo 10½.