BEST OF 2022 | Todd's Top Ten Films of 2022
I’d like to start this piece - to end 2022 - with a Babylonian introduction. A fantastic year in film deserves a cacophony of congratulations, an unabashed party of praise, while its ugliest bits are snuck out quietly behind the spectacle of its greatest moments. Unfortunately, I can neither compete with Babylon, nor hope to capture its magic in the written form. Instead, this will be more akin to the flickering videocam footage, filled with affection and admiration, of Aftersun. (Not to imply I could capture the magic of Charlotte Wells’ masterwork, either.)
If there was ever a year of life-long projects coming to fruition, from Wells to Spielberg, 2022 was it; and I was but a mere spectator of other people’s dreams finally being put to celluloid. Their memories flashed across my daily life, affecting me deeply. You’ll have to forgive that this is a list of more than ten narrative features, in spirit, if only ten in practice. 2022 was too big, emotionally, to be summed up in any ten films - so we’re stuck with a montage of fluttering imagery and names. They represent the memories of a year breaming with nostalgia-dipped motion pictures. Here’s to the movies and those of us who let them pull on the puppet strings of our everyday emotions. This list is for you.
10. Cha Cha Real Smooth
I nearly tripped over myself with anticipation upon the announcement that Cooper Raiff’s sophomore project, Cha Cha Real Smooth, would play at Sundance last year. The young maestro’s debut, Shithouse, was one of my favorites of 2020, so this was big news to an equally young critic in myself, covering his second Sundance.
It goes without saying, Cha Cha did not disappoint. A touching, overly personal reflection on what it is to be 25, fresh out of college, stuck, in love with someone in a different life, Cha Cha (like Shithouse) hits a little too close to home at times. Life is nothing but a series of unfortunate events, a random collision of soulmates, best friends, and inexplicably complicated enemies. Few capture that better - with a Millenial/Zoomer lens, nonetheless - than Raiff.
I am, obviously, predisposed to be taken up by that brand of storytelling, but that doesn’t diminish the beauty he and his stellar cast are able to brandish. Cha Cha Real Smooth is every bit the tear jerking comedy I anticipated, but it’s also so much more, and it stuck with me all year.
9. Nope
“What’s a bad miracle?”
A violent clash with a chimpanzee that one lives to bank on? The ranch willed to one by a father killed in a freak accident? A video camera that serves as both savior and executioner? The answer to all of one’s problems looming, unmoving, in the sky? Yup.
That’s Nope: A miracle of a movie.
8. TÁR
I’ll get it out of the way: TÁR is one of the best film of the year. Epic, confounding, and utterly cold, Todd Field’s long awaited work about a conductor “reconciling” her greatness with her cruelty has been the only thing I’ve talked about in months. Not a day’s gone by since meeting Lydia Tár where I haven’t spoken of her, breathing her into existence like Candyman.
TÁR is no doubt a quasi-horror film. This ghost story floats from classroom to orchestra, the wake of a different-kind-of-death trailing. Students shunned, colleagues disregarded, neighbors scorned, mere children threatened or worse, there isn’t a thing that escapes the ethereal toxicity radiating from Lydia Tár.
On a technical level, TÁR is nothing short of a masterpiece. Anchored by a spectacular central performance from Cate Blanchett, TÁR also boasts career-defining writing and direction from Todd Field. I have little doubt that this film will find itself firmly seated in the frontrow of 21st century canon, if it hasn’t already. Love it, hate it, what to make of that steely greatness is up to each and every audience member, but there’s no denying it’s there. She may be terrible, but TÁR is perfect.
7. RRR
Now, for something completely different. TÁR’s equal in scale and antithesis in attraction is S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR. How do I even describe this film? It’s an anti-colonial drama, an action film, a romance, a comedy, a musical, a three-hour Telugu epic with absolutely no Western rivals.
N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan turn in two of the sweetest, fiercest, hottest performances of the year as the film’s heroes, while Rajamouli flexes the muscles that hold him at the top of the Indian film world. And that’s where I’ll leave it. The less I say the better. RRR must be seen to be believed.
6. The Banshees of Inisherin
Take all the people out of Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, and I still think it would make my list of favorites off the dreary Irish cinematography and the wonderful animal acting. But once you add the phenomenal performances from Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan that carry one of the year’s best screenplays, you get a Best-of-2022 level film.
I’ve written already about why McDonagh’s exploration of masculinity, friendship, and self-fulfillment in this film is such an achievement, but some reiteration never hurts. While “toxic masculinity” has received myriad portrayals on the silver screen over the last century-plus, few recent attempts come closer to capturing what makes it such a complicated target. It’s funny and sad; simple, yet layered; a self-reflective period piece of male friendship that still rings true today. Even if it doesn’t quite knock you out, it leaves you feeling its marks in the days and weeks after.
5. Triangle of Sadness
I feel so spoiled being able to just throw Triangle of Sadness onto a list of my favorite films, as it’s really three different movies in one, each more accomplished than the last. Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner is a vicious satire that constructs, deconstructs, and then reconstructs the world’s fucked up capitalist machinations. Watching an audience slip through the film’s stream of disgust and delight from a mezzanine at the Toronto International Film Festival may be one of the signature theater experiences of my lifetime.
Triangle of Sadness has no wasted pieces, with star turns from Harris Dickinson, Zlatco Burić, Dolly de Leon, and the late Charlbi Dean. (I was brought to tears by her elegance and humor, knowing it’s gone too soon.) Just as there are no bad performances, there are no throw away lines, nor unnecessary shots. It skates its way from scene to scene, building up to a riotous climax, and an all-telling finale. As hard as it tries to buck its viewers - intentionally or otherwise - if you can bear to stick with it, you’re in for a world class roller coaster ride.
4. All Quiet on the Western Front
When I first wrote on All Quiet on the Western Front here at ForReel, I described it as a “practically unachievable landmark.” A couple months removed from those words, and yet they still ring true to me all the same. Felix Kammerer’s mud-plastered face, which is in nearly every frame of this esteemed remake of a classic, has haunted me since the first time I laid eyes on him. Likewise, the film’s remarkable set pieces remain the best the year had to offer.
All Quiet on the Western Front is, above all else, the technical achievement of 2022. But it’s also so much more. It’s an emotionally devastating journey, ushered along by the aforementioned tremendous performance from Felix Kammerer. Even if it doesn’t become the canonical version of the title, All Quiet on the Western Front is sure to live on in my own personal history book.
3. The Menu
I was 17 films deep at TIFF when I finally stumbled into my evening screening of The Menu. It was my fourth (but not final) film of the day. I was, admittedly, wiped. But then something magical happened. Something that only redhead Anya Taylor-Joy, comedic Ralph Fiennes, Hong “THE GOAT” Chau and the magic of movies could do: They saved me.
They ripped my sleeve off, jammed an IV into my arm, and pumped it full of Tabasco. This shit had me electric. The Menu is so thrilling, so hysterical, so audacious in its committment to the bit that it didn’t matter that I was running on negative hours of sleep. It’s so exactly “my shit.” It’s already well established in my personal Pantheon of Favorites to Watch Other People Watch for the First Time, alongside such greats as Sorry to Bother You and The Game, and I somehow feel it’ll only rise in my estimation as time goes on - which is saying a lot, considering I have it at number three on a year where I watched hundreds of movies. I don’t know what else to say, man. If you love me, you’ll love The Menu. Yes, Chef.
2. Top Gun: Maverick
HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL YEAH.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll admit it: I cried when Top Gun: Maverick started. And I cried when Mav hit Mach 10. And I cried when Mav watched Rooster through the bar window. And I cried when Mav rode his motorcycle down the runway. And I cried when Mav met up with Iceman. And I cried when, and I cried when, and I cried when…
I harbor no secret love for Top Gun and its now superior sequel (it’s all public, baby), and I have no regret when I say: Tom Cruise saved cinema. Top Gun: Maverick is a masterpiece. Sue me.
Honorable Mentions
Let us now return to the aforementioned flickering film reels of dozens of 2022’s best pictures. These are but some of the films I’d write glowingly about if I ever found an editor crazy enough to let me write a top 50 (100, perhaps) of 2022. Just missing the cut of my top ten, Official Competition, a wonderfully funny Spanish film with an electric Penélope Cruz. There’s also Glass Onion (stupid!), Decision to Leave (smart!), and The Batman (sexy!).
I finally saw the light on Timothée Chalamet with Bones and All. I loved the first thirty minutes of Babylon and the final ten of The Whale. Criminals put in some of my favorite work in On the Count of Three, The Good Nurse, and especially, Saint Omer. I loved Kogonada’s After Yang and Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island. And I thought the women really showed out in Women Talking, and The Woman King, and The Eternal Daughter. (Lots of woman-related names last year.)
There are, of course, my not-so-guilty pleasures like Barbarian, Scream, and the biggest, baddest motherfucker of all, AmbuLAnce! I’ll wrap this up in a minute, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how quietly mesmerizing all Hit the Road, Broker, Return to Seoul, and A Love Song are.
Then, of course, there’s the film that I’m confident will be my favorite in five years, even if it didn’t make my list in this moment, and that’s Aftersun. Takes such a rare and special talent to make something so profound and prophetic that I can look at it and just know I’ll grow into it. Charlotte Wells has that talent. So, thank you to her and every other person who put in work on the hundreds of worthwhile projects 2022 had to offer.
1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
I revisited Everything Everywhere All at Once on New Year’s Eve only to be reaffirmed in all that I knew to be true: the Daniels’ film featuring transcendent performances from Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, and Michelle Yeoh is a miraculous, genre-defying, instant classic. Too pure for its own good, too good to be put into writing, too well written to be worthy of shooting, too well shot to be appreciated, too appreciated to, well, you get it. I have very little to add to the endless praise that surrounds this film - including my own - so I’ll leave it with this…
I know it feels like cinema is dying. Theaters are closing. Superheroes are drowning everything out. But as long as we still have innovators pushing boundaries, and masters making their pet projects, and studios pushing out fodder in hopes of a single hit, and rocks sitting on the edges of cliffs telling us that if nothing matters then everything matters, we’re gonna be okay. And that goes for Hollywood too. Maybe Everything Everywhere All at Once is my favorite movie of 2022 because it’s a stellar production, with superb acting, and emotionally resonant writing, but I don’t think that’s really the reason.
I think it’s my favorite because it gives me hope: Movies, like everything, will be okay.