The Very Best Movies I've Seen in 2022--so far

2022 is off to a normal start for the film business, which is weird.  Festivals, theater and virtual releases, Awards season on the way.  You'd think we wanted to go back to the same old disgusting movie theaters again just like we used to.

Here are my rankings of the best films of 2022, good films from 2022 that didn't make the best-of list, the worst films of 2022, and of course films that I chose not to see (yet). 

The very best films of 2022

1. Girl Picture--perhaps this is the perfect coming of age movie? Finnish teen Mimmi fights with everyone, including her customers at the smoothie shop where she works with Ronnko--a stabilizing influence though the friend is worried because she can't have an orgasm. Into the picture walks the talented, A-student Emma, a championship junior figure skater who has temporarily lost her triple Lutz. Add a great soundtrack and fantastic cinematography and you're in for a beautiful ride of love gained and thrown away. You have to be tough to be a teen girl, as always.
2. Gentle--Edina is a talented female body-builder. In fact, thanks to her partner Adam, she's the Hungarian national champion and though he's past his prime, she also aspires to become the single best in the world at her art. The problem is, the drugs required to compete at the top are killing Edina, and the two can't afford them anyway. Eventually Edina turns to sex work.  It turns out further that the men who want to pay for the attentions of a super strong woman tend to be kind and "gentle."  What they want is someone to protect and care for them (the most beautiful encounter involves a sort of baptismal scene with one john--see the picture below).
   
   So, Edina makes money, buys more steroids, and against the pleas of Adam and her doctor, walks on stage for her Miss Olympia world championship performance...
3. Top Gun: Maverick. Perfectly constructed video entertainment...a true blockbuster.
4. Dos Estaciones. In Jalisco, Mexico, Maria Garcia (played by Teresa Sanchez who won the best actress award at Sundance for this role) tries to keep her local tequila factor afloat.  It's a gorgeous factory, filled with employees who depend on her, and ruled by competition with the large American distillers who steal the best staff and get all the best agave.  Maria fights and fights, as long as she can.
5. The Kindness of Strangers. Venture into the homeless shelters and soup kitchens of NYC as the victim of domestic violence (her husband is a psychopath who eventually kills his own father) makes an escape with her two boys. In most cases, some one like this would end up on an even worse track...in jail or in trouble...but literally she's the fortunate one who gets small gifts of food, shelter, and forgiveness.  And legal representation.  Bill Nighy steals much of the show as a fake Russian restauranteur. Re-released by Netflix in 2022. 
6. Everything Everywhere All at Once.
7. The House. If the name Enda Walsh means anything to you, you've probably already seen this. Some would argue he's been carrying the entire Irish theater tradition on his back for years. This Netflix stop-action animation feature carries on the signature Walsh surrealism. First a mother "spins" endless curtains for a house given to them by an architect, after snobbish relatives leave.  Then a rat, in the same strange house,  tries to sell it.  He can't, but a very weird couple who visits and expresses interest moves in.  Forever.  Finally, Rosa is a cat and landlord of the same house again, this time after a huge flood.  No one pays their rent, including the hippie. A contractor comes to help Rosa, but instead of repairing things, he tears up the floor to build a boat. Rosa takes control of the floor boat, and sails off into the sunset.
8. After Yang. Premiered at Cannes in 2021, but released in theaters and streaming in March 2022.  Based on the 2018 short story "Say Goodbye to Yang," the story charts a futuristic family that, like most, has bought a first generation robotic child as a low-cost and perfect babysitter.  It's the thing families do in the future, apparently. Unfortunately, since babysitting doesn't really require the latest tech, a lot of these robot kids are burning out.  Faulty circuit boards or something.  Thing is, we love Yang, so father (Colin Ferrell) and daughter go to great lengths to try to save him.
9. Leonor Will Never Die. A love story to action films. Leonor is a retired filmmaker, until a television falls on her head while she's completing her last script.  What happens? Of course she has to star in the fantasy film she never completed.  Cue the action scenes with the most improbable heroic star we've seen in a long time. She's in fact the leader of the entire Philipino action canon, spilling out, and falling into, actions scenes at will.  She can't pay her electric bills, nor can she keep Ronwondo, a son she lost, from appearing in most scenes.  But she's the best ever...a fact you can't forget! 

Films I liked that didn't quite make the rankings of top films in 2022

1. Nanny. A Senegalese mother, undocumented, it stuck caring for the child of a wealthy family in order to pay to get her own sun transported illegally into France. You can imagine that it won't go well.

The very worst films of 2022

1. TikTok Boom! This is a documentary.  Hope you don't see it.   For two boring hours it repeats the headlines, with an aggressive anti-Chinese spin (as if this isn't our own fault), without adding a thought of it's own.  You'd think having four serious influencers in front of the camera might save the racism and froth, but sadly they all turn out to be as staged and pablum as the film itself.
2. The Worst Person in the World. Joachim Trier abandons his artistic vision to peer down the blouse of the main character in this movie.  The judges at Cannes must be old white men because they gave the actress, Renate Reinsve, the best actress award.  But, she's neither the worst person in the world, nor interesting. The film supposedly adds value to the "An Unmarried Woman" genre by examining the Oslo middle class, but I'm not interesting in parenting or decorating as film topics, either. 
3. WWI Poet movie--tries to explain how an idealistic pacifist poet becomes a grouchy gay asshole poet over the course of a lifetime.  Cameos by TS Eliot and Ezra Pound!