My 2022 in Movies

As I was putting together my year in review, The Year That Was: 2022, I was writing little blurbs about each movie I saw this year that I really liked. It got to a point, however, that the list was getting a little too long for a post meant to just wrap-up the whole year, so I decided to cut it from there and put it into this, its own post.

With that said, here's a list of all movies that I enjoyed this year presented in the order in which I saw them:

Writing With Fire (2021). Directors Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas made a really great documentary about an all-female run news organization in India.

The Power of the Dog (2021). Jane Campion made a gay little Western that I initially thought was all right, but then I couldn't stop thinking about it for days so then I decided "No, actually, this is great."

Nightmare Alley (2021). Guillermo del Toro sure knows how to tell a story about some weird folks.

The Player (1992). A fun Altman movie about making movies and then there's a murder and then there's more movie stuff and it's fun!

The Batman (2022). No, Batman did not need to be rebooted again, but yes, this was a very good movie that Matt Reeves should be proud of.

Memories of Murder (2003). Many will say that Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder is like a Korean Zodiac, but it turns out they'd be wrong and it's the other way around; David Fincher's Zodiac is an American Memories of Murder.

Prey (2022). The studio's a coward and should've let Dan Trachtenberg shoot and release this Predator prequel film in Comanche. That said, do yourself a favor: Turn on the Comanche dub, sit back, and enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed.

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019). Dan Gilroy's film about art snobs being mysteriously offed made me think about my own engagement with/appreciation of art and that made me appreciate it.

Alps (2011). Yorgos Lanthimos does his thing and makes grief and grieving an awkward affair with incredible results. I loved it.

Suspiria (2018). Luca Guadagnino does something special with this remake; he takes the Dario Argento classic, truly makes it his own, and the results are so astounding that I was compelled to own a physical copy of it.

X (2022) & Pearl (2022). Speaking of owning physical copies of movies, Ti West's and Mia Goth's X and Pearl...hoo-boy. So good I had to buy them both. X is a nice little slasher send-up, and Pearl is its prequel, and both are so good and so different. I think the whole ensemble in X is great, but Mia in Pearl is transcendent. There's a third movie coming out next year that's part of this series and given how good these two are, I'm both excited and a little scared. Can it live up to these two? Time will tell!

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021). This is a movie shot in a documentary style about a shell named Marcel who wears shoes. Marcel lives with his grandma in an Airbnb and it's about them and family and life and it's very cute and I teared up a lot while watching it.

Confess, Fletch (2022). You know how a lot of people saw Knives Out and were like "I could watch a thousand movies about Benoit Blanc solving mysteries!" and then Netflix decided to give Rian Johnson a deal to do just that (well, three, not a thousand)? That's how I feel about Jon Hamm as Fletch. Give me three-or-more of these, please.

The Menu (2022). Mark Mylod's film about foodie folks being invited by a chef of some renown to a meal to end all meals made me think about my own engagement with/appreciation of food and fine dining and that made me appreciate it.

There are three films that are seemingly beloved by the masses that I also saw but did not share the love for: Malignant, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Barbarian. Make what you will of that information.

There's time left in this year and movies left to see, so I might be updating this post, but for now...