My 10 best movies of 2022

    As the movie business becomes increasingly fragmented, it's almost foolish to create a list of 10-best movies for 2022 or any other year. Compiling such a list is more habit than anything else because it has become impossible to keep up with all movies released on all platforms.

   In September of 2022,  for example, some 28 documentary features were released in one form or another and that's not counting documentary series. 

   I know that it won't take long before I find movies I haven't seen on the 10-best lists of other critics. That's the way of things these days. 

    So I preface this 10-best list with a cautionary note. These movies are among those that I most admired and enjoyed in the universe of movies that I was able to explore.

    I didn't think about it while making this list, but as it turns out, five of the 15 films mentioned here (including honorable mentions) were directed by women. Moreover, seven of the listed films had women as their main character.

    Meaningful or just a coincidence of this particular year? Only time will tell.

    Oh well, meaningful or not, old habits are difficult to break, so here's my list.

1. The Banshees of Inisherin

A rueful Irish tale about a broken friendship between two men played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Writer/director Martin McDonagh took his story in a shockingly unexpected direction, leaving us to mull all that we'd witnessed. 

2. EO

Director Jerzy Skolimowski tells the story of a forlorn donkey whose adventures cast a profound light on the relationship between humans and the animal life of our beleaguered planet. Heartbreaking and beautiful moviemaking.

3.  Tar

    

Sophisticated, provocative and fueled by Cate Blanchett's fierce performance as a famous conductor, Tar gave director Todd Field a platform from which he could orchestrate a compelling drama about genius-level talent, power and its abuses.

4. Aftersun

I can't think of many child performances better than the one Frankie Corio gives in this story about a dad (Paul Mescal) who takes his 11-year-old daughter on a Turkish vacation.  Director Charlotte Wells took a relaxed but revealing look at the way a woman remembers the father she didn't really know.

5. Till

Director Chinonye Chukwu smartly builds the story of the 1955 murder that sparked the Civil Rights movement around a fiercely illuminating performance from Danielle Deadwyler, who plays the grieving determined mother of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Solid moviemaking.

6.  Top Gun: Maverick

Few expected Tom Cruise to score big with a sequel to a movie that opened in 1986. But Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski shrewdly surrounded the star with an appealing young cast led by Miles Teller. A movie about Navy pilots and the military? Partly. But this one's really about star-driven entertainment that delivers.

7. Nanny and Pearl

I hate doubling up on a 10 best list but these two horror movies feature strong work from cast and crew -- and, more importantly, were about something more than jump scares. Nanny gave director Nikaytu Jusu an opportunity to explore the relationship between a Senegalese immigrant and the liberal whites who hire her to take care of their daughter. Second in a series from director Ti West, Pearl features an astonishing performance from Mia Goth as an ambitious, sexually awakened woman consigned to a dreary life. Both movies show what can be done when horror meets with a bit of artistic aspiration.

 8. Happening

This French movie reached US shores at a time when few topics felt more incendiary and relevant than abortion. Director Audrey Diwan tells the story of a 23-year-old student (Anamaria Vartolomei) who hopes to become a writer. A one-night stand leaves Vartolomei's Anne pregnant. The year: 1963 and abortion is illegal in France. This  keenly focused movie shows the obstacles Anne must surmount to obtain an abortion. The result: Powerful and honest moviemaking.

9. Decision to Leave

It took me a while to warm up to director Park Chan-Wook’s tangled, complex take on film noir. Park (Old Boy) has little interest in creating a straightforward narrative but his subject is familiar: a married detective who holds himself in high regard (Park Hae-il) falls for a Chinese woman (a great  Tang Wei) who’s a suspect in a murder investigation. Cliched? Yes, but Park’s artfully fractured narrative pushes deep into the lives of the detective and his “prey.” Park isn’t so much telling a story as examining a provocative question: Can a lover ever be fully known?

10. Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza hits the target with a drama about an aspiring artist whose felony record locks her out of the job market. Director John Patton Ford, who also wrote the screenplay, engineers a crime story that makes Emily part of a credit card fraud scheme. Plaza's  performance burns through some late-picture improbabilities and turns this LA-based movie into a winner.

Honorable Mentions

1. After Yang

Korean-born director Kogonada displays a deeply developed aesthetic sense in this meditative look at a family's attachment to an android known as a “technosapien.” A restrained Colin Farrell creates the perfect character for the movie's transfixing calm.

2. Official Competition

Argentine directors Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn's entertaining, funny comedy focuses on a movie director (a terrific Penelope Cruz) who exacerbates and toys with conflicts between two of her actors (Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez). 

3. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Ridiculous? Of course. But this bit of stop-motion animation from director Dean Fleisher-Camp takes off from a YouTube hit, landing a charming, funny, and perceptive bit of cinematic play. Great voice work from Jenny Slate as the voice of Marcel.

4. Both Sides of the Blade

Director Claire Denis looks at a successful woman (Juliette Binoche) who becomes involved in a love triangle. Vincent Lindon and Gregoire Colin portray the men in a story that finds Binoche's Sara trying to negotiate two sides of a romantic coin while resisting the tug of her personal history.

A father and daughter wrapped in memory

      Dad is divorced. It's not clear how often he sees his daughter but we suspect that his visits are infrequent. Perhaps to make up for it, Dad has taken 11-year-old Sophie on vacation to a resort in Turkey. 

      In his early 30s, Dad finds himself in an ambiguous position: He's both friend and parent to Sophie and it's clear that he hasn't entirely worked struck the right balance.

      It's also clear that Dad is troubled. There are signs. While his daughter sleeps, Dad, who has a cast on his right arm, stands on the balcony of their hotel room swaying as he tries to light a cigarette. He's like someone trying to work out kinks, and we suspect the kinks are more than physical. 

      In her first movie, Scottish director Charlotte Wells pulls off a neat trick. She keeps things specific: A father and daughter play pool, doze in the sun or take boat rides. 

    At the same time, Wells wraps the movie's emotional life in a cloak of tantalizing vagueness. 

    Bifurcated and unsettling, Wells' approach allows for a challenging range of interpretive possibilities.

      Mostly, the daughter's point of view dominates. We'll eventually learn that Sophie is recalling this summer interlude as an adult with a baby and a wife. She's looking at old camcorder footage Dad took on that long ago trip, which Wells, thankfully, uses sparingly.

     Sophie tries to understand who her father might have been when she was at an age when she couldn't really take the measure of his life.

      Stroboscopic flashes of Sophie dancing with her father in a club disrupt the flow of calm imagery. Moments of frenzy that shatter the movie's placid surface.

      By now it should be clear that Wells' plotless, hazy approach places a heavy burden on the actors. 

       As the father, Paul Mescal creates a loving parent who seems to be harboring secrets. Mescal's Calum isn't about to allow Sophie to peer into areas he may not wish to examine himself.

        It's a tricky performance. The boyish-looking Mescal conveys a lot by simply allowing himself to live in the movie's accumulation of small moments. 

        Frankie Corio gives a great performance as Sophie, one of those amazingly natural turns that makes it seem as if no acting is happening.

        Corio's Sophie is still a kid. She can get caught up in an arcade motorcycle game with a boy who's about her age. But she's also anticipating change. She's fascinated by teenagers who invite her to share a few moments. Sophie watches with curiosity as the older kids begin to express their sexuality, an awakening that she has yet to experience.

         Wells has created a portrait of two people who share moments of amazing intimacy without really knowing each another, which perhaps stands as a metaphor for many human interactions. Wells allows us to feel the warmth of afternoon suns and the dissolution of tension that happens in the moments before one falls asleep at poolside. She lulls us into relaxation while simultaneously allowing unsettling undercurrents to ripple through nearly every scene.

          Of course, it's all a bit fuzzy. We're mostly looking at events as remembered by the adult Sophie. Maybe 'remembering' isn't quite the right word. She's dreaming the past with all its love, angers, and unrecoverable loss.

          Now and again, Wells shows us images of hang-gliders floating through the blue Turkish sky. These images, almost trivial from a vacation standpoint, might represent a way to think about memory --untethered drifts through time.

          Aftersun offers the pleasure of discovering a movie made by someone who knows how to speak the language of cinema. Wells isn't telling a story; she's sharing an experience, leaving us immersed in the emotions her film unleashes.