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 tale that takes an unexpected turn

     

   Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who appeared together in In Bruges (2008), reunite in The Banshees of Inisherin, the story of two former friends living on a fictional island off the coast of Ireland.

   Martin McDonagh, who directed In Bruges, locates Banshees'  characters on an island where the residents seem to regard the mainland as if it were another world. It is: Engulfed by civil war, Ireland feels more than a boat ride away from isolated Inisherin.

    A simple conceit drives the story. Once best friends, Gleeson's Colm suddenly and without explanation stops talking to Farrell's Padraic. We suspect that Padraic committed some terrible slight. He must have done something.

    That's not the case. Colm refuses to acknowledge Padraic's existence for no apparent reason at all.

    Faced with loneliness and beset by consternation, Padraic won't take "no" for an answer. Again and again, he presses Colm to explain his sudden change of heart.

     Eventually, Colm, an obstinate rock of a man, tells Padraic’s sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) that his former pal, is just too dull for sustained companionship.

      Siobhan counters. Padraic always has been dull so why shun the poor fellow now?

      Farrell excels as the good-hearted and insistently sincere Padraic, a guy whose social milieu consists of his farm and animals, most notably a pet donkey called Jenny.

    Padraic gives Jenny access to the cottage he shares with his sister, which -- not unexpectedly -- annoys her.  Siobhan yearns for better things and bristles under the weight of her island confinement.

     Later, we learn that Colm -- despite his stoicism and silent smoking -- is fighting a losing battle. Facing his own mortality, he realizes that he has accomplished nothing. He wants to devote the rest of his life to writing music for the fiddle he plays with a few other musicians at the town pub, the only place on Inisherin that accommodates any public gatherings.

      With the clock ticking, Colm has no time for distractions.

      At first, McDonagh seems to have made another movie steeped in colorful turns of phrase and Irish rue. But hints of darkness soon cast  a bit of a pall over the proceedings.

       The local policeman (Gary Lydon) sadistically abuses his son Dominic (Barry Keoghan). An old woman (Sheila Flitton) makes pronouncements of doom.

       The supporting actors excel, although Condon -- as the short-tempered, literate, and essentially decent Siobhan -- proves exceptional. Siobhan realizes that sustained isolation leads to unbearable desperation.

      The landscapes of Inisherin are stark, the ocean forbidding, and just about every aspect of life feels irrevocably meager.

      When the movie takes its darkest turns, we realize that McDonagh has serious intentions. In a fit of understated rage, an increasingly frustrated Colm pledges that every time Padraic talks to him, Colm will chop off one of his own fingers. 

        I won't tell you how the story arrives at its chastening conclusion but McDonagh takes us to places we hardly could have anticipated when the movie began.

        Fine performances and McDonagh's commitment to the odd edges of his material enables The Banshees of Inisherin to amuse, shock, and get under the skin, a bitter Irish chill of a movie.

        But more than an expression of Irish parochialism, this quasi-folk tale shows how tragic results can spring from something that borders on the trivial, irreparably altering the way life stumbles onward when something happens that can’t be made right.