Going to the movies, buying a bag of popcorn, and burying yourself in a film for a couple of hours was still a routine when the year 2020 dawned. In recent years, streaming services like Netflix and cash-burning startups like MoviePass have plucked at the threads of the traditional theatrical distribution model, pushing consumer behaviour to its limits, but the industry has never seemed completely unravelled. Even as comic book blockbusters rose in popularity and smaller films switched to VOD distribution, the big screen maintained its legendary appeal. The films were screened there. Here are the top ten best movies of 2022 that have piqued people’s interest.
“Nomadland”
Director: Chloé Zhao
IMDB Rating: 7.3
“Nomadland” is the type of film that can go horribly wrong. With Frances McDormand as the lead and a cast of real-life nomads, it could come across as cheap wish fulfilment or blatant showboating in less capable hands. Instead, director Chloé Zhao creates enchantment with McDormand’s face and the real world around it, providing a poignant reflection on the desire to abandon civilization.
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
Director: Eliza Hittman
IMDB Rating:7.3
Hittman’s ability to create and direct such compassionate films has long been bolstered by her desire to cast them with fresh new talent, all the more to sell the reality of her stories and introduce moviegoers to promising new performers. Hittman maintains her history with “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” her most vivid work to date, one made all the more striking by its studio pedigree. (This is not the type of movies that many mainstream studios would back and produce, so props to Focus Features and Hittman for attempting to reach a wide audience.)
“First Cow”
Director: Kelly Reichardt
IMDB Rating: PG 13 for brief strong Language
Few filmmakers have grappled with the subject of what it means to be an American in the way Kelly Reichardt has. “First Cow” consolidates the profound themes of all that has come before it in a careful manner indicative of her captivating approach: It takes her back to the embryonic America of the 19th Century frontier in “Meek’s Cutoff,” touches on environmental issues in “Night Moves,” revels in the magnificent isolation of the countryside in “Certain Women,” and explores the dark travails of vagrancy in “Wendy and Lucy.”
“Lovers Rock”
Director: Steve McQueen
IMDB Rating:7.5
“Lovers Rock,” a paean to an invigorated young culture taking charge of its surroundings despite the social upheaval around them, is set during a single night in 1980 and features a soundtrack from the namesake reggae song. When listened to on its own, this lovely snapshot of boozy dance-floor seduction feels like an artist releasing years of repressed good vibes by applying his lyrical technique to pure, uncontrolled happiness for nearly the whole 68-minute duration.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things”
Director: Charlie Kaufman
IMDB Rating:6.6
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is both a self-parody and a significant break from Kaufman’s previous work because it spins his usual concerns inside out. While this oozing snowball of a breakup movies is yet another strange and ruefully entertaining excursion into the abyss between humans, it isn’t about someone striving to cross it for the first time. In contrast, Kaufman is now telling a storey about the schism itself.
“Beanpole”
Director: Kantemir Balagov
IMDB Rating: 7.2
Balagov’s icy “Beanpole,” based on Svetlana Alexievich’s book “The Unwomanly Face of War,” movies tells a glacially paced but gorgeously plotted storey about two women — best friends — who become so desperate for personal agency that they start using each other to solve the unsolvable arithmetic of life and death.
“Time”
Director: Garrett Bradley
IMDB Rating: 6.8
On home video, a woman’s 20-year struggle to release her spouse is turned into a poignant storey of hope. On the surface, Garrett Bradley’s “Time” poses a basic question: how can a 21-year period be depicted in a single film, let alone an 81-minute documentary? Its distorted opening images, which were taken from the first of a thousand video messages that a black Louisiana woman named Sibil Fox Richardson (aka “Fox Rich”) recorded for her husband as she awaited his release from the State Penitentiary, offer an equally straightforward response — it is measured in terms of loss rather than length.
“Da 5 Bloods”
Director: Spike Lee
IMDB Rating:6.5
As it careens through complex storey twists and different tones, “Da 5 Bloods” doesn’t always fit, with some big moments better accomplished than others.
Still, this pure distillation of a Spike Lee film exemplifies the rarity of an American filmmaker so sure in his instincts and style that nothing can slow them down.
“Martin Eden”
Director: Pietro Marcello
IMDB Rating: 7
“Martin Eden,” directed by Pietro Marcello, is a dreamy and surprisingly realistic Jack London adaptation done with more than a century of perspective, one that doesn’t bend over backwards to avoid modern audiences forgetting London’s themes.
Because London’s storey isn’t prescriptive — it offers readers just enough rope to hang themselves, and it sets them all up for the same traps that Martin does — it’s all the more compelling.
Bacurau
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles
IMDB Rating:7.3
The filmmaker of “Aquarius,” Kleber Mendonça Filho, returns with a fascinating and bizarre Western about the hazards of industrialisation. In numerous aspects, the picture is a natural progression from the Brazilian critic-turned-two-previous auteur’s works. “Bacurau,” like 2012’s breakthrough “Neighboring Sounds,” is a deep and broad portrait of a Brazilian town battling to defend itself against the gloomy shadow of modernity. And, like 2016’s irresistible “Aquarius,” “Bacurau” is constructed around an implacably stubborn lady who refuses to give up her place in the world — who refuses to let our unquenchable need for the future bury her meaningful ties to the past.
Published By: Bhavya Dedhia