Here we are again — another year that somehow felt both five seconds and twelve eons long has come to a close. For me, a big highlight was definitely getting to see movies in theaters again (post-vaccination and with a mask on, of course). My first venture back was for “A Quiet Place Part II,” and soon after that I got to live my high school theater kid dream by seeing “In the Heights” on the big screen. For a bit, things seemed safe enough in New York for me to take the subway to my favorite cinemas further out in the city. I saw “Happy Together,” my first ever Wong Kar Wai film(!), at the IFC Center. BAM opened its doors to me — and my fellow A24 sycophants — for David Lowery’s booming summer epic “The Green Knight.” I caught Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” short film when it screened for a week on the Upper West Side. I even saw “Old” in an empty multiplex in Tempeh, Arizona.
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But of course, I spent most of my year indoors, scrolling aimlessly through my Apple TV and feeling unmoored. Sundance helped at the beginning of the year, as I and my friends and colleagues all tuned into the festival from our homes. I debated the merits of simulation theory with my film club thanks to Rodney Ascher’s “A Glitch in the Matrix” and became one of the only people on Earth (including The Great and Powerful Rodrigo Perez) with a soft spot for Karen Cinorre’s time-bending, kinda-feminist-kinda-just-crazy war drama “Mayday.”
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If nothing else, it was another year of good movies. There was plenty of weird, terrifying, substantive stuff out there. Female directors were killing it with exciting first features and historic returns to the big screen. Horror and overall genre weirdness got an unprecedented spotlight because few studios were brave enough to release their big titles this summer. People got to be gay in 4K: at shivas, in 1925 Montana, even in Ye Olde Medieval Times.
The list below reflects all that and more. Here’s hoping you enjoy, and that you have a happy and safe 2022.
Extremely honorable mentions go to “Cusp,” a harrowing documentary of modern girlhood by Isabel Bethencourt and Parker Hill; “Passing,” Rebecca Hall’s exquisite directorial debut based on the novella by Nella Larsen; “Flee,” a gorgeous animated documentary by Jonas Poher Rasmussen; “C’mon C’mon,” Mike Mills’s love letter to gentle parenting; “Lamb,” an Icelandic fable by Valdimar Jóhannsson; “Undine,” a delightfully strange German romance from Christian Petzold; and Saint Maud, Rose Glass’s inimitable tale of female religious ecstasy.
10. “Shiva Baby”
After much hype following its 2020 SXSW premiere, I was impressed that “Shiva Baby” managed to exceed my already high expectations. This is independent filmmaking at its best: a scrappy tale of twenties turmoil made by a first-time feature director. Filmmaker Emma Seligman used “Shiva Baby” as an opportunity to write what she knew (at least what she knew about bisexuality and Jewish chaos), and she produced a tale that is as refreshing and relatable as it is nail-bitingly tense. In the film, college senior Danielle (Rachel Sennott) attends a shiva where she is confronted with her overbearing family, a lost high school love (Molly Gordon), and the married man who’s been paying her for sex (Danny Deferrari). Set over the course of one day and filmed almost entirely in one location — a house in Flatbush, Brooklyn — “Shiva Baby” is a masterclass in pacing, cinematography, and acting. At a tight 78 minutes, this film leaves no room for error.
9. “Luca”
Hey, remember how Disney and Pixar made a gay movie this year? That’s okay, they don’t either. But they can’t stop me from screening “Luca” for my future children until it’s appropriate for me to just show them “Call Me by Your Name.” This sun-soaked tale of self-discovery, directed by Enrico Casarosa and written by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, follows Luca (Jacob Tremblay), a sea monster who discovers the pleasures of life on land after he meets a precocious fellow sea monster named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer). The two masquerade as human boys and befriend some townspeople in a quest for a Vespa, all while terrified that their true identities may be revealed. (Please imagine me looking at my laptop screen pointedly as I type this.) It’s charming, beautiful to look at, and endlessly rewatchable. It is either “The Celluloid Closet” author Vito Russo’s, best dream or worst nightmare. For all these reasons, it will be in my heart for a very long time.
8. “Censor”
Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond has a thing for the “video nasty” censorship movement of the 1980s when the British Board of Film Classification was working to stamp out excessive unsavoriness in the world of home video. In her first feature “Censor,” the protagonist Enid (an incomparable Niamh Algar) is a censor for the BBFC. She is awash in horrifying images — gouged eyes, rapes, disembowelments — every day. But she is truly disturbed for the first time when a mysterious feature appears to depict the disappearance of her own sister, a childhood trauma she cannot remember. As Enid searches for the truth, she walks a twisting path to madness, destined for the same carnage she’s so avidly worked to restrict. “Censor” is an unforgettable work of genius. Cinematographer Annika Summerson plays some truly nasty tricks to bring Bailey-Bond’s gut-wrenching vision to life, and Niamh Algar gives a harrowing performance. I had never heard of video nasties before I saw this film, but that period is an amazing setting for horror. I want to live in Bailey-Bond’s brain.
7. “All Light, Everywhere“
Theo Anthony is another director whose brain I would love to inhabit. With his debut feature “Rat Film,” Anthony connected rats — like, just the rodent, as a concept — to racism in major U.S. cities. This year with “All Light, Everywhere,” he takes viewers from the act of sight all the way to the economic and moral implications of police surveillance technology. With its impressionistic, cerebral style, “All Light, Everywhere” feels a bit like watching the smartest person you know explain something for two hours straight. There are tangents. It’s a little shaggy towards the end. But there are few films I watched this year that felt more rewarding — or more unique — than this one.
6. “The Lost Daughter“
Maggie Gyllenhall’s directorial debut proves that she is an incredibly thoughtful filmmaker with a lot to say, particularly about motherhood and middle age. Based on Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, “The Lost Daughter” follows Leda (Olivia Colman), a fractious woman on a Greek getaway, as she becomes entangled in the life of another vacationer (Dakota Johnson) and relives her struggles as a young mother. Colman, Johnson, and Jessie Buckley, as Leda in flashback, all give powerhouse performances. Cinematographer Hélène Louvart (whose name you might recognize from Happy as Lazarro or Eliza Hittman’s last two films) renders this frank, occasionally sinister tale in appropriately stark terms. I truly can’t think of anything bad to say about this movie, other than that it makes motherhood look impossibly, horrifically terrible.
5. “The Power of the Dog“
Oh Jane Campion, how I’ve awaited your return to the big screen! It has been a long 12 years since “Bright Star,” but New Zealand’s finest is finally back with “The Power of the Dog,” an exquisite gut-punch of a film. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Phil Burbank, an irascible rancher in 1925 Montana. When Phil’s brother George (Jesse Plemons) takes up with a kind innkeeper named Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a jealous Phil takes it upon himself to psychologically torture her and her effeminate son, Peter (Kodi Smitt-McPhee). Much is revealed in the slowest of burns: alcoholism, closeted homosexuality, a mysterious shadow in the mountains. A twangy Jonny Greenwood score and some jaw-dropping set work by Grant Major set the tone for a film that is every bit as mysterious and desolate as its main character. I am incredibly grateful to have seen this one in theaters rather than on my TV via Netflix, and I encourage anyone who can do so to do the same.
4. “The Night House“
I want to scream about this movie and never stop screaming. Not enough people are yelling about “The Night House”!!! From David Bruckner, director of “The Ritual” — an overlooked, Swedish-set folk horror film — “The Night House” centers on Beth (Rebecca Hall) as she struggles to cope after her husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) shoots himself. Despite offers of kindness from her neighbor (Vondie Curtis-Hall) and best friend (Sarah Goldberg), Beth begins a dark search for the truth about Owen’s life. Her house, which he built, is maybe haunted. And there may or may not be an exact replica of it just across the lake. I saw this movie during its brief theatrical run twice, and I still couldn’t tell you if anything that happens in it is real or not. (I mean that as a compliment!) As an avid horror fan, I was impressed that “The Night House” found new and inventive ways to scare me, and absolutely delighted to see a complex, multifaceted trainwreck of a woman — thanks, screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski!— as the lead.
3. “The Novice“
Speaking of complex, multifaceted female trainwrecks… “The Novice” just came out on December 17th, but it is — as I wrote in my Playlist review — absolutely fantastic enough to earn a spot in my top three. This is sound editor Lauren Hadaway’s directorial debut, and it uses whip-smart sound design and a frenetic score by Alex Weston to tell the tale of Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman), a college freshman who will stop at nothing to go varsity on the school’s rowing team. Fuhrman shines here, her intensity rendering Alex both entirely sympathetic and impossibly dour. It is impossible to look away as Alex hurtles from accomplishment to accomplishment, leaving little bits of herself (her sanity, her sweat, and even her skin) in her wake. Like most of the other films on this list, this is a difficult watch, but cinephiles will find it extremely gratifying — and, like me, will probably run to Hadaway interviews afterward to find out how they filmed all those balletic rowing sequences.
2. “Violation“
Now streaming on Shudder, “Violation” is a gut-wrenching rape-revenge tale by co-directors and screenwriters Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli. The film follows Miriam (also played by Sims-Fewer, if you can believe it) as she exacts revenge upon the man who raped her — and thus completely implodes her own life. This is what rape-revenge should be: disgusting, harrowing, real. This is what the actual physical and psychological impact of rape and murderous revenge could look like. Twitter wants to talk about Jeremy Strong’s method acting techniques; I want to talk about how Madeleine Sims-Fewer drank a pint of saltwater on the set of this movie so that she could film herself vomiting for 78 real, uninterrupted seconds. This movie is easily one of the best of its kind. It is, in my opinion, the most important film to be released this year. I mean it as high praise when I, a critic obsessed with horror and the rape-revenge genre, in particular, say I never want to see it again.
1. “The Green Knight“
I am slightly shocked to find myself putting “The Green Knight” at the number one spot on this list. In the past, I have found director David Lowery’s work to be boring at best and insufferably pretentious at worst. But after “The Green Knight,” I am officially giving Lowery carte blanche. I will pay to see whatever he makes next — and I will pay double if it once again stars Dev Patel as a hot, dumb hero. In “The Green Knight,” Patel plays Gawain, a lout who has to decide between keeping his honor or keeping his head after a fateful Christmastime duel. The journey to his final destination is breathtaking: Costume designer Malgosia Turzanska (“Hell or High Water”) and production designer Jade Healy (“Marriage Story,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”) are officially on my list of art department MVPs. This is a movie about the colors emerald green and mustard yellow. It is a movie that taught me that Arthurian legend is actually, like, pretty gay. It is a movie where several men hold Dev Patel’s face very tenderly. It is…the best movie of the year.