My Favorite Films of 2022

If you could get past the onslaught of multiverse movies, it was actually a pretty damn good year for cinema. Several directors I admire took big risks and, in my mind, led us to some pretty interesting places. Here are my ten favorites from the year.

1. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is a wonderful ode to the joy and pain of making movies, a thoughtful and moving recollection of youth by one of cinema’s greatest storytellers, and, above all, an immensely entertaining motion picture. The film recalls another auteur filmmaker’s tribute to the power of cinema, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011), and falls into a recent sub-genre of top-tier directors reflecting on their upbringings (James Gray’s excellent Armageddon Time also fits into this category). But The Fabelmans has a special quality all its own, and also offers us the genesis of the broken family theme that’s present in so many of Spielberg’s indelible films.

Sammy Fabelman (played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord as a boy, then by Gabriel LaBelle as a teenager) attends his first movie with his parents, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), at the age of six. The film is Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and the images onscreen are seared into Sammy’s brain – along with a desire and need to recreate those images within his own home (particularly a rousing train crash sequence). When Sammy receives a train set for Hanukkah (along with an 8mm camera lent to him by his mother), he goes about shooting his first home movie.

The Fabelmans offers many ideas as to why a child might want to make films, but Sammy’s mother is able to identify perhaps the most enlightening reason – Sammy wants to exert some kind of control over the train crash. Mitzi understands this desire more than Burt, as she was a piano prodigy who gave up her dream, we presume, to raise her children (Sammy has three younger sisters).

I’ll stop here and segue into slightly more personal territory. Having control over some aspect of one’s life – particularly when there are painful outside factors beyond your control – resonates as a motivator behind creating one’s own world. In my personal creative work, I’ve tried to articulate the link between personal tragedy and my need to control the environment around me. If I’m unable to stop unpleasant or even traumatic things happening around me (the death of a parent, a struggle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder), perhaps I can control other aspects of my life, particularly my creative endeavors – and, ideally, reconcile the troubled aspects of my life through these endeavors. Although Sammy’s need to “control the train crash” isn’t linked to tragedy initially, it’s not long before events in his family life spin completely out of his control, and the only place for him to turn is to his filmmaking.

After the death of Mitzi’s mother, Burt asks a teenage Sammy to edit together a home movie from their blissful family camping trip. Burt senses there’s something wrong in his marriage, and he hopes Sammy’s film might lift Mitzi’s spirits. Sammy, a bit dejected that he has to temporarily put aside his ambitions to shoot an action-packed war movie with his classmates, goes about editing the camping trip footage – and, in the process, discovers hints of possible marital infidelity in the background of certain frames.

Spielberg is careful to show such empathy for both Mitzi and Burt during the slow dissolution of their marriage. There are no bad people in this movie, only flawed individuals trying to navigate an uncertain world. And as Sammy is tasked with directly facing an uncomfortable family secret, Spielberg is able to beautifully articulate how making films about one’s personal story can be quite painful and revealing – while making movies of more fantastical genres not mined from personal experience (westerns, war pictures) can be exhilarating and much more fun.

There’s a deliberate parallel here to Spielberg’s own filmography, in which his brilliance at making escapist entertainment in the early part of his career (think Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T.) eventually gave way to the filmmaker tackling weightier, sometimes quite personal subjects (namely, depictions of the Jewish experience in films like Schindler’s List and Munich). And it’s taken him 75 years to finally edit together his own home movie, and it was worth the wait.

In the film’s second half, Spielberg goes into delightfully unexpected territory, depicting Sammy’s high school experience in northern California, where his alpha male classmates taunt and harass him with anti-Semitic slurs and even violence. There’s an illuminating passage in which Sammy is asked to shoot and edit a film of Senior Skip Day, during which the senior class skips school and parties on the beach. When he screens the movie for his graduating class, we see that Sammy has made his cruel classmates look like golden gods – leading to a fascinating confrontation between chief bully Logan (Sam Rechner) and Sammy. Logan cannot understand why Sammy would choose to make those who bullied him out to be larger-than-life cinematic figures. This is a terrifically written scene, in which Spielberg (and co-writer Tony Kushner) get to play around with a variety of subjects, including a filmmaker’s intention, the ways in which one cannot control how others see their work, and the nature of art as a subconscious reflection of a filmmaker’s desires. Does Sammy want his tormentors to feel bad about their cruelty, or does he actually want to be one of them? What’s great about this scene is that Sammy truly doesn’t know the answer, and neither do we. That’s not the point. The Fabelmans is about an artist finding his voice and discovering what he wants to say and how he wants to say it – and we leave Sammy at a crucial juncture where he’s still figuring these things out.

I couldn’t help but identify with the film’s final scene, in which Sammy – now out of high school and about to start a job at CBS in Los Angeles – waits in the office of one of his heroes, the legendary director John Ford (played by director David Lynch in a terrific cameo). Sammy has now come full circle, and is face to face with the man whose films made such an impression on him as a young person. Without being too corny about it, I feel like I’ve sat in that office, too, staring wide-eyed at the poster collection of my hero (in my case, Martin Scorsese). Look, I’m no Spielberg and I never will be, but the feeling conjured up by this scene rings completely true. It’s about the giddy sense of a future where the possibilities are endless, where one’s lifelong artistic practice may one day pay off, where the horizon is always just ahead – and, ideally, framed correctly. That last one may only make sense once you’ve witnessed the final shot of The Fabelmans.

If The Fabelmans is still playing in a cinema near you, I cannot implore you enough to go see it. The adult audiences on which this kind of film depends for survival are simply not showing up at the cinema, despite the numerous exceptional entertainments released in the last year (including Spielberg’s own West Side Story, which should have been a powerhouse at the box office). The Fabelmans truly feels like a last stand for cinema. Yes, you can catch it on VOD, but for a movie that’s about the power of the moviegoing experience, it’s simply not the same thing. And, to put it bluntly, studios are going to stop making serious, thoughtful, intelligent movies like these if folks don’t show up to see them.

2. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

Martin McDonagh's latest film is a nerve-wracking, dread-inducing masterpiece. Compared to some of the director's prior work (as both a filmmaker and playwright), there's relatively little violence in The Banshees of Inisherin - and yet it feels as brutal and uncomfortable as anything he’s ever made. There's something quite haunting about the spareness and simplicity of this film's story, which really boils down to a falling out between once-best friends.

It's no accident that the Irish Civil War is happening in the background of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s feuding. The Banshees of Inisherin can be fairly easily interpreted as a parable about the folly of war - how what starts as a minor, rather stupid squabble turns into a game of bluffing, of following through with the most asinine and horrifying threats, until the situation escalates to such a point that there’s simply no going back for anyone involved.

But underneath the film’s allegorical nature is an astute examination of depression and loneliness, and I think that's what sticks with the viewer long after the film is over.

The feud between the two men could have been one-note and purely comical, but throughout, Gleeson clearly still has a degree of empathy for Farrell, no matter how much he'd like to shut him out of his life. And the basic reasoning behind his refusal to speak to his friend is somewhat understandable - Gleeson knows he only has so much time left, and he simply doesn't want to spend that time gabbing away with drunkards in a pub. But clearly something else is going on with Gleeson's character - and it may take me repeat viewings to fully catch the nuances of what he's going through.

Farrell, meanwhile, is wonderful as a character who's rather simple-minded and knows he's simple-minded (though he's smarter than he gives himself credit for). The film never feels like it's making fun of him, though - the power of Farrell's performance is in his utter sincerity and the way in which he communicates the pain of feeling intellectually inferior to those around him.

In a film full of beautifully concise, rich dialogue, there's perhaps no line more devastating than one uttered by Barry Keoghan's character: "There goes that dream, then." That sentiment may very well be the key to the entire film.

3. Babylon (Damien Chazelle)

To quote Brad Pitt’s character – an aging movie star named Jack Conrad – “FUCK YEAH!”

Look, I don’t have a whole lot to say about Damien Chazelle’s rather divisive film other than this: I was wildly entertained for 190 minutes straight, and that counts for a lot. The filmmaking on display here is electric, the performances from Pitt and Margot Robbie are superb, and the spectacle of the whole thing is truly something to behold. In an age where many movies posing as entertainment are dour and visually unexciting affairs, Babylon knows how to throw a good party – and, somehow simultaneously, deliver a stirring tribute to the early Hollywood trailblazers of yesteryear now relegated to the dustbin of history.

4. Armageddon Time (James Gray)

James Gray’s latest film, the semi-autobiographical Armageddon Time, is exquisite. It’s the kind of thoughtful, sobering American drama that used to be commonplace during awards season. But, as was the case with so many adult-skewing pandemic releases, the audience that would truly adore this movie largely slept on it.

As a portrait of where America is headed in the early Reagan years, the film doesn’t have a terribly happy ending, but it does offer something that feels true and even bleakly optimistic: those of us born with a "leg up" in the world (whether due to race, class, socio-economic status, etc.) may not be able to fully deny or forgo the advantages and opportunities that come our way, but we do have a choice to opt out of the fear-mongering, elitist power systems that create and abed monsters.

The hallmark of any James Gray film is a final shot that thematically ties the film together, beautifully articulating a singular idea behind the entire movie. Armageddon Time leaves us with Gray's stand-in Paul (Banks Repeta) walking away (figuratively and literally) from his private school in Queens, which hovers over him like a beacon of darkness. This is just one kid choosing a different path, to be sure, but it means something.

5. TÁR (Todd Field)

Despite loving director Todd Field's prior two films (Little Children and In the Bedroom), I wasn't certain what I'd think of TÁR (as I wrote in my review of B.J. Novak's Vengeance, I don't really like seeing online culture depicted onscreen - and the early word around TÁR was that it tackled 'cancel culture' head on).

Thankfully, this movie is beautifully and artfully made - and, more importantly, willing to wade into matters of moral ambiguity. We're never told how to feel about the title character, which is one of the hallmarks of a great character study.

I also quite admire how TÁR really thrusts you into Lydia Tár's world from the get-go - it's a film that expects the audience to keep up with it, and the specificities of an orchestra conductor's day-to-day existence and routine never feel anything less than authentic.

Cate Blanchett is, as always, riveting.

6. White Noise (Noah Baumbach)

In my mind, Noah Baumbach's White Noise is one of the major achievements of the year. I’ve read a lot of folks comparing it (unfavorably) to Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014), but that seems like a fairly broad and surface-level comparison between what are ultimately two pretty dissimilar adaptations of dense, “unfilmable” books. Plus, I loved Inherent Vice, so the comparison didn’t deter me in the least from eagerly anticipating White Noise.

If Baumbach is out to conjure up a feeling of existential dread, then he’s done so beautifully. Perhaps it’s the part of me that worries constantly about the long-term effects of COVID (are our organs really going to deteriorate faster if we’ve caught the disease?), but I genuinely relate to Adam Driver’s character’s fear of dying early from exposure to an airborne toxic event. Pretty much everyone in this movie is afraid of death and obsessed with how to avoid it, an all-too-real feeling coming out of the pandemic.

White Noise also has a stunning two-hander of a scene near the end of the film, with Driver and Greta Gerwig performing their hearts out in a bedroom confrontation. Excellent blocking and staging, memorable visuals, ultimately arriving at an emotional catharsis for both characters - what a sequence! This scene alone dispels any notion that the film is too academic or heady.

It kills me that most people will see this movie on a television, because White Noise is a spectacularly cinematic movie. It’s really exciting to see what Baumbach can do with access to such a large budget, and, like Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Bardo, this film could’ve only been made on this scale by a streamer. It’s just a shame these streaming titles’ theatrical runs aren’t better marketed and there’s barely a week-long window in which to catch them in cinemas.

7. Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater)

Richard Linklater’s latest film, Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood, is a joy to experience. This is Linklater’s third feature-length film shot using rotoscope animation (after Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly), and here, the stylized animation helps create an equal parts vivid and blurry account of the past – which is appropriate for a film modeled on Linklater’s own childhood memories growing up in Houston during the Space Age.

The year is 1969, and ten-year-old Stan (Milo Coy) is mesmerized by the Apollo missions being orchestrated just miles away at NASA. When the agency accidentally builds a lunar module too small for an adult, two officials (Glen Powell and Zachary Levi) recruit Stan to land this mini-ship on the moon. Although this top-secret mission is ostensibly the film’s A-story, it becomes fairly clear early on that we’re not supposed to take it at face value. This is, after all, a film about how the Space Race captured a child’s imagination.

Before we get to Stan’s mission, however, Linklater takes us on a welcome detour through a distinct time and place. Our narrator (a grown-up Stan, voiced by Jack Black) guides us through the cultural specificities of Texas in the late 1960s – from the long summer days of elementary school kids getting up to no good, to the television shows, movies and music that came to define the decade. The result is something resembling an animated hang-out movie (which is Linklater’s specialty) – and in an era where movies are becoming less and less fun, I’m happy to report that Apollo 10 ½ is an absolute blast.

Eventually, we do come back around to Stan’s Apollo mission – but instead of going all-in on the fantastical concept of a ten-year-old landing on the moon, Linklater does something more interesting. On the day of the actual Apollo 11 launch, we intercut between Stan’s imagined voyage into outer space and the real spaceflight commanded by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. While Apollo 11’s trip to the moon is in progress, Stan and his friends spend the day at AstroWorld. He returns home exhausted and ready to fall asleep… just as Armstrong and Aldrin are set to land on the lunar surface.

I can’t think of a more characteristically Linklater third act than one in which our protagonist is literally falling asleep on his mother’s shoulder as man successfully lands on the moon. As Stan weaves in and out of consciousness, Linklater adopts a cinematic style that’s part dreamscape, part faithful recreation of the moon landing – both happening simultaneously.

Ultimately, this third act set piece serves as a beautiful representation of memory – one that outright acknowledges the fancifulness and embellishment we bring to our own recollections of the past. In that sense, the split presentation of the moon landing is entirely truthful, in that it represents how it felt for a kid in that era – the excitement, the desire to be involved, the imaginings in one’s head of what it would be like to reach the outer limits of our world. Linklater bring this theme home in a beautiful closing exchange of dialogue. As his mother and father carry a fully-asleep Stan to his bedroom, his father says, “I just want him to be able to tell his grandkids he saw the first steps on the moon” – to which his mother replies, “Well, you know how memory works. Even if he was asleep, he’ll someday think he saw it all.”

8. Women Talking (Sarah Polley)

Sarah Polley's Women Talking is a phenomenal film, and despite receiving a Best Picture nomination at this year's Oscars, it somehow still seems to be underrated and under-seen.

Based on the seemingly period costumes and remote locale I had seen in the film's trailer, I assumed Women Talking took place during the early 20th century at the latest. So it's a wonderfully jarring moment when Daydream Believer by The Monkees comes blaring from a passing truck into the isolated Mennonite community in which our lead characters live. It suddenly re-contextualizes everything we've seen thus far - how the struggle to be heard within this community is completely divorced from (and yet, somehow, completely in tune with) the forms of cultural upheaval happening elsewhere.

Unlike last year's The Whale, a movie about a self-loathing victim that invites nothing but pity from the audience, Women Talking is a film of characters with agency, fiercely debating a plan of action and resistance. This is what happens when you create intellectual characters with conflicting viewpoints and put them in a room together - great drama! Women Talking would make Sidney Lumet proud.

Also, for a film that is largely about, yes, women talking, Polley never allows the proceedings to feel stagey. If anything, there's a real commonality with Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), particularly in the use of voiceover, which allows for a fragmented, almost stream-of-conscious style of filmmaking happening right alongside the more formal, scripted interplay between the gifted actors. Polley pulls off the balance beautifully.

9. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson)

Rian Johnson’s sequel to the blazingly original Knives Out (2019) might be the purely entertaining (and rewatchable) title on this list. A third outing with Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) can’t come soon enough. And it's worth mentioning that an onslaught of celebrity cameos in a film's sequel usually comes across as a cheap substitute for laughs - but here, they all work brilliantly (particularly Hugh Grant and Ethan Hawke, both hilarious).

10. Amsterdam (David O. Russell)

I knew I’d love Amsterdam, and I suspect a whole lot of folks who have been dissuaded from watching it (by practically every film critic and trade publication around) would enjoy it, too. After all, it’s a big cinematic gift with long, unhurried scenes full of movie stars doing marvelous character work, gorgeous cinematography by one of the best in the business (Emmanuel Lubezski), and perhaps David O. Russell’s most unfiltered expression of optimism in the face of cruelty and despair.

Is there too much explaining in the third act? Yes - but it’s by characters I’ve grown to love and actors who I love to watch. Does the film sometimes abandon its central narrative and indulge in O. Russell’s signature madcap group scenes? Absolutely - but, again, I love that. If it’s between a totally wild vision like this and some inoffensive, blasé film that more or less does everything “right,” I’ll take Amsterdam any day of the week.

Also, talk about a movie that uses its cast! Christian Bale is characteristically excellent, but what about Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola as the mismatched detectives, one a war veteran and the other a bumbling novice trying to prove his mettle? Or the surprise dynamic duo of Mike Myers and Michael Shannon, who are hysterical as a pair of government spies? And then there’s my favorite screen presence of all time, Mr. Robert De Niro, who clearly relishes the opportunity to make a critical third act speech against fascism (the role feels tailor-made for him, with O. Russell clearly asking De Niro to channel his well-known loathing of Trump into the performance).

There are no stock characters in O. Russell’s films, which is part of why his scenes are so chaotic and messy (in the best possible way) - everyone is trying to get along the best they can, but they keep running into the peculiarities and sharp edges of one another when attempting to have a conversation. Everyone seems to know each other, too, which is a rather charming trend in O. Russell’s prior work (The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, in particular).

It disheartened me to see film critics and trade columnists waiting with pitchforks to take this film down a peg, and actively root for and delight in its box office underperformance. Only Richard Brody of The New Yorker seemed to review the film on its own terms, as opposed to the others, who seemingly have it in for O. Russell, and whose complaints (namely, that the movie is overstuffed, has too many varying tones, exhausts the viewer with its relentless energy) are all positives, in my mind. And Amsterdam holds up wonderfully on a second viewing, to boot!