FAVE FILMS 2022

Welcome to my 2022 Fave Films list! I think it was an outstanding year for cinema. Much better than usual. Once again, I’ve assembled a list of my favorite films released in cinemas or on streaming or whatever in 2022. I don’t know where you can watch all of these. I watched some of these in cinemas but most of them at home so hopefully you can too. One interesting aspect about the majority of these films is their length. 2022 was the year of the loooooong running time & most of these films deserve distinct praise for their ambitious & epic scope, among their many other outstanding qualities. I say this every year, but these were my ‘favorite’ films, not the ones that I think were objectively the ‘best.’ However, it was a rare year when a film’s objective quality did affect my appreciation of it more than usual.

You will see many films here that many critics also included on their lists. I try not to let that influence me, but sometimes great minds think alike. What I think is more noticeable are the films that many critics included that I didn’t. Again, not because I thought they were bad, but because I liked these more, for personal & subjective reasons. So there aren’t any: low-flying airplanes in an unspecified country, angst-ridden Irish fellows, obese English teachers, stop-motion wooden dolls, space Smurfs, quirky detectives solving mysteries, German wars or peanut butter & banana sandwich-eating dead rock stars on my list. But I did see all of those films & can recommend them. Instead, I present these films that stuck with me the most & that best define my favorite disbelief-suspending moments of celluloid affection in what we call the year 2022.

And, I’m going to do something that I haven’t done since 2017 – I’m actually going to put these in order this year! Normally I simply do it alphabetically. But just for fun, let’s give this a try. I’m sure every time I look back at this list, I’ll want to change the order a bit. But I certainly do have a favorite film of the year, which I usually don’t. So let’s see where the next 9 films fall as of the moment I abandon this list with its final edit.

My favorite feature films

This list is in order

All my reviews are spoiler-free

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

My favorite film of the year & the only one I’ve rated a perfect 5 stars. This superb 2 hour & 19-minute masterpiece is the densest, best directed, best edited & best written movie of the year. I can’t imagine what the script even looks like. The acting is perfection & can go from thrilling to emotionally gut-wrenching in an instant. The action sequences are not only technically superb but astonishingly creative. Not since a Jackie Chan in his prime has martial arts been this humorously clever. This masterpiece from directors Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, a.k.a. ‘Daniels,’ (of SWISS ARMY MAN fame – one of my 10 favorite films of 2016, as well as the Turn Down for What music video on YouTube, which has over a billion views) has already solidified itself as one of my top-3 favorite films of this century. On par with ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND &… I don’t know, OLDBOY maybe? It’s the film I recommend the most out of any that has ever appeared in this blog, which started in 2011. If that doesn’t influence you to see it, I don’t know what else I can say.

Released 2 months before DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, Marvel’s dive into the same pool is an underwhelming bellyflop in comparison. With ‘only’ a $25m budget to work with (compared to STRANGE’S bloated $200m), this out-of-nowhere, mind-melting phenomenon gets my vote to win every award it’s nominated for at every ceremony. I’m at a complete loss for words when trying to talk about this film. I will be praising it for the rest of my life as a perfect example of a film that was seemingly made especially for me. I hope you love it at least half as much as I do.

THE BATMAN

A film good enough to be part of the Joaquin Phoenix Joker-verse (one of my top-10 favorite films of 2019), but which has decided to be its own thing, which I also respect. I was very apprehensive about this film at first. I had a feeling it would either be really bad or really good. And it would all hinge on Robert Pattinson’s performance. Could a young, emo Batman work? Using Nirvana’s darkest song as its theme music? With a 3-hour runtime? I now say yes, with 4.5 / 5 stars support. Pattinson’s role as Bruce Wayne is the only thing really holding it back. He puts the goth in Gotham, but he’s a little too mopey / low energy for my taste. But once he dawns the mask, he shines. I love the raw & unsanitized tone with heavy PG-13 content. Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman might be the best live-action version of the character ever. The entire cast is quite inspired really. I mean Colin Farrell is completely unrecognizable as the Penguin & is amazing. I just wish Paul Dano had more screen time. It’s this lack of face-to-face / one-on-one conflict between Batman & his adversaries that somewhat holds this film back.

The film was inspired by some of the best graphic novels or main-run storylines recent comics have to offer. But there’s the rub. I’d rather have seen a more direct adaptation of something far more specific. Because by dipping its toes in a variety of well-known material, it might create limitations for future films to adapt that material more directly. But writer / director Matt Reeves’ film steals from, I mean was inspired by, quite a few sources. The main 4 being: Frank Miller’s Year One, Jeph Loeb & the late, great (he passed away in June) Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween & Dark Victory (the latter being where the dominate red color scheme originates from) & Darwyn Cooke’s Ego & Other Stories. The future sequel seems to be heading in a Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls storyline direction (from D.C.’s post Flashpoint, New 52 reboot era), which I find very exciting. Yet, that’s another big story I’d like to see told as a more direct adaptation.

RRR

This year my goal of influencing others to watch these films I loved the most has no larger obstacle than doing that with this film. India’s 3 hour & 7 minute RRR (RISE, ROAR, REVOLT) is probably this blog’s hardest sell. I am by no means an expert in Indian cinema. There are a number of gems that I love stemming all the way back to Satyajit Ray’s 1950s APU TRILOGY to modern, over-the-top spectacles like 2010’s ENTHIRAN (an epic example of CGI ridiculousness). RRR is more like the good / respectable elements of 2011’s SINGHAM combined with nothing you have ever seen before & never knew you wanted or needed cinema to provide. Open your mind to what the world has to offer & just let this film wash over you. It’s a god-damned tidal wave of epic greatness.

Because of the existence of EVERYTHIG EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, I have to say that RRR is 2022’s 2^nd most bonkers action movie completely out of left field that you’re just not prepared for. This film has got: action, adventure, bromance, music, dancing, explosions, wild animals eating evil British colonizers, gravity-defying stunts, heart & soul. You can even divide it in half & watch it over 2 viewings due to its intermission (that’s what I did). As of this posting, it’s on Netflix so it’s easy to find. I honestly don’t want to say anything more about this film except that I give it 4.5 / 5 stars & it is one of my top-3 favorite films of the year. All of my favorite critics also put it in their top-10. Please give this film a watch. I promise your life will never be the same.

BABYLON

Damien Chazelle’s 3 hour & 9 minute epic is both a love letter to early Hollywood & a middle finger to the industry. This flawed but enthralling thematical mixed-bag radiates so much energy it’s at times overwhelming (at least to a cinema audience without the power to hit pause, like how I saw it in 2D in IMAX). It stars Brad Pitt & Margot Robbie, who are also both in ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD, though unlike that film, they actually share a scene together this time (only one though if memory serves). Why can’t they just be together onscreen? That’s what we want to see! It’s really up-&-coming actor Diego Calva who’s our anchor character who steers us through this film’s brilliantly organized chaos. I love movies about movies & making movies and historical elements of early Hollywood, which is why I responded so strongly to this film. As well as to my next pic, as you’ll soon see. So I’ve projected an amount of love onto this film that it arguably might not deserve. But I was certainly the target audience for this ambitious & bigger-than-life accomplishment.

The film undermined my expectations of what I thought it would be. I assumed we’d spend time with historical figures & pillars of the early industry. I thought we’d visit the set of D.W. Griffith’s 1916 epic INTOLERANCE or bump into Buster Keaton crashing a real train in 1926’s THE GENERAL or cut a rug with Charlie Chaplin on the dancefloor. But Chazelle’s script is a fictional representation of what the industry was like through the eyes of original characters who could generally represent a number of well-known stars (and would-be stars). The film’s 3^rd act mirrors the theme of the 1952 classic SINGING IN THE RAIN, which highlights the many struggles the industry faced transitioning between silent & ‘talkie’ films during the late 1920s. And it’s here that BABYLON begins to lose momentum & drags a little bit. But it nails the ending with a free-form Jazz crescendo & Stan Brakhage-inspired montage of chaotic imagery that takes your breath away.

THE FABELMANS

The ‘other’ movie about making movies that I loved this year was Steven Spielberg’s 2 hour & 31 minute ‘autobiography.’ I’m sure some liberties were taken, to protect the innocent as well as the guilty, as the saying goes. Again, this film undermined my expectations of what I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be about him sneaking onto the Universal Studios lot, pretending he already worked there to meet people and make connections (which he did). You know, about him breaking into the industry. But that’s actually the period in his life where the story of this film ends. Instead, it’s a heartwarming yet bitter-sweet story about him coming of age & falling in love with filmmaking as a child and into his late teens. It’s not the movie I wanted, but instead an unexpected insight into some of the most personal life experiences of perhaps the most iconic film director of his generation.

I’d heard that David Lynch has a cameo in the film, but I didn’t know who he played or how it tied in to the story. The scene appears at the very end of the film & apparently is almost exactly how Spielberg lived it. It’s one of my most favorite scenes of the entire year & absolutely inspired casting. In fact the entire cast is wonderful & gives poignant & period-centric performances that really helps immerse you in 1950s-60s Americana. Spielberg has always been great at historical accuracy, capturing the tone & feel of a bygone era. And never before has he done it so poignantly as here with his own childhood.

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May, this 2 hour & 27 minute Black Comedy / Satire from Swedish director Ruben Östlund (who shares my birthday) is my favorite film that I’ve seen by him. Two of his previous films (2014’s FORCE MAJEURE & 2017’s THE SQUARE) also appear as runners-up on my Fave Film lists of those years. This year he cracked my top 10. One who hasn’t put much thought into analyzing this film might easily or glibly dismiss it as being ‘pretentious,’ because this isn’t a film for everyone. But I’ve been marinating for decades in classic contemporary works by: Godard, Buñuel, Tati, Lanthimos or even Gilliam & believe it’s worth the effort required to keep digging open such cinematic oysters in hopes of finding such rewarding pearls. It takes aim at a variety of subjects, including: influencers, modelling, social hierarchies, feminism & political science. Arguably without any mold-breaking revelations & at times with a ‘university-level sophistication,’ admittedly. But this is a Comedy, so the genre requires one to be hit over the head with its themes after all.

For me, the film is most entertaining right at its center. It’s the meat of the proverbial burger, held together by two supporting buns. There’s a clever build-up that takes our protagonists to the ship & it’s the scenes on the ship that I enjoyed the most. In fact, the climax of part 2 might be the most hilarious sequence I saw in any film last year. Woody Harrelson is only in the film for like 20 minutes, but he steals the show & is the nucleus of what makes the scenes so good. Tragically, main actress Charlbi Dean (pictured on the left) died of an undisclosed illness in August at the age of 32. Knowing that before watching it gave her performance an added poignant gravitas & the ending a more emotional punch. An ending that one can spend quite a bit of time debating, which to some might be frustrating, but which is the kind of thing I often love. There’s a YouTube video where actress Dolly de Leon (Abigail) reveals what she ‘knows’ happens after the camera’s final cut & it’s exactly what I thought & what we all wanted to happen. Because what kind of queen deliberately gives up her throne?

NOPE

Jordan Peele’s 2 hour & 10 minute Sci-Fi / Horror / Mystery is another of the year’s ambitious & epic achievements from a director who I’d already admired & who pushed themselves above & beyond anything they’d previously achieved. Peele’s latest is a huge classic Spielberg nod & has often been compared to JAWS (for reasons that get into spoiler territory). I will say that it’s amazing visual storytelling with an epic scope that demanded a big-screen viewing, which is what I gave it. I’d seen his previous 2 films at home. It’s a bit of a slow-burn, but the strength of the characters carries it through the build-up & the intriguing & disturbing back-story, which sets the table for the conclusion’s theme & moral with just enough foreshadowing that it’s still a surprise that essentially demands a repeat viewing.

NOPE is my favorite Horror film of the year, though not the most frightening or disturbing. It’s kind of more of an Adventure / Action film to be honest. With just enough of a Western motif to get away with its pacing & character work. I do wish there was more conflict among its characters though. To play devil’s advocate, that’s what kind of holds the storytelling back a little. Those intensive moments that Peele did so well in his first 2 films is somewhat lacking here. Daniel Kaluuya’s performance is a bit too reserved / deadpan for what could have been a much more intensive interaction among the film’s other characters. But that is what allows the Mystery elements to shine at least. The characters experience events together with the audience, which helps us empathize with them instead of taking our focus off of the larger story. If that makes sense. That’s how I feel anyway. If you haven’t seen it, avoid all the trailers, especially the most recent one, which gives away the fucking money shot / surprise ending!

DECISION TO LEAVE

Watching this 2 hour & 19-minute film is witnessing an absolute master director at the top of his form. This is a tragic romance wearing the skin of a Hitchcockian thriller. This could be called Park Chan-wook’s VERTIGO. This film will challenge you more than any other on this list. It’s a sophisticated work worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as his previous films OLDBOY & THE HANDMAIDEN (the former I’ve already pointed out as maybe one of my top-3 favorite films of the century, the latter one of my top-10 films of 2016). Above all else, it’s a tragic romance, told using the allegory or even fable of a love affair between a mountain & the sea. A love so forbidden & ephemeral that to confess it is to betray it, as if to invoke primal forces to aid in its undoing.   

The film is dense with symbolism &, if you speak Korean, even more detail in the specific language that actress Tang Wei uses as a Chinese-born character speaking Korean, having learned it through period dramas, making her sound even more elegant than a native speaker (imagine if a non-native English speaker studied the works of Shakespeare to learn the language). Yes we’ve seen this story before, about a cop falling for a suspect & trying to help her, etc.. But the film’s uniqueness comes from its Eastern setting. Like how Kurosawa’s RAN is still Shakespeare’s King Lear, but when reset in Japan’s Edo Period, it transforms into something new. And as is appropriate for the genre, the ending is perhaps the most breathtakingly crushing of any film of the year. In my humble, perfect.

TÁR

Todd Field’s 2 hour & 38 minute biopic of a fictional character will likely give the amazing Kate Blanchett her 3^rd Oscar. This isn’t your typical success story, focusing on the rise of a talented conductor / composer who faces ‘extra’ adversity as a queer woman, etc.. This is a film that begins with an amazingly accomplished maestro whose world is her oyster. And then begins chipping away at her like Michelangelo realizing his statue of David more sincerely held a monster within that beautiful stone that needed to be exposed instead. Or like David Lynch exposing the dark underbelly of the seemingly perfect town of Lumberton in BLUE VELVET represented here personified. The titular character is exposed to be a fanatical control freak who grooms & manipulates underlings with seemingly ruthless detachment to serve her own career. There’s a biting social commentary motif of cancel culture that manifests itself perfectly in my favorite scene in the film & one of the year’s best choreographed. It’s on YouTube titled, ‘Tar Offends BIPOC Pan-gendered Person During Lecture’ if you want to taste this film before you fully commit. Pay careful attention to Blanchett’s position within the room & the frame to see how her manifestation of taking control of the situation is choreographed. It’s stunning.

Todd Field is someone I’d really only known as the guy who played Nick Nightingale in Kubrick’s 1999 film EYES WIDE SHUT. But this is the 3^rd feature he’s directed. His amazing directorial talent seemed to have come out of nowhere. I’ll admit that it begins as a slow burn, with lots of exposition, but the film builds like a slow crescendo to an unrelenting climax. I think TÁR is essentially about the now more important than ever question of ‘can you separate the artist from the art?’ ‘To what degree should we?’ And how that’s always going to depend on whatever social zeitgeist is currently controlling a cultural narrative. What are we willing to forgive about the individual whose work is not only objectively great but means so much to so many people? I for one won’t give up watching the films of some directors whose personal lives have sickened me or freaked me out (Polanski, Bertolucci, Allen, Kim Ki-duk, Hitchcock, etc..). But maybe you’re unable to & that’s a debate we should be able to have, & continue having, without throwing each other under the bus as well.

ATHENA

The shortest film on this list, at 1 hour & 39 minutes, is French director Romain Gavras’ modern-day ‘Greek’ tragedy that ignites an entire country ablaze. Using only a handful of long takes with superb choreography, this French Drama / Thriller is a powder keg spectacle. The opening 12-minute (cleverly-edited together to appear as one) shot gets a lot of media attention & will absolutely & instantly absorb you into this violent world. Though a little light on story, it makes up for that with sheer visual majesty & numerous characters who scowl expertly. Or as the Indian Express put it, ‘it grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. It makes you submit yourself to being hurled violently from one scene to the next, keenly aware the entire time that you’re strapped to a vehicle of chaos, headed towards the edge of a cliff.’ The film outlines the many flaws of mob mentality & how those looking for reasons for rebellion will always find one. And the more indoctrinated & radicalized one is, the easier it is to be manipulated into fanning the flames of justice only to burn yourself in the process.

The film premiered on Netflix & it was my mate Dany who 1^st recommended it to me. I’d heard mention of it but my reaction to the trailer made me watch it within days. I know that the cinematography for AVATAR 2 & TOP GUN: MAVERICK were far more complicated & technically advanced, but I still found some of the techniques in this film so confusing I had to watch the 37-minute ‘making of’ doc on YouTube to discover just how some of these shots were done. The director’s previously directed 2012 music video of Jay-Z, Kanye West & Frank Ocean’s song No Church in the Wild was no doubt a ‘proof of concept’ blueprint for what he imagined ATHENA should be. I will admit that I saw objectively ‘better’ films last year, but like in all my Fave lists, there’s always a guilty-pleasure pic or two since there’s no accounting for taste & this year I’m highlighting & recommending this more overlooked gem, which I’m looking forward to happily watching again for the 3rd time.

I’ll begin the Horror section by pointing out some honorable mentions. These first two I actually rated 4 / 5 stars, but the other 5 films listed below I liked a little more. The first is BARBARIAN, which broke the typical paradigm of storytelling, which I really appreciated. I didn’t know where the plot was going & it’s a great film. I don’t understand why some people are naming this their favorite &/or the ‘best’ Horror film of the year though. The second is THE INNOCENTS. Swedish children discover they’ve got superpowers & begin using them to hurt people. There is some very Kubrick-inspired cinematography & sound design elements that make this film very unsettling to watch.

These next three get a solid 3.5 / 5 stars and round out my top-10. BONES & ALL is a really well-made film & I love director Luca Guadagnino (whose 2018 SUSPIRIA remake was one of my top-10 favorite films of that year). A highly-recommended cannibal romance. Then we have THE SADNESS. This very gory Taiwanese ‘zombie’ film is a must-see, though a little light on story. And rounding out the top-10 is probably THE MENU, which is actually light on the horror elements, until the end. Really good, but many people seem to have loved it more than me. For the record, I really liked 2022’s HALLOWEEN ENDS, though that’s not a can of worms I really want to open in this blog. I hated 2021’s HALLOWEEN KILLS (the 2^nd in the trilogy) though, after really liking 2019’s HALLOWEEN. But there you go.

 

My favorite Horror films

This list is also in order

X

As previously mentioned, NOPE is my favorite Horror film of the year. X & PEARL are similar in that neither are particularly frightening (though they’ve both got their moments), or the goriest or even the most suspenseful. They are a strange brew of solid characters, performed amazingly, directed expertly & whose story unfolds unexpectedly. For me, X stands a little above PEARL in that there is a lot more talent in front of the camera. More interesting characters, more subversive content as well as a higher body count. Mia Goth has cemented herself as a modern Horror icon with her performances in both films. Her rocket to fame in 2022 was seemingly only matched by one of X’s co-stars, Jenna Ortega (of TV show WEDNESDAY & 2023’s SCREAM VI fame). Goth plays 2 characters in X (also the old woman, Pearl) & you’d hardly know that as a casual viewer. X is another one of those movies about making a movie, which again, I really like. The fact that it’s a Porno, & the film is set in the late 1970s, makes the story that much more seductive. The entire cast is brilliant.

Director Ti West is someone whose career I’ve been following ever since 2009’s slow-burn, underappreciated, atmospheric & great HOUSE OF THE DEVIL. I really enjoyed his 2011 follow-up THE INNKEEPERS as well. He kinda lost me with 2013’s THE SACRAMENT (the plot is obvious & therefore not suspenseful) & then he dipped under my radar because it looks like he only directed TV shows until 2022 with the X trilogy. Oh yes, this is going to be a trilogy. Read on for more.

PEARL

PEARL is a prequel to X, starring Mia Goth as the older woman (Pearl) from X when she was a young woman. Whichever film you want to watch first I don’t think matters. I’d probably start with X though. If X springboarded Goth into the mainstream as a modern, masterful scream queen, PEARL is a high-dive, another-level acting performance altogether. Goth is an actress, not just a character actress. Her performance in Pearl is award-worthy. Her end-of-film monologue is more haunting and memorable than anything Brendan Fraser did in THE WHALE (no disrespect to him). There’s a clear WIZARD OF OZ motif at the core of PEARL, which is apt since the story is set on a farm in 1918. The film has this glean of haunting nostalgia that permeates through every scene, adding discomfort to an already unsettling story about ambition, madness & desperation. I’ve just watched 2023’s Brandon Cronenberg film INFINITY POOL (probably going to be featured on next year’s list), starring Goth (among others) & she’s a god-damn tour de force. Thank god somebody finally tapped her true potential by giving her such amazing material to make her shine. Because she’s fucking amazing.

There are numerous debates online & among many of my favorite critics & YouTube personalities as to whether ‘X or PEARL is better’ as well as ‘are X & PEARL as good as many think,’ etc.. Usually it’s the hard-core Horror fans who criticize the pair for not being ‘Horror enough.’ And I get that. But like NOPE, there’s more here than just something to make us feel afraid in the dark. These are good stories, amazingly performed & masterfully directed. Ti West’s conclusion to this trilogy is called MaXXXine & will be set in 1980s Hollywood (I can’t say more because of spoilers if you haven’t seen X). It is a sequel to X. No release date has been set as of this posting but hopefully it’ll be released by late 2023 or early 2024.

YOU WON’T BE ALONE

This is a 1 hour & 48 minute film from first time feature-film director & writer Goran Stolevski, who hails from the Republic of North Macedonia, as it’s now called. Though he now lives in Australia, who partly funded this project & is Australia’s official entry for Best International Film for this year’s Oscars. Again, one of my favorite Horror films is actually not that frightening. A young 19^th century girl is kidnapped by an evil spirit & transformed into a witch. Fast-forward to adulthood, she’s then played by Noomi Rapace in her original form. I say this because throughout the film she kills village folk & transforms into their identity, who are then played by other actors. The elder womenfolk can often spot her evil presence, so she’s forced to keep on moving on from village to village, consuming identities as she goes, & existentially pondering where the separation is between her true self & those she consumes.

And that’s the source of the film’s malevolence – you’re trapped inside the head of the witch as she wears the skin of humans. And as Guardian critic Luke Buckmaster points out, it’s like Wim Wenders’ film WINGS OF DESIRE except instead of angels incorporating themselves into our mortal realm & us being privy to their psychological musings, it’s the inverse. We’re experiencing a visitor from the other place. One who doesn’t view humans in wonderous awe, but in melancholic weariness. And in a constrained & somewhat suffocating 1.44:1, square-ish, aspect ratio that constricts our view more tightly on the characters, often in close-up. This recommendation came from my friend Tyson, who insisted that I watch it & I’m glad I did. It wasn’t released by A24, but it has that sort of feel to it. One of those ‘arthouse’ films that’s sometimes a bit polarizing, but which I often gravitate towards.

TERRIFIER 2

The unrated, 2 hour & 19 minute film TERRIFIER 2 is not for the faint of heart. It wins the goriest scene of the year award for sure. It is relentlessly sadistic & twisted. It’s a violence for violence’s sake spectacle filled with underwhelming acting performances & a script that needed a few more rewrites. And it’s amazing. Art the Clown, modern Horror’s most notorious & sickest fuck, is back with a vengeance. Slaughtering like only he can in the most exploitative & disgusting ways put on film in 2022. Even as a Horror lover, you will probably either love or hate this film. It caused some people to need to leave the cinema mid-way through because of how brutal some scenes are. It is tasteless. It is trash. It has very few redeeming moral values. Everything some critics said about the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, by the way. And those two films are similar. Because in their own individual ways, they’re both great.

Art seems to be supernatural in nature, though that’s never addressed or explained at all really. Kind of like Michael Myers. Art’s new hallucinated(?) little pale girl friend steals every scene she’s in & I wish she was in even more of the film. This is once again director Damien Leone’s world. He directed the 2011 TERRIIER short that introduced Art as well as 2013’s ALL HALLOW’S EVE (which incorporates most of that short into the feature film) & 2016’s TERRIFIER. Art is his toy to play with as he sees fit & all I can say is that I’m really looking forward to part 3. Apparently there were scenes that were deemed ‘too over the top’ for TERRIFIER 2. Maybe they’ll change their mind for part 3 & include those anyway.

SMILE

There are many critics who didn’t like the 1 hour & 55 minute SMILE as much as me. And that’s cool. It’s possible that BARBARIAN was objectively better, etc.. But I really liked the atmosphere & tone of this film. It has a dreamlike quality that forces the characters to question their own reality & the authenticity of everyone they encounter. The ending reminded me of a great scene in HEREDITARY. It’s got a pretty great ‘monster’ who’s revealed at the end. I can’t look at any dead-eyed, artificial smiler in any customer-service position anymore without thinking about this film. That’s how deeply it’s tapped into my psyche. The acting isn’t first-rate here, but absolutely & adequately creepy.

First-time feature director Parker Finn expanded his 2020 Horror short LAURA HASN’T SLEPT (which you can watch on YouTube) into this greatly fleshed-out work that has become quite successful (earning $217 million globally off of a $17 million budget). Time will tell if this remains a great stand-alone work (like IT FOLLOWS), or if the financial temptation of cashing in on a sequel is too great. As of this posting there is no announcement of one being greenlit. But consider my ticket pre-paid if one comes.

Special Mention

MARVEL’S WEREWOLF BY NIGHT

None of the 3 Marvel Studios films nor the 3 TV series released in 2022 got more than 3.5 stars from me. The one exception is this 52-minute ‘special’ released on Disney+, which is whatever the film word for the book term ‘novella’ is. Filmella? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute & the British Film Institute consider anything at least 40 minutes a ‘feature,’ but I like my word better. So this horror filmella, directed by composer (& basically 1^st time director) Michael Giacchino (Oscar-winning composer of Pixar’s UP & who also composed the music for this) is a masterful nod to the classic Universal horror films of the 30s & 40s. Underlined by an obvious WIZARD OF OZ motif, this single work sets a grand stage, a high bar & springboards Marvel’s entire ensemble of horror & monster content into the MCU with the darkness & craftmanship worthy of what their more mature material demands. Future projects such as BLADE or any other member of the Midnight Suns ensemble all need to look to this filmella for their inspiration & standards moving forward.