Cinema 2022: Best & Worst

Below are the ten most satisfying and memorable films I saw in 2022: 10. The Velvet Queen A- The first of four documentaries that managed to make my top 10 films in 2022 (the fact that all four are technically 2021 films is a separate issue, one of the frustrating limitations of the regional market in which I live), The Velvet Queen is easily the most visually beautiful of them. I could easily tell you this is worth watching for the nature footage alone. What makes this an even richer experience as a film is how it is about two men on the hunt for an elusive snow leopard on the Tibetan pleatau—not to kill, but just to get photos of it in the wild. Along the way, they get a lot of stunning footage and images of other wildlife and scenery, in a serene narrative in which they also develop a rapport with the sparsely populated native people. Spoiler alert, they do eventually get hard-won shots of the animal they search for, and not only is it worth the wait, but the entire journey is every bit as rewarding. The sense of joy among these men, just in the search itself, being wholly engaged in an activity they truly love, made this one of the most infectiously joyous films I saw all year. What I said then: “Joy” is a somewhat tricky word to use for this film, actually, because for Munier and Tesson, emotion that intense comes in short bursts. Most of the time, a better word might be serene. We get voiceover narration of journal entries, and sometimes see conversations between them, about how contented they are just to pick a spot in the wilderness, sit still, and wait, for hours. As they do this, they get the photos and footage that packs the film that is The Velvet Queen, usually of wildlife but often just of landscapes, all of it stunning and gorgeous. Sometimes, you think you’re just looking at landscape and then you’re informed of the camouflaged wildlife you didn’t even realize was in the frame. 9. The Banshees of Inisherin A- The crackerjack team that brought us In Brudges in 2008 returns this year with a tale set much earlier, on a remote island during the Irish Civil War in the early 1920s, now somehow simultaneously melancholy, shocking and funny. Its plotting suggests extremities of behavior you won't believe they will actually go to, and then it indeed goes there. It is deeply philosophical as well, posing the conflicting attitudes of what's really important in life: leaving a legacy that lasts after death, or appreciating the relationships that exist while you're living. Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell are longtime friends, and one of them decides he doesn't want to be friends anymore. This is the story of the fallout of that decision, told with a depth of humanity that is greater than its simple premise might initially suggest. What I said then: The Banshees of Inisherin is the kind of movie that, where other films might hint of an uncomfortable path and then pivot, instead leans right into those paths. Colm’s and Pádraic’s story is one of cascading wrong moves, the kind that turn friends into enemies. You know, kind of like a civil war. 8. The Fabelmans A- When The fablemans began, with its opening scenes shot in soft, dreamlike, Spielbergian tones that felt particularly on the nose given its widely known autobiographical nature, I quickly began to think: oh no, I may not like this movie. And then, what followed was a series of what might best be called "memory vignettes," edited together to create a brilliantly constructed overview of Spielberg's lightly fictionalized life. Once the entire puzzle is constructed, those first scenes fit as perfectly as any other piece. This is all about a young man's unabating interest in filmmaking, both in the face of and informed by the divorce of his parents in his teen years. Admittedly, The Fabelmans only works as an excellent work of art when you have a working knowledge of Spielberg's art and career, but this is hardly unique among great works of many great artists. And Spielber may be by and large a populist filmmaker—garnering him many fans and critics alike—but he is also clearly capable of making great art, this example being hardly his first such example. It does, however, make a case for his crowning achievement. What I said then: At age 75, clearly Spielberg is a lot closer to the end of his career than to its beginning. He no doubt has several movies left in him, but one can easily understand why he might have wanted to get this one done well before anything might force him to slow down. Nearly thirty years ago, he won his first Best Picture Oscar for Schindler’s List, which was clearly deeply personal to him as a Jewish man. This film, on the other hand, is deeply personal to him as a family man, as someone with a kind of all-encompassing empathy rarely found. You can feel the love he has for his parents, even as he dramatizes some of their less flattering behaviors toward each other. Even more keenly, you can feel the passion he had, and has, for filmmaking—and the respect his parents developed for that passion. 7. Lingui, the Sacred Bonds A- In contrast to the admittedly far more entertaining The Woman King (which I would honestly place at #11 on this list if it went that high), if you want a sort of immersion into an African culture, but with a far cleaner authenticity, then Lingui, the Sared Bonds is the way to go. This one isn't "fun," nor does it adhere to broad storytelling tropes in an attempt to invite audiences in. Here, the characters do that effectively on their own, a 15-year-old girl seeking an abortion in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the Chad capital of N'Djamena, with the assistance of her increasingly empathetic and increasingly desperate mother. The emotional journey focuses more on the deeply devout Muslim mother, offering a unique perspective on otherwise universal struggles. What I said then: The story, in retrospect, is more about the emotional journey of Amina, the mother, than that of Maria, the daughter. The daughter knows who she is and what she wants from the start, and doesn’t change beyond obvious effects of the trauma surrounding however she got pregnant. It’s Amina who is a different person by the end of the story than she was at the start, although her deep love for and fierce protection of her daughter is never in doubt. Lingui is also a great movie about a mother-daughter bond, the kind that gets more healthy as the story goes on. 6. Triangle of Sadness A- One of the great surprises of the year, Triangle of Sadness is basically three short films in one, that being just one of the "triangles" referenced by the title, which is honestly misleading. One might hear that title and immediately assume this is a deeply depressing film, but on the contrary, it's a deeply biting satire, skewering the super-wealthy in ways only Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) can. The three separate stories have only two characters in common, working models who are a young couple, their widely varying environments becoming cause for widely diverse discussions and examinations of finances, wealth and power. This film shifts from a fashion runway to a luxury yacht to a remote island, each location shifting the balance of power and dominance among the huge ensemble cast of characters. The second act is especially thrilling, something I might call an "almost-disaster movie," and then the third act gets darkly funny as people are forced to have their ideas subverted. What I said then: Sitting through Triangle of Sadness, regardless of its length, is a surprising experience in richly rewarding ways. Its final moments bring things around perfectly, with just the right amount of ambiguity. Honestly, the more I think about this film the more I feel impressed by it. 5. Tár A- This is a densely intellectual film, another one with satirical undertones, which lives up to the critical hype. That didn't translate into box office success, but no matter; it remains one of the best films of the year. I saw this the same weekend as Triangle of Sadness, seeing this one first, and in the end I found they made fantastic companion pieces, great films to watch back to back. Cate Blanchett gives the best performance of the year as an egotistical and borderline sociopathic genius music conductor, one who gets called out on ambiguously problematic behaviors, and not even its often pedantic dialogue steeped in classical music history could keep it from being fully absorbing from beginning to end. It's a compelling thought experiment to consider how wildly different this film would be if the script were exactly the same but the lead part were a man instead of a woman—just one of the many layers of consideration when contemplating the implications of this acutely nuanced film. I very much look forward to watching it again. What I said then: Tár is the opposite of populist entertainment, by many accounts a film that succeeds at being a satirical work of staggering genius by being up its own ass about being a satirical work of staggering genius. The way I see it, this film is pretentious about its own commentary on pretension. But, that doesn’t necessarily make it any less genius. 4. Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America A I can feel readers' assholes pucker in knee-jerk defensiveness at just reading this film's title. Even though anyone with a dismissive attitude could still get more out of this film than they would likely expect, the arguably more important point is how much it has to offer audiences for whom they might expect this is "preaching to the choir." I don't believe there is a single person for whom this documentary, filmed sort of like a TED Talk about the history of American racism, won't offer multiple insights. I found it deeply illuminating, that's for sure, and sincerely appreciated the comfortable accessibility with which writer, activist and lawyer Jeffery Robinson (also Deputy Legal Director and Director of the Trone Center for Justice & Equality at the ACLU) spoke to his audience—the primary target being, of course, White America. And, so long as you approach it open to the experience, this film is not so much "homework" as it is a rich and rewarding kind of education. What I said then: Nothing about this movie demands that it be seen on the big screen, so hopefully it will be available on a streamer soon. Because it is indeed vital viewing, regardless of the size of the screen. And it won’t be preaching to the choir, far from it—Jeffery Robinson takes the Chronicle part of the title pretty literally, tracking the major “tipping points” of possibly moving toward racial justice in this country, from its founding to the present day. You won’t just be hearing things you already know, and you certainly won’t just be told what you want to hear. 3. Sedimentos A What a refreshing array of perspectives this film is, previously unexamined in cinema: a multigenerational group of six trans women in Spain, all of them in varying stages of their journeys not necessarily correlated to their age, taking a weekend trip to a remote town in León, all the while being trailed by a camera crew they were trained to ignore in pre-production workshops. It would be easy to mistake this for a narrative film, the editing is so perfectly finessed, but it's actually a documentary. This film presents such a fully dimensional portrait of every one of these six women, simultaneously flawed and a great hang, it was easily the best of the films I saw at the Seattle International Film Festival this year. What I said then: Sedimentos has a quality to it that is reminiscent of Robert Altman films, with its focus not just on dialogue but on overlapping conversations. Except in this case, they are real, neutrally observed and recorded. Whether this is compelling is a matter of taste, I suppose, but in my view the context alone makes it deeply so. It’s not so much just recordings of ordinary conversations, as the editing creates a rich narrative of six women from as many walks of life, bonding with each other. 2. The Worst Person in the World A Not anywhere near as funny as marketers want you to believe, nor as unpleasant as the title goes out of its way to suggest, The Worst Person in the World steadily works its way under your skin, leaving you only gradually to register its greatness. Beautifully shot and uniquely told, this is a charming romantic drama in which the protagonist is not just definitively a single woman, but one who only needs to win over herself. Men play a significant part—two men in particular—but this is her story, a woman's journey through genuine attempts at relationships which, spoiler alert, don't work out. Norwegian director and co-writer Joachim Trier offers a sensibility that is all but guaranteed to be obliterated by shoehorned tropes if this is ever attempted as an American remake. What I said then: And that gets to the heart of why I loved The Worst Person in the World: it succeeds on every level, and on every level it does so unconventionally. All of the characters ring true, as do all of their behaviors, offering a fundamentally realistic portrait of romance and humanity, with a subtly artistic visual flair. Hanging out with Julie is an eminently pleasant experience, even though she’s as flawed as anyone—arguably more so even than the men she gets with. Perhaps this film’s most impressive feat is how it never puts on airs of high-minded art and still winds up being a fine specimen of artistic accomplishment. 1. Flee A Even if some of its technical aspects were only slightly imperfect—the animation is a bit rudimentary, still unforgettable as a rotoscoping technique—no other movie this year left me so gobsmacked, so stunned into contemplative silence once it was over. This was the first film ever to be nominated simultaneously in the three Academy Award categories of Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature Film, and Best International Feature Film (criminally, not winning any of them, likely due to split votes), the rotoscoping animation being a technique for obscuring the identity of its subject, a gay Muslim man in Denmark telling his story for the first time, of fleeing Afghan militants who killed his parents and kidnapped his sister when he was a child. This is a sad tale, examining how this man's myriad childhood traumas affect his present-day relationship, but it is also a deeply moving one, leaving a more lasting impact on me than any other film I saw this year. What I said then: Flee has to be seen to be believed. Or perhaps more accurately, seen to broaden your mind, about refugees, about people from Afghanistan, about the tumultuous modern history of Afghanistan, about the human experience. This is a window into a world and a past that puts the privilege of citizens of the Western World into sharp relief. Five Worst -- or the worst of those I saw (Bearing in mind that I could have seen far worse movies than these if I had made the choice to, but when I already know a movie is worthless, I don't bother watching it at all) 5. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnass C+ Another Marvel movie, another excuse to take a nap. This movie had real potential, being directed by Sam Raimi, and instead he basically phones it in—possibly through no fault of his own, although one would think he knew what he was getting into having to work with increasingly exasperating MCU strictures about plot points, character behaviors, and connective threads to way too many other movies. He gives this movie a recognizable visual quality, but is stifled by way too many clear limitations; we shouldn't have to slog through the mediocrity of the film's first three quarters in order for things to get weird. In the end it isn't worth the wait. What I said then: There are people genuinely convinced that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a truly great film, and that makes me despair of humanity. Not because this movie is particularly bad, but because audiences are so conditioned by the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” that they can no longer distinguish between that which is quality cinema, and that which is average. 4. Lightyear C+ Here is the Walt Disney Corporation squeezing every last cent they can out of Pixar's flagship IP, and one of its most beloved and iconic characters: Buzz Lightyear, zooming back into theaters after there have already been four Toy Story movies. Never mind how confusing the concept is (we're supposed to understand that this the motion picture that is Andy from Toy Story's favorite movie, and the title character is who his toy Buzz Lightyear, originally voiced by Tim Allen, is based on), the whole universe is stale the moment we step into it. Its one real selling point is the entertaining robot cat named SOX. What I said then: The principal characters in Lightyear just aren’t nearly as compelling as those in the Toy Story series. That franchise had a novel concept: kids’ toys come to life when they aren’t looking. Lightyear is just a straightforward science fiction tale, with a lot of production design oddly reminiscent of the Alien franchise. Nothing here feels particularly original. 3. Crimes of the Future C+ A seemingly intriguing mood piece with a boneheaded plot point, Crimes of the Future depicts a human race that has suddenly made an evolutionary jump, adapting the ability to digest plastics. Except evolution doesn't jump; it's a gradual process of change over thousands of years. That makes this film the latest of countless that misinterpret and misrepresent what evolution really is, especially when it comes to something as extreme as the ability to eat manufactured plastic. Okay, sure, maybe David Cronenberg was going for something allegorical here (not that that makes it any more comprehensible), but this sticking point made me immediately lose my patience anyway. What I said then: In the world of Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, from a script he first wrote in the nineties and which still feels like it’s from that era, human bodies have begun randomly generating new organs with no known function. They have also stopped getting infections (one character marvels at how no one ever washes their hands anymore, blech), and people’s pain tolerance has skyrocketed, resulting in a trend of sort of sensual body mutilation just to get to the point of feeling something. And from an evolutionary perspective—ostensibly the perspective this film takes—absolutely none of that makes any sense whatsoever. 2. Jurassic World Dominion C+ This might qualify as the grandest disappointment of the year, I was so excited to see it: Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), from the original 1993 Jurassic Park all together again? Sign me up! When I saw that in this film's teaser trailer, I was so thrilled I literally got chills. That original film is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I even quite enjoy most of its sequels—even the 2015 Jurassic World reboot holds up surprisingly well after seven years. But, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was dumber yet still entertaining—much like The Lost World: Jurassic Park had been as the first sequel in 1997—but then Jurassic World Dominion comes along and insults our intelligence so hard you have to wonder if the filmmakers had turned it into a competition. Other movies in this franchise make little rational sense if you nitpick into the details; this one makes no sense even at a surface level, and the use of the original three characters, hinging on mutant locusts that aren't even dinosaurs, is completely squandered. What I said then: Jurassic World Dominion is a mess. It’s an entertaining mess, but still a mess, wasting far too much time on dull, one-note characters when it could be spending more time wowing us with special effects its makers didn’t even bother to perfect. With a bit more time and a modicum of effort, this movie, even being the sixth in the franchise, could have been so much better. The return of original-film cast is little more than stunt casting that ultimately serves only to disappoint. 1. Striding Into the Wind C+ If there's anything the other four movies on my worst-of 2022 list have that Sriding Into the Wind doesn't, it's that at least none of the others are straight up dull. This 134-minute Chinese "road trip" movie didn't even get its characters embarking on travel until two thirds of the way through, even then spending most of its time depicting film school students doing reshoots in Mongolia. All of this would be fine if it had much of an overarching narrative to speak of, anything happening to spark interest. What few critics even paid attention to it seemed to like it, which may have been why I went to see it in the first place. I then spent most of my time in the cinema just itching to get out of there, away from this supposed "slacker comedy" in favor of some kind of legitimate stimulation. What I said then: Striding Into the Wind is relatively quiet, and relentlessly naturalistic, as if Wei had a ton of unusually well-shot home video footage and managed to cut it into something vaguely resembling a narrative. I have to say, I was bored as hell. Complete 2022 film review log: 1. 1/4 The Lost Daughter B+ *
2. 1/8 Swan Song B *
3. 1/10 Finch C+ *
4. 1/15 Bergman Island B *
5. 1/16 CODA A- *
6. 1/21 Parallel Mothers A-
7. 1/23 The Velvet Queen A-
8. 1/29 A Hero B *
9. 1/31 Flee A
10. 2/2 Moonfall F **
11. 2/5 Last and First Men B
12. 2/11 The Worst Person in the World A
13. 2/12 Kimi B *
14. 2/13 Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America A
15. 2/15 Big Bug B- *
16. 2/19 Death on the Nile B-
17. 2/20 Lingui, the Sacred Bonds A-
18. 2/23 Games People Play B+ *
19. 2/26 February B- *
20. 2/28 2022 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action B
21. 3/1 2022 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation B-
22. 3/3 The Batman B+
23. 3/5 Red Rocket B+ *
24. 3/6 Cyrano B
25. 3/8 2022 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Documentary B+
26. 3/9 A Song Called Hate B *
27. 3/12 Turning Red B+ *
28. 3/13 After Yang B *
29. 3/15 The Adam Project B- *
30. 3/17 Striding Into the Wind C+ *
31. 3/20 Compartment No. 6 B
32. 4/4 Memoria C
33. 4/6 You Won't Be Alone B-
34. 4/7 Everything Everywhere All at Once A-
35. 4/11 Mothering Sunday B
35. 4/12 The Batman B+ (2nd viewing)
36. 4/13 The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent B-
37. 4/14 Cat Daddies B+ */***
38. 4/15 Vera Dreams of the Sea B+ ***
39. 4/16 Nothing Compares A- */***
40. 4/16 Sedimentos A */***
41. 4/25 Neptune Frost B+ */***
42. 4/27 The Northman B+
43. 5/10 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness C+
44. 5/19 Downton Abbey: A New Era B
45. 5/22 The Bad Guys B
46. 5/25 On the Count of Three B+
47. 5/28 The Innocents B
48. 5/31 Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers B- *
49. 6/1 Top Gun: Maverick B+
50. 6/3 Fire Island B *
51. 6/7 Crimes of the Future C+
52. 6/9 Jurassic World Dominion C+
53. 6/17 Lightyear C+
54. 6/21 Top Gun: Maverick B+ (2nd viewing)
55. 6/22 Freedom Uncut B-
56. 6/28 Elvis B-
57. 7/2 Mr. Malcom's List B
58. 7/7 Thor: Love and Thunder B-
59. 7/10 Marcel the Shell with Shoes On B+
60. 7/12 Official Competition B-
61. 7/21 Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris B
62. 7/23 Nope B
63. 7/26 Fire of Love B
64. 7/28 DC League of Super Pets C+
65. 8/4 Bullet Train C+
66. 8/8 I Love My Dad B+
67. 8/13 Prey B+ *
68. 8/16 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 40th anniversary release B+
69. 8/22 Bodies Bodies Bodies B
70. 8/28 Three Thousand Years of Longing B
71. 9/6 Jaws in 3D (no review)
72. 9/13 Hold Me Tight B
73. 9/16 Moonage Daydream B
74. 9/17 The Woman King A-
75. 9/20 See How They Run B
76. 10/1 Avatar (re-release) B+
77. 10/3 Bros B
78. 10/8 Still Working 9 to 5 B *
79. 10/11 The Woman King A- (2nd viewing)
80. 10/22 Tár A-
81. 10/23 Triangle of Sadness A-
82. 10/29 The Banshees of Inisherin A-
83. 11/3 Till B+
84. 11/5 Armagedon Time A-
85. 11/6 Weird: The Al Yankovic Story B *
86. 11/10 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever B
87. 11/12 Aftersun B
88. 11/17 She Said B+
89. 11/21 The Menu B
90. 11/23 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery B+
91. 11/26 The Fabelmans A-
92. 11/27 Devotion A-
93. 11/29 Strange World B
94. 12/3 Violent Night B-
95. 12/4 The Inspection B+
96. 12/10 Bones and All B-
97. 12/11 White Noise B+
98. 12/13 Empire of Light B
99. 12/17 Avatar: The Way of Water B+
100. 12/18 Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths B *
101. 12/20 Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio B+ *
102. 12/22 The Whale B * Viewed streaming at home
** Advanced screening
*** SIFF Advanced screening

THE WHALE

Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Darren Aronofsky would have us believe that the literary reference to Moby Dick is why this movie is called The Whale. Brendan Fraser’s character, Charlie, teaches an online writing course, you see. It’s about the literal animal! As a metaphor! I mean . . . come on. This is a movie about a depressed, miserable, morbidly obese man. What are viewers really supposed to think about this supposed “whale”metaphor?

It’s easy to have deeply mixed feelings about The Whale, which, at the very least, is a vast improvement over Aronofsky’s last offering, Mother!, which I hated so much it infuriated me. This is a director whose films I will always see just because his name is attached, even after he finally produced a piece of garbage. The thing is, with The Whale, it’s a little less clear whether or not it’s garbage.

Here are some good things I can say about it. Brendan Fraser’s performance is incredible, making ample use of his vivid blue eyes and deeply expressive eyebrows, even within the confines of a large fat suit. One could make the case that this is the best performance of his career. I find myself wishing it were for a different role, in a different movie, in which he returns to a lead role in a feature film in over a decade.

The dialogue is impeccably written, by Samuel D. Hunter based on his own 2012 play of the same name—which, incidentally, also got criticized for “fat shaming.” The dialogue is so compelling, however, that it’s easy to assume you’re watching a really good movie and miss its many problematic elements. I may have been moved to tears by this film, and particularly by Fraser’s performance, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great film.

The supporting cast is also excellent, including Sadie Sink as Ellie, Charlie’s estranged and troubled teenage daughter; and Hong Chau as Liz, Charlie’s longtime at-home nurse. There is also Samantha Morton as Mary, Charlie’s ex-wife and mother of Ellie, although Morton is comparatively underused in a part that does not fully utilize her talents (if you want to see a far better performance by her in a similarly small role, watch She Said). Rounding out the primary cast of only five characters is Ty Simpkins as Thomas, a young evangelist who keeps coming around in an attempt to save Charlie’s soul.

As stage-to-screen adaptations go, The Whale is unusually well done, the entire film set only in, and occasionally just outside of, Charlie’s second-floor apartment. It’s the source material that is the potential problem, so convinced as it is that it’s “humanizing” a morbidly obese character, before revealing in its home stretch that the movie was ostensibly about Charlie’s homosexuality all along. But what are audiences going to remember? What are people actually discussing in regards to this movie? They’re talking about a character who is depicted as a giant, disgusting, fat man who is filled with so much self-loathing he’s attempting to eat himself to death.

Never mind the fact that this is not just a movie about a gay man, or just a movie about a fat man, but a movie about a fat gay man—played by an actor who is neither fat (his weight gain over the years notwithstanding) nor gay. After years of discourse about allowing queer people to play themselves onscreen, and increasing amounts of discourse about diversifying fat representation onscreen so it’s not always tragic stories of self-hating overeaters, the casting of Fraser, great as he admittedly is, feels both naive and a huge misstep.

Much has been made by the producers of work with the Obesity Action Coalition regarding sensitive representation onscreen. It seems relevant to note that OAC exists to support people seeking bariatric surgery—which I won’t deny that some people want and need, and should be validated in that. What OAC is not, however, is an organization dedicated to diversifying the representation of fat people onscreen, which is a crucial difference.

The Whale seems like a perfectly good movie on its own terms, something that might more easily escape criticism if it existed in a vacuum, or in a world where we regularly see people of all sizes leading perfectly fulfilling and happy lives, dealing with conflicts that have nothing whatsoever to do with their fatness. Unfortunately, that sort of screen depiction, while not nonexistent, remains very rare. Which leaves this Brendan Fraser performance, moving and nuanced as it is, just another in a long line of fat, miserable slobs in movies.

At least What’s Eating Gilbert Grape cast actual-fat-person Darlene Cates nearly thirty years ago, back in 1993. Arguments have been put forth that casting an actor who was actually as fat as Charlie would have been too difficult for the actor in this particular part. I’ve seen the film and that argument is bullshit. Sure, Fraser, even in need of a comeback, is far more famous than any obese actor, and there’s always the issue of big names bringing in financing. Aronofsky himself is a big name. Their hands weren’t exactly tied here.

Not that it necessarily would have made a difference, considering the source material itself. The opening shot of this film is of Charlie masturbating to gay porn, and painfully straining himself in the process. It’s telegraphed from the very start that this is a man to be pitied.

There are more subtle, aesthetic choices I found annoying—such as the way Charlie wears his clothes, with shirts never quite long enough to fall past his drooping belly. I’m not fat myself, but I know many fat people, I know what fat bodies look like and how fat people wear clothes. Sure, some do keep their belly outside of their pants rather than pulling their pants around them, but most do not; and the fact that Charlie doesn’t is a clear choice, meant to add to our idea of a man who has taken how disgusted he is with himself to be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

It doesn’t help that the fat suit itself is not altogether convincing. I never felt like I was watching an actual fat man—which, again, I would had they actually cast a legitimately fat man for the role—but rather always felt like I was looking at a man in a giant fat suit. The prosthetics and makeup around Fraser’s head and neck are impressive and convincing, but the rest of his body looked a lot more like a textured rubber prop then actual folds of skin and cellulite. All this is rendered even more ridiculous in the final scene of the film, which I felt skirted the edge of camp: Charlie takes a couple steps forward on his own, his swollen feet shifting forward unsteadily, making him look like a giant toddler. I nearly laughed.

The bottom line is, there was more to like in The Whale than I expected. But, it’s difficult to gauge what value there is in that, when all of it is in the service of just pitying another miserable fat man onscreen. Bring me into a world where we see a lot more happy and well-adjusted people of all sizes onscreen and I will be inclined to give a movie like this a lot more credit.

Overall: B

GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Animation: A-

The stop motion animation in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinoicchio may be the best I have ever seen. It’s not quite perfect, but then stop-motion never is. Usually it’s a lot easier to see how it’s done, with diorama scenes shot frame by frame, but for the most part in this film, the character movements are almost shockingly fluid. I can’t imagine the hours that would have had to go into this, and still, this is the longest stop-motion film ever made. (It clocks in at an hour and fifty-seven minutes, although the animation gives way to extended end credits at about 1:50.) The fact that virtually every frame is a uniquely beautiful work of art makes it all that much more of an achievement.

I only wish I could have seen it in a theater. It was released in select theaters on November 9, but apparently not in my local market—both rare and a disappointment. Now, exactly one month later and as of December 9, it is streaming on Netflix. At least a lot more people will now actually be able to see it, I guess. Will they bother, with Netflix’s massive library to choose from? It would seem so: it remains in their top 10 movies currently. Perhaps one day they will figure out they can get the best of both worlds by giving their movies a wide release in theaters, after which millions will still watch it streaming. I would have much preferred seeing this wonderful film in a cinema, but I’m just glad it exists.

Presumably co-writer and co-director Guillermo del Toro’s name is part of this film’s official title in order to differentiate itself from the critically reviled Disney live action version that was also released, all of three months ago. This one might as well be called The Pinocchio Movie Worth Watching.

Parents of small children may well want to be strongly cautioned, however. This is still del Toro we’re talking about: this film goes into some weird, very dark places. I can’t remember another animated feature film that deals with death so frankly—and so extensively. The entire narrative is bookended by deaths pivotal to the plot, and one of the story threads is about Pinocchio himself being impervious to death. Except, because this is a Guillermo del Toro film, Pinocchio is killed and revived several times, each time spending longer in a netherworld populated by card playing rabbit skeletons and a magical Chimera voiced by (naturally) Tilda Swinton. It should be noted that none of this suggests permanent immortality, as human death in this world is indeed permanent, and the rules are different for Pinocchio because he isn’t actually a real boy.

He is, however, a gift offered to Geppetto (David Bradley) by the Chimera’s empathetic sister Wood Sprite (also voiced by Tilda Swinton), in a misguided attempt to ease his grief still unabated many years after the death of his ten-year-old son, Carlo. Both Carlo and Pinocchio are voiced by the immensely talented Gregory Mann, a pubescent boy with a heavenly voice. (His voice reportedly changed during production, necessitating the editing of his voice to match how it sounded from the start.) I didn’t really expect this Pinocchio to be a musical, but it technically is, with characters breaking out into song, albeit not particularly frequently. The songs themselves are just fine, but the voices across the board are wonderful—including that of Ewan McGregor as Cricket. He sounds even better now than he did in the 2001 smash Moulin Rouge!

Cricket, incidentally, provides some much-needed comic relief in an otherwise rather dark movie. This humor itself is also dark much of the time (he keeps getting squished and saying things like “Life is such hideous pain,” which ironically brought me endless joy). In addition to McGregor, though, this deeply stacked cast also includes Christoph Waltz as the villanous carnival puppetmaster; Ron Perlman as a fascist government official in this film del Toro chose to set in World War II Italy; John Turturro as the local village doctor; Tim Blake Nelson as the aforementioned Black Rabbits (apparently based on “Undertaker Rabbits” from the original story). Most amusing of all is Cate Blanchett, who was reportedly so eager to be a part of this film that, when it was the only part left, she happily took the part of Spazzatura, an assistant carnival monkey who speaks almost exclusively in squawks and grunts.

All of these elements combined to leave me thoroughly charmed by Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which is both recognizably a product of his mind and a uniquely imaginative venture, narratively as well as visually. It does feel a bit more skewed toward adult interests, but it is appropriately rated PG, and older children may enjoy it. They may also be disturbed by it. And that is honestly the most fun thing about it.

Therein lies a rich world of discovery.

Overall: B+

BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

If I was left with any prevailing idea of Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, it was that memory is an abstraction. This film has been widely reported to be deeply autobiographical on the part of director and co-writer Alejandro G. Iñárritu. It’s also immediately surreal, in ways that take a great deal of time to make sense, in a film that goes on for two hours and thirty-nine minutes.

I’m not sure I would have immediately jumped to declaring this movie pretentious, but about an hour and ten minutes in, Bardo declares itself so. This was where I found myself grateful for the film to be streaming on Netflix—after a very limited theatrical release in November, in one local location inconvenient to me; otherwise I would have seen it then—because the egotistic documentarian protagonist is met with a diatribe by a friend at a party, and I was able to write down the monologue in its entirety. Here, Iñárritu takes it upon himself to use a supporting character to make these judgments before we as viewers even have a chance to:

I think it’s pretentious. It’s pointlessly oneiric. It’s oneiric to cover up for your mediocre writing. It’s a mishmash of pointless scenes. Half the time, I wanted to crack up, the other half I was dying of boredom. It’s supposed to be metaphorical, but it lacks poetic inspiration. It feels stolen. Plagiarized. And you barely covered your tracks. … It’s banal, random. And then, later, within this same conversation: You couldn’t check your ego. And: What the fuck were you trying to say?

The thing is, there are many layers of irony to this monologue. Iñárritu invites us to dismiss his cinematic self-indulgence, while seeming to congratulate himself for the brilliance of this very action. Which only makes the entire enterprise that much more pretentious.

I found myself wondering why he would make this character who was clearly an avatar for himself, Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a journalist-turned-documentarian, rather than a narrative film director like himself. Then it occurred to me that perhaps his profession is an on-the-nose metaphor: filmmakers are on an endless quest to represent universal truths. Journalists and documentarians fancy themselves representatives of fact, while often losing sight of their own inherent subjectivities. Bardo is a film easy to intellectualize, and yet it left me unconvinced that it deserved it.

Indeed, the vast majority of Bardo is a series of surreal or abstract vignettes, although by the end Iñárritu manages to tie them all together in a relatively clever way. Meanwhile, he even manages to infuse the narrative with Silverio’s (and, predumably, his own) conflicting emotion between a love of his birth nation of Mexico and how that’s complicated by a decision to move to and raise a family in California.

There are many references, both visual and textual, to Mexican history, particularly the Mexican-American War. There’s a few nods to the Spanish colonialism that gave birth to Mexico itself, and its lasting legacy with class divides between rich white Mexicans and their typically darker-skinned servants. I wondered to what degree “White guilt” was infused into these narratives. In one of many jarring narrative and visual shifts, we cut to Silverio walking a long tracking shot through an empty plaza, until he comes upon a giant mountain of largely naked bodies. This was the one moment in the film when I literally said out loud, “What the fuck?” But then, I have to give Iñárritu credit: this sequence ends with a twist so clever I can’t spoil it. I laughed out loud.

Iñárritu seems to be using Bardo to reckon with his own success. “Success has been my biggest failure,” Silverio declares. Is that what Iñárritu is saying of himself? Is this a nearly three-hour exercise in his lack of self-esteem or confidence in his work? It certainly isn’t humility, not with bravura filmmaking this assured. This is a man who knows how to work a camera, and the technical achievements, as with many of his films (see Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) or The Revenant), consistently impress.

It’s the narrative, such as it is, that is the potential problem with this one. I would not go so far as to call this movie “bad,” but it’s easily the least-good of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s mainstream films. Strangely, it’s neither as profound as it seems to want us to think it is, nor as bad as it wants us to think Iñárritu believes it is. Many have dismissed this film as “self-indulgent,” as though any film, particularly any autiobiographical one, weren’t exactly that. I’ve even read it being described as “outrageously narcissistic,” and while I would concede it’s narcissistic, I can’t agree that it is outrageously so. Getting back to that metatextual monologue suggesting we either want to laugh at it or are bored to death of it—I had neither reaction to it, nothing so extreme. I found this movie oddly compelling in spite of itself.

It’s way too long—that much is certain. And yet, virtually every sequence is beautiful to watch. Another memorable line of dialogue: “Life is just a series of senseless events. You must give in to it.” This is the best advice for anybody watching Bardo. If you go into it expecting something very open about how it self-consciously presents itself as “art,” you might find its universe surprisingly inviting. You’ll just need to set aside enough time for it.

Just give it time and you might make sense of it.

Overall: B

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Special Effects: A+

Is anyone coming to see Avatar for the story, really? I can tell you that I wasn’t. I came with the expectation of a thrill ride of heart pounding action set pieces, and heart stopping special effects. On those fronts, Avatar: The Way of Water absolutely delivers. And it delivers beyond your expectations: I can’t say that its “wow factor” surpasses that of the 2009 original, but it’s stunning to note that it easily matches it. And how does it manage this feat? By making the special effects even more impressive than they were in the previous film.

I have to admit, I went in with skepticism on that front. Indeed, I did not think Avatar was as visually stunning as millions of others did back in 2009—particularly in 3D, which never managed to impress me. In fact, I went to see that movie a second time in 2D and found it a better experience. Well, call James Cameron a megalomaniac all you want, but this is a guy who knows how to get the job he’s looking for done, and the very reason he waited 13 years to make the sequel was because he wanted to the technology he was looking for to catch up. And I am here to tell you: it was worth the wait.

It amazes even me to say this, but Avatar: The Way of Water is a stunning experience in 3D. With the exception of the relatively few human characters rendered as human onscreen, every living thing in this movie is rendered with CD effects, the fauna of Pandora all invented creatures. And they all look as real as if they were right in front of your face. If James Cameron has anything to do with it, the days of 3D as a gimmick or a price-gouging distraction are a thing of the past. Every minute of the sensory experience of this film feels organic, like you are indeed immersed into a fully realized world. More than once I watched what I was seeing onscreen and actually thought to myself, This is incredible. Truly, it may very well be that this film advanced VFX technology further in a single go than any other movie since Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993.

The key difference, of course, is that Jurassic Park also has an incredibly tight, skillfully constructed script, which was just as much a part of that movie’s success as its visual breakthroughs. The same cannot be said of James Cameron’s scripts, which these days can have the surprise effect of making us wistful for the rote romance of Titanic. Now, to give The Way of Water some credit, this outing leans less heavily on the Dances With Wolves nature of the original—on which Cameron had sole writing credit—with a team of four other writers who worked with him on the story. That part is an improvement, albeit not by a huge margin.

If there is any particular disappointment to this movie, it’s the return of Stephen Lang as the villain—he wasn’t that great a villain to begin with; why do we need him again? And, okay, you may be wondering how this is possible, if the guy (spoiler alert!) died at the end of the first one. Well: cloning to the rescue! Cameron’s “innovation” in this case is not to bring back just a clone of the character Quartich, but to revive him as a cloned version of his Na’vi avatar—he and his troupe of military goons are Na’vi grown in a lab, so they never revert to their human selves. On top of all that, the Na’vi version of Quartich has had the original’s memories implanted. Viola! I now dread the idea that Quartich will be the villain in every single one of these movies.

Another actor from the first film whose character died returns, this one on the more compelling side: Cameron loyalist Sigourney Weaver returns, not as the original Dr. Augustine, but as Kiri, the mysterious offspring of the avatar version of Augustine, father unknown, adopted into the family by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). Some snide remarks are made about Kiri’s father being Augustine’s colleague Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), but I don’t think we are meant to take that at face value, not least of which because it would suggest a nature far darker on Spellman’s part than ever gets otherwise suggested in the film.

Kiri is shown sporadically through The Way of Water to have an easy, special connection to the Great Mother, the natural world around her, with abilities to control certain forms of life, particularly (of course) under water. This element of her character is never fully fleshed out in this film, only steadily revealed throughout, and I suspect this will be more directly explored in the next sequel. Presumably so will her paternal parentage.

Which is to say, even at a ridiculously long three hours and 12 minutes, Avatar: The Way of Water leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It submerges us ever deeper into the world of Pandora, after settling into this new family life with the Sullys, who now have three children aside from Kiri: sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), and eight-year-old daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Further adding to this mix is Spider, the fully human teenager who turns out to have been Quartich’s son, marooned on Pandora due to his youth precluding him from traveling back to Earth. With his special mask allowing him to breathe Pandora’s air, he’s befriended the Na’vi and integrated himself into their society as much as is possible in his human form—which includes wearing little more than a loincloth, which is all we see actor Jack Champion wearing for the duration of the film. He plays a key role, including an extended period when he’s commandeered into a sort of tour guide for Quartich and his troops. It was distracting to me that those guys never made Spider put on some clothes, rather unrealistically just accepting him as a “feral” human adopting the ways and culture of the Na’vi.

So, as always, the script in a James Cameron movie is its weakest link. Usually I place more importance on that than I will here, because nearly everything we actually see onscreen is so genuinely amazing, it goes a long way toward making up for stupid lines of dialogue like “You are not in Kansas anymore” (which Quartich literally says in both of these movies).

As it is, you could split The Way of Water into three, roughly one-hour parts. In the first, we are re-introduced into this world, and I have to give Cameron some credit here: he eases us into it instead of jolting us with an opening over-the-top action sequence, something far too many movies make the mistake of doing. We meet the expanded Sully family, and although this gets just as “bro-y” as most Cameron films (the Sully sons literally refer to each other as “bro,” too many times; we spend far too much time with trigger-happy military personnel), most of the kids each get key story arcs of their own—with the suggestion that the adopted daughter, Kiri, may yet be the most important. Cameron’s plot threads may lack the same dimension as his visual effects, but they do get surprisingly well fleshed out.

The second hour is when we get largely submerged underwater—hence the subtitle—when the Sullys, fleeing the vengeful advances of Na-vi Quartich, go into hiding in some faraway islands where a different, seawater-adapted tribe of Na’vis live. This is where a wholly unrecognizable Kate Winslet shows up, as Ronal, the wife of their chief, Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). Ronal and Tonowari have teenage children of their own, who vacillate between rivalries and friendships with the Sully children. They learn this tribe’s seafaring ways, and this is where a great deal of underwater footage is eye poppingly impressive; we also learn about their hyperintelligent, whale-like creatures, tukun, which can communicate with the Na’vi and ultimately play a pivotal role in the climactic sequence of the film.

And that sequence goes on a long while, mostly in the final hour, nearly all of it breathlessly mesmerizing. I would see this movie again just for its final third, it’s so well staged and thrilling—even though it features its own sequence of a sinking ship, which quite clearly (and deliberately?) recalls the last hour of Titanic. Still, I must mention James Cameron’s notoriously despotic attention to detail even here: we spend little time inside this particular ship when it is upright, and yet there is very attentive production design on things like floor-bolted dining tables we only ever see in passing after the ship has capsized. Which is to say, every physical setting in this film has a genuinely lived-in feeling. Although this movie has no hope of winning any top-tier awards, it’s already easy to imagine it sweeping both the technical and the creative awards.

Truly, the one and only thing that keeps Avatar: The Way of Water from being an even more stunning achievement than it is, is the fact that we’ve already gone to this world once before. Back in 2009, everything in Pandora was completely new to us (well, except for the story tropes). This time, we are returning to a world we’ve already been to, just far more vividly rendered. When it comes to how we see it, it’s a little bit like stepping out of black and white and into color, an almost Wizard of Oz moment. There was a time I always said CGI effects would become dated quickly, in a way that practical effects never did. But in this case, whatever practical effects or sets they had were integrated seamlessly. For now, at least, you can’t see the seams. It has been a long time indeed since a film transported its viewers so successfully.

It is somehow both imperfect and spectacular.

Overall: B+

EMPIRE OF LIGHT

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

It’s rather depressing when a movie that largely depicts the magic of cinema tanks at the box office. There’s a sad sort of irony, also, when the cinema house featured prominently in Empire of Light—itself called the Empire Cinema—is partially derelict out of lack of use. A new employee is given a tour which winds up including an upper level, with two screening rooms no longer in use, now drafty from broken windows and filled with random pigeons.

I don’t think this was writer-director Sam Mendes’s intention, but it made me wistful. Or, I suppose, like I’ve gotten old: increasing numbers of people feel that their huge at-home TV screens make for a perfectly adequate home theater experience. But that is not the same immersive experience as seeing a film on the much larger screen, occupying your entire field of vision, in a movie theater. It’s kind of funny, then, that empire of Light’s protagonist, Hilary (Olivia Colman, excellent as always), ultimately watches a film alone in her theater—barely a smaller number than the whopping four people I was among when I saw this.

All that said, “the power of cinema” isn’t really what Empire of Light is about. It’s just one example of an escape Hilary learns, as a woman with fairly severe mental illness. (At one point she’s is told to her face “You’re a schizophrenic,” but we never see that as an official diagnosis.) Hilary is a fictionalized woman at the center of a wholly invented story, but a character very directly based on Mendes’s mother, who suffered the same.

This is a movie with evenly mixed reviews, and the more I consider it, the more I see why. There’s a sort of triad of story elements, including Hilary’s mental illness; her friendship and quasi-romance with a far younger, Black coworker named Stephen (Michael Ward); and the political backdrop of increasing racial violence in an early-eighties, Margaret Thatcher-era Britain. These three threads never quite fully connect with each other. Somehow, that doesn’t make me like the movie any less, perhaps because of its strong performances, and a quietly sentimental tone that worked for me.

It certainly doesn’t work for everyone, and Empire of Light’s sentimentality is a common complaint against it. What’s wrong with sentiment, at least on its face? Mendes and his actors never give us anything especially overwrought. And over time, we see Hilary and Stephen developing deep empathy for each other, and their respective struggles with their place in the world. I’m not really sure what the point is of the racial element, whether Mendes is trying to equate dealing with racism with dealing with mental illness. And I won’t deny that I became slightly uncomfortable with the consummation of their relationship, just because he is so dramatically younger than her. But maybe that doesn’t matter. They’re both adults. I mean, barely: Stephen is applying to go to college.

It’s provocative, and I do see value in being challenged. There’s a moral question there, although Mendes never really directly explores it. There’s a sort of sad comfort in the tone of this film. A subtle kind of melancholy, that is somehow inviting. There’s a lot that doesn’t quite come together, but I enjoyed the experience.

This film reportedly was written during covid lockdowns. It feels like it, to an extent. It could be argued Sam Mendes needed a bit more quarantine time to flesh out and then connect his ideas and themes. The story of a mentally ill middle-aged woman works better than that of a young Black man facing racist brutality. Mashing the two together is a bit odd, and yet Colman and Ward have real chemistry together. Ward has a generally sunny disposition onscreen as Stephen, and a charismatic screen presence. Odd though it may be, seeing them together is a pleasant experience. A fair assessment of this film as a whole.

A brief moment of fireworks in an otherwise quiet movie.

Overall: B

WHITE NOISE

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

White Noise is kind of all over the place, so it would be fitting for me to start with the end—not just the end, but the end credits. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t say exactly what it is, but I will say that a sequence that lasts the entirety of the credits, which doesn’t quite match the tone of any of the rest of the movie, might be the most fun five minutes or so I’ve spent at the movies all year. I guess that’s one way to get you to sit through the end of the credits. Although you certainly won’t be reading the credtis.

This is a distinct turn in the career of writer-director Noah Baumbach, who here is adapting live action from another source material for the first time. I find myself wondering if the original novel, by Don DeLillo, had the same liberal sprinkling of humor, which I can only call . . . Baumbachian. White Noise is an odd jumble of genres, split into three parts, the middle of which, about an airborne toxic event, is notably Spielbergian in tone and presentation, with tonal notes of both Close Encounters of the Third Kind and War of the Worlds. It’s like we’re suddenly thrust into a disaster movie, but only for its middle third. It basically goes from dramedy to horror and then back again to dramedy.

And the thing is, although this airborne toxic event is easily the most memorable thing about White Noise, that’s not directly what it’s about. What it is about, exactly, I am struggling to wrap my brain around. I might be tempted to ask the same question of “Why?” that I did Bones and All, except that in this case I was truly hooked on this thing I could not quite understand, and in the end, thoroughly delighted. I suppose marrying horror with drama and comedy is much more my speed than marrying horror with romance.

This is not your typical horror movie either, however. There is something far more existential, thematically, going on with White Noise. Much of it has to do with the human quest to stop fearing death, and how that is perhaps a fool’s errand. That gets to the heart of this film, or at least closer to it, than the disaster on its face.

It doesn’t hurt that it is also frequently quite funny, in ways that only Noah Baumbach can be. There have been times I have found his work self-consciously “quirky,” but that’s never really the vibe here, even though sometimes the humor is subtly absurd. All I can say, I guess, is that this movie speaks to me. I would be delighted to watch it again, and revel in the chance to gain greater insight into its intentions.

Reviews of White Noise have been mixed, and I can see why. Some might see this movie and say, “What the hell are they talking about?” Even I sometimes thought exactly that, but was happy to leave the question unanswered just because of how much I dug its vibe. This is largely thanks to its leads, Adam Driver looking pudgier than ever as a middle-aged scholar of Hitler Studies, and Baumbach mainstay Greta Gerwig as his emotionally struggling wife. It is noted at one point that they are each on their fourth spouse, only one of the four children between them actually produced by the two of them together. The three older kids are incredibly well cast, each of them vital parts of the plot and, as actors, very much up to the task.

Don Cheadle plays a colleague at “College on the Hill,” a man with twin obsessions with car crashes in cinema, and Elvis Presley. They have discussions, and in one case a sort of duet college lecture, that draws parallels between the slavish devotion to Elvis and the slavish devotion to Hitler. It felt like it had real import to the themes of this movie, but I never quite understood it.

There are big tonal shifts, giving White Noise an air of a cross between Steven Spielberg, Richard Linklater, the Coen Brothers, maybe even a dash of Robert Altman with its penchant for overlapping dialogue in group or crowd settings. I happen to love all of these directors, and each of these tones somehow work, so I’m into it. One of the final sequences, the most Coen Brothers-esque, takes place in a Catholic emergency room with surprisingly faithless nuns. I found it hilarious.

What I couldn’t tell you, in the end, is quite how it all fits together. I can only tell you I loved the experience. I wish the same for you.

I kind of wanted the entire movie to be about this.

Overall: B+

BONES AND ALL

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I left Bones and All unable to decide what to make of it. I’m still feeling that way, to a degree. Maybe I would feel differently, or have more conviction, about it after a rewatch, maybe after some time has gone by. I’m not sure I’ll ever want to watch this movie again. The closest I can get to sincerely complimenting it is to acknowledge that it’s not just fucked up, but fucked up in a way we’ve never seen in cinema before.

It also could be argued that some innovations are entirely unnecessary. Indeed, one of the questions I keep coming back to is: why? Luca Guadagnino, who directed and wrote this adaptation of the novel by Camille DeAngelis, has married two very disparate genres: tender love story, and horror. But why?

Maybe because there was something more obviously valuable to the story as it existed in the novel. I can’t speak to that, as I’ve never read it. And when it comes to Guadagnino, that guy is all over the place: Call My By Your Name (2017) was a modern masterpiece of queer cinema; he followed that up a year later with Suspiria, which was a wild mess. Then, in 2020, he gave us the immersive and deeply ambiguous limited series We Are Who We Are, which absolutely was not for everyone but really spoke to me.

Maybe it’s just when Guadagnino shifts into horror that he no longer speaks to me. He has a unique sensibility that, when married to the horror genre, just puts me off. And what purpose does it serve for us to see a tender love story about cannibals? It’s possible there is an allegorical element here, except that I fail to see any need for allegory when we live in a time when it’s easier and more effective just to be straightforward.

Guadagnino hires very talented actors, and then doesn’t seem to direct them very much. And clearly there is loyalty to him here: Timothée Chalamet was previously in Call Me By Your Name; we also get a single scene each from Michael Stuhlbarg (also in Call Me By Your Name, here stunningly reinvented as a redneck) and Chloë Sevigny (previously in We Are Who We Are). The talented actors command the screen regardless, and are often unrecognizable in this film—I did not realize the nomadic and vaguely sinister old man and would-be cannibal mentor was Mark Rylance until I viewed the credits. Other, less significant characters, though, are portrayed by actors whose deliveries feel just barely this side of unrehearsed. There is a naturalistic looseness to Guadagnino’s approach that works spectacularly some of the time, and not at all at other times.

The primary protagonist is Maren (Taylor Russell), a teenager only just turned 18, at which point her heretofore stunningly protective father (André Holland) finally abandons her, no longer able to cope with the responsibility of moving them to a new town every time she bites off a friend’s finger.

There is a curious establishment of rules in the universe of this film, where cannibals have a kind of sixth sense about each other. More specifically, they can recognize each other’s scent, which is how the creepy old man finds Maren to begin with. He teaches her how to recognize and use their smell, as well as some rules to live by that he’s established for himself. Eventually it becomes clear there is an invisible minority that the public at large cannot see, but they have ways of recognizing each other.

But then Maren meets Lee (Chalamet), and she’s more interested in being taught by him. A friendship blooms, and eventually romance too. It’s all very tender and sweet, except they are feeding on the corpses of fellow human beings in the meantime. This scenario doesn’t lay out any moral dubiousness, instead revealing elements of self-loathing and guilt over the things they are compelled to do. This all feels very on the nose as a metaphor for, say, queer people in the closet, especially at the time this is set (the 1980s). Except that cannibalism actually is literally grotesque, and I don’t know what any of this really has to offer the year 2022.

It’s entirely possible I am missing something. As it is, I kind of just don’t get it. I was fully engaged and consistently intrigued by this film, but I can’t say it enriched me in any way. Does it offer any useful insights? Is it actually entertaining? An older couple sitting in my same aisle got up and left the theater after the first onscreen feeding. Honestly they likely had a better time of the following two hours than I did, or at least had an easier time making sense of it.

Oh did I mention this movie features cannibalism as an act of love and mercy?

Overall: B-

THE INSPECTION

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

In a surprising way, The Inspection justifies not just the existence of the U.S. Military, but the way it treats its recruits. Without ever saying these exact words, writer-director Elegance Bratton seems to be telegraphing that the US Marines teaches discipline, cultivates strength, and builds character—all the typical platitudes that at best I have mixed feelings about.

Billed as “inspired by true events,” those events were lived by Bratton himself, having joined the Marines after a decade of being homeless, that period following his mother kicking him out of their home for being gay. Jeremy Pope, here in his first starring role after all of two other feature film roles to date (he also had roles in the TV series Hollywood and Pose, and is a multiple-Tony-nominated Broadway actor), plays the fictionalized lead by the name of Ellis French. This is a fantastic acting choice, not just because he’s an out Gay Black man himself, but because of his subtle recognizability as one, without ever quite being coded as such onscreen. Pope can switch from uncomfortably insecure to steely resolve with aplomb.

I suppose you could call this a “gay Black G.I. Jane,” although that would be an oversimplification. Still, The Inspection is about a deeply marginalized character proving himself within constraints of the U.S. military that are challenging at best and barbaric at worst. There is a scene in which Ellis is conducting a test of his ability to save a drowning man, the man in the water being his gleefully bullying training instructor (Bokeem Woodbine), who literally drowns him. Only the subversive empathy of fellow instructor Rosales (Raúl Castillo) ultimately saves him.

So this is both the strength and the challenge of The Inspection, in that in one scene to the next, you have no idea how Ellis will be treated, and the uncertainty is what characterizes Ellis, to a degree at least, as an abused child. By the time Ellis is actually making a pass at Rosales (a moment scene in the film’s trailer), you are horrified for him.

Presumably these sorts of things actually happened in Elegance Bratton’s experience, or else why would he put them in the script? Still, this was behavior I truly could not understand: a gay man trying to keep under the radar in boot camp, still fantasizing about his fellow recruits while showering with them? I feel certain I would be so terrified of any such thing that I’d be rendered literally impotent in that scenario, but then, what do I know? I have never even showered communally with straight men, much less been in the military.

That said, the narrative trajectory of The Recruit is satisfying in its relative unpredictability. In past movies of this sort, Ellis’s sexuality would be a much more potent plot point, something kept hidden until a climactic reveal of some kind. Here, his sexuality becomes clear early on, and although it remains a central conflict in the story—being a major part of his endurance of harassment from all sides—it never becomes a movie about shame. Ellis knows who he is; he just feels like this is his only option for any kind of future.

Granted, there is a key conflict regarding Ellis’s sexuality, and that has to do with his mother’s rejection of him, and her burning resentment after he returns to her apartment asking for his birth certificate. Ellis’s mother is played by Gabrielle Union, who is great in all of about three notable scenes. I wonder if securing her as a name actor helped get the film financed, because otherwise Union’s ample talents are greater than what this role allows her to do.

Bratton dedicates this film to his mother, who reportedly passed away shortly before its release. Clearly The Inspection exists more as an exercise for Bratton to process his relationship with his mother, than as a straightforward story about a gay Black man in boot camp. Whatever the motivations, the movie works, and I was moved by it, even as I failed to see the necessity of not only the treatment of this one recruit, but all of them.

Jeremy Pope shines as a great actor with vast potential.

Overall: B+

VIOLENT NIGHT

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B-

There’s a maybe five-minute sequence in Violent Night that is essentially an ultraviolent version of Home Alone. There’s a little Black girl instead of Macaulay Culkin, and the booby traps are more severe than those that Kevin set—although truthfully not by a wide margin; Home Alone, while still hilarious, rather downplays the severity of the injuries the traps would actually inflict. In Violent Night, instead, people actually die. Lots of them. What’s more: Violent Night is so shameless in its ripping off Home Alone in this sequence, it comes long after the movie gets literally name checked by young Trudy Lightstone. Call it “Chekov’s movie reference.”

The thing is, that five-minute sequence is by far the best part of Violent Night, giving me several good belly laughs, and I rather wish the whole movie had been centered around that. The whole story would have been much improved just being an R-rated, ultra-violent update on Home Alone, 32 years later, as thought that holiday classic were crossed with, say, Kill Bill. Now that would have been a blast.

There is a particular problem with Violent Night, you see, and that is its tonal schizophrenia. Some scenes are very violent and also very funny. Some scenes are very violent just for the sake of violence, without being funny, as though script writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller were using the sight of David Harbour in a Santa suit as a crutch—somehow, we’re meant to stay amused just because literal Santa Claus is dispatching countless nameless goons with a sledgehammer he calls “The Skullcrusher.” I mean, sure, that’s kind of funny. For a minute or two.

Violent Night works incredibly well when it has its wits about, which is unfortunately not all of the time. And, sure, even Home Alone was treacly and sentimental, ostensibly about “wholesome family values” even though in the end it wasn’t really—but it still worked because it had its narrative priorities in order, saving the violent gags for the extended, hilarious climactic sequence at the end. Violent Night, on the other hand, whips back and forth all through the movie, between bloody fights and an ultra-rich family learning the value of each other while being held hostage by a team of criminals headed by “Mr. Scrooge” (John Leguizamo).

Anyone familiar with the truly fantastic and hilarious—and thus far superior—1988 Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged will instantly be reminded of that film’s opening sequence, which turned out to be a preview for a network TV action movie with Santa Claus as its main character, called The Night the Reindeer Died. The whole point there was exaggerated ridiculousness as the result of crass holiday consumerism, and now, in 2022, we basically have that sketch gag stretched out into a feature film. I’ll give 2022 movie this much credit, at least: Violent Night is a far better title. I bet the writers of that fake trailer from Scrooged are kicking themselves now.

Ironically, David Harbour’s Santa Claus in Violent Night is a drunken mess largely because of disillusionment about what consumerist zombies modern children have become. And yet, what does Violent Night itself represent, really?

I won’t lie: I found Violent Night fun enough. That Home Alone booby trap sequence single handedly heightened my impression of the entire movie, if only to keep me from relegating it to utter mediocrity. Now I would just call it . . . relatively mediocre.

David Harbour is inspired casting as Santa Claus, notwithstanding how easy it is to argue he isn’t fat enough. At worst, he’s “stocky”—a clear choice to make him a badass former ancient warrior. Odd that we should learn that about him but not how the hell he actually became Santa. Also strange that he should be riddled with “Christmas magic” and yet so easily maimed and bloody. This is sort of like making Die Hard as an actual Christmas movie. Still not nearly as good though.

The little girl, by the way, is played winningly by Leah Brady; she’s visiting her very rich grandmother’s estate with her otherwise estranged parents (Alexis Louder and Alex Hassell). It’s pretty fun to see Beverly D’Angelo as ultra-rich-bitch Grandma Gertrude Lightstone, although even her character, like all the other adults, exist only to serve the plot purpose of vapid people barely worth protecting or saving.

I just wish Violent Night could make up its mind between earnestness and self-parody. Nearly half the movie is incongruously earnest, as though we are watching a wholesome holiday movie, even though that’s not what it is at all. None of it fits, and a movie like this really only works if it never takes itself seriously.

David Harbour never does, at least, and so the movie is at least slightly better for it. Even the subplot of little Trudy being vindicated in her belief in Santa Claus could have worked in a movie that held its conviction of utter silliness. Instead, director Tommy Wirkola seems to want Violent Night to offer something for everybody, even though that’s just never how movies like this work. In the end, it just means the audience who comes for the cartoonish violence rendered more amusing by the involvement of Santa Claus will spend every other sequence just waiting for the action to start again.

The more tedious scenes might have worked better if it had more cleverly written humor, but with a few notable exceptions, the gags in this movie are low-hanging fruit. Someone needs to try this exercise again, and do it right, or at least better. Flesh out the young-child-as-action-hero angle. Call it Scrooge Hard, or something. Home Explode? I don’t know, we can workshop it. Unfortunately there’s no better action-Christmas-movie title than Violent Night. I just wish it got more than halfway to living up to it.

While visions of skullcrusher hammers danced in their heads

Overall: B-