Category: Movies

The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #5 – “TÁR”

The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #5 – “TÁR”

Lydia Tár is brilliant. She is also successful. She is also a bully. The third so often follows from the first two that they all seem to go together. Those who are brilliant and successful don’t get called a “bully,” but instead are simply “demanding” or “exacting.” And that’s what the world around world-class composer sees: a fiercely talented world-class conductor who loves the music above all else (or so we’re supposed to think) and requires everyone to serve her efforts to coax world-class music from her orchestra and all others she comes across. But the music has ceased being the primary motivation for Tár’s life; instead, Lydia Tár’s primary motivation for life is the elevation of Lydia Tár. And, as so perfectly realized by writer/director Todd Field and world’s best actress Cate Blanchett, her use–and abuse–of those who cling to her for their affirmation and livelihoods eventually fights back.

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“Broker”: Who is Your Family?

“Broker”: Who is Your Family?

As he has done in so many times before, such as in Nobody Knows, Like Father, Like Son, and, most similarly, in 2018’s Palme d’Or winning masterpiece, Shoplifters, Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda again explores this question of family in his new film Broker. And, as in those other movies, he seems to argue that your family are not necessarily those to whom you are bound by blood. Instead, your family are those to whom you are bound by love, regardless of the circumstances that pulled you together.

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The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #6 – “Nope”

The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #6 – “Nope”

Jordan Peele is the new master of horror as cultural commentary. 2017’s Get Out is so highly regarded that it made the Sight and Sound Top 100 Best Films of All Time list this year. So, when Nope came out this summer, so did the think pieces of what big message Peele was trying to make. And he made a lot of them. Combining sci-fi and horror with a throwback to old UFO movies, Peele’s third film is a critique of such things as Hollywood and its treatment of minorities, the quest for fame and the predatory nature it unleashes, and man’s attempt to tame the natural world for his own ends. But, in addition to its many messages, Nope also works as one fantastically entertaining summer popcorn flick.

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The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #7 – “After Yang”

The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #7 – “After Yang”

What does it mean to be a family? What does it mean to be human? Can we all participate in a fun massive multiplayer online family dance-off? Technology presses into these questions in Kogonada’s second film, After Yang, a soft sci-fi story set in the not-too-distant future. In Kogonada’s vision, the answer to the third question is an exuberant “Yes!” The opening credits set to numerous families dancing against each other in the online world shows us that technological improvement can serve our families well. At the end of that sequence, however, those other two questions are thrust to the forefront. The film doesn’t try to force any answers on you, but simply shows you the fallout when the lines between technology and humanity blur.

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The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #9 – “White Noise”

The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #9 – “White Noise”

I’m convinced that writer/director Noah Baumbach has always been an absurdist. Most of his films are what I would call “absurd realism.” The settings, characters, and situations are all set in reality, but people don’t really speak and act the way that Baumbach’s characters do (e.g., the dysfunctional Brooklyn family of The Squid and the Whale, the erudite slacker of Frances Ha, the all-too-worldly college students of Mistress America). After his least absurd film to date, 2019’s Marriage Story, Baumbach went for all-out absurdism by adapting Dom DeLillo’s postmodern fable “White Noise.” And it turns out that, the more absurd Baumbach gets, the more I am there for it.

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The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #10 – “The Whale”

The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #10 – “The Whale”

Darren Aronofsky has never been a filmmaker devoted to subtlety. Requiem for a Dream is a kinetic fever dream turned waking nightmare. The Fountain is an epic mediation on time and reality with a literal Tree of Life. mother! is a creation fable with a rave. Noah has giant rock monsters. Rock monsters. Even his quietest film until now, 2008’s The Wrestler, has wrestling sequences which are bonkers. Aronofsky is comfortable with the point of the film being right in front of you smacking you in the face. When you embrace that, you can embrace one of the few filmmakers working today whose every effort is designed to bring attention to the biggest things in life and the universe: the purpose of existence; the nature of God; the struggle for identity and meaning.

So, many criticism of his newest film, The Whale, make so much sense in light of who Aronofsky is. The most common complaints that I have seen are that it is too contrived, too stagey, and too overwrought. Too which I reply: of course it is. Have you ever seen a Darren Aronofsky movie? That it is contrived and stagey comes from it being adapted from a stage play. That it is overwrought comes from the movie’s creator. But not everything overwrought is bad. The Whale‘s strength, as the strength of many of Aronofsky’s films, is that he is able to use the overwrought surface to find real emotion underneath.

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