The Five Best Movies of 2022 (So Far)
Bangers only
Welcome back! As promised, here is the remainder of the list that I began in my previous post (whose introduction became a lengthier-than-expected invective about the state of cinema; apologies!). If you missed that, check it out here!
5: Barbarian
I am hesitant to write too much about Zach Cregger’s brilliant horror flick, if only because its joys lie squarely in its surprises – of which, dear reader, I can assure you there are many. Barbarian appears at first glance like a movie you have seen hundreds of times: a woman (Georgina Campbell) ends up at an Airbnb in a decrepit part of Detroit, only to find that there is already another guest (Bill Skarsgård, known best as Pennywise the Clown in the It series) staying there. What to do but stay the night anyway – what could go wrong! All I will say is that Cregger is far too clever to take the well-trodden path here. Barbarian breaks the horror mould by deriving tension from the “what” instead of the “when”: whereas typically one knows exactly what terrors are to be delivered to the characters and is only guessing when they will arrive, here one never for a moment knows what to expect. Seeing this in a crowded theater on its opening night was very nearly the best in-theater experience I had this year (second only to my top pick): my fellow audience members’ live reactions to the twists and turns were nearly as entertaining as the film itself, and that is saying something.
4: The Northman
Robert Eggers comes off the spectacular one-two punch of The Witch and The Lighthouse with another abundantly researched, exceptionally detailed historical fable, a hallucinatory Viking revenge epic based on the same Norse myth which inspired Hamlet. The Northman is a visual feast of the highest order, with Eggers’ expanded budget – estimated to be about six times that of his first two features combined – allowing his sense of cinematic flair to ascend new heights. Harrowing action sequences such as the spectacularly orchestrated one-take village raid above are coupled with phantasmagoric, ethereal shots of gore, all of it drenched in a rich palette of sullen grays, moonlit blues, and fiery oranges and yellows. Though its majestic execution comes somewhat at the expense of the thematic complexity of his earlier work, this is nonetheless a tour-de-force from Eggers, and an embodiment of what occurs when studios entrust creative directors with a budget matching their ambitions.
3: Jackass Forever
You would be forgiven if the earliest moments in the history of cinema were not at the top of your mind while watching a man get covered in honey and salmon and left alone in a room with a grizzly bear, as occurs in this latest entry in the Jackass franchise. But Jeff Tremaine’s film is nonetheless part of a lineage that began with the very first films of the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès with the “cinema of attractions,” which in the words of film theorist Tom Gunning was “an exhibitionist cinema… that display[ed] its visibility, willing to rupture a self-enclosed fictional world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spectator.” Action and horror movies possess some of this spirit, but the Jackass series is its purest contemporary distillation, forgoing narrative entirely to engage in the act of simply showing. With stunt after increasingly unhinged stunt, Jackass Forever taps into the elemental hilarity of a buddy’s physical pain. There is an unexpected sweetness buried in the insanity of Johnny Knoxville’s group of lovable idiots, particularly in the camaraderie evident from (and built out of) their collective laughter. “Touching” may not be the word that immediately comes to mind while watching people get shot out of a cannon forty feet into the air, but here we are.
2: Nope
Jordan Peele’s sci-fi/horror/social commentary genre bonanza grows richer with each new viewing, as moments that were either innocuous or puzzling upon a first watch become revelatory when understood in the film’s broader context. Peele’s technical aptitude and attention to detail are allowed to come to the fore when one’s attention is not dominated by the tension of not knowing what is to come. Nope is one of the rare works which can both entertain on its own terms and challenge the viewer with layers upon layers of ideas: the risk of art edging into exploitation, the folly of trying to harness natural forces beyond oneself, and above all the intoxicating allure of spectacle. It is an irony, and almost certainly a conscious choice by Peele, that what prevents his immense array of ideas from becoming unwieldy is Nope’s awe-inspiring visual construction – itself a kind of spectacle. To think that behind the subtlety of Nope is the same mind that came up with L’Carpetron Dookmarriot… we humans contain multitudes.
1: Top Gun: Maverick
Sequels, in particular “legacy sequels” that arrive decades after their progenitor, are always engaged in a dance of death with a beast that can be either their triumph or their downfall: nostalgia. The ever-present risk is that a sequel’s only end becomes cravenly serving fans who thirst for the same feelings that the original elicited from them. That is an all too slippery slope towards the film forgetting to stand on its own without the crutch of legacy propping it up. The graveyard of nostalgia’s victims is vast: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Independence Day: Resurgence, and most notoriously Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace are among the many corpses which litter it. Successful legacy sequels like Blade Runner 2049 and Mad Max: Fury Road often skirt the issue by taking a circuitous route around their source material, tapping into its spirit while only rarely engaging directly with its narrative. They hide from nostalgia in the trees, avoiding its gaze, nervously evading it.
There is no such timidity in Top Gun: Maverick, a work of pure, uncut nostalgia which faces the beast head on, tames it, and unleashes it with brazen, spellbinding energy. The opening credits are almost shot-for-shot with the original, scored once again to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.” A group of pilots drunkenly perform a piano-accompanied rendition of “Great Balls of Fire” at their favorite watering hole – just as in the original. Philosophical and temperamental asymmetry between two machismo-obsessed trainees becomes a chief source of conflict – just as in the original. The finale involves a strategic mission to neutralize a conspicuously unnamed enemy nation – well, you guessed it.
How does Maverick get away with all this without it coming off as obsequious, pandering nonsense? It is down to the sheer dedication of its creative team – director Joseph Kosinski and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, certainly, but above all our last true movie star, Tom Cruise – to the minutiae and craft of filmmaking. Nostalgia in their hands becomes a boon instead of a burden. The recycled elements continually remind the audience of what they enjoyed from the original, only for the film to blow away its predecessor at every turn – a revitalization instead of a mere recreation. This is nowhere more true than in the action sequences, which – I am not being hyperbolic here – rank among the greatest ever put to screen. Each and every shot in each and every flying sequence comes across as meticulously planned, obsessively constructed, and masterfully executed. One understands the amount of effort being exerted, and yet is not made to feel it. All one can feel is the rush of air, the G-forces, the speed, the adrenaline.
I can easily believe that this film exists. What I cannot believe is that it’s so alive. For something to feel so deftly controlled and yet so exhilarating, so finely calibrated and yet so limitless, is nothing less than miraculous. That’s just what Top Gun: Maverick is: a magisterial, magnificent miracle, and the best film of 2022 so far.