The year in film of 2022 can best be described as quality over quantity. There wasn't a lot of great films last year, but there was a handful that I consider to be truly great cinematic achievements.
One of the biggest surprises of 2022 was The Batman. Going in, I thought that character's cinematic journey was pretty much tapped out. Not at all, because The Batman is a fresh and exciting take on the character. Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne is an asocial recluse when he's not in costume, and Matt Reeves' film plays like a brutal gangster picture straight out of Warner Bros. of the 1930s and 40s.
Top Gun: Maverick is one of those "legacy sequels" done right. It respects the 1986 original, but is actually a far better film which has Tom Cruise returning as Navy aviator Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell to train some young upstarts. The drama is good, and with Cruise and the cast doing much of their own flying really gooses up the action scenes. This is a pure summer popcorn movie at its best.
Because of quarantining due to the COVID-19 pandemic, director Ti West and actress Mia Goth created not one but two great horror films - X and its prequel, Pearl. In X, a group of porno filmmakers rent a barn to make a skin flick, but they have to deal with a homicidal old couple. This nod to 70s horror is a slasher film per se, but it's done with deep artistry from storytelling to the composition of shots. Goth plays both the final girl and the elderly killer, Pearl. The prequel stars Goth as the young version of Pearl - a farm girl who will literally kill to become famous. Again, it's a slasher at heart, but it's shot like a glorious technicolor classic, and Goth delivers an absolutely Oscar-caliber performance.
For my money, last year had two unique and fascinating animated features - Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. Apollo 10 ½, from Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock), is a warm nostalgia piece about the build-up to the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. But get this, it's also a wonderful flight of fancy as fourth-grader Stan is recruited by NASA to be the first kid in space. Linklater shot live-action scenes, then had them traced over with animation, a process known as rotoscoping, which the director used in two previous films, Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006).
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is the best cinematic adventure of the wooden boy since the 1940 Walt Disney animated production. This distinct interpretation explores heady themes of life and death while delivering it through the dazzling art of stop-motion animation.
Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, loosely based on his childhood, is a coming-of-age drama about a boy in love with films and filmmaking. This remarkable movie gives us some insight into the mind of one of the greatest filmmakers alive.
My favorite movie of 2022 is director George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing, an understated fable about a Djinn - or genie - and his life of loneliness. An equally lonely English scholar (Tilda Swinton) accidentally awakens the Djinn (Idris Elba), who recounts his past to her. The two then form a romantic relationship. The director of Mad Max has created a meditative dramatic fantasy that really stayed with me.
My favorite movie of 2022 is director George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing, an understated fable about a Djinn - or genie - and his life of loneliness. An equally lonely English scholar (Tilda Swinton) accidentally awakens the Djinn (Idris Elba), who recounts his past to her. The two then form a romantic relationship. The director of Mad Max has created a meditative dramatic fantasy that really stayed with me.
