2022 Top Ten Films
1. Triangle of Sadness
There’s a damn good reason writer-director Ruben Ostlund won the Palme D’or at Cannes with this surrealist tale of class warfare on a deserted island after a luxury yacht is sunk by pirates. Woody Harrelson comes out of nowhere as a drunken, incompetent captain and Dolly De Leon is fascinating as a crew member who formerly scrubbed toilets but now is the de facto queen of the island, for she is the only one with survival skills. Features the only regurgitation scene ever filmed that made me laugh.
2. The Good Boss
Fernando Leon de Aranoa writes-directs this social satire that swept everything in site at Spain’s Goya Awards, along with wins at Mexico’s Ariel and the European Film Awards. Javier Bardem is the titular, compassionate head honcho of an industrial scales company who grows increasingly corrupt to cover up problems that he wants hidden from an awards committee. The cast and de Aranoa’s brilliant storytelling transport the viewer delightfully into a world amusing relativism.
3. Official Competition
This darkly ironic thriller from co-directors Mariano Cohen and Gaston Duplat pits a beautiful, manipulative film director (Penelope Cruz) against two actors who despise each other (Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez) and have totally different work methods and ethics. Push comes to shove and suspected murder has to take a back seat to the allegedly more important promotion of the film within a film.
4. Young Plato
Declan McGrath and Neasa Ni Chianin captures our hearts with this portrait of Belfast inner city school headmaster Kevin McArevey. His practical lectures on philosophy are geared to save the lives of boys prone to sectarian violence, shattering poverty and drugs. McArevey’s tough love leaves a lump in the throat, as his wisdom is bound to fall on deaf ears for some of these at-risk but eminently loveable lads.
5. Tar
Todd Field has constructed a dreamlike tale of cancel culture comeuppance for one of our most gifted actors, Cate Blanchett. As a renowned female classical music conductor, she tosses off Field’s erudite lectures with aplomb but her psychological makeup cannot cope with the errors of her public and private decision making. The film is reminiscent of the best of that now marginalized auteur, Roman Polanski.
6. Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Emily and Sarah Kunstler beautifully embroider a doc that uses lawyer Jeffery Robinson’s lectures, personal anecdotes and interviews about long-standing issues of racial prejudice. What sets it apart from other worthy entries is Robinson’s learning issues about his own past that knock him — and the viewer — emotionally off our feet.
7. Dear Mr. Brody
What kind of man promises to give away his $25 million fortune in order to better a selfish, war-ravaged world? In the case of Keith Maitland’s documentary, it’s 21-year-old hippie millionaire Michael Brody Jr., whose 1970 largesse turns to disgust when the media, and fortune seekers of all kinds, make demands and accusations that lead him to psychologically melt. Maitland uses a cache of letters to Brody, found 50 years later, unopened, to enthrall us even more.
8. Moonage Daydream
Brett Morgen’s kaleidoscopic depiction of the life of musician-composer and enigmatic chameleon David Bowie draws on every imaginable type of source material. Best of all, eschewing voice over narration, Morgen lets Bowie himself philosophize, often with brilliant insight, on fame, creative risk-taking, the media’s effect on pop music and more.
9. The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile
The viewer does not need to be a fan of country music to fall for Kathlyn Horan’s film about previous teen music sensation Tucker, who with trepidation, vulnerability and a measure of self-destructiveness comes out out of retirement. Worshipful Carlile produces the album despite the obstacles and the honest and often hilariously vulgar repartee is as winning as Tucker’s now whiskey baritone, heartfelt vocals.
10. Is that Black Enough for You?
Yes, it is, Elvis Mitchell, whose essayist approach to Black cinema is as informative and stirring as it is wildly entertaining. From the ennobling careers of friends Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte to the gritty, kickass feminism of Pam Grier and everything in between, Mitchell has constructed an overdue love letter to the great, the overlooked and even the absurd.
WORTHY COMPETITORS
She Said
Charlotte
Accepted
Fire of Love
A Cops and Robbers Story
