Hey. So... it's been a while, hasn't it?
Yes, after a prolonged absence, I've decided to take another crack at this whole movie reviewing thing, and what better way to shake the rust off these gears than with a top 10 list? But first, let's answer a few questions.
1. Why did you stop writing?
Well in case you didn't notice, there was a global pandemic. Everyone was stuck in their houses for a year and a half and a lot of public spaces, including movie theaters, were shut down. Beyond that, my life had been going through a bunch of serious changes, some related to the pandemic, some not, so I didn't really have the time, energy or means to write movie reviews, even when theaters opened back up and I started going to theaters on a regular basis again.
2. Are you going to start writing reviews regularly again?
Maybe? The thing is the pandemic wasn't my only reason for stopping. I was also going through a bit of burnout at the time and felt like my creative spark had fizzled out. Right when I stopped is when I found other creative outlets (namely Dungeons & Dragons), and when I started going to the movies again, I felt a bit relieved that I didn't feel obligated to write a thousand words on it. I had thought of picking it back up, only to be held back by the fear that I'm just not good at it anymore, but creativity is a muscle that atrophies if it isn't regularly used, so of course if I did start doing it again, maybe it'll be like I never stopped. But right now, it's not where my priorities lie.
3. What are some movies from 2020 and 2021 that you enjoyed?
In no particular order: Da 5 Bloods, David Byrne's American Utopia, Sound of Metal, Annette, Bo Burnham: Inside, The Sparks Brothers, The French Dispatch, Titane, The Suicide Squad, The Green Knight, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, Last Night in Soho, Nightmare Alley, and Cyrano.
Side note: Like my previous lists, I'd like to preface that I haven't seen everything this year, so if your favorite movie didn't make the cut, that's probably why. Some movies that slipped through the cracks for me include Top Gun: Maverick, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Smile, Elvis, T'ar, The Fablemans, Avatar: The Way of Water, Prey, Decision to Leave, Crimes of the Future and RRR.
With all that out of the way, here is the list proper.
10. Bullet Train
Chalk this one up to recency bias. I initially skipped out on Bullet Train during its theatrical run due to some middling reviews (yeah, I'm one of those people, judge me all you want), only to catch it one lazy afternoon on Netflix after Thanksgiving, and every day since then I've been kicking myself for not getting on the train sooner. Bullet Train has just about everything I love in an action movie. It's a tightly made, expertly choreographed, adrenaline fueled balls to the wall bruiser featuring a colorfully charismatic all-star cast who came to play. Set on a train speeding across Japan, Brad Pitt plays a down on his luck hitman finishing one last job, only to end up sharing a ride with a rogue's gallery of assassins and mobsters with connected yet conflicting agendas. It's a movie that wears its influences on its sleeve, displaying some obvious inspiration from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie and Robert Rodriguez, but with some of the wild fight choreography that made David Leitch one of the best action directors of the past ten years. By the end, you will learn way more about Thomas the Tank Engine than you ever wanted to know.
9. The Northman
Three movies in, Robert Eggers has established a great little niche for himself; historical dramas that put a heavy emphasis on historical accuracy that relishes in the brutal and the fantastical. While it doesn't quite reach the heights of The Witch or The Lighthouse, The Northman is still a gritty epic revenge thriller where you feel every stab, slice and bludgeon its vengeful protagonist endures and doles out. Based on an epic poem that was apparently also the inspiration for Hamlet, we follow a banished Viking prince on a quest to kill his uncle and avenge his father. In true Robert Eggers fashion, the movie is dirty, grimy and savage with a heaping helping of the surreal for good measure, starting with our main character partaking in a hallucinogenic manhood ritual, and ending with two naked dudes sword fighting on the edge of a volcano. You know, just manly men doing manly things.
8. The Whale
Darren Aronofsky really knows how to kick his audience's heart in the balls. People have been waiting for the comeback of Brendan Fraser for a while now, and the grand majority of this movie's marketing was built on that promise. But I wouldn't be putting it on this list if that's all The Whale had to offer. Fraser gives a devastating, career invigorating performance as Charlie, a morbidly obese man trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter before he dies, but he's surrounded by a small but powerful supporting cast, including Hong Chau as Charlie's brutally honest best friend and nurse, and Sadie Sink as his cruel, abrasive and insecure abandoned puppy of a daughter. While the cast is miniscule and the setting confined to Charlie's apartment, it puts them all through the emotional wringer as they process grief, loss, abandonment and addiction in a search for validation, spiritual salvation, and ultimately, redemption. The movie isn't perfect by any means. Does it feel a bit like a retread of The Wrestler? Yes. Is it glaringly obvious that this was adapted from a stage play? Yes. Does the score become overbearing at times? Oh hell yes. But despite all that, Aronofsky cuts through all the, ahem, fat, and delivers an emotionally devastating character piece that, in any other director's hands, easily could've devolved into just My 600-lb Life with an A24 filter.
7. X and Pearl
6. Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio
I hate that I have to emphasize that this is "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio". There have been dozens upon dozens of adaptations of this story over the years, three of which came out this year; the other two being another of Disney's lazy, cynical live-action remakes, and the other being a crappy direct-to-video rush job starring Pauly Shore. It should be no surprise which of the three ended up being the winner. Brought to vivid life with stunning stop-motion animation, Del Toro imbues this classic story of a living wooden puppet who wishes to become a real boy with his signature blend of whimsy and macabre. Pinocchio has always been kind of morbid to begin with, but its themes of following your conscience, doing the right thing, and untrustworthy adults willing to manipulate the naïve and innocent, is made all the more potent by the inspired choice to set the story in Fascist Italy. In some respects, this is a bit of a spiritual successor to two of Del Toro's other films, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, both of which involve children in fascist countries crossing paths with the fantastical and supernatural. The main difference of course being that you can watch this one with your kids.
5. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
In 2019, Rian Johnson dropped Knives Out, a biting, twisting, endlessly rewatchable whodunnit murder mystery that constantly turned itself upside down and inside out, revealing new twists and layers with each consecutive turn. And then three years later, he made another one. Going loopy from the pandemic with no cases to solve, Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is once again mysteriously summoned to an outing with a group of venomous, backbiting millionaires to play a murder mystery game, only for everyone to turn on each other when the bodies start dropping for real. The first third of the movie does its best to scatter clues for the audience to piece together in an attempt to figure out who the culprit is. The second third then pulls the rug from under us, that the mystery Benoit Blanc is trying to solve isn't really what we were set up to believe. Then the last third rewinds to show us what was really going on while we were too busy looking for clues in the foreground, all leading to a conclusion that, just like its namesake, seems to be buried under several layers but in truth is hiding in plain sight. Rounded out by a stellar cast including Edward Norton, Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr. and Kathryn Hahn, fabulous set designs and costumes, astounding cinematography and airtight editing, this is an onion well worth peeling back the layers of.
4. The Menu
I used to work at a high-end restaurant. It's one of the most grueling, stressful places one can work, where you have to deal with a chaotic environments and entitled customers who could destroy you over the slightest mistake. I'm amazed I lasted as long as I did there, especially as I saw several employees come and go burned out and with all the passion sucked out of them. So needless to say, I had a bit of sympathy for The Menu's main antagonist; a world-class chef hellbent on getting revenge against those who ruined his love and passion for food, even if he was clearly batshit insane. Like Glass Onion, The Menu is a pointedly on the nose "eat the rich" satire with heavy emphasis on the "eat". But where the former is a classic Agatha Christie style murder mystery, this is more set up like a Jacobean revenge thriller, where Ralph Fiennes' vindictive chef takes pretentious critics, entitled tech bros and insufferable foodies on a culinary journey where he doles out ironic punishments like a Michelin Star Willy Wonka, all while not even dignifying his victims with bread. But where Ralph Fiennes serves, Anya Taylor-Joy eats as the odd woman out, a last minute tagalong who doesn't fit into this crowd of overfed elites and sees right through their bullshit. It all culminates in a spectacular ending that'll have you begging for seconds. Just be sure to save room for dessert.
3. Barbarian
Like I said before, 2022 was such a great year for horror movies that I easily could've made a list just for that, and if that were the case, Barbarian would've had the #1 spot locked down. The movie starts out pretty simple. Two people accidentally double-book an Airbnb. If that weren't suspicious enough, the house is in the middle of a decaying Detroit neighborhood. And on top of that, they find a mysterious hidden room in the basement containing... well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. And even if I did, doing so would would rob you of the experience of seeing for yourself. Barbarian is a movie that's best experienced with as little firsthand knowledge as possible. It sets itself to be one kind of horror movie, and then halfway through it pulls the steering wheel and sends your expectations careening off a bridge. The final results are equal parts disturbing and hilarious, making for one of the most unforgettable movie experiences I've had in a long time.
2. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is one of those movies that simply could not exist without the internet. Based on a series of viral videos made by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell takes a cutesy, simple, family friendly premise and pushes it to levels of poignancy and emotional potency attempted only by the likes of Pixar or Studio Ghibli. At its surface, it seems like a meta-commentary about its own rise to viral stardom, where Marcel tries to use his newly found internet fame to find his missing family, only to deal with unwanted fame and a slew of unhelpful fans who force him back into a life of hiding. While it holds an evergreen message about not clinging to the past and embracing the future, the film itself never takes itself too seriously or pretends to be something other than what it is. For someone so sheltered, having never left the confounds of his home, Marcel's curious, childlike demeanor conceals a sense of wisdom and brimming imagination, intercutting musings about community and the passage of time with questions like "Have you ever eaten a raspberry, and if so, what was it like?" If you're looking for something that'll give your heart a big warm hug, then this movie is prescription viewing.
1. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
If I had a nickel for every time this year that an A24 movie centered around something with googly eyes made me both laugh and cry, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's strange that it happened twice. But yeah, this movie has topped many a best of the year list, this being no exception, and it absolutely deserves it. Very few movies this year dominated the pop culture zeitgeist for as long and fiercely as this one did, all while cramming so many wacky ideas inside without losing it consistency and focus until it becomes a cinematic turducken that analysts are still picking apart and finding new things to dissect. It's a moving character piece about a woman losing touch with her life and herself in a ginormous, chaotic universe. It's a family drama where differing parenting styles unite to overcome generational trauma. It's a bonkers comedy that comes at you with a rapid fire barrage of ridiculous scenarios with the force of a thousand Geico commercials. It's a high-flying action flick where everything from chairs to fanny packs to trophies shaped like butt plugs can and will be used as a weapon. And yes, we're still talking about the movie where a woman is having her taxes audited in one scene and then in another is in a parallel timeline where everyone has hot dogs for fingers. I'd expect nothing less from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the mad geniuses who made us all cry with a movie about a talking farting corpse. If there's only one movie from this year that will still be talked about for years to come, I'd put all my money on it being this one. It has everything. It's ideas come from everywhere. And they all come at you all at once.
Honorable mentions:
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Bodies Bodies Bodies
The Black Phone
Bones and All
Nope
Turning Red
Wendell & Wild
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