2022 Movie Reviews

[TrueFaith77]

30 movies in, here is my 2022 movie report card (alphabetical):


Grade: A
Bigbug (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)*
Everything Went Fine (Francois Ozon)
Father Stu (Rosalind Ross)
Nitram (Justin Kurzel)
Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)

Grade: B
The Battle at Lake Changjin II (Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, Dante Lam)
Don’t Look Down (Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel)
Guermantes (Christophe Honore)
Home Team (Charles Kinnane, Daniel Kinnane)*
The Invisible Thread (Marco Simon Puccioni)*
Morbius (Daniel Espinosa)
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche (Celeste Bell, Paul Sng)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (9) (David Blue Garcia)*

Grade: C
Ambulance (Michael Bay)
I Want You Back (Jason Orley)*
Redeeming Love (D.J. Caruso)
Souers (Yamina Benguigui)
Through My Window (Marçal Forès)*

Grade: D
7 Days (Roshan Sethi)
Better Nate Than Ever (Tim Federle)*
Panama (Mark Neveldine)
Rifkin’s Festival (Woody Allen)

Grade: F
The Batman (Matt Reeves)
Death on the Nile (Kenneth Branagh)
Deep Water (Adrian Lynne)*
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniels)
Master (Mariama Diallo)
The Northman (Robert Eggers)
Scream (5) (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin; Tyler Gillett)
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (Alison Klayman)*

* - streaming release

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by TrueFaith77

30 movies in, here is my 2022 movie report card (alphabetical):


Grade: A
Bigbug (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)*
Everything Went Fine (Francois Ozon)
Father Stu (Rosalind Ross)
Nitram (Justin Kurzel)
Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)

Grade: B
The Battle at Lake Changjin II (Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, Dante Lam)
Don’t Look Down (Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel)
Guermantes (Christophe Honore)
Home Team (Charles Kinnane, Daniel Kinnane)*
The Invisible Thread (Marco Simon Puccioni)*
Morbius (Daniel Espinosa)
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche (Celeste Bell, Paul Sng)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (9) (David Blue Garcia)*

Grade: C
Ambulance (Michael Bay)
I Want You Back (Jason Orley)*
Redeeming Love (D.J. Caruso)
Souers (Yamina Benguigui)
Through My Window (Marçal Forès)*

Grade: D
7 Days (Roshan Sethi)
Better Nate Than Ever (Tim Federle)*
Panama (Mark Neveldine)
Rifkin’s Festival (Woody Allen)

Grade: F
The Batman (Matt Reeves)
Death on the Nile (Kenneth Branagh)
Deep Water (Adrian Lynne)*
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniels)
Master (Mariama Diallo)
The Northman (Robert Eggers)
Scream (5) (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin; Tyler Gillett)
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (Alison Klayman)*

* - streaming release

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniels)

This movie was supposed to be good. I was thinking about seeing it.

[Jondalar]

6. Morbius, grade D = This is a bad movie. It's just blah. The director has managed to make a movie about a vampire totally boring and almost unwatchable. I don't know why darker comic books like Morbius and Venom have such problems translating into good movies. There hasn/t been a truly successful Anti-hero movie yet. Skip this one.

[Jondalar]

7. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, grade B - = I'm only liked this movie because of the Scarlet Witch. She is one of the best, if not the best, villain Marvel has ever had and Elizabeth Olsens' performance is perfect. However, the plot is flimsy and the film feels disjointed. The movie can't decide if it's a Marvel movie or a Sam Raimi (director) horror movie. The new superhero America Chavez is a complete bore and I didn't really like her character. However, there are some good action scenes and surprises. It's worth seeing but it doesn't feel like a Doctor Strange movie and I was disappointed.

[TrueFaith77]

31.Firebird (Peter Rebane); grade: B

“There is a thin line between bravery and carelessness.” That’s how a character describes flying fighter jets in the Soviet-era set Firebird. This warning also applies to two soldiers’ gay love story. Their daring gets heightened by a society of surveillance (wires, spies, anonymous reports) and flashes hot in tame love scenes. The movie is best when glorying over the actors. Blond, impossibly defined, birdlike Tom Prior (Sergey) and lean, handsome, square-jawed Oleg Zagorodnii (Roman) connect over their artistic interests as photographers and, then, when Roman introduces Sergey to ballet. Director Rebane makes their chemistry palpable whether focusing on their shoulders and clavicles or when heightening their bold sexual adventures with stolen kisses hiding in the forest or when jet engines signify orgasm. Totalitarian suppression and military accoutrement give their desire the frisson of doomed liberation absent from domesticated consumer-capitalist homosexuality. Oleg uses his camera—and acting as an athletic Hamlet—to capture fleeting moments (the birth of a flirtatious smile). Rebane similarly captures an actor’s expression of grief and gratitude. Firebird achieves surprising emotion by providing psychological (individual) background to Sergey and jettisoning the victimization catalogued in Brokeback Mountain.

[Jondalar]

8. Top Gun 2, grade B+ = what makes this movie good are the flight and combat scenes. They are excellent. However, that's pretty much it. The love interest is pretty much unbelievable and so is the plot. However, I believe this is the best they could of done with this sequel. The movie is a good time, but it's forgettable and I don't have much to say about it. I think Tom Cruise is starting to look old though.

[TrueFaith77]

33.Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski); grade: B

The amazing authenticity of Tom Cruise really makes Top Gun: Maverick soar. The publicity around the movie focuses on Tom Cruise performing his own stunts. He demonstrates this most obviously in his Buster Keaton-esque derring-do in the Mission: Impossible movies, especially the fourth installment Ghost Protocol (directed by Brad Bird). With Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise impresses folks with the realism of actually flying fighter jets. (The CGI is seamless.) The g-force tugs at his facial muscles. But the greatest special effect in the movie is Cruise's face and his physicality (remember the paternal phantom punch in Spielberg's War of the Worlds? It's still Cruise's finest moment--and it's magnificent.) Here, Cruise amazes when emotional recall plays over his countenance when he sees a new generation of pilots singing along to "Great Balls of Fire" like he and his buddy Goose in the original Top Gun, part of that 80s tradition that reduced narrative to commercials and music videos. Now, Cruise imparts emotional weight to the utterly weightless characterization of the first film. Similarly, Cruise affords emotional generosity to his reunion scene with Val Kilmer's Ice Man. Both scenes induce goose bumps. Unfortunately, Cruise's gravitas (earned after 2002's breakthrough Minority Report) grounds the film in his significance but does not apply his significance. There is no frisson to his generation-gap conflict with Goose's son (Miles Teller is like a ripe eunuch) or in his romantic redemption with gorgeous Jennifer Connelly. Commitment-phobe Maverick never links Cruise's emotional authenticity to the audience's need for social-spiritual commitment--as did his characterizations in Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Tropic Thunder, and Lions for Lambs.