2022 Movie Reviews

[TrueFaith77]

8.I Want You Back (Jason Orley); grade: B-

Jenny Slate might be the best current film comedienne. Her characters start as overgrown children who mature by discovering purpose and building relationships (Obvious Child and Landline remain her best work). She makes her characters specific (sexy, ethnic) but recognizes in this arc a universal crisis. And in this film she and director Orley find a new expressive facet when Slate’s character plays Audrey in a hilariously impassioned junior high production of Little Shop of Horrors. I lol’d in every scene, and, though the two main characters don’t quite get the comeuppance they deserve, the film secures a moral foundation (Scott Eastwood warning: “Stay away from my wife. I’m not kidding” is his best acting yet).

[TrueFaith77]

9.Bigbug (Jean-Pierre Jeunet); grade: A

Jeunet long-dreamt an Eisenstein-inspired peek into the sexual secrets behind closed doors. Now, finally fulfilled, but through the sci-fi lens of covidpocalypse isolation. Each actor is lit with a ring light—as if evincing an individuating spark. By the time Jeunet penetrates into the psycho-spiritual essence of his characters’ exploitable desires, the film is revealed as a continuation of Spielberg’s devastations in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Like Spielberg, Jeunet expands these insights into cultural awareness (quoting French literature and citing Sternberg-Dietrich’s iconic Blue Angel). Dizzy yet? When the characters debase themselves for the pleasure of their AI overlords, Jeunet fulfills the film’s De Palma-like existential immanence. This peak dystopian satire brings to our current totalitarian waking nightmare the clarity of dreaming. It’s the movie to beat: 2022.

[Jondalar]

2. Moonfall, grade D = Very bad sci-fi movie, stupid plot. There are some very good special affects and Halle Berry gives a pretty good performance, but don't waste your money. The movie isn't paced well and I couldn't wait to leave.

[TrueFaith77]

10.Texas Chainsaw Massacre (9) (David Blue Garcia); grade: B


Like Brady Corbet’s art-film masterwork Vox Lux, Garcia’s B-movie TCM retcon launches its broad socio-political analysis from the trauma of school-shooting survivor’s guilt and the psychological specificity of sisters. The social tensions go beyond fake binary political paradigms. Garcia winds them so tightly that when the scary-and-funny slasher gore commences it feels like relief. In other words, Garcia confronts his characters with the moral dilemma they try to escape. Garcia complicates the “final girl” trope with ambivalent politically-loaded imagery of a phallic assault rifle and chainsaw. Those unable to comprehend such complexity and contradiction—humanity!—are doomed sheeple to the slaughterhouse.

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by TrueFaith77

10.Texas Chainsaw Massacre (9) (David Blue Garcia); grade: B


Like Brady Corbet’s art-film masterwork Vox Lux, Garcia’s B-movie TCM retcon launches its broad socio-political analysis from the trauma of school-shooting survivor’s guilt and the psychological specificity of sisters. The social tensions go beyond fake binary political paradigms. Garcia winds them so tightly that when the scary-and-funny slasher gore commences it feels like relief. In other words, Garcia confronts his characters with the moral dilemma they try to escape. Garcia complicates the “final girl” trope with ambivalent politically-loaded imagery of a phallic assault rifle and chainsaw. Those unable to comprehend such complexity and contradiction—humanity!—are doomed sheeple to the slaughterhouse.

I'm a horror junky. I'm going to watch this one.

[Jondalar]

3. Death on the Nile, grade C- = The movie is beautifully shot, but poorly directed. There are some great scenes of the nile river and Egypt but the movie is choppy and doesn't really flow. Also, they changed the story and added a bunch of politically correct elements that make the movie far fetched. It just didn't quite work and the ending is not shocking at all. It was a big disappointment.

[TrueFaith77]

11.The Batman (Matt Reeves); grade: F

#TheBatman bastardizes Chinatown in the incoherent style of 80s Euro-trash ad men Scott, Figgis, Lyne. Essentially, it peddles Fascism. Note: GOAT Batfleck always struck in the face of imminent danger—but Battinson just disregards the Constitution to bootlicking applause. Best moment: Batman and Selina’s motorcycle wheels hum in harmony—actors offscreen, it’s their sexiest interaction. The film ruins it with Selina’s cri de gurre about white male privilege that I think was supposed to be funny/ironic (as she unknowingly delivers it to Bruce Wayne), but the audience lapped it up with the grave seriousness encouraged by hack Matt Reeves. The music score’s sentimental use of “Ave Maria” (the name of Catwoman’s mother) just continues the culture’s ruinous misunderstanding of the profound “Martha” revelation in Zack Snyder’s Batman V Superman.

[TrueFaith77]

67.Unhuman (Marcus Dunstan); grade: F
68.See How They Run (Tom George); grade: F
69.Grande Jete (Isabelle Stever); grade: C
71.The Menu (Mark Mylod); grade: F

The year’s brutalizing movies exploit real-world brutality, while the rare film attempts to explore the human dimensions of abuse. Both Knives Out wannabes Mark Mylod’s The Menu and Tom George’s See How They Run (also ripping off Wes Anderson) reveal the motivations of their respective murderers as founded in the child abuse they suffered. Upon this moral horror, the films hang the year’s most incompetent big-movie screenplay and display of film technique, respectively. Such indulgence of spiritual darkness proves enough to make audiences feel smart—these films use child abuse for cred. (Such a fall after Mylod made the definitive satire of the Washington closet in What’s Your Number?) The Tik-Tok style of Scream wannabe Unhuman means to congratulate the sophistication of young audiences, but is itself a form of abuse. More depressing than its twist (ripped off from the great Detention by Joseph Kahn), is its incapacity to highlight the talent of the underutilized Uriah Shelton (iconic in Rodrigo Garcia’s Blue, audacious in Christopher Landon’s Freaky). In international cinema, Grand Jete takes a stultifyingly dispassionate view of incest. Set in German drudgery in and outside of Berlin, it concerns a woman ballet instructor, whose physical demands she makes of her young charges she, too, probably suffered including giving up her son to pursue dance. “You have no maternal feelings,” her own mother drones. Returning home, she commences a sexual affair with her son after he invites her to an underground physique competition in which he participates. Their shared interest in pushing physical limits meets a desire to push social boundaries. The style of the film, handheld camera with characters moving in and out of shallow focus, keeps all prurience at a distance—but also empathy. The dulling emphasis on the mundane and punishing duration culminates in the scene where the mother gives birth to the child she shares with her son. The endless physical strain engenders within her, finally, maternal feelings. Somebody better cast Uriah Shelton in the American remake before it’s too late, but it better not be hacks Mylod or George!

[Jondalar]

19. Avatar 2: The Way of Water, grade A = This movie is too long and could have easily been trimmed by 30 minutes. The plot is also too simple. However, you have to see it. It is spectacular, especially in 3D. I felt like I was watching the next step in cinema and James Cameron deserves all the credit for pushing the boundaries of technology. I liked this movie better than the first Avatar. I was just spellbound by the visuals. However, I will warn you that it is very long.