Mile
Zero

There is no doubt in my mind that Everything Everywhere All at Once was my movie of the year. It's probably the best thing I've seen in about a decade, at least since Fury Road. I do want to talk about it in a little more detail. But first, let's examine the general landscape.

As of this writing, I watched 152 movies this year. Most of them were horror movies. That's true even if we discount my traditional Shocktober batch of 31. Horror flicks are shorter than other movies, I think, so by runtime they account for about half — 128 hours out of roughly 262.

This was also the year that I stopped getting DVDs from Netflix, after about two decades as a subscriber. Gradually, as part of a general shift away from physical media, the selection there had gotten worse for new movies, but it had also deteriorated for older films, which was a lot of the reason I had kept it around: if I heard about something from the 70s or 80s on a podcast, I would have liked to be able to find it there to watch.

The pitch of a streaming future was supposed to be that we would have access to anything ever made, even if we couldn't own it. Instead, we're ending up in the worst of both worlds: you can't own a movie or TV show physically, and they get yanked constantly from digital services due to a tangle of competing financial interests. Here's an example: Kathryn Bigelow's 1995 Strange Days cannot be streamed in any form, not as a rental or a "purchase." You can buy a DVD, maybe, but it's expensive and hard to locate. I got a used copy from Bucket O' Blood here in Chicago after years of looking in various record stores.

It's not like this is the end of society — after all, we used to have to sit down at a pre-arranged time every single week to watch a television series. But I do worry about how film culture moves forward in a world without a coherent memory of itself.

(In some ways, this is the same problem that visual art and software development face with the increasing onslaught of AI-generated images, text, and code. It's ironic that after spilling countless tons of pollution to create a world-spanning network of technology, that same technology will be used to pollute its own intellectual underpinnings. Capitalism truly eats itself.)

On other other hand, you've got something like Everything Everywhere, which smashed into me this year like a runaway truck. It's the story of Evelyn Wong, played by Michelle Yeoh: a bad mother running a failing laundromat, whose husband (Waymond, played by a resurgent Ke Huy Quan) wants a divorce. In fact, she's the worst of all Evelyn Wongs in the multiverse, being hunted by an omnipresent supernatural force known as Jobu Tupaki, whose ultimate plan involves a horrific Everything Bagel. ("I got bored one day, and I put everything on a bagel. Everything. All my hopes and dreams, my old report cards, every breed of dog, every last personal ad on Craigslist. Sesame. Poppyseed. Salt.")

There's this thing that a good TV show will do, where there's a character in the first episode that you hate, and then halfway through the season they'll get a feature episode, show their backstory or their personal tragedy, and suddenly they're your favorite, you can't imagine the show without them. Everything Everywhere is that, but for tone. It'll introduce a throwaway joke like Raccacoony, Evelyn's mangling of Ratatooille. Then, because it's a multiverse, we get to see Raccacoony, a trash panda voiced by Randy Newman controlling a hibachi chef, in a cutaway gag that pays off a cute fight sequence. And then at the end of two hours, somehow you've come to care deeply for Raccacoony, you're rooting for Evelyn to free him from animal control and somehow this all makes sense.

Also, there's like seven of these tonal judo throws going simultaneously. There's a self-contained homage to Wong Kar Wai, and an extended riff on the phallic IRS awards owned by an auditor played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who is clearly having the time of her life in her late career choices. It's an almost indescribably dense film, united by a Gondry-like aesthetic and a spirit of deep generosity. Somehow, almost impossibly, it sticks the landing. It's really good. Stephanie Hsu is magnetic. You should watch it.

In any other year, a new Jordan Peele movie would be a shoo-in for the top slot on my movie list. Nope is not the best thing he's ever done (I still think Us is going to be a dark horse for Peele's legacy), but it's extremely good. It's also a real showcase for his strengths as a writer: the script has a lot of layers to it but it's not relying on a gimmick, and his characters are drawn in specifics that his cast can really dig into. It's also not didactic — there are messages here, but not an easily-digested manifesto (he has stated pretty clearly that he doesn't just want to be "the racism horror guy,"). Instead, what we get are intersections between spectacle, creativity, labor, and trauma.

My third-favorite movie of 2022 is a little Senagalese film named Saloum, which I think is still only available on Shudder. It's Tarantino-esque in the best ways (incredibly charming actors given sparkling dialog and tense dynamics) and the worst (the ending fizzles a bit). You should go into this blind, but I'm so excited to see what comes next from everyone involved.

Everything else

The first movie I watched back in January was Bound, the Wachowskis' 1996 audition for The Matrix, starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. I used to have to introduce this movie to people by saying "it's really good, but don't be scared off by the first ten minutes." I don't know if that's still something we have to say in this day and age, but it's still a pretty camp start for what turns into a tight, constrained noir. I tend to forget that the whole movie is basically a play in a two-apartment set, every inch of which is lovingly chewed by Joe Pantoliano. Part of me really wishes that instead of being given actual budgets for Speed Racer or The Cloud Atlas, the Wachowskis had spent thirty years turning out clockwork gems like this.

Pig is a part of the latter-day Nicolas Cage renaissance, and given a lot of those movies you might expect it to be a blood-soaked revenge film, a la Mandy or Prisoners of the Ghostland. What you actually get here is a quiet meditation on labor and skill, as a retired chef returns to the city where he was famous in search of his kidnapped truffle hog. Parts of it get a little misty-eyed for my taste, but the performances (from Cage, Adam Arkin, and Alex Wolff) help keep it grounded most of the time. It's better than it has any right to be, basically.

As I mentioned, the streaming landscape worries me a little bit, but there are some weird gems in there as well — movies nobody cares enough to fight over. One of these is Siege, a 1983 Canadian horror film that's essentially a better Purge. When the Nova Scotian police go on strike, a gang of bigots attack a gay bar, killing all but one patron, who they pursue to an apartment building (hence, the siege). It's surprisingly progressive, funny, and filled with fun misfit characters who have to band together against creeping fascism. It's very 80s, but its heart is in the right place.

Another classic I'd never seen before was Brain Damage, directed by Frank Henenlotter, who's probably best known for Basket Case. A deeply unsubtle story about addiction, as personified by a weird talking parasite named Aylmer, it's both very funny and also (like Basket Case) a tribute to the scummier side of city life. If you've ever wanted to see a scene where a deep-voiced worm puppet mocks an addict's withdrawal from blue brain juice, this is the movie for you.

And then, of course, there is Shocktober. I didn't pick a theme this year (last year, I watched a lot of giallo). Three movies in particular stood out: The Changeling is a great haunted house movie starring George C. Scott, Under the Shadow feels like a great variation on The Babadook, and I still have a lot of love for Nia DaCosta's 2021 Candyman, which I think is smarter than most critics gave it credit for.