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Maybe it's because I'm getting older--not old (yet), but older--or maybe it's because of the way time skirts by me, through and around my fingers, just a little faster with every year, or maybe it's because of the way that life continues to pancake into less and less meaningful divisions, 5 and 8 being exceptionally meaningful divisions when I was a child, but 29 and 32 both carrying the same shade of light purple. But for whatever reason, with each increasing year I feel the need to create a something with these blog posts, a way to mark the year, or a way to mark how I perceived it, hoping I can find a way to turn what I think about my favorite movie of the year into something I think about getting older, or maybe just how I think about myself. And why not? For the majority of my life, I've kept time by the movie calendar more than the regular one--I couldn't confidently tell you three things that happened to me in 1999, but I could list 30 movies off the top of the head that came out in 1999, and whether I had any relationship to them. There's no functional difference in my memory between 2014 and and 2015, except maybe that one was the year that I liked Under the Skin best and the other was the year I liked Mad Max best. Maybe it's the pandemic and two years of monotonous anxiety, or anxious monotony speaking, 2020 and 2021 blurring together as an invisible chimera, halves only different if you know how to look, but pulling one year apart from the next seems to grow a little sillier to attempt with each turn.
And what does this deeply maudlin intro have to do with me trying to see how many poorly deployed adverbs I can sling at you in the coming hulking mass of paragraphs? Well, for better or worse, it's a comfort and a pleasure to scrawl a big red X across the year here, reminding myself what I saw, where I was, and what it meant before letting it slip into a murky past. And it's definitely silly, but hey, who doesn't use tangible things or less tangible things, like the concept of a good movie, to narrate their own lives every now and again? So it's a dumb and personal thing I do here year in and year out, but I love doing it, and I appreciate anyone who can get something--even if it's just a fun night with a good movie rental--from me building these yearly monuments to my hobby.
And it sure was a year, even if it didn't feel like it. Last year, I wrote at some length about the changing landscape of moviegoing, and how the concept of movies could survive, and it felt topical and meaningful, and now--I guess we're in the same place? Ticket sales are down, theaters are struggling, a few corporate giants continue to swallow as much space and air as they can, but hey, there's great stuff if you know where to look. And again, one of the biggest effects the pandemic has had on movies is to demand that you know where to look; if you're looking for a wide variety of films, you can find them, but certainly not in theaters.
But I am who I am, which is to say that I spent far more time looking than I did, say, working on my dissertation. Really, this coming year (I say 'coming' like it hasn't been 2022 for almost three months) will be one of those for me Wherein Nothing Will Be the Same, etc.--honestly, I have no idea where I'll be, or what I'll be doing in a year's time. And to some extent I've been coping with the current malaise and the coming insecurity by watching movies. Which means that this year I've logged 100 movies from 2021 before writing this, a number that absolutely demolishes my previous record of 80-something (I'm too lazy to go look it up), which is ridiculous. I've gone out there and waded through the theatrical releases, the dubious streaming choices, the movies from Bhutan about yaks, to bring you the best of the best--and it really is the best this year, with the top 5 being able to take any top 5 I've ever had, probably. After 2020, a year in which I misplaced my love of the movies, being able to recommit so thoroughly has felt spectacular, and will probably have to tide me over for a while, given the upheaval to come.
If you're new here (and how could that possibly be the case, since I have not met a single new person for like 40 years, and that one person looked at this blog and then ran off screaming), then here's how the format works. I'll rattle off my top 20 movies of the year, while doing my very best hurl brevity into the tornado I keep nearby for just such a purpose. This means that I'll limit myself to two sentences per film, because a) I am old and frail, and my hands are already hurting from typing this, and I've got like four hours to go, and b) I will at least pretend to respect your time, if not my own. Granted, I have never once in my life been able to hold to this rule the whole time, but it's become like a fun little game to see how far I can get before I decide that only five or more sentences can help me communicate the deep and profound emotions I have for Pig or whatever. After all that, I'll offer some thoughts on the best scenes and worst scenes of the year, if you're still looking for ways to kill your time (and who isn't? Time is your only enemy left to kill; let my anger toward Free Guy be your weapon).
In interest of transparency, here's a full list of the films I've seen this year. I covered things pretty well this year, and don't feel like my viewing year has any massive holes, though there are certainly still some international/genre/documentary exceptions. So sorry to Petite Maman, Compartment No. 6, The World to Come, The Card Counter, Jockey, Great Freedom, Cyrano, Prayers for the Stolen, C'mon C'mon, etc. Maybe next year.
Here's what I saw:
Annette, Army of the Dead, Ascension, Bad Trip, Being the Ricardos, Belfast, Belle, Benedetta, Bergman Island, The Beta Test, Black Widow, Candyman, Chaos Walking, CODA, Coming 2 America, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Cruella, Cryptozoo, Days, Don't Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, Encanto, Eternals, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Flee, Free Guy, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Godzilla vs. Kong, Halloween Kills, The Hand of God, The Harder They Fall, A Hero, House of Gucci, I'm Your Man, In the Heights, Jungle Cruise, King Richard, Lamb, The Land of Blue Lakes, The Last Duel, Last Night in Soho, Licorice Pizza, The Lost Daughter, Luca, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Luzzu, Malignant, Mass, The Matrix Resurrections, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Moffie, Mortal Kombat, Never Gonna Snow Again, Nightmare Alley, No Time to Die, The Novice, Old, Operation Hyacinth, Parallel Mothers, Passing, Pig, Plan B, Prisoners of the Ghostland, The Power of the Dog, Procession, A Quiet Place Part 2, Raya and the Last Dragon, Red Rocket, The Rescue, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Shiva Baby, Single All the Way, Snake Eyes, Space Sweepers, Spencer, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Spine of Night, The Suicide Squad, Summer of 85, Summer of Soul, The Summit of the Gods, Swan Song, The Tender Bar, Test Pattern, This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, Those Who Wish Me Dead, Tick Tick Boom, Titane, The Tomorrow War, Together Together, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Werewolves Within, West Side Story, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Wild Indian, The Worst Person in the World, Zola
Just a heads up: a piece of these entries here and there might be stolen from my letterboxd review, because either a) I liked what I wrote there and thought it would add something here, or b) I'm lazy. I'll also take this opportunity to plug letterboxd. Get a letterboxd! Follow on me! Let's yell at each other about movies all year round! Seriously, I have a wonderful time on this site and think it'd be groovy if more people I knew were on there:
https://letterboxd.com/jkuster/
Alright, without further ado (I've pushed all the ado I had left into the aforementioned tornado), let's get to it!
(I'll list with each entry where these movies are available to rent or stream.)
Honorable mentions: though they didn't make the cut, I'm grateful for giddy highs and lows of The Worst Person in the World, the mile-a-minute comedy and zaniness of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and exquisitely framed melancholy of The French Dispatch.
20. The Hand of God (dir. Paolo Sorrentino)
At once a woozily remembered memoir of teenaged life gone awry, a love letter to the city of Florence, and a totally bonkers fever dream, Sorrentino's Hand of God covers a whole bunch of bases before it even stops for breath. The margins might be more interesting than the character at the center (which seems the case more often than not), but it's hard to deny a movie with its heart so lovingly sewn onto its sleeve.
(streaming on Netflix)
19. Luca (dir. Enrico Casarosa)
Another movie built from the director's memories of adolescence in Italy, this time with fish monsters, pasta contests, enough gentle homoeroticism to sink several small fishing vessels. The characters, the sense of place, the Dan Romer score, all a breath of fresh seawater: how many movies do we get, animated or otherwise, that don't want much from its characters or its audience other than to sit in a place and near about it and themselves?
(streaming on Disney+, rentable for a heavy fee on google play, youtube, itunes, etc.)
18. Test Pattern (dir. Shatara Michelle Ford)
Starts low-key and warm as a romance story and then mutates into something still low-key and seething. Ford's film about how hard it is to seek justice--or to be treated like a person, by the system or by the people right next to you--after sexual assault resonates even more its sharp direction and stellar crafting (the editing and the score in particular stand out).
(streaming on Kanopy, rentable on google play, youtube, itunes, etc.)
17. Never Gonna Snow Again (dir. Michal Englert and Malgorzata Szumowska)
Almost impossible to nail down: a black comedy, or a mean-spirited satire, or a straightforward drama about a neighborhood, or sci-fi, centering around an angel, or a superhero, or a radioactive mutant, or a liar as he carries his massage table from one rich home to another, helping where he can. This bizarre story of hypnotism, money, and migration feels of a piece with movies like Werckmeister Harmonies and Wings of Desire, in which super-beings drift from place to place, discovering what trouble means for them this time.
(rentable where things are rented)
16. The Lost Daughter (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)
I mean, any movie that lets me watch Oliva Colman and Dakota Johnson be frenemies for two hours is gonna make my top 20 and should also win a Nobel, a Pulitzer, and a Kid's Choice Award, just because. But it helps that this movie is so good beyond its acting--the writing, the jangly sense of time and place, the sure-handed direction, the staggering display of big hats, Olivia Colman threatening to cut some dicks off, etc.
(streaming on netflix)
15. Belle (dir. Mamoru Hosoda)
Maybe writing with my heart over my brain here, but who cares: the animation is brain-melting and lovely, its take on bifurcated virtual and physical lives is sharp, its dramatic aspects land well, and its (shockingly) one of the funniest movies of the year. Sure, it's arguably three movies tangled together, but I loved all three of them.
(not available online)
14. The Novice (dir. Lauren Hadaway)
A movie with utterly insane dedication to depicting what someone has to do to go from 0 to rowing crew at a professional level in a matter of months, with every possible cinematic tool getting thrown at the wall to try and capture the protagonist's world-ending dedication to destroying herself just to show she can. Gripping and upsetting from start to finish, plus a huge performance from Isabelle Fuhrmann (seriously, when will she be a bigger star?), and an unassuming and non-sensationalized queer relationship.
(rentable where things are rented)
13. The Green Knight (dir. David Lowery)
Took me a minute to find this movie's wavelength, but once I did (it happened around the time Barry Keoghan romped across the battlefield, bragging about how all his brothers died there), I couldn't pull back out: I'm such a sucker for movies that become more and more unhinged the longer they run, and even more so for movies that double down on their own joyous nihilism. I've thought about this movie's end more than most others this year, as well as its architectural costumes, its wild giant interlude, and the fact that--sorry everyone--based on the rules, Dev Patel kind of still owes Joel Edgerton a handjob.
(rentable where things are rented)
12. Pig (dir. Michael Sarnoski)
Gentle and talkative when pressed, this movie about Nicholas Cage on the search for his stolen pig totally floored me in ways I didn't expect--a movie about chasing someone down to show them kindness, despite the odds. Cage is great (as he is, and can be), but Alex Wolff steals it for me, showing titanic range from Hereditary to this.
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)
11. Zola (dir. Janicza Bravo)
"Adapted from a series of tweets" hardly inspires confidence, but but Bravo's astounding and green-eyed rendition of the worst girls' trip ever conjures a bizarro cage of expectations in which it's better to stay or be quiet, and hey, at least this is happening in Florida. Has there ever been a voiceover more welcome than Zola's side-eye counterpoint woven throughout the movie?
(rentable where things are rented)
10. Spencer (dir. Pablo Larrain)
Spencer, a look at Princess Diana over the course of a weekend, is like a documentary made by aliens, or maybe a haunted house movie filmed by the handless things living between the walls. I honestly think Spencer's closest cousin is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: worlds where the future doesn't matter, the present is the reified and inescapable past, what matters most in the world is attending unbearable meals and consuming them without thinking, and the only thing to do is find whatever's jagged or brittle in front of you and use it to crack your own teeth.
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)
9. This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (dir. Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)
Dazzling, hypnotic, moving from one minute to the next like the ocean, inevitable and with equal parts joy and malice, like Dario Argento on ketamine. A ragged, blue-tinged Lesotho-made fairy tale about the importance of community, or, barring that, the importance of screaming, burning, and being reborn.
(streaming on the Criterion channel, rentable where things are rented)
8. Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodovar)
A real joy to watch Almodovar take some of his most familiar pieces--complicated mothers, women who need to be actresses, naïve young women who learn to feel their pain freely, wisecracking assistants who will still hold your arm while you weep next to someone's grave, fucking off to another city as an escape, or a return--and shuffles them together with some real-world ugliness to create something vibrant and immediate. (In?)arguably the best Penelope Cruz has ever been, and with an upsetting and haunting ending of past and present folding into each other, neither finished with the other.
(rentable where things are rented for a hefty price, might still be playing at a theater near you)
7. West Side Story (dir. Steven Spielberg)
The obvious question everyone asked about this movie was why anyone would remake the original, and the obvious answer this movie gave back was to do a bunch of things better, adding new contexts, new relationships, bold ideas, and--oh yeah--not having the lasting film legacy of a story about Puerto Rican characters be one done almost entirely in brownface. Tony Kushner/Stephen Sondheim/Steven Spielberg, plus Robbins Bernstein, is a ridiculously potent combo, and throwing all of their work in a blender with other ridiculously talented artists is a sight that deserves to be seen projected on a whole-ass skyscraper. It's not perfect (Ansel Elgort's participation notwithstanding, and a difficult pill to swallow), but it's full of lightning, and I'm glad it exists.
(not available online, might be playing near a theater near you)
(I got so far with the 2 sentence rule, and yet here we are. Time to go throw brevity in that tornado, as its ritualistic murder is also an important part of my year-end ritual.)
6. Titane (dir. Julia Ducournau)
Weirdly, I don't know if any cinematic moment this year brought me more joy than when Titane's protagonist sits down on a very special stool (you'll know it when it happens), but it did and it will keep bringing me joy until I too motor off into the sunset, carried by my little motor babies. An absolutely bananas ride from start to finish, just an assault of music and wiggling parts. Your mind might first turn to the graphic violence, or the, uh, having sex with a car, but what really lingers are the musical interludes--Vincent Lindon teaching his new child how to dance, the frat boy firefighter raves, a no-strip striptease that leaves everyone, audience included, unsure how to feel. And the gentleness! The absolute goddamn kindness and humanity that Titane exudes while also containing violence so brutal that several people in my theater audibly gasped or were vocally uncomfortable when they happened. A great entry into the the We All Have Bodies, and What a Shame That Is movie pantheon, an assault on the senses, a sneaky dance movie, and a treatise on cars and family that Vin Diesel and co. could only dream about making. How is this only #6 on my list? Definitely a hard recommend--as long as you're ok with brutality and/or your brain melting a little.
(streaming on hulu--and also the Disney+ bundle, hilariously, rentable where things are rented)
5. Flee (dir. Jonas Poner Rasmussen)
A late entry--I only saw this last week--but this documentary about a queer refugee trying to confront his past and himself (the film is animated, in part, to protect his identity) has been stuck in my head ever since. For whatever reason, the scene that hit me hardest was a small one, Amin talking about a crush he had on a boy he met while moving from one place to another, admiring the gold chain he wears, the way he looks while he's laying down across from him. I started crying for--the mundanity, I guess. The way simple, lovely, everyday things (like light-up sneakers or a soap opera) seep into the cracks of the brutal and extraordinary. How Amin's hands move to that necklace for the rest of the movie--the tokens we use to feel like a person, even if you have to lie about what it means for you. People and objects trying their best to keep those categories separate. A beautiful and surprising watch that always manages to move at a slight angle away from the direction you think it'll end up.
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)
4. Bergman Island (dir. Mia Hansen-Love)
Fitting, maybe, how many of my top 5 (or the top 20, even) will have to do with remembering, or forgetting, and what to do with yourself as you close your eyes and wake up in the future as a different future. When, with this film as an example, you suspect you've been pretending that the things you have, or want, are off-white, or maybe beige, and have to wonder if this is a problem, and if it means everything, or nothing, or both simultaneously. Bergman Island combines two of my favorite subgenres: people having a few days of romance in exotic locales before parting forever, and movies about how people look at one another when they assume that person isn't looking back. Instances of small romance that add up to--nothing, maybe, or to something, but who has the time to parse them, and even if you do, who has a reason?
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)
3. The Power of the Dog (dir. Jane Campion)
One of my favorite aspects of this movie is how impossible it is to place in a genre. It could be a western (it's got horses and ranches!), but doesn't move or breathe like one. It's not much of a thriller (unless you are thrilled by Kirsten Dunst playing the piano...and honestly who isn't), or a romance, though it's got elements of both. Very black comedy? Straightforward drama? All appropriate but not. An erotic thriller without sex, a western without the west, a thriller where none of the thrills are ever spoken aloud--all enacted by characters who look, speak, and behave vaguely like aliens. The Power of the Dog is, for lack of a better word, wacky as shit, and I love it. Very few working filmmakers can match Campion in understanding and exploiting the power of touch, of bodies, of textures that you rub your fingers against in lieu of other, more important things to rub against. Add Jonny Greenwood's score that throws a lit match into a lake of gasoline, a quartet of fantastic performances, and the other masterfully wrought crafts, and you get a dead-eyed unicorn of a movie. What a delirious and wonderful world we've created for this horny zombie nightmare to be the undisputed frontrunner for best picture.
(streaming on netflix)
2. Days (dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
I freely admit that this movie--made entirely of long takes watching people do everyday things at length, with little in the way of big characterization and almost no dialogue (and what dialogue there is is in Mandarin without subtitles)--might not be for everyone. Even the trailer seems to know that there's no point trying to sell this movie--you already know if you're interested or not. But if you're looking for a little silence, try this movie on, which remains one of the most absorbing and deeply moving film experiences I had this year. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better filmic representation of how it feels to live a series of days and be aware of how time moves with them, each indistinguishable from the next but intricately bound to the way your life is developing on path from living to dying. And if someone can reach through and halt that progression, even for a moment--. This is a gorgeous and impactful movie, even if--or precisely because--it asks for a little patience.
(streaming on mubi, otherwise not available online, which, uh, kind of ruins the whole 'hey, go try this thing' angle of this entry)
1. Drive My Car (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
I am honestly a little intimidated by where to start writing because this movie is so huge, so generous, so vibrant with life and thought and emotion. It's easy to say that the three hour runtime flies by faster a movie half its length, and that I could have watched it for another three hours without batting an eye. It's easy to point at the performances, or how cannily the screenplay weaves Uncle Vanya into Murakami's original short story (Vanya only being a throwaway detail in the original) to make the two texts speak to each other, and then again with Hamaguchi's film itself. Or point to the already-famous shot of the two cigarettes through the sunroof as a microcosm for the film's approach to grief, or pain, or being alive--better when shared, but the people around you are fundamentally unknowable, so whatever you do has to start with yourself. Sitting and silence as stand-ins for penitence, or maybe forgiveness, eventually, when the only other option is to say something again and again until it means nothing, or everything. And again, how time passes, or does but doesn't really, distinct piece of your life feeling like a frozen image trailing like kite-strings and everything in between is a motion blur, until it's not--or is--again. Simply put, nothing moved me this year like watching Drive My Car's protagonists try to find their lives by driving, or speaking, or sitting in silence, or maybe finding something to create, some direction to go in so that, years later, when you are in a supermarket or doing some other meaningless meaningful thing, you can smile without thinking about it first.
(not available online right now, but coming to Hulu on March 2nd, I think. Also could be playing at a theater near you.)
And there we are! I've been working for at least three hours (somehow, keeping up the brevity rule took me longer than just not being brief?), but I am going to stagger desperately around my garden shed for a minute and then soldier on with the best scenes and worst movies of the year.
(I'll try to link to a clip of the best scenes if possible.)
(Note: generally I try and avoid spoilers or picking endings here, but I haven't quite done that this time around. I'll mention which clips might be spoilers when I hit them, but still, be forewarned.)
Best Scenes of the Year
10. Firehouse Dance-Titane
One of two Titane dance sequences on this list, this one's fairly late in the film, so don't read any further if you want to keep Titane's surprises to yourself (which you ought to). But the main character's reluctant and than committed sexy dance atop a firetruck for her skeptical peers and then her 'father,' melding both of her personae into one shimmying body, is beautifully strange and strangely beautiful, just like the film itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDms1IXNI7A
9. Stopping Time-The Worst Person in the World
In this kind-of romcom about a woman who's never sure what she wants, the protagonist stops time so she can run across a frozen Oslo to imagine life with the man she's considering leaving her boyfriend for. It's a dizzy, whimsical headlong rush:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyT2jpyu3VY
8. A Nice Night at the Movies-The Lost Daughter
Leda, played by Olivia Colman, decides to spend the night at the movies, but shares the theater with some rowdy members of a family that she has secretly wronged. When the theater attendant comes to check, the kids quiet down--just long enough for her to leave. The unbroken closeup on Colman's face as she realizes how easily they'll get away with it, and how easy it is to leave her powerless, is pretty astounding. And then, of course, there's the part where she snaps and screams that she's going to cut all their dicks off. Fun times at the theater!
(no clip, unfortunately)
7. The Winner Takes it All-Bergman Island
Who hasn't cryed while listening to/dancing to ABBA? Spoilers for the end of the story within a story in Bergman Island, but this moment, in which Mia Wasikowska seals her relationship's fate when she takes to the dancefloor, had me (and everyone) dancing and weeping in equal measure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-jdKw1ruQ
6. A Crush-Belle
There's no way that this scene plays without all the context before it, but within the confines of the movie this was one of the funniest scenes of the year. A whole comedy of errors featuring secrets coming to light (or not) and misinterpreted jokes from before coming back to bite people on the ass (again), all held in a dopey and perfect long take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmdNo6D9agM
5. A Cool Platonic Dance with Dad-Titane
Again, a few spoilers for Titane if you want to go in fresh, so stop reading now! The protagonist--a serial killer on the run, hiding with a man who believes she's his son who's been missing since childhood--is having trouble relating to their new father, and the father (god Vincent Lindon is so good in this role) is having trouble why his long-lost son doesn't seem to love him. It all comes to a head in one of the weirder dance/fight scenes I've ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heJlyo-Ziv4
4. Bus Fight-Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
I am as loath as anyone to send positive attention Disney's way these days--actually, strike that, I am much more loath than most everyone to do that--but I'm not going to pretend that I don't see quality if I see it, and the bus fight in Shang Chi (itself a strong movie) is one hell of a well-conceived and entertaining set piece.
(Not the entire scene, but you get the point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jFOrP5l1bE
3. and 2. Scenes about Boys-Flee
I rarely do two scenes from the same movie in these lists, and I avoid scenes without clips or with spoilers, but I'll break all of those rules to talk about two scenes from Flee--maybe recency bias is playing a role here, but I can't help that both represent some of the best moments the year has to offer. #2 I already discussed up above--the scene where Amin meets and crushes on another teenager while he is crossing borders. It's small but packs a huge punch, and moved me more than almost anything this year. #3 comes third because it has spoilers--skip ahead if you're not into that. When Amin comes out to his family, his brother wordlessly drives him to an undisclosed location, during which we all imagine the worst--until it's revealed that his brother has taken him to a gay club. He tells him they've always known, that it's fine, and presses some money into his hand, leaving him for the first time in a world where he can exhale--at least this part of himself, anyway.
1. Uncle Vanya-Drive My Car
I know, I keep saying that I avoid endings and spoilers and then I keep putting them here. But I think this scene would make a strong contender if I were to pick a scene of the decade. Honestly, it's hard to think of many more scene ever that are as beautiful and moved me as much as this one. Even though this is almost the end of the movie, I'm not sure it actually spoils anything. Much of the film has been about staging a version of Vanya in which an international cast all performs in their native language. In the final scene, the woman who performs in Korean sign language gives the plays final monologue with her hands in front of Uncle Vanya (played by the main character), her arms acting like his arms, using his face to sign, while the emotions of the play, and the events of the film, run through them. It'll lack a punch if you haven't seen the movie and don't have the whole emotional context with it, but if you do, then I can't imagine this not knocking you off your feet. Hell, I've watched it like 8 times and I still tear up a little.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y77FELZaE6c
And finally, the worst movies of the year! While I don't want to dwell on negativity or end on a down note, there's some catharsis to be found in throwing the things that hurt you off of the proverbial cliff. So let's get to throwing! Note that I generally avoid movies that are supposed to be awful, so this can just as easily be seen as a list of most disappointing movies.
5. Being the Ricardos
If this had quietly shuffled out in August, I probably could have watched it as mediocre and harmless, but since it's out there selling itself as The Best Thing of the year, I've got to read it in that context, and as a potential Best Thing, this movie is dumb trash that only makes me angrier the further I get from it. Most everything (give or take some of the performances) a total catastrophe. Fundamentally a movie The same kind of historical revisionist bullshit ending that Sorkin did with Trial of the Chicago 7, where the flaws and ugliness of an era are trotted as a feel-good moment while the insipid soundtrack rises, everyone clapping themselves on the back.
4. Single All the Way
Maybe it's too tough for me to relate to bougie family holidays, or families getting *really* excited about gay romance, but this felt like watching aliens, and not even interesting ones. I get that some kind of parity is due between straight and queer romance movies, including poorly made ones, but I don't know if it would cost anyone much to put even a little effort into this thing, even if it's clearly made as grist for the Netflix content mill. Not even the way Jennifer Coolidge says 'Maaaahh-rey' can save it.
3. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
Yeah, no, the devil wouldn't put his name on anything this half-ass and lackadaisical. Look, we all love looking at Lorraine Warren's ruffled tops, and we all like looking at Patrick Wilson in his little pants, but can we just stop this train? Can the Warrens contend with something doesn't involve a loud noise and spooky cgi monster, just this once? At the very least can the next movie be about who the shit in Kansas or wherever had a haunted Samurai hat and why the Warrens ever took it away from them.
2. Free Guy
I know, kicking Free Guy is like kicking a baby--too easy. But you *cannot* write a movie about how evil corporations are ruining art and then makes this goddamn movie. How is that not a jailable offense? Speaking of jail, I like Taika Waititi, and Ryan Reynolds totally exists, but maybe both of them don't spend any more time in front of a camera for a little while? An extra pox and a half for the unholy and stupifying places the romance element went, and for, jesus, I don't know, literally every piece of this stupid movie.
1. Halloween Kills
It kind of pains me not to have Free Guy at the bottom, but Halloween Kills is the kind of movie that made me wish that I didn't like movies. I know the 'look how they massacred my boy' things has been done to death, but I don't know if it's ever been more appropriate to shriek into the wind than when thinking about George Washington, Undertow, and All the Real Girls and then going to see this execrable pile of stupid trash. I lay awake at night, unable to sleep because I'm worried that whatever happened to David Gordon Green might one day happen to me. Deeply stupid in a way you can tell it's proud of, its utterly inane mob justice metaphor (is it fair to call something a metaphor if that thing doesn't mean anything?) and truly remarkable character work (a very nice way to say that everyone is bad all the time). One of those movies that made me legitimately resent the concept of filmmaking.
Well, there you have it, wherein 'it' means 'too many of my opinions and a ton of my time!' I'll be back tomorrow with directing, writing, and acting categories, and I'm sure each will be even more stupendous than the last. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? What did I miss? What deserves more of a chance?
