The Best Films of 2022 (Alisha's List)
Staff writer Alisha on her favorite pieces and films of 2022.
Favorite Pieces Written
Part history, part film analysis, this piece looks at how an indie Canadian horror flick about werewolves speaks volumes about how the professionalization of medicine hurts women. I explore how Ginger Snaps has much to say about how formally-practiced medicine doesn’t make much of an effort to listen to women, along with what it actually looks like to provide meaningful care for our bodies.
Many love and know Gene Kelly for his singing and dancing, that wide smile that charms women and that leaping athleticism that humanizes the working man. But not many know that early on in his career, Kelly played an homme fatale, a veritable violent, bad guy. On the face of it, his noir turn seems uncharacteristic; one might expect for Kelly to deliver an underwhelming bad guy. In reality, though, Kelly thwarts all expectations. In this piece, I look deep into Kelly’s performance, showing that he put as much care into playing the bad guy as he put into perfecting his entrechats in later years.
One of Robin Williams’ darker roles, the character of Sy in One Hour Photo is called creepy by many, has always been since the film premiered in 2002. But what if I told you that Sy is more like us than we would like to believe? In this piece, I parse our prickly feelings about Sy, showing that if he’s creepy, then we, too, are creepy.
This roaming piece looks at the history of how 1944’s Cover Girl got made, and why it was revolutionary for its time. I argue that this is a deeply complex and challenging wartime musical, a technicolor spectacle that delivers superb performances by Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, all as it smuggles a noir-esque sadness into an ostensibly morale-boosting musical.
We need to talk about Matt Dillon. In this piece, I parse through Dillon’s expansive career, drawing a line through it to highlight the method within the madness of his characters. Dillon is the quintessential homme fatale of recent times, and in this piece, I celebrate that.
Best of Year List
The Bob’s Burgers Movie
Bob’s Burgers has always been a masterclass in character development, to the effect that episodes in later seasons don’t have to try too hard in the way of edgy jokes or absurdly outlandish plots to keep fans hooked, relying instead on viewers’ love for the Belcher family to keep us coming back episode after episode, particularly playing with the sweet friction between our expectations for characters and the frustration or challenging of these expectations. The result is a subtle show with loads of charm and heart and meaty characters whose joy viewers are able to wholeheartedly rejoice in. The film, which landed quietly at the beginning of summer 2022, is the apotheosis of joy; containing the fullness of 12 seasons’ worth of growth and development, the film is a masterpiece, upping the ante on the show to achieve that satisfying thrill that so many movies shooting off from shows always aspire to but find it tough to achieve. This movie is a wholesome gem that brightened a tough, tough year.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Speaking of wholesome gems. If The Bob’s Burgers Movie added silver-screen glimmer to the unassuming charm of a TV show, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On marvels on the other end of the spectrum, muting the glimmer and larger-than-life aura of cinema to reveal the power of subtle storytelling. This film explores a kind of loneliness that we often don’t talk about because we don’t know how to talk about it without feeling we’re scanning as desperate, and it does so with a sweetness and heartbreak that only Jenny Slate can manage. This film is sweet and enlivening, adorable and wrenching. A double feature with The Bob’s Burgers Movie will leave you weeping for hours, in the best way imaginable.
Pearl
The past year was perhaps one of the greatest for producing intriguing female characters, and one of the best of the best was Mia Goth’s Pearl. Containing the kind of loudness and unabashed insanity delivered by Isabelle Adjani in Possession, Pearl is a marvel. Gross, heartbreaking, vivacious, and garish, Goth stuns as a character that has instantly become a classic, showing ultimately that psychotic women make for some of the best, most fun, and most beguiling characters.
Joyland
Simply put, Saim Sadiq’s naturalist dream Joyland swept me away. Containing a bevy of characters who are not only fleshed out but compelling and biting, this film challenges and stuns. Every performance is pitch-perfect, and every turn is, in turns, stunning and heartbreaking. Important as it is subtle, Joyland was my favourite watch of 2022 because I saw myself reflected back from the silver screen, for the first time and in so many ways. This film is a landmark achievement, depicting its subject matter with grace and respect, nuance and shrewdness; this is a film like a dagger wrapped in silk, beautiful as it is lacerating. Joyland is unmissable.
Terrifier 2
Terrifier 2 achieves what most sequels must strive for: it sensed what viewers craved after watching the first film and delivered it with a kind of mischievous skill that is very difficult to achieve in a balanced manner. Creating the kind of mythos that catapults horror flicks to the plane of classic or canon, Terrifier 2 is a perfect horror film. Grotesque but affecting, it satisfies a curiosity about Art the Clown that many undoubtedly held after watching Terrifier, but it does so in a way that isn’t gimmicky or belaboring. Rather, the film manages to flesh out its monster in such a way as to still keep some of his evilness beneath a shroud of damned mystery by delivering him alongside a hero who is in turn precious and saintly. Not for the faint of heart, Terrifier 2 is better and more terrifying than the first.