Author: Amy Diaz

2022 offered sweet stories, beautiful animation and some excellent stupidity

Whether you define a great movie as an artistic achievement or as a movie so gleefully goofy that you cry from laughter, there were great movies in 2022.

Saying this almost feels counter-intuitive with all the stories about movies — especially non-franchise, non-sequel, non-existing IP movies — that didn’t do as well as hoped at the box office. On Dec. 21, Box Office Mojo showed a year-to-date top 10 consisting of two cartoons for kids, four Marvel movies, two movies based on DC Comics IP, the latest (last?) Jurassic movie and Top Gun: Maverick. (Avatar: The Way of Water had not yet clawed its way into the top 10 but I suspect by close of business on Dec. 31 it will.)

But other movies came out on screens big and small — often on the big screen followed quickly by the small screen, which probably isn’t great long-term for theatrical distribution but was helpful to the movie-lover who couldn’t make it to the theater in time. I still haven’t caught Aftersun, Spoiler Alert, Triangle of Sadness, Bones and All, The Fabelmans or Decision to Leave but these acclaimed films are currently available via VOD. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is on Netflix, along with Bardo. Other 2022 (or, you know, nominally 2022 movies) I haven’t seen yet include Women Talking, The Whale, White Noise and Babylon — so this isn’t quite a definitive list. But, of what I have seen, here’s where to find some of the great movies — whatever that means to you — of 2022.

• “2021” movies I saw in 2022: I always start the year watching all the movies that sort of touched base in a few theaters in the previous year but didn’t get a major release until later. Of that bunch, I enjoyed dramedy Licorice Pizza in spite of its problematic teen boy-older teen or twentysomething girl chaste-but-dodgy relationship and because of the solid performance by Alana Haim and the 1970s southern California of it all (find it on Amazon Prime, Paramount+ and for rent or purchase). Joel Coen’s black and white take on The Tragedy of MacBeth (Apple TV+) featured great performances by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. C’mon C’mon (Paramount+, possibly as part of some Showtime situation, who even knows anymore; maybe also Showtime and purchase) is a sweet movie with a likable performance by Joaquin Phoenix.

• About that top 10: Look, you wanna watch Top Gun: Maverick (2022’s No. 1 at the box office, as of last week)? That’s fine, we can still be friends; I also think planes are cool (movie is available for rent and purchase). But for me, the best movies of the moneymakers are The Batman (HBO Max or rent or purchase), mostly because I liked the municipal corruption aspect; Thor: Love & Thunder (Disney+ or rent or purchase), which is no Ragnarok but has some great moments (many featuring solid use of Guns N’ Roses); Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (still in theaters), which deals with personal emotions and global philosophical issues and has beautiful, thoughtful costumes, and Minions: The Rise of Gru (Peacock, rent or purchase), which had a fun Looney Tunes vibe that my kids really enjoyed.

• Animation for the kids: For the last few years, Netflix has turned out some solid animation with a mix of styles. Two this year: Wendell & Wild with kind of a marionette stop-motion look to its characters and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which has a whole different, very del-Toro-ish approach to stop-motion. I’d peg both of these movies at late tweens and up, both for themes and for unnerving visuals. My favorite animated film of the year is Disney’s Turning Red (Disney+ and for purchase), an absolute charmer that is sweet, hilarious and very pretty. It too is a tween-and-up film, in which an Asian-Canadian girl in the early aughts finds that emotional turmoil (over boys, her relationship with her mother, all the changes of being 13) turns her into a giant red panda.

• Animation for the PG-13 crowd: Joke density and surprise earnestness were my favorite things about The Bob’s Burgers Movie (HBO MAX, for rent or purchase). Even if you’ve fallen away from the series, it’s still an enjoyable watch.

• Animation with live action: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (rent or purchase) has fun with the shell-ness and acorn size of its lead character but also deals with big issues (grief, loneliness) with incredible sweetness.

• Another one for the kids: I have no nostalgic memories of the first Hocus Pocus so I found Hocus Pocus 2 (Disney+) rather delightful, with its silly-fun musical number and its hokey jokiness.

• Leftover Christmas cookies: We are living in a golden age of weird Christmas content, with every streaming service seeming to want to participate. I don’t understand it but each year I find a few movies that make me enjoy it. This year, I liked Disney+’s Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which really went for the goofy holiday special of old and made great use of a very game Kevin Bacon, and Apple TV+’s Spirited, a good-natured A Christmas Carol riff. The very gory, kinda sweet Violent Night (like, believe them; violent, not for kids) is still in theaters but you can also rent or purchase the movie.

• So dumb it’s genius: I might have had more fun watching Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Roku Channel) than any other movie this year. It is an absolute achievement of stupidity and an excellent approach to rock music biopic. I can’t recommend it highly enough; go watch it now.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (STARZ, rent or purchase) also featured performances of people willing to go to silly extremes, namely Nicolas Cage as an actor named Nicolas Cage.

• Girls through the ages: In medieval England, a girl tries to resist her father’s push to get married (in part to settle family finances) in Catherine Called Birdy (Amazon Prime). In fair Verona, a girl resists her father’s push to get married and gets dumped by secret boyfriend Romeo in Rosaline (Hulu). In Victorian London, a girl attempts to establish herself as an investigator rivaling her famous brother in Enola Holmes 2 (Netflix). Sure, these stories feature varying amounts of anachronism, but all three are charming and make some honest observations about the lives of young women.

• True love: Fire Island (Hulu) offers a delightful riff on Pride & Prejudice and features great performances from Bowan Yang, Joel Kim Booster and Conrad Ricomora, who joins the pantheon of great Mr. Darcys. Bros (Peacock) also offers solid performances from Guy Branum and Bowen Yang, a stand-out cameo by Debra Messing and truly sweet chemistry between romantic leads Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane.

• Dumb love: Am I here to argue that Marry Me (Prime Video, rent or purchase), a movie where Jennifer Lopez plays a pop star who marries a stranger on a whim after romantic embarrassment, is an Oscar-worthy achievement? Well, maybe yes if we’re talking about the Best Original Song Oscar. Otherwise, it’s more of a “great artistic achievement in cotton candy goofiness.” Ditto The Lost City (Paramount+, rent or purchase), which doesn’t go as goofy as I would have wanted with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum but does have enough fun to relax you after a long day.

• Heartfelt: People are going through it in the sweet but sincere and deeply felt Cha Cha Real Smooth (Apple TV+), a sort of quarterlife-crisis dramady; Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Hulu), a series of conversations between Emma Thompson’s character and the man she hires to help broaden her sexual experience, and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (Peacock, rent or purchase), Lesley Manville’s character’s breaking out of her shell to buy a Dior dress in the 1950s.

• What’s up, docs: This is also a golden age of doc accessibility — sure, many of them are true crime, but the various streamers do make documentaries on all subjects available. Three I liked from this year: The Automat (HBO Max), which I first saw as a part of the New Hampshire Jewish Film Fest and is a loving tribute (filled with excellent interviews, including from Mel Brooks) to the automat dining experience; Sr. (Netflix), a look at the life of filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. and his relationship with his son, and Descendant (Netflix), a look at the Black community in Alabama that can trace its ancestors to the ship Clotilda that illegally smuggled Africans into the pre-Civil War South.

• As advertised: In Beast (Peacock, rent or purchase), Idris Elba fights a lion — like, that’s it, that’s the movie. The Princess (Hulu) requires a warrior-trained princess to escape down a tower and then kick some more butt until she rescues her family. Sure, these movies have action and violence but their “what you ordered and nothing more” quality is kind of relaxing.

• Action and thrills with a kick: Of course, some action movies go above and beyond. Prey (Hulu), the latest entry in the Predator series, is a solid bit of suspense-action entertainment, with a young Comanche woman in the early 1700s facing off against a Predator. In Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi (HBO Max, rent or purchase) the spare but engaging thriller has Zoë Kravitz believing she hears a crime via the Alexa-like personal assistant she works on troubleshooting. The Northman (Amazon Prime, rent or purchase) is a wonderfully bonkers, super grisly Viking Hamlet. Is Nope (Peacock, rent or purchase) a Western, a sci-fi movie, a thriller or something else? I’m not sure I’ve decided but it is a great suspense movie from Jordan Peele with standout performances by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer.

• Bring the performances: Of performances that stood out this year, let’s start with Manchester’s own Adam Sandler in Hustle (Netflix) where he plays a scout for a basketball team and gives his character depth. In The Wonder (Netflix), Florence Pugh brings a whole well-rounded person to the role of 19th-century nurse who is sent to examine a girl in Ireland who isn’t eating but somehow isn’t starving. Causeway (Apple TV+) gives both Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry a chance to shine as two people who find comfort in a friendship. Tár (available for purchase) features a standout Cate Blanchett performance as a conductor whose ego has eclipsed ethical behavior and even rationality. In Till (purchase) Danielle Deadwyler does not let you look away from the grieving Mamie Till-Mobley, whose young son is murdered horribly in segregated Mississippi. Viola Davis gives just one of the great performances in The Woman King (rent or purchase), which tells the story of the female warriors of the African kingdom Dahomey.

• 2022’s best: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, multiverses, compassion, a rock with googly eyes, a raccoon chef, mothers and daughters — Everything Everywhere All At Once (Paramount +) actually has everything, taking place everywhere throughout different realities, all at once so Yeoh can hopefully save all of existence. It is smart, it is hilarious, it is empathetic. It’s, well, great.

2023 in movies

Here are some of the movies I’m looking forward to watching in the first half(-ish) of 2023. Dates are according to IMDb and who even knows anymore how solid any movie’s release date is until it actually hits screens.

• Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Feb. 10) Steven Soderbergh returns to direct this third movie in the Magic Mike (Channing Tatum) series.

• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Feb. 17) The next Marvel entry seems medium promising — the trailers promise, if nothing else, a relentlessly likable Paul Rudd.

• Creed III (March 3) Michael B. Jordan directs and stars in this third outing of the Rocky spinoff series.

• Shazam! Fury of the Gods (March 17) DC’s whole movie situation seems like a hot mess but this follow up to the very likable 2019 film feels like a bright spot.

• John Wick: Chapter 4 (March 24) I love this Keanu Reeves franchise beyond all reason. The trailer for this new entry features more “High Table” nonsense, more Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne and more John Wick casually wasting fools.

• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (April 28) The iconic Judy Blume novel gets a big-screen adaptation.

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (May 5) Marvel’s traditional summer kickoff.

• Fast X (May 19) On the one hand, Charlize Theron’s exhausting villain Cypher returns to the Fast & Furiousverse in this the 10th outing, but on the other hand, IMDb lists Rita Moreno in the cast. If she has just half as much fun as Helen Mirren (also listed in this movie’s cast) has been allowed to have in this franchise, this should be good.

• The Little Mermaid (May 26) These live action Disney remakes have always been interesting. Plus you have Halle Bailey as Ariel and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula.

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Part One (June 2) This would be the animated Spider-Man universe, featuring Miles Morales. The 2018 first entry was, rightfully, that season’s Oscar winner for animated feature.

• Barbie (July 21) I am Team Greta Gerwig, who directs this movie and co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach. That and the super-winky (literally and figuratively) teaser trailer give me lots of hope for this movie.

• The Marvels (July 28) This movie, which features Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers as well as Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan (and, according to IMDb, Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau), is probably the 2023 Marvel outing I’m most looking forward to. In the meantime, watch Disney+’s Ms. Marvel, which is a fun time.

Featured photo: Everything Everywhere All AT Once

Avatar: The Way of Water (PG-13)

James Cameron takes us on a three-hour-and-change trip back to the lush moon Pandora in the 13-years-in-the-making sequel Avatar: The Way of Water.

After some Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) narration flipping us through the years since the first movie (when Sully, a human Marine, eventually got, er, uploaded into the big blue body of the Na’vi, Pandora’s pre-existing humanoid population uncomfortably rendered with a bunch of “noble people of the land”-type tropes), we pick up on the action a “Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have four kids, some of whom are teenagers” amount of time later. A “new” star appears in the sky — a sign that the sky people, a.k.a. damn dirty humans, have returned. This time, the humans start their visit by burning to bare dirt a city-sized patch of land and then building a heavily fortified operations base.

A year later, a new batch of avatar-like Na’vi hybrids shows up — only these don’t have human operators in a pod somewhere. These soldiers are Recombinants — basically Na’vi clones with human memories, emotions and crappy personalities uploaded to their brains. These special soldiers, who are physically Na’vi but styled to look like Marines (why?), are meant to help keep the, sigh, insurgent hostiles on Pandora at bay while the re-established human colony expands to make Pandora a new home for humanity. But they (we) are achieving this by aggressively paving over all the greenery, strip mining again I guess and now, whaling. I get that we, as a species, are crummy at not repeating our mistakes but come on. Also, somehow this whole operation seems to be run by the U.S. Marines?

Anyway, the gist is that Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the bad guy of the first movie, is back, despite being dead, this time in a Na’vi body. Because Jake and his tribe have been attacking the new human supply lines, Quaritch and his Recombinant crew are sent to hunt down Jake Sully. After Quaritch very nearly kills Jake’s kids, Jake decides to take his family and leave their forest tribe to find a new place — somewhere they can just disappear and not put others in danger.

The kids don’t love this plan. Oldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) wants to stay in his homeland but gets with the program to please his dad. Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), their second-oldest son, is sullen about everything and mopes about being an outsider. Kiri, whose name I thought was Kitty the whole movie, is their adopted teen-ish daughter; she is the half-Na’vi child of Sigourney Weaver’s character’s avatar from the first movie (somehow?), voiced by Weaver here. She is kind of an “I can feel the spirit of the planet” type, almost to the point of having superpowers. Like, they talk a lot about the biological connection between all living things on Pandora but Kiri is portrayed as almost being able to Use the Force. Also, she has a close relationship with Spider (Jack Champion), a human who was orphaned by the first human colony and has been raised by the human scientists and the Na’vi Sully family. Also, there’s Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), the Sullys’ youngest daughter, who just seems to tag along on adventures and get captured.

The family winds up in a village on an island with people who live by the sea — with turquoise-colored skin and swimming-friendly tails and just enough visuals borrowed from Pacific Island cultures to make this all uncomfortable, especially since the wife of the chief is played (or voiced or whatever we’re calling all of these essentially animated performances) by Kate Winslet.

As you might imagine, this village is a little wary of the family that shows up essentially saying “we’re escaping death and destruction at the hands of the human military industrial complex; is it cool if we kick it with you for a bit? They probably won’t know we’re here in your very flammable village.”

Other stuff in this 192-minute movie: Spider gets a whole storyline about his difficult lineage. Lo’ak — giving strong Edith from Downton Abbey’s vibes — is bummed about how much his dad rags on him and he also makes friends with an outcast whale. (I know, the animals aren’t Earth whales but they’re basically whales and they’re the creatures being hunted for some tiny gland that stops aging in humans.) Edie Falco plays a human general. But even with all the stuff this movie crams in, it still could have shaved a good 50 minutes off, at least, and not lost anything.

But length isn’t the movie’s only problem.

The Way of Water lacks coherent character arcs and seems to change course or sort of forget character motivations.

The whole “natives and colonists” thing and its accompanying ickiness from the first movie is still there in this movie, along with, not misogyny exactly, but some patronizing stuff with the female characters. I thought “ugh, movie” a lot — which I think is the result of the characters generally being so one dimensional.

There is way too much repetition, both of stuff that happened in the first movie and of stuff that happened an hour earlier in this movie.

At times, The Way of Water feels a little “James Cameron’s greatest hits”-y with a sequence that feels very Titanic and some elements that made me think of Terminator 2.

So what’s to like?

The visuals, not all of the visuals, but many of the visuals are very good. (I saw a 2D version of the movie.) Scenes of discovering the ocean and island worlds are, sure, long but they are also often very beautiful. The Way of Water hasn’t completely solved the problem of how to make underwater, blue-lit stuff look dazzling but it maybe does a better job with underwater than any live-action/photorealistic movie before. (Colors and faces pop more than in, say, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, where I felt like a lot of the cool visuals of the underwater kingdom got lost in the watery haze of it all.) Underwater fights are still a blur of whatever but the water does add some fun elements to the choreography of the fights and what happens in the battles.

Jermaine Clement has a small role as a human scientist and in the final battle gets a dumb but fun line. It stuck out just enough to make me wish there was more of that sort of goofiness.

Ultimately, Avatar: The Way of Water is fine, a perfectly acceptable thing to watch if you’re looking to kill three hours on something that will only medium annoy you and offers some pretty things to look at. If you, a person who pandemic splurged on a nice home viewing setup, want to wait to watch it until you can do so cuddled up on the couch, I think that’s fine too. B-

Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by James Cameron with a screenplay by James Cameron & Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, Avatar: The Way of the Water is THREE HOURS AND 12 MINUTES OF THIS YOUR ONE LIFE ON EARTH LONG and is distributed in theaters by 20th Century Studios.

Featured photo: Avatar: The Way of Water

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (PG)

The tale of the wooden puppet gets the Pan’s Labyrinth-but-animated treatment in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a beautiful-looking weird-in-its-own-way adaptation.

All Pinocchios are weird, is my theory on this IP. In the league of cautionary fairy tales, this one seems to lean the hardest on the cautionary element, making it sort of disturbing from the jump no matter how a director or writer chooses to go with it. This particular Pinocchio is maybe less disturbing than others but still dark. But maybe in my top five for potential Oscar animation nominees?

Once again, we get a sad Geppetto (voice of David Bradley), a woodworker in Italy who lost his young son during World War I. After years of drowning his sadness in wine, Geppetto one day crafts a wooden version of his son that a spirit (voice of Tilda Swinton) gives life to. The wooden boy, more angular and del-Toro-ish than his usual incarnation, declares Geppetto his papa and joyfully goes about discovering/destroying their house.

Geppetto is at first a little horrified by this wooden creature, particularly when a talking cricket hops out of a hole in the wood to verify Pinocchio’s (voice of Gregory Mann) story. But quickly Geppetto, Pinocchio and Sebastian the cricket (voice of Ewan McGregor) form a little family. That family is not terribly well accepted by the outside world, this being a very conformity-focused Italy in the increasingly fascist time of Mussolini. Local fascist muckety-muck Podesta (voice of Ron Perlman) says that Pinocchio must go to school to learn discipline, and thus begins the string of events that leads to Geppetto, Pinocchio, Sebastian and a surly monkey (voice of Cate Blanchett) ending up in the belly of a large fish.

This movie hits all the usual points: Pinocchio being sent out into the world with nothing but a cranky cricket to guide him, then him being tricked into becoming a performer for Count Volpe (voice of Christoph Waltz), a long separation between Pinocchio and Geppetto and Pinocchio falling into the clutches of yet another scammer who plays on boys’ worst instincts. Only in this case the scammer is Podesta, who takes Pinocchio and his own son Candlewick (voice of Finn Wolfhard) not to the amusement-park-ish Pleasure Island to be turned into a donkey but to a fascist military school to become cannon fodder for the Italian fatherland.

All this imagery — with the joyful and innocent Pinocchio sort of stumbling through the increasingly dark Italy — is extremely well done. The animation here is of the stop-motion variety (according to Wikipedia) and the characters have a very tactile, dimensional, puppety look. We can see the wood grain and knots in the pine that make up Pinocchio, who at times has almost a “wooden stick insect” appearance. We see the whiskers in Geppetto’s beard and mustache, which have a thick look, like “hairs” that have been carved and painted. The Italian village manages to look both like a physical space and fantastical, with the sunniness of the exteriors balanced by the menace of the fascist imagery in the posters in the town square. It is all exceedingly well done — so well done that I think it tips over into the scary frequently. Common Sense Media pegs this for age 11 and up and I would say — with the war, the death, the sadness and the frequent peril of Pinocchio — yeah, at least that. Maybe more like 12 or 13. Even the Swinton-voiced “blue fairy” character, who sort of looks like a human moth ancient godlike character with two sets of wings dotted with eyes, is at the very least unnerving.

I feel like this Pinocchio has plenty to delight fans of animation as a form and of Guillermo del Toro as a visual storyteller but isn’t exactly my choice for young-kids family movie night. B+

Rated PG, according to Netflix, where it is streaming. Directed by Guillermo del Toro with a screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Patrick McHale, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is an hour and 56 minutes long and distributed by Netflix.

Emancipation (R)

Will Smith plays a man escaping Confederate captivity in Emancipation, a movie by director Antoine Fuqua.

Post-Emancipation Proclamation but mid-Civil War, Peter (Smith) is enslaved along with his wife, Dodienne (Charmaine Bingwa), and their children on a Louisiana cotton plantation when he is taken to do work on the Confederate army’s railroad. As hellish as the conditions on the plantation are, the prison camp Peter is taken to is even worse, with the heads of men who attempted to escape displayed on pikes. The captors seem to be significantly more invested in torturing the men they’re holding than in the war effort and seem to be on the verge of murdering Peter when a brief distraction allows him and a few other men to get away. The men run toward the snake- and alligator-filled swamp that stands between them and the Union Army, where they have heard that they will be recognized as free, thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation.

On the trail of the escapees are Jim Fassel (Ben Foster) and two fellow bounty hunters. For a good part of the movie, we get a chase between Fassel and his stupid dogs and Peter, who attempts to use the rough terrain of the swamp to his advantage.

For me, this movie frequently suffered from what I think of as Gangs of New York syndrome, where a wobbly central story sits in the middle of a fascinating and well-rendered history. The stories about how people contemplated freedom versus what could happen to them and their family if they tried to reach a safer harbor are interesting. The decisions people made, how they held themselves and their families together while enslaved — how Dodienne kept her children with her, how Peter drew from a deep well of faith — are solidly engrossing stories. But the movie too often turns its focus to other stuff — like the chase between Fassel and Peter or, even less interesting, Fassel and his motivations.

To this unevenness, add Will Smith’s sometimes strong, sometimes wobbly performance. Sometimes it is really affecting; he gives us a man with a singular purpose — getting back to his family — but a lot of hurdles to achieving that, who has to negotiate with both enemies and allies, neither of whom really have his interests at heart. Other times, I feel like I’m just watching Will Smith giving a very performance-y performance, jammed into some very dark history.

I think ultimately that history and the very arresting way it’s shot, largely in black and white with these very artful wisps of color, make Emancipation worth watching. B-

Rated R for strong racial violence, disturbing images and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Antoine Fuqua with a screenplay by Bill Collage, Emancipation is two hours and 12 minutes long and distributed by Apple TV+, where it is streaming.

Featured photo: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (PG)