Doug's Favorite Movies of 2022

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Northman

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Prey

Good Night Oppy

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Violent Night

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Honorable Mention:

Kimi

Avatar: The Way of Water

Emily the Criminal

Die Hard

Rewatched this often-imitated action classic on Christmas because a: Kristen Haldeman Kauffman had never seen it and b: Christmas. It’s interesting what a slow build the opening hour is. Hardly any explosions. These days the action is full-steam by minute 15.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

The filmmakers say that all of this makes sense. The filmmakers say if you watch multiple times, all the clues are there and it all ties together. My old, tired brain can’t keep track of all the pieces in real time, but this was FUN. The actors really seem like they’re enjoying themselves. (Oh, boo hoo. Poor them! Filming a movie in a beautiful resort in Greece. Rough times!) It’s Agatha Christie on Red Bull, it’s luxury wish-fulfillment, and it thoroughly entertains.

The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari

This documentary about tourists getting fried by an active volcano milks the suspense and the peril to death. What happened to the sightseers is awful and it’s clear that precautions weren’t taken by the guys in charge. It’s an interesting story, but a downer cautionary tale about the… DANGERS of peering into ACTIVE VOLCANOS.

Jurassic World Dominion

Trying to resurrect something from the distant past can be foolhardy and dangerous. That’s what filmmakers did by dusting off the original Jurassic Park cast to spice up the far inferior Jurassic World franchise. To be honest, it was nice to see those oldies, although they didn’t have much to do. What stands out here is not the par-for-the-course, scary dino chases, or the cool, wisecracking-under-fire repartee, but that there was actually an attempt to invoke a Michel Crichton-esque scientific commentary on the dangers of genetic modification. There’s a real dig at Monsanto here and I think Crichton would be pleased, because although it’s fiction, it’s scarily possible. Otherwise, CG dinosaurs roar, people run, yadda yadda yadda. Bryce Dallas Howard ends up in a swamp. She was a good sport about that.

8 Bit Christmas

If a kid sets his sights on a toy at the beginning of the movie, I don’t care how many lessons about Christmas or materialism the kids needs to learn, he should GET that goddamn toy at the end of the movie. So, this throwback comedy tries to teach a bunch of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” lessons about greed and materialism, but at the end: the kid gets a dumb present that he NEVER asked for. Dumb and lame, not bittersweet. A big, derivative letdown.

Uncharted

It’s a cinematic version of “top this.” Raiders of the Lost Arc is going to do this? Well WE’RE going to do this!! Goonies and National Treasure are going to do this? Well WE’RE going to do THIS!! It’s a suitable, action-packed airplane movie, but you don’t walk away with a lot of heavy, philosophical undertones.

Avatar: The Way of Water

Marveling in someone’s technique doesn’t last as long as being moved by a hero’s plight. As technically trailblazing as this is, it takes a LONG time for the heroes to dive into the conflict, and there’s a lot of swimming with sci-fi whales in the meantime. The burden of world-building yields amazing visuals, but beyond that it’s really hard to distinguish all the different blue people, except the one that looks like Sigourney Weaver. And to dust off the old villain is just lazy. I always say this, but I admire the love of movies. I admire the desire to entertain and dazzle. So it’s an A+ for dazzle. But I hunger for the hero’s journey.

Violent Night

“Someone should just re-make Die Hard with Santa Claus in place of John McClane,” said some studio executive, probably. “To decide for certain that Die Hard is a Christmas movie”, that same eager studio exec, probably. But to raise the stakes and achieve the necessary body count, the heist has to be big. And for the heist to be big, we have to get to know the rich assholes that have all the money, which is too bad. Because we would really rather be watching Santa Claus kill some motherfuckers with a sledgehammer. It’s really enjoyable. And it’s a new Christmas tradition.

Tár

Orchestra conductor Lydia Tár is an asshole. Sure she’s talented and yes, she’s smart. But she’s shitty to everyone around her but her 8-year-old daughter, and even then it’s touch-and-go. There are long, long scenes of her being awful to her music students and abusing her power by favoring young, potential hook-ups. She’s shitty to her co-workers and her neighbors. She’s both obsessed with and derides youth and new points of view. Her bout of writer’s block is well-deserved and eventually she melts down all together. Blanchett is always good, but this is not much different from her typical Blue Jasmine-esque uptight basket-cases. The point of the movie seems to be: even if you spend two and a half hours burning all your bridges, you still get to do what you love as long as you move far, far away. I didn’t really get this, and I’m not really impressed.