{"id":183946,"date":"2022-12-12T11:52:47","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T16:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=183946"},"modified":"2024-11-14T22:57:31","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T03:57:31","slug":"movies-i-loved-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=183946","title":{"rendered":"Movies I Loved in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is the month of Top 10 Lists. I’ve submitted a few to different sites. And … each list is slightly different. Because I’m not a list person and I don’t rank things and I really don’t like to argue about lists. I look at lists this way: they are a road-map, and a detailed one. The map doesn’t just show the freeways, but every lane and path and small county road. I use other people’s lists as a way to go, “Oh wow, I guess I should check that out.” When I saw that so many critics put Paddington 2<\/i> on their Best of 2018 lists, I was like, “Jesus, I haven’t even seen it.” (Many people stop there. “Why do so many critics have movies I HAVEN’T EVEN HEARD OF LET ALONE SEEN on their lists?? Fuck them! What about MY PERSONAL FAVORITE?”<\/i> But that’s no fun! They’re providing their own personal road map, showing you the little country lanes THEY have discovered when wandering around. So why not check it out?) I hadn’t seen Paddington 2<\/i>, never gave it a single thought, but then there it was, showing up on so many people’s lists, so I went and saw it immediately. And I fell so in love with it I had to re-arrange my own Top 10<\/a> to include it. I love it when that happens! And so, when I submit a Top 10 for one site, I’ll toss together a list. If I’m asked to put together a list for another site, I’ll subtract a couple titles to include some titles I couldn’t include on the OTHER list. Like I said, I’m not big on LISTS, at least not in terms of considering them etched in stone like the 10 Commandments. I like to think of it more like … Here are the movies I loved this year, and there are definitely some movies that made it to the Top of my list and never left, that’s for sure – not EVERYthing is in flux – but the rest is up for grabs. How can I choose between, say, Holy Spider<\/i> and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed<\/i>? How can I say one is BETTER than the other? I refuse! Also, I am still catching up. There are a couple of titles I still need to see because I missed the press screenings for this that and the other thing. <\/p>\n

So. Here are some of the movies I loved this year. This is un-ranked although the first five haven’t really changed since I first put them on there. <\/p>\n

List after the jump.<\/p>\n

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2022 Movies, starting with a Loose Top 10<\/h1>\n

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Elvis<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

dir. Baz Luhrmann<\/p>\n

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\nSummer of 2022 was the summer of the Elvis movie. It was playing in two theatres right near my place (one theatre in walking distance) so I saw it again and again. I haven’t done that in years, and certainly never to this degree. It fed something in me, and also it was wild how long it was in the theatres. From June until September. It beat Top Gun: Maverick<\/i> at the box office. (I don’t think in total, but for one week it did. Extraordinary.) I also felt like it needed to be seen on a large screen, and … once it left the big screen, when would it ever show up there again, except for special events? I wasn’t asked to review it. And I sent out pitches and no one responded. I have been writing about Elvis non-stop for over 10 years. I have written about him here, there, and everywhere. Wouldn’t it make sense to have “the Elvis girl” – as one critic called me, to my face, when he met me for the first time – lol – to weigh in? Wouldn’t that add some value to the perspective on this film? What the fuck am I even doing here? This brought on a (very small) existential crisis and made me question my participation in this racket and also to double-down on my own goals in re: Elvis. The only way to do what I want to do is to … do what I want to do. I know. Rocket science. The movie is divisive, blah blah blah, most great movies are. Baz Luhrmann poured everything he had into this one, and … he drives people crazy, yes, but … it’s like Jackson Pollock or Mondrian or pick your poison … artists with a strong personal style, a style many find alienating. That personal style comes from their own personal taste and their inclinations – mysterious, alchemical – as an artist. They try to put down what they see and how they see. They make things the way they make them because they like to do it that way. That way makes sense to them. And, in a lot of ways, what they are criticized for is that which makes them unique, and themselves. To require them to do something else in order to “fit in” with what you think is “appropriate” storytelling is … an opinion coming from dummy-dumb land. From the land of bossy mediocrity. You may not LIKE their style and expression but that doesn’t mean it’s BAD. This attitude – common in critical circles – is a trap, one I have fallen into myself. Try to see what a movie is doing, how it’s doing it, and then weigh in on how successfully it does what IT wants to do, not how it fails to do what YOU think it should do. Because who the hell are YOU. Clearly I feel strongly about this. I think my feelings might come from my years at the Actors Studio where, at acting sessions, after an actor works in class – the first question asked by the moderator is: “What were you working on?” The actor answers. It could be something small like “I was working on being in a heat wave.” Or something big like “I was working on the moment before.” Actor talk. If you know, you know. Ideally, the comments and critiques should all be focused on what the actor was working on and whether or not they achieved it. Not: “It would have been better if you had played it like THIS” or “WHY were you working on THAT? Wouldn’t it be more interesting if you worked on THIS TOTALLY OTHER THING?” Comments like that are shut down at the Actors Studio and it’s just been drilled into me, through repetition, that it’s best to figure out what someone is working on, focus on that, and then say whether or not they achieved it. I’ve carried this habit into my writing work. It helps me to be open to films not made “for” me. I get that not everyone feels like I do on this score – and that’s FINE – but it’s equally FINE that I approach things this way. The Elvis movie succeeded in doing what Baz Luhrmann set out to do, in every single important way. I guess it’s valid to mention that despite my appreciation of Baz – and my “defense” of him<\/a> – I went into Elvis<\/i> with my arms crossed, annoyed and resistant. I don’t like biopics, and I am very suspicious of Elvis biopics. I was annoyed from the moment I heard who he cast as Elvis. THAT guy? That scrawny guy from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/i>? Yes, he was very good (how on earth did he make Tex freakin’ Watson funny, ridiculous, pathetic?), but I thought: Oh HELL no. I was being close-minded, judging before the fact, something I dislike in others. lol. But Baz wove a spell. And Austin Butler blew me away, even though he doesn’t look anything like Elvis. But he grokked the lonely inchoate SOMETHING inside of Elvis that drove him. And that’s the most important thing to “get” about Elvis. The rest is just prosthetics. It’s a profound performance. So I give credit where credit is due. People might think the Elvis movie would be a “soft sell” for someone like me. Or that I am inherently biased in its direction. Wrong. It’s the opposite. I like ELVIS, I don’t like interpretations OF Elvis, and watching actors play the role who don’t come close to the magic of the Real Thing is legitimately painful for me. It’s unpleasant. Frankly, I’d rather just NOT. Baz’s movie, of course, is only an approximation of the Real Thing – but it’s infused with passion and it’s focused on what I consider to be the right things. It is an act of redress, and a serious work of contextualization – placing him in a larger context, where he needs to be – you don’t GET Elvis if you don’t get the context. Context is missing from the majority of biopics. Most focus on personal foibles, flaws, addictions, etc. Those things are deemed more “dramatic” but they aren’t. They’re banal. Everyone has personal foibles, flaws, addictions, but why we are WATCHING the movie is because of what this person did with their ART. And what is THAT about? This is very very hard to do, particularly with someone like Elvis, whose posthumous fame is not really about his art. I watch the kids on YouTube discover Elvis after seeing Baz’s movie, and many of them are shocked at how well Elvis sings. They can’t believe it. They never knew. This is a disgrace (not the kids’ fault! It’s the culture’s fault for not passing down information about its treasures). So that’s an exciting development. Critics might not care but I care deeply about the kids, and their teary-eyed awe at watching the Real Thing in action. They suddenly understand that Austin Butler – as good as he was – was just a shadow, an echo, of the Real Thing. And their minds are forever blown. That’s what matters and that’s what Elvis<\/i> has done. It’s huge. And it’s about fucking time. Why do you think I’ve been writing about him for a decade-plus?<\/p>\n

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