I just said “best of” to get you in here, but we all know this is subjective. Here’s my fave media I engaged with in 2022!

Skim, see what interests you, and check out Unconsenting Media or Does the Dog Die if you’d like some additional content warnings. Reach out if you want to chat about any of these, unless you’re asking how dare I not include your fave in my roundup (the answer is I didn’t watch/read/play it, or it wasn’t one of mine.)

What were your faves?

Fave Movies of 2022

Decision to Leave

Available on Mubi or rent from Apple TV

Decision To Leave feels like ships passing in the night, centering two people who keep coming into each other’s lives but never at the right time or for the right reasons. There’s something beautiful in the ways they shift in and out of each other’s focus (both literally and figuratively, as in the outstanding interrogation scene which would make the movie worthwhile all on its own). 

Each conversation is filled with layers of meaning and nuance, with two actors more than up to the task, deftly balancing solemnity and playfulness. I love the way Park makes use of technology as an extra barrier and bridge between the leads’ communicating. It’s fascinating to listen to Song Seo-rae give an impassioned statement, followed by the robotic, monotone translator app repeating it back.

In Front of Your Face

For rent on Apple TV

Hong’s movies prove to me that you can absolutely make a movie that is simply people sitting and talking and it has to be a movie, not just “a filmed play” (eat my heart out, Martin McDonagh). 

His camera lingers with people as they explore parts of themselves against others through conversation. With the assistance of duration and stillness, we can take in not just the environment they’re in but also their micro gestures and micro reactions. We get to really live with someone for a short period of time. We need the closeness of film to appreciate every tiny moment he captures.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Available on HBO Max or for rent on Apple TV, Google Play, Youtube

In some ways this movie feels like it was made for the 12-year-old version of me I look back on. Not the full person who probably did exist at the time, but what I remember about getting a home computer and diving into the expanse of the internet before my parents really understood what the internet was and what to be scared of. 

Being in a chatroom and having someone ask my a/s/l. Scrolling through forums full of words, conversations, and concepts I don’t fully understand yet (and some of which I maybe shouldn’t be reading). Feeding my weird little neopets. Reading a spooky story that feels like it might jump out of the screen. It’s incredible that the movie is able to evoke these strong memories in me while still being contemporary.

I’m really interested in the ways in which We’re All Going to the World’s Fair plays with our perspective on who is in control throughout the film, especially given how rare it is to see a young person with autonomy in movies. Children and young people’s autonomy over their bodies in particular is something our culture doesn’t respect well, and the wave of anti-trans legislation directed at children over the past few years is only the not-so-new reflection of that. To have a young person who takes agency, demands some form of autonomy in a movie is really exciting and powerful.

And honestly the watch is worth it just for how intimate yet visually exciting this movie is — it’s full of fun, grainy, spooky body moments. Jane Schoenbrun cleverly hired creators with experience making that style of content to do some incredible work.

RRR

Available on Netflix (dubbed) or ZEE5 (in original Telugu)

I just love bros loving each other. Also it kicks ass. This is for your friends who say they don’t like movies where nothing happens. 

It’s exciting to watch a movie that just rewrites history to say “Fuck the Crown.” There are dynamics in the film that people more knowledgeable than I have taken umbrage with that I just don’t have a deep enough perspective on to speak to, but it IS sick to see Ram and Bheem destroy the colonizers.

Crimes of the Future

Available on Hulu or rent from the usual places

Crimes of the Future just completely won me over through its physical manifestation of the artistic process, and exploration of bodies, climate change, and sexuality. I know it’s like Cronenberg’s thing but More Movies About How Gooey Bodies Are (gross and sexy)! 

There’s a pretty horrific child death early on and his body comes up again later, but to me it felt like Cronenberg shot the child with such tenderness, care, and sorrow that I could make it through.

I Was A Simple Man

Available on Criterion Channel or rent from the usual places

Trees rustling in the wind, a woman painting in the light of a window while she watches herself from the bed. Our experience of life isn’t linear, so is death not linear as well? Maybe, in some ways, death isn’t an end – even if there’s nothing after?

I Was A Simple Man has a fascinating relationship with time and memory that rings so true to me. It’s a movie about grief and the importance, pain, and joy in remembering who went before us.

Nope

Available on Peacock Premium or rent from the usual places

I don’t know if I can say anything better about Nope than what Jordan Peele says in this writer’s roundtable but the sibling relationship did the heart good.

Athena

Available on Netflix

Styled like an ancient tragedy, by way of murderous cops and hurting and hubristic and righteous brothers in disagreement on how to respond to it. Director Romain Gavras deftly uses blocking, choreo, and long takes in one of 2022’s great technical marvels of filmmaking, allowing us to accompany each brother’s external and internal conflicts closely. I usually get eye-rolly at gimmicky, long takes, but these are used so well, and the incredible actors shine the longer you look at them.

Unfortunately, imo, the final scene undercuts a lot of the movie itself, though there’s something in knowing what happened doesn’t really matter - the cops prove who they are through the rest of the film. I want more movies that swing this hard, even if they miss.

Saloum

Available on Shudder or rent from the usual places

What’s most horrifying about Saloum isn’t the [redacted for spoilers], but a man. A man who’s the reason we are here. That’s true for a lot of horror, but it’s pretty on-the-nose here in a way that just works for me.

I love the lead trio – I would’ve happily watched a whole series with the three of them traveling and doing things – and the design is great, especially the opening scene. We’re introduced to the trio in similar getup, parkas with hoods up, but we get a glimpse into each of them by a shot that lingers on their shoes (or lack thereof.) 

After Yang

Available on Showtime or rent from the usual places

After Yang is, thankfully, a movie disinterested in the tired “are robots people?” question, but instead interested in asking “what are the ways in which their personhood is shown, especially after they’re gone?”

Another movie about grief that stuck with me this year. I’m just impressed there’s no question about whether Yang is a person or whether the family’s loss is earned. How do you grieve someone whom our society is still treating like an object, when there are no real ways or traditions or paths or places to process that grief?

Honorable Mentions

I think these are fun and/or worth seeing if they seem up your alley, but mileage may vary!

Ambulance; Baby Assassins; Catherine Called Birdy; Confess, Fletch; Fire Island; Glass Onion; Matilda The Musical; The Menu; The Munsters; Prey; Thallumaala; Turning Red

Might have made it but I didn’t see it

Aftersun, Banshees of Inisherin, Benediction, TÁR

Fave New-to-me Movies of 2022

Alphabetically

Films by Agnès Varda (specifically La Bonheur, 101 Nights, and Vagabond)

Available on Criterion Channel

This year I completed watching Varda’s filmography (excluding Kung-fu, Master! which I just didn’t want to watch). While going through her work last year I wrote “Varda is one of the few filmmakers I can consistently turn to when things feel blurry and so personally frustrating, when work about hope annoys me but I need something that doesn't feed my cynicism.”

The films I watched this year pushed against that, reminding me that even looking through (almost) all of a person’s work only gives me a glimpse into who they really are. In Le Bonheur I find Varda cynical -- fairly so -- while employing all the aesthetics of pretty, useless, dopey hope. Sunflowers, bright fabrics, endearing prop-like children.

Le Bonheur might just feel charming, saturated but everyday --following two women and the warm blockhead they share -- if it weren't for the last twenty minutes.

Sometimes a wife is just a pair of hands, doesn't much matter who they belong to. She cooks well, and she's sweet. Maybe we're all so replaceable.

Vagabond similarly abandons any sentimentality, giving us a straightforward depiction of Mona -- a largely unlikeable young woman, as she travels and takes, always fighting for freedom above connections and comfort. The camera moves to the left in every tracking shot, following Mona towards her final destination from the beginning of the film -- death in a ditch.

Coming away from Vagabond, however, I felt more humanity and clarity from Varda than in her kinder pieces or more palatable characters. Mona might have been unlikeable, and she wanted no sympathy from others, but what does that matter?

I’ve been thinking of this a lot in a pandemic where not only do I as a chronically ill person feel abandoned, but “leftists” cheered the deaths of the unvaccinated. Building a new world where everyone gets free access to health care, housing, support means everyone. Even the people I don’t like. That’s the starting place. That should be our bare minimum.

When talking with Varda decades later, Sandrine Bonnaire tells how she got blisters while digging during a shoot and, proud, showed them to Varda who just said “Fine.” Varda responds “I should’ve licked your blisters in thanks.”

Alternatively I found One Hundred and One Nights to be a joyous, extravagant romp about cinema and faltering memory. And where else could you see Catherine Deneuve and Robert De Niro in a small boat chatting in French about whether they turned off the gas at home?

More than anything I admire Varda’s intentional decision across most of her films, fiction to documentary, to simply present people as they are, without constantly pushing her thoughts on how they are. No one’s able to remove their presence or perspective from the work they create, there is no objectivity, but Varda tries time and again to just show us people doing what people do, sometimes with a dash of magic.

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Available for rent from the usual places.

Godzilla (1954)

Available on HBO Max and Criterion Channel or for rent on Apple TV

all time banger theme by composer Ifukube Akira

The Handmaiden (2016)

Available on Prime Video or rent it from VUDU to get one over on Mr Bezos

Irma Vep (1996)

Available on HBO Max and Criterion Channel 

Porco Rosso (1992)

Available on HBO Max or rent from the usual places

La Ronde (1950)

Available on HBO Max and Criterion Channel 

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

Available on the Roku Channel, VUDU or TUBI or rent from the usual places

Throne of Blood (1957)

Available on HBO Max and Criterion Channel or for rent on Apple TV

War in the Pocket (1989)

Not available to stream right now

Wing Chun (1994)

Available to rent from Amazon

Honorable Mentions

The Apartment, Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, Detour, The Gleaners and I, Mama Roma, Police Story 3: Super Cop, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Fave TV of 2022

Alphabetically

A Court of Fey and Flowers

DropoutTV

ACOFAF features exciting and moving Regency-influenced storytelling, hinging on the chance of rolling dice. The production value of D20 shows has only gotten stronger and stronger.

Andor

Disney+

Genuinely the best Star Wars thing I’ve ever seen. Reminded me of what it was like to watch Star Wars as an awe-stricken child.

Derry Girls

Netflix

There’s not one unfunny person in this cast, a riot from start to finish.

Players

Paramount+

It happened to me: I cared about a fictional League of Legends team.

Reservation Dogs

Hulu

I’m so impressed that this season is even stronger than the last. The most lovable group of troublemakers on TV (sorry to the Derry Girls).

Severance

Apple TV

🎵 Work suuuucks, I know 🎵

Spy X Family

Hulu

I’m a mark for anything about found families, but I love the way Spy x Family makes the building of this family just as important as all the spy and assassin hijinks.

The Rehearsal

HBO Max

Stealthily one of the most thoughtful shows on television, The Rehearsal (and Nathan Fielder) is so interested in investigating its own mistakes, and I’m amazed at the way that it comes to the clear conclusion that its premise (practicing enough to avoid mistakes) is impossible, without coming away with any easy answers in its self-reflection.

What We Do In The Shadows

Hulu

1.) New York Citaaaaaaay

2.) Guillermo is very attractive. If only we could all be like Guillermo. This is a Guillermo appreciation newsletter.

Outer Range

Amazon Prime

A writer’s room full of playwrights, and you can feel it (complimentary).

Honorable Mentions

Frankly I enjoyed a lot of TV this year and on a different day the above list might have had half of these on it.

All Creatures Great and Small, Abbott Elementary, Game Changer, Girls5Eva, The Great British Baking Show (Syabira specifically), House of the Dragon, Irma Vep (first ⅔), Make Some Noise, Ms. Marvel, Our Flag Means Death, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, White Lotus

Might have made it but I didn’t see it

Interview With A Vampire

Fave New-to-me Reads of 2022

Alphabetically

The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Companion Piece by Ali Smith

Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu (books 1 and 2 - Grace for Kings, Wall of Storms)

A Fortune for Your Disaster by Hanif Abdurraqib

Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet H. Murray

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Transcendental Style in Film (Introduction) by Paul Schrader

Zito’s Newsletter by Zito Madu

Honorable Mentions

The Rest Room by Natasha Lipman, The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

Fave Games of 2022

Alphabetically

Bear and Breakfast

Case of the Golden Idol

Citizen Sleeper

HOUNDS and Scene Thieves by Tyler Crumrine (from Possible Worlds Games)

Norco

Our Haunt by Rae Nedjadi (2nd Edition)

PlateUp

Strange Horticulture

Stray

Tunic

Honorable Mentions

These weren’t 2022 releases so I’m just grouping them here to make sure you know about them.

This Discord Has Ghosts In It, A Short Hike, Spiritfarer, Starcrossed