Auteurist Trap: 2022 - 40 Favorites

I caught a little over 160 new films this year, yet nearly everything I saw that wasn't a horror movie felt somewhat invisible, as far as making an above-ground cultural impact outside the cinephile bubble. Not just the four (!) new Hong Sang-Soo films that play to the Lincoln Center arthouse crowd, but seemingly all "serious" awards/prestige films struggled to find much of a theatrical audience...unless the popular crowd-pleasing action spectacles of RRR, Everything Everywhere All At Once and Top Gun: Maverick qualify as awards/prestige films, which perhaps they do.

This was a rather strange year for me personally, one full of success, loss and change. I recorded 3 audio commentaries (Natural Enemies, Heartbreakers with Chris O'Neill and a really exciting not-yet-announced one with Amanda Reyes), 21 podcasts (4 of them during a brief stay in London), interviewed Kier-La Janisse onstage at the Fantasia International Film Festival, traveled to a number of places (including Paris, a longtime goal), and met a number of online friends and acquaintances in person for the first time. The good outweighed the bad in 2022.

The film world loses major figures every year, of course. I imagine that the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Bogdanovich, William Klein, Ruggero Deodato and a director I hope will receive some renewed attention, Alain Tanner, will continue to inspire and challenge audiences in the years to come. Alfred Sole, director of the great Alice, Sweet Alice, was someone who couldn't have been nicer during a brief interview we did in 2017. Speaking as a longtime admirer of David Lynch's work, the passing of his longtime composer Angelo Badalamenti, not to mention their most famous collaborator, singer Julee Cruise, felt like the end of an era.

Within the film cultural circles I travel in, this was an especially tough year. Craig Ledbetter was someone I had only the briefest of exchanges with, and I had hoped to interview him one day for Supporting Characters. His work, especially the influential magazine European Trash Cinema, impacted so many of the people I've interviewed, and while he gently declined my request, arguing that the work he did in the 80s and 90s was too long ago, I regret not trying him again one last time. I had bought bootlegs from Ledbetter by mail, but my first encounter with his writing was in Video Watchdog magazine. And the sudden passing of Video Watchdog's publisher/art director Donna Lucas in October was genuinely heartbreaking. She was as essential to the success of that landmark magazine as its many celebrated writers. I only interacted with Donna Lucas a handful of times, yet by all accounts she was one of the sweetest people in the whole cult film world, a community with no small number of neurotic malcontents. And no figure in that scene had a more cantankerous public image than Code Red DVD's Bill Olsen, who could manage to convey an air of hostility even while wearing a banana costume. But collectors of neglected exploitation movie gems like Teenage Hitchhikers, Love Me Deadly and Messiah Of Evil owe him a debt of gratitude, his company playing no small part in laying the groundwork for the world of genre film boutique labels we have today.

And then there were my friends. Film critic Sergio Mims was a warm and gregarious character, a film fanatic who lived a rich life devoted to cinema: working on films like Penitentiary, co-founding festivals like Blacklight and Black Harvest, co-founding Shadow And Act, hosting the Bad Mutha’ Film Show on radio and recording over a dozen Blu-Ray audio commentaries. He was the kind of encouraging person who would post your good reviews to tell the world, not just his own. And my friend Travis Crawford, the writer (including for Craig Ledbetter's European Trash Cinema), film journalist, commentator and Danger After Dark programmer, just missed his 52nd birthday. This one hit me the hardest, and I think my overall engagement with film culture is still a bit...diminished maybe, without having Travis around to discuss these things with. Maybe that'll pass. But I sincerely doubt there'll be a more bittersweet listening experience for me in 2023 than finally hearing Travis' audio commentary for Martin.

Anyway, on to the list.

What constitutes a "2022" movie for the purposes of this list is a bit subjective. Most played theatrically, some went straight to streaming, I think at least one went straight to Blu-Ray. Some will have a theatrical release in 2023, some might continue to float around the festival circuit. Who knows? These are all films I saw for the first time this year.

As so often happens, the movie titles this year began to blur together for me after a while. Were people on Twitter arguing about Blonde, Bardo or Babylon? Certainly not Beba. Barbarian arrived in the same year as Viking and The Northman, though only one of them was actually about vikings. Horror fans could enjoy Sissy and Piggy and Nanny. There were not only dueling adaptations of Pinocchio, but competing documentaries about Maurice and Katia Krafft: Fire Of Love and The Fire Within (not to be confused with the Louis Malle film). R.M.N. and RRR. The Girl And The Spider and Holy Spider. After Yang, After Love, Aftersun. God’s Creatures, Godland and God’s Country (again, not to be confused with the Louis Malle film, or even Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country from a few years ago). Troll and Trolls, neither set in Nilbog. Please lower your voice, just a little, if you join me at a triple feature of The Quiet Girl, Soft & Quiet and The Silent Twins.

Recycling old titles wasn't limited to Troll and old Louis Malle classics. We had new films called Smile, Babylon, Elvis, Resurrection, Pearl, Passion, The Outfit, The Son, Hustle, Special Delivery, Sirens, Coma, Vortex, Midnight and Night Shift. For further potential confusion, there was a horror film called The Initiation, only 7 years after Karyn Kusama’s unrelated cult favorite. And we continue to get new films called Limbo. I imagine only hardcore David Cronenberg fans will have to specify which Crimes Of The Future they’re talking about.

I was tempted to do a list of 50, or even 45, but opted to keep the same format as usual. But I was adding and removing titles up until today. Time and access always prevent me from giving everything I enjoyed a second watch, and I usually only know if I really like something during a rewatch. I could have just as easily included Catch The Fair One, The Woman King, All My Friends Hate Me, Both Sides Of The Blade, All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, Murina, Anonymous Club, Holy Spider, Please Baby Please, Fall, Master Gardener, The Son, Glorious, Pearl, Queens Of The Qing Dynasty, Pleasure, Decision To Leave, Stop Zemlia, The African Desperate, Stars At Noon, Country Gold, Vengeance, Walk Up, Lux Ætern, Wyrm, Sr., The Silent Twins, Neptune Frost, Flux Gourmet, Sirens, Barbarian, The Eternal Daughter, The Novelist’s Film, Happening, Top Gun: Maverick, EO, Nitram, Riotsville USA and/or Good Luck To You, Leo Grande on the list. Best not to overthink it.

I ran out of time before I could catch up with Broker, I Didn't See You There, Beatrix, Shin Ultraman, A Night Of Knowing Nothing, Ahed’s Knee, Pinnocio, Petrov’s Flu, Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, The Fire Within, God’s Creatures, Strawberry Mansion, Troll, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Close, Întregalde, Alone With You, Three Tidy Tigers, The Northman, Amsterdam, Ticket To Paradise, Children Of The Mist, Mariner Of The Mountains, On The Count Of Three, Lost Illusions, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, All That Breathes, Close, Subtraction, The Cathedral, Catherine Called Birdy, Fabian: Going To The Dogs, The Good Boss, Saloum, Three Thousand Years Of Longing, The Alternate, Speak No Evil, You Won’t Be Alone, Thirteen Lives, Potato Dreams Of America, Compartment No. 6, Come To Harm, The Sadness, Brother, When The Waves Are Gone, Vide Noir, Passion, Godland, Navalny, Natchathiram Nagargiradhu, Argentina 1985, Athena, Descendant, Till, A Room Of My Own, Memory Box, Detectives vs. Sleuths, Ninjababy, Jhund, Happer’s Comet, Topology Of Sirens, The Plains, Coma, Limbo, Il Buco, A New Old Play, Unrest, When Then Waves Are Gone, Jack Has A Plan, Avatar: The Way Of Water, The Diamond, The Road Dance, Ambulance, The Janes and Goodbye, Petrushka, among many, many others. I’m sure my list would include some of these if I had.

In alphabetical order:

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)