Best Movies I Watched in 2022
- Enola Holmes (2020)
Synopsis: A young girl sets out on a quest to find her mother and ends up, unpredictably, solving crime.
A charming film, and a breath of fresh air in the world of overly-contrived, overly self-aware Disney live-action remakes and endless, meaningless MCU installments. Doesn’t feel the need to be constantly winking at the audience (well, except when Enola literally winks at the audience—the 4th wall breaks were unexpected, and I think they mostly worked) in order to show us that it knows it’s a Holmes movie.
Admittedly there is a bit of a “woke Disney” vibe (i.e. the way new Disney films have hamfistedly-inserted, thoughtless gestures at progressive politics that are ultimately milquetoast and pointless but still get right-wing shitheads pissed off), and it comes dangerously close to having a Black Panther-esque “Hey this revolutionary makes some good points, what if we do a really watered down version of that” kind of ending, but ultimately while the Reform Bill is clearly positioned as a Good Thing (which, you know, it is, probably), Enola’s mother clearly believes more change is needed, and is still willing to fight for that change. Overall it didn’t feel like it was pandering or preaching, but engaged with its themes earnestly and on a level that fit the story it was telling.
On the performance side, it was nice to see Millie Bobby Brown get to play a more dimensionalized character, and while I’ll never understand who thought it was a good idea to cast Henry Cavill as Sherlock, he is, it pains me to admit, not terrible, though he benefits from not being the main character. I’m always curious which version of Mycroft a Holmes adaptation will go with (when they deign to include him at all), and Sam Claflin does an excellent job with the “I am a snobby idiot and I hate that my brother is smart” version, though I’ll admit I prefer the “I am a snobby idiot but also I am quite clever, and I hate that my brother is slightly cleverer than me” version—but that version wouldn’t have worked here at all. And though he doesn’t get much to do, I enjoyed how Adeel Akhtar’s Lestrade plays off of each Holmes family member slightly differently. Susan Wokoma gets even less to do, but her speech in the tea house is well-delivered. Louis Partridge is fine, I guess.
Curious to see if the sequel completely ruins it or elevates it. Either seems plausible.
p.s. I was kind of expecting there to be some thematic weight to Enola inevitably carrying out a successful corkscrew, but if there was I missed it. It’s never explained what her difficulty with it is, so we don’t know what she’s overcoming when she finally gets it right.
p.p.s. Smart to set this in the pre-Watson years, he would’ve just been a distraction.
p.p.p.s. Makes me miss The Nevers, which still doesn’t have an air date for the second half of Season 1—at this point this has to be the record for longest midseason break in the history of television. (UPDATE: Since originally writing this review The Nevers was canceled and taken off of HBO Max, with still no word as to how or when or if we’ll ever see the end of Season 1, which to be clear we know exists.)(UPDATE #2 [not to, you know, reveal just how long I spend on these or how many times I revise them]: The 1st half of Season 1 is available for purchase from your standard digital media stores (Amazon, Apple, YouTube, etc.) and you should buy it because it’s great, and while it obviously ends on a bit of a cliffhanger it’s actually fairly self-contained. The 2nd half streamed live (and only live) on Tubi on an absolutely deranged schedule of 4 episodes per day, in the middle of the week, with the first episode starting at like 4:14 ET or some shit and no breaks in between, so no one watched it. Hopefully it will also eventually be available in a more reasonable format.) - Enola Holmes 2 (2022)
Synopsis: A young girl solves crimes and, unpredictably, meets a person who is also very clever but bad.
Less charming than the first one (inevitably, part of the original’s charm was in its novelty) but with more mystery to make up for it. From talking to my coworker it sounds like they got sued into making Sherlock more of a jerk? Which is hilarious. And David Thewlis delivers as always.
Not sure how I feel about their version of Moriarty, honestly feels a bit uninspired, and a little too grounded of a backstory for a character who is usually so ominously nebulous. But well-played for what it is.
And on the other hand, they made Lestrade the much more familiar, bumbling version when I actually liked the more multi-layered and seemingly more capable version from the first film.
Kind of hoping they don’t make a third one—as I said in my review of the first, having Watson around would just be a distraction, and I stand by it. The cast is too crowded to fit him in without it completely unbalancing things (especially since, you know, this isn’t about Sherlock). - Event Horizon (1992)
Synopsis: A crew of specialists get assigned to recover an experimental ship, accompanied by the ship’s ever-so-slightly unstable inventor.
I only saw this movie because a friend of mine wanted to see it, and I hadn’t really realized how much of a horror movie it was going to be until it was too late.
That being said, it was surprisingly good. I’m no expert on horror (and indeed, I generally avoid it), but my friend, who has more experience with the genre, said it was really well-done, and while the jump scares got a bit tedious I think I’d otherwise agree. There’s a dream-like (or nightmare-like) quality that permeates the film, not just in the obvious ways (characters seeing visions of dead loved ones, for example) but in the way the editing shifts us between different locations without necessarily providing a logical connection, or the way the timer counting down for most of the movie (how many hours of air they have left) seems to progress at an entirely unpredictable rate. It’s all very evocative and moody, and (after the first 10 minutes or so, anyway) relatively unconcerned with exposition or logic, which I think makes it that much more effective. Also for some reason I seem to always find “inanimate object is actually the antagonist” to be a fairly compelling premise. Can’t imagine why.
All in all a terrifying but exemplary film that I absolutely would not recommend watching in a dark theater at night (if you’re someone who dislikes horror movies).
p.s. There’s a scene that I particularly appreciated with Weir and his wife in the bathroom. Weir looks in the mirror and sees his wife behind him—classic horror blocking, the monster (here, the malevolence of the ship as represented by the vision of the dead wife) behind the protagonist in the mirror. He then turns around and now we see them in a different mirror, this time with the wife in front and Weir behind. It’s immediately after this scene that Weir begins hunting down the rest of the crew—he is now the monster.
p.p.s. I will say that the lack of focus on exposition and logic make the stakes at the end a little uncertain, at least to me. I’m not sure what exactly Weir’s goal at the end is; insofar as it’s only to bring people into the chaos dimension with him, well he still got most of them, and insofar as it’s to be able to take the ship to other places in order to do evil stuff, it’s not clear to me that he won’t be able to do that without the front half of the ship. I mean, I don’t have any reason to think that he could, but I also don’t have any reason think that he couldn’t, because they’ve done so little to explain how the whole thing works. So I just don’t know how defeated Weir actually is; the movie seems to want us to think he is, but then there’s that bit at the end, and I don’t mind an ambiguous ending but my point is I don’t understand the mechanics of the whole thing well enough to even know whether it’s ambiguous. It just feels a little unsatisfying.
p.p.p.s. Also don’t watch this in a theater where the majority of the audience seems to think it’s campy even though it’s really not that campy, and a smaller, more disturbing subset of the audience seems to just be amused by people experiencing traumatically horrific events. This movie really isn’t going a for a B-movie, slasher flick/creature feature vibe; it’s psychological horror as much as anything else and takes it pretty seriously.
p.p.p.p.s. When what’s-his-face is in the airlock and there’s a noise that seems to drive the ship’s influence out of him or whatever—weird that that never came up again. And that no one else gets possessed in that same way—even Weir’s behavior seems to operate on a different mechanism, it’s more like he was driven mad and then just kinda leaned into it than like he’s being controlled or possessed the way what’s-his-face was. But I guess it fits with the whole lack of logic thing. - Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Synopsis: A visit to the IRS goes horribly wrong. Then things get weird.
My review for this one went a little long and also says very little about the actual movie (but you should still read it, it’s about how sometimes things are good actually). Everything Everywhere All at Once is really fun and also heartbreaking and also (and this pun is (presumably purposefully) unavoidable) joyful. Incredible performances, unbelievable visuals—movies with this much bombast are usually about superheros or monsters or spaceships and not, like, interpersonal relationships and existentialism. It’s about intergenerational trauma, about living with mental illness, about the power of empathy and communication, about trying to choose those things even when it’s so much easier to not, and I had to do actual physical harm to myself to keep from bawling in a tiny dine-in theater room at like 4 pm with only my roommates, my parents, and two strangers who honestly I don’t think really enjoyed the movie. It was A Time. One of the best movies I’ve ever seen. - In Bruges (2008)
Synopsis: Two Irish hitmen find themselves in Bruges. Hijinks ensue.
A surprisingly fun movie given the subject matter. A lot like the Coens in that way, though completely different stylistically, with a loose feel and leisurely pacing. Also like the Coens’ movies, the ending feels inevitable, which is different than saying you can see it coming.
Insofar as the film is successful in getting the audience to re-contextualize our moral framework from the perspective of two hitmen, it pretty much comes down to the performances, and Farrell, Gleeson, and Fiennes are all brilliant, and ably supported by the rest of the cast. - The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)
Synopsis: Just your usual boy-meets-girl-while-stuck-in-time-loop story.
Honestly did not think I was going to like this, but my coworker recommended it because I was saying how much I love time loops, so I figured I’d give it a chance. And yeah, it’s kind of a tiny perfect movie.
I love that it starts in the middle of the time loop with the protagonists having already figured out and accepted that they’re in a time loop (it even almost does my new favorite time loop thing which is when the protagonist explains to their friends that they’re in a time loop and the friends just accept it with very little convincing because they’re good friends—it doesn’t quite do that, but almost).
Also appreciate the double plot-twist (I guess the first one isn’t much of a twist if you know who the stars are, but fortunately I was watching this like a week after I added it to my queue so I’d completely forgotten what the movie was even about and was actually surprised when Margaret showed up), and I feel like the movie does pretty much honor the main twist, at least within the limits of the rom-com genre.
Other than that, it’s just a very well-done movie. All the performances are solid (always a treat to see Al Madrigal), there are no wasted scenes, and the dialogue was surprisingly un-cringey (trying to make teenagers talk like teenagers is a trap and this movie (mostly) didn’t fall for it—I’ll take a 17-year-old who talks like a character from The West Wing over the characters from Life is Strange any day).
Really the only cringey part of the movie was the whole “pretending to drink beer but not actually drinking beer in order to get her drunk” thing, and I don’t really know how I feel about there not being any consequences for that—like, this isn’t that kind of movie, but then they shouldn’t have that in there in the first place. He should’ve just also gotten drunk (which he clearly never has before so they could’ve played that for comedy too), and I guess it would still be iffy but less creepy and more just normal teenage bad decision making. But I mean it’s good that the behavior isn’t rewarded either, it just feels like playing it for laughs and not punishing him for it is a little too close to condoning it.
Oh, also it would’ve been nice if when they see the janitor playing piano the music could have cut out and we could hear him playing something a bit more interesting than just some random arpeggios. Just feels a little undercooked for how the scene is played. But that might just be me, I could see an argument for leaving it as is because it’s more playful, and it’s not about him being like a secret musical genius or whatever, he’s just taking a moment to appreciate something beautiful regardless of his actual ability and yeah never mind I think I just sold myself on it, ignore this whole paragraph.
As for the time loop itself, this definitely adds something to the genre (time loops are a genre now, deal with it), at least from my experience. I can’t recall another time loop story in which one of the characters expressly doesn’t want to get out of the loop [NB: This was before I played Deathloop], and having the protagonists be young really changes the whole perspective—there’s a difference between a 17-year-old wondering what their future is going to be when they get out of the loop and a 43-year-old realizing that the future he was headed for wasn’t all that desirable. Being almost exactly halfway between the two, I’m really just feeling a lot of feelings about Groundhog Day and this movie at once and it’s just it’s a lot okay. A very 2020-202? kinda mood.
Also, there’s an episode (two episodes, actually) of Imaginary Advice called “Ten Thousand Years” (Parts 1 & 2) in which Ross Sutherland posits that Phil’s experience of the time loop seems bearable because the film is structured and stylized in such a way as to make us think it’s bearable, but that actually repeating the same day over and over again for anywhere from 15 to 10000 years (the range of estimates one can find for how long Phil is actually stuck in the loop) would be psychologically devastating. I don’t really have anywhere to go with that, but yeah, imagine if that day was this day (you know, with the *spoiler* happening every day)? Anyway I think it’s good the movie doesn’t address this (or rather structures itself in such a way that we don’t look at it that way and aren’t made to think about how long they’ve actually been in the loop), you absolutely should not be thinking about it from that angle.
So yeah, a really (slightly bitter)sweet movie with very few flaws that pretty effectively does what it sets out to do, and is a welcome addition to the pantheon of Good Time Loop Stories.
p.s. This town has no cops. Seems nice.
Honorable Mentions
- Galaxy Quest (1999)
- Kung Fu Panda (2008)
- Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
Certain of Eventual Failure 