(Photo by Alex Harper.)
(Photo by Kent Nishimura.)
Don't mind Los Angeles: We're just reeling from the fact that we've got blizzard warnings.
This was fun: The hosts of The Extra Credits had Will and me on to participate in a draft of last year's best movies. The rules were that we'd each get five picks, and then we'd let the listeners choose whose slate was the best. You can hear our draft and deliberations down below. If you wanted a decent overview of the 20 most worthwhile/noteworthy movies of 2022, this is a good place to start.
Reality tells the story of real-life whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner, who was taken into custody by the FBI in 2017. The movie, starring Sydney Sweeney, is drawn entirely from the transcripts of law enforcement's interactions with Winner. A fascinating conceit, which I think really helps the film. My review is here.
Part of the musical DNA of De La Soul's "Eye Know" is right here. Rest in peace, Trugoy.
We disagree about the final installment in the Magic Mike trilogy, but we're pretty much aligned on the twisty Sharper. As for Your Place or Mine, well, I got angry. Check out the latest episode of the podcast down below.
Much to my surprise, we both liked Knock at the Cabin. As for You People, well, it's definitely fascinating, without actually being any good. And then, for our Reboot segment, we go back to 1993's Carlito's Way, which I feel exactly the same about as I did back then. Hear the whole thing down below.
Very glad Clerel decided not to pursue science and took a chance on music instead.
When people talk about Public Enemy, they tend to focus on the band's first four albums. But PE keep putting out records, and there are gems there as well. Like this one, off 2007's How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?
Tom Brady retired (again) and has a movie coming out on Friday, 80 for Brady. Repeatedly, he's tried to be funny on TV shows and in commercials, usually without much success. But for Cracked, I wrote about the Saturday Night Live sketch that's still pretty great, even if it hits different now than it did back in 2005. Read on.
Writing full reviews during a festival tends to lower your overall intake of movies, but I was grateful to avoid any outright stinkers. (Even the films ranked lowest on my list had their pleasures.) But there were plenty of movies I didn't have a chance to get to, which is always a bummer. But even if I'd seen twice as many, I doubt any would have been as beautiful as Past Lives, writer-director Celine Song's killer debut about soulmates, fate and romantic compromise. Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro are all superb. It will truly be an amazing film year if it doesn't make my end-of-the-year Top 10. (Kudos to my No. 2 of the festival as well: writer-director Raven Jackson's lyrical debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, pictured above.)
Below are my rankings, with links leading to individual reviews.
25. Theater Camp
24. Blueback
23. Radical
22. Jamojaya
21. Infinity Pool
20. The Stroll
19. Polite Society
18. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
17. A Thousand and One
16. Magazine Dreams
15. Fair Play
14. Cat Person
13. Judy Blume Forever
12. Shortcomings
11. The Eight Mountains
10. Other People's Children
9. Earth Mama
8. The Starling Girl
7. Shayda
6. You Hurt My Feelings
5. A Still Small Voice
4. Eileen
3. Passages
2. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
1. Past Lives
In late 2001, two TV producers, Judd Apatow and Mark Brazill, got into an email feud. It quickly became the stuff of legend. For Cracked, I wrote about a weird moment in TV history.
When David Crosby: Remember My Name came out, I moderated a Q&A with director A.J. Eaton and producer Cameron Crowe. David Crosby wasn't there, and part of me was relieved: He was always known for being a feisty character. But that would have made it fun, too. Sadly, I never met the man.
While I've read a few Judy Blume books, I confess I'm not some super-fan. So maybe in some ways I was the ideal critic to evaluate Judy Blume Forever, a celebratory documentary about the author. You can read my review here.
In ye olden days of Sundance, there would be buzzy movies that would sell for ridiculous amounts of money. This was part of the excitement around the festival: Who's going to buy such-and-such-film?!? And for how much??!? That reality has changed, but Fair Play, starring Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich as a high-powered couple working in the cutthroat world of New York finance, generated plenty of interest, eventually selling to Netflix for $20 million. I reviewed the psychological drama for Screen International.
The start of this year's Sundance seems like a distant memory to me now. On opening night, I saw Radical, based on a true story, which chronicles an unconventional teacher in Mexico trying to reach his students. Eugenio Derbez stars in the film, which inspired some to compare Radical to CODA because he's a teacher in that as well. I think the movie is just OK.
Memories are a way we interpret the world, constantly sifting through faded mental snapshots of what once was in order to reconcile who we’ve become. But our brains are a flawed storage facility housing those stray images and foggy impressions that constitute our entire existence. Memory is all we have, and it’s rarely enough.Photo by Matt Harbicht. Still tickled that Claire Denis was able to attend so we could give her our Career Achievement prize in person. And pleased that Barry Jenkins made the time to be our special surprise guest in her honor.
Movies are memories, and few have been as piercing as writer-director Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. And, tonight, we honor her frequent collaborator who helped shape this beautiful meditation, editor Blair McClendon. The movie is about a young girl, named Sophie, who’s on vacation with her father. But the film is constructed to be Sophie’s recollection years later as an adult. She is trying to solve the mystery of who her dad was, although Aftersun doesn’t contain typical, static flashbacks — rather, they seem to be floating, morphing inside Sophie’s head, a rough approximation of past events filtered through emotion and distance. McClendon’s technique may be hard to articulate, but it’s very easy to grasp — we are watching on screen what it means to try to remember.
We experience this vacation in fragments. Crucial scenes are intermixed with seemingly random interludes that are representative of the strange things our brain holds onto. Weaving together Sophie’s past and present, carefully molding sequences so that they feel ephemeral but also incredibly resonant, McClendon achieves with his dreamlike editing something I’ve never seen before: a movie that is, itself, as fragile and elliptical as a memory.
When our mind returns to Aftersun, this extraordinary film comes back to us in emotionally charged snippets — a shot of a brilliant blue sky, an image of a rug, the sad smile of a father doing his best. Every moment tells its own story — every moment becomes its own treasure. Memory is imperfect, but Aftersun is flawless.
Please join me in congratulating our Best Film Editing winner, Blair McClendon.
One of the best running jokes on 30 Rock was the series of mostly terrible films that Tracy Jordan starred in. But which one was the best? For Cracked, I drew from the small hints we had about his different movies to rank them all. A fool's undertaking. Perhaps, but it sure was fun.
The writing staff of Only Murders in the Building decided Steve Martin's character had recorded a novelty hit back in the day. Martin took it from there. For Cracked, I wrote about "Angel in Flip-Flops."
The first poster for Ruben Östlund’s ‘Triangle of Sadness’ has been released. pic.twitter.com/uNM4QWBrUX
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) August 8, 2022
You know the one I mean. I wrote about that moment, and the beauty of comedic vomit scenes, over at Cracked.
Maybe not necessarily the best song from A Light for Attracting Attention, but it's the one that I've been fixated on in recent weeks. And while all Radiohead/Thom Yorke tracks tend to sound better at night, I have it on good authority that "The Same" is pretty wonderful on a road trip during the middle of the day, the emptiness of the American Southwest all around you.
