2022 Movies: Are Any Worth Checking Out?

Which 2022 Movies Are Worth Checking Out?

Roughly two years ago, I wrote the last top 10 most anticipated movies of the year list I would ever write for this blog, but I didn’t know it would be my last list of that kind when I wrote it. Something else I didn’t know as I was writing that list was a man in Wuhan, China had contracted a virus, and that same virus would spread around the entire world only a few months later and change everyone’s plans for 2020 and beyond, including Hollywood’s. Nearly every single movie we thought we would get that year became delayed because of the pandemic, and even now we are still waiting for movies to come out that were advertised with much earlier initial release dates.

Here’s the thing, though: 2020 was obviously not a great year for new movies, but 2021 had a lot more to offer than I had expected when the year started. In fact, I saw a number of new movies in the movie theater in the second half of the year, and while some of them were enjoyable, not many were significantly memorable, but hey, it was just nice to have theaters open again, and there would be even more to look forward to in 2022. Or so I thought…

This year had many new movies and way fewer delays, but it actually turned out to be worse than 2021 for good new movies. As I combed through 2022 releases, I discovered I actually forgot about multiple movies I saw, which was my first sign that writing anything about the new movies of this year wasn’t going to be easy.

So, what I’ve decided to do is go through everything I saw that came out this year, then specify the ones that I think are worth checking out.

 

Jackass Forever

I thought Jackass 3D would end up being the last time those idiots would get together to make a movie about dumb stunts and pranks and gags, but even in their old age Johnny Knoxville and company proved they still had some brain cells left to kill. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it nearly as funny as Jackass 3D, and that may have something to do with being a more mature adult now—except, it doesn’t. I still laugh myself into pain watching the first three Jackass movies, but Forever just didn’t have the same kinds of simple-yet-brilliant stunts and pranks taken way too far. The new younger additions to the cast felt like they were trying too hard, the pacing of the segments wasn’t as good as the previous movies, and in the end it just didn’t make me laugh all that hard.

 

The Batman

I liked the new take on the caped crusader, and I think of all the actors who have played the role, Robert Pattinson did the best job balancing Bruce Wayne and Batman. I think Keaton made a great Batman but not as good of a Bruce Wayne, I think Bale was a great Bruce Wayne but not as good of a Batman, and I didn’t really mind Affleck as Bruce Wayne or Batman, but the movies he found himself in were not a good showcase for him. I think the movie Pattinson found himself in was really well realized and certainly didn’t compromise its vision of Gotham City or the villains occupying it, but I also found the movie to be too much.

The Batman is grim and dark, the mystery is what drives Batman, and the characters are all well-written and played by great actors, but it’s overly dark, the mystery is too drawn out and not all that compelling, and there are too many characters. I didn’t really enjoy Zoe Kravitz’ take on Cat Woman, and I thought including The Joker at the end was pointless. I found it hard not to compare it to The Dark Knight because this vision of Batman/Gotham adhered closer to Christopher Nolan’s than any other previous adaptations, and despite Dark Knight only running about twenty minutes shorter than The Batman, I would watch it ten times over again instead of watch The Batman again. The Batman was too long, too drawn out, and too inconsequential for it to really resonate with me. I would still watch a sequel with this same cast and crew in front of and behind the camera again, but I don’t feel the need to revisit this one anytime soon, even though I did enjoy many aspects of it.

 

X

I really don’t have that much to say about this one. X was a middle-of-the-road A24 horror movie, for me. I found it way too derivative of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to really enjoy it as its own thing. I recognize the craft that went into making it, but the writing was too bland for me to really care as I was watching it, and the lack of creative horror moments left me uninterested in seeing the prequel or upcoming sequel.

 

Everything Everywhere All at Once

This is the best movie I saw in 2022. Hands down. I knew the minute it ended that it would take something seriously special to top this movie-going experience this year. It felt like something truly original and told a story I never could have imagined I needed to experienced but I am so glad that I did. In terms of balancing creative use of special effects with effective cinematography and camera work, endearing characters, bizarre humour, clever writing, and unconventional cinematic elements, Everything Everywhere All at Once was the most fun I had at the movies all year, and was the movie I continued to think about the longest after I walked out of the theater. I haven’t watched it again as of writing this and I desperately need to.

Worth checking out!

 

RRR

I heard about this epic Indian film that had North American critics going nuts and saw it had been added to Netflix, and the preview showed animal battles and some totally insane action. Well, RRR was similar to Everything Everywhere All at Once in the way that it was unlike anything else I saw this year, but RRR was also a bit much to sit through. I thoroughly enjoyed much of the film, but I didn’t quite understand all of it, and I think it’s simply because it’s so unlike your typical Hollywood blockbuster. The visual effects were mostly pretty good considering they weren’t done by Hollywood VFX artists, but the movie’s epic three hour runtime felt a little tedious at points. The action was so over the top that I found it intentionally hilarious much of the time, and there were moments that were truly shocking and made me fist pump. However, the movie didn’t stick with me all that much on the whole—I really loved the soundtrack and many of the action scenes, but I can’t recall a lot else about it that I really enjoyed. I think I would need to see it again to fully appreciate it.

If you like foreign films, check it out.

 

The Northman

Robert Eggers’ third film kind of disappointed me, even though I enjoyed it and found it was as skillfully made as his first two. The Northman just felt so authentic that it was almost like watching something from the History Channel—actually, I take that back, History Channel sucks and The Northman was actually well made, it doesn’t deserve to even be associated with History Channel. I just mean that it was so harsh and real sometimes that it became a bit difficult to watch, but difficult because I didn’t find myself that invested in the characters or story due to those elements not being prioritized by the filmmaker. It felt very well crafted in terms of shot composition, production value, and acting, but it’s described as “a Viking revenge tale" and that’s all it is. That’s what you get, nothing more, nothing less. It had some epic moments for sure, but overall, I can’t picture myself watching it again and again in the same way I would with The Witch or The Lighthouse.

 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

This was one of those movies I forgot I saw…I had some hope for this MCU Phase 4 film because of director Sam Raimi, and they kind of let him bring his unique flair to it, but it wasn’t enough to save it. The title character gets sidelined, which is frustrating, Scarlet Witch turns into a villain, which I didn’t enjoy (also the fact that you had to see WandaVision before this in order to understand it didn’t work the way I think they were hoping it would), and the new characters were uninteresting (minus Bruce Campbell as hotdog man). It ended in a way that felt like nothing that had just happened really mattered all that much because everyone is so powerful they’ll just come back for the next one, and the ending setting up yet another adventure with a new sorcerer did not spark joy.  

 

Top Gun: Maverick

I think everyone was surprised that the new Top Gun sequel—a sequel that very few people asked for and felt like it came way, way too late—turned out to be one of the best action movies since Mad Max: Fury Road, and ended up that way because of one simple factor: excellent real stunts without too much CGI! I saw the original Top Gun once and didn’t find it all that remarkable, and I wouldn’t say Maverick is a mind-blowing experience by any means, but if you’re looking for solid action scenes with jets and characters that are more than tolerable, then it will more than satisfy. I didn’t care about it before I heard the positive word of mouth, and I ended up really enjoying seeing it on the big screen.

Worth checking out if you can see it on the biggest screen possible in surround sound.

 

Jurassic World Dominion

I wrote a whole Brachiosaurus-sized review for this monstrosity of a sequel back when it came out in June, and my opinion hasn’t changed, so I’ll link it below. I haven’t seen the extended cut yet, but I probably will some day when I forget about how much the theatrical version sucked. Short summary: I absolutely do not recommend checking out Jurassic World Dominion.

Review: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/06/jurassic-world-dominion-review.html

 

Elvis

I had been intrigued when I had heard about the casting choice for The King of Rock and Roll, the relatively unknown Austin Butler, and the director who would be helming the project, the extravagant Baz Luhrmann. I found Elvis to be a somewhat unwieldly music biopic in the first act, jumping around too much and rushing through his early life, but then it hit its stride, and by the end I was fully invested. Luhrmann did a good job directing, but it’s Butler’s performance as Elvis Presley that makes it worth seeing. The music, too, is extremely well done, and the movie concludes in a powerful way. I didn’t find Elvis to be a particularly fantastic movie all the way through, but when it’s good, it’s really good, and of all the recent music biopics of its kind in the past few years, I think it’s my favourite one so far.

Worth checking out!

 

Thor: Love and Thunder

The third Thor movie, which I unlovingly referred to as the Thor Saturday Morning Power Hour after seeing it, might have been great if I had been ten years old, but having been on this unending ride that is the MCU for well over a decade now and having been repeatedly disappointed more times than wowed with the phase four films, Love and Thunder was almost painful to sit through. It had some great moments to be sure, but it felt like writer/director Taika Watiti was unleashed to do whatever he wanted and he didn’t really know what to do, so he tried to make a dumb comedy and an emotional character-driven superhero epic and failed at both. The “comedy” was more cringe-worthy and embarrassing than it was hilarious, the drama felt manufactured and hollow more than it did moving, and in the end I didn’t care about seeing Thor again in another movie. In ways, it was even worse than Thor: The Dark World, and so many of the decisions made—from completely wasting the Guardians of the Galaxy to giving CGI screaming goats far too much screen time—left me seriously questioning whether or not I want to continue to see every MCU entry in the movie theater. Put it this way: I still haven’t seen Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

 

Nope

Not many movies can be sold on the credibility of the director alone these days, but in case you don’t know who Jordan Peele is, he’s the half of the comedy duo Key & Peele who decided he wanted to make movies no one else was making, so he co-produced, wrote, and directed a little psychological horror/thriller for Blumhouse Productions called Get Out, and it ended up being a huge hit critically and commercially and was nominated for numerous awards. He followed it up with Us, which I wasn’t a big fan of, but it too was a successful horror/thriller with something to say. This year he put out Nope, which was a little less out there compared to Us, but is definitely a Jordan Peele movie, for better and for worse. Without spoiling too much, this one is about aliens and Hollywood, and I found it too lazily paced to really recommend it, but I did enjoy aspects to it, and was reminded of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Contact, though some questionable moments throughout and a deflating ending really brought it down for me. It was better than Us, but still a far cry from the quality of Get Out.

 

Prey

This is another movie I reviewed back when it came out, so I won’t say as much on the latest entry in the Predator franchise, but this back-to-basics-prequel had a lot more genuinely entertaining scenes and well-crafted moments than the previous Predator movie…and yet, despite what I said in my review, I found I quickly forgot about it after I watched it, and noticed a few things about it that were a little disappointing in retrospect. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it and would still recommend it, but I don’t know if it was exactly the gritty reinvention the franchise needed, and I definitely think a number of people out there overhyped it by saying it was the best Predator movie since the original, with some even claiming Prey to be better. It is not better than Predator or even Predator 2 in my opinion, but it is a damn fine Predator movie.

Review: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/08/prey-review.html

Do you have Disney+? If so, check it out.

 

Don’t Worry Darling

I didn’t review this one, but I still don’t have much to say about it. The drama behind the scenes of the making of this thriller was ultimately more interesting than the big twist of what is really going on in Don’t Worry Darling. It was a concept that I don’t think reached its full potential, and even though it was well directed by Olivia Wilde and well-acted by the two leads, Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, it didn’t really end up being something that stuck with me. I wouldn’t really recommend checking it out, but I think if it’s something you were curious about, you probably already saw it.

 

Halloween Ends

Blumhouse retconned all the Halloween sequels and made one that only directly followed up the 1978 original, which fans easily bought into and were overall happy with. Even though it was basically just a reboot that emulated the original, even copying the title (forcing fans to make the distinction between talking about Halloween 1978 and Halloween 2018) it was still better than most of the old sequels. Then came Halloween Kills last year, which was a totally ridiculous and misguided sequel that was so excessively violent and unintentionally dumb that it was actually kind of entertaining. Blumhouse cleverly designed this reboot series as a trilogy, wrapping up the franchise unofficially with Halloween Ends, so naturally I felt like I should see it since it was released around Halloween and I saw the other two in October as well and it seemed like this might have some finality to the already questionable storyline started in Halloween 2018. Halloween Ends was not what I expected. It tried to do something different, and it was pretty much a disaster. Unlike Halloween Kills, this one isn’t so bad and over the top that it’s entertaining. Halloween Ends is a letdown in multiple ways, not the least of which is failing to feature the masked killer we’ve come to expect enough or living up to the clever kills and bloody violence of the previous two movies or having a different take on the concept that’s interesting and clever. This conclusion to the reboot trilogy is one of the worst Halloween sequels even in the context of the previously retconned sequels.

 

Glass Onion 

Finally, I’m back to talking about a good movie! Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the second movie to feature Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc trying to solve a mystery amid a wonderful ensemble cast. It’s not really a sequel to Knives Out—in fact you could watch this movie without seeing Knives Out and understand it perfectly—but compared to writer/director Rian Johnson’s first film in this rather interesting series, I didn’t love it quite as much, just because it lacked that relatable familial content and traded it up for some less realistic plot elements. Glass Onion has quite a different mystery at its core.

For the first act I was bored and uninterested in the characters. Then, act two rewinds to earlier, we see a setup that we were missing before, and we see alternate perspectives of scenes we’ve previously been in, which all builds up the understanding and mystery and makes the whole thing better, then the third act is wonderful and entertaining and funny and in the end I loved it, and it actually made me want to see it again to see if act one would be better with the understanding of what is actually going on. It still felt odd that so much was withheld initially to make the movie better later on, but I applaud Rian Johnson for making a second unique and tightly-plotted mystery with a bunch of great actors.

Worth checking out!

 

Avatar: The Way of Water

After thirteen years of waiting, the long-ago-promised sequel to Avatar finally arrived in theaters, but did it live up to the hype and anticipation? Well, I was eager to see the first sequel writer/director James Cameron had made since Terminator 2 (which was over three decades ago) but how could something live up to such a long build up? Simple: it just can’t. Avatar: The Way of Water surprised me in two big ways: it was an absolute technical marvel, somehow surpassing the already incredible motion capture performances from the first one, and the flawlessly blended CGI environments and creatures and vehicles, and the awe-inspiring designs for everything. But, that was kind of where the surprise and joy ended for me.

As a sequel, it tries to go deeper into the characters and personal conflicts instead of bigger in scale, so Way of Water is not as epic as the first Avatar, nor is it as immersive in the same way (though still incredibly immersive) or as magical. It tries to focus more on family drama while also delivering brutal action and swift sequences, but doesn’t do this as successfully as I had hoped. Ultimately, the story was not something I found myself very invested in, and for all the characters we follow along the way, I didn’t connect with many of them—and that wasn’t just because they were blue aliens. I’ll save diving in any deeper (no pun intended) and just conclude with this: if you were already excited to see Avatar: The Way of Water before it came out, then you’ve probably already seen it or made plans to see it, but if you don’t have those fond memories of the first movie and were iffy on seeing the sequel, I actually would not recommend it. With its excessive three-hour runtime and overindulgence in James Cameron-isms, I don’t think it’s on the same you’ve-never-seen-anything-like-this-before-level the original was on. You have seen something nearly exactly like this before. Way of Water was impressive and I liked it, but I don’t think it’s quite the same kind of theatrical experience that has to be seen like the first movie was.

 

There you have it: out of all those movies, I would really only recommend six of them. I’m hoping 2023 has more great new films to offer, since none of the ones I had hoped would be great in 2022 really panned out—not even Avatar: The Way of Water, unfortunately. Here’s to a better year for going to the movies. My fingers are crossed!

 

Gremlins (1984): Favourite Films Series

Gremlins (1984): Favourite Films Series

 

Gremlins was one of the first movies I purchased on blu ray. It wasn’t even for myself initially, I bought it for a friend, with only a partial recollection of having rented it on VHS from the video store as a kid but just knowing he needed it for his collection, then I added it to my own budding collection not too long after. It became an essential part of my holiday-movie-viewing traditions, and I’ve watched it within the month of December most years since getting the blu ray.

I saw it for the first time when I was about seven or eight, and I remember enjoying it, but not that many specific things about it stuck with me other than the lore of the creatures: don’t get them wet, don’t expose them to bright light, and don’t feed them after midnight. One of the reasons those rules stuck with me was because a classmate of mine used that same premise for a short story he wrote in grade four, and when he read it out to the class I recognized that he had copied the idea from Gremlins, and it really bothered me. He just recycled the same premise—how unoriginal!   

The premise of Gremlins is not meant to be taken too seriously—it rides a fine line of being scary and funny, but thrilling all the way through. Randall Peltzer is an inventor of mostly useless, dysfunctional, and bizarre gadgets, but one night a young boy leads him into the stranger side of town (A.K.A. Chinatown, one of the aspects of the film that, admittedly, doesn’t hold up super well) and he discovers a strange creature in a cage in a dingy shop, but the old one-eyed shopkeeper says “Mogwai not for sale.” The old man’s grandson sells it to Randall secretly anyway, and Randall gives it to his son Billy as an early Christmas gift. Out from the box pops the creature we come to know as Gizmo, the most adorable fictional creature in all of cinema. Seriously, you’ll wish it was real so you could adopt one yourself. He comes with those aforementioned rules, though, and you can probably predict what happens next: all of those things!

Gizmo gets water from a paint brush jar spilt on him by accident, little furry balls pop painfully out of his back, and suddenly there are several more mogwai, only these ones aren’t as kind-spirited as sweet little Gizmo, with the one nicknamed Stripe (because of his mohawk) leading them. These ones are also hungrier, and Billy accidentally feeds them leftover chicken after midnight, which makes them go into cocoons similar to the egg stage of the xenomorph from Alien, then the mogwai hatch into ghoulish new forms: scaly, evil gremlins! Billy tries to stop Stripe, but the gremlin ends up in the swimming pool at the YMCA, spawning dozens more. He has to rescue his co-worker/wannabe-girlfriend Kate from the bar, and, along with Gizmo, try to stop the rampage of the gremlins as they trash the town and party their little green asses off.

I love monster movies, and Gremlins is one of the quintessential examples from the 80’s. When you put the premise down on paper, it somehow sounds unique and absurd at the same time. The creatures have clear rules, but they don’t really make sense, and it doesn’t matter. Gremlins is a perfectly engineered monster movie because it has characters who are given the proper setup needed for viewers to care about them before the mayhem ensues, and the first act is suspenseful, then the second act is full of classic jumps and frights and comedic moments, and the third act is all-out mayhem. The director, Joe Dante, keeps the gremlins mysterious at first, but once they are shown, they are given the spotlight, and have many moments to shine. The creature scenes are full of variety, hilarity, genuine fear, and charming visuals.

What I love the most about Gremlins is the build-up to the mayhem. We are with Billy every step of the way with learning how the mogwai work, and when we see poor little Gizmo’s sad face after the new ones spawn from him, we know that he knows there’s trouble ahead, but who could have expected just how much trouble? There are too many memorable and iconic moments with the many gremlins to count them all—the one eating the cookie in the kitchen, the one with glowing red eyes hiding in the Christmas tree, the one hanging from the Christmas lights—I could just keep going.

The moments when the gremlins are killed are all standouts. The one that explodes in the microwave is gruesome, but maybe not as gruesome as the demise of Stripe at the end, when he melts down to a goopy skeleton in a fountain, and even his skeleton itself goes soft and liquefies. Besides the creature deaths, there are some intense human deaths too. Santa himself gets assaulted by the gremlins (though it’s actually just a guy dressed as Santa), but the ultimate death is for the grumpy Mrs. Deagle, when she is launched out the top story window of her house on her motorized chairlift after the gremlins mess up the wiring. It is one of the most over-the-top and funniest deaths I can think of from any movie. Part of what makes it so perfect is the way the gremlins react: shocked for a second, then they laugh hysterically.   

The monsters have real personality, and their purpose is not to kill everyone, it’s just to have a good time and cause mischief. They are unique in one really important way: despite their appearance (in cute mogwai mode and in creepy gremlin mode), they are intelligent and communicative. The little garbled lines of dialogue they utter throughout are both hilarious and disturbing, and the way they figure out how to mess with people is where a huge portion of the entertainment value is. It all culminates in the tavern scene, which has nothing but gremlins goofing around and partying and doing all kinds of weird things (all while poor Kate tries to serve them drinks!) and is an effects spectacle. The animatronics and puppets used for the creatures hold up just as well today as when the movie first came out. As a kid, I didn’t even think about how they achieved some of the shots. Techniques included using trick camera angles, different sizes of Gizmo puppets, and even mixing in a little stop motion, but the movie just would not work the same if it hadn’t been made in this wonderful window of time when practical effects were at their best and CGI hadn’t yet replaced them.

Conceptually, the gremlins are among my favourite movie monsters. I had no idea as a kid that their concept stems from the real urban legend of little green men infiltrating the machines and vehicles in World War II—something that is mentioned in the movie by Billy’s neighbour Mr. Futterman, played by Dick Miller (who has had a role in every one of Joe Dante’s movies). Mr. Futterman gets the ultimate fright when the gremlins drive his Kentucky Harvester tractor through the front of his house. You could pick Gremlins apart for being somewhat predictable, but it’s a tribute to all the classic genre conventions of horror/monster movies, right up to the ending, with a “fourth act” where the heroes think they have defeated the creature once and for all, but they have to battle it one last time to save the day.

Gremlins definitely has one foot in the comedy genre and another in the horror genre, but it is not what I would call holiday fare for the whole family. Don’t let that PG-rating fool you; all the gruesome moments I mentioned earlier are shown in explicit detail. Joe Dante made some other movies that mixed horror and comedy in a similar way, but never as effectively as with Gremlins—a movie which actually contributed to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Too intense for young kids, but not intense enough to warrant an R-rating? That was the new solution in 1984. Steven Spielberg is the real reason for its inception, having produced Poltergeist two years earlier, then this movie, and then having directed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, all of which contributed to the ratings’ creation. I think Gremlins is one of the main contributors as to why I love creature effects and gruesome, gooey monster gore, and just why I enjoy movies like this in general, having seen it at such a young age. Aside from the monster aspects of the movie, though, there is still plenty to enjoy.

Jerry Goldsmith is one of my favourite composers of film scores, having done the music for a number of my favourite films, but sometimes I forget he was the mastermind behind the extremely catchy themes for Gremlins. When I revisited the movie as a teen and the end credits began, with the absolute bop of a track “The Gremlin Rag” booming through the surround sound speakers, it became rooted in my mind as the theme music of Gremlins, and re-watching it now, I notice all the early cues for the theme, which makes the music build up alongside the story in the same suspenseful way until it reaches the later bombastic scenes. In addition to the original score, I also love the choices of Christmas songs. The one used for the opening titles is what I would consider to be a lesser-used Christmas song in holiday-themed films, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love, and in the kitchen scene that comes later “Do You Hear What I Hear?” is made so haunting by the looming presence of the gremlins.

I’ve highlighted plenty of the horror so far, but I think Gremlins is a bit more about the humour. One of the funniest moments I can think of from any movie is when Billy and Kate find the gremlins in the movie theater, and Kate asks Billy what they are doing in there. He peeks in and says with perfect delivery: “They’re watching Snow White…and they love it.” There are many funny moments throughout, but there is also one very dark moment with the main characters. We find out why Kate isn’t such a big fan of Christmas when she tells Billy a little story from her childhood. Her dad broke his neck trying to climb down the chimney dressed as Santa. Yikes, talk about a holiday buzzkill. It’s dark, but in a similar spirit to some of the best Christmas specials out there like The Grinch and Charlie Brown, it reminds us that Christmas is not always the happiest time of year for everyone, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with the Christmas stuff either. It’s mostly a backdrop for the story.

So there you have it, folks: Gremlins is my favourite Christmas movie of all-time, in addition to another one of my overall favourite films (and my favourite entry in the little-monster-movie subgenre, too). Gremlins is an underrated 80’s classic, and I recommend checking it out no matter what time of year it is, but if you’ve seen it before and are now considering revisiting it, keep it in mind this holiday season.