There’s a lot of great movies I didn’t get around to this year. The time constraints of raising a toddler meant my wife and I gravitated towards the shorter episodes of a television series rather than sinking into a movie we weren’t sure we had the energy for. So there’s an awful lot of surely great films I just never got around to, including: Wendell and Wild; The Sea Beast; Crimes of the Future; RRR; Marcel the Shell With Shoes On; Decision to Leave; Raymond & Ray; Weird: The Al Yankovic Story; Bones and All; After Yang; White Noise; Puss in Boots: The Last Wish; Women Talking, the list goes on.
As usual, a few awards to hand out before the Top 10. As is often the case, we got a few bangers and some all-timers that will (hopefully) only grow in stature over the years. Let’s begin:
A Marvelous Party with (a) Punch: Thor: Love and Thunder
This is the kind of movie where you get to see Russell Crowe, once the menacing Maximus in Gladiator over twenty years ago, wear a tunic and dance as a beer-bellied Zeus. Where giant screaming goats are inspired by a Taylor Swift meme. Where Thor spends quite a bit of time trying to convince his current battle axe, Stormbreaker, he’s not cheating on it with his old flame, his hammer Mjölnir. It’s an utterly ridiculous film in so many ways. Truly a film where Taika Waititi had as close to a blank check to do whatever crazy shit he wanted.
But Taika’s films often have a more serious idea gently flowing underneath the silliness, and here it’s no different. Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher sets the tone early on when he realizes the gods are not there to save him; they are only there to use him for their own bidding. When we see Jane with Stage IV cancer, we’re somehow convinced that if she can become a female Thor, she can certainly, through some form of Marvel magic, be cured. But Waititi connects Gorr to Jane in an unexpected way to underscore that not everything can be outrun. The gods will not save us. There are things that will take us away from what we love most and there isn’t anything we can do about it. It’s a pretty sobering message for a silly superhero movie! The rest of the movie doesn’t quite gel – the tonal shifts like heavy waves, the abundance of CGI shows its seams – but I appreciate Waititi’s desire to stick to his creative guns and give us a party with a different kind of punch to drink up.
The Real Boy McCoy: Pinnochio
The opening forty minutes of this artful movie made me think of a This American Life story I heard about years ago, where a couple’s show-business bull, Chance, died. In the fog of their grief, they allowed scientists at Texas A&M to clone the bull with Chance’s DNA, creating an offspring aptly named Second Chance. Except Second Chance acted nothing like Chance. In fact, he was unpredictable and, at times, violent. In this version of Pinocchio, Geppetto’s need to build his wooden son comes after losing his real son in a horrifying event. We know he won’t be the same as the real thing. And we know Geppetto will struggle to appreciate the difference as he works his way through the grieving process.
While the film has a heavy dose of Catholicism spread through its 1930s Italy setting early on, it’s not until Pinocchio dies for the first time and 4 skeleton-bodied bunnies carry his casket through the underworld does it feel like a true Del Toro film. From there, we see a glowing winged spirit with eyes in their feathers, pontificating on the nature of death, loss, and memory. This is where stop-motion – and animation in general – really flexes its muscles. The level of detail in these puppets and their various sets is as incredible as you’d expect. A swap of the Pleasure Island for a fascist military training camp is a great touch. It all comes together to lead towards an ending as mature as it is melancholy; a true reminder that we will all be outlived by someone and to do our best to enjoy our fleeting moments together.
Best Duo, Non-Nope, Non-Aftersun division: Bullet Train
If you’re gonna tell a story almost entirely on a bullet train, you need a colorful cast of characters to keep things interesting. Fight scenes alone can’t do the trick. You need people worth caring about fighting for. And while I cackled with delight upon the reveal of the White Death (Michael Shannon, I missed you!) and a particular train passenger (The Lost City–Bullet Train connection bears some spectacular fruit), the duo of Lemon and Tangerine made it all work. Played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, respectively, the hilarity often comes from two guys desperate to be taken seriously despite their ridiculous nature. They bicker over their names. Over the details of the case. Over who’s gonna do what and shhhh to not talk quite so loud. They are like a married couple suddenly realizing a cross-country trip isn’t quite the relaxing thing they imagined. It all feels like quite the lark until one of them meets an unfortunate fate and you realize just how much these fine actors made you care.
Way To Get Your Act Together: Barbarian
This was one of the funner ways I’ve seen three-act structure play out. You can imagine it like thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The opening 30 minutes or so give you a sense of just what the hell you might be in for. And then just as it gets you all terrified, it cuts to Justin Long playing a terrific asshole, singing his heart out while driving his convertible, wind in his air. It’s so jarring it made me laugh out loud. But then the real magic happens when the two storylines combine and you get to witness two completely different responses to the fucked up situation from two completely different people. A real bizarro delight.
Who’s This Weirdo?: The Batman
If it wasn’t for Batman providing such cool, sleek imagery over the years, I think we’d all finally realize just how weird this superhero is (Lego Batman sure did an excellent job of pointing this out). Yes, he’s traumatized by losing his parents. But he also wants to dress like a bat – without all the fur, of course, because that would make it too weird. And he drives around with gadgets and would probably be a massive supporter of the 90’s grunge movement if it hadn’t already passed him by.
So believe me when I say how much I enjoyed the first time Batman shows up to a crime scene and the investigators have this completely aghast look on their faces. Who is this guy? For the first time in forever, onscreen Batman looks so small. So meek. Like someone who barely believes in the thing he dressed up for. And then he builds himself up, everyone believing a little more in him just as he believes in himself. I don’t think the world needed another Batman movie – at least not so soon after Batfleck – but if anyone can make it work, it’s Matt Reeves. He really leans into the total weirdo Bruce Wayne is and Robert Pattinson absolutely sells this wrinkle on the character. And just when Batman starts to get a little too high on his supply, Reeves allows him to try a flying gadget and absolutely eat it as he stumbles across the pavement. He doesn’t have everything figured out yet. And that’s pretty fun to watch.
Worth the Revisit: Elvis
There are few people who use artifice to their advantage quite like Baz Luhrman. He’s willing to forgo realism to chase a feeling, willing to go big when everyone goes steady. He understands mythmaking intuitively because he himself is always building a myth each movie out. So seeing this on my in-laws motion-smoothing TV did this film no favors. Everything looked cheap. The yarn Lurhman unfurled became less tactile and far more plastic.
And yet.
It still worked. It still showed me the insane power Elvis had over his (especially female) audience. The way he would make the establishment crazy. The way he’d play into the image just as much as he tried to find ways to move beyond it. And while Tom Hanks’ Colonel Tom Parker doesn’t quite work in its fat-suit-with-a-questionable-accent form, you can see what Luhrman is trying to do in showing us just how much Elvis Presley himself got played. It’s a film as joyful as it is tragic, as exuberant as it is melancholy. It knows sometimes the brightest legends dim too fast because those at the controls aren’t watching the heat, only the money.
A Twist Worthy of Tapestry: The Woman King
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood aced onscreen chemistry with her films Love & Basketball and Beyond The Lights. Here, there’s a different kind of chemistry between Nanisca (Viola Davis) and Nawi (Thuso Mbedu). Nanisca is the weary, hardened leader of the Agojie, an 18th-century all-female group of warriors that later inspired the Dora Milaje of Marvel’s Wakanda. When Nawi is offered to try out for the tribe for being too stubborn against her father’s matchmaking, she struggles early. It’s through Izogie (a sensational Lashana Lynch) and Nanisca’s tough love she finds her way into the group. But in a polarizing twist, Nanisca and Nawi find themselves connected in ways they’re not sure how to absorb.
The danger of making a historical epic inspired by true events is that something will always give. Hollywood needs simplification somewhere in order to bend the movie to the shape of what’s expected, and what makes a better movie doesn’t always make a better story. Here, villains are sometimes painted way too broad and love interests too contrived. But what absolutely worked for me is the exemplary performances from Davis and Mbedu as they navigate their tricky relationship. They push against each other. Learn from each other. Realize they can’t be without each other. It’s not romantic, but it’s as strong a relationship as Prince-Bythewood has guided to screen.
Honorable Mention: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
This film had to be too many things. It had to honor Chadwick Boseman while the people involved were still grieving. It had to build upon the success of the first movie and expand the sandbox somehow. It had to tie side characters into the larger MCU story that had yet to be revealed. And it had to answer the question of who – if anyone – would be the next Black Panther. On paper, it feels like all the boxes are checked. The artistry on display is just as vibrant as anything Marvel has offered. Ryan Coogler and his team do not miss. But they are clearly burdened by more than just their heavy hearts.
The film opens with T’Challa’s funeral, a visually stark affair that felt unnecessarily rushed, as if the MCU clock had set everyone’s watch a bit faster. I loved meeting Namor and the Atlanteans, but a film this overstuffed – having to introduce Riri aka Ironheart, even further – just doesn’t quite have enough time to let everything breathe. It’s why Namor’s turn towards villainy feels rushed. Why the final ocean battle is hard to get invested in until it focuses on Namor and the new Black Panther realizing maybe a battle to the death isn’t so necessary.
There is so much to appreciate about this film – Angela Bassett’s gravitating performance (that should have won an Oscar), the updated details of Namor and his people, the way Ryan Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole create scenes that allow their actors to properly grieve as much as their characters. I can only imagine how hard it was to adjust this story to make it what it is and then to follow through with filming it during a pandemic. It’s a task even vibranium can’t always save. Thankfully, the last scenes show us the promise of a brighter, freer future, a legacy carried on in ways everyone can build around.
I See You and I Appreciate You: Jurassic World: Dominion
Look, it is not easy to make a Jurassic Park sequel. I don’t care what anyone on Twitter or at work may tell you. Everyone thinks they can crack the Jurassic Park sequel code. They think they have an answer that Hollywood just needs to hear before they throw up all their spreadsheets, smack their foreheads, and go OMGYES.
What makes the first Jurassic Park so great is that it’s about many things all at once. Yes, it’s a horror movie of being stuck at a suddenly malfunctioning park full of deadly dinosaurs. Yes, it’s a warning of what happens when you play God and mess with science without wondering if you should in the first place. When I was a kid, I couldn’t get enough of seeing these dinosaurs on the big screen. When I saw it as an adult in theaters – finally with subtitles – just before our daughter was born, I was struck by how this was really Alan’s story, about a man-child unconvinced of the place of children and the responsibilities of anything beyond his work. Just watch the Alan that arrives on the island and the one who leaves. He’s a stressed, anxious man as they enter. He leaves a relaxed, exhausted quasi-parent with kids at his side, smiling at the woman he loves but perhaps isn’t quite ready to commit to. He’s gone on an entire journey with these kids alone, calming them through Bronchiosaurus snot, electrified fences, and escaping cars stuck in ever-breaking trees.
The second Jurassic Park goes darker and grayer (literally with the cinematography) and seems unsure exactly what human story it’s trying to tell while trying not to repeat itself. The third comes back to the theme of knowing better without a human story for us to dig into. And on and on we go. So you can see what Colin Trevorrow is maybe thinking when he brings back this Jurassic World trilogy. You see it with the brothers dealing with a divorce and the overworked aunt who fails to do her one job as everything goes to shit. You see it in the second film when they come back to the cruel obliviousness of humanity and pair it with cloning people (okay, that’s a stretch). And then you can see with this third film as they have giant mutant locusts (wait, what?), a high-speed dinosaur chase through a black market in Malta (uhhh), and then top it off with a finale in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy, where a company led by a clone of Apple CEO Tim Cook is determined to do something pretty nefarious with all of it (gulp). I almost resented the pure nostalgia trap of having Alan Grant and Ellie Satler back in the same vicinity until I realized I kinda love these characters and maybe after this crazy movie is over, they can try again in a non-giant-locust-infested future. They are both single and with renewed appreciation for each other, after all.
When Dominion’s trailer first came out and I expressed my misgivings at the potential story and the blatant nostalgia drip of it all, my friend said, “Dude, who cares about the story? I want to watch dinosaurs eat people.” That’s when I realized a successful Jurassic Park means something different to everyone. If all it took was dinosaurs eating people, we wouldn’t need to worry about revitalizing this franchise so often. As I said, the original worked because it had so much going on. These are not easy movies to write. Or to shoot and execute. They are, like all movies, really, really hard work. So while I won’t be cueing this up again anytime soon, I salute the effort Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael made to go as big and crazy as they could with this finale.
10. Glass Onion – written and directed by Rian Johnson
I’ve been a huge fan of Rian Johnson since Brick, following him through the heady, wistful The Brothers Bloom, as he took a giant leap with the underrated Looper, and even as he made the most polarizing (but still the best) modern Star Wars movie in The Last Jedi. Dude has got significant writing chops, a reportedly delightful onset demeanor, and a constant, incisive desire to upend expectations. How could you not root for him? As great as Knives Out is, what makes Glass Onion really hum is the playful confidence with which Johnson disguises his intentions. He brings in quite the cast of new, conflicting characters (with actors rearing to play some new colors) and dresses it up with a Hidden in Plain Sight mystery and accompanying metaphor that still, somehow, managed to fool me.
I hope viewers understand this ain’t easy. That they appreciate the utter craft on display. And that Johnson and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc get to make as many of these movies as their heart desires.
9. AmbuLAnce – written by Chris Fedak (based on original Danish film); directed by Michael Bay
Sometimes the most ringing endorsement of a movie is how much you enjoyed watching it on a plane. I caught this in the wee hours of a morning flight I couldn’t quite sleep through and found myself desperate to finish it on the connecting flight. No one makes movies quite like Michael Bay does – certainly not with as many explosions and swirling cameras. Here, he’s bolstered by a story with clear stakes and clearer geography, a sandbox absolutely worth exploring. Drone cameras are usually used for languid, panoramic shots. Here, Bay uses them like smooth agents of chaos, like missiles seeking a new, accelerating angle for the viewer.
The more sophomoric humor Bay can’t help but throw in is easy glided over by the tight story of a man trapped and with few options. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II absolutely sells the desperation at the core of his character. You understand why he makes the choices he did. You feel for him as he sinks further into the danger, like quicksand he’s not convinced he could ever escape. Jake Gyllenhaal gets to have a blast being a slick asshole who occasionally remembers its okay to have a heart.
Half the fun of movies like this with their FUBAR plots is wondering just how it’s going to end. You figure Yahya has to survive somehow. Someone has gotta get a win. But what I didn’t expect is how much Eiza Gonzalez’s Cam would factor into it. Gonzalez is game for the challenge, completely shouldering the narrative chaos as the story wraps up with about as feel-good and sobering an ending you can ask for. This is an ambulance you wouldn’t mind going for a long ride in.
9. Avatar: The Way of Water – written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, & Amanda Silver; directed by James Cameron
There isn’t anyone making movies like James Cameron now. Once again, the 3D is transporting. The blend of CGI and real elements is so seamless as to feel whole – you can’t figure out where one begins and the other ends. Even more: you don’t care. The bleeding-edge technology and explosive creativity (58 new ocean creatures!) that went into making this film possible is enough to make you sit down and take a deep breath. I so appreciate Cameron’s insistence on letting us, as an audience, just soak in all the cool shit his team has created. To allow us to explore just as much as the characters do. From a writing perspective, this is as structurally sound a story as it gets. So many things cycle back around in the end, leading to an incredible third act.
But for all my jokes about how this was some unexpected sequel to Titanic (there is a giant sinking ship at the end, after all), the true ending caught me off-guard. After a frantic (but never rushed), high-octane action finale, the parents are stuck in a waterlogged ship. It’s unfamiliar territory to them. They were too busy being parents, watching over and scolding their kids, to really learn the way of the water. It is their kids who end up saving them. It’s the kids who remind them how to breathe, who literally and figuratively light the way back to safety. And if that wasn’t enough, Cameron allows us to mourn the death of a child in a way I can’t remember seeing another blockbuster do. It’s surprisingly tender and vulnerable, as if Cameron himself is finally letting us see his own lessons in raising teenagers. Sure, he can help design a submarine and go to the deepest known part of the ocean. But teenagers? Whew. That’s an entire thing to build a massive movie around.
I’ve learned over time to never doubt James Cameron. I almost did this time – wondering if focusing a story on teenage avatars would be a step too far. But he, once again, proved us wrong. He may still be sinking ships. But he’s learned what keeps us all afloat.
8. Top Gun: Maverick – written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie; directed by Joseph Kosinski
When I first heard Christopher McQuarrie was gonna be lending his hand to this movie, presumably to help them punch up the story a bit, I didn’t know what to expect. Was it a well-intentioned misfire in need of serious patching? Did they have a good thing they simply wanted to make better? Maverick doesn’t give you any chance to wonder. It’s as confident a movie from start to finish as I’ve seen all year. There’s no wonder it lit the box office on fire all summer.
Knowing it’s been 30 years since the last movie, Maverick does an incredibly economical job in reminding us why this character matters and why this story will matter to us. We relearn everything we need to know about Maverick, the way he’s an excellent pilot who can’t help but push the limits, all of it punctuated by a stunned Cruise walking into a diner, and the story begins.
What I didn’t expect is just how much emotional grip they would pull off with the relationship between Maverick and Goose’ son, Rooster (Miles Teller). Some of the best narrative tension you can have in a movie comes from an important conversation that’s yet to be had – and may never be able to take place. The way the movie recontextualizes Rooster’s anger towards Maverick as not about his father’s death but about the papers supposedly pulled and a career delayed is an incredible inspired choice that pays off big time. You feel it in your chest the whole way through. The way there is so much Maverick wishes he could say but can’t. The way he has to guide someone who may always hold anger against him and may never know the truth. There are so many things going on – both narratively and thematically – throughout the movie and yet it all operates with electric efficiency. The crowd I saw it with absolutely cheered in multiple places. A film that soars to heights no one ever expected.
7. The Lost City – written by Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, and Aaron & Adam Nee; directed by Aaron & Adam Nee
What makes this movie work so well is Channing Tatum’s sincerity. The first time we see his character, Alan, we know it’s all a facade. He’s supposed to be a dumb cover model for all Loretta Sage’s (Sandra Bullock) romance novels. She certainly sees him that way. And she doesn’t see why she should care at all about anything he has to offer. He’s just the pretty face.
But what makes this such a delight is the way the movie inverts the expectations. Loretta does not need Alan. She’s not ready to put herself out there again, at least not with a little push. Alan, on the other hand, is absolutely convinced he’s one of the few people to understand just how wonderful and brilliant she is and that it is his job to make sure she understands that. There is not one cynical muscle in Tatum’s chiseled body. He absolutely sells it and it elevates the movie scene by scene. We’ve seen him do comedy with ease in the Jump Street movies (and an especially fantastic Bullet Train cameo). But here: he’s like the dancer he is, fully aware of how to use his body for maximum effect – dramatic, comedic, or romantic. When he puts the moves on Loretta and convinces her to dance one calm night before the storm, you start to believe in them just as Loretta does. It’s quite the swoon.
This is a movie about someone seeing you when you’re not quite able to see yourself. Someone who sees your sparkle and knows how to make it shine once again. And sometimes that person is Channing Tatum. And that’s pretty neat.
6. The Fabelmans – written by Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg; directed by Spielberg
As much as I adored all of EEAAO’s many well-deserved Oscar wins, the lack of love for The Fabelmans shocked me. Spielberg is Hollywood royalty. But I suspect many voters assumed they knew what movie they were getting and glossed over the actual pain and honesty imbued within it. Spielberg isn’t interested in a nostalgia trip to simpler times. He’s excavating the past, trying to present the truth it took him an entire lifetime to digest.
There’s a scene late in the film when Sam Fabelman’s parents reveal to the children they’re about to be divorced. Sam literally sits behind the whole scene, halfway up the staircase. He’s at a remove. Then he looks up at the mirror and there’s another version of him, moving around the family scene with a camera. In the most devastating moment of his sisters’ lives, he can’t help but film it. He can’t help but see what he can make of it for his art. Any writer or filmmaker watching will feel devastatingly seen in this moment. We’ve all done it. We’ve all slightly removed ourselves in the most painful moments of our lives, wondering just how we’ll write about it, just how we’ll paint the characters involved. And when you know just how much Spielberg has put his own personal family history in each of his films, it hits especially hard. He’s not here for a victory lap. He’s here to look in the mirror like never before.
Spielberg has always been a director to give kids more credit than they often get in the movies. Here, the kids aren’t freaked out by the fake blood they see in Sam’s films. They catch on to things before the parents do. They’re not dumb. They are as observant and honest as anyone, unwilling to hide behind lies they cannot quite keep track of.
But as personal as this film is, his collaboration with Tony Kushner – their fourth – is quite funny and full of joy in the way you only can see when you’re looking back through the lens of being a parent yourself. Spielberg understands how hard his parents – especially his father – tried to make it all work. There’s an appreciation for what he had married to a desire to understand what made him who he is. Like Aftersun, we see an artist trying to truly understand their parents and amending their image in the process.
5. Turning Red – written Domee Shi & Julia Cho; directed by Domee Shi
“Some people are like, ‘Be careful. Honoring your parents sounds great, but if you take it too far, well, you might forget to honor yourself.” It starts to feel like it’s gonna hit you over the head with it as we gaze at a great photo of Meilin and her parents. Then the camera zooms in and Meilin breaks the fourth wall with: “Luckily, I don’t have that problem.” It’s only a minute and a half in, and we already got this 13-year-old assuring us she’s been doing her own thing her whole life. But then we see her actual life, and we see the truth. We see someone we know all too well: a person trying their best to live in a realm where denial doesn’t exist.
This film absolutely emanates thematic confidence from the very first frame. It knows what it’s trying to say and what it’s trying to be. Creating an animated film is such an exhaustingly iterative process, running through choices over and over and over again until you stumble on the ones that feel best, all before committing to the expensive, time-consuming final renderings. So when sheer joy emanates from the screen like this, you know the team has galvanized around something they truly believe in. It’s beautiful.
Between the absolutely perfect metaphor of the red panda, the fictional-but-all-too-real boy band, the delightful characters in Meilin’s friend group, and all the inspired choices pushing this film towards the end, I sat in awe at its ability to never lose sight of its message. Meilin stumbling into her mother in a dream forest is one of the most emotionally and thematically rich things I’ve seen all year. All of it funnels into a highly memorable final act Pixar will struggle to soon top.
4. Everything Everywhere All At Once – written and directed by The Daniels
When I first saw this movie back in July, I had great love for it but figured it would be too weird to ever great any proper kind of awards consideration. Well. Five major Oscars will certainly challenge that thinking.
What I found most endearing about this film’s release is just how many of the elders praised what The Daniels pulled off and instinctively understood this was the kind of movie that would change the language of film for the next generation. It’s not for everyone. But it’s certainly a style that jibes well with the internet and the way it’s collectively warped all our brains. The Daniels’ last stunner of a film, Swiss Army Man, mined great pathos from a farting corpse and his delusional pal. Here, they go even deeper, challenging the idea of nothing meaning anything and finding great meaning behind doing laundry and taxes with those you love.
At times, this film’s maximalist style felt like it overwhelmed the story and lost me for a bit. But then it came back, laser-focused, in that scene in the rain when Evelyn does her best, knowing it may be her last chance, to connect with her daughter and show she cares. Don’t be fooled by the flying butt plugs and hot dog fingers. This is a movie with a heart so big it barely fits inside the cinema. And to see it embraced as much as it has been is one of the year’s great surprises.
3. The Banshees of Inisherin – written and directed by Martin McDonagh
For much of my life, in a way I could not entirely explain, Ireland felt like a place that called to me. Perhaps it’s the red in my beard. Maybe even the way I enjoy some judicious use of swearing. It’s certainly not because of the beer, a beverage whose enjoyment I base on my levels of tolerance. When I came out of my first long-term relationship, the world feeling wide and full of possibility, the cards began to fall in just the right manner. My cousin was living in Manchester and eager for my visit. The summer program I often worked was cancelled for budgetary reasons. My summer, suddenly wide open, suggested it be highlighted somewhere – anywhere – with an Irish-green hue.
There are two times in my life when I’ve felt myself in the presence of something elemental, something full of deep history that dwarfs any man’s existential crisis. I first felt it when stepping barefoot into the coarse, otherworldly sand of the Big Sur shores. Huge rocks with edges and surfaces etched from millennia of weathering and seawater were strewn about, like paperweights meant to stretch the tarp of the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t help but lay upon one of them like Ariel, the protagonist of my favorite childhood movie, hoping for the perfect shot of waves crashing behind me. It felt like a place where past, present, and the unknown future collided and ebbed and flowed in your mind, much like the water itself. A wave of peace washed over me. I would spent the next few years searching for anything approaching that.
When I took my solo trek to Ireland, I found myself restless again about the future. What did I really want to do? Whom did I really want to be? I tried to calm my mind in Galway with some stress eating, getting a personal Pizza Hut pizza and an ice cream cone – a true tourist meal. I adored how Galway sat on the edge of the Irish coast, like a whisper hugging the rocks. The next day, I took a trip to the Aran Islands, where the Banshees of Inisherin would be filmed. So I recognized all of the scenery – the impossibly green grass, the stone fences strewn about the island and keeping the cattle in their place. It felt like a place hidden from the world – perhaps because you had to take a boat to get there, one where the waves would rise above your head on either side of you as the engine muscled its way through.
The way McDonagh and cinematographer Ben Davis frame the island and the characters within it is a true thing of beauty. Every shot feels motivated and thought through. They have made a simple story on a small island feel as epic as anything in theaters today. I went to see Wakanda Forever the following week, and for all the globetrotting, sea-diving adventures it takes, it can’t match the intimately epic and epically intimate feeling of Banshee.
As the story unspools, I felt myself gripped with Colm (Brendan McGleeson). I just turned 36, and there seems to be something about how you feel invulnerable and gonna be around for awhile all the way up to 35. But 36? Shit gets real, real quick. It started with Jonathan Tjarks dying at 34, an awful, tragic loss and realizing he would never even get to be 35. Then it was followed by relatively young family members dealing with pretty scary health issues. Suddenly, 36 sounded like something to be thankful for. A huge note to write out, saying, “Thank you universe. I ask for nothing further.” But we still have to live. And there are still lives around us needing us to live. And there’s still creative ideas pinging around in our heads, desperate for a conduit to find its way into the world and make someone, somewhere, feel just a little less alone. When Colm finally gets around to explaining why he’s suddenly unfriended his closest friend, Padraic (Colin Ferrell), he describes the sudden pang of realizing there isn’t much time left to make a mark in the world and that, as a result, he must rid himself of dull endeavors as he pursues creative immortality.
There is no way for us to know if Colm really is even that good of a musician or writer. Because I think McDonaugh isn’t trying to excuse the personal costs of being some kind of creative genius, but rather to own up to how it impacts others. He wants to push everything aside, but he finds himself lonelier. And he’s truly wounded his best friend in irreversible ways.
As the tension between the personal war of these two friends increases, Colm admits to another character a most devastating thought: “ I do worry sometimes I might just be entertaining myself while staving off the inevitable.” It made me think about all the time I spend writing out my little story ideas in all kinds of files and places, unsure if I can even keep track of all of it and, in my demoralizing moments, unsure whether any of it is worth keeping track of.
What makes this film stick can be summed up in the last line, when Padraic says: “Some things there’s no moving on from. And I think that’s a good thing.” Our culture is franchise and reboot heavy, willing to undo any death or consequence to keep people feeling fine and happy and unbothered by the future. But there’s a cost to that. It becomes easy to be that perpetual early-30-something until you hit the wrong side of 30 and you’re unprepared for what’s next. Some things there’s no moving on from. And that’s a good thing.
2. Nope – written and directed by Jordan Peele
It may be no mistake that the summer film that felt the most like a movie to me has a structure nearly identical to Jaws aka the original summer blockbuster. This is only Jordan Peele’s third movie and I believe this to be his masterpiece. Get Out is a tight story told with tight execution. Us is far more sprawling and ambitious in its ideas, but doesn’t quite pull it all together. Here, Peele seems to have striked just the right balance. There is so much that can be gleaned from this film, any number of ways it can be read, and yet Peele has you glued to every beat, every moment, every line.
The brother-sister relationship between Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer feels like a true sibling relationship, in the way they irritate and amp each other up. The tech guy (Brandon Perea) is a complete blast, a Dave Franco from a weirder parallel universe. And the cloud monster: what a fucking creation. What a brilliant way to give us something alien and unsure while underlining every one of your themes with terror and awe. Also: a surefire way to get me invested in your movie is to have a chimpanzee. Leave it to Peele to make it a haunting, unforgettable simian experience.
I’m still flabbergasted that the Academy gave this film no love. Especially in a year in which EEAAO won all the awards. In time, it will get its flowers. Until then: don’t stare into the eye of the monster for too long.
1. Aftersun – written and directed by Charlotte Wells
This film shows us three different ways we can be haunted. There’s the digital video from a camcorder, the way we can revisit the past in all its grainy glory, looking for clues to explain the entire life that came after. There’s a strobe light on a dance floor, full of bodies dancing to the same beat, allowing us flashes just long enough to wonder but not long enough to truly understand. And then there’s the way we try and live in the present as a parent of our own child, wondering how much or how little we’ll be like the parents that brought us into the world and just how much or how little we want that to be true.
As the movie ended, I found myself quiet and deep in thought. So much to consider. So many details given, specific but not so specific as to inhibit our own memories from bleeding through. Emotions to recognize even if we’ve never been on holiday at a resort in Turkey. What I keep coming back to is the film’s use of two popular songs – R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” and Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” – and how I’ll never hear them the same way again.
When “Losing My Religion” first burst out onto the scene in 1991, the first single off R.E.M’s Out of Time, I was five years old and far too young to understand the song or the resulting controversy from the music video. As a teenager, desperate to be as rebellious as my Catholic guilt would allow, I glommed onto it, convinced it was some daring rebuke of organized religion, an absolute earworm for the agnostic soul. It was only later I learned the term ‘losing my religion’ is also a Southern expression for losing your shit. Stipe himself once said it was about romantic expression. Sometimes romantic expression makes you lose your shit as well.
But in Wells’ superlative debut, a new, devastating context is offered. In another one of those carefully suggested details, we learn Sophie (an electric Frankie Corio) and her father (a devastating Paul Mescal) have a tradition of doing karaoke together on these holidays. She’s put their name on the list. It’s a rare thrill at a resort devoid of any true escape. But as soon as they’re called up, her father resists. He’s just not in the mood and there is no room to bend. So she slumps down the stairs and onstage, alone to sing this song. All the sudden, the lyrics can be heard anew.
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enoughI thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
You’ve probably heard these lyrics before. Perhaps a thousand times on the radio. But here, you can’t tell who is singing to who. This could be Sophie singing to her father, who’s become increasingly distant and hard to get through to. It could be her father, watching his 11-year-old daughter grow past what he can understand and protect her from. It can be so many things. And it caught me all in the chest just as her isolation on stage increases and her voice wears down.
As a parent, it’s hard knowing when you could do better for your kids, when you could give them a little bit more fun, but to feel too exhausted to follow through. You’re doing the best you can but it doesn’t always feel enough. Colum had Sophie had such a young age, when most of us don’t even have a clue what we want to do or what we want to be, and you can see him trying desperately to figure out his own life so his daughter won’t worry about him too much. She knows better than she gets credit for. And he knows it.
But the beauty of Aftersun is in how we get glimpses of adult Sophie – sometimes only flickers of her silhouette through an artfully-placed dance hall strobe light – trying so hard to understand her own father. She may never get there. Much may be left to mystery. Maybe she will hear “Losing My Religion” on the radio and wonder, again, if it says more about her father or herself. It’s a dance that never ends. We can only keep showing up and seeing where the light may fall.
All of this cascades into my favorite movie ending since 2004’s Before Sunset. Once again drawing from a familiar pop song, Wells juxtaposes a young Sophie reluctantly dancing with her father on their last night on vacation with the dance hall strobe lights as older Sophie searches for her father. Bubbling beneath it is “Under Pressure”. What makes it work so well is how the most immediately familiar part of the song – the heavy drum beat and first notes – are stripped bare, leaving Mercury and Bowie’s vocals and a cello. Whether Wells intended it to be or not, it’s a great auditory metaphor for the way we must rehear the past to better understand the present. And knowing what we know about Sophie’s father, the lyrics, like with REM’s “Losing My Religion”, hit especially hard:
Pressure pushin’ down on me
Pressin’ down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that brings a building down
Splits a family in two, puts people on streets
Watching Calum dance that night at the resort is the freest we’ve seen him since dancing alone on a balcony at the beginning of the film. It may be his last free moments before he sends his daughter back with his ex-wife and has to deal with his own demons. And the way Wells ends the film, it may be the last time Sophie ever truly sees him. We’re always searching to understand our parents, especially as we may become parents ourselves. We’re dancing with the past, present, and future, all at once.
Early in the film, Sophie tells her father how show thinks about the sky. That no matter how far away someone is, we’re all sharing the same sky. Sometimes blue, sometimes grey and moody, but the same atmosphere on the same planet at the same time. At some point, the sun will set on our parents and closest friends, and we’ll play over and over those days of shared light, making sense of its shadows and glares. And maybe we’ll have a pretty great pop song playing underneath all this reflection. I’m just so grateful to share a sky where this movie exists and to be able to bask in the Aftersun again.
