In 2022 it felt like moviegoing came (almost) all the way back (for the seemingly dwindling number of people who were willing to go into the theaters). As the year winds to a close, we’re sharing lists of our favorite films we’ve seen (so far).
Roundtable: We crashed Babylon’s spectacular Hollywood History party and lived to tell the tale
Damien Chazelle’s latest movie is a staggeringly ambitious, multi-tiered melodrama that follows several disparate characters amidst Hollywood’s transition from silent movies to talkies. Very much interwoven with this huge technological shift is the extended high that was the late 1920s, followed by the Wall Street Crash that ushered in The Great Depression. Lest we make this sound too highbrow, it is a film that includes car chases, explosive elephant excrement, orgies, projectile vomit, freak shows, bloody injuries, and mountains upon mountains of hard drugs. And don’t forget the snake fight.
Avatar: the Way of Water makes a giant splash
More than a decade in the making, James Cameron has at long last returned to Pandora, the lush reource-rich moon inhabited by tall blue cat people with swimmers builds that put Michael Phelps to shame, whose bioluminescent nature consciousness was the setting for his own massively-successful and boundary-pushing success Avatar. It’s a three hour long trip to the cutting edge of filmmaking technologies, a three-dimensional marvel of variable frame rates, and a story of a family on the run that demands to be seen in a cinema, nausea be damned.
At long last EO, the year’s best donkey, arrives in Seattle
It’s a big year for donkeys on film, but although Jenny is a sparkling figure in The Banshees of Inisherin, there’s no competition for my favorite. That’s an easy call. On a minute-by-minute basis, I have seen no film this year as surprising in framing, construction, and plotting than Jerzy Skolimowski’s truly dazzling film EO.
Spoiler Alert is a melodramatic tearjerker – but in the best way possible
Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert is a feat of filmmaking. It’s a melodrama starring the actor responsible for one of the most cloying TV characters in my lifetime, and it operates in a genre prone to audience manipulation and overwhelming sentimentality, and it offers few (if any) surprises. Yet, somehow, I actually really, really enjoyed it.
I Am D.B. Cooper asks if the elusive hijacker is actually an area man from Skagit County
D.B. Cooper could be almost anyone so he could just as easily be an old man with a limp and a Goofy sweatshirt in Mount Vernon, out on bail for an assault charge named Rodney, which is who this movie is about.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed intertwines Nan Goldin’s life and photography into a searing portrait of the artist as activist
Although Laura Poitras’s All The Beauty and the Bloodshed puts decades of Nan Goldin’s photography onto the big screen, neither the film nor its subject are stuck in the past.
Empire of Light harkens to the days of beautiful old cinemas and a time of turmoil
Planted firmly in the middle of Main Street, the Empire movie theater could be in any small town from North Britain to Southern California and it would look the same. Hilary (Olivia Coleman) is a White middle-aged woman that works day in and day out in the thankless job of movie theater manager. Taken advantage of by her boss and ignored by everyone else, she lives a life of simple solitude.
Seattle Film Critics Society spotlights achievements in local filmmaking with PNW Award
This morning, the Seattle Film Critics Association (a few of your friendly neighborhood SunBreakers are members) announced nominations for a new annual …
The Inspection finds purpose through service in the DADT era
Elegance Bratton made his name as a filmmaker whose work in documentaries, short films, and television has focused on exploring the lives of vulnerable Black queer and trans young people in New York. With his feature film debut, he tells a lightly fictionalized version of his own troubled youth. Kicked out of his home at age sixteen by a staunchly homophobic mother, Bratton navigated homelessness for nearly a decade until a decision to enlist in the Marines helped him to find new purpose in his life. It’s a deeply personal story, but lyrically rendered with clear eyes, it’s also universally accessible.