2022’s Watchlist: Top 10 Talks> 1-4
I had originally intended to talk about each of my top 10 individually but, upon seeing how they shook out, I realized that my 1-4 were all good enough to be my #1. Additionally, each of them encompass the same thing that I think we’re beginning to really see with modern cinema, and that’s what I want to talk about here.
“All I think, is that I love you.”
Movies have always been about capturing the impossible. Be that “impossible” genetically engineered dinosaur attractions, battles in space, killers that thrive in your dreams, or simple romances too pure for our real world – movies live and die by walking that magic line. Each film on my 2022 top ten list encapsulates this concept in some way, but my top 4 have fallen together to create an incidental reflection of the thing I think is the true magic of the art and something that modern cinema is beginning to capture like no generation before it:
The magic, horror, and oddity that is simply being alive.
Of course, each generation has influences, anxieties, and limitations that end up shaping the art they create. However, I think that film is a medium that has largely come into its own within the last decade or so. This isn’t to say that fantastic and truly timeless films haven’t been made in the past or that all modern films are better than all older films. That simply isn’t true. What I do think is true though, is that modern films [and modern audiences] have finally found a way to communicate what it means to live and simply be in a way that past generations have not been able to grasp.
“When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naïve; it is strategic and necessary. It’s how I learned to survive through everything.”
Part of the uptick in quality and creatively meaningful films is the massive proliferation of high-quality recording devices and ease of access to them. With the widespread use of cellphones, second-hand cameras that are “out of date” because they don’t shoot 87k video, and the huge array of easy to use video editing software, it is [for better or worse] easier than ever to make your own movie. A shout-out to this comment is my #11 pick of the year, When I Consume You [2021]: An incredibly difficult and intelligent film about depression and the way it manifests between a couple of best friends. This film was clearly made with little-to-no budget and shot with what the filmmakers had on hand [an additional shoutout here to their first film They Look Like People <2015> ] but, due to the general high quality of easily accessible gear, the film looks great and hardly out of place next to larger titles with studio backing. Fantastic films like 2012’s The Battery or 2018’s Freaks simply wouldn’t exist without the level of readily available technology that exists today.
Part of modern cinema’s ability to capture the oddities I spoke of above, of course, is standing on the shoulders of everything that’s come before. There have always been fantastic philosophical fantasies about what it means to live, thrive, and exist. Weird journeys like 2013’s Upstream Color and tragic ones like 2017’s A Ghost Story get to live and breathe and touch our lives because of the lessons we’ve learned in the past – both technologic and emotional. Without our past, the future is simply our present; and modern film is made so much better because of where it came from. In a lot of ways, film is one of the most interesting time capsules there is. As with any form of art, film captures the ideas, attitudes, and aptitudes of the culture it came from. Film from the 40’s and 50’s is very different from that of the 90’s and film from the 90’s is very different from what will exist in the 2040’s and 2050’s. Unlike some other forms of storytelling, film lets us look back at not only biases, but interesting technical limitations as well. Most interestingly, sometimes those technical “limitations” are what make some films shine the way they do — The Hobbit films and their wretched CGI come to mind against the LOTR trilogy and their stellar makeup and costumes. Aside from technical concepts, timeless media in this vein — as is the case of much of The Twilight Zone 1959-1989 [sort of] — the other thing that film allows us to do is identify the true visionaries of the past and see the way that bubbling ideas from prior generations have truly shaped themselves and matured [or died] within our modern societies. It can be very sobering [and frightening] to observe the wants, needs, and anxieties of past generations that both have and haven’t changed as time goes on. Storytelling is not a new artform by any means, but I think that modern film has finally begun to realize its potential to form a lasting place within the practice. In the last few years, film has begun to figure out how to communicate what it means to have a soul and to love another in a way that I just don’t think has been communicated before. There’s always been great romances, but rarely do those romances focus on love as something deeply ethereal the way that 2020’s Nine Days, 2021’s Little Fish, or [not to put too fine a point on it] 2020’s Soul do.
Of course, the final part of what I think makes modern cinema so enticing is my own biases and the fact that the artists making a lot of my favorite films seem to share my worldview. Strange right?
“We’re all small and stupid.”
All of this is to say that films like Everything Everywhere All At Once couldn’t exist in previous generations because of both technologic and philosophic issues. It’s simply a film that audiences would not have accepted, studios would not have funded, and artists couldn’t have created with the level of fidelity, charm, tact, and authenticity that it needed. Here, at a perfect confluence of all the above things, we get to enjoy this truly masterpiece.
My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To is a fantastic and touching film about loving and caring for someone who needs you, but also the journey of self discovery and appreciation of the freedom that the ending of that contract brings. It’s unlike most anything I’ve watched previously, and is a great standout because of how it would have been handled by previous generations of filmmakers. 10 years ago it would be an action vampire horror or, if we take it back to the early 00’s, it would have been an Underworld sequel instead. As is though, we are both prepared to consume and create art with much more to say now, and, thus, get this slow, intentional, and incredibly powerful drama about finding your own freedom in a world that doesn't understand anything about you when it even bothers to see you at all.
“The world of love wants no monsters in it.”
Similarly, Bones and All requires a tact and grace that I don’t think would have been exercised by previous generations of filmmakers. It would have been easy to hand this film to someone like Eli Roth and amp up the gore, ratchet the tension, and increase the insanity to make a completely forgettable and pointless follow-up to The Green Inferno. Equally easily, it could have been turned into a Warm Bodies wannabe and lost all integrity or meaning. Instead, we’re given a very contemplative and difficult film about finding your people and figuring out how to live, despite hating everything about both you and the way the world has made you. Though very different from the book, Bones and All manages to be wholly its own and wholly something that would have been ruined only a few years prior.
This all culminates into my #1 of the year, You Won’t Be Alone: A film about how strange even the simple coincidence of being alive is, and about finding love for that strangeness even though everything in the world is so alien and often cruel.
“That there, it is poplars. That there, it is sparrows. But, are sparrows snakes? Are women wasps? Kisses chains? Me… Am I a devil?”
When you don’t understand the world and the world doesn’t understand you, is the true value living in someone else’s skin, or learning to love your own for all it both can and cannot be?
These films go beyond the “love yourself” message of corporations, ad agencies, and movies of prior years, and take it into a deeper place. A place that says you should not only love yourself, but you should love your be-ing. That you should not only love what you are, but that you are. A place that says “love” is not the answer, but being in love is.
Film in generations past has been wonderful – we simply wouldn’t be where we are today without some of the cinematic greats that have built the medium up to what it is now. Artists have always been the true visionaries of society. Be they musicians, painters, poets, or even politicians; artists have always held the keys to our futures. As a haven for these artists, film has served as a poignant, and lasting look into these people's minds, philosophies, wants, needs, anxieties, and desires. Recently, film has also become accessible in a way that few artforms have ever been. With the rise of not only easy to acquire, but easy to use, technology, a waxing cultural and societal desire for inclusion and the breaking of both barriers and silences alike, and the skills, techniques, and knowledge of generations past; the modern film is quickly becoming one of the most well realized and executed forms of art that has ever been.
Keep creating, keep living, and never stop believing in the magic of the world around you. Keep being, falling, and accidentally finding yourself deeply, truly, and unapologetically: In love.
“Of all the places I could be… I just want to be here with you.”
