All the Bloodshed Money Can Buy To Die For

Happy Criterion Announcement Day! As goes every 15th of the month (or sometimes therebaouts) we have gotten the new slate of Criterion blu-rays and 4Ks for an upcoming month, which in today's case means March of 2024. And what a slate it is! Starting with the happiest shock of the bunch -- on March 26th they're dropping Gus Van Sant's satical masterpiece To Die For onto 4K! Definitely my favoritew movie of Van Sant's (with all due apologies to the very close runner-up My own Private Idaho) and possibly still my favorite Nicole Kidman performance -- all that's a long list and it would depend on the day and my mood. Anyway there weirdly aren't a ton of special features on this -- some commentary tracks, deleted scenes, and an essay -- but when the movie itself is this good and it's been newly restored I don't really care. Next up...

... we have Iranian director Amir Naderi's 1984 film The Runner, which is based on his own childhood in that post-revolutionary country and stars child actor Madjid Niroumand as an orphan determined to rise above his circumstances, and we have Senegalese director Alice Diop's 2022 masterful Saint Omer, a courtroom drama about a novelist following the trial in France of an immigrant accused of murdering her own daughter. 

And then we have William Dieterle's 1941 classic retelling of The Daniel and Devil Webster called All That Money Can Buy, which memorably stars Walter Huston as the devil himself and has a grand score from Bernard Herrmann. And to top it all off we've got my #8 favorite film of last year, Laura Poitras' documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed about photographer and activist Nan Goldin, which is a goddamned masterpiece and one of the most important documents of our age. This is not a light bunch of movies, y'all! Great great stuff coming from Criterion in March -- pre-order everything at the links provided. 

Get Busy Living Or Get Busy...

Although there are some exceptions -- and yes I am talking about you, Robert Downey Jr remaking Vertigo -- I'm glad that I pried the stick out of my ass about movie remakes right around the time that Luca Guadagnino put his version of Suspiria into the world. Because I told myself and I believed myself that we'll always have the original thing in the world, so if the new version sucks we can just pretend it didn't happen! Voila, magic! And then sometimes these things don't suck and we're all the better for it.

Which brings me to Oliver Hermanus' 2022 film Living, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's film Ikiru -- a lot of people got really hung up on that! But I'm glad I wasn't one of them because I found Living profoundly moving. Mostly thanks to Bill Nighy's Oscar-nominated turn (he should have won), but not just -- the gorgeous score and Hermanus' camera-work and the supporting turn from Aimee Lou Wood (she should've gotten a Supporting Actress nomination dammit). Point being I adore this film. Here's my 2022 Sundance review. And it's now (getting to the reason for this post) on blu-ray today! Pick up your copy here. I wish they'd release the scene of Nighy singing "The Rowan Tree" in the film so I could embed that; maybe I'll have to go add it to my own YouTube page some time. That'll convince you to see the blasted movie if you haven't yet!

Living For Living

I re-watched Oliver Hermanus' Living and Todd Field's Tár (both films on my favorite movies of 2022 list) this past weekend -- not strictly because the Oscars are happening this upcoming Sunday and the two lead performances from those films are both nominated. But that wasn't not the reason, either. I wanted to re-visit both Bill Nighy and Cate Blanchett's work just to make sure and yup-- it turns out they're still my favorite performances of the past year. Here is my review of Living and here is my review of Tár. Honestly I think they're both about as good as movies get -- my allergy to using the word "masterpiece" until a few years have passed keeps me from throwing that around but let's be real, we'll be using that word soon enough.

That said as I lamented on Twitter yesterday as I re-watched Living, that movie really got dicked over awards-wise this season, Nighy and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro aside. The tremendous score from Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, the costumes from Sandy Powell, the cinematography and production design -- I would have nominated it all. Living is lush, gorgeous, sweeping, heartbreaking -- it's everything I go to the movies for. Which is all my way of seeing that you should go watch Living if you still haven't seen Living. It's still not streaming anywhere as far as I can tell, although you can rent it for twenty bucks from all of the streamers -- here it is on Amazon. And they just announced that it is hitting blu-ray on April 11th -- you can pre-order it right here. Now I just pray somebody drops that score on vinyl cuz I need it in my bones. All that said...

... What were your favorite performances of 2022?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Alithea: There's no story about wishing that is not

a cautionary tale. None end happily. Not even

the ones that are supposed to be jokes.

Genie: But you and I are the authors of this

story, and we can avoid all traps.

It struck me just yesterday that I had totally forgotten to include George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing in my "runners-up" column for my favorite 2022 movies list, where it definitely belonged as I liked this movie a lot more than most people seemed to've. Here is my review where I said it is, "a weird little miracle, the kind of movie that doesn’t get made anymore, and we’re better off with it here, rubbing our bellies, granting our heart’s strangest unspoken desires." Anyway I feel lousy I forgot to include it since the movie didn't get enough love elsewhere, and doubly so since today is George Miller's birthday, so as my gift to him I'll be heading back to that post to add it in. And y'all should seek it out if you haven't managed to see it yet. I find it truly lovely, a poem for words and thoughts and finding someone who can cut through the deadening hum of the world to bring you a whisper of peace. joy, enlightenment once in awhile. 

Feeling very Alithea today pic.twitter.com/SoHBgXyVrn

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 2, 2023

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2022

Well I didn't plan on doing this today but what the hell -- seize the moment and such. Unlike last year, where I still haven't shared my favorite movies of the year, that is. That's right -- I'm just going to go ahead and give you my favorite movies of the year 2022 right now, right this moment. Wham bam let's just get it done. I've made it pretty clear here and elsewhere that my hatred for lists and awards has truly gotten the best of me -- ranking something as individual and personal as art as "the best" within a broad context has become nonsensical to me. I don't really even see the use of it anymore.

That said, individually I do find it fascinating -- seeing a single person's favorites, that is. Groupthink obliterates the outliers and quirks of individuality (which is how shit like Green Book or CODA ends up winning a Best Picture prize) but if there's a writer or friend whose opinion I trust I wanna see what they liked, as a singular person, in hopes that they'll direct me to something I might not have paid attention to. See John Waters' list at ArtForum every year -- I've gotten more out of those than any Oscars ceremony ever.

Anyway since I'm a member and/or a writer for a few places where I have had to submit my favorite movies of 2022 a few times already I did make this list awhile back, and I've had it sitting here staring at me. So why not share it? I don't know that I'll ever have the time to do a great big slew of "Golden Trousers" awards like I was doing a decade ago -- with a full-time real-life job AND writing regularly for two other websites AND keeping MNPP itself going my time is thin gruel right now y'all. But please, enjoy this much, if you care to!

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2022

20. Soft & Quiet (dir. Beth de Araújo)
-- my review here -- 

19. Everything Everywhere All At Once (dir. The Daniels)
-- my review here -- 

18. Close (dir. Lukas Dhont)
-- my review here -- 

17. Pearl (dir. Ti West)
-- my review here -- 

16. White Noise (dir. Noah Baumbach)
-- my review here -- 

15. Brian and Charles (dir. Jim Archer)
-- my review here -- 

14. Peter Von Kant (dir. François Ozon)
-- my review here -- 

13. The Northman (dir. Robert Eggers)
-- my review here -- 

12. The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg)
-- my review here -- 

11. Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells)
-- my review here -- 

10. Mad God (dir. Phil Tippett)
-- my review here -- 

9. Please Baby Please (dir. Amanda Kramer)
-- my review here -- 

8. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (dir. Laura Poitras)

7. Tár (dir. Todd Field)
-- my review here --

6. Living (dir. Oliver Hermanus)
-- my review here -- 

5. Great Freedom (dir. Sebastian Meise)
-- my review here -- 

4. Benediction (dir. Terence Davies)
-- my review here -- 

3. Decision to Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook)
-- my review here --

2. Bones and All (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
-- my review here -- 

1. Flux Gourmet (dir. Peter Strickland)
-- my review here -- 

------------------------------------

Runners-up: Fire Island (dir. Andrew Ahn), The Inspection (dir. Elegance Bratton), Holy Spider (dir. Ali Abbas), Bodies Bodies Bodies (dir. Halina Reijn), Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund), Three Thousand Years of Longing (dir. George Miller) A Wounded Fawn (dir. Travis Stevens), Dinner in America (dir. Adam Rehmeier), Women Talking (dir. Sarah Polley), Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris (dir. Anthony Fabian),  Alcarràs (dir. Carla Simón), Pleasure (dir. Ninja Thyberg), The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh), Watcher (dir. Chloe Okuno), The Cathedral (dir. Ricky D’Ambrose), Resurrection (dir. Andrew Seaman), The Quiet Girl (dir. Colm Bairéad), Nope (dir. Jordan Peele), Satan's Slaves 2 (dir. Joko Anwar), After Yang (dir. Kogonada)

So there that is! Go watch all of those movies, please.

And on to 2023 we officially move...

Colin Farrell Tastes the Rainbow

A week ago I shared with you the nominations for our Team Experience awards -- which saw all of us who write for The Film Experience voting on our favorite things movie-wise of 2022. Well today I have the winners! Click on over to TFE to see who won! And spoiler alert that gorgeous laddie Colin Farrell seen above might just have topped his category. (And yes Colin Farrell can top my category any time.) I can't say the big winners correlate too much with my own individual ballot but I never can -- not until I do my own damn awards again. My tastes are so fuckin' singular, guys, you don't even know. Iconoclast in the house, woop woop!

Team Experience the Awesomeness

I knew I should have waited a skinny minute to post those two polls I'd participated in yesterday, because I knew that this third example would be revealing itself any minute and here we are -- today our Team Experience 2022 nominations went up at The Film Experience, wherein all of us who write for that website (save our glorious leader Nathaniel, who has his own awards as befits the king) voted on our favorite movie things of 2022. And I know that plenty of other people voted on these but I feel as if my influence is actually felt -- Franz Rogowski for Best Actor for Great Freedom! Love for Bones and All and Decision To Leave and Mad God! These are me things and I approve. Go look and gape in awe at out awesomeness y'all. Our winners will be announced on February 7th.

Hey Look At My Big Poll Y'all

And now, for something a little different -- a heads-up on two polls I recently participated in. The first and more recent one went live today -- click over to IndieWire to see a survey of what critics thought was the best of Sundance 2023, in which I voted. Things I voted for definitely made the lists but the big winner, Chloe Domont's gender and power dynamics corporate thriller Fair Play starring Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor as a couple whose work relationship gets seriously in the way of their engagement, was a disappointment for me and I'm not getting the love I see other critics heaping upon it at all. It's not a disaster -- it's serviceable and the actors give it their all. Y'all know I love Alden and he's in fine form (in more than one manner). But I really didn't feel as if it told me anything new by its end. Anyway this isn't meant to be a review, I'm not reviewing it -- just putting that contrasting brief opinion out there. My little meh.

The second poll I recently participated in is the annual Nashville Scene poll, which took a look back at the movies of 2022 and picked out some faves -- check it here. MNPP friend Jason Shawhan runs this poll and gathers up a smart batch of critics (although I might, you know, be biased) so it's always if you ask me more interesting than a lot of yearly round-ups I see. Several of my actual favorite movies of the past year actually made this list, which hasn't been happening a lot for 2022 -- my personal list, if I ever end up showing it to you, is turning out to be let's say an eclectic one. Which is to say I kind of feel when I do these polls that I'm just throwing my opinion into an abyss, where all my teensy tiny weirdo little choices are immediately swallowed up by other's consensus. Oh well, that's what this "Best of" machinery is always about!