Music & Films for
Common People
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Going from a hiperrealist depiction of the anomy of Venice's youth in their love for motor boats and cellphones, to a experimental video-essay on the beauty of lights over water, Atlantide is certainly a beautiful, hypnotic and cryptic film not made for everybody.
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ATLANTIDE
Dir. Yuri Ancarani
(Italy)
For better and for worse, Guadagnino is not bothered at all on the moral background of his cannibal lovers, so he focuses on balancing horror and romance with mostly positive results. Halfway between his own Call Me by your Name and Julia Ducournau's Raw, but not as great as them.
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BONES AND ALL
Dir. Luca Guadagnino
(Italy)
We more or less know where this small indie film of two friends making a suicidal pact is going from the beginning, yet it does great at acknowledging that trauma is real and has consequences, and it also finds a few moments of originality and h
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ON THE COUNT OF THREE
Dir. Jarrod Charmichael
(United States)
One of the best works of cinematography of the year, with its cold desaturated tones and intense contrasts. It is a film that rescues the best tricks of Hollywood war films but also can't avoid some clichés of films that supposedly denounce war while making violence aesthetic.
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IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES
(All Quiet on the Western Front)
Dir. Edward Berger (Germany)
Although this is not one of Koreeda's masterpieces, it is another beautiful exploration of what it means to be a family and how broken individuals can come together to heal. The chemistry between all the cast is quite genuine and make the film even warmer and more tender.
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BEUROKEO
(Broker) Dir. Hirokazu Koreeda
(South Korea)
What saves this film from becoming a forgettable action comedy is the great sense of timing to deal with such a chaotic absurdist maximalism. It is certainly not a cinematic glory, but Brad Pitt and a couple of other cast members do a great job to keep you entertained the whole time.
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BULLET TRAIN
Dir. David Leitch
(United States)
Crafted with pastel painting, La Traversée is a small animation film that deals with two siblings forced to exile from an unnamed country. It is a modest film that is rich in its explorations of the pains of having to migrate during wartime.
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LA TRAVERSÉE
(The Crossing) Dir. Florence Miailhe
(France)
Filmed on an elegant black and white cinematography, Mills gifts us with one of his usual tender and emotional rich stories of humans finding connection, now in the form of a lonely man and his nephew, in a soft existential tone that warms your heart.
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C'MON C'MON
Dir. Mike Mills
(United States)
Denis made not only one, but two of the most erotic films of the year. In Avec Amour et Acharnement, she puts Binoche and Lindon in a dangerous love triangle that allows her to explore the contradictions of desire and love.
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AVEC AMOUR ET ACHARNEMENT
(Both Sides of the Blade) Dir. Claire Denis
(France)
Peele's horror movies always leave you thinking way beyond the end. In this supernatural story, he manages to pull comments on the human obsession with celebrity and making a show of anything, even of things that, by nature, won't adhere to our ideas of what is entertainment.
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NOPE
Dir. Jordan Peele
(United States)
Although it could be mostly described as activist cinema, 1976 makes use of elements of thriller to enhance the tension and to mirror the anxieties of finding what it means to live under a dictatorial regime. Martelli also manages to find a visual style and effective symbolisms.
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1976
Dir. Manuela Martelli
(Chile)
Modest and unpretentious, it is a film that centers on the loneliness and the emotional fight of a young girl, and with empathy and tenderness, it is able to touch your heart without recurring to manipulative clichés. It is a generous film that uses silence as a way to express deep emotions.
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AN CAILÍN CIÚIN
(The Quiet Girl) Dir. Colm Bairéad
(Ireland)
As a political thriller, it works like a clockwork. Although Mitre has always been a politically charged director, this time he moves to a more agile and Hollywood-esque style to achieve a gripping effect. Sadly, as a film that tries to offer restoration to victims, it doesn't work as well.
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ARGENTINA, 1985
Dir. Santiago Mitre
(Argentina)
A social satyre that focuses on capitalist workplace bad practices with a great comedic tempo that gets highly improved by the amazing presence of Javier Bardem. It will make you laugh and will leave very clear that in an exploitative market economy, no boss is a good boss.
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EL BUEN PATRÓN
(The Good Boss)
Dir. Fernando León de Aranoa (Spain)
Lapid not only crafts a visually rich film that plays with camera movements and stylistic breaks in order to portray the ideas of his meta-cinematic director, he also lands a few punches at the Israeli controlling and censorship state, as it does to artist's egos.
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HA'BERECH
(Ahed's Knee) Dir. Nadav Lapid
(Israel)
After more than a dozen film adaptations of the classic Shakespeare tragedy, this particular film stands out because of the super visual design that Joel Coen (back on the director's chair alone after 20 years) crafts with a minimalist symmetric architectural style.
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THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
Dir. Joel Coen
(United States)
The main reason on why modern adaptations of literature classics fail is because they immediately recur to the manerisms of classical cinema. Giannoli adapts Balzac keeping the beautiful decors and costumes, but with a more contemporary tone, making it almost an intrigue thriller.
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ILLUSIONS PERDUES
(Lost Illusions) Dir. Xavier Giannoli
(France)
Del Toro is a genius creating worlds and atmospheres, and his take on the "freak circus" is quite inspired, making use of superb camera, lightning and art direction, rich in textures and shades, to achieve that exquisite style of the beauty in the grotesque.
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NIGHTMARE ALLEY
Dir. Guillermo del Toro
(United States)
Taking the idea of fractures at different levels (of a bone, of a relationship, of a country) in this choral film that takes place during the yellow vest protests in France in 2019. It is an artistic response to the fatigue and desire of change that broken politics bring.
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LA FRACTURE
(The Divide) Dir. Catherine Corsini
(France)
Vigas mixes a coming-of-age story with a social drama, and even a splash of detectives thriller to explore how much the internal need to find truth could get us to places (both in the world and within ourselves) that are dark and destructive, and we were not prepared to reach.
31
LA CAJA
(The Box) Dir. Lorenzo Vigas
(Venezuela)
Denis ignites the erotic passion but also the dark anxiety on a romantic thriller that follows two strangers who hide too many secrets while attempting to flee a dictatorship. Good to see such an accomplished director finally getting the festival recognition she rightfully deserves.
30
STARS AT NOON
Dir. Claire Denis
(France)
This film is unlike any other film by Gaspar Noé, although the formal experimentations are still there, for once he just stopped being loud and provocative, and instead he went for an introspective drama that explores the emotional turmoil of the physical and mental decay of age.
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VORTEX
Dir. Gaspar Noé
(France)
Oppressive and suffocating. The general tone of the film resembles very much the patriarchal society that Kovalenko is denouncing with her neorealist coming of-age story on how men's supposed love and protection (to a daughter, sister or lover) is corrosive.
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RAZZHIMAYA KULAKI
(Unclenching the fists) Dir. Kira Kovalenko
(Russia)
One can question the moral implications of a film where rapist and victim are treated with equal empathy, but not much on how griping and what a great debate starter it is. Perhaps, the biggest achievement is establishing that in patriarchy, rapists are not aware that they are such.
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LES CHOSES HUMAINES
(The Accusation) Dir. Yvan Attal
(France)
The explorations that Bentley do on clinging to what we believe that defines our existence, and the desperate need to leave a legacy are framed in a beautiful cinematography that makes the most of the southern US landscape and a career-best performance by Collins Jr.
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JOCKEY
Dir. Clint Bentley
(United States)
A social drama that introduces us to the world of the fishing industry in the Mediterranean, in order to tell a story about how modern world is eroding tradition and forcing people to change their way of life in order to adapt to a ruthless economy market. Smart in its use of symbolism and it contained emotional distress, Luzzu is a great debut and a testament to the important to give voice to the fights of the common people.
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LUZZU
Dir. Alex Camilleri (Malta)
Although this is clearly a film about a filmmaker, halfway through this film we discover that is not about Ingmar Bergman, as the title suggests, but about Mia Hansen Løve, the author herself. An intimate project that works at three levels of meta-narration, Hansen Løve tells by her own account, the hardships that a woman still faces to become an artist. A mature piece that explores the connections between author and work of art.
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BERGMAN ISLAND
Dir. Mia Hansen Løve (France)
It's impossible not to draw parallels between Ninja Baby and the other great Norwegian film of this year, The Worst Person in the World. But rather than putting them to compete, we should pay attention at how both of these films dialogue and, through comedy, they present the conflicting notions of maternity for young women in the western world. Sve Flikke is creative and resourceful in her narrative, and will get many sincere laughs of empathy.
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NINJA BABY
Dir. Yngvild Sve Flikke (Norway)
One of the most prolific directors nowadays, Ozon has mastered the way of making a statement on how everything that's personal is also political. This time, he tackles another pressing social issue, the right of one person to chose when to die through euthanasia, but from an intimate story focused on the daughter of a man who has taken his final decision. The moments of pure emotion that Marceu and Dussollier achieve are terrific.
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TOUT S'EST BIEN PASSÉ (Everything Went Fine)
Dir. François Ozon (France)
It is a delight when an adaptation from a theatre play loses it's theatricality to fully adapt to cinematic devices. It's another delight when a moral fable gets it's ethic questions from a genuine construction of tension and character development. Cavayé, supported by the amazing performances of Auteuil and Lelouche, gets a griping talke of power, ambition and resentment, and how a "good man" can end up siding with the worst fascism.
21
ADIEU, MONSIEUR HAFFMAN (Farewell, Mr. Haffman)
Dir. Fred Cavayé (France)
In Piligrimai, there isn't a single explicit scene of violence; yet, the trip that two people take to a small town to retrace the kidnapping and murdering of someone they knew is able to get into your skin not only by how violence is suggested, but also how innaction towards that violence gets normalized. A film that is careful in the dosage of information that the viewer gets and that restricts emotions as a stylistic weapon to maximize psychological effect.
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PILIGRIMAI (Pilgrims)
Dir. Laurynas Bareisa (Lithuania)
Theis goes to a very complicated topic that easily could have derenged and hurt his coming of-age tale. Yet, this film of a young boy falling in love with his teacher is told entirely from empathy with the confusion and anxiety of puberty, finding the deep emotions that lie there; he also leaves no room for moral ambiguities, and that's why he manages to coming out victorious from the daring decision to take this kid's infatuation to the limit,
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PETITE NATURE (Softie)
Dir. Samuel Theis (France)
On one of the best first-features of the year, Ruiz de Azúa gets an intimate family portrait that shows the imperfections of two families: one that have lasted for several decades, and one that is just finding its feet. It is remarkable how the film finds empathy and vulnerability on the idea of parents trying their best, no matter at what stage in life, but never being able to feel like they are adequate enough, for their children, but also for themselves.
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CINCO LOBITOS (Lullaby)
Dir. Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Spain)
Wells tell her story as a distant memory, and thus, she privileges the emotions and the atmospheres over a clear and square narrative. It is a personal film that tries to hold to a summer between a teenager girl and her young dad in order to understand better what they both were going through at the time. It is mature to let the audience close the suggested clues, and it is masterful at using a soundtrack as a narrative device.
17
AFTERSUN
Dir. Charlotte Wells (United Kingdom)
Les Olympiades is an odd choice of film for a director that has made his best works exploring violence. Yet, he is also quite successful at painting the lives of middle-class millennials in France with an intersectional approach (not surprising to find Celine Sciamma as one of the co-writers) in order to catch the emotional impact of the paradoxes in trying to find emotional connections through non-commited sex.
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LES OLYMPIADES (Paris, 13th District)
Dir. Jacques Audiard (France)
Kuosmanen adds a small gem to the canon of two strangers that bond through their loneliness. Hytti Nro. 6 finds moments of vulnerability, tenderness, existential void and pure joy and stays there with an exquisite taste for making us a fly in the wall inside a small train compartment. The two lead actors are fenomenal, and the build-up of their differences and its transformation towards empathy is quite a magnetic force.
15
HYTTI NRO. 6 (Compartment No. 6)
Dir. Juho Kuosmanen (Finland)
Although the storytelling full of twists is not as perfect as in other Park's films like Oldboy or The Handmaiden, he is masterful in creating a dark tense environment for this romance neo-noir, that is classic in its telling of a detective seduced by a femme fatale, but crafty and imaginative to find new ways to tell it. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the editing dances around conteamplation and action in many effective ways.
14
HEOJIL KYOLSHIM (Decision to Leave)
Dir. Park Chan-Wook (South Korea)
Ruben Östlund gets into the select group of filmmakers that have won the Palme d'Or at Cannes twice with this scathing social satire of the world of extreme privilege that suddenly gets turned inside out. An acid exploration of power dynamics, the film bares the absurdism of capitalism, recurring to many types of comedy; one could argue that it abuses physical comedy, but how not to love seeing billionaires vomiting themselves?
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TRIANGLE OF SADNESS
Dir. Ruben Östlund (Sweden)
Baker keeps studying the lower classes of white United States, but now from a more relaxed point of view; although now he goes for a hilarious comedy, is not for a moment any less smart and gutsy. Simon Rex is a very inspired choice for portraying a porn star that goes back to his hometown when he gets broke. Is it a good social study of marginalized lifes? Yes! Does it allow you to have lots of laughs at the expense of Trumpist rednecks? Also yes!!!
12
RED ROCKET
Dir. Sean Baker (United States)
One of the best depictions of living with a mental health condition, and the effects it takes on the people that surround the patient. Lafosse is able to fully transmit the anxiety and suffering of the characters, making it a film that is hard to watch at several points. The performances of Damien Bonard and of Leila Bekhti are incredibly powerful at conveying the idea that sometimes not even the deepest love is enough to save a marriage.
11
LES INTRANQUILLES (The Restless)
Dir. Joachim Lafosse (Belgium)
A contemporary tale of manners, Alcarrás cements Simón's as one of the most exciting new voices in European cinema. Her eye for naturalist observation is quite remarkable, and by following a family that is about to lose their peaches farm, she is able to analyze how tradition collides with modernity and how that clash breaks people apart. A special mention to the way she deals with non-actors, because all the family scenes come with such realism that we can feel an immediate endearment towards them.
10
ALCARRÁS
Dir. Carla Simón (Spain)
A bottomless pit of creativity and lunacy. The duo of directors known as Daniels just gave us the craziest film of the year by exploring the idea of multiverses, and giving us the most unexpected superhero: a middle age Asian-American woman who owns a laundromat. The directors shamelessly grab references from everywhere: Wong Kar-Wai, Kung Fu movies, even Disney... to create an explosive cocktail where the ingredient that makes it unforgettable is the amazing Michelle Yeoh in a career-defining role.
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EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE
Dir. Daniels (United States)
In the end it's friends who break our hearts. McDonagh has made one of the best films ever about adult friendship (although it focuses on the end of it), and it is particularly outstanding because it pulls a tone swift mid-way, changing from a sardonic intimate dramedy to a thrilleresque revenge film. The humanity that all performers bring to their characters is touching and make the clever screenplay even richer in emotional depth, and let's not forget the amazing ways in which the setting works as a character.
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THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Dir. Martin McDonagh (United Kingdom)
Flugt is an achievement as a documentary and is an achievement as an animated film made for adults. As the main subject of this film tells his story of escaping Afghanistan, we face the horrors of life under a repressive regime that leaves you no other choice to migrate and living as a refugee. It is also a trip of self-discovery and coming to terms with one's painful past and your broken identities. It is the inspiring film that never fails for cheap emotional tricks because truth is powerful enough.
7
FLUGT (Flee)
Dir. Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Denmark)
Not only Annie Ernaux became the latest winner of the Literature Nobel Prize this year, one of her best works got an amazing adaptation to the screen. Diwan tackles abortion as a personal and a political issue, not from a preaching position, but from a honest exposition on how women decision to chose it's vital. The observational tone is the right choice and she uses the camera with certainty to make us witnesses of the suffocating position that the lead character faces under an oppressive society.
6
L'ÉVÉNEMENT (Happening)
Dir. Audrey Diwan (France)
It's unlikely that in any other single year, cinema has explored and questioned the idea of motherhood in so many different ways as in 2022. Gyllenhaal makes a remarkable jump to the director chair to gift us a complex analysis of the regrets of becoming a mother. Along with the help of the portentous Olivia Colman as the lead character, and a matching younger version by Jessie Buckley, she borders the darkest corners of the psyche of a woman and her highly dubious moral decisions.
5
THE LOST DAUGHTER
Dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal (United States)
Once and again, Farhadi gifts us with impecable screenplays where every detail is treaded in the most meticulous way to twist and turn the board for his characters and for his viewers several times. Farhadi again tackles the full complexity of the human being in the age of social media where one single action will turn you either into a hero or into a monster. His study of complex morality is clever but full of tension and stress, continuing the legacy of Farhadi as a master storyteller of the human absurd.
4
GRAHREMAN (A Hero)
Dir. Asghar Farhadi (Iran)
Cate Blanchett reaches new heights of freakin' performatic awesomeness in Tár. She's there in every single frame of this three-hours epic of the most gifted orchestra conductor's descent to hell, and in every single shot she is terrific. Of course, it helps that Todd Field has provided her a cryptic and complex character study that grabs the #MeToo movement and dares to ask uncomfortable questions, but without preaching or pointing fingers, just letting the complexity of the issue to puzzle the viewer.
3
TÁR
Dir. Todd Field (United States)
Personal and political at the same measure, Grosse Freiheit is a queer history lesson on how the systematic abuse and the deprivation of basic human rights has broke entire generations of people that can't adscribe to dominant social structures. It is a film about violence, both physical and psychological, but in between there's tenderness, sensuality and bond between social pariahs. There's elegance and sophistication in the narrative and the style, but also there's room for it being disruptive and unorthodox.
2
GROßE FREIHEIT (Great Freedom)
Dir. Sebastian Meise (Austria)
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Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve team up to create one of the most remarkable characters in contemporary cinema, pretty much the 2020's postmodern answer to Annie Hall. Julie, the supposed "worst person in the world" is unique in her traits and quirks, and yet, is so universal on the existential questions that a young woman (in the western world, of course) faces. This comedic approach could be a departure from Trier's previous dramas, but that stylistic experimentation could be very well traced back to his first feature, the very underrated Reprise. In any case, Trier only gets better with time, and his witty screenplay is at the same time elegant and playful, smart and hilarious; a film that is a prime example on how to get a episodic narrative that changes tones at several times, but keeping a brilliant coherence as a whole. While it steal our hearts and laughs, it will definitely keep us wondering if it is not us who actually are the worst person in the world.