Veronica's Top 13 Movies of 2022

In not being able to narrow down my choices to ten or less, I was also unable to rank them. At least not definitively. There is some thought to the order in which these fall but can I really tell if I liked a movie landing at the number five slot more than the movie at number six?

Between memberships to both Alamo Drafthouse and the Roxie (which prompted me to see a ton of movies more than once) and a bumper crop of great, weird, fun, freaky films released this year, it was really hard for me to pin everything down into neat little categories. And hey, if I don’t even expect neat categorization for myself, how can I expect it from my entertainment?

Jackass Forever (dir. Jeff Tremaine)

I am always here for a Jackass movie. The fact that poor Johnny Knoxville’s body has been irreprably damaged for my amusement somehow doesn’t lessen my love of seeing people get hurt. Jackass Forever has a new layer to it in that these dudes are no spring chickens and with their choice of work on top of their years on earth, we get to see flashes of wisdom and bittersweet moments. Like Steve-O explaining as he watches Knoxville climbing into a bullpen to get potentially gored that even at his lowest, being suicidal and addicted to drugs, he would have never considered doing this stunt. Or Spike Jonze popping into frame to spray hair paint onto Knoxville’s bald spot. It is a marginally more mature version of Jackass and it made me cry laughing.

Lenore Will Never Die (dir. Martika Ramirez Escobar)

I saw this on a whim and really loved it. A movie about movies and a faded woman director in the Phillipines who isn’t quite ready to leave behind a career she enjoyed and in which she flourished. Lenore Will Never Die blends surrealism, meta humor and a sense that these characters are in the hands of a filmmaker that cares about them; turning this simple storyline (an older woman facing poverty gets injured just as her caretaker son is planning on leaving) into an unpredictable ride complete with villains, shoot-outs, and a spontaneous dance number.

Hit The Road (dir. Panah Panahi)

Road movies are a funny genre in that they can vary so widely in tone and style yet have such a similar feel no matter the time period or country. Hit the Road is an Iranian comedy where a family is driving their son to the border to avoid him being arrested as a political prisoner. Now, I can understand how at first glance this does not sound funny but between the family dynamics and the perennial favorite humor of people getting hurt, Hit the Road has a surprising amount of laughs alongside genuine, tender moments.

Flux Gourmet (dir. Peter Strickland)

I believe, faithful reader, I can be honest with all of you at this point in our relationship so I’ll admit that I saw Flux Gourmet because I heard it was gross. The trailer intrigued me enough but it was the reports of critics calling it ‘sick’ and ‘repulsive’ that really got me. It was undoubtedly disgusting though doesn’t play its cards all at once, and at first mines the low-grade gross that is our basic human functions. I don’t even mean the really nasty ones. I mean ones like eating and food.

Flux Gourmet takes the concept of ‘naked lunch’ (how we need to not think about what’s on our fork) and blends it (quite literally in the climax) with artistic ambition and the drive for creativity to outdo itself. I don’t want to say too much about it but I implore people, which I realize is something I say a lot, to check it out. You’ll know before the most digusting part if you’ll be able to handle it. Trust me.

Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund)

Plenty of class skewering this year. I’ve noticed a lot of them had to do with food and the ocean so I’m not sure what that’s all about. Triangle of Sadness boils down to how useless most of us are outside of the worlds we build or navigate. A very lavish cruise ship (no Carnival crap around here) gets boarded and sunk by pirates, and the survivors are stranded on an island where power dynamics, quite opposite to the ones that exist in our current society, begin to form.

This was one of those films that made me crack up laughing but then be unable to explain to people who hadn’t seen it why it was funny. Vomiting isn’t always a comedy goldmine but damn if this year didn’t get the most it could out of characters puking at inopportune times.

Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (dir. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)

I’ve written about this movie before and it was released in this country at a very apt moment. In an Islamic village in Chad, a mother seeks an illegal abortion for her teenage daughter. Thus begins an odysseus for healthcare access that paints an interesting portrait of an area where the old world and the new are melding together. Aside from the main storyline there are vignettes about women’s roles in society and religion, to say nothing of female circumsicion, and how they’re being manuvered within a culture in flux.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (dir. Dean Fleischer Camp)

A lighter movie than most on this list. I lost count of how many times I went to see this – three that I can think of. Everyone else in the world encountered Marcel the Shell, like, 15 years ago but I had no idea. I’m not sure where I was at the time but this movie was my first time seeing Marcel. Upon my inaugural screening, I was laughing so hard at one joke that I had to cover my mouth and nose to try to not disturb the next scene. It’s just a sweet movie featuring another moment of vomit-based humor.

Pearl (dir. Ti West)

I’m glad this film came out because I wasn’t thrilled with X or The Sacrament before it and I wasn’t ready to write off Ti West. For me, Pearl has a meaner, sicker sensibility than X which made it more appealing. The titular character, played by Mia Goth, walks the perfect balance of depraved and ambitious while also being convincing of the fact that she’d rather be normal. It’s a fun film that portrays female sexuality and ambition as uncontrollable and quite possibly dangerous. Goth brings everything she has to the role and as always is a blast to watch.

Holy Spider (dir. Ali Abbasi)

A female journalist travels to Mahhad, Iran to cover a string of murders. Someone is killing sex workers and, as is par for the course in a lot of countries, no one in authority seems to care. Holy Spider plays out like a thriller spliced with a documentary. The journalist conducts interviews not only with the police and investigators but also with the family members of the murdered women, observing their homes and where they came from.

For portions of the film, the audience follows the murderer and sees the quiet unravelling of a man angry and dissatisfied with everything. Not just the state of his country but also his personal life and his station in it all. It avoids being sympathetic to him but instead delves into how zealots like this can see their actions as justified and how they can operate in plain sight.

Pleasure (dir. Ninja Thyberg)

I was initially nervous about this movie because I’ve seen (mainly on the internet) some romaticizing of sex work and the porn industry and a bit of a flippant attitude towards the warnings given about engaging in either. Personally, I’m all for legalizing sex work and dissolving the stigma surrounding it but too often I’ve encountered people creating an idealized version of it without fully grasping the dangers. There are tons of reports of mostly female porn stars leaving the industry because of abuse and mistreatment so I was worried the message of Pleasure was going to be, “porn is empowering, anything a woman does is empowering” with no room for nuance in the conversation. Instead, it was exactly the opposite. Pleasure, like Pearl, is a film about female ambition and sexuality and how someone with drive can apply it to any option presented.

Crimes of the Future (dir. David Cronenberg)

Even some Cronenberg fans were underwhelmed with this movie. I had assumed the people trashing it didn’t appreciate or understand body horror but it turns out they just didn’t like this. For me, Crimes of the Future hit on a lot of my anxieties about the future, the environment, and even how we as humans will approach the idea of sex. And art. Honestly, this and Flux Gourmet would make for a marvelous double feature, one that wouldn’t net me a lot of friends. You don’t win friends with body horror, I guess.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (dir. Joel Coen)

There was no way I wasn’t going to enjoy this movie. It had a stellar cast, including a too brief scene of my secret love Stephen Root, and was directed by one of the Cohen brothers. Doesn’t matter which one. Most importantly, it’s Shakespeare and I am a lifelong lover of the Bard. One doesn’t spend their life as a theatre kid and a literature kid and not adore Shakespeare. I was a fan of Macbeth’s more naturalistic approach to the dialogue since I think some people can be intimated by the language when honestly, so much of Shakespeare is sex and death and just perfect for modern audiences. What else is there to say? I saw this movie three times, and I’m now obsessed with Kathryn Hunter. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies (dir. Halina Reijn)

Speaking of movies I saw three (or more, whatever) times, this Gen Z murder mystery had me hook, line, and sinker. Like I’ve said before: Monsters Due on Maple Street for the Instagram generation. Look it up, kids. The conclusion of all the drama was pretty obvious to me (since I’ve seen Monsters Due…) so because of this and the fact that I’ve seen this movie upwards of five times, I can safely say enjoyment of it does not rely on the twist. It’s clever, well-acted, has yet another instance of wringing humor from puking, and skewers the culture it’s kind of glorifying in a goofy way. This movie came out right around the unexpected death of a very close friend and I can’t tell you how much it helped to sip a margarita at the Alamo and laugh at Pete Davidson hitting himself in the neck with a machete.