Multiverses were the hot trend in mainstream cinema this year with the MCU banking its whole future on the appeal of mirror dimensions and alternate timelines. If you take the trend less franchise-literal, it was even more omnipresent. Multiple films asked us to consider alternate realities, ahistorical timelines, and the multiplicity of identity through the power of both storytelling and our own imagination. It's through this broad prism that I present my take on the year's best films.
I hope you enjoy though it always bears repeating that "Best" is necessarily subjective; We each occupy our own universes when it comes to these matters.
10 Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, UK) A24. Oct 21st. 102 minutes
The year's most striking debut was a mysterious feat of personal excavation and imagination. The new filmmaker, who lost her father as a teenager, shares vignettes from a summer vacation shared by an 11 year old girl on the cusp of adolescence and her young father who is turning 31. The fragmented shards of feeling are simultaneously sharp enough to draw blood but so elusive and intangible that the only scars they're leaving are psychic ones. It was perfect for this multiversal year for when we're young what do we know about our parents, really? They're their own alternate worlds orbiting are own that we are both intimately familiar with and which we might never visit or fully comprehend.
09 Happening (Audrey Diwan, France) FilmNation. May 6th. 100 minutes
The past year has been a regressive nightmare for the sanctity of bodily autonomy. Happening, which won the Golden Lion in Venice in the fall of 2021, and is set in 1963 is thus right on time. An adaptation of Annie Ernaux's memoir "L'Événement" it tells the incredibly tense story of a young woman in France who is desperately searching for a way to terminate her pregnancy. She has no intention of following this path and casting off the future she's already chosen (continue in university / become a writer). Happening plays like a philosophical thriller with physical consequences. How will Anne get through this and why are there so many other people allowed and authorized to morally or physically weigh in on her decisions?
08 Girl Picture (Alli Haapasalo, Finland) IFC Films. Aug 12th. 100 minutes
Social norms, languages, educational systems, and youth culture may vary from country to country but the coming-of-age subgenre, when done this superbly, almost always registers as universal. This involving and touching tale of three young women navigating dating, sexuality, and evolving friendships is a total gem. Our dream is that teens who are fantasizing about those years, twenty-somethings living it, and anyone who remembers it in the rearview mirror (that's just about everyone!) might one day chance upon Girl Picture and fall in love as completely as we did. They'll see their own lives reflected back at them even if Finland feels as far from their world as some alternate universe.
07 Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund, Sweden/UK) NEON. October 7th. 147 minutes
Triangle of Sadness doesn't take place in an alternate universe. It's very much our own pathetic one in the death-rattle of late capitalism, with a side plague of social media emptiness. What is does do with dynamic craft is construct flippantly flipped scenarios: the rich lady demanding that the peasants enjoy her luxuries; Gender income disparity the other way around via two young models; The powerful become powerless; The toilet manager promotes herself to captain. But no matter how much you shake up "reality", humans are gonna human.
06 EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland) Janus Films. Nov 18th. 88 minutes
EO begins with an emotional ending as the titular donkey is separated from his longtime performance partner in the circus. For a pack animal like EO this doesn't mean a life of leisure so he or she (?) is out of the frying pan and into various fires as the donkey travels Europe, mostly without intention, leashed by circumstances, coincidences, and humans. The latter are unpredictable, whether well intentioned or not. Six donkeys play EO which is brilliant because the film's genius is that it never pretends that we can understand any animal's inner life. This ass contains multitudes. We can however understand the vagaries of fate and sympathisize with the possibilities of every fork in the road before EO.
05 Fire Island (Andrew Ahn, US) Searchlight. June 3rd. 105 minutes
The year's most unexpected and rewatchable treasure proved to be a gay romcom from screenwriter/star/comedian Joel Kim Booster and director Andrew Ahn (Spa Night). Speaking of alternate selves... Booster's ballsy but thoroughly successful gamble asks us to rethink classic literary heroine Elizabeth Bennett as a romance-averse gay man and her marriage-minded sisters as his family of gay besties. The mirrored characters and plot turns from "Pride & Prejudice" are great fun to spot -- what a sturdy blueprint for a comedy! -- but Booster & team queer it up making it all their own.
04 Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, US) A24. March 25th. 139 minutes
What else is there to be said about this already beloved movie? We'll be quick since we're already looking at the whole top ten through its idea of splintered reality and our multiple selves (though there's only one Michelle Yeoh in this world. Amen). Amid the purposeful sci-fi-action-comedy-chaos, the true miracle is how rich a handle it has on four indelible characters and their core feelings and intimacies. It manages this despite constantly shuffling which version of anybody we're looking at. While its maximalism can be exhausting -- it never stops shuffling and repeating and I stand by my feeling that it's at least 15 minutes too long -- it remains intoxicating and funny on multiple views.
03 TÁR (Todd Field, US) Focus Features. Oct 7th. 158 minutes
Todd Field's challenge of a movie -- god, it's thrilling when filmmakers expect the audience to engage -- begins with an extended interview. The world famous conductor Lydia Tár pontificates about Time and her control of it with music. Lydia, your God complex is showing! Field, in concert with a whole symphony of absurdly talented artisans, crafts a drama that is part vicious character portrait and part troubling thinkpiece. It's ambiguous enough to allow for multiple interpretations. As Lydia begins to unravel and lose her place in a rarefied world, we lose our own footing. Increasingly haunting interludes and asides ask us to question reality or at least our perception of it... and this character.... and these events. Whatever is happening to Lydia is true enough for her even if she lives within a multitude of lies.
02 The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, Ireland) Searchlight. October 21st. 116 minutes
The remote island of Inisherin is the setting but it's really a mirror dimension. Ireland is the true setting / topic of this brilliant tragicomedy from the great playwright Martin McDonagh. Longtime friends (Colin Farrell & Brendan Gleeson, smartly reunited from the writer/director's other great picture In Bruges) are suddenly at war with each other. No one can fathom or articulate just why and how this great divide has occurred or predict what collateral damage will follow. Death hangs around like a creepy neighbor you do your best to ignore. Banshees is at once small and expansive and its blunt metaphor a darkly comic weapon. Clobber us, McDonagh!
01 The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, US) Universal. Nov 11th. 151 minutes
What would Steven Spielberg have done with his life if he hadn't become a filmmaker? The Fabelmans doesn't engage with this question but it does raise it, indirectly. Burt Fabelman (a splendid Paul Dano) keeps dismissing his son's preoccupation as a "hobby". At one painful point in the family drama, Sammy (Spielberg's proxy) sells his camera, tying it too closely to his feelings about his difficult mother. So the question lingers for us... even if the question is thankfully moot and the answer is comforting; as if any paths taken would have still led us back here to the filmography at hand. Steven Spielberg's best film in 30 years is so rich in implications and feeling and verve that it's difficult to square with the mostly warm but non-emphatic reception. Is it a matter of impossible expectations? We all come to every movie carrying ourselves with us. Given Spielberg's extremely mainstream behemoth career, we also come to each and every Hollywood movie carrying multiple "Spielbergs" in our psychic luggage. As a longtime Spielberg agnostic, I felt more true love and gratitude for his gifts and life choices, than I ever had before. The sublime wink of an ending points you toward the sky. As for me, I was already there, spirit soaring.
If you'd like an even deeper dive into Nathaniel's "Best" there’s a longer version of this article here as well as the gold, silver, and bronze medals in 41 categories in my long running annual Film Bitch Awards to close out this film year. Happy Oscar night!