Welcome to 5 Favorites. This is my final post in this series and I’m wrapping it up looking at the first three years of the decade. While it’s likely these films will be displaced as the rest of this year and the subsequent six years arrive, this is a pretty solid list of films.
Before we dig into the final five, let’s look at five other films were considering. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) was a fascinating look at one of the most significant trials of the 20th Century. Well acted and featuring that snappy Aaron Sorkin dialogue, it was much more entertaining than it had any right to be. Last Night in Soho (2021) was one of the genre peaks of the last three years presenting a murder mystery thriller with a time-bending aesthetic. Wonderfully acted and fascinating. tick, tick…BOOM! (2021) was also brilliantly acted, this time with Andrew Garfield in a career-defining performance as a tribute to Rent composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson. Nope (2022) was Jordan Peele’s first foray into science fiction, but with his compelling horror aesthetics. It was a tremendous continuation of a staggeringly brilliant career. Finally, She Said (2022) was a behind-the-scenes look at the efforts of two New York Times reporters as they struggle to get people on the record for an explosive story that would take down powerful Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. A brilliant cast led by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan with devastating performances by Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton. Now, let’s crack on with my final five favorites.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Actor Emerald Fennell’s big screen debut as writer and director was an auspicious one with this anti-misogyny story. Carey Mulligan stars as a once-promising medical student whose career plans collapse after the rape and suicide of her best friend and fellow student. She spends her days serving coffee and evenings avenging her friend by entrapping entitled young men who take advantage of her faux drunkenness and expose their supposedly good guy personas. Her list of “conquests” is extensive but a chance encounter with Bo Burnham’s conscientious former classmate, but her desire for vengeance is not easily dissuaded, but finding a humane significant other begins to crack her resolve.
Fennell’s compelling thriller presents several archetypes of men who claim that “not all men,” are scumbags who will take advantage of women and shows that they are mostly all talk. It’s a riveting social commentary fit perfectly into the #MeToo movement with a fierce and commanding performance by Mulligan. The film will have women nodding along and men shaking their heads and claiming that they aren’t like these guys. Hopefully, it will encourage them to consider how they treat women and their own fallibility, but that’s the secondary goal to revealing the dangerous and frightening space in which women live on a daily basis. It’s a must-see film with terrific directorial flourishes and a fascinating twist on familiar pop tunes as counterpoint to the action.
Soul (2020)
It’s easy to cite Pixar’s recent slate of films as a notable decline in creative energy. Yet, they are still able to put out strong films when the need arises. One of them is Soul, a film that got shunted to Disney+ during the pandemic and that was an absolute shame. The film features a terrific voice cast led by Jamie Foxx as a music teacher by day and jazz pianist by night. He’s been searching for his breakthrough and finally gets his chance, but meets an unhappy end before he can take this richly deserved opportunity.
As his soul travels up a never-ending escalator of similar figures, he finds himself stuck in an area where new souls are trained and helped to find their life’s purpose. This where he meets Tina Fey’s cynical 22 who he has to assist in order to find a way to return to his body, a body that she inadvertently inhabits during a implantation mix-up. The film is filled with passion and great music and tells viewers that you don’t have to have a purpose to be deemed a human being. Sometimes, floating from one event to another is precisely what helps you learn and grow as a person and that fitting into society’s perfect little boxes isn’t essential. A wonderful departure from the more hollow trends of Pixar’s post-Inside Out output.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Starting out this decade’s list was a woman making her feature filmmaking debut. Now, let’s head to the opposite end of thee spectrum with the legendary female filmmaker who became only the second woman nominated for a Best Directing Oscar and, with this film, became the first woman nominated for directing twice. Jane Campion adapts Thomas Savage’s novel of the same name about a wealthy rancher (Benedict Cumberbatch) who becomes jealous of his younger brother (Jesse Plemons) when he takes on a wife (Kirsten Dunst). Meanwhile, without his former mentor, Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank takes on a protégé of his own, Dunst’s son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and not merely for platonic reasons.
Campion’s deconstruction of western tropes and the monolithic cowboy figure as represented by Phil, is a forceful an compelling narrative driven by a world class director who is no stranger to conveying emotion through gestures and simple character interplay. She’s ably assisted by her wonderful cast with Cumberbatch and Dunst delivering Oscar-worthy performances. Westerns have been the target of revisionism for decades, but few have gotten into the misogynistic machismo and homoeroticism of these towering figures in the way Campion has. It’s a fascinating piece that might feel a bit slow in its revelations, but will no doubt rivet true cineastes even if modern audiences don’t quite get it all.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Like Promising Young Woman and The Power of the Dog before it, The Banshees of Inisherin was the film that should have won Best Picture, but ultimately went home with less recognition than it should have. Promising only got an award for writing, Power only got one award for directing, and Inisherin received nothing. It’s a disappointing Oscar world we live in when great films like these can go home without a single trophy when many more were deserved, especially the lead performances of all three films. Here, it’s Colin Farrell turning in career-best work as the simple-minded farmer whose best friend (Brendan Gleeson) decides to focus on his music by ending his friendship with Farrell’s Pádraic.
There isn’t a sour note in this picture from In Bruges filmmaker Martin McDonagh. While I like In Bruges more than some, I’m less enamored with his prior film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The Banshees of Inisherin, however, is a terrific film and definitely puts him in a small group of filmmakers whose work I await enthusiastically. His wonderful dialogue feels natural even when it’s almost absurd. The film’s parallelism to the Troubles, Ireland’s longstanding feud between protestants and Catholics, is a fascinating framing device to serve as fertile ground for master actors to thrive in.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
For all the heaviness of the previous four titles on this, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is heavy in a different way. It’s still the superhero adventures we’ve associated with Marvel comic book adaptations, but with a meditation on life, death, obligation, and duty. The original Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, died two years earlier and rather than re-cast the role, they’ve leaned into Boseman’s death as a central element to the film’s plot. Shuri (Letitia Wright) must come to terms with her brother’s death, blaming herself for not being able to save him. Meanwhile the nation, and its interim head (and Black Panther’s mother) Ramonda (Angela Bassett) are coming to terms with their own grief.
Yet, life seldom allows the grief-stricken to mourn without outside influence, such is the case here as another secret nation, Talokan, is forced into the open due to their source of vibranium that the world wants and Wakanda won’t provide. Its leader, Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) takes a different path than Wakanda and goes on the offensive, intent on exacting justice against the scientist who developed the device to locate the previously-untrackable vibranium. Setting the two nations on a collision course, the film has a lot of moving parts and they are beautifully interwoven and its themes are effectively voiced. This is a Marvel movie for the lost and those who have lost and deserves to be seen.
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