Vintage Sand Episode 45: Mapping the Metaverse: 2022 in Film

Vintage Sand

2022 was definitely the everything bagel of movie years. No less an authority than Stephen Spielberg anointed Tom Cruise as the savior of movies this summer, which made sense given the success of "Top Gun: Maverick". Then came the fall, and excellent movies were released…and no one showed up. And even when they did, as with the $2.2 billion dollar gross accumulated by James Cameron’s "Dances with Smurfs Part Deux", the movies barely seemed to make a dent in the cultural landscape. It didn’t help that so many of our beloved directors released crappy movies: Aronofsky with the odious "The Whale", Russell with his how-could-it possibly-go-wrong-with-that-cast disaster "Amsterdam", Alex Garland with the puzzling (and not in an interesting way) "Men", Iñarritú inadvertently reminding us how brilliant both "Roma" and "8 ½" are with "Bardo", and the literal crapfest (elephant, in this case) that was "Babylon". Sometimes, it felt like 2022 was a living, breathing argument against the auteur theory. Yet there were some very good spots too, including not one but two really interesting portrait-of-the-filmmaker-as-a-young-man movies with "Fabelmans" and "Armageddon Time". The scene of the year? Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar (née Linda Tarr of Staten Island!) arguing with one of her students about the pointlessness of cancelling Bach in Todd Fields’ most welcome return. "Everything Everywhere" became the only film in history to win three acting Oscars and Best Picture. Underappreciated gems like "The Menu" and (sorry, John and Michael) "Don’t Worry Darling", and even appreciated ones like "Aftersun" wormed their way into our brains and didn’t let go, though I will never look at s’mores the same way again. And we even had a solid Oscars ceremony, with powerhouse performances by Rihanna and Lady Gaga and nearly an epic battle between Malala and Cocaine Bear. Plus, we got perhaps the most sublime moment in American film this century: David Lynch playing John Ford in a Spielberg film. That glorious scene almost took away the sour taste of the “Look, I’m doing Bergman!” montage of film history that ended "Babylon" not nearly soon enough. And while we liked "EO" better when it was "Au Hasard Balthasar", and "Living" better when it was "Ikiru", and we thought that the Siegfried Sassoon biopic "Benediction" was a better World War I film than "All Quiet", there were definitely some tasty tidbits to be found on that everything bagel. An up and down year, but to paraphrase the wondrous Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey in Matilda, it wasn’t much, but it was enough for us.