Three Standout Movies from 2022

Oscar nominations are less than a week away, and since I’m pretty sure you won’t be seeing the following films nominated for best picture, I thought I’d give them a little love here. Admittedly, my viewing record is highly incomplete at this juncture, as I save most of the serious award contenders for a two-month blitz in January and February before penning my annual Popwell rundown. But of all the English-language titles available during the long spring, summer and fall of 2022, these three left the biggest impression:

Smile
Horror fans numbed into indifference by a solid decade of mediocrity from Jason Blum and James Wan could be forgiven for expecting Smile to be more of the same, especially given a marketing campaign that stressed the film’s titular gimmick — i.e., people with creepy smiles. But from its very first scene, it’s clear that writer/director Parker Finn has a lot more on his mind than cranking out another disposable bag of setups and jump scares.

Like 2018’s classic Hereditary, Smile mines its horror from extreme family trauma and dysfunction. Sosie Bacon (Kevin Bacon and ‎Kyra Sedgwick’s daughter) is mesmerizing as Rose Cotter, a staff psychiatrist at a mental hospital with some issues of her own. She witnesses a patient commit suicide, but not before the young woman relays a bizarre story about being haunted by people smiling at her in some inexplicably threatening way. Soon Rose is seeing the same thing, losing her grip on reality as she struggles to understand the mystery.

The plot thickens from there and I won’t give it away, except to say that Smile is sort of It Follows meets The Ring. Those are two of the better horror films of the 21st century, and as with them, the virtues of Smile are all not in the writing but the filmmaking — the way the film oozes dread and terror from every frame. One knows even before the opening credits that no one is going to be OK here, and some of the scare scenes are truly bonkers. The title might be ironic — poor Rose has nothing to smile about in her doomed life — but this film will leave a genuine smile on the face of true horror fans.

Three Thousand Years of Longing
Director George Miller’s long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is another spectacular feast for the eyes, but with a lighter palette and tone than the grim apocalyptic landscape of his signature franchise.

Tilda Swinton is a globe-trotting archaeologist who buys an old lamp at a curio shop in Istanbul. Back in her swanky hotel room, she’s cleaning the thing when, you guessed it, a djinn (genie) pops out, in the giant, gaseous form of Idris Elba. Quickly learning English, he implores her to think of three wishes so he can be free from his eternal bondage. Trouble is she can’t think of one, insisting that her life is full. She wants to know all about his life, though, and what follows are a handful of Arabian Nights-style tales brought to life in dizzying style. We see how he came to be trapped in the bottle, patiently plotted his escape for centuries only to be foiled by the cruelest of fates, how he fell in love against all odds and felt the ultimate pain of love lost. These stories are full of epic longing, tragedy and splendor, boasting gorgeous sets and costumes and bravura camera work, and they constitute the beating heart of the movie.

Swinton is excellent as always, but this is Elba’s film. He’s sexy and heartbreaking in equal measure in his best performance to date, and the two of them have a deep, easy chemistry. The third act involves their attempt to make a go of it romantically back in her London home, but the great middle section of the film is what stays with you. Like most genie stories, Three Thousand Years of Longing is inevitably about the folly of wishing for things at all. At the risk of ignoring that timeless lesson, this film made me wish that George Miller had could have avoided disposable fare like Happy Feet and Lorenzo’s Oil and devoted his entire career to the kind of sweeping, immersive adventure stories he does so well.

Bullet Train

My instincts told me to avoid this movie, put off by a loud, dumb trailer that seemed to promise a punishing dose of Guy Ritchie-style hijinks, heavy on wisecracks and jittery action and light on anything else. Turns out Bullet Train pretty much is that movie, but with just the right amount of restraint to keep the viewer engaged and not exhausted. Its 2-hour runtime is stuffed with all the requisite wisecracks, double-crosses, plot twists, fistfights and explosions, but somehow it all mixes together just right. That’s because director David Leitch knows when to ease off the throttle, putting us on the train and letting us get to know the characters before they start beating each other up again.

Brad Pitt stars with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Joey King and Brian Tyree Henry of Atlanta fame as various operatives assigned to kill or be killed on a train speeding through Japan. Pitt coasts through the film in a good way, doing the genial dumb guy bit that’s served him well before. But Henry and Taylor-Johnson are the standouts, carrying much of the film with a lively, bickering henchman bit straight out of Pulp Fiction. This is a popcorn movie with characters you’ll like and eye-popping action scenes that’ll make you wonder how the fuck they did that.
The list of memorable movies set on a moving train is long and crowded, reaching back almost as long as cinema itself. The sure-handed Bullet Train slots firmly into that tradition, and is well worth the ride.