2022 movie rating - voila! culture

Let's start with an unpopular opinion: good movies are still being made these days.

Worse: the movies released in 2022 were no less good than those released in 2002, 1982 or 1962, for that matter.

You know what, let's put it differently according to the negative tone these days.

They were no worse than what was coming out at the time.

It's true, today's cinema has not an iota of the success and resonance it once had.

New releases are also not what they used to be, and not because there is no news, but because there is much more competition: streaming services, WhatsApp groups, social networks, a flourishing food culture and what not.

All this around, and what about the thing itself?

The cinematic content is still of high quality, and if anything has changed, it is also a little more diverse than it used to be.

Who cares?

Not many people.

As we publish these lines, another cinema somewhere in the world is closing its doors.

We'll play I think, as if anyone cares, and reflect on the list of films of the year.

It includes full-length films, feature films or documentaries, which premiered this year.

A lot of them are available here in theaters, if you remember what that is, or on VOD.

Some will come up in the country only later this winter.

Two films will not reach us for political reasons and if you want to watch them here, you will have to find underground ways to do so.

stayed out.

From "Triangle of Sorrows" (Photo: Cannes Film Festival)

To illustrate the claim regarding the quality of contemporary films, we note that this is a rather random list.

Tenth place could have been first place, and vice versa, and many films could have easily fit her.

The substitutes' bench of this rating is as high quality as France's bench in the World Cup.

Here is a partial list of films that were pushed out due to lack of space, but deserved a place in the parade, and even a high place: "Red Fire", "There's Nothing New in the West", "Triangle of Sadness", "Armageddon Time", "Nothing Compares" ", "Babylon", "Well Written Murder: A Greek Mystery", "Sabaya Cinema", "Concerned Citizen", "There Are No Such Men", "Watch Them Run", "Valeria Gets Married", "Metronome", "Broker", "Decision to Leave", "God's Country", "Everything Everywhere at Once", "Emily the Criminal", "Girls Movie",

"Unbelievable but true", "Palm Trees and Power Lines" and the hand is still tilted.

To be honest, I don't understand why anyone still bothers to make movies and why they bother to distribute most of them, but thank God they still do.

10. "The Night of the 12th"

Director Dominique Moll and screenwriter Gilles Marchand are long-time partners, continuing the glorious French tradition of thrillers where the characters, setting and social context are just as important as the mystery.

In "The Night of the 12th", they present the story of the detective who develops an obsession with an unsolved case: who set a young woman on fire in the middle of a deserted street in the middle of the night?

The tragic answer, it becomes clear over time, is that there is a basis for suspecting every man around her, and regardless of who the individual is to blame, the society we live in bears collective guilt.

Like many films this year, "Twelfth Night" deals with violence against women, but unlike many other works, it does so without using the subject in an exploitative way, and with a lot of intelligence and sensitivity.

The moment when the detective has trouble breaking the bitter news to the murdered woman's parents is one of the greatest scenes of the year, largely due to the performance of Bastien Bouillon, who was relatively unknown until this film.

Previous films by Mol and Mershan, for example "Harry, a true friend", were distributed in Israel - but those were different times.

"Twelfth Night" was indeed a great commercial success in its homeland and was screened here in front of full halls at the Jerusalem Festival, but at the moment it is supposed to skip commercial distribution in Israel and go straight to VOD.

Glues the viewer to the chair from the first second to the last.

From "Twelfth Night" (Photo: Cannes Film Festival)

9. "She Said"

Of all the many commercial failures this year, this is one of the saddest of them all, also because of the film writers who enjoyed dancing on his blood, for reasons reserved to them.

"Her Word" presents the story of Judy Cantor and Megan Tuohy, who published in the "New York Times" the groundbreaking investigation of Harvey Weinstein.

Behind the film was the German filmmaker Maria Schroeder, who, among other things, directed Shira Haas in "The Rebel".

Similar to "The Night of the 12th", it also avoided the exploitation that characterizes the preoccupation with MeToo, and among other things chose not to present the character of Weinstein nor his acts of rape.

Schroeder worked here with Natasha Breyer, one of the most prominent photographers of our time;

with Nicholas Brittle, one of the best composers of our generation;

And with wonderful actresses like Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan and Samantha Morton.

The result is a mind craft of fascinating and inspiring artistic choices, and an explosion of talents that proves that the media can still change reality (at least in the United States).

And what about the press film genre?

The commercial failure of "Her Word" provides the unfortunate answer to this.

Next time we will see such stories as a streaming series.

Next time it will be a streaming series.

From "Her Word" (Photo: Tulip Media)

8. "All The Beauty And The Bloodshed" ("All The Beauty And The Bloodshed")

"Milla Shela" emphasizes the Jewish identity of Judy Kantor, who lights candles in it and talks about her grandmother who survived the Holocaust, and it is clear that the "Tikon Olam" year is a candle to her liberal feet.

On the other hand, the film also had to point out that Weinstein was also Jewish, and he and his team tried to use the shared identity to speak to the journalist's heart and get her off the investigation.

Thus it becomes a film about a woman who is the pride of the Jewish people and a man who is a shame for this people.

This is also the story of "All Beauty and Bloodshed", Laura Poiters' documentary which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

It presents the story of the American-Jewish photographer Nan Goldin, who experienced the most terrible family and personal tragedies imaginable, and then was a participant in two collective tragedies - AIDS, and the opioid epidemic.

She survived to tell, to document and also to fight.

Goldin struggles with the Sklar family, who were involved (allegedly, allegedly!) in the deadly addiction of millions of Americans to painkillers - and yes, her origins in Eastern European Jewry, too.

This struggle leads to what is perhaps the most amazing cinematic moment of the year: as part of the settlement agreements, the Mushpoha is required to conduct a Zoom conversation with the victims' families.

In these moments, of course, there is no beauty, but there is also no bloodshed.

The blood has already been spilled.

All that remains are the wounds.

"All Beauty and Bloodshed" was not screened in Israel and to my understanding it will not be screened either, as the director opposes it for political reasons.

Not nice of her, but at least she did us a favor by not mentioning one thing in the film: while around the world more and more institutions are removing the name of the Sklar family that supported them from their walls, in Israel there are quite a few buildings that still bear that name.

Not in Israel.

From "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" (Photo: Venice Film Festival)

7. "The Banshees of Inisherin"

Martin McDonough is an awards season favorite.

A few years ago the filmmaker starred in it with "Three Signs", and this year he is doing it with "Ghosts of Inishiran", which received numerous Golden Globe nominations and is expected to repeat the feat at the Oscars as well.

Having already been released relatively successfully in his homeland and in America, sometime during the winter the film will also be released here, and it is possible that he will do so with a handful of figurines in his pocket.

McDonagh joins forces here with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who starred in his masterful Bruges.

They play two barbarians living in 1920s Ireland.

They were soul mates, but then they quarreled, and the silly quarrel turns into a bloody conflict, which turns out to be an allegory for the civil war in their country and for wars in general.

The allegory is brilliant, the landscapes of Ireland are magnificent, the performances of Farrell and Gleeson are wonderful, as are those of Carey Condon and Barry Keoghan alongside them.

The script, as usual with McDonagh, presents countless witty jokes, but the black humor does not hide the magnitude of the tragedy.

On the way to the Oscars.

From "Ghosts of Inishirin" (Photo: Forum Film)

6. "Eo"

Aside from the wonderful acting performances of the human stars, "Ghosts of Inishirin" also features some wonderful animals, including a border collie dog and an Athon named Jenny, who is the apple of the eye of the protagonist.

In general, this cinematic year was full of ups and downs.

We also saw them in "Triangle of Sorrows" and especially in "E-ah" by Jerzy Skolimovsky, which was screened here this summer at the Jerusalem Festival, and will be screened commercially in February.

Here, the donkey is not a secondary character but the star of the film, which follows the hardships of one donkey throughout Europe, and uses it as a metaphor for the suffering of other persecuted groups, and at one point also for the persecution of the Jews in Eastern Europe.

The film is of course reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Balthazar, which also placed a donkey in the center of the plot, but did so in an ascetic style.

Here, the style is ambitious and experimental, and the Polish director enjoys playing with colors and camera angles.

At the age of 84, Skolimovsky is as enthusiastic and curious as if he had touched a camera for the first time in his life,

Another reason for the film's high ranking: in one close-up on the donkey's face, there is more kindness, compassion and humanity than in all the humanity around us.

At a time when humans are destroying the earth, the hero of "E-ah" creates within himself the good and the good that still remains here.

About him and his serious friends one can only say what François Truffaut said about the aliens in "Encounters of the Third Kind" - they belong here more than we do.

A donkey jumps to the head.

From "E-ah" (Photo: Jerusalem Festival)

"Top Gun: Maverick" ("Top Gun: Maverick")

Tom Cruise, with his disposable face, is in my eyes the greatest American actor of the last forty years, and in any case the only star who managed to survive all the vicissitudes that Hollywood experienced during this time.

Cruise was born for cinema, understands cinema and loves cinema.

In "Love in the Sky: Maverick" directed by Joseph Kosinski, he enters the cockpit of old planes that are no longer in use, and shows that they are no less useful than modern aircraft - a clear metaphor for the fact that cinema, an ancient art that is supposedly a miracle of phlegm, is still able to outrun Netflix.

Like other films this year, for example Spielberg's "The Devilmen", "Love in the Sky: Maverick" is also a love letter to the cinema, but more importantly - it is also a loyalty contract with the cinema.

The film was ready a long time ago and was on the shelf because of the corona virus.

TV streaming services offered high sums to acquire his rights, but Cruise refused - he remained faithful to the big screen, and the gamble paid off.

This blockbuster was a huge success, and was screened for months to full houses.

Trailer for the movie "Love in the Sky: Maverick" (Cannes Festival, Fremont Studios)

4. "Aftersun" ("Aftersun")

A famous saying goes like this: "He who was not a communist until the age of 18 has no heart, he who remains a communist after the age of 18 has no mind."

Borrowing, saying this - whoever doesn't like 'After the Sun' must have no heart, and probably no mind either.

Scottish director Charlotte Wells' celebrated debut film, released here at the weekend, is about a woman in her thirties reflecting on a childhood memory - the last holiday she spent with her late father.

What is there in this story?

Nothing, except life itself.

The feeling is that the director put all the emotions in the world in a barrel of gunpowder, then lit a match.

In the scene that apparently gave the film its name, the girl looks at the sun and tells her father that no matter what happens, even when they are far apart, they are still under the same sky - a statement that illustrates how sensitive and how smart this film is.

I am proud to share the sky with such a film.

It's fun to share the sky with a film like this.

From "After the Sun" (Photo: Lev Cinema)

3. "Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song" ("Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song")

2022 was another successful year in the musical docu segment, one of the only sub-genres that still manage to arouse the interest of the audience.

Aside from the films in question about David Bowie, Sinead O'Connor, King Crimson and others, the standout for me was this docu, which was screened with us this summer at the Jerusalem Festival and is now available on VOD.

This is not "another docu about Leonard Cohen".

It focuses on his most famous song, "Hallelujah", and a significant part of it focuses on another musician, Jeff Buckley, who is responsible for the most famous remake of the hit.

Dan Geller and Dana Goldfein, who created the film, try to answer the question "How is a song born?"

And following that on the question "How does a song become a classic?".

In the process, they also answer a host of additional difficulties.

We haven't seen a film this year that is so awaited and expands horizons, and in addition to the intellectual richness, it also offers an emotional experience.

I finished watching smarter, with tears in my eyes, and with a song in my heart.

hallelujah!

How was a song born?

From "Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song" (Photo: Jerusalem Festival)

2. "The Whale"

One of the reasons for the high ranking of "The Funeral: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song" is that it is full of inspiration and inspiration, and imbued with the belief that a person can change and change.

I will always give a place of honor to such films, because I believe that cinema has a contract with the audience - not only to reflect reality to them, but also to offer them an opening of hope.

Happy End is not a dirty word.

From this point of view, there was no more optimistic film this year than "The Whale" by Darren Aronofsky, which was relatively successful in America this month and will be released in Israel next month.

The film features Brendan Frazier in his comeback role, as an English literature lecturer who, following a personal tragedy, literally ate himself to death.

Now, he weighs like a whale, and his estranged daughter comes to visit him before he finally sinks into the abyss.

Following "Requiem for a Dream" and "Black Swan", Aronofsky has the image of a sadistic director.

Apparently, "The Whale" is also like this, because it has scenes of emotional eating and vomiting (another common motif in cinema this year - we also saw vomiting in "Triangle of Sadness" and "Babylon").

In fact, the opposite is true.

"The whale" comes and says that man is the ultimate wonder of creation, and conveys this message in a pure and pulsating way.

sadist?

vice versa.

If we have to make claims against the director, then we can call him naive.

Comeback this year.

Brendan Frazier in "The Whale" (Photo: Lev Cinema)

1. "Until Tomorrow"

The suppression of freedom of expression and thought in Iran reached its peak this year.

Just before it was too late, local cinema also managed to reach new heights.

One of the best films of this year's Cannes Film Festival was "Layla and Her Brothers" starring Tarna Alidosti, the most prominent actress in the country, whom the regime did not hesitate to put behind bars last week just because she dared to express support in a protest against him.

An exemplary and even more relevant film was "Until Tomorrow" by Ali Asghari, which was screened at the Berlin Festival and we will not be able to see it in Israel legally - in many cases, an official screening of an Iranian film in Israel could cost its team in prison, and even more severe punishments.

The most relevant and topical there is.

From "Until Tomorrow" (Photo: Berlin Festival)

"Until Tomorrow" is about a young woman who tries to hide from her parents the fact that she has a baby, which forces her to go on a night trip through the streets of Tehran;

A campaign against the patriarchy, for its freedom and for its future and that of future generations in Iran;

A journey that grabs the viewer by the throat from start to finish.

I haven't seen a more immersive movie this year, and unfortunately there wasn't a more relevant and topical movie this year either.

• culture

• Theater

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Tags

• Love in the Sky - Maverick

• Tom Cruise

• Brendan Frazier

• Darren Aronofsky

• Leonard Cohen

• Colin Farrell