The Top Ten Nerd Movies Of 2022
This year the film and theater industry continued to climb out of the financial disaster brought on by the pandemic shutdown in 2020 and 2021. The release of movies directly to streaming services or day-date theater and streaming releases may have benefited the audiences staying home, but it was financially devastating to any studio that did not already own a streaming service and doubly so for movie theaters and theater chains.
The shutdown and the ongoing concerns over covid-19 have meant some serious changes to the success of theatrical released films. Currently, only big blockbusters like Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick are drawing in large enough crowds to be considered big hits. Two highly anticipated films, Lightyear and Death on the Nile, each barely made more than their respective budgets, making them flops when marketing is added in. And the disaster epic Moonfall is on record as being one of the biggest flops in film history. How this affects film releases over the next year will be interesting to watch, and maybe unpleasant as well.
Below are my Top Ten movies from the past year, in no particular order. Let me know in the comments what you think of the list, and what your list would look like.
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ryan Coogler showed everyone how to portray grief on film. While the loss of Chadwick Boseman informs every frame of the movie, it is also a film that is as much — maybe even more so — anti-colonialist as the first movie. Tenoch Huerta as Namor perfectly captures the comic character’s sense of anger at the surface world and his haughtiness, while making him very sympathetic. And as strongly as I championed the idea of replacing Letitia Wright as Shuri because of her anti-vaxx statements, I can’t deny just how powerful her portrayal of a grieving sister and daughter is in this movie.
The only knock Black Panther: Wakanda Forever gets is that, despite the local pride of watching scenes filmed in Cambridge and at MIT, the entire subplot that introduces Riri Williams (played well by Dominique Thorne) to the MCU is entirely unnecessary. Well integrated to the main plot to be sure, but unneeded.
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness
Director Sam Raimi finally gave us a movie that veers enough away from the MCU formula that — for better or worse — was established by the Russo brothers that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness feels like something a little different. Sure, Taika Waititi did something similar a few years before with Thor: Ragnarok, but that was mostly story and acting to emphasize the comedy, not camera work and editing. Raimi crammed his trademark fast zooms into eyeballs and jump scares into what could have been a bog standard MCU sequel.
I’m still unsure about how much I like the multiverse cameos though. Are they going to be used for projects down the road, or was it all just a one-off set of Easter eggs? I hope for the former but fear it will be the latter.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Everyone everywhere should watch this movie. Directors the Daniels have created a family dramedy about a woman and her relationships with her daughter, her husband and her father and set it in one of the wildest, most absurdist science fiction action thrillers I’ve seen. Imagine if Terry Gilliam and Bong Joon Ho decided to make a Taika Waititi dramedy — with Wo-Ping Yuen handling the action. Michelle Yeoh as the lead Evelyn needs an Oscar nomination stat, Jamie Lee Curtis turns in her best performance in decades (even considering her wonderful turn in Knives Out) but Ke Huy Quan as Evelyn’s husband Waymond comes out of near retirement since 1992 and delivers an absolute master class performance. How do you get to be that good an actor when you haven’t acted in 30 years?
The Batman
I went into this expecting another dark, brooding Dark Knight tale. And while that is what we get at one level, writer/director Matt Reeves and lead Robert Pattinson brought a completely different take on Bruce Wayne and the Batman than we’ve seen before. The Tim Burton and Michael Keaton version is an oddball rich boy, and the Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale version plays up the fake playboy persona. In The Batman, Bruce Wayne is a barely functioning walking case of PTSD. And Batman is both his rational detective side and the epitome of “vengeance” in a way that is finally believable.
Sure, it’s way too long, but Paul Dano’s portrayal of the Riddler as a sort of ur-Batman who weaponizes the violent incels that — let’s be honest — make up a certain percentage of the audience for this movie, is a brutal statement about the nature of hero worship. And the superhero film genre The Batman squarely fits into.
The Northman
In the midst of the flood of Viking content over the last few years, The Northman stands out as an action-filled epic historical drama that puts the mystical, mythical nature of that period in time and place right out front. To make that work, the historical aspects of the production design are spot on, leaving room for the mystical elements to become believable. Alexander Skarsgård as the lead Amleth is excellent, as is Anya Taylor-Joy and Ethan Hawke. But it is Nicole Kidman in an all too rare villain role that steals the show. Her Queen Gudrun is a baaaad mommy.
I could go on at length about the historical weapon accuracy, but I’ll spare you. This is probably Robert Eggers’ most approachable film, even with the trippy mystical aspects. After all, Eggers has said that one of the strong influences on The Northman is Conan the Barbarian, and sword epics don’t get much more approachable than that.
The Adam Project
On its surface The Adam Project is a solid sci-fi action comedy that you would expect from star Ryan Reynolds. But below that it is a story about grief and loss and what extreme things they can make you do. Sure, the story structure is a familiar take on the Flashpoint crossover in DC comics, but it is different enough to keep you engaged. But the real revelation in The Adam Project is the younger Adam himself, Walker Scobell. In his very first acting role, Scobell stands toe to toe with Reynolds as a comic actor, giving every bit as good as he gets. At 12 years old. Scobell landed the lead in the upcoming Percy Jackson series on Disney+, and I can’t wait.
Easily lost in all this action and joking is Reynolds turning in some really nuanced scenes of a man suffering deeply from loss.
The Gray Man
OK, this is a stretch as a nerd movie, being mainly a spy action thriller. But it was made by the Russo Bros., stars Captain America (Chris Evans) and Agent K (Ryan Gosling) and Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick). The action is exciting, even if the plot is a bit pedestrian. But it is the performances by Gosling and Evans that really make this Netflix movie. Evans takes his heel turn from Knives Out and ramps it up to 11. The costume and makeup people behind the look of Evans’ character Lloyd should get Emmy nominations.
Nope
No Jordan Peele movie has ever been strictly a horror movie, and that really applies to Nope. A sci-fi monster alien horror movie that is as much a satire of Hollywood and fame culture, Nope nails every one of its disparate aspects. While the plot may be a bit more intricate than it needs to be, it is tense at almost every moment, and never drags.
The performances are just outstanding. Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ Haywood is nothing like his Chris Washington from Get Out, but equally compelling — maybe even more so. Keke Palmer is great as Emerald Haywood as is Brandon Perea as Angel, the Geek Squad-like techie we all wished we got during an installation. But the best turn comes from veteran niche character actor Michael Wincott as reclusive oddball film director Antlers Holst.
Jordan Peele is now three for three. Logic says at some point he has to make a film that doesn’t work as well as Nope, but he hasn’t yet.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
Pinocchio is antifa! Well, Del Toro at least seems to be, continuing his placing of mystical fable stories in the pre-war rise of fascism in Europe. That’s just one of the changes to the commonly known story of Pinocchio that co-screenwriter and co-director Del Toro bring to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. One of the most obvious is the look of Pinocchio himself, as seen in the image above. He is sans clothing entirely, and looks like an in-progress wood carving, chisel marks and all. In fact, all of the character stop-motion puppets look amazing. Made by the Jim Henson Company, they have not a trace of muppet anywhere to be found. Add in a stellar voice cast, with relative newcomer Gregory Mann as Pinocchio and a fantastic performance by Game of Thrones and Harry Potter bad guy David Bradley as Gepetto (seriously, who thought Walder Frey could be such a good dad?) and you have one of the best movies of the year.
Prey
It took 35 years to make a follow-on movie in the franchise that was as good as the original Predator. I say follow-on because Prey is technically a prequel, set in 1719 and featuring an encounter between a Predator and members of a Comanche band in the Northern Plains. Director and co-writer Dan Trachtenberg’s second feature film shows that his first, 10 Cloverfield Lane, wasn’t a fluke. The cast is incredible and proves that casting with ethnic accuracy is always the right call even if you cast relative newcomers. I’ve been a fan of Amber Midthunder since the series Legion, but she really shines in Prey as the lead Naru. But it is absolute newcomer Dakota Beavers as Naru’s brother Taabe that is the big surprise here. He acts like he has been in front of a camera his entire life, which he hasn’t since his main job is performing in a country band with some of his brothers. All the Comanche characters are played by Native American or First Nations actors, and you can even watch Prey in Comanche language with English subtitles.
That doesn’t make Prey a great movie — the writing, directing and acting handle that — but it is a kind of extra effort that really should be just business as usual in Hollywood by now.
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