It’s hip to hate on Avatar, James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi epic that made over $3 billion in global box office. I’ve been in and out of the haters club a few times over the past 13 years, but having recently re-watched it, I’m now convinced that if Avatar had underperformed commercially instead of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, it would be defended as a misunderstood gonzo auteur masterpiece. “Why didn’t they make five of these?” we would ask, but because they are making five of these, we’re pissed about it. This is the energy I brought to my screening of the long-promised sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. I was ready to say “fuck the haters” and embrace this 192-minute behemoth with both arms. I couldn’t make it happen. Watching Avatar: The Way of Water is like binging a season of television all at once, not because you don’t want to stop, but because you know that if you do stop you’ll never pick it back up again.

The Way of Water is set over a decade after the end of the first film, when soldier Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) defected from his corporate colonialist outfit and joined the ranks of the indigenous Na’vi to protect the lush moon Pandora from being plundered by humans. Now permanently transplanted into a tall, blue body that approximates the Na’vi form, he and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are raising four children and live in peace and harmony with their clan and their forest. Eventually, however, the forces of Earth return, determined to conquer Pandora as a replacement for their own spoiled world. In an effort to protect their village from Earth’s vengeance, Jake and his family flee their home and seek refuge on a remote island chain, where they are forced to learn a new way of life on the ocean. While they try to fit into a foreign and occasionally hostile culture, the war makes its way gradually but inevitably to their shores.

The above logline probably makes The Way of Water sound very derivative of the original, and to an extent, it is. Jake becomes a fish out of water, is adopted into a new community, then fights to defend it, just like before. This time, however, he shares the spotlight with his four children and a slew of other characters, making this Avatar more of an ensemble piece. (Or, in Cameron’s own parlance, Avatar$.) This is fundamentally a good idea, as Jake Sully is not a terribly fascinating character to begin with, but the film’s focus is split in so many directions that none of its characters feel whole, even after three full hours.

Sully’s family is made up of cartoon characters, and not because they’re rendered by computers. In truth, most of the family-oriented animated movies I saw this year (like Turning Red or GDT’s Pinocchio) featured more complex protagonists than the heroes of The Way of Water. The technology is not the problem. The problem is that each subplot is about an inch deep at high tide, and they just keep coming, one after another. Every little episode has a beginning, middle, and end and advances the story only just so, making the film’s second act an exhausting marathon of predictable vignettes. Relief comes at last as the spectacular final battle begins, but even this overstays its welcome as it reveals a protracted three-act structure of its own, each with a distinct climax. The result is a three-hour movie that feels five hours long.

In these three hours, Cameron and company don’t actually add very much to the politics or philosophy of the first Avatar. Like its predecessor, The Way of Water preaches against the greedy and merciless exploitation of the natural world, begging the audience to reconsider its sense of entitlement towards it. This message isn’t getting any less relevant, but its delivery is even more ham-fisted and cornball than in the first film, which contributes to the Kids Movie vibe of the entire affair. It’s still critical of colonialism and the military-industrial complex, but the specific target of The Way of Water’s allegorical lens is the whaling industry. James Cameron is on record saying that he might have retired from directing if he didn’t think that he could further environmentalist causes through the Avatar series, but I’m hard-pressed to think of a message that’s less controversial or less actionable for the average moviegoer in 2022 than “save the whales.” The sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time is an enormous platform, but despite this unprecedented bully pulpit, The Way of Water actually seems less brave than the first Avatar.

Where improvement can undoubtedly be measured is in the incredible visual effects. Most of the characters in The Way of Water are brought to life via digital performance capture, allowing for such tricks as 73-year-old Sigourney Weaver playing a Na’vi teenager. The Na’vi and their world are more stunningly lifelike than ever, the product of a decade of advancement and tremendous amounts of work. (Never let anyone dismiss the labor that goes into VFX as if someone simply presses a button that says “Render Movie.” It’s more like dressing a soundstage or operating a puppet while also inventing gravity.) However, even the quality of the effects occasionally works against the movie, as many theaters are projecting it at 48 frames per second (as opposed to the usual 24), which is impressive but immediately calls to mind video game cinematics or the TV in your dentist’s office that has motion smoothing enabled. A great visual effect should disappear, but for my part, the high frame rate combined with the fact that most scenes include no actual photography made it very difficult to shut off the part of my brain that was waiting for the cutscene to end so I could start playing. When live-action human characters do appear, it’s as off-putting as full motion video is in a modern PlayStation game.

James Cameron remains a tremendous action director, but he doesn’t offer much here that’s new. Remember how cool it was in Avatar when Neytiri shot an arrow through the windscreen of a helicopter and nailed the pilot through the chest? Well, in this movie, she does it like three times the exact same way. (Also, she does little else in the entire movie other than scream and cry, a serious disservice to Zoe Saldaña.) No one films the sea more lovingly than Cameron and there are some beautiful shots both above and below the waterline, but compared to the practically-achieved and yet utterly impractical glory of The Abyss, how can I be as impressed by this perfect digital ocean? The same guy who gave us the unique dynamic between Sarah and John Connor and the T-800 manages to make a family of blue aliens seem bland. Edie Falco is in this movie and gets nothing to do. I’m at a loss.

I’m honestly shocked to find myself coming down this hard on The Way of Water. My opinion on the first Avatar has wavered back and forth for a decade, and it’s possible I may come back around on the new one. The last thing I would have predicted I’d say after seeing Avatar 2 is “Maybe it’ll play better at home,” yet here I am considering that very thought. And, confronted with the inevitability of three more Avatar movies, I find myself pondering that alternate universe in which the first film had bombed, and my friends and I would toast to its memory and speculate on the sequels that too good for this world and never came to be. 

Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.

The holidays are a time in which the connections to family and dreams of peace are deeply felt. It’s fitting, then, that so much Christmas entertainment comes courtesy of performers that are, quite literally, felt.

Like Charlie Brown and Rankin-Bass, the comedic warmth of The Muppets is required viewing while trimming the tree or wrapping presents. Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, The Great Gonzo and company most notably made spirits bright in The Muppet Christmas Carol, an acclaimed version of Charles Dickens’ classic tale that celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. (It’s being screened at the Museum of the Moving Image on December 17 and 24, and Disney+ recently reissued the full-length version of the film, featuring a celebrated musical number omitted from home video releases.)

But Jim Henson and his team were making merriment on the small screen for more than a decade before The Muppet Christmas Carol hit theaters. And The Muppets have pressed on with holiday cheer long after Henson’s passing in 1990. Here’s a look back at 10 notable Muppet Christmas specials — some with familiar faces and guest stars, and some that showed just how out there Henson’s company could be.

The Great Santa Claus Switch (1970): Before The Muppet Show (or even Sesame Street) made Henson a television icon, the quirky creator took his Muppet concept wherever it could go. In the ‘60s, that meant offbeat commercials and a handful of sketches on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan loved The Muppets enough to give them a whole timeslot near the end of his tenure. Here, a troupe of elves works together to stop a con artist from replacing Kris Kringle – both human roles being played by The Honeymooners’ Art Carney. It’s as rough-hewn as most early Muppet appearances, but the seeds of future brilliance are surely there.

Where to watch: Officially, the only way to see this is to request a viewing at the Paley Center. Or you can just check YouTube.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (1977): The first major Muppet holiday hit featured almost none of the usual gang of characters (Kermit served as the show’s narrator). Instead, it took inspiration from a children’s book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, showcasing the critters of Frogtown Hollow as they work to make Christmas jolly on a budget. A cult favorite since its early airings in America on HBO in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Emmett is notable for being the first Muppet work to feature songs written by the incomparable Paul Williams. (He’d earn an Oscar nomination three years later for the gorgeous “Rainbow Connection,” from 1979’s The Muppet Movie.)

Where to watch: Emmet Otter was released on Blu-ray in 2018 and currently streams on Prime Video and Peacock.

 

John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together (1979): Midway through The Muppet Show’s five-season run, the gang joined forces with a favorite host, country-pop hitmaker John Denver, for a delightful one-hour network special. The Muppets’ vaudevillian charm meshes well with the aw-shucks-far-out style of Denver’s hosting, and the music they make together — released on a million-selling soundtrack album — is some of the best holiday fare you could ask for, from standards (a cheeky “Twelve Days of Christmas”) to pop faves (Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem taking on The Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick”) — plus a joyous reprise of the Emmett Otter chestnut “When the River Meets the Sea.”

Where to watch: Curiously, this one’s never come out on any video format. Make time to either stream the soundtrack, or book an appointment at the Paley Center, which has a copy for viewing.

The Christmas Toy (1986): One of the stranger Muppet works overall, this ABC special again sidelined the usual characters for a dark story about a troupe of living toys that weirdly bears a passing resemblance to the plot of Toy Story. This special skipped to the “Buzz and Woody hold hands accepting their fate in a garbage incinerator” vibes much quicker, however; a central conceit involves how these toys will permanently freeze and die if spotted by a human. Cheerful stuff!

Where to watch: For the truly curious, it’s on Prime Video or Peacock, complete with a by-now typical narration from Kermit.

A Muppet Family Christmas (1987): While Jim Henson spent the ‘80s experimenting with his craft on film (The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth) and television (The Storyteller, The Jim Henson Hour), he never fully left Kermit and the gang behind. In fact, A Muppet Family Christmas may be one of his biggest statement pieces involving the core characters. This time, the regular Muppet gang visits Fozzie’s mother right before a blizzard, and the casts of Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and even Muppet Babies are along for the ride. In a time before crossovers of this kind became common (and repetitive), there’s a real charm here — especially considering it’s one of the last times they’d all get together while Henson was alive.

Where to watch: Though not streaming, an edited version is available on DVD.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992): On its face, The Muppets adapting an old Christmas standard shouldn’t go past merely pleasant — especially in the wake of Henson’s passing. (His son Brian took over as director.) But The Muppet Christmas Carol is pure magic, thanks chiefly to creative designs for the Christmas spirits — which were initially going to be existing Muppets until smarter heads prevailed — and the stone-cold serious performance of Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge, the reason everyone on Twitter loves to recast movies with Muppets and keep one flesh-and-blood actor. Also crucial: the first new batch of Muppet songs by Paul Williams after his recovery from substance addiction, which adds a dash of bittersweet pathos to the proceedings. (Seriously, why did they cut “When Love is Gone”?)

Where to watch: Both cuts of the film are now on Disney+; the full-length version can be accessed under the bonus features tab on the movie’s page.

Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree (1995): Nearly 20 years after Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, the Henson company adapted another children’s book, this time featuring both original Muppet creations and a handful of human actors, including Robert Downey, Jr. as the title character and Leslie Nielsen as his butler. Beyond the novelty of seeing the future Ally McBeal addict-turned-Iron Man navigate through children’s fare, there’s not a whole lot to recommend from this brief special — except for a narration from you-know-who.

Where to watch: Never officially released, but easy to find on YouTube.

It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002): A decade after The Muppet Christmas Carol, Kermit and friends were inserted into another holiday classic: It’s a Wonderful Life. After a scheming banker (Joan Cusack) attempts to foreclose on the Muppet Theater, a forlorn Kermit wishes he’d never been born — so a bumbling angel (David Arquette) shows him how bleak that world would be. Full of gags that are both dated (Steve Irwin references! Cameos by the cast of Scrubs!) and insane (without Kermit, Scooter is found dancing in a cage in a seedy nightclub), this one gets kind of close to recapturing that madcap Muppet magic.

Where to watch: It’s not streaming on any of the major networks, but It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie is available to buy or rent digitally or on DVD.

A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008): This pleasant little TV special is full of heart and hilarity as Gonzo leads the gang on a journey to the North Pole to help a young neighbor deliver her Christmas list to Santa. The human cameos include Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Krakowski, Nathan Lane, Uma Thurman and, uh, then-New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. The real magic, however, is another batch of songs from Paul Williams (who even makes an appearance as — what else? — Santa’s head elf).

Where to watch: As one of the first Muppet productions after the troupe was purchased by Disney, you’ll find this one on Disney+ too.

Lady Gaga and The Muppets Holiday Spectacular (2013): On paper, this one should have worked: The Muppets were two years out from a popular return to film (co-written by Jason Segel, with Oscar-winning songs by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords), and Gaga is exactly the kind of 21st century icon who’d fit right in with Kermit, Piggy and the others. Unfortunately, the opportunity for holiday magic is squandered in favor of promotion — in this case, the singer’s ARTPOP — and not even cameos from Elton John and RuPaul can elevate this past unusual curio status. And it’s a shame, since Muppet Christmas specials ironically helped push the boundaries of unusual curios in the first place.

Where to watch: YouTube is your connection here; no streamer’s living for the applause at the moment.

An Oscar winner, a Physician Who alum, and a summer time box business office smash wander on to a streaming system. . . . Isn’t that how the joke’s supposed to go? This 7 days is packed to the brim with enjoyable new titles, from spectacular indies to a Parisian Netflix staple.

And, though it may not be new and noteworthy, enthusiasts of Westworld may want to squeeze in a person much more rewatch just before it is dumped from HBO Max hold your HBO favorites restricted, for the reason that who appreciates what is subsequent on the chopping block.

What to look at on Netflix

BARDO, Fake Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

It is been seven several years since The Revenant, but internationally acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu is coming back with a bang — or, fairly, a Bardo. Preserving in line with his other prolonged-titled ventures, BARDO, Bogus Chronicle of a Handful of Truths provides to the auteur’s oeuvre of existential satire. This dramedy epic follows a journalist-slash-documentarian who returns house to Mexico and starts to working experience weird and symbolic visions. Notably, Iñárritu responded to criticism his movie received when it initially premiered at festivals above the summer months and lower about 20 minutes from the final item, a rare revision in the present day film industry. BARDO, Fake Chronicle of a Handful of Truths premieres Friday, December 16^th.

Emily in Paris

Irrespective of no matter if France will become a repeat Environment Cup champion this weekend or not, Francophiles can bask in the glory of Emily in Paris Time 3. The Lily Collins show returns with additional vogue, a lot more really like triangles, far more experienced turmoil, and, of program, additional glamor pictures of the Metropolis of Lights and Adore. Can Emily figure out her work-lifestyle stability? Can she figure out her feelings for Gabriel and Alfie? Can she reduce her own bangs?! Locate out all that and a lot more this week. Period 3 of Emily in Paris premieres Wednesday, December 21^st.

What to watch on Hulu

I Enjoy My Father

Strap in, simply because I Love My Dad is a strange a person. James Morosini writes, directs, and stars in this film based mostly on serious situations in his existence. Following blocking his father on social media, Franklin is content to be properly and truly estranged. However, his dad Chuck (Patton Oswalt) refuses to depart factors as they are, so he sets up a pretend account on-line — as a pretty, youthful waitress — to stay in his son’s everyday living. What follows is that classic tale of a father catfishing his son (and hoping it does not screw up their connection even extra). I Adore My Father streams Friday, December 16^th.

What to enjoy on Amazon Primary

Nanny

This psychological horror has a social conscience, setting its sights and its scares on classism and the immigrant encounter. Nanny gained the best prize at this year’s Sundance Movie Competition, becoming the 1st horror film to do so, and it is no marvel why. The film follows a Senegalese lady who’s lately immigrated to New York, acquiring perform as the nanny for an affluent couple’s daughter. However, she before long will become haunted by the absence of her younger son, who she hopes to deliver stateside when she will save up more than enough funds. Unfortunately, the American Aspiration turns into extra of a nightmare. Nanny premieres Friday, December 16^th.

What to check out on HBO Max

I Hate Suzie

Billie Piper gives a masterclass effectiveness in I Despise Suzie, a British-imported dark dramedy about a teenager popstar-turned-Television actress whose lifetime and career get upended when her cellular phone gets hacked and a bevy of compromising photographs get leaked. Season 1 capabilities 8 episodes just about every modeled after a unique stage of trauma, from shock to denial to bargaining to acceptance, so it’ll be quick to catch up prior to Time 2 premieres later on in the week. A satire on stardom, it is a gem of a present about modern womanhood and privateness in the age of ever-existing social media. Time 2 of I Dislike Suzie premieres Thursday, December 22^nd.

What to enjoy on Paramount+

Best Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise! Planes! A Lady Gaga keep track of! Miles Teller with that mustache! Major Gun: Maverick has anything but the aircraft provider kitchen sink. This megahit from in excess of the summertime is flying its way on to streaming this week. Cruise’s Maverick receives called away from his satisfying daily life as a daring examination pilot and is purchased again to Major Gun, where by he’s questioned to coach a new crop of recruits for a almost impossible mission. Teaching isn’t automatically Maverick’s gig, so it’s only a matter of time prior to he hops back in the cockpit and again into motion. Major Gun: Maverick begins streaming Thursday, December 22^nd.

What to Look at is a typical endorsement of motion pictures and Tv well worth your streaming time.

This was a year of reflection and regret, both in our lives and in our movies. In the year’s most resounding cinema, this uneasy nostalgia— a rueful and often painful reframing of past experience— had a particular sound. 

You hear it in the whir of the of the adult Sophie’s camcorder, the noise that begins Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, a debut film that so haunted my dreams after I saw it that I had to watch it immediately over again just to get it out of my subconscious and back on to the screen. 

The camera, like the rug that adorns the bedroom that Sophie shares with her partner, once belonged to her father Calum (a mesmerizing Paul Mescal), who used it to capture a long-ago vacation he took with the 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio, making a screen debut every bit as assured and unforgettable as her director’s) at a cheesy Turkish resort. The tiny tape inside the camera holds everything— an unearthed treasure map of loss and understanding— and also, agonizingly, not nearly enough.

It’s the thunk of a slide in a projector in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, an incisive documentation of the life of photographer Nan Goldin and an exploration of the myriad ways that the personal can and must get political. The film is Citizenfour director Laura Poitras’ most accomplished documentary yet.

As Goldin reexamines her famous pictures of party girls, drag queens, abusive ex boyfriends, and friends dying of AIDS, she must confront the truth that many of these images adorn the walls of and add luster to galleries and museum wings named in honor of the Sacklers, a family who has wantonly profiteered from the death and devastation caused by the ongoing opioid crisis. Righting that injustice gives the 69-year-old Goldin renewed purpose for a life that has endured so much loss— the past ignighting a rage that can and will reshape the future.   

It’s the thwip-thwip-thwip of 8mm film unfurling in young Sammy Fabelman’s hand cranked editing machine as he slowly discovers a truth that will eventually rip his family apart. This footage will become the basis of the “secret film” that the natural-born filmmaker, a stand-in for The Fabelmans’ storied director and co-screenwriter Steven Spielberg, that he will only share with his mother. That moment as she watches the movie in Sammy’s closet — with Spielberg pushing in on the open, emotionally wrought face of the otherworldly Michelle Williams — is a powerful display of the agonizing intimacy that only movies can produce.

That The Fabelmans, like Todd Field’s Tár and most of the other “prestige” films released this year, failed to bring people into the theaters is both one of the major stories of movies this year, and also a sad, yet strangely delicious irony. Five decades after ushering in the blockbuster era with Jaws, Spielberg has essentially made another “secret film” (one that happened to cost upwards of 40 million), to be shared with select audiences in movie theaters often only slightly more populated than Sammy’s closet. (Movie theaters have become an ideal refuge for people who are dying to be out in the world but still can’t handle big crowds.)

That Wells, Poitras, and Spielberg’s films dealt with processing the trauma that can ping-pong between parent and child highlights another noticeable trend in this year’s best movies.  

In The Quiet Girl, writer-director Colm Bairéad’s quietly devastating masterpiece of a feature debut, an introverted 9-year-old finds a respite from the emotional neglect and poverty of her overcrowded home when she spends the summer with a couple who are themselves trapped in a catacomb of despair. The entirely Irish language film is so poetic and precise in cinematic language that, like Aftersun, you come away feeling like you haven’t simply watched the movie, but rather lived it.

Similarly (but also completely different), Turning Red, the Pixar movie which for COVID reasons never received a theatrical release, features Mei, a 13-year-old girl trying to balance her vanishing childhood, her place as a Chinese immigrant in modern-day Toronto, and generational anguish symbolized by a magical curse that turns her into a red panda when she hits puberty. This debut feature from longtime Pixar staffer Domee Shi is loud and Jolly Rancher-colored where The Quiet Girl is withdrawn and gauzy, yet like Bairéad’s film it demonstrates cinema’s singular ability to lay bare our internal lives, and make them pulse with childhood wonder, no matter the size of the screen.

In Lukas Dhont’s Close, the pain and loss endured by 13-year-old Léo (Eden Dambrine, in yet another of the many outstanding performances in what has been a remarkable year for young actors) is almost too much to bear. What sticks with you though, is less the agony on display than the purity and intensity of the love of the two boys at the center of the story. From the bicycle rides through the Belgian countryside to the apparent roughhousing that’s loaded with meaning not completely understood by the kids themselves, Dhont’s second film (following 2018’s controversial Girl) has an innate feel for both the rhythm of childhood and the many ways in which friendships from that time shimmer with a potency that stays with you your whole life, even if the friends themselves do not.

At a time when we have yet to come close to recovering from or even being through a global pandemic that has reshaped our lives and relationships and taken so many from us, it is strangely fitting that one of the other films that best understood male friendships, like Close, also directly confronted mental health. 

The directorial debut (yes, another one) from comedian Jerrod Carmichael, who also stars, On the Count of Three has about as bleak a premise of any film comedy ever— it’s about two friends attempting a suicide pact. That Carmichael mines tenderness, love, and sadness from this pit of hopelessness is a testament to his sensitivity as a filmmaker and the masterful acting on display. For my money, Catch-22’s Christopher Abbott, playing Carmichael’s Papa Roach-loving best friend who lugs around his childhood abuse like it’s a knapsack full of swords, gives the best supporting performance of the year. 

 Broker, a South Korean film from the Japanese master filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, also mines an uncommon and bristling humanity from a hard-to-swallow concept. It’s about an owner of a laundry (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho in one of the year’s most resonant movie star turns) who absconds with a baby abandoned at a church and attempts to sell it on the black market. A companion piece to Kore-eda’s 2018 film Shoplifters and filled with the same unforced, warmhearted humor, the film adds new facets to our ongoing societal conversations about family, choice, and class. 

The intersection of family and identity is filtered through a whopper of a quarter-life crisis in Cambodian-French director Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul, about a French woman of Korean descent who decides on a whim— after a night of drinking soju— to look up and attempt to contact her birth parents. 

In a year that has been defined by stunning lead performances by female actors— to scratch the surface: Cate Blanchett in Tár, Danielle Deadwyler in Till, Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Williams in The Fabelmans, Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal — first-time actor Park Ji-Min’s fearless turn in Return to Seoul as an unheeding lost soul fumbling between worlds will likely be the performance that sticks with me the longest.  

Along with its cornucopia of astonishing lead performances by women, this year was demarcated by the creativity and excellence evidenced from a diverse array of non-fiction filmmakers. Among this year’s breathtaking documentaries were Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, Daniel Roher’s Navalny, Bianca Stigter’s Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Sara Dosa’s The Fire of Love, Sierra Pettengill’s Riotsville, U.S.A., and Reid Davenport’s I Didn’t See You There. As impressive as that list is, that’s just a fraction of the outstanding docs that premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival alone. 

Margaret Brown’s Descendant also played at Sundance, where it won a Special Jury prize. Trenchant and moving, the fourth feature film from Mobile Alabama native Brown reshaped the understanding of the last two and a half years of racial unrest for all who had a chance to watch it. Framed as a search for the wreck of the Clotilda, a ship that brought enslaved Africans to the U.S. two generations after slavery had been deemed a capital crime, the film explores resiliency, community, and the way the sins of our past continue to shape everything from who our neighbors are to the air that we breath. (That Descendant was also one of the best films on the environmental catastrophe we are all attempting to live through shows the depth of Brown’s achievement.)

While the history of the Clotilda was new to most of us (I first heard about it on a 2017 episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots featuring Academy Award-winning documentarian Questlove, who had an ancestor on the ship and served as a producer on Descendant), Nothing Compares tells a story we all thought we knew but actually didn’t.  

Pieced together by Irish filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson and her editor Mick Mahon, the film tells the almost impossible to believe story of Sinéad O’Connor. As a child, the singer survived neglect and mistreatment from her parents and from the Catholic Church’s infamously ruthless Magdalene Laundries as a teenager, to briefly become the biggest pop star on the planet. When she used her platform to call attention to the Church’s abuses against children a full decade before The Boston Globe laid bare those tragic crimes to the world, she became an ostracized pariah. As a Gen-Xer who watched the scandal unfold in real time and said and did nothing about it then, Ferguson’s film filled me with an epic feeling of compunction that later transformed into a call to action.

The claims that cinema as we know it is in its final death throes intensified this year, echoing an alarm that started with the streaming revolution and got even louder during the pandemic. (Film historians are well aware that pundits have been clamoring about the imminent demise of movies since shortly after the medium’s invention.) 

This became such a dominant narrative in movie-centered conversation that eye-poppingly thrilling but thematically anemic throwbacks like Top Gun: Maverick and a couple of Marvel movies became more than just enjoyable ways to kill off a Saturday night; they were deputized as saviors of an industry.

In reality, this was a landmark year for spectacle cinema, but it was no thanks to Tom Cruise, Doctor Strange, or the rest of their ilk. For once and hopefully forever, the tools of the CGI pageants that dominated the last two decades of our moviegoing lives have been wrested away from our corporate overlords and are finally being wielded by justice-invested filmmakers hellbent on doing more than simply fattening shareholders’ bottom lines. 

We got to witness this in with depressing verisimilitude in All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger’s monumental anti-war chronicle of the life of a World War I grunt. But we also saw it play out to profound, rapturous, and far less dispiriting effect in the year’s two best historical fantasies: S. S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language epic RRR and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, marshaled by its mesmerizing star and producer Viola Davis.

RRR is an anti-colonial fable about the overlapping missions of vengeance and overthrow undertaken by a tribal leader and a police officer, played by Indian superstars N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan respectively. Featuring one show-stopping set piece after another, RRR is an emphatically over-the-top reminder of the power of myth-making, friendship, and perhaps most memorably, dance. Seeing it on the world’s largest IMAX screen at Hollywood’s Chinese Theater for the opening of Beyond Fest and sitting among a sold-out crowd— many of whom danced the “Naatu Naatu” during the closing credits— was the single most memorable filmgoing experience of my life.   

There was anger and pain echoing within RRR’s joyful and triumphant nose, but it is right there on the surface of The Woman King, which is a furious, guttural yowl of an action movie. Whoever imagined that a screed against colonialism, slavery, and misogyny— the effects of which have permeated too much of both our history and our screen fantasies— could kick such copious ass. 

If All Quiet on the Western Front was the most fatalistic of this year’s great movies, the journalistic procedural She Said, helmed by German actress-turned-director Maria Schrader and written by British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, was the most optimistic. It proved that with precision, unrelenting drive, and the backing of a formidable institution, even the most entrenched and diabolically evil of demons can be slayed.

Schrader’s film, along with Aftersun and The Fabelmans, elicited the strongest emotional response from me of any of the films this year. After I finished this taut recounting of the investigation by The New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor (played by with valiant restraint by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan) into the sexual misconduct of film producer Harvey Weinstein, I cried for a good 10 minutes.

Part of it was that I worked at Variety in 2000 as a reporter in their New York office. Among other things, I covered Miramax— the Tribeca-based studio that Weinstein ran and had founded with his brother— and was a regular target of the tirades of Weinstein and his underlings. 

I did not know that he was a sexual predator, and if my colleagues did they didn’t share it. But we were all well aware that his bullying was regularly rewarded with favorable stories, and to have played even a small part in the whitewashing of his reputation that was de rigueur for the trades in those days is haunting.

It is also one of the many reasons why the bravery shown by Twohey and Kantor’s sources— including former Miramax employee Laura Madden, beautifully played by Jennifer Ehle— was so moving. Over and above an opportunity for melancholic reflection, She Said, like all the most outstanding films of 2022, serves as a beacon of hope in these times that continue to be darker than we would wish. 

These films aren’t simply demanding that we do better moving forward, they give us a blueprint of how to do it.

Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.