Just over mid-2022, the film year was already intriguing, with one of the highest-rated releases to date topping the box office. That would be “Top Gun: Maverick”. But if you’ve already seen it and want to see other great films, I asked The Times co-chief critics AO Scott and Manohla Dargis for their favorites. Here they are, in no particular order. —Stephanie Goodman
‘Everything everywhere at once’
The story: A laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) is stressed. Her husband is filing for divorce. Her daughter is depressed and angry with her. And to top it off, the IRS is checking her out. When she takes on the audit, her encounter with an inflexible bureaucrat sparks a multiverse romp that reveals the lives she could have lived (and the hot dog fingers she could have) and, more importantly, different paths for her relationships.
AO Scott’s opinion: “Ancient cleverness serves a sincere and generous heart,” wrote our critic of the film directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who work under the name Daniels. “Yes, the film is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down – and on the surface too – it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a tale of immigrant striving and a hurt ballad of mother-daughter love. ”
Read the review and interviews with Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, who plays her husband. You may remember Quan, who started out as a child actor, as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
Watch: It’s still in some theaters, or you can buy it on major digital platforms. Also watch an Anatomy of a Scene with the directors.
‘happens’
The story: In the southwest of France, Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) is a 23-year-old student in the early 1960s who hopes to become a writer. But when she becomes pregnant, her attempts to have an abortion, which were only criminalized at the time, become desperate. The film is based on the memoirs of French author Annie Ernaux,
The opinion of Manohla Dargis: Director Audrey Diwan’s gaze “remains clear, direct and fearless,” wrote our critic. “She shows you a part of life that the movies rarely do. By which I mean she shows you a woman who desires, desires to learn, to have sex, to bear children on her terms, to be sovereign – a woman who, by choosing to live her life, risks a become a criminal and dare to be free. †
Read the review and an article on how the film has sparked a wider debate in France.
Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime and other major digital platforms.
In the world of ‘Everything everywhere at once’
In this mind-blowing, quirky take on the superhero movie, a laundromat owner takes center stage in a grand, multifaceted showdown.
‘Flux Gourmet’
The story: In the world created by writer-director Peter Strickland, culinary delights can also be musical, and groups perform by squeezing mashed potatoes on a blender or dropping food into hot oil. In a mansion where players and devotees have gathered, egos and entrenched principles bring the tension to a boil. (Who can resist?)
AO Scott’s opinion: “The film is not so much an allegory or fantasy as a witty philosophical speculation about some basic human issues,” Scott wrote. “We are animals driven by lust, hunger and aggression, but also delicate creatures in love with beauty and abstraction. Those two sides of our nature collide in unexpected, infinitely variable ways.”
The story: The pandemic may be fading away, but Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) continues to work from her loft, perhaps out of agoraphobia, at a job solving bugs in KIMI, a Siri-like digital assistant. While working on one of those bugs, she thinks she hears a violent crime. Her attempts to succeed her put her in danger.
The opinion of Manohla Dargis: The thriller “self-consciously draws from an assortment of cinematic references,” including “Rear Window,” wrote our critic. But the director Steven Soderbergh “does all his tricks, obviously with a lot of fun.” Even as the plot gets more ominous, “it retains a lightness of touch and a visual playfulness that keeps the film safe in the realm of pop fun.”
Read the review.
Stream it on HBO Max.
‘Neptune Frost’
The story: In this Afrofuturistic vision by American multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams and Rwandan filmmaker Anisia Uzeyman, a Burundian miner (Kaya Free) and an intersex runaway (Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo) meet in an African community dedicated to imagination and solidarity.
AO Scott’s opinion: The plot is “loose and evocative,” he wrote, describing the film as “a collage of vibrant images, sounds and words that touch the film’s themes like hashtags.” Williams and Uzeyman combine anarchic politics with anarchic aesthetics, creating something that feels both handmade and high-tech, digital and analog, poetic and punk rock.”
Read the review.
Watch it in theatres.
‘Lingui, the sacred bonds’
The story: In N’Djamena, Chad, 15-year-old Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio) has been expelled from school because she is pregnant. Her single mother, the enterprising Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), gains from selling coal stoves that she invents from salvaged tires. So both women have a share in their quest for a safe abortion.
The opinion of Manohla Dargis: Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun “shows you women on the move and in revolt, fleeing and escaping and sometimes crafty, joyful circles around the men in their lives,” the critic wrote. “And if you look at the credits, you also hear the sounds of women’s laughter – a divine and triumphant coda.”
Read the review and an interview with the director and a star of the film.
Watch: Stream it on Mubi; rent or buy it on major digital platforms.
‘Future’
The story: In a project started before the pandemic and completed during the pandemic, directors Pietro Marcello (“Martin Eden”), Francesco Munzi (“Black Souls”) and Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) traveled across Italy to interviewing people about everything about their career hopes for the meaning of happiness.
AO Scott’s opinion: “It would be a mistake to impose too much coherence on such a kaleidoscopic, open collective portrait,” he wrote. Yet the film is “an affirmation of the sustainability of an approach to filmmaking based on curiosity, democratic principles and the idea that people can speak for themselves.”
The story: Young Nelly has gone to the French countryside with her mother and father to vacate the house of her recently deceased grandmother. In the woods, Nelly befriends another girl who builds a cabin, just like Nelly’s mother once did. As the two similar-looking children grow closer (played by twins Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz), their enigmatic connection points to deeper bonds.
The opinion of Manohla Dargis: “Part of the mystery is that it’s unclear what kind of story this is and where it — with its charming child and restrained melancholy — might go,” wrote our critic. By withholding information, director Céline Sciamma encourages you to “look at this place and its story with the open eyes of a child, which means setting aside your expectations of how movies work.”
Read the review.
Rent or buy it on major digital platforms.
‘Mr. Bachmann and his class’
The story: In her fly-on-the-wall documentary, filmed during the 2016-2017 academic year, Maria Speth follows the title character, a charismatic counter-culture sixth-grade teacher, and his mostly immigrant students in a German village north of Frankfurt.
AO Scott’s opinion: While we don’t learn much about the subjects’ lives outside of school, “a few students in particular draw attention, almost elevating their teacher and adding to the film’s emotional richness,” wrote our critic . ‘This is not a heroic teacher drama about idealism in the face of adversity. It is an acknowledgment of the hard work of learning and the magic of simple decency.”
The story: A young Swedish woman with the stage name Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) has just arrived in Los Angeles and is determined to become a star in the porn industry. Acting in extreme scenes and trying to go beyond her own limits, she observes how the work affects the humanity of fellow performers, men and women.
The opinion of Manohla Dargis: “It’s a smart, daring, totally unexpected film that is, at its core, an old-fashioned tale about an ambitious fighter who overcomes the odds to become another American success story,” wrote the critic. Director Ninja Thyberg “knows the horrors, as an excruciating scene underlines. But women make porn and women watch it, and for different reasons, including because they like it. Because it is their choice.”
Read the review.
Rent or buy it on major digital platforms.