There will always be lists at the end of the year telling you which feature films and series were the best of the year as long as there are passionate TV watchers and ardent theater goers connecting with characters through screens big and small. The connections we make with these kinds of stories are very personal, and our feelings about them are not always in agreement. It's hard not to think about the things that grabbed our attention or felt like they were fulfilling narrative desires that audiences didn't know they had.
Even now, months after its initial theatrical release, there's still so much light and heat and hype surrounding the Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once that we don't know what kind of lasting legacy the movie will have as one of the year's discourse-shapers The film's story about a burned-out family fighting to hold onto one another by manipulating reality with love resonated with people in a deep and powerful way that no one could have predicted. In a year when Hollywood largely misunderstood what makes stories about the multiverse interesting, Everything Everywhere All at Once succeeded by actually playing with the idea of multiple realities and focusing on a kind of existential madness so universal that it was hard not to feel it.
There was something moving and magical about seeing Ke Huy Quan show up in a movie that needed him to tap into a level of emotional depth and complexity that Hollywood seemed not to think he was capable of. Everything Everywhere All at Once felt like a classic because of its ability to bring every facet of Waymond Wang to life.
Everything Everywhere All At Once was able to make people feel something long after they first saw the film because it focused on how powerful a force family love can be. It was great for Everything Everywhere All at Once to have that kind of staying power. That same power has led to some of Everything Everywhere All at Once's detractors and fans becoming hostile in their defense and critique of the movie, a mode that feels like people's default when it comes to discussing genre fiction
The public perception of Everything Everywhere All at Once was partially defined by an intense fan base that treated evangelizing their entertainment as a job. Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal sold viewers on the idea of a darkly absurdist deconstruction of social interactions and a passionate fanbase that saw deep truths about the human condition in their favorite episodes.
The Rehearsal is a comedy about letting people test run living through challenging situations like being the creator, executive producer, and star of an aggressive meta thought experiment. The first season of The Rehearsal was meant to help people learn how to navigate complex and sometimes confusing moments in their lives.
It was easy to write The Rehearsal off as a novelty that was too good to be true because of the gradual unraveling of its built reality. When jokes gave way to awkward silences, nervous stares, and people deciding they didn't want to be a part of the show, The Rehearsal felt like it was tapping into something very honest and real.
The Rehearsal felt like a return to the days when the network was building a name for itself as a hub for must-see original TV. In a year marked by uncertainty about the future of the network, House of the Dragon was the most popular nostalgia play. George R. R. Martin began detailing the Targaryen family history in his book Fire & Blood a long time before the Game ofThrones spinoff.
We were all watching House of the Dragon to see how Alicent and Rhaenyra would get the better of one another, but we were also returning to the show because we wanted to interact with one another. The sense of familiarity that grew stronger as House of the Dragon's first season progressed was what made it easier for people to stick with the show.
It is not known if House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power will have the kind of staying power that made it possible for the second season ofStranger Things. This summer, it took over the world. In its third season, the show showed some signs of fatigue. 4 reminded fans why they fell in love with the series and introduced a new generation of young people to Kate Bush's music. Maybe because it had been so long since we caught up with the kids, it didn't matter that some of the show was new. 4's twists were a tad predictable or how splitting the season up into two batches of episodes felt unnecessarily drawn out.
Those things didn't stop people from getting hooked on the show, and sowing seeds of curiosity about what the Duffer Brothers have to offer up next. The series feels like it could have ended organically in season four, and there is still a fifth season toTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia,TrademarkiaTrademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia
The intangible sense of exciting promise that comes with wholly new stories like the ones being told in The Bear and Apple TV Plus' Severance was what was missing from the show. One show about a high-strung chef trying not to drown in his family beef and another about employees fighting to make themselves whole after their Amazon-like employer splits their minds in two shows how prepared we were to have our own work related stresses.
Quiet quitting was not just about people leaving their jobs to stay with their bosses. It was usually about rethinking how workers value their labor in relation to their emotional well-being and making informed decisions about the best way to take care of their needs.
The Star Wars series was able to establish itself as one of the franchise's most riveting stories because of Andor's exploration of these types of ideas. Because Disney has made sure that there will always be more Star Wars, many were quick to dismiss Andor as noise. The rhythms of a Star Wars story revolving around a seemingly ordinary man who can't comprehend how important a figure he's destined to become was what Andor fell into. Andor worked hard to earn a few moments of Star Wars wonderment by always making sure to focus on what really motivates people to join rebellion or commit to fascistic overlords.
There wasn't much about Andor that felt disconnected fromRogue One, an excellent spinoff that belongs higher on the list of Star Wars stories. Andor was a reminder of how satisfying stories can be when they are firing on all cylinders.
The same thing could be said about X, a film about a group of pornographers who find themselves being hunted down and murdered on a farm where they are just trying to make their own X-rated film. X was a drama that didn't really unpack the lives of its characters. Through sex, violence, and a lot of fake blood, it spun a classic of a horror tale that depicted the elderly with messed-up feelings about young people.
The eroticism of X reminded me that horror has always been able to speak to people's desires and play on their scariest fears. The two-dimensional story of a number of passionate sex scenes between Florence Pugh's frazzled housewife on the edge and Harry Styles' unconvincing businessman husband is what Don't Worry Darling tried to do. It wasn't going to be enough to make up for the fact that the film didn't have much of a compelling narrative core.
There was a kind of minor spectacle that grabbed people's attention with its messiness, the kind that makes you remember that celebrities are just people who may or may not be beefing at any given point in time. At a time when the platform has come to symbolize all of the tumult and disarray over at Warner Bros., Discovery felt like a particularly unfortunate twist of fate. It is more likely that people will remember how Jordan Peele's Nope temporarily took over the world instead of which movies hit HBO Max.
People who haven't seen Nope can still experience it for themselves, but there is something special about the journey the cast took the public on. It was an experience unto itself that made sitting down in a theater to see what the hell was going on that much more gratifying. As time went on, Nope proved to be the sort of film that becomes richer the more time you think about it and discuss it with others.
After Warner Bros. pulled the project at the last minute, co-directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are still working on Batgirl, but it is mostly finished. It looks like the project will never see the light of day as part of WBD CEO David Zaslav's plan to get the company back on track financially.
Audiences never got a chance to meet this new live-action Batgirl and see her go toe to toe with Brendan Fraser as the Firefly. Her absence from the DC movie scene symbolizes how willing Warner Bros. Discovery is to light things on fire in the name of progress that is hard to comprehend from the outside.
While leadership at WBD has insisted there are bigger and better things planned for the company's newly formed DC Studios outfit, it's been impossible not to see the production company as having casually willed one of its most eagerly anticipated projects out of existence. When it was announced back in August, it was a slap in the face. While big studios still hold most of the cards in Hollywood, film lovers themselves also have a kind of power in this space that is capable of willing things into existence like Scorsese's Goncharov, which is a testament to the fact that film lovers themselves have a kind of power in this
The meme is a testament to the strange and beautiful way that films and the artists who make them can inspire people to dream up new realities that others can't help but want to participate. More so than almost any other real (which is to say, "extant" movie that took off this year) movie that took off this year, Goncharov's prominence in 2022, felt like a reminder of how films can move and connect us all to one another, when we It feels like the one we should all focus on is the kumbaya film lover vibes and the hope that we can find pieces of art that make us.
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