First-half faves like 'Petite Maman,' 'Everything Everywhere' bode well for 2022 in film

Perhaps the floodgates have opened after two years of dribbles, where a handful of movies braved theaters while others went straight to streaming or just got put in dry dock.

Now, things are looking better (ish?) and studios are releasing films they’ve held at bay since late 2019 all at once. Audiences are showing a willingness to head back to the cinemas by giving long box-office legs to movies varying from blockbusters like “Maverick” to indie oddities such as “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

The movies are back, we can now say unironically. The Year of our Lord 2022 is promising, even at the halfway mark, to be the best cinematic trip around the sun in 15 years. What’s been so great?

I will avoid repeating commentary on four-star masterworks like “Elvis,” “The Northman,” and “Happening,” having devoted full columns to them fairly recently. Although the latter two are both available to rent and well worth your time. Especially “Happening,” a film about abortion in 1960s France that seems more relevant than it did even a month ago.

Pretty much everything else below is already out of theaters, but available at home thanks to diminishing theater-to-streaming windows.

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'Petite Maman'

I’ve seen some classify “Petite Maman” as a 2021 offering, But it was almost exclusively released in the U.S. this spring well outside of awards season, so I am going to declare it the best 2022 film thus far.

It’s a seemingly simple story about a little girl who travels with her family to her grandmother’s house. While in the woods, she spots another little girl and they become fast friends.

I don’t dare spoil what comes next. There’s science fiction at play, but not enough to distract from a beautiful story about how children perceive adults and vice versa. This is a story about how we process things like youthful memories and death. It is poetic and elegantly simple in execution.

It’s also refreshingly PG; there’s nothing remotely squeamish about “Petite Maman.” It’s wonderful work from director Céline Sciamma who last directed “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” — also a layered, touching film you should watch if you’ve not had the chance.

'Crimes of the Future'

David Cronenberg provides nothing but squeamishness in “Crimes of the Future,” but it is a daring film brimming with ideas that rise above the body horror, performative surgery and child homicide. (My lord, that’s how the film opens!)

“Crimes” asks questions — and poses possible answers — about whether society should undo bad things or simply adjust to them. About how our bodies will evolve to pollution and a changing climate. About what happens when we’ve run out of ways to shock one another. About what we’re willing to sacrifice for the greater good of our perception of an ideal society.

I, by no means, am a Cronenberg fan. I often find his shocking overtures hollow. But now he’s 79 and a widower, and this story feels imbued with dark melancholy. At its heart, the film is a reflection of the filmmaker’s style in the face of mortality. Plus, he’s got a killer cast with great performances by Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Lea Seydoux.

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'Men'

Alex Garland — one of the best directors to emerge in the past 10 years — also swings for the intellectual fences with his folk horror flick “Men.” It's the story of a woman (Jessie Buckley) who flees to the country after the death of an abusive spouse and  finds trauma, grief and guilt hard to escape. Literally everyone else in the village are, well, "Men” and all played by Rory Kinnear.

The film could be seen as just about the violent nature between sexes, but Garland digs into philosophical questions about religion and death; climaxing with a bonkers third act that suggests man’s greatest resentment stems from an inability to create life. It’s heavy stuff, told with the fevered urgency of recounting a nightmare.

'Everything Everywhere All At Once'

The struggle to understand others is told more lightly with the Daniels’ “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Using the high-concept of the multiverse, we see characters in different iterations of different planes of existence. Some are envisioned as grand romances, others as sci-fi action spectacles, and others are just plain quirky.

What emerges is a deep contemplation of the challenges families face when adjusting to societal change and age. Plus, it’s incredibly funny and exciting. It’s best to see with a big crowd.

Michelle Yeoh anchors the fantastical tale, which also features the great Hollywood comeback of the year: Ke Huy Quan, who starred in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies,” then was all but discarded by Tinseltown. He emerges here as Yeoh’s put-upon husband and steals the show with a gentle performance. In my mind, the best supporting actor race for 2022 begins and ends with Quan.

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These films are not only solidly artistic and challenging, but also really engaging to watch. Good, and good for you.

My list ignores really strong films like the gothic fairy tale “You Won’t be Alone,” the crowd-pleasing “Maverick” or the guilty pleasure of the very meta and very imaginative “Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers” reboot on Disney Plus. I'm not kidding.

It’s been a rough couple of years for cinephiles, but we’ve finally hit the promised land. I cannot wait to see what the rest of 2022 holds.

In real life, James Owen is a lawyer and executive director of energy policy group Renew Missouri. He created/wrote for Filmsnobs.com from 2001-2007 before an extended stint as an on-air film critic for KY3, the NBC affiliate in Springfield. He was named a Top 20 Artist under the Age of 30 by The Kansas City Star when he was much younger than he is now. 

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: First-half favorites bode well for 2022 at the movies