2022 Movie Year in Review
In 2021, I watched 7 movies, all of them streaming, and none of them after July. The continued combination of a pandemic and a toddler made the 2022 list even shorter and limited us to solely to streaming a second time. Here are the 6 movies I saw in 2022.
The Royal Tenenbaums - F 1/07 - Hulu
Mascots - F 1/21 - Netflix
Pillow Talk - S 2/05 - Prime
Encanto - R 6/30 - Disney+
Prey - S 8/20 - Hulu
The Sea Beast - Su 9/21 - Netflix
The first three of these movies were movies that M and I watched together early in the year. In order:
- M is a big fan of Wes Anderson. I am not particularly a fan, having only really enjoyed Grand Budapest Hotel of the three of his films that I had seen prior. M more or less forced me to choose from a list of his movies. I went with The Royal Tenenbaums. I felt it was... fine. I become increasingly convinced Wes Anderson is just not my thing, although I do admire his visual aesthetic.
- By contrast, I have greatly enjoyed Christopher Guest's mockumentaries. Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration all made me laugh to greater or lesser extent, so when we realized that there another Guest mockumentary, Mascots, that we hadn't seen because it was made for Netflix originally, we clearly needed to check it out. Well, we thought we did. In fact, it was pretty much terrible. I don't know how Guest botched a competition based mockumentary about sports, but he did. I'm sure there's some Guest fan who is so obsessed that they'd love this, but that fan is not me. Even the comparatively weak For Your Consideration was a lot better than this.
- I believe M picked out Pillow Talk as a movie I had not seen that she had loved as a kid. And you know what? She was right. Rock Hudson and Doris Day star in a quite enjoyable romantic comedy. There are certainly bits that are a bit dated by today's standards (including, quite disturbingly, a sexual assault that is played off as a joke) but the vast majority is a stupidly enjoyable rom-com.
Our fourth movie of the year was Encanto, which M, my parents and I watched together when we were in NY. My smart-ass summary is "a really good looking movie with some imaginative sequences, one super catchy song and not much else." Seriously, I barely remember it at this point, but I also guarantee that if I had the soundtrack album (as I often did for Disney movies when I was a kid) that this would rate much higher in my eyes.
The last two movies on my list I watched by myself.
- The newest film in the Predator series is Prey, which I watched one night while M was out and about and Birdie was sleeping. I was actually quite pleased with how good it is. Admittedly, it's got most of the same beats as the original, but it executes those beats really well. Amber Midthunder does a fine job as the woman who out thinks the Predator in 1719. I'm not sure what it says about an alien race who can travel between the stars that they keep getting outsmarted by humans, but I suppose it provides more dramatic tension than just having someone use increasingly large explosives or guns on a Predator. Anyway, Prey is not as good as the original, and it's not trying to do something different like the superior Predators did, but I still enjoyed it a great deal. I really need to go back and watch some of the other films that I missed along the way.
- On our slow way home from New Mexico, I watched an animated film on Netflix called The Sea Beast over several nights. It was good enough for me to keep turning on over several nights, but that's probably because it was right in my wheelhouse with ships of the line doing battle with giant monsters. I feel the pitch was something like Moby Dick meets Pacific Rim with a heavy dose of Disneyish happy ending. Would actual kids like it? I have no idea.
At the end of 2022, my ongoing lifetime total movies is somewhere around 1322 in the theater, and counting movies seen at home only since 2020, around 1349 in total. I have already saw one movie in the theater in 2023 and have plans for another, so maybe next year's summary will be a bit longer.
The Royal Tenenbaums - F 1/07 - Hulu
Mascots - F 1/21 - Netflix
Pillow Talk - S 2/05 - Prime
Encanto - R 6/30 - Disney+
Prey - S 8/20 - Hulu
The Sea Beast - Su 9/21 - Netflix
The first three of these movies were movies that M and I watched together early in the year. In order:
- M is a big fan of Wes Anderson. I am not particularly a fan, having only really enjoyed Grand Budapest Hotel of the three of his films that I had seen prior. M more or less forced me to choose from a list of his movies. I went with The Royal Tenenbaums. I felt it was... fine. I become increasingly convinced Wes Anderson is just not my thing, although I do admire his visual aesthetic.
- By contrast, I have greatly enjoyed Christopher Guest's mockumentaries. Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration all made me laugh to greater or lesser extent, so when we realized that there another Guest mockumentary, Mascots, that we hadn't seen because it was made for Netflix originally, we clearly needed to check it out. Well, we thought we did. In fact, it was pretty much terrible. I don't know how Guest botched a competition based mockumentary about sports, but he did. I'm sure there's some Guest fan who is so obsessed that they'd love this, but that fan is not me. Even the comparatively weak For Your Consideration was a lot better than this.
- I believe M picked out Pillow Talk as a movie I had not seen that she had loved as a kid. And you know what? She was right. Rock Hudson and Doris Day star in a quite enjoyable romantic comedy. There are certainly bits that are a bit dated by today's standards (including, quite disturbingly, a sexual assault that is played off as a joke) but the vast majority is a stupidly enjoyable rom-com.
Our fourth movie of the year was Encanto, which M, my parents and I watched together when we were in NY. My smart-ass summary is "a really good looking movie with some imaginative sequences, one super catchy song and not much else." Seriously, I barely remember it at this point, but I also guarantee that if I had the soundtrack album (as I often did for Disney movies when I was a kid) that this would rate much higher in my eyes.
The last two movies on my list I watched by myself.
- The newest film in the Predator series is Prey, which I watched one night while M was out and about and Birdie was sleeping. I was actually quite pleased with how good it is. Admittedly, it's got most of the same beats as the original, but it executes those beats really well. Amber Midthunder does a fine job as the woman who out thinks the Predator in 1719. I'm not sure what it says about an alien race who can travel between the stars that they keep getting outsmarted by humans, but I suppose it provides more dramatic tension than just having someone use increasingly large explosives or guns on a Predator. Anyway, Prey is not as good as the original, and it's not trying to do something different like the superior Predators did, but I still enjoyed it a great deal. I really need to go back and watch some of the other films that I missed along the way.
- On our slow way home from New Mexico, I watched an animated film on Netflix called The Sea Beast over several nights. It was good enough for me to keep turning on over several nights, but that's probably because it was right in my wheelhouse with ships of the line doing battle with giant monsters. I feel the pitch was something like Moby Dick meets Pacific Rim with a heavy dose of Disneyish happy ending. Would actual kids like it? I have no idea.
At the end of 2022, my ongoing lifetime total movies is somewhere around 1322 in the theater, and counting movies seen at home only since 2020, around 1349 in total. I have already saw one movie in the theater in 2023 and have plans for another, so maybe next year's summary will be a bit longer.