The Great Movie Conquest of 2022

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - June

I'll acknowledge I didn't get to dive as deeply as I'd hoped this month with my chosen theme. Part of that was poor planning, part of that is I'm discovering in realtime the limits of devoting one month to one performer's body of work, particularly when that performer is still alive. The performer in question is, of course, the effervescent Amy Adams.

Like most of my generation, I came to know Adams through her performance as Giselle in Enchanted. Her fantastic work in this role helped cement her as the doe-eyed naivete too pure for this world. Much of her work prior to her breakout role (Catch Me if You Can, Junebug, etc.) circled a similar note, as did many of her roles in the years immediately following (Doubt, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, etc.).

In the last decade or so, though, Adams has enjoyed more mature and grounded roles, as seen with movies like Nocturnal Animals or Arrival. Part of my conquest this month was to try to identify a specific turning point in her career.

It was around 2013, with Man of Steel and American Hustle, that I first started to notice Adams going for more mature roles, and so that's kind of where I assume she made the jump. But I'm finding there are films that complicate that hypothesis.

2010 had Adams as a world-weary bartender opposite Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter. Even as early as 2008, one year after her turn as Giselle, she featured in Sunshine Cleaning as a woman who spontaneously decides to start a biohazard clean-up business, and already she was starting to work outside that perfect portrait of wholesomeness. At the start of the film, Adams' character is having an affair with a married man, and she's also shown to be somewhat judgmental and condemning to her wayward sister (played by Emily Blunt). Even fresh out of her turn as a modern Disney Princess, Adams showed great ability in touching on other aspects of the human experience.

But of course, that's always been her secret weapon. Her performance in Enchanted wouldn't have been worth remarking on if she didn't have the ability to portray a literal 2D character with depth. She showed us that even something like "innocence" could signal a character with a complex inner life. Though she became more well-known for "weightier" roles later on (I'm especially interested to see how her evolution informs her approach to Giselle when she returns to the role in "Disenchanted" this fall), maturity has always been a part of her repertoire.

Elsewhere on this month's roundup, June month saw two more movie reviews from me. The first was for Jurassic World: Dominion, and the second was from Elvis. Both movies represent two different factions of film that are often viewed as opposing. "Dominion" is the culminating offering of one of the most successful franchises of all time while "Elvis" is an auteur-driven biopic Oscar hopeful. I know a lot of audiences view these as two separate masters that man cannot serve equally, but here at Films and Feelings, we don't abide by such fallacies. Both were really enjoyable experiences.

I was lucky to come across Robert Redford's directorial debut, Ordinary People. This film, which took home the best picture of the year Oscar, follows a family grieving the loss of their eldest son. Even knowing the territory, I wasn't prepared for how vulnerable the film made me feel, and I've already given it a second viewing.

The votes for next month's theme are in, and I will spend July watching epic fantasy from the 1970s and 80s. I chose this time period specifically because it barely predates the age of CGI. Fantasy during this time looked and felt different than what we know today, and the results are endlessly fascinating.

Anyways, we are now halfway through 2022, and I am finally halfway through this fool's errand. I'd say I'm starting to get to that place where I look forward to not having to scramble for a new movie each day, but honestly I've been there since like Mid-March. (It's fine. I only have to do this 184 more times.)

By this point, I'm starting to ask myself how many of these movies I'm ever going to see again. Or even, how many of these I'm ever going to think of again. Odds are, very few of them. And this only further begs the question, what is the point, then, of all the countless films I'm consuming that are destined for me oblivion?

I'll be honest, I do not have an answer for this.

--The Professor

If July were just wall-to-wall with 9 and 10 star films, that'd be GREAT ...

June's Harvest

Big Eyes (2014)

The Omega Man (1971)

The Lure (2015)

Ordinary People (1980)
The Letter (1940)

Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

Network (1976)

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Boys' Night Out (1962)

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

The Two Mrs. Carrols (1947)

High and Low (1963)

The Fighter (2010)

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

Limitless (2011)

The Scarlet Letter (1926)

Office Space (1999)

Marathon Man (1976)

The Wings of Eagles (1957)
Loving (2016)

Black Gold (1947)

Ghost World (2001)

Golem (1920)

Elvis (2022)

Too Late for Tears (1949)

The River (1951)

The Big Sick (2017)

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

Enemy of the State (1998)

Blackboard Jungle (1955)

Comments

REVIEW: ELIO

Here's a fact: the term "flying saucer" predates the term "UFO." The United States Air Force found the former description too limiting to describe the variety of potential aerial phenomena that might arise when discussing the possibility of life beyond earth. There may have to be a similar expansion of vocabulary within the alien lexicon with Pixar's latest film, Elio , turning the idea of an alien abduction into every kid's dream come true. The titular Elio is a displaced kid who recently moved in with his aunt after his parents died. She doesn't seem to understand him any better than his peers do. He can't imagine a place on planet earth where he feels he fits in. What's a kid to do except send a distress cry out into the great, big void of outer space? But m iracle of miracles: his cries into the universe are heard, and a band of benevolent aliens adopt him into their "communiverse" as the honorary ambassador o...

Fine, I Will Review The Percy Jackson Show (again)

I have wondered if I was the only one who thought that "Sea of Monsters" was the weakest of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians pentalogy, but I have seen my reading echoed by other book loyalists. This second installment is perhaps penalized partially because it marks several major junctions in the larger series. This is, for example, the part of the series where the scope of the adventure really starts to enlarge. We know going in that there's an angry, deceased titan out to destroy Olympus, and that he's amassing an army, and so we need a sense that this threat is growing stronger. But this also marks a turning point in how series author, Rick Riordan, chooses to develop his main character. And so, season 2 of the Disney+ television adaptation faces similar crossroads. Season 3 of this show is already filming as we speak, so its immediate future is already spoken for, as far as production goes. But stylistically, this second seas...

REVIEW: ZOOTOPIA 2

Any follow-up to the 2016 masterpiece, Zootopia , is going to be disadvantaged. Cinema was still a year ahead of Jordan Peele's "Get Out" when Disney released one of the most articulate explanations of race, allyship, and accountability ever put to film. Now that everyone knows how good, even "timely," a Disney pic can be, how do you surprise everyone a second time? The insights in this sequel won't spur any new chapters in your sociology 101 textbook. Though honestly, neither was the deflection of white saviourship that novel back in 2016. We more or less knew how racial profiling and biases played out in the landscape. What surprised many of us (and validated the rest of us) was the idea that these ideas could be articulated so eloquently in a children's film. It seems that the studio tried the same thing here with Zootopia 2 that it did with Frozen II six years ago. I think a lot of people wanted that m...

REVIEW: MERCY

Everyone who was despairing that Star-Lord and Taser-Face never got their showdown, your moment in the sun has come. In MERCY , out this weekend, future Los Angeles has adopted a justice system in which criminals are weighed before an AI judge. Those on trial are allowed the full disposal of public surveillance and digital footprints in order to clear their name within a 90-minute timeframe. And this is the situation in which recovering alcoholic and policeman, Chris Raven, (Chris Pratt) find himself as he is charged with the murder of his wife, and he is left to make his case before the commanding Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) or face execution. The movie's buoyed up by a respectable ensemble cast, including Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Kylie Rogers, Jeff Piere, and Chris Sullivan. Pratt and Ferguson are both up to the task, but we've also seen more memorable work from both of them. The movie knows ...

Edward G. Robinson: Patron Saint of Forgotten Men

I want to start off this essay by talking about one of my go-to movie stars, Chris Pratt. My first exposure to him was at the end of my freshmen summer term when he landed as Peter Quill/Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy , a film I very much enjoyed, as you all know. (I would also see The Lego Movie for the first time around here). And by the time he was up for Jurassic World the next summer, I was up to date with my Parks and Recreation viewing, and the world had accepted him as a household name. Like a lot of celebrities who came into prominence in the wake of social media, part of Pratt’s strengths lies in his supreme accessibility. But where someone like Ryan Reynolds found his market as being this cynical son-of-a-gun, Pratt’s appeal was his complete lack of pretense. His sincerity. Whe...

REVIEW: Mickey 17

Coming into Mickey 17 having not read the source material by Edward Ashton, I can easily see why this movie spoke to the sensibilities of Bong Joon Ho, particularly in the wake of his historic Academy Award win five years ago. Published in 2022, it feels like Ashton could have been doing his Oscars homework when he conceived of the story--a sort of mashup of Parasite , Aliens , and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times . Desperate to escape planet earth, Mickey applies for a special assignment as an "expendable," a person whose sole requirement is to perform tasks too dangerous for normal consideration--the kind that absolutely arise in an outer space voyage to colonize other planets. It is expected that Mickey expire during his line of duty, but never fear. The computer has all his data and can simply reproduce him in the lab the next day for his next assignment. Rinse and repeat. It's a system that we are assured cannot fail ... until of course it does. I'll admit my ...

REVIEW: The Running Man

A lot of people have wanted to discuss Edgar Wright's new The Running Man outing as "the remake" of the 1987 film (with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a very different Ben Richards). As for me, I find it more natural to think of it as "another adaptation of ..." Even so, my mind was also on action blockbusters of the 1980s watching this movie today. But my thoughts didn't linger so much on the Paul Michael Glaser film specifically so much as the general action scene of the day. The era of Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell and the he-men they brought to life. These machine-gun wielding, foul-mouthed anarchists who wanted to tear down the establishment fed a real need for men with a lot of directionless anger. This was, as it would turn out, the same era in which Stephen King first published The Running Man , telling the story of a down-on-his luck man who tries to rescue his wife and daughter from poverty by winning a telev...

REVIEW: Jurassic World - Rebirth

I had a mixed reaction to Jurassic World: Rebirth, but it did make for one of the most enjoyable theater experiences I've had in recent memory. I have to imagine that a part of this is because my most common theater appointments are matinee screenings, but I had the opportunity to see this one at a fairly well-attended midnight screening. And there's nary a film more tailored for surround-sound roaring and screens wide enough to contain these de-extinct creatures. ("Objects on the screen feel closer than they appear.") It was natural for me to cap the experience by applauding as the credits stared to roll, even if, as usual, I was the only one in the auditorium to do so. Yes, I am that kind of moviegoer; yes, I enjoyed the experience that much, and I imagine I will revisit it across time. That's not to imagine the movie is beyond reproach, but I suppose it bears mentioning that, generally , this i...

REVIEW: West Side Story

Slight spoiler, the first shot of Steven Spielberg's West Side Story adaptation opens on a pile of rubble, a crumbled building wrecked to make way for new development. I amusedly wondered if this was maybe an accidental metaphor, a comment on this new adaptation of the stage show supplanting the legendary film version in 1961. There's not a lot about the 2021 film adaptation that deviates largely from the blueprint of the 1961 film or the stage musical on which it is based. That blueprint, of course, being the romance between two teenagers on opposite ends of a gang rivalry in 1950s New York. A few songs get swapped around, the casting is more appropriate, but there's no gimmick. We have to assume, then, that at the end of the day, Spielberg just wanted to try his hand at remaking a childhood favorite. Filmmakers, take note. Follow Spielberg's example. When revisiting an old text, you don't need a gimmick. Good taste is enough. ...

REVIEW: Song Sung Blue

I came into Craig Brewer's Song Sung Blue with little context for the real-life couple at the center of this movie, for Neil Diamond, or for the world of celebrity impersonators interpreters. There are no doubt subterranean connotations to the specific songs that they chose to sing at certain moments in the narrative that are lost on me. I have no doubt, though, that the intended audience will find this movie before long. But the film was still viable enough that even a relative neophyte like me could still find himself humming along to this musical drama. The film documents the real-life couple of Mike and Claire Sardina, celebrity impersonators who fall in love, marry, and form a tribute band for legendary singer, Neil Diamond. We track their relationship from its beginning through their career aspirations and the crossroads in their marriage, including a violent accident that changes their family forever. Again, I don...

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