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

Children of a Lesser God: Between Sound and Silence

Loyal readers may remember last month when I talked about Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue and how I casually alluded to the larger framework of disability within film and promised to talk about it one day. Well, this isn’t like with my Disney Princess series where I teased the project for years before finally getting to it. I’m making good on that promise here today. You’re welcome. Now, when I say “disability within film,” that’s a really large slice of the pie. The discussion of disability in Hollywood is a vast and complex field of study. There’s obviously overlap across the broader discussion, but people of different disabilities experience ableism differently, similar to how members of different ethnic identities experience racism differently, and it’s a machine that has to be dismantled on multiple fronts. But with this piece, I’m not so interested in airing all the ways the industry has let down members of these communities. Today, I’d mostly li

The Power of the Dog Doesn't (want to) Understand Toxic Masculinity: A Deconstruction and History of the "Toxic Cowboy"

I want to start this piece by recounting my very first experience watching John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers . The film sees John Wayne playing Ethan Edwards, rugged cowboy who embarks on a years-long quest to recover his young niece, Debbie, after she is kidnapped by a band of Comanche Indians, who also murder her entire family. Ethan is joined on this adventure by Debbie’s adopted older brother, Martin, played by Jeffrey Hunter. Ethan does not welcome Martin’s presence on this mission and even tries to leave him behind at the start, and he will continue to menace Martin as they travail the desert. Part of this is because Ethan does not consider Martin to be Debbie’s real family, and he also resents Martin’s Native American lineage. But most of his animosity stems from the fact that he simply sees Martin as weak. He does not seem like the kind of guy who can hold his own on the wild frontier. But through their time together, Ethan does come to quietly

Are We in Another Golden Age of Musicals?

In early 2017, Variety ran a piece titled “ Will Musicals See a ‘La La Land’ Boost ?” alongside said movie’s victory lap around the box office and critics at large. Justin Paul, who wrote the music for La La Land alongside his partner, Benj Pasek, was optimistic about the doors his movie was opening: “I have to believe that other studios, other producers, would only be encouraged by the impact of ‘La La Land,’ both critically and at the box office.” Their agent, Richard Kraft, shared a similar sentiment. “I think people are growing tired of snark and skepticism and pessimism. [La La Land] hit the zeitgeist for smart and unapologetic optimism. Even in times of strife and conflict, people still fall in love and follow dreams.” These are the kinds of statements that don’t go unnoticed by a musical nerd who chose to write his semesterly report on Meet Me in St. Louis when all his fellow film students wrote on Woody Allen. Classical musicals had always just been that gateway into c

My Crush on Sarah Connor is Hard to Explain

I had an experience this last fall when I was working at a residential treatment facility for boys with behavioral issues. My boys had been dying all week to watch Black Widow. These boys very seldom got to watch new movies while they were with us except for special field trips or when on home visits, and this movie had only just become available on Disney+. The staff all agreed to let them have a special viewing as a reward for their deep cleaning leading up to Parents' Weekend. I was really proud of my boys for their enthusiasm. I took it as a token of their evolving social awareness that they were as excited for a female-led superhero pic as they had been for Falcon and the Winter Soldier. My boys were becoming little feminists, or so I thought. Imagine my disappointment when we finally watched the film and they spent the entire runtime catcalling Natasha and her sister. An entire film dedicated to a powerful heroine moving heaven and earth to liberate others like her, and

REVIEW: Cyrano

The modern push for the movie musical tends to favor a modern sound--songs with undertones of rap or rock. It must have taken director Joe Wright a special kind of tenacity, then, to throw his heart and soul into a musical project (itself a bold undertaking) that surrenders to pure classicalism with his new film Cyrano . Whatever his thought process, it's hard to argue with the results. With its heavenly design, vulnerable performances, and gorgeous musical numbers, the last musical offering of 2021 (or perhaps the first of 2022) is endlessly enchanting. Cyrano de Bergerac's small stature makes him easy prey for the scorn and ridicule of the high-class Victorian society, but there has yet to be a foe that he could not disarm with his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. The person who could ever truly reject him is Roxanne, his childhood friend for whom he harbors love of the most romantic variety. Too afraid to court Roxanne himself, he chooses to use the handsome but t

American Beauty is Bad for your Soul

The 1990s was a relatively stable period of time in American history. We weren’t scared of the communists or the nuclear bomb, and social unrest for the most part took the decade off. The white-picket fence ideal was as accessible as it had ever been for most Americans. Domesticity was commonplace, mundane even, and we had time to think about things like the superficiality of modern living. It's in an environment like this that a movie like Sam Mendes' 1999 film American Beauty can not only be made but also find overwhelming success. In 1999 this film was praised for its bold and honest insight into American suburban life. The Detroit News Film Critic called this film “a rare and felicitous movie that brings together a writer, director and company perfectly matched in intelligence and sense of purpose” and Variety hailed it as “a real American original.” The film premiered to only a select number of screens, but upon its smashing success was upgraded to

Bright Young Women: The Legacy of Ariel and The Little Mermaid

I had an experience one summer at a church youth camp that I reflect on quite a bit. We were participating in a “Family Feud” style game between companies, and the question was on favorite Disney movies as voted on by participants in our camp. (No one asked for my input on this question. Yes, this still burns me.) I think the top spot was either for Tangled or The Lion King , but what struck me was that when someone proposed the answer of “The Little Mermaid,” the score revealed that not a single participant had listed it as their favorite Disney film. On the one hand, this doesn’t really surprise me. In all my years of Disney fandom, I’ve observed that The Little Mermaid occupies this this very particular space in pop culture: The Little Mermaid is in a lot of people’s top 5s, but very few people identify it as their absolute favorite Disney film. This film’s immediate successors in the Disney lineup (usually The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast ) are the most li

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to ponder out loud what the purpose of a good film is. But film critics new and old don’t need much

REVIEW: The Lost City

Your reasons for browsing a movie like "The Lost City" probably aren't so different from mine. Me? I just wanted to see Daniel Radcliffe back in the mainstream world. You may have wanted to relish Sandra Bullock or Channing Tatum making their rounds in the spotlight, or, just as likely, wanted to see them together. Maybe word of Brad Pitt's extended cameo did it for you. Whoever caught your attention, it was certainly one of the A-listers because a film like this doesn't have a lot to offer outside its movie star parade. And yet, I can't say I don't like the film. Loretta Sage is a best-selling writer in the field of romance-adventure struggling to remind herself why she does what she does. Her latest writing block is a product of 1. her grieving the recent death of her husband and 2. her growing insecurity over the prestige of her career. Maybe eloquent prose is wasted on an audience that will read anything with Channing Tatum's exposed bosom on the

REVIEW: Ezra

I actually had a conversation with a colleague some weeks ago about the movie, Rain Man , a thoughtful drama from thirty years ago that helped catapult widespread interest in the subject of autism and neurodivergence. We took a mutual delight in how the film opened doors and allowed for greater in-depth study for an underrepresented segment of the community ... while also acknowledging that, having now opened those very doors, it is easy to see where Rain Man 's representation couldn't help but distort and sensationalize the community it aimed to champion. And I now want to find this guy again and see what he has to say about Tony Goldwyn's new movie, Ezra . The movie sees standup comedian and divorced dad, Max (Bobby Cannavale), at a crossroads with how to raise his autistic son, the titular Ezra (William Fitzgerald), with his ex-wife, Jenna (Rose Byrne). As Jenna pushes to give Ezra more specialized attention, like pulling him out of public school, Max takes g

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog