the 2022 jdb awards!

Happy Oscar weekend! Here goes my personal awards for 2022 film season.

Picture

BENEDICTION 

"Benediction is an expansive movie of loss, isolation, and horror; it’s an energizing and inspiring movie about the vanity of existence itself. The physical design of the film—its décor, its costumes, its settings—coalesces with the actors’ diction and gestures, as well as with the historical characters in Sassoon’s circle who populate the action, and with the memory of love and the exaltation of art. The film brings the past to life with a vividness and an immediacy that seem wrenched from [Terence] Davies’s very soul." - Richard Brody

nominees

AFTERSUN

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED

CLOSE

EO

THE FABELMANS

LINGUI, THE SACRED BONDS

LOST ILLUSIONS

TÁR

VORTEX

Director

Terence Davies, BENEDICTION 

"None of us can find redemption in other people or in other things. You have to find it yourself. At the end of his [Sassoon's] life, I think he was actually quite unfulfilled. That touched me enormously. All my films are about outsiders because I’m an outsider. I listened to everything because I’m the youngest of 10. I wasn’t aware of it at first, but as I got older I realized I’m not a participant in life. I observe it. And when you’re an outsider, you’re usually ignored." -Davies

nominees

Todd Field, TÁR

Jerzy Skolimowski, EO

Steven Spielberg, THE FABELMANS

Charlotte Wells, AFTERSUN

Actor

Paul Mescal, AFTERSUN

"I think he’s sitting in these feelings, and deeply confused and upset by why he’s not able to enjoy himself, or because everything else on paper is good. He’s with the person that he loves most in the world and he should be happier than he is, and that’s devastating." -Mescal

nominees

Colin Farrell, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

Eden Dambrine, CLOSE 

Caleb Landry Jones, NITRAM

Jack Lowden, BENEDICTION

Actress

Cate Blanchett, TÁR 

"When I read it, I was so daunted by the ask of it — not just what was necessary to play the character, but also the depth of questioning in the screenplay and my relationship to it, which kept shifting depending on which scene we were shooting or which relationship we were focused on that day. When the cast started to come together, Nina Hoss elevated it yet again. Then Hildur Guðnadóttir got involved to do the music, and I thought it doesn’t get much better than this. My job was not just to rise to the occasion of the screenplay but the quality of the people I was working alongside." -Blanchett

nominees

Henriette Confurius, THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER

Frankie Corio, AFTERSUN

Mia Goth, PEARL / X

Michelle Yeoh, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Supporting Actor

Barry Keoghan, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN 

"I'm always looking for, what's the kind of... what is it that we're trying to do that we can get across, that is the most... makes the audience relates so much. Is it being raw? Is it being real? Is it being vulnerable? What is it? I'm trying to figure that out. Is it the behaving part? I'm always trying to figure that out. That's the beauty of it as well, is I'm always trying to learn from the craft and what it is that we do. How can we take it another level up? So I'm always watching. I'm always watching." -Keoghan

nominees

Johnny Flynn, THE OUTFIT

Brendan Gleeson, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

Brian Tyree Henry, CAUSEWAY

Ke Huy Quan, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Supporting Actress

Judy Davis, NITRAM

"No one who sees Nitram will forget the way Davis’s defensive face and posture finally dissolve into a rare kind of tender bewilderment and love that has been so beaten down so many times but still somehow exists. In real life, the woman she is playing in Nitram has retreated into denial, because there comes a point for any human being when pressure becomes so intense that it can no longer be endured. In the last shot of Mum, she sits stiffly outside her home, cigarette in hand, her face unreadable in profile but likely doing minute calculations underneath." -Dan Callahan

nominees

Nina Hoss, TÁR

Dakota Johnson, CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH

Janelle Monáe, GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

Brittany Snow, X

Ensemble

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE 

"I think that we all really slipped into this family dynamic quite seamlessly, and chemistry is very real, and I think it’s just this sort of unspeakable magic that you can’t quite know why." -Stephanie Hsu

nominees

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

BENEDICTION

THE FABELMANS

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

Original Screenplay

Todd Field, TÁR 

nominees

Terence Davies, BENEDICTION

Tony Kushner & Steven Spielberg, THE FABELMANS

Martin McDonagh, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER

Adapted Screenplay

Xavier Giannoli & Jacques Fieschi, LOST ILLUSIONS 

nominees

Mathieu Amalric, HOLD ME TIGHT

Claire Denis, Léa Mysius, & Andrew Litvack, STARS AT NOON

Robert Eggers & Sjón, THE NORTHMAN

Rian Johnson, GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

International Film

EO 

nominees

CLOSE

LINGUI, THE SACRED BONDS

LOST ILLUSIONS

VORTEX

 

Documentary

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED 

nominees

ALL THAT BREATHES

DESCENDANT

A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING

SR.

Cinematography

Ben Bernhard, Riju Das, & Saumyananda Sahi, ALL THAT BREATHES 

nominees

Simone D'Arcangelo, THE TALE OF KING CRAB

Michał Dymek, EO

Ksusha Greenfield, A WOUNDED FAWN

Frédéric Noirhomme, PLAYGROUND

Film Editing

François Gédigier, HOLD ME TIGHT 

nominees

Agnieszka Glińska, EO

Blair McClendon, AFTERSUN

Brett Morgen, MOONAGE DAYDREAM

Paul Rogers, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Score

Howard Shore, CRIMES OF THE FUTURE 

nominees

Michael Giacchino, THE BATMAN

Paweł Mykietyn, EO

Tindersticks, STARS AT NOON

Dan Wool, MAD GOD

Song

“Stars At Noon,” STARS AT NOON 

nominees

“Hold My Hand,” TOP GUN: MAVERICK

“Keep Rising,” THE WOMAN KING

“Lift Me Up,” BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

“New Body Rhumba,” WHITE NOISE

Art Direction / Production Design

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO 

nominees

ELVIS

THE HOUSE

LOST ILLUSIONS

MAD GOD

Costume Design

Catherine Martin, ELVIS

nominees

Jenny Beavan, MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

Ruth E. Carter, BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

Pierre-Jean Laroque, LOST ILLUSIONS

Gersha Phillips, THE WOMAN KING

Make-Up & Hair

X 

nominees

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

NEPTUNE FROST

THE WOMAN KING

YOU WON’T BE ALONE

Sound Design

TÁR 

nominees

AFTERSUN

THE DREAM AND THE RADIO

EO

MOONAGE DAYDREAM

Visual Effects

MAD GOD 

nominees

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

THE HOUSE

NOPE

A look back at last year's winners & nominees. The Worst Person in the World won Picture, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor, and International Film. 

jeffery berg's top 10 films of 2022

2022 was a year of maximalist movies about spectacle (Elvis, Avatar: The Way of Water and Babylon) and extravagant movies about the continuing widening divide in class and social stratification (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Barbarian, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery). 

The year offered films of memory pieces, childhood traumas, composers, artists and writers, projectile vomiting, whales and donkeys. In the year when Roe vs. Wade decsion was overturned by the Supreme Court, many films about abortion happened to come out: Call Jane and Tbe Janes, Happening, and Lingui, The Sacred Bonds. Environmental concerns surfaced in The Dam, EO, All That Breathes, The House, The Territory and Wildcat. 

Even if they weren't financial successes, numerous movies about movies emerged (Babylon, The Fabelmans, Pearl, X, Last Film Show, Empire of Light). Most were set in the past, and wistful reminders of technological changes: the demise of the projectionist and the shifting away for many from the theatrical experience.  

Here goes my Top 10 films of 2022 with notables as well!

10.

LINGUI, THE SACRED BONDS

Vividly filmed and performed Chad-set drama focusing upon a mother and her daughter's pregnancy and the patriarchal society that thwarts them at every turn.

9.

VORTEX

An incredible use of split screen of an ailing elderly couple (played very well by Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun) in a drab, over-stuffed flat in France, directed with a sense of dread, horror and empathy by Gaspar Noé.

8.

CLOSE

Two 13-year old friends gradually drift apart in this heartbreaking drama. The explorations into masculinity are deftly handled by filmmaker Lukas Dhont.

7.

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED

Breathtaking documentary of Nan Goldin's  life and also her fight against the opioid crisis, zeroing in on the Sackler family. The archival footage and imagery of Goldin's astonishing work and films of Goldin's contemporaries are so beautifully presented.

6.

LOST ILLUSIONS

Balzac's vision is still biting all these year's later in this lush, brisk, well-acted and assembled adaptation. 

5.

EO

An incredible film of animal pathos, with Director Jerzy Skolimowski moving in close to the experience of a roaming donkey in the fickle and hostile world of humankind.  

4.

AFTERSUN

Like Barry Jenkins's Moonlight, Aftersun strikes with a cumulative power. A memory piece, sometimes light-to-the-touch, and sometimes agonizing. Director Charlotte Wells's work shines admirably in her first feature-length.

3.

THE FABELMANS

I was so pleasantly surprised by Spielberg's cinematic semi-memoir--it was much funnier and adroit than I expected, and the cast is wonderful. Outside of the "awards race," it's a lovely coming-of-age film that doesn't shy away from the perspectives of being an artist, privilege and gnawing self-doubt.

2.

TÁR

The most memorable film-going experience of the year at New York Film Festival, and then the movie grew in estimation after re-watches. A vigorous, full-bodied character study from Todd Field's acid tongue script and brilliant direction. 

1.

BENEDICTION

A gripping reimagining of the poet Siegfried Sassoon's life in the aftermath of World War I and into his later years. I went back to some of Terence Davies' previous work immediately after watching this stirring film (biting, funny, moving); he is one of our more unsung auterus with an incredibly rich and daring filmography. 

Other 2022 films of note in rough order of preference:

Pearl / X, Emily the Criminal, The Woman King, A Night of Knowing Nothing, Top Gun: Maverick, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, The Northman, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Descendant, The Girl and the Spider, Barbarian, The Banshees of Inisherin, Saint Omer, Nope, All That Breathes, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Causeway, Stars At Noon, Nitram, Playground, The Cathedral, Empire of Light, Hit the Road, To Leslie, Sr., Argentina, 1985, In Front of Your Face, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Wildcat, Navalny, Devotion, Hold Me Tight, The Box, Bitterbrush, The Territory, A Love Song, Bones and All, Till, The Dam, Fire of Love, Petite Maman, The Outfit, Gagarine, The Eternal Daughter, Last Film Show, The Janes, Moonage Daydream, Clara Sola, Our Father, After Yang, Great Freedom, Neptune Frost, Triangle of Sadness, Kimi, Women Talking, Smile, The Batman, Happening, Watcher, Fresh, Sharp Stick, The Innocents, The Dream and the Radio, Armageddon Time, She Said, Private Desert, Scream, Bros, A Wounded Fawn, The Quiet Girl, Avatar: The Way of Water, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Nanny, The House, Hatching, Corsage. Decision to Leave,  Deep Water, The Son, The Fallout, Mad God, Speak No Evil, We Met in Virtual Reality, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, Italian Studies, Palm Trees & Power Lines, Living, Here Before, One Fine Morning, Master, The Tale of King Crab, Last Flight Home, Saloum

-Jeffery Berg

A look back at 2021 when The Worst Person in the World was my #1.

tár

A few weeks ago, I first saw the teaser trailer for Todd Field's film Tár, curiously in front of the 3-D version of Jaws. When the thunderous music of Mahler kicked in, a group of teens in front of me started mimicking Cate Blanchett's character's exaggerated conducting with mocking glee. Weeks later, in the very back row of a crowded audience at Alice Tully Hall, in close proximity to many moments of which Tár takes place, the film was introduced by the executive director of the New York Film Festival who asked for patrons to keep their masks on during the screening. A grouchy, elderly man in front of me shouted out, "Where's yours?!" So there this film landed in this post(?)-pandemic era, at least a post(?)-lockdown era, where a (likely) mostly privileged crowd is packed in, and Cate Blanchett (who the grouchy old man attempted a cell phone pic of, zooming in from afar onto her glowing face, striking bangs and black dress) appeared onstage for a brief moment beforehand, telling us the importance of the big screen and of being here. Are movies, especially bold character studies like this one, made with such precision, becoming just as niche as orchestral performances of classical music? There are similarities between the grouchy Upper West Side type and the mocking teens at the cushy reclining-seated New Jersey AMC: both united in trying to make a splash, a scene from their seats in the dark by the light of the screen before anything really begins. At my screening, especially with the film's opening of a live, wry Adam Gopnik New Yorker staged interview of Blanchett's title character, there was a heavy air of commiseration, of immediate understanding of and maybe desire for some aspects of Lydia Tár's particular artistic successes (to be an EGOT; to have a book about oneself published by Nan A. Talese). I was in an audience in the dark watching a movie scene of an audience in the dark watching a luminary onstage.

Field's movie hones in on a specific character of a specific milieu in a "real" space. That's not unusual. Yet, unlike other movies with fictional presidents or fictional characters of considerable, renowned success, somehow, perhaps through its specificities, Lydia's story as a world-famous conductor and composer feels plausible. It doesn't deny the existence of others in the field, in fact, it constantly references them, including the controversial James Levine. The movie is clearly rooted in present day, where orchestras are able to gather once again after a length of time, where mobiles are ubiquitous and sleek cars are getting smoother and quieter. As Lydia treks between her homes in New York City and Berlin, where she is set to conduct Mahler's 5th for a major performance and recording, we see a woman of determinism, power, and considerable wealth. Even her subpar flat looks magazine-ready with monochromatic schemes and burgeoning, but excessively tidy, shelves of books. The dwellings, including the symphony hall and cozily posh restaurant spaces, become intrinsic to the story's atmosphere and Lydia's continuous sense of hushed comfort. She moves through these areas with a keen sense of ease, knowing just where to flick on or off the lights, or, in a ritualistic way, how to light candles and start her work composing on a grand piano (Hildur Guðnadóttir wrote the score: a small melody that gnaws away at Lydia throughout the movie). That's why it feels so startling when Lydia starts hearing sounds (some, in a genius stroke of design, seemed amplified on one single side of speakers that had heads a-turning)--from an irritating, mundane doorbell riff to curdling screams in a desolate park. Hearing (music) suddenly goes from pleasurable to unnerving. Soon, as evidenced in a Julliard master class scene and the icy ignoring of a desperate former lover, Lydia's cruelty and denial eventually becomes her downfall. Through Blanchett's towering turn in nearly every frame of Florian Hoffmeister elegant, heightened photography, this downfall feels acutely colossal.  

Field's script is extremely impressive, giving Blanchett rich monologues to spin on and some chilly statements and retorts. Even though it's quite a dour tale of a perfectionist unraveling, it's blended with heaps of humor. The film has an understanding of genre, from thriller to the sobering, realistic drama to cryptic melodrama. In the Julliard scene, one of the greatest-written moments in the movie, Field's Lydia bounces from Bach to Jerry Goldsmith, and runs headstrong into the briar patch of representation in the classical music world. Lydia's biting humor, genius but sense of superiority makes her troubling, wrathful take on the situation all the more ghastly. There's a rampant joylessness to Lydia--she can be sinister and vindictive in her "transactional" relationships, including with her assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant), who she strings along and emotionally manipulates, and also the first chair, Sharon (Nina Hoss, in an impactful supporting performance), of whom is also her romantic partner. But then again, Lydia also displays moments of warmth: she drives her daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic) to school as they belt out song (counter to that, Lydia has a Hand That Rocks the Cradle-inspired moment with Petra's bully); there's also her sense of adoration for music, at least music she likes: as the orchestra's final note recesses into silence, she closes her eyes and brims with a rare smile. Her work isn't all romanticized--it's about drab boards and coldly replacing people. The job of the conductor is a mixed one of vital importance and inflated importance. Often the conductor's name is bigger on the album cover than the great composers they are conducting (an album shot scene with Blanchett in the movie is particularly amusing). But it's also the Maestro / Maestra's job to meticulously enact the composer's work with their instrumentalists through listening, emotion, physicality, and rehearsals. As displayed with the cool use of end credits in the beginning, Field pays tribute to the players of his own symphony.

Like the film, Blanchett mixes a sense of naturalism with knowing flamboyance. As with DeNiro in Raging Bull, Blanchett's turn is a lightning-in-a-bottle centerpiece performance of the audience watching a centerpiece performance that still goes to the bones of the character. As Lydia's ticking metronome-bomb ticks, the film unfurls and curls back up and unfurls again. It's not about the lurid satisfaction of how will Rebecca De Mornay's menacing nanny Peyton get away with her antics in Hand That Rocks the Cradle, it's the lurid satisfaction of wanting Blanchett's Lydia to get caught, to get her comeuppance. Field is too smart though to make that comeuppance pat nor completely satisfying. He ends up landing Tár in an unexpected place, with a shivery, unnerving coda. The grouchy man squirmed and dozed in his seat as the film wound to its conclusion and I watched another audience in the dark who seemed to want to run away from reality, from themselves, and I thought of how so many are searching in front of our screens, for entertainments, in our immensely fractured world. ****

-Jeffery Berg