1. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is the cinematic equivalent of getting slapped in the face with a large dildo (literally, as it turns out). However exhausted you are by what Hollywood churns out, it will leave you gobsmacked, overjoyed, and aching for more films as inspired.
2. HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK by Sequoia Nagamatsu (@SequoiaN)
HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK is a haunting collection of short stories that begin to weave themselves together until a mosaic novel reveals itself. That happens right around the same time you also realize you’re reading a heartbreaking, beautiful inspiring book about fighting to hold on to the beautiful in the face of terrible tragedy.
3. “THE BOYS” Season 3
“THE BOYS” continued to deliver this year, proving yet again why it’s the best television series ever created about America. Because you really cannot talk about what America is without super-hero sex parties, obviously. You can read my thoughts on it here:
4. MOBY DICKENS by Blak Douglas
Australia’s Archibald Prize winner for 2022. Blak Douglas’s portrait of artist Karla Dickens — the first time a portrait of an Aboriginal woman has been awarded the prize — depicts the Biblical flooding that laid waste to Lismore this year…but is also a canny metaphor for the artist’s journey in the art world.
5. TOP GUN: MAVERICK
Easily the most satisfying blockbuster experience of 2022…at least so far. It’s a cinematic miracle in many ways, as far as I’m concerned. You can read my thoughts on the challenges the filmmakers faced and why I think their solutions provide a MasterClass for storytellers here.
6. “THE BEATLES: GET BACK”
In a year packed with phenomenal docuseries, Peter Jackson’s “THE BEATLES: GET BACK” tops them all by allowing Beatles fans — and anyone else interested in the artistic process — into the studio with the Fab Four for the first time. If you’ve ever cracked jokes about how Yoko broke up the band, you’re in for a surprise.
7. THE LEBS by Michael Mohammed Ahmad
I’ve read many books this year, many of which will stay with me for the rest of my life, but few will like Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s THE LEBS. It’s brutally confrontational, but what it reveals about how the traditional artistic gatekeepers in the West interact with non-white artists to warp these artists’ identities and their communities’ place in cultural and even political conversations must be experienced.
8. “RUSSIAN DOLL” Season 2
A stunning, challenging, confronting series about international trauma. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished the final episode. You can read my thoughts on it here:
https://www.colehaddon.com/post/russian-doll-season-2-a-moving-study-of-intergenerational-trauma
9. THE SOUVENIR PART II
THE SOUVENIR polarises many (I loved it). But its sequel, THE SOUVENIR PART II, strikes me as anything but. This story of an emerging filmmaker trying to confront and transform her grief over a recent loss into an innovative and meta film is deeply moving.
10. WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD by Benjamín Labatut
A stunning, sprawling novel — really, a collection of short stories weaving a singular thematic narrative — about scientific discovery and the fuzzy border that exists between genius and ultimate madness.
11. “ANDOR” Season 1
There are so many great TV series this year, but “ANDOR” may be the best of them. It tells a grand story with methodical patience, transforming STAR WARS from fantasy to pure science-fiction. You can read my thoughts about it here:
12. TOY by David Bowie
A posthumously released David Bowie album, most of which are re-recordings of songs released between 1964 and 1971. For the most part, I consider them curiosities, though a handful have made it into my regular rotation after multiple listenings. I’ll always be grateful for more Bowie in my life.
13. “THE LAST MOVIE STARS”
This absolutely awe-inspiring documentary from Ethan Hawke, about the marriage of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, dissects celebrity and marriage equally. What a feat. Hawke is an international treasure, as far as I’m concerned.
14. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion
Both my parents died in a five-year window, and I wallowed in grief as a result for quite some time. Didion’s book, about the sudden loss of her husband and the surreal, nightmarish year it produced, is also about 20th Century society’s move away from mourning culture to “getting over it” has damaged how we all experience death. You can read more of my thoughts about it here:
Joan Didion’s THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING shook me. I’ve struggled with persistent grief for several years after a series of deaths in my family, but reading her account of the sudden death of her husband and its aftermath made clear to me that I had failed to properly mourn myself, that 20th Century society’s move away from mourning culture to "getting over it" has damaged how we all experience death. There was once an intimacy and art to mourning, but now we are encouraged to "be strong" and
15. MAGIC MIKE XXL
It’s difficult to wrap your brain around how one of the most feminist films in recent memory is about male strippers, but it’s true. MAGIC MIKE XXL is also just pure joy. Try not to grin at this dance sequence, in which Joe Manganiello puts his all into making an unhappy gas station clerk smile.
16. PIG
This haunting tale of grief, spiritual recovery, and artistic greatness interrupted will surprise and, ultimately, level you. Nicholas Cage delivers what I would argue is his greatest performance.
17. “STATION ELEVEN”
“STATION ELEVEN” is a ten-episode meditation on human civilization and whether it deserves to continue in any form familiar to us today. Created by Patrick Somerville, based on Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, I found it to be a MasterClass not just in television storytelling, but in humanity.
18. RRR
This Tollywood production is some of the most fun I had watching a film this year, which is saying a lot given that films like TOP GUN: MAVERICK and EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE also came out this year. Behold “Naatu Naatu”, one of RRR’s many brilliant music-driven sequences, which has been rewatched over and over in my house by me and my kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=4_eEgJhsBMo&feature=emb_title
19. SCARY MONSTERS by Michelle de Kretser
SCARY MONSTERS tells a binary tale of two immigrants, their stories playfully, hauntingly interacting with the help of the reader’s own devices. A Miles Franklin award winner, it strikes me as essential 21st Century Australian fiction.
20. “SEVERANCE” Season 1
An eerie, unsettling, increasingly thrilling series I would call “workplace horror”. It’s difficult to talk about it without giving away its secrets, but it’s about identity, grief, and the existential destructiveness of capitalism.
I write about #popculture, primarily #cinema and #screenwriting/#storytelling, at Medium. If you want to hear more from me, check me out there and subscribe.
Cole Haddon
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