Worst of the Year
+ an all-encompassing drag
I hate award shows but love rankings. There are plenty of 2022 movies I won’t get around to seeing until 2023, but I gotta plant my flag somewhere. Consider these the worst of the year so far. Remember: things can always get worse.
Best is incoming, but let’s have some fun first. I present, in no particular order, the worst of 2022.
Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski)
It’s too easy to slight the direct-to-stream reboots (which I’ll get to later). I’m going controversial here, taking on the big gun, the biggest gun, the record-breaking Top Gun: Maverick. The further I get from this movie, the more I hate it. Fuck this movie. Fuck this worthless, dried out, nostalgia cash grab, vapid, Navy recruitment ad of a movie. I understand people like to see planes fly through the sky—I myself have been susceptible to such frivolities—but boy, boy, boy, boy do I hate a movie that only exists to reference its predecessor. Every scene in here is a glossier version of something from the OG Top Gun, which was also a jingoistic pound of nonsense but was at least fun and unafraid of its homoeroticism. Tony Scott remains an untouched legend, this movie is way worse than even his really bad movies.
Don’t Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde)
The drama surrounding this is definitely Best of the Year which only makes this dull, bloated blowhard more disappointing. With all the visual and thematic depth of a Taylor Swift video, this is an incomprehensible muddle presumably edited by someone with their eyes closed. Styles is getting (deservedly) criticized for his bad performance, but everyone here is getting absolutely dog-walked by a script that nobody realized was incoherent.
Men (Alex Garland)
Annihilation (2018) was bad, and Garland proves that it wasn’t a one-off. Similar to Don’t Worry Darling, Men suffers from girl power disease: it takes an overly bold stance as a FEMINIST MOVIE and then reveals that the most empowering thing imaginable is a white woman being abused, making exclusively stupid decisions for 85 minutes, and then finally saying “nuh-uh, not anymore.” Black people exist as hysterical plot conveniences, men are mustache-twirling strawmen who have no desires outside of terrorizing nice white girls.
Werewolf By Night (Michael Giacchino)
Readers might remember this was a secret screening at Fantastic Fest, and my first Marvel exposure in a while. I can only paraphrase Zachary Quinto’s words about watching a movie directed by a YouTuber: “I am angry and resentful that I will never get back the time I spent to watch this movie.”
While I’m here, I want to give an enormous eye roll to directors who put in fake cue marks haphazardly through their obviously digital movies. And a second eye roll to people who call them cigarette burns. We get it, you saw Fight Club. The only losers in the IP war are those of us who have seen some of the greatest acting talents of their generations attend comic book conventions to promote a 3.5 hour (plus an after-credits sequence) recording of a green screen.
I watched a bunch of the ‘30s Universal Monster movies this year, and there is a reason they are still part of the canon. Even within the extremely stringent studio system, these movies have real artistry and techniques forgotten by mainstream Hollywood like, you know, good lighting.
Hellraiser (David Bruckner), Prey (Dan Trachtenberg), Scream (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)
Can reviewers please be serious. These are all the same movie, and that movie is terrible. I know the film industry is struggling post-Covid, but the answer cannot be that every film critic now does PR for the latest streaming slop. These uninspired rehashes of masterfully constructed B-movies are just further proof of my claim that the viewer is the true victim of the IP battles. Prey is maybe the least-worst of the three, but I will never get over those ugly action scenes, maybe some of the most hideous I’ve seen outside of a SyFy original.
See you in two weeks for the Best of the Year. In the meantime, let me know your own worst list and how angry you are about me including Top Gun in mine.
You are absolutely right about TG:Mav. 1000% a cash grab and feature length commercial for the navy (I left with an old Simpsons bit in my head YVAN EHT NIOJ).
I cringed through the first twenty for sure. I also fully bemoaned the fact that while it leveled up the jet action, it completely lost its sexiness (which probably has most to do with the nature of the international market)—the “sex scene” was reminiscent of some deep Hayes Code winks and nods and even though Tom is in great shape for his age, don’t need his bare chest playing football (sun screen shirts are all the rage!) (and football is so much worse of a choice than the sexiest sport ever invented: beach volleyball. Just go all in on recreating the magic there).
I could pick out the problems with this movie all day and I could convince myself it’s terrible except for my knowledge that I had a good time in the theater. Maybe it was just my first time back in a theater since pandemic. Maybe it was because I chose to revisit the OG just a few weeks before and was completely taken by the deep orange gradients on the lens and the extreme telephoto photography and remembered just how damn sexy movies were in the 80s. Maybe because I’m the exact market this marketing team was aiming at. But for whatever reason, I chose to let go of all that was bad and just watch it for what it was. And I had a good time.
Of course, you’re still right. Maybe my point is sometimes the worst movies can be a fun time if the jingoism doesn’t make you barf.
soooo with you on the disappointing, bloated, flatter than a flat-top, top gun. i was mad at it when the credits rolled (and in several scenes prior)!!!!!!