Best Performances of 2022

Too many good ones

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While film and it’s future are constantly being debated by people who wear suits and who make more money then god, you can sleep well at night knowing that the profession of acting is doing just fine. 2022 gave us plenty to watch and to spend nights debating over. Here’s the best Performances of 2022. Oscar Nominations come out on Tuesday!

Some of the greats of the profession put out films or have films coming out in the coming days. While not going for any Oscar nominations remember Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Rita Moreno and Lily Tomlin are coming out with “80 for Brady” in February which I’m sure will be the magnum opus of their respective careers.

2022 gave us the return to serious acting from Jennifer Lawrence. Causeway was her first serious performance since 2017’s Mother! If you were even able to follow it. Tom Cruise returned and made an ungodly amount of money and proved to everyone why he is probably our last remaining movie star. Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt each had two films come out to varying degrees of success. Florence Pugh had THREE films! Come out and somehow the most successful of them was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Robert Pattinson brooded, Austin Butler crooned, and Michelle Yeoh has officially taken her place on the “American Movie Star” rankings. Maybe the most shocking was Camila Mendes bucking Riverdale and Maya Hawke bucking Stranger Things to give fairly grounded and funny performances in Do Revenge. However these are all my honorable, honorable mentions. Now onto the real honorable mentions of the best performances of 2022.

One of my absolute favorite performances of the year was Amber Midthunder in Prey. Prey came out a strange time as I watched it in Harrison Fintz’s apartment alone a week before an August primary election when it unceremoniously dropped on Hulu. Prey is however very sneakily one of the best action films of 2022. It’s a predator prequel, but don’t worry about it I haven’t seen any of the other predator films so I can’t say you need to see them to like this one. The movie is grounded around Amber’s performance as Naru, a young Comanche warrior who’s trying to protect her tribe from a threat that is far more powerful then she is. I couldn’t get enough of Midthunder and hope we get to see her in more projects in 2023 and beyond.

I mentioned Florence Pugh before but her best performance of the year was in “The Wonder” which is actually pretty good and currently on Netflix. Margaret Qualley delivers in a so-far career best performance where she is both mysterious and sexy in Claire Denis’ “The Stars at Noon” currently on Hulu. It also stars Joe Alwyn, who to me also did his best performance in the film, but I’m still waiting to see more from him. Jennifer Lawrence’s return in Causeway was also great, but we’ll return to Causeway in a bit.

Taylor Russell is really an actress I can’t get enough of. She completely transforms 2019’s “Waves”, if you haven’t seen it, you are missing out on one of the best breakout performances of last decade. I haven’t seen her escape room films, and probably never will, but her dramatic followup in “Bones and All” was worth the wait. She somehow finds a way to take the struggles of being a Cannibal and ground them in a romance with Timothee Chalamet that is actually worth watching. If you can get past the, you know, cannibalism, Taylor Russell delivers in “Maul Me By Your Name” or “Eat Prey Love”, whichever pun you prefer. Also I can't take credit for those fake titles but I think they are very funny and you all needed to hear them. Anyways, Taylor Russell is a big yes, can’t wait to see what’s next.

Justin Min is great in After Yang, but we’ll get to After Yang in a week or so when we get too the “Haley Lu Richardson” retrospective. Haley had a quiet 2023 film wise, but she’s good in “Montana Story” and “After Yang” although her best performance can be found on television. Dakota Johnson gives a lovely supporting performance in “Cha Cha Real Smooth” as a mother of an autistic child, which really makes you question your life when you realize Dakota Johnson is old enough that she has now played mothers in back to back films. I feel like she was just in college/making 50 shades movies? Anyways maybe we’ll visit her career more later this year as well.

The last honorable mention is Daniel Kaluuya in “Nope” because my god can he carry a film. Seeing Kaluuya on horseback just felt right. His version of the silent brooding hero was possibly the best version of it you saw on screen in 2022. He’s also apart of some of the most thrilling action sequences. Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya really need to make films together forever because what a combination. Nope was the most thrilling blockbuster of 2022, and one of the most creative original screenplays that anybody could have put together. None of it works without Kaluuya.

Now.

Diego Calva, Babylon

Babyon is a gigantic movie with a lot of moving parts. It’s certainly polarized a lot of film going individuals over wether it’s a masterpiece or a complete and total disaster. I fall into the category that it is a very good movie. There’s Margot Robbie, who steals her scenes and delivers the best scene of the year in the “Hello College!” Scene. You’ll know it when you see it. However the film comes down to Diego Calva’s performance as Manny Torres.

Calva is asked too do a lot as we have to see the world of Babylon through his eyes. We follow him through the opening two sequences and observe how the world interacts around him and who our main players are. He gets connected with the Brad Pitt character, which is a layered performance by Pitt which people will come around too in due time, and any of the plot runs through Calva. I had no familiarity with Calva before Babylon and he breaks out in one of the performances of the year. The best part of his performance is how you watch him pine over Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy and the pain you feel as you watch him at the end of the film. Calva is asked to hold a tremendous movie on his back and he succeeds in a very impressive manner. I’m looking forward to seeing Calva again.

Anthony Hopkins, Armageddon Time

This one is entirely personal. Armageddon Time is another complicated film by an auteur that many people didn’t see. Yet as a Jewish kid from New York I had to pull up to the NYC Premiere of the film about a Jewish kid from New York. The most touching part of the film is Anthony Hopkins performance as the grandfather.

Hopkins acts as a sort of Jewish conscience that follows around Banks Repata’s Paul. Armageddon Time is about the cost of Jewish assimilation. What happens when Jewish Americans buck their jewishness for whiteness and to advance in a white society, leaving behind those they have more in common with. Hopkins exists as a reminder to Paul what being Jewish means. What Jewish values actually are and how we’re supposed to deal with discrimination against both Jews and others. Hopkins most powerful scenes are when he’s recalling acts of hatred against Jews or telling Paul to stand up for his black classmates. He’s also the only character who believes in Paul as an artist, which is probably the most important non-Jewish related throuhline in the film. Armageddon Time was skipped by a lot of people, but Hopkins is reason enough to revisit it.

Donkeys!

I’ll keep this quick. Seven donkeys play EO in EO. Jenny the Donkey is the lovely miniature donkey star of the Banshees of Inisherin. EO and Banshees are two of the best films of the year and both relate, to varying degrees, on how much empathy you can feel for donkey. The answer is what you’ll find in your heart after seeing these films.

Zar Amir Ebrahmi, Holy Spider

Let me level with you; I’m not an expert on Iran. That being said, holy crap is Holy Spider a good movie. It’s a “David Fincher” type thriller where a journalist, played by Zar Amir Ebrahmi, investigates a serial killer who is not being properly investigated due to the fact he’s doing the work that many believe the morality police in Iran should be engaged in. It’s a tight movie, where the only thing that makes it a difference from a 4.5 and a 5 is that near the end of the film, Zar is moved to the side where the narrative focuses on solely the Serial Killer played by Mehdi Bajestani who will really freak you out if you spend enough time with his character on screen.

I think it’s best to let you watch the movie and experience it for yourselves but let me give you some history on 2022 Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Ebrahmi. Due to a sex tape scandal, she was banned from Iranian films for ten years. Ebrahmi was however framed in the tape and studio techniques were used to frame her and yet she had to flee the country in order to avoid the Iranian morality police. She has not returned to Iran since which is why this film was actually shot in Jordan. She originally was only slated to be the casting director of the film, having left acting to avoid controversy, but took on the role herself after the lead dropped out. It’s an incredibly powerful and brave performance both on screen and knowing what she has been through off-screen. You can also see her at Sundance online in a film called Shayda which it’s pretty exciting to have such a power actress return to the international scene.

Vicky Krieps, Corsage

This is going to spoil the movie so if you really want to see Corsage, skip to number 9. Okay here we go. No one has ever made Heroin usage look as good on screen as Vicky Krieps. Vicky Krieps performance in Phantom Thread is still one of the great performances of the 2010s. So the excitement around Corsage is justified especially when you combine it with the power of her performance in Bergman Island, which was one of the first films in 2021 that was really exciting to watch. Corsage also works as a royal period piece which is absolutely without fail one of my least favorite genres of film. Marie Antoinette, A Royal Affair and Corsage so far are the only films that have effectively bucked that trend for me.

So much of Krieps’ performance in this film is based around what sort of things are in your control, just as it was in Phantom Thread. This time her character, Sissi, has varying degrees of power she can add to her definitions of control. One of the areas she exhibits the most control over is her eating, which makes this truthfully the best film that has something to do with an eating disorder in 2022. (I’m looking at you *** *****). By the time her aforementioned Heroin use begins, it is actually a radical act of Sissi taking back control and handing off duties she no longer desires and truthfully is no longer able to perform. It’s a fim about a middle-aged monarch yearning to break free, and when she does gain her freedom, life begins. Corsage relies much more on the character than it does on the period to tell the story, and by relying on Vicky Krieps they have a solid film on their hands. This one is playing in some theaters now and you should check it out, if not just for Vicky Krieps.

Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway

I’m not sure who has Apple TV plus so you may have missed Causeway when it was unceremoniously put onto there service a couple months back. The film which was written by Ottessa Moshfegh and directed by Lila Neugebauer is about a soldier named Lynsey (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who returns from Afghanistan after suffering a traumatic brain injury. During her rehablition in her hometown of New Orleans, she becomes friends with a mechanic names James played by Brian Tyree Henry. Now you might have seen him in Bullet Train as a Thomas the Train engine obsessed assassin but I promise you this performance is better.

Tyree Henry’s James has surprises for the audience at every turn and the more layers the character allows us to see, the more you realize this film is one of the great hidden gems of 2022. While he’s the supporting character in the film, one of the best parts of the character is he isn’t just someone who appears when the main character needs him. He’s apart of this lived in world as a sweet yet complicated man. Both James and Lynsey live in worlds where they are both tortured by their personal demons and how they come to terms with their past. Jennifer Lawrence does some really strong acting in this film as well, and it’s refreshing not to see her in a superhero costume or a bodysuit. I hope we get more of this kind of performance from Lawrence which reminds us why she’s one of the best at her craft.

To leave this on a quote from Tyree Henry in an interview he did with the LA Times about James “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let him go. I carried this man with me for six years. So wherever I grew, he had to grow too. He gave me such a platform to really express everything that I was feeling, all the fears, the pain, the joy. He gave me a place to hold up a mirror to myself and be like, “I got you, you’re protected, you’re not crazy for what you’re seeing or going through.” I wanted him to find a place of home, and, in essence, that is exactly what was happening with me, what was going on in my life. So I’m very happy how we concluded it for him. Very happy.”. He should be happy, and we should all be excited for what comes next for him.

Lea Seydoux

I am fairly big on Lea Seydoux as an actress. Her work has been layered going back to her first films like the rather uninteresting “The Beautiful Person” and picks up as she continued to snag high profile French films throughout the decade. She had her biggest breakout in “Blue is the Warmest Color”, which thoughts or discourse on the movie aside, she is magnificent in. She always does interest work, even in bad movies, and she always chooses interesting projects and or interesting directors to work with. You may not remember her in these movies but you can see Seydoux in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Inglorious Basterds, and Midnight in Paris, along with higher profile roles in “The Lobster”, “The French Dispatch” and the Daniel Craig Bond movies. In 2022 she delivered two great performances working within that same formula of picking interesting projects with directors who always create interesting work. The first project of the year for her was David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future”.

Seydoux plays “Caprice” the performance artist paired with Viggo Mortensen’s Saul Tenser. It’s worth noting this is also one of the most interesting Mortensen performances in a while as well. Seydoux’s Caprice is a creative mastermind who MC’’s the body based performances she does with Tenser. While Tenser is growing the body parts, Caprice runs the shows. The best part of her character is when later on in the film decides to get her body altered as well. The range Seydoux shows in this scene and the following ones reminds you why she’s one of the best actors working right now.

Even better then “Crimes of the Future” is her film “One Fine Morning”. One Fine Morning may just be both Lea Seydoux’s best work and director Mia Hansen-Løve’s best work. One Fine Morning is a film about falling in love and saying goodbye. Two of the most simple and complex emotional responses we can have. Lea Seydoux has probably never lived a life like you and I have. She was always stunningly beautiful and has been acting for longer then a decade and a half now. So why does she make every day life look so compelling and so important in “One Fine Morning”? It’s as beautiful a portrayal of life as you can get, and it combines both Seydoux and Hansen-Løve while they are at the height of their artistic powers. You can’t see this film fast enough.

Now here’s your recap of what’s playing in theaters right now. See you at the Movies!

Anything worth watching in theaters?

I liked “A Man Called Otto” (4/5). It’s the newest release worth seeing.

Here’s everything currently playing at my local theater and my rating out of 5.

Avatar: The Way of the Water (4/5)

M3Gan (Didn’t see yet)

House Party (Not planning on seeing until HBO Max)

Plane (Might see?)

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (4/5)

Whitney Houston: (I haven’t heard of anyone see this movie)

Babylon (5/5)

The Whale (2/5)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (4/5 but if you’ve waited this long I’d see something else instead)

The Fabelmans (5/5)

The Devil Conspiracy (Haha. No)

Strange World (3/5)

The Woman King (3.5/5)

Holy Spider (4.5/5)

At the local art house cinema

EO (4.5/5)

Corsage (4.5/5)