Consider how everything changed in the late '70s and early '80s when cable television suddenly (it seemed to most of us) put 40 or more channels at our disposal. Baby boomers grew up in an era when television meant two, three or four channels available over the airways and movies rotated slowly through theaters.
If you lived in a big city and were willing to travel outside your neighborhood, there were lots of films available. But most Americans lived in areas where there was a limited number of screens, and the films that played on them hung around a while.
In the '70s, it wasn't unusual to see the same movie a number of times during its initial theatrical run because it was what was playing. While the pull of the movies wasn't as strong as it was in the 1930s and '40s — TV was a rival, cheaper and available at the push of a button — our relationship with movies was different and deeper.
Paradoxically, our relationship with movies may have been pretextural. We went to the movies to go out — for the atmosphere and the social engagement, not necessarily because we cared all that much about the films. Movies were often excuses to convene social rituals. What was playing was of secondary importance to the experience of moviegoing.
These days it's easy to consume 10 or more movies in a week. We are firehosed with content, with nostalgia channels like TCM and the Criterion Channel as well as heavyweight streamers like Apple TV+, HBO Max, Netflix and the like.
Now, movie theaters are striking back — if box offices figures are not already back to 2019 levels, the hype expended in promotion of the biggest putative blockbusters has at least created the illusion that theatrical releases are all the way back.
We're just over halfway through 2022, a year in which many of us began to believe it might be safe to go back into the water, to fly on airplanes and walk foreign streets. We've been to the movies a few times, and part of achieving normality is to return to our pre-pandemic routines.
Around this time of year I think back over the first six months to note what films I've been impressed by, in part so I'll have notes to consult at the end of the year when all the film critic polls and awards season movies are out.
If history serves, most of these movies will be forgotten by the end of the year; it is the nature of Hollywood to save what it believes are its best shots at Oscar and Independent Spirit Award glory for the fall. But this is what I've seen so far. You might want to consider seeing these too, if you're so inclined.
As usual, I find myself with inexcusable holes in film-watching. I will catch up on movies like "Turning Red" and "The Northman"; others will inevitably slip through the cracks. But I've seen a lot so far this year, probably a few more than most of you have. These are the best, presented in no particular order.
Clayne Crawford in “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers.”
"THE INTEGRITY OF JOSEPH CHAMBERS"
Writer/director Robert Machoian re-teams with Clayne Crawford, the star of his 2019 breakthrough "The Killing of Two Lovers," for another taut and anxiety-inducing exercise in plausible horror. Tension and dread permeate this story of an American beta who, suspecting some vague but inevitable catastrophe, decides to prep himself to protect and provide for his family should the worst occur.
And so insurance salesman Joe (Crawford) resists the pleading of his wife, Tess (Jordana Brewster), and borrows a buddy's hunting rifle, F-250 and hunting lease. He climbs into a deer stand in the wilderness and is overcome by boredom. So he climbs down and walks, swinging his rifle recklessly, distracting himself with silly songs and a pitch-by-pitch re-enactment of the end of the 1991 World Series.
Set in the pre-cellphone '90s, the film is both a model of economical (in all senses) filmmaking and a full-blown scary monster movie for adults. Machoian's photographer's eye is keen, but what really stands out is the sound design by Peter Albrechtsen, an ambient old forest buzz-tick-chirp-whistle, and the edgy score by William Ryan Fritch. Alternately witty and gut-scraping, "The Integrity of Joseph Chambers" reminds me both of Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" and Jeff Nichols' "Take Shelter."
The film premiered at the recent Tribeca Festival and no theatrical release date has been set, but I would expect it to be given a fairly wide release, probably early in the fall.
"ROUNDING"
This is the second film by Alex Thompson, whose first, the delightful "Saint Frances" (2019) is a collaboration with his significant other, writer-actor Kelly O'Sullivan, a North Little Rock native who has a smaller part in this film. It's about an ambitious young insomnia-plagued medical student named James Hayman (Namir Smallwood) who, after a traumatic incident at a large Chicago hospital, seeks what he believes will be a less stressful situation at a rural hospital.
But he soon becomes borderline obsessed with Helen (Sidney Flanigan, who played the teenage abortion-seeker in 2020's "Never Rarely Sometimes Always"), a young asthma patient whose condition has proved baffling to the hospital staff. Hayman, possibly fueled by big-city hubris, believes he can get to the bottom of her problems. But as he becomes entwined with his patient, he begins losing his psychological equilibrium. To say more would risk spoiling what is a level or two deeper than your typical horror movie plot.
While the main draws here are the performances of Smallwood and Flanigan, Thompson's take on medical horror feels rooted in some solid vicarious experience. (I wrote that before I looked it up, but it appears Thompson wrote the script with his brother Christopher, a practicing physician. So score.) It feels a little like the Sundance black comedy series "This Is Going to Hurt," based on the memoir by British doctor Adam Kay.
I also saw "Rounding" at Tribeca; there's no information on when (or if) it will have a theatrical release, but it will certainly surface somewhere, if not in theaters on a streaming service, before the end of the year.
"EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE"
If I had seen this film by the Daniels (as the directing team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert style themselves), I would have joined the legions of critics who have praised it as a revolutionary blast of life-affirming nihilism.
As it is, I didn't see it until long after it had arrived in theaters and everyone had weighed in on its virtues, and find very little to criticize about it. (Maybe it's too long at two hours and 19 minutes — some of the fight scenes seem repetitive; there's always something to nitpick.)
Michelle Yeoh is splendid as the harried laundromat owner who finds herself dragooned into saving the multiverse by an alpha version of her diffident husband (Ke Huy Quan), and the script's inventiveness and robust action elevate what could have been a sub-Michel Gondry premise.
It's still in some theaters and available now on most streaming services and DVD on Tuesday.
"TOP GUN: MAVERICK"
What's remarkable about this live-action comic-book movie is that, despite being virtually a beat-for-beat reiteration of its 1986 progenitor, it's executed so well that you have to give it props. Cardboard characters and ridiculous plot points serve what's basically a two-hour Cialis commercial, but it's so movie-movie vroom-vroom that nobody really cares. Those are real jets onscreen! Cool!
In theaters everywhere.
Ashton Kutcher and B.J. Novak in “Vengeance.”
"VENGEANCE"
I was not hopeful about B.J. Novak's directorial debut; I'd planned to pop in to the press and industry screening at the Tribeca Festival for a few minutes before heading off to another film. But "Vengeance" grabbed me and held on in a way no other Blumhouse production has.
Mostly it's because of the writing — Novak, who wrote the film, is also a novelist, but I haven't read his other work — but this story of a New York-based podcaster (Novak) who travels to Texas to report on the death of a young woman with whom he'd had a brief fling makes some sharp cultural observations and subverts regional stereotypes while capturing some genuine local color (like the Texas tradition of stealing order numbers from the Whataburger).
It also features a strong cast includes Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher, Boyd Holbrook, J. Smith-Cameron and Dove Cameron.
The film is scheduled to get a wide release July 29.
"AFTER YANG"
A thoughtful, quiet science fiction weepie by the immensely interesting writer-director Kogonada, whose 2017 debut, the architectural study/character-driven indie drama "Columbus," similarly subverted genre expectations. Here, a family, led by married couple Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), worry about the family android, acquired when their daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) was born — as is the custom in this near-future — to serve as her companion.
Yang (Justin H. Min), is beginning to malfunction in minor ways that portend major trouble. But because they got him secondhand from a shop that no longer exists, his warranty is useless. While they could return him to the original manufacturer for a replacement, that would likely mean Yang would be scrapped. And they cannot countenance throwing away family.
So they do whatever they have to do to try and fix Yang. This involves hiring a black-market repairman and consulting an expert who specializes in studying "techno sapiens." Finally it's decided that they'll take drastic illegal measures — cracking Yang's core to take a look at his inner workings, the soul of this machine.
Kogonada's word is both familiar and exotic — and like the Daniels' "Everywhere," somewhat evocative of Gondry (especially in the set design). It's a strange and beautiful and remarkably sad new world.
Now streaming on Showtime.
"HAPPENING"
Based on French writer Annie Ernaux's memoir "L'evenement" ("The Event") about her experience with illegal abortion when she was a student in Rouen, Audrey Diwan's "Happening" is a timeless film that by chance has arrived at a particularly fraught time. It bears certain similarities to Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's 2007 masterpiece "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" and Eliza Hittman's 2020 film "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," but unlike those angrier films, this one is less political than personal, deeply sad but almost matter-of-fact about the ways in which the state punishes vulnerable citizens.
Now available for rent and purchase on Amazon Prime and other (but not all) streaming services.
"MEN"
A flawed but intriguing feminist horror film from Alex Garland, whose work people seem to either love or dismiss. There are strong performances by Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear here.
You might be able to find it in theaters. A24 has a distribution deal with Showtime that will likely have it surfacing there before too long.
"CAROL & JOHNNY"
There are any number of documentaries I could have cited here, but Colin Barnicle's film, which details the career and unlikely love story of two of America's most successful bank robbers, Johnny Madison Williams and his wife/getaway driver Carol Hawkins-Williams, is the one that I can't get out of my head.
Maybe that's partly because Johnny — who is such a vocal ringer for Billy Bob Thornton that I at first thought BBY was narrating the film — is a meticulous and efficient bank robber who pulled off 56 jobs during the '80s and '90s, with the help of Carol, who coolly drives him away from the scene in the trunk of a nondescript car.
Had the film simply been a deconstruction of their scientific method — the FBI agent who tracked and finally captured them, Don Glasser, also sits for extensive interviews — it would have been worthwhile. But lay over that the genuinely affecting love story between these two, and the hesitation they both feel at the possibility of getting back together after decades apart (Johnny, who had been sentenced to 92 years in prison and who'd assumed he'd die in custody, was unexpectedly granted humanitarian release during the covid-19 pandemic).
What looked to be a fascinating true-crime story turns into a deep dive into the weird and tender workings of the human heart.
I saw it at Tribeca; no distribution plans have been released.
Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com