My Year in Film 2022

Somewhat to my shame, I saw only one film in a theater this past year: the Daniels’ inspired and unhinged Everything Everywhere All at Once, featuring a thrillingly multilayered star turn by the luminous Michelle Yeoh and the comeback performance of Ke Huy Quan, whose fanny-pack-of-fury kung fu battle was my favorite fight sequence since the elevator fight in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

I meant well. There were films I was eager to see on the big screen. Top Gun: Maverick. Nope. The Fabelmans. The Banshees of Inisherin. I just never made it out the door.

I adopted Marlowe in July, and just like that, my will to leave the house in the evening ebbed away. I spend 10 hours a day away from her as it is, so I require more compelling reasons to leave her when she’s the most entertaining presence in my life now.

Also, the last few years under the cloud of COVID did a number on the release window of movies as they shift to DVD/Blu-ray and home streaming. So for the time being at least, it isn’t a hardship to wait a little while to see something on my own smaller screen. (It’s a 43-inch Vizio, by the way. I still won’t watch movies on my phone, despite my friend Phil’s long-ago, pre-smartphone remark about my presumptive screening of Lawrence of Arabia on a 13-inch TV/VHS combo: “Yeah, but at that size, the composition really pops.”)

Circumstances change, and if my life ever returns to some semblance of what it was before — and here I’m thinking more about the years when I worked from home, not the year I saw 390 movies because I was unemployed — maybe my screening habits will include more frequent visits to the multiplex and the shared experience of the big screen.

Maybe in 2023. Who knows?

As always, presented here are only the feature films and shorts I viewed in their entirety in theaters (in this case, just the one), on DVD or Blu-ray, on subscription streaming services (The Criterion Channel, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and the public-library affiliate Kanopy), or on Turner Classic Movies; any other broadcast or cable presentation (edited, reformatted, with commercial interruptions, etc.) is excluded from this listing.

*   theatrical exhibition
+   repeat viewing this calendar year
¹   first time ever
^s   short film

January (20)

1	Shadow of the Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1941)
1	Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
2	Don’t Look Up (McKay, 2021) ¹
5	Drugstore Cowboy (Van Sant, 1989) ¹
7	Red River (Hawks, 1948)
7	Sneakers (Robinson, 1992)
8	Lilies of the Field (Nelson, 1963) ¹
9	Big Girls Don’t Cry … They Get Even (Silver, 1991) ¹
11	Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959)
12	The Great Escape (Sturges, 1963)
13	Lifeboat (Hitchcock, 1944)
14	Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Lewin, 1951) ¹
15	I’ll Take You There (Shelly, 1999) ¹
20	The Fountainhead (Vidor, 1949) ¹
21	Suspicion (Hitchcock, 1941)
21	Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Brooks, 1977) ¹
23	The Wrong Guy (Steinberg, 1997) ¹
25	A Very Long Engagement (Jeunet, 2004)
26	Harper (Smight, 1966)
30	His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)

February (17 + 3)

1	Romeo Is Bleeding (Medak, 1993)
3	Waitress (Shelly, 2007) ¹
5	Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952) ¹
5	Point Blank (Boorman, 1967)
5	The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999)
6	The Butcher Boy (Arbuckle, 1917) ¹ s
6	The Rough House (Arbuckle, 1917) ¹ s
12	One Week (Keaton/Cline, 1920) ¹ s
12	Big Bug (Jeunet, 2022) ¹
12	2 Days in Paris (Delpy, 2007) ¹
19	2 Days in New York (Delpy, 2012) ¹
20	Moneyball (Miller, 2011)
23	Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, 1954)
24	Nine Days (Oda, 2020) ¹
25	Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (Weide/Argott, 2021) ¹
25	Our Man in Havana (Reed, 1959) ¹
25	Free Guy (Levy, 2021) ¹
27	La Piscine (Deray, 1969) ¹
27	Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008) ¹
27	Malcolm X (Lee, 1992)

March (10)

1	Key Largo (Huston, 1948)
4	Salaam Bombay! (Nair, 1988) ¹
5	CODA (Heder, 2021) ¹
6	Killing Zoe (Avary, 1993) ¹
22	The Card Counter (Schrader, 2021) ¹
23	The One I Love (McDowell, 2014) ¹
26	Gorky Park (Apted, 1983) ¹
28	Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)
29	Mrs. Miniver (Wyler, 1942) ¹
31	Walking and Talking (Holofcener, 1996) ¹

April (25 + 1)

1	Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) ¹
2	Eyewitness (Yates, 1981)
2	Diplomatic Courier (Hathaway, 1952) ¹
5	Rumble Fish (Coppola, 1983) ¹
7	Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017)
8	Friday Foster (Marks, 1975) ¹
8	Destination Wedding (Levin, 2018)
8	Everything Everywhere All at Once (Kwan/Scheinert, 2022) * ¹
9	Kimi (Soderbergh, 2022) ¹
11	The Time Traveler’s Wife (Schwentke, 2009) ¹
12	Sleepwalk with Me (Birbiglia/Barrish, 2012) ¹
13	Love & Friendship (Stillman, 2016) ¹
14	Black Widow (Shortland, 2021) ¹
16	Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997) ¹
18	T2: Trainspotting (Boyle, 2017) ¹
20	Betsy & Irv (Noren, 2022) ¹ s
20	The Secret Life of Bees (Prince-Bythewood, 2008) ¹
22	Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
23	In the Soup (Rockwell, 1992) ¹
24	The Great Buster: A Celebration (Bogdanovich, 2018) ¹
24	Silver Streak (Hiller, 1976) ¹
28	Volver (Almodóvar, 2006) ¹
30	Personal Best (Towne, 1982) ¹
30	The Comfort of Strangers (Schrader, 1990) ¹
30	Crimson Peak (del Toro, 2015)

May (18)

1	Doc & Darryl (Apatow/Bonfiglio, 2016) ¹
1	A Taxing Woman (Itami, 1987) ¹
4	The Black Hole (Nelson, 1979)
7	Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
8	Stage Fright (Hitchcock, 1950) ¹
10	Palm Springs (Barbakow, 2020)
13	Julia (Zonca, 2008) ¹
15	Remorques (Grémillon, 1941) ¹
17	Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009) ¹
20	Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Almodóvar, 1990)
21	A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006)
22	Sign o’ the Times (Prince, 1987) ¹
22	SubUrbia (Linklater, 1997) ¹
22	Me and Orson Welles (Linklater, 2009) ¹
26	25th Hour (Lee, 2002)
27	Something Wild (Demme, 1986)
28	Parallel Mothers (Almodóvar, 2021) ¹
29	Emergency (Williams, 2022) ¹

June (9)

3	Five Graves to Cairo (Wilder, 1943) ¹
4	A Foreign Affair (Wilder, 1948)
4	Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
5	Into the Night (Landis, 1985)
7	The Batman (Reeves, 2022) ¹
11	Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996) ¹
18	All About My Mother (Almodóvar, 1999)
25	Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodóvar, 1988) ¹
26	Mississippi Masala (Nair, 1992)

July (20 + 1)

1	Pain and Glory (Almodóvar, 2019) ¹
4	Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
6	Victor/Victoria (Edwards, 1982) ¹
9	The Petrified Forest (Mayo, 1936) ¹
9	Crazed Fruit (Nakahira, 1956) ¹
13	Foul Play (Higgins, 1978)
14	Murphy’s Romance (Ritt, 1985) ¹
15	Days of Being Wild (Wong, 1990)
15	Mo’ Better Blues (Lee, 1990)
16	Fallen Angels (Wong, 1995) ¹
19	The Bob’s Burgers Movie (Bouchard/Derriman, 2022) ¹
24	Eros: The Hand (Wong, 2004) ¹ s
24	My Blueberry Nights (Wong, 2008) ¹
24	Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Hyde, 2022) ¹
27	Clockers (Lee, 1995)
29	The Big Steal (Siegel, 1949) ¹
29	Zero Effect (Kasdan, 1998)
29	While the City Sleeps (Lang, 1956) ¹
31	Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)
31	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Raimi, 2022) ¹

August (16)

2	Moneyball (Miller, 2011) +
3	I Love You Again (Van Dyke, 1940) ¹
6	Drive My Car (Hamaguchi, 2021) ¹
6	Prey (Trachtenberg, 2022) ¹
7	Arabesque (Donen, 1966) ¹
7	The Gray Man (Russo/Russo, 2022) ¹
9	Spider-Man: No Way Home (Watts, 2021) ¹
13	The Legend of 1900 (Tornatore, 1998) ¹
14	Blue Collar (Schrader, 1978) ¹
20	The Skin I Live In (Almodóvar, 2011) ¹
20	The Lost Weekend (Wilder, 1945)
21	The Nice Guys (Black, 2016)
21	Eros (Wong/Soderbergh/Antonioni, 2004) ¹
28	North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)
30	Licorice Pizza (Anderson, 2021) ¹
31	Bad Education (Almodóvar, 2004) ¹

September (14)

3	Whipsaw (Wood, 1935) ¹
4	Hud (Ritt, 1963) ¹
4	Michael Clayton (Gilroy, 2007)
4	Duplicity (Gilroy, 2009)
5	The Beatles: Get Back – Part 3: Days 17-22 (Jackson/Lindsay-Hogg, 2021) ¹
5	Little Miss Marker (Bernstein, 1980) ¹
9	Malèna (Tornatore, 2000)
10	The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
11	Sleeping Beauty (Leigh, 2011) ¹
11	A Room with a View (Ivory, 1985) ¹
17	Confess, Fletch (Mottola, 2022) ¹
18	Running on Empty (Lumet, 1988) ¹
21	Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg, 2022) ¹
22	Cat People (Schrader, 1982) ¹

October (15)

5	Beirut (Anderson, 2018) ¹
5	Schizopolis (Soderbergh, 1996) ¹
6	Lorenzo’s Oil (Miller, 1992) ¹
8	The Keep (Mann, 1983) ¹
9	Prince of Darkness (Carpenter, 1987)
11	Law of Desire (Almodóvar, 1987) ¹
16	The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
19	The Hidden (Sholder, 1987)
22	The Invisible Man (Whale, 1933)
23	A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour, 2014) ¹
24	Talk to Her (Almodóvar, 2002)
30	Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)
30	Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981) ¹
31	The Fog (Carpenter, 1980) ¹
31	Starman (Carpenter, 1984) ¹

November (7)

4	Wolfen (Wadleigh, 1981)
4	The Wolf Man (Waggner, 1941) ¹
6	Enola Holmes 2 (Bradbeer, 2022) ¹
12	Ghost Story (Irvin, 1981)
17	Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
21	Knockaround Guys (Koppelman/Levien, 2001) ¹
21	20 Feet from Stardom (Neville, 2013) ¹

December (20)

2	Medicine for Melancholy (Jenkins, 2008) ¹
3	Adventures in Babysitting (Columbus, 1987)
4	Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) ¹
10	Pinocchio (del Toro, 2022) ¹
12	Spectre (Mendes, 2015) ¹
13	No Time to Die (Fukunaga, 2021) ¹
15	Thor: Love & Thunder (Waititi, 2022) ¹
16	Mad Max: Fury Road – Black & Chrome Edition (Miller, 2015)
16	The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
17	Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977) ¹
18	Bullet Train (Leitch, 2022) ¹
21	C’mon C’mon (Mills, 2021) ¹
23	Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Johnson, 2022) ¹
23	Athena (Gavras, 2022) ¹
23	The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Gilliam, 1988) ¹
26	You Never Can Tell (Breslow, 1951) ¹
28	Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
30	White Noise (Baumbach, 2022) ¹
30	Both Sides of the Blade (Denis, 2022) ¹
31	Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962) +

2022 by the Numbers

• 191 feature films
• 5 shorts
• 129 first-time viewings
• 1 film in theaters
• 0 filmmaker commentaries
• 2 repeat viewings this calendar year