As we close our 21st Oscar Viewing Project (links to all past contests at the bottom of this page), we're going to close with our My Oscar Ballot, where I pick all of the nominees that I would've included had I been running the show with Oscar. As I always add as a proviso, while I've seen every single one of the Oscar nominees in these categories, I did not see every film made in 2022. If one of your favorite films is missing, ask in the comments before you call me out, as I might just have let it slip by (I do make a point of seeing as many major films of the year as possible, though, so I feel confident with saying these are the best). With that said, let's dive into my choices for 2022!
Aftersun
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Bob's Burgers Movie
Decision to Leave
The Fabelmans
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Nope
Tar
Women Talking
Gold: One of the best films in recent memory to not get any nominations from the Academy in any category, Decision to Leave is hopefully going to be one of those movies that cinephiles discuss in hushed terms even if it didn't survive the awards onslaught. Grand lead performances, and a story that ebbs between reality and postulation, it's a neo-noir that's impossible to see through.
Silver: Banshees is what happens when everything goes right in a movie. The acting, the writing, the plotting...everything here is exactly where it needs to be. The film itself gives us insights into its characters through their actions (particularly their mistakes) without ever feeling like they're doing something out-of-character to aid the plot. In a comedy, that's a hard trick to pull off, and Banshees nails it.
Bronze: James Cameron's return-to-the-movies was worth the 14 year wait, giving us one of the most visually-arresting motion pictures ever made. The plot and acting are good (better, one could argue, than what he brought with the original Avatar), but as a reminder, film is a visual medium, and oh is this a movie that knows how to make every corner of each frame look like another world.
James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water)
Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave)
Todd Field (Tar)
Jordan Peele (Nope)
Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans)
Gold: Sometimes, directors make films late in their careers that are confused for being a "career achievement" award run and instead it's just a truly brilliant picture made by a senior citizen. That was the case with Steven Spielberg's personal ode to cinema in The Fabelmans, a testament to his creative mind that this feels fresh even if you've seen every one of his other movies.
Silver: I have never felt about Park Chan-wook the way I felt during Decision to Leave. Leaving behind some of the excess that has plagued a few of his past endeavors (just my opinion), he gives us a twisted tale in Decision to Leave, one that satisfies and leaves you guessing even as the last credits roll.
Bronze: James Cameron is one of those great directors like David Lean or Cecil B. DeMille that know what audiences want most from a big-screen adventure is spectacle, and he gives us that. I cannot imagine what it's like to work in a sea of green screens and largely have to assume you know what's happening as you go along, but he does it better than any director in the industry.
Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Park Hae-Il (Decision to Leave)
Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans)
Paul Mescal (Aftersun)
Gold: Colin Farrell has been one of the unsung heroes of the film industry for decades (at least as unsung as a movie star can be), so it's great that he finally got his Oscar nomination for Banshees, and even better that it's for a rich, deeply-felt (and hilarious) show of a man whose world is upended.
Silver: Very close behind is Paul Mescal (if I allowed myself ties, I'd consider it here). His work as a young father who seems to regret on some level having a daughter so young becomes much more complicated as we go, and we add in the aspects of flashbacks to his performance, working both as a real person & a memory. Tricky stuff, but he's up to the task.
Bronze: Park Hae-Il has to play his detective from the start as a man who doesn't want the world to see him, but as we watch the movie, we begin to realize what is real and what is hidden about him, and come to know he's been showing aspects of himself from the start. In a similar way to Mescal, this is a tricky balancing act (it's a performance that needs to play differently through a second watch), but it works.
Cate Blanchett (Tar)
Olivia Colman (Empire of Light)
Tang Wei (Decision to Leave)
Michelle Williams (The Fabelmans)
Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
Gold: Cate Blanchett gives the best performance of 2022 as Lydia Tar, a woman that is not just at a crossroads, but someone who doesn't understand why she could possibly be at a crossroads. I've said this before, but the embodiment of someone encountering the Peter Principle has rarely been done in such a way on the big screen, and man is Blanchett ready.
Silver: Tang Wei wandered through the acting wilderness after basically being blacklisted for her work in Lust, Caution (which if you click 2007 at the bottom of this article, you'll find she also medaled for). So I'm glad to see that those years did not dull her talent, fully on-display as this coquettish femme fatale.
Bronze: Michelle Yeoh is at her best in EEAAO when she's inhabiting the prickly side of her character. This is a woman who knows she had dreams beyond what she's living, and finds that expressing them, even if it hurts those around her, is worth the damage...that her full-circle moment never abandons those characteristics is a prime reason the film became so cherished.
Paul Dano (The Fabelmans)
Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Brad Pitt (Babylon)
Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
Steven Yeun (Nope)
Gold: Heartbreak feels good in a place like Barry Keoghan. Playing his Dominic at first as a randy buffoon, we as the audience dismiss him, and then when he shows that he is, in fact, a person, we realize alongside Kerry Condon how devastating this must be, to live your life as someone else's joke. In a movie where we learn the value of friendship, no one embodies it quite as well as Keoghan.
Silver: Brad Pitt will continue to act, but one wonders if he enters a new chapter in his career after Babylon, a movie that showed everything special about him as a movie star (there's that charismatic light...the camera is fickle, but it knows what it likes), while also embodying the ephemeral qualities of being a star. The spotlight only lasts but a flicker, and Pitt gets to play with that concept in Babylon.
Bronze: Few comebacks are as satisfying as what Ke Huy Quan brings to EEAAO. Decades after he charmed audiences in The Goonies & Temple of Doom, he brings a gentle steadiness to his Waymond, playing a man who knows that he was not his wife's dream...but she was his, and has spent much of his life trying to show her how much he appreciated that.
Jessie Buckley (Women Talking)
Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin)
Claire Foy (Women Talking)
Kate Hudson (Glass Onion)
Janelle Monae (Glass Onion)
Gold: In what I believe is a first, we're going to give a third acting gold medal to the same movie. But when you have a performance as rich as Kerry Condon's, you kind of need to break the rules. Condon is the rational one in this cast, but she's also the one character who knows that there is, in fact, value in taking a jump and doing what's best for you rather than protecting the rest. In a film about sacrifice, she's the one who shows it.
Silver: Janelle Monae's part is tricky in Glass Onion (and if you're going to call me out on category fraud, I wouldn't totally argue with you that this might be a little bit of it even if it's borderline enough that I'm not going to change). Without giving away too much about the film, she has to play it twice, but like some of the other actors here, she has to play it the same way from the beginning, even if the audience will only understand some of her decisions later. Continually the best singer-actor in movies today.
Bronze: Claire Foy had been in one of those positions where you give such a dynamic performance in a TV show, that you struggle to know if your talent will ever be used so well again. With Women Talking, we get an answer, and boy is it a clear one. I love the way that her character has practiced these speeches, even if they come off as off-the-cuff or impetuous. In an acting year that could best be described as "characters keeping secrets," she shows just how powerful that can be as the movie progresses, and she has to make her own difficult choices.
The Bob's Burgers Movie
Glass Onion
Living
The Menu
Women Talking
Gold: Sarah Polley's marvelous script for Women Talking won the Oscar in what some considered to be a surprise, but anyone who saw the film would struggle not to hand her every statue you can find. Scripts like this shouldn't work in film-they read like a play, and usually lens like one, but the script is so rich & organic, you understand the growing stakes and the pain of these women, and you know it was destined for a big screen.
Silver: Rian Johnson's filmography isn't perfect (this isn't a Last Jedi slam-it's a Looper slam), but I can say wholeheartedly I've never loved his writing more than in Glass Onion. The script is hilarious, starting out with a confident introduction of all of the characters, and then spending much of the film spoofing Elon Musk (who proves by the day how right they are in casting Edward Norton as a lucky idiot), while also giving us a game mystery.
Bronze: The single funniest television show from the past ten years, going to the big-screen felt like a risk for Bob's Burgers. But by giving us heart (with Bob & Louise) alongside great musical numbers, a fun mystery, and a host of jokes, this stands alongside The Simpsons and South Park as iconic animated series that hit a home run on the big screen.
Aftersun
The Banshees of Inisherin
Decision to Leave
The Fabelmans
Tar
Gold: If you've been on this blog for longer than five minutes, you'll know that I love nothing more than a well-constructed film noir. With a tense mystery, one that shows a woman who doesn't entirely know where she's going (and sometimes feels like she's making it up as she goes along) and a detective solving a complicated case while falling in love, you've got a neo-noir classic in Decision to Leave's script.
Silver: Conversation is core to what happens in Martin McDonagh's Banshees of Inisherin. Most of the action, in fact, happens from conversations, some planned, some (within the story) blurted. This is a risky endeavor since it means that expositional dialogue is going to become a problem, but this movie never commits that error. The dialogue flows naturally, telling the story without feeling like it's narration.
Bronze: Todd Field's script in Tar is the encapsulation of someone with genuine talent, but someone whose greatest gift is assuredly overconfident bullshit. Field knows that in an era of people misreading female protagonists as "girlboss" (look at the people who still insist that Shiv Roy is a hero), the audience will be suckered into rooting for Lydia, which makes the way that he treats her downfall in his script even smarter.
The Bob's Burgers Movie
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Gold: It started with a decided advantage as one of my all-time favorite TV shows. But Bob's Burgers also stands apart from its series, giving us more depth about the titular character (and his relationship with his until-now unseen mother), as well as giving us some great musical numbers & a silly mystery to accompany it.
Silver: It happens sometimes that a movie is so much better than the rest of its franchise you wonder how it came to exist. That was the case with the lush, miraculous beauty of Puss in Boots, a richly-animated, smart story about death that featured strong vocal work from Antonio Banderas, Florence Pugh, & John Mulaney.
Bronze: I debated quite long between Marcel and Strange World (the best movie I didn't nominate in any category, and a film that deserved far better than the "box office disaster" label it ended up with). But I think Marcel is breaking different ground, and threads a tricky needle between knowing & wondering in its title character that other films would've made too pretentious.
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Fabelmans
Nope
The Northman
Top Gun: Maverick
Gold: Wonderfully folding in the score (even with a new composer), the team of Avatar: The Way of Water give us a freeing dialogue. There's no doubt throughout the movie that you are hearing this in real-time despite the actors themselves being part of motion-capture, and you have to mix an particularly complicated dialogue track in along with a unique approach to movies.
Silver: All of Jordan Peele's movies sound marvelous, but with Nope, you get something on a whole different level. The score is sublime, but it's the attention to detail as the movie continues that really makes this solid. Think of the way noise is used, even songs in the film, to underscore more tension or to divert from the omnipresent danger (or the silence employed in the monkey attack).
Bronze: Top Gun: Maverick is the movie of this bunch where it's almost impossible to tell what is mixing and what is editing (perhaps Oscar was onto something keeping them combined), but it all sounds terrific. The way that we get real-time engine roars along with the actors in the film is thrilling & proof of how few things compare to a well-constructed action film.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Nope
The Northman
RRR
Top Gun: Maverick
Gold: Top Gun: Maverick comes out on top for this one, because I just can't fathom how hard this was. Every plane ride, many of which are being edited and added to, is so realistic that you'd believe that there were no special effects. The use of actual jet packs to create the sound in the movie adds to the authenticity, and gives us one last ride with Maverick.
Silver: The world of Avatar is so unique, with every angle of the screen gleaning your focus, that you'd be forgiven for taking the sound for granted. But the whales, the creatures of this film, and the way that we film so much outdoors without it feeling like we're suddenly inside (or there's an omnipresent racket) enhance, not decline, the illusion of the movie.
Bronze: Sometimes grotesque (the other realm scene where you can almost hear the blood rushing is intense), but always realistic & adding to the film's otherworldly nature, The Northman's sound team created a sound that felt centuries in the making.
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Fabelmans
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Living
Nope
Gold: Nope gives us a total homage to the western as we're watching, with Michael Abels channeling vocals, whistling, and a strumming guitar in a way that you could easily put this music in the middle of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western without feeling out-of-place. This keeps the juxtaposition between western & horror all the stronger.
Silver: Carter Burwell brings a light-hearted softness to Banshees of Inisherin, underlining how we don't entirely know whose story this is (or where it will end), while also playing into the comedy that is running throughout the picture itself. I particularly loved the reliance of marimba on the film, like we're walking along on a journey.
Bronze: John Williams is so far into his career, every score feels like an event, because it might be the last film he makes (he's said he wants more, but has nothing on-deck after Dial of Destiny). His work in Fabelmans is filled with a melancholic hopefulness, wistfully recalling something for the audience even as they experience the film for the first time.
"La Despadida," Bullet Train
"Lift Me Up," Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
"Naatu Naatu," RRR
"Nothing is Lost," Avatar: The Way of Water
"Sunny Side Up Summer," The Bob's Burgers Movie
Gold: I have spent over a decade worshiping the magic that is Bob's Burgers, and you can bet that when the film opens with "Sunny Side Up Summer," giving us a gleeful jolt of magic to go along with this charming movie that I was already mentally memorizing every lyric.
Silver: It matches literally nothing else in the movie, but you will honestly not care as you watch "Naatu Naatu" get tapped out in RRR. The ridiculous over-the-top nature of the number, along with Ram Charan giving us all a master class in sexiness, makes this the highlight of a play-to-the-rafters film.
Bronze: Rihanna was given the difficult job in Black Panther to try and capture the spirit of not just the film in front of her, but the missed opportunity that Marvel was clearly feeling in the wake of Chadwick Boseman's untimely demise. She does that well, going subtler and softer over the end credits, giving us a lament that still has hope engrained within its melody.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
Glass Onion
The Northman
White Noise
Gold: I'm going with an unusual choice here, but I am someone who thinks animated works deserve their due. The watery beach world brought to life in Avatar: The Way of Water deserves its place in the sun (literally and figuratively) and is beautiful in how it enhances the loveliness of the original film.
Silver: We'll go close behind with the gargantuan, opulent sets of Babylon. I know there's a bit of a debate right now in Hollywood over spending too much money on movies, but I'd much rather get something like this, with meticulous recreations of sound stages from the classic era, than a CGI mess if we're spending $100 million on a picture.
Bronze: Finishing this off is The Northman. Realism isn't always what I'm looking for in a movie, but when it's done this well it's hard to argue with the results. The film's sets look like they are centuries old, with the rowboats and houses steeped in mud, dust, and ash to give a truthful glow.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Decision to Leave
Empire of Light
The Fabelmans
Nope
Gold: Hoyte von Hoytema is on another level with Nope. At once lending homage to The Searchers, The Misfits, and Once Upon a Time in the West, he also has the tricky task of making the rare western horror, and does so by playing with wide expanses, epic action scenes, and never letting the effects feel cheesy, but instead terrifying.
Silver: There's been a long debate about whether or not effects-heavy films should be eligible for this category, but while I don't think it's the same art-form, I do think that in a world where most action films look like garbage, CGI done-well has to be acknowledged. The lighting and beauty of Avatar makes every frame feel deliberate.
Bronze: There were a lot of "tributes to cinema" in 2022 (I, for one, can't get enough and will happily take more even if box office receipts don't bear them out). In terms of capturing the look of movies, though, no film did that quite like The Fabelmans, where we get actual scenes of Gabriel LaBelle literally processing the trauma of his childhood through cinema. Genius (and gorgeous).
Babylon
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Glass Onion
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
The Northman
Gold: The way that Jenny Beavan recreates Christian Dior in Mrs. Harris is so inventive. Instead of trying to modernize it, she uses the elegant designs of one of the great masters of the 20th Century standout, giving us something timeless (and worth spending your pension check on).
Silver: Babylon, on the other hand, does well with going anachronistic, giving us looks that are inspired by the 1920's but with a 2020's flare (think of Margot Robbie's crimson, waist-cut gown). The film's playfulness with time leans in heavily on the "movies last forever" front.
Bronze: Every costume in The Northman adds a level of authenticity you rarely find in modern pictures. Look at the designs, which can be quite beautiful (the fur-lined robes of Nicole Kidman are a highlight), and then add in blood, sweat, and mud stains to much of the remaining battle wear. You never have any doubt that these characters live in these costumes.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Decision to Leave
EO
Nope
The Northman
Gold: Avatar: The Way of Water accomplishes the impossible. It makes a three-hour movie feel like it lasts for 70 minutes, giving us a raring adventure over the end of the film, but also has the decency to let us sit with the beautiful world that James Cameron has created in the middle third. You're going to give us art direction that costs $300+ million...make sure the audience sees it.
Silver: Nope is about as perfectly-structured as horror gets. The film feels surgical in the way that it pops in hints, clues, and eventually the horrible reveal of our monster...and then gives us a raring, Shane-inspired final act.
Bronze: The Northman gets much of its power from the way that it unfolds, a horrible family tale, amidst the bloody, unearthly world of Vikings that it wields on the audience. Think of the way that it handles some extended cuts, especially on the longboat. True devotion to the craft.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Northman
Gold: The incredible realism on-display in The Northman is astounding. The detailing here is what sets it apart. It's not just the dirt & blood & guts that happen, but also the period work, with the hair being without conditioner and the ways they exemplify beauty for a gorgeous 21st Century cast from a millennium ago.
Silver: Babylon is just on another level when it comes to its makeup & hairstyling. I love the gaudiness of this, the way that Margot Robbie's windswept mane changes based on her career health (but always feeling authentic) and the search-for-youth hipness of what Jean Smart is sporting in terms of dark eyeliner & a trendy hairdo.
Bronze: You'd be forgiven for starting with the hot dog fingers. After all Jamie Lee Curtis & Michelle Yeoh having the most ridiculous hot dog fingers in Everything Everywhere All at Once surely is a defining look of the film, but for me, it's the way that the characters (Michelle Yeoh & Stephanie Hsu) seem to have similar beats in their makeup & hair in every multiverse, while still playing with an increasingly mirrored image. Also, the donut hair bun rocks.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Nope
The Northman
Top Gun: Maverick
Gold: Honestly, if you did top special effects of the past decade, it'd still be Avatar: The Way of Water at the Gold. Gorgeous, lifelike animation, as if we are actually on Pandora. Look at the way he draws water pouring over rocks or the whale blinking its eye...every detail is captivating (and putting all other CGI movies to shame).
Silver: In a different year I'd have been very happy to give this statue to Top Gun: Maverick. The return of practical effects (though aided by CGI, let's be clear) we get a spellbinding return of the glory days of action movies, when you saw stunt-work and aerial acrobatics zooming across the blank movie theater canvas.
Bronze: The work in Nope is, like Top Gun and Avatar, story-building. The effects here are less intense, and in some cases feel like something pulled out of the 1950's (the use of the digesting alien is terrifying but also insanely well-crafted). Best of all is the way that it merges onscreen with our night sky cinematography.
Also in 2022: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature, Sound, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2022
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