The Stage is Set
The Big Game is upon us.
On one side, you have a relatively young quarterback who put the "hurt" on the New York Giants in the Divisional Round of the NFC playoffs. He out gunned and outmanned the opponent, breaking out to a 28-0 lead by the half, throwing two touchdown passes of his own, ultimately dispatching them 38-7 en route to the NFC Championship. In that game, they managed to untie the San Francisco 49ers, and show the same confidence for Philadelphia that Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence showed on the dance floor at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in the movie Silver Linings Playbook.
On the other side, we have the midwest team. with the likable quarterback whom nonetheless has been hampered by a high ankle sprain. This resulted in the team largely resorting to their running back and kicker to carry the game. Normally, the quarterback would need several weeks to recover from this injury, and the most recent game was anything but certain. But his kicker managed to send a missile from near the 45 yard line, after his team enjoyed a fifteen yard advantage on a penalty for an off-side shove delivered against Cincinnati, between the goalpost, very close to the end of regulation, to win the AFC Championship and send a State Farm Commercial and Hy Vee commercial star to the Superbowl.
It's that time of year again. Everything is on the table. Everyone at the Big Dance has an equal chance. There may be favorites, but the team is only as good as its last film... I mean game. And the audience... I mean fans will be the judge of that. Well, also, the critics, I mean sports writers, will have the say over whether the cast, I mean team, did well enough.
I am very sleep deprived. It is that time of year again.
I was talking about the Academy Awards, right?
My # 1 movie of 2022 is Top Gun: Maverick. Tom Cruise plays the role of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. Years after the events of the first movie, we see Tom Cruise as Pete Maverick trying to break Mach 10, even though his research program has been terminated. Pete has always ben the well, maverick type, more ready to ask for forgiveness than permission. He risks property of the U.S. Navy, taking the plane to speeds never before reached, and yet, as the test pilot who successfully fought down MiGs while covering for Iceman, everyone knows he's the best. It'd be flippant to court-martial him and dismiss him from active duty. So of course, Iceman (Val Kilmer), now an admiral, opts to hire Mitchell to instruct a new generation of Top Gun pilots. And he does. One of them has the call-sign Rooster. Played by Miles Teller, and sporting a mustache that combines with his face to make more than a passing resemblance to Goose. He's Goose's son. And it's uncanny how in his moxie, his self-assurance, but his basic sense of duty, decency, and affability, Miles Teller evokes Anthony Edwards. His willingness to take part along with the rest of the team in a dangerous mission to blow up a hidden underground nuclear reactor which is deep behind enemy territory in a hostile nation, first off, couldn't be more prescient for the United States in 2022, without putting a name on the country, concerns Mitchell. He'd made a promise to Rooster's mother not to let him follow in his father's footsteps. She had pretty much begged him on hands and knees to not allow her boy to face the very certain risk that costed his father, her husband, his life. And there's the second-most central conflict of Top Gun: Maverick. It was my favorite film of 2022. It appears that it was nominated for Six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted Screenplay (continuing from the first movie's script), and Best Original Song, "Hold My Hand," Lady Gaga featuring BloodPop.
My #2 movie of 2022 is The Fabelmans. Steven Spielberg directs a largely autobiographical story. The names are changed to protect the innocent. Gabriel LaBelle plays the role of Sammy Fabelman. Much as this story can be watched as a work of fiction, it is clear by the expressions he makes, his facial features, height, and even the cadences in his voice and elocution, we are watching a young Spielberg. And it's clear that the real Spielberg approves of the representation of his past, he's directing it. And he co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Kushner. So it is as accurate of a Spielberg biopic as we can ever expect to get. Michelle Williams plays the role of Mitzi Fabelman, his loving and supportive mother, and Paul Dano plays the role of Burt Fabelman, the kindly, gentle computer engineer who is working with the big box room-sized machines in the 1950's and 1960's. And he's gotta' move to Arizona when Spielberg... I mean Sammy is sstill a young boy. HE uproots the entire family However, Arizona proves to be a fertile ground for young Sammy to begin to foster his filmmaking talents. His 1952 trip to the cinema to see The Greatest Show on Earth with his parents at about age six stuck with him. He wants to be able to control the action on screen. Not just react to it. He wants to make the same spectacles that he has paid a ticket to go and watch. He wants to know how it's done, how it can be made to look so real. First he begs for and gets a model train set for Hanukkah. And he films it crashing! If he promises not to crash it, he's able to get it back from his dad under supervision... and from his mom, no strings attached. Because she sees in him a true filmgoer's intention. Teenage Sammy is shooting films with his friends in the Boy Scouts out on the arid landscapes. They selll scoripions to raise money to buy film and film equipment. He's shooting explosions. He's making family films when they're at camp. He's making a big war picture. And much as he has very loving, nurturing parents, I sense that in a two and a half hour movie, there must lie a conflict somewhere. It comes in the form of Uncle Bennie, played by Seth Rogen. HE's also as supportive as can be to Spielberg, I mean Sammy Fabelman. But he's a strong presence in the family. A funny, charming presence.... whom the dad could probably punch in the nose if he knew just how charming he was becoming to his wife. There is subtle pain laced through this beautiful movie. Then Sammy finds love himself with a Catholic girl. A Jewish boy with a girl who overthinks her faith, but loves Sammy, perhaps because it's forbidden. The more slow-burning, subtle conflict in this film, the more it draws me in. It's my second favorite film of 2022. But that's a close 2nd.
My #3 movie of 2022 is The Adam Project. The film opens to "Gimme Some Lovin'" by the Spencer Davis Group playing as a backdrops against opening titles "Time Travel Exists. We Just Haven't Discovered It Yet." Cut to the future, 2050. Ryan Reynolds is stealing a jet from his nefarious boss, played by Catherine Keener. He's using it to go back in time to try and save the life of his dad. He's attempting to go all the way back to 2018, but he gets stranded in 2022. He crash lands, and goes to the only landmark where he knows he can safely hide; his boyhood home. There, wounded by a gunshot or shrapnel, he goes to hide in his garage. He is promptly discovered by his boyhood self. Taunted by bullies at school, struggling with the fact he has recently lost his father, and frequently giving his mother (Jennifer Garner) a hard time, he has a lip, he's precocious, and he gets himself into trouble frequently with the smart mouth. So of course, young Adam is going to have a battle of wits with Old Adam. Old Adam merely wants to (A) intercept with his wife, also a pilot, played by Zoe Saldana. She had set course for 2018, and succeeded in getting there. She proceeds to spend four years of her life waiting for the old Adam to meet her. They finally do in 2022. Next, he (B) needs to repair his plane, so that he can (C) time jump all the way back to 2018, which is when his father is still alive, and (D) find his father, a physicist played by Mark Ruffalo, convince him that his theories on time travel are real, and convince him to let him help change his future so he doesn't get killed. The problem? Adam's father doesn't want to change the space-time continuum. It'll disrupt the whole pattern and course of human history. So he just wants to get rid of his adult son from the future. But Adam does have the capacity to change the future for the better. Just like Dr. Sam Beckett and Dr. Ben Song from Quantum Leap. This movie could not be more of a Gregonator if it had Jennifer Lawrence, a reference to the Cubs or Cardinals, or a Caribou Coffee. The Adam Project got two MTV Movie + TV Award nominations, for Best Movie and Best Team (Ryan Reynolds and Walter Scobell), plus a People's Choice Award nomination for Choice Female Star of 2022. It drew no Academy Award nominations.
4. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special - Technically, this was a made for television special. But it is within the continuity of the Marvel Extended Universe. So I am counting it with movies, as anything that isn't a full series that debuts on Disney Plus anymore is all the same to me. I thought it had a pretty good self-contained plot. Peter Quill is still very depressed about the loss of Gamora, who died tragically trying to prevent her adoptive father, Thanos, from instigating the Snap. I loved that Peter's friends decided to give him the Christmas he never had while growing up working for Yondu. We see in a flashback that Yondu once kicked over a Christmas team and told his scavengers that they weren't allowed to celebrate the holiday. So Drax, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Kraglin, and Mantis decide to find Kevin Bacon on earth. They remember that Peter Quill loved the movie Footloose, among all other things '80's culture. They make a landing on Los Angeles, set a course for Bacon's Los Angeles home, and hilarity ensues. Drax and Mantis get drunk together. They use a map of the stars to find Bacon (aptly retro to do so, just like the awesome mix tapes), and he obviously resists, calling the police on trespassers on his property. Past this point, you kind of just have to be along for the ride, and expand your limits of verisimilitude, and open your heart to the possibility of Kevin Bacon getting on a space craft with aliens and going up to the ship to cheer up Peter Quill, and teach all of the rest of them a lesson about the true meaning of Christmas. With music by the Old 97s, music that is hip and vintage enough to fit the mold of the Aweseome Mix Tapes of the first two films, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is my fourth favorite film of 2022. And it received no Oscar nominations, by virtue of being small screen. I am holding out hope that it can take home some Emmy nominations.
5. The Batman- Robert Pattinson was much more of a Batman than I was expecting. He did so by reigning in on Bruce Wayne. He scales back. He's a grieving orphan, and he's been absent from his foundation. The mayoral candidate is critical of Wayne not making charitable endowments to Gotham City. And Gotham has been laid to waste. Even the decent people are forced to work at the nightclubs. Even the politicians are addicted to these little white pills. Even the exotic dancers with hearts of golds are lost souls, tethered in their flings and affairs to Gotham's mob bosses and elected public servants. Selena Kyle desperately wants to help a friend of hers from the Iceberg Lounge, even though she is sure that the death of the former mayor means that someone is targeting her. I appreciated that Kyle could bring her water and make her feel safe and protected, even if there was nowhere safe inthe entire city. Yes, there's a serial killer on the loose. Paul Dano delivers the ying to his Burt Fabelman yang with The Riddler. In my humble opinion, The Riddler may well have been the stronger of his two performances in this year. He was nuts. But he had suffered as an orphan himself. Maltreated. Malnourished. He was an orphan in Bruce Wayne's orphanage. In his stilted sense of justice, he's merely bringing the chickens home to roost. I'll grant you, it was a three hour film. And it's taken some getting used to to sit through three hour movies again. But I knew what I signed up for. I was signing over a whole day of my spring break for this one. I loved The Batman. The Batman has been nominated for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the Academy Awards.
6. Lightyear- not nominated for anything as far as I'm aware.
7. LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation- Like GOTG Holiday Special, this may be Emmy Territory
8. Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers- This one is made for television, but debuted on Disney Plus - Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Television movie
9. Scrooge! A Christmas Carol - This was on Netflix, but it had some beautiful music.
10. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever- This drew five Academy Award nominations, happily, including Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the great Angela Bassett, the woman drowning in grief as Wakanda's fearless leader in a period of transition, as well as Visual Effects, Make-up and hairstyling, Costume Design, and Original Song, "Lift Me Up," music by Tems, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler, and Ludwig Goransson, lyrics by Tems and Ryan Coogler.
So who do you think is going to win the Superbowl? I think I've made it clear who I'm rooting for here.
On one side, you have a relatively young quarterback who put the "hurt" on the New York Giants in the Divisional Round of the NFC playoffs. He out gunned and outmanned the opponent, breaking out to a 28-0 lead by the half, throwing two touchdown passes of his own, ultimately dispatching them 38-7 en route to the NFC Championship. In that game, they managed to untie the San Francisco 49ers, and show the same confidence for Philadelphia that Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence showed on the dance floor at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in the movie Silver Linings Playbook.
On the other side, we have the midwest team. with the likable quarterback whom nonetheless has been hampered by a high ankle sprain. This resulted in the team largely resorting to their running back and kicker to carry the game. Normally, the quarterback would need several weeks to recover from this injury, and the most recent game was anything but certain. But his kicker managed to send a missile from near the 45 yard line, after his team enjoyed a fifteen yard advantage on a penalty for an off-side shove delivered against Cincinnati, between the goalpost, very close to the end of regulation, to win the AFC Championship and send a State Farm Commercial and Hy Vee commercial star to the Superbowl.
It's that time of year again. Everything is on the table. Everyone at the Big Dance has an equal chance. There may be favorites, but the team is only as good as its last film... I mean game. And the audience... I mean fans will be the judge of that. Well, also, the critics, I mean sports writers, will have the say over whether the cast, I mean team, did well enough.
I am very sleep deprived. It is that time of year again.
I was talking about the Academy Awards, right?
My # 1 movie of 2022 is Top Gun: Maverick. Tom Cruise plays the role of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. Years after the events of the first movie, we see Tom Cruise as Pete Maverick trying to break Mach 10, even though his research program has been terminated. Pete has always ben the well, maverick type, more ready to ask for forgiveness than permission. He risks property of the U.S. Navy, taking the plane to speeds never before reached, and yet, as the test pilot who successfully fought down MiGs while covering for Iceman, everyone knows he's the best. It'd be flippant to court-martial him and dismiss him from active duty. So of course, Iceman (Val Kilmer), now an admiral, opts to hire Mitchell to instruct a new generation of Top Gun pilots. And he does. One of them has the call-sign Rooster. Played by Miles Teller, and sporting a mustache that combines with his face to make more than a passing resemblance to Goose. He's Goose's son. And it's uncanny how in his moxie, his self-assurance, but his basic sense of duty, decency, and affability, Miles Teller evokes Anthony Edwards. His willingness to take part along with the rest of the team in a dangerous mission to blow up a hidden underground nuclear reactor which is deep behind enemy territory in a hostile nation, first off, couldn't be more prescient for the United States in 2022, without putting a name on the country, concerns Mitchell. He'd made a promise to Rooster's mother not to let him follow in his father's footsteps. She had pretty much begged him on hands and knees to not allow her boy to face the very certain risk that costed his father, her husband, his life. And there's the second-most central conflict of Top Gun: Maverick. It was my favorite film of 2022. It appears that it was nominated for Six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted Screenplay (continuing from the first movie's script), and Best Original Song, "Hold My Hand," Lady Gaga featuring BloodPop.
My #2 movie of 2022 is The Fabelmans. Steven Spielberg directs a largely autobiographical story. The names are changed to protect the innocent. Gabriel LaBelle plays the role of Sammy Fabelman. Much as this story can be watched as a work of fiction, it is clear by the expressions he makes, his facial features, height, and even the cadences in his voice and elocution, we are watching a young Spielberg. And it's clear that the real Spielberg approves of the representation of his past, he's directing it. And he co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Kushner. So it is as accurate of a Spielberg biopic as we can ever expect to get. Michelle Williams plays the role of Mitzi Fabelman, his loving and supportive mother, and Paul Dano plays the role of Burt Fabelman, the kindly, gentle computer engineer who is working with the big box room-sized machines in the 1950's and 1960's. And he's gotta' move to Arizona when Spielberg... I mean Sammy is sstill a young boy. HE uproots the entire family However, Arizona proves to be a fertile ground for young Sammy to begin to foster his filmmaking talents. His 1952 trip to the cinema to see The Greatest Show on Earth with his parents at about age six stuck with him. He wants to be able to control the action on screen. Not just react to it. He wants to make the same spectacles that he has paid a ticket to go and watch. He wants to know how it's done, how it can be made to look so real. First he begs for and gets a model train set for Hanukkah. And he films it crashing! If he promises not to crash it, he's able to get it back from his dad under supervision... and from his mom, no strings attached. Because she sees in him a true filmgoer's intention. Teenage Sammy is shooting films with his friends in the Boy Scouts out on the arid landscapes. They selll scoripions to raise money to buy film and film equipment. He's shooting explosions. He's making family films when they're at camp. He's making a big war picture. And much as he has very loving, nurturing parents, I sense that in a two and a half hour movie, there must lie a conflict somewhere. It comes in the form of Uncle Bennie, played by Seth Rogen. HE's also as supportive as can be to Spielberg, I mean Sammy Fabelman. But he's a strong presence in the family. A funny, charming presence.... whom the dad could probably punch in the nose if he knew just how charming he was becoming to his wife. There is subtle pain laced through this beautiful movie. Then Sammy finds love himself with a Catholic girl. A Jewish boy with a girl who overthinks her faith, but loves Sammy, perhaps because it's forbidden. The more slow-burning, subtle conflict in this film, the more it draws me in. It's my second favorite film of 2022. But that's a close 2nd.
My #3 movie of 2022 is The Adam Project. The film opens to "Gimme Some Lovin'" by the Spencer Davis Group playing as a backdrops against opening titles "Time Travel Exists. We Just Haven't Discovered It Yet." Cut to the future, 2050. Ryan Reynolds is stealing a jet from his nefarious boss, played by Catherine Keener. He's using it to go back in time to try and save the life of his dad. He's attempting to go all the way back to 2018, but he gets stranded in 2022. He crash lands, and goes to the only landmark where he knows he can safely hide; his boyhood home. There, wounded by a gunshot or shrapnel, he goes to hide in his garage. He is promptly discovered by his boyhood self. Taunted by bullies at school, struggling with the fact he has recently lost his father, and frequently giving his mother (Jennifer Garner) a hard time, he has a lip, he's precocious, and he gets himself into trouble frequently with the smart mouth. So of course, young Adam is going to have a battle of wits with Old Adam. Old Adam merely wants to (A) intercept with his wife, also a pilot, played by Zoe Saldana. She had set course for 2018, and succeeded in getting there. She proceeds to spend four years of her life waiting for the old Adam to meet her. They finally do in 2022. Next, he (B) needs to repair his plane, so that he can (C) time jump all the way back to 2018, which is when his father is still alive, and (D) find his father, a physicist played by Mark Ruffalo, convince him that his theories on time travel are real, and convince him to let him help change his future so he doesn't get killed. The problem? Adam's father doesn't want to change the space-time continuum. It'll disrupt the whole pattern and course of human history. So he just wants to get rid of his adult son from the future. But Adam does have the capacity to change the future for the better. Just like Dr. Sam Beckett and Dr. Ben Song from Quantum Leap. This movie could not be more of a Gregonator if it had Jennifer Lawrence, a reference to the Cubs or Cardinals, or a Caribou Coffee. The Adam Project got two MTV Movie + TV Award nominations, for Best Movie and Best Team (Ryan Reynolds and Walter Scobell), plus a People's Choice Award nomination for Choice Female Star of 2022. It drew no Academy Award nominations.
4. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special - Technically, this was a made for television special. But it is within the continuity of the Marvel Extended Universe. So I am counting it with movies, as anything that isn't a full series that debuts on Disney Plus anymore is all the same to me. I thought it had a pretty good self-contained plot. Peter Quill is still very depressed about the loss of Gamora, who died tragically trying to prevent her adoptive father, Thanos, from instigating the Snap. I loved that Peter's friends decided to give him the Christmas he never had while growing up working for Yondu. We see in a flashback that Yondu once kicked over a Christmas team and told his scavengers that they weren't allowed to celebrate the holiday. So Drax, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Kraglin, and Mantis decide to find Kevin Bacon on earth. They remember that Peter Quill loved the movie Footloose, among all other things '80's culture. They make a landing on Los Angeles, set a course for Bacon's Los Angeles home, and hilarity ensues. Drax and Mantis get drunk together. They use a map of the stars to find Bacon (aptly retro to do so, just like the awesome mix tapes), and he obviously resists, calling the police on trespassers on his property. Past this point, you kind of just have to be along for the ride, and expand your limits of verisimilitude, and open your heart to the possibility of Kevin Bacon getting on a space craft with aliens and going up to the ship to cheer up Peter Quill, and teach all of the rest of them a lesson about the true meaning of Christmas. With music by the Old 97s, music that is hip and vintage enough to fit the mold of the Aweseome Mix Tapes of the first two films, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is my fourth favorite film of 2022. And it received no Oscar nominations, by virtue of being small screen. I am holding out hope that it can take home some Emmy nominations.
5. The Batman- Robert Pattinson was much more of a Batman than I was expecting. He did so by reigning in on Bruce Wayne. He scales back. He's a grieving orphan, and he's been absent from his foundation. The mayoral candidate is critical of Wayne not making charitable endowments to Gotham City. And Gotham has been laid to waste. Even the decent people are forced to work at the nightclubs. Even the politicians are addicted to these little white pills. Even the exotic dancers with hearts of golds are lost souls, tethered in their flings and affairs to Gotham's mob bosses and elected public servants. Selena Kyle desperately wants to help a friend of hers from the Iceberg Lounge, even though she is sure that the death of the former mayor means that someone is targeting her. I appreciated that Kyle could bring her water and make her feel safe and protected, even if there was nowhere safe inthe entire city. Yes, there's a serial killer on the loose. Paul Dano delivers the ying to his Burt Fabelman yang with The Riddler. In my humble opinion, The Riddler may well have been the stronger of his two performances in this year. He was nuts. But he had suffered as an orphan himself. Maltreated. Malnourished. He was an orphan in Bruce Wayne's orphanage. In his stilted sense of justice, he's merely bringing the chickens home to roost. I'll grant you, it was a three hour film. And it's taken some getting used to to sit through three hour movies again. But I knew what I signed up for. I was signing over a whole day of my spring break for this one. I loved The Batman. The Batman has been nominated for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the Academy Awards.
6. Lightyear- not nominated for anything as far as I'm aware.
7. LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation- Like GOTG Holiday Special, this may be Emmy Territory
8. Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers- This one is made for television, but debuted on Disney Plus - Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Television movie
9. Scrooge! A Christmas Carol - This was on Netflix, but it had some beautiful music.
10. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever- This drew five Academy Award nominations, happily, including Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the great Angela Bassett, the woman drowning in grief as Wakanda's fearless leader in a period of transition, as well as Visual Effects, Make-up and hairstyling, Costume Design, and Original Song, "Lift Me Up," music by Tems, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler, and Ludwig Goransson, lyrics by Tems and Ryan Coogler.
So who do you think is going to win the Superbowl? I think I've made it clear who I'm rooting for here.