If you're looking for a flashy headline to define the cinema of 2022, a few possibilities come to mind. It was the year of horror, as films like Barbarian, Smile, The Black Phone, Bones and All, Men, and the one-two punch of X and Pearl found varying levels of critical and commercial success. It was the year in which big-screen spectacle roared back into theaters, thanks to movies like Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water (even though Netflix juggernauts like Glass Onion provided stiff competition). At the same time, some of the great arthouse or international films in 2022 could be seen at multiplexes, which felt like a desperate attempt to fill screens as Hollywood continues to struggle post-COVID (though I'm not exactly complaining about the ability to see Petite Maman, for example, practically wherever I wanted). It was, in fact, a year of contradictions, seeming to move both forwards and backwards: despite attempts to grapple with current hot-button issues (e.g., Tár and Women Talking), 2022 actually took a step backwards in terms of representation, and once again, nine of the top ten box-office earners of the year were sequels (and eight of them were American). 

Last year marked the return to theatrical moviegoing for many people – masked, trepidatious moviegoing in search of a return to some kind of normalcy. With it came a handful of bold, visceral, compelling films, both mainstream and obscure, from all corners of the globe. If it seemed like 2021 was a strong year for movies, maybe that's just because it was a thrill to visit cinema once more on the big screen, where it belongs. Even so, what a relief to experience trauma and heartache (and joy and beauty) vicariously in movies instead of in real life, though as we all know, there's still plenty of that raging in the world around us. 

You would think that a global pandemic and semi-enforced quarantine would be an ideal time to watch a few movies a day and devote one's time to creative pursuits (like, for example, posting more frequently on a blog that's been dormant for over a year). Many people said as much in the early days of COVID: now, at least, I can finish all those projects that have been sitting on the back-burner, left unfinished due to a lack of time and mental energy. 

Reality left a lot to be desired in 2019, with the turbulence of our time begging for some kind of cinematic reckoning. Many of the most vital and sobering images of the year were replayed by news outlets or posted on social media: footage of mass shootings senselessly repeated, tyrants and politicians speechifying to no end, Notre Dame going up in flames, Sri Lanka and Syria besieged by violence. Then, of course, there were sporadic stories of inspiration, heroes to look up to outside of fiction, like Megan Rapinoe and Greta Thunberg.

With the summer of 2019 firmly in the rearview and a slew of anticipated films coming up this fall, it seems like an apt time to catch up with the most acclaimed, provocative, or notable films of the past few months. The state of theatrical moviegoing may be in flux and the cultural discourse surrounding cinema isn't what it used to be (unless the film in question is a three-hour superhero epic); but still, it's refreshing to know that some movies can engender some kind of heated debate.

Back in the summer of 2007, a friend and I rented a couple movies: the Chris Rock comedy I Think I Love My Wife (which was improbably based on Éric Rohmer's Chloe in the Afternoon) and Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us. I assumed that the Chris Rock movie would be vastly inferior but, given the narrative propulsion of most Hollywood movies and the charisma of its star, writer, and director, at least entertaining and intermittently funny. I expected the Kiarostami film, meanwhile, to be masterful, majestic, and thought-provoking but occasionally trying on one's patience. These presumptions were the result of the binary ways of thinking that many critics, distributors, and filmmakers have subscribed to over the years: movies are quick and fun and entertaining, films are substantial and artful but slow. I was surprised on that day in 2007 to find that I Think I Love My Wife was interminably dull, filled with desperate jokes and a story that failed to engender any sympathy or interest, while The Wind Will Carry Us was ravishing and riveting, each shot populated with sparks of beauty and uniqueness, all of its 118 minutes stuffed with ideas on technology, communication, the concept of home, what it means to be alive. In short, the Kiarostami film was infinitely more entertaining than the Chris Rock comedy, which was meant almost entirely to provide a fun diversion.  

The more things change, the more they stay the same—​and nowhere is that axiom truer than in the movies. The early 21st century has seen a radical shift in the way movies are financed, made, and viewed, with digital technologies predominating, home streaming replacing the theatrical experience, and major conglomerates like Netflix and Amazon overtaking the film distribution scene. This isn't a doomsday proclamation: a countless number of fresh and vital films continue to be made each year, although more than ever before, the onus is on audiences to track down high-quality content (and not rely on algorithms to be told what they "might enjoy"). 

“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.”

​—Federico Fellini

The lights dim, the projector whirs to life, light is flung upon the screen, and all rules of science and sensory experience are broken: this is part of the appeal of film, that it can give life to our nocturnal visions, abiding by a reality that, before movies, could only exist inside our heads. True, movies entice us for other reasons: storytelling, entertainment, pathos, populating seemingly real places with apparently real people in a mirror image of our own world. The dominance of narrative linearity was more or less entrenched in cinema by the mid-1910s, as movies supplanted literature and theater as the most commercially popular storytelling medium. Yet from their birth to their turbulent recent history, as Hollywood continues its cultural invasion and celluloid gives way to digital formats, movies have also pulsated with the language of dreams, drawing us irresistibly closer to their uncanny visions, fashioning a new language of hieroglyphics in motion.