For a film to get its own page on the main 2022 links page, it must receive at least 5 link submissions from our members with few exceptions. Here is a list of all films that haven’t quite reached that threshold yet. When it does, it will be moved to the main page and removed from this page.
892
- Excerpt: Abi Damaris Corbin’s quiet and unobtrusive style helps 892 build tension primarily from character instead of incident.
The Abandon
- Excerpt: Official Closing Night Film of the 2022 Mammoth Film Festival
After Yang
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: Above and beyond everything else, it hits what it means for those grieving and all that is tied to us.
- Excerpt: After Yang is like therapy. It’s taking a problem, one so large in lives that it feels impossible, and breaks down into questions that we can answer.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It combines world-building with fascinating sci-fi concepts (robots, clones, self-driving cars!), and of course, big questions about human nature.
Alice
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Alice isn’t about edification as far as the “true events” that could allow something like this to happen. It’s about catharsis. I think it forgets that sometimes.
Am I OK?
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It feels quite personal and quite honest, and thanks to an appropriately light tone, it ends up becoming a delightful experience.
Babysitter
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An exercise in style and color that, without working all the time, is very easy to admire.
A Banquet
Beguiled Company
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This 70 minute, one take time travel comedy written by its theatrical ensemble Europe Kikaku’s Makoto Ueda works its premise for all its worth without overstaying its welcome, only to reveal it was a meet cute romance all along.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Andrew Wyatt @ The Lens
Big bug
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Jeunet se burla de nuestra tendencia a querer que la tecnología nos haga todo (en una escena un personaje usa un dron miniatura para que le encuentre las gafas) y apunta con dardos punzantes a temas como la clonación de mascotas, la futura incapacidad humana ante el contacto físico o la obsolescencia programada.
Book of Love
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Betty Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Is Book of Love a fun movie? Lots of humor sure worked for me!
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Through the use of film clips, director Nina Menkes shows how a film vocabulary has formed and hardened into accepted practice, one that privileges the male gaze over all other points of view. It is Menkes’ contention that these internalized norms of film construction influence how men and women behave in the real world.
Brazen
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Bro Daddy
Call Jane
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Chris Barsanti @ Slant
- Excerpt: Call Jane is curiously staid and low-wattage story where, too often, things work out just fine for its characters.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Call Jane ends up satisfying with its efficient mix of drama, subtle humor, and true events.
Catch the Fair One
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Sarah Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: [Wladyka] makes excellent use of Reis’s physical talents and intensity—her performance was recognized with a Special Jury Mention at the film’s debut at the Tribeca Film Festival—and Ross Giardina’s cinematography captures both the bleakness of Kaylee’s world and the intensity of her determination.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Reis, the first Native American woman…to win a championship boxing title, is absolutely magnetic in the lead and Wladyka… belies his sophomore feature filmmaking experience. Both are talents to watch.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: I wouldn’t mind watching more of these characters through the runtime because the script has them be pretty poignant when it calls for a scene to be heartbreaking or comedic that was handled better than I expected
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The contrast between two very different characters who get along so well, is what makes “Cha Cha Real Smooth” an extremely charming experience.
Clean
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s as though the film wants to be a hard-hitting drama and action spectacle at the same time but ends up being neither.
Compartment No. 6
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: On its surface, Finland’s shortlisted submission for the International Feature Oscar…is a romantic buddy comedy, but the filmmaker…has gone for something deeper, illustrating the detrimental effects of snap judgments and self-delusion.
Definition Please
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Its] strength is its authenticity and normalization of minorities away from stereotypes. Unlike Monica’s words, our origins and identities aren’t so stringently defined.
Delicate State
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An ultra-low-budget marvel, a perspective on societal disruption and disorder as everyday precariousness comes for those previously sheltered from it. Barely speculative, maybe terrifyingly prescient.
Donkeyhead
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: At a time when most exercises in representation coming from the entertainment industry feels superficial, pandering, and exploited by corporations for profit, it’s refreshing to see a film that can touch on an underexplored perspective in a way that is truly genuine, totally fearless in its approach, and actually has something to say.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: No matter how funny Donkeyhead can prove, it’s also quite devastating. Just because the other three were able to survive [childhood] better doesn’t mean they avoided scars.
Dual
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A dark but funny film, satirically violent and immensely entertaining; very different from any other movie I have seen so far at Sundance.
Emily the Criminal
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It works very well as a dramatic thriller, but it also paints a credible picture of a reality that, surely, many people live in the United States.
Endless Sunshine on a Cloudy Day
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Actor and screenwriter John Connors, who makes his directorial debut chronicling the devastating battle that Anthony, his wife Kim, and their children, Jade and Eion, waged over the next two years to beat back cancer, shows a deep empathy for his subjects as he unspools their story.
Fabian: Going to the Dogs
- Excerpt: Kästner’s tale of a young writer in the Weimar Republic who sees his life and career unraveling parallel to the Nazis’ rise to power has now been adapted to the screen by German filmmaker and cultural critic Dominik Graf. Starring two of Germany’s most compelling actors in Tom Schilling (A Coffee in Berlin) and Albrecht Schuch (System Crasher), along with rising star Saskia Rosendahl (Lore), Fabian: Going to the Dogs is a sprawling tale of hedonism and heartbreak set during one of the most infamous periods of upheaval in European history.
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fallout
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s only until we can talk about these issues openly that we are able to find some hope of overcoming them.
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Fire of Love
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Fresh
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: The tone shift didn’t come across as distracting as I predicted because I managed to get in the groove of how twisted the rest of the premise is heading.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An incredibly tense film, centred on Edgar-Jones and Stan’s fantastic performances (the latter uses his charisma to terrify both Noa and the viewer).
Futura
- Excerpt: While Futura doesn’t unveil any extraordinary new insights into the minds of teens and twentysomethings, it does force us to reconcile with the necessity of changing the world now so that we can all look forward to some kind of future, let alone a better one.
Gehraiyaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Give Me Pity!
- Excerpt: It’s Sissy St. Claire’s big night, although things don’t go quite as planned. Amanda Kramer’s sharp dissection of the medium continues as she takes us back to an era of glitz, glamour and psychedelic existentialism.
God’s Country
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: God’s Country proves that being subtle and understated is sometimes best when developing a dramatically powerful story.
Good Luck to you, Leo Grande
Cecilia Barroso @ [Portuguese]
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A film about the pleasure that every human being deserves, about the perception that one has about their own body, and about female sexuality.
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
- Excerpt: Harrison discusses Hotel Transylvania: Transformania for the 1st Annual JanuScary Special!
The House
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: this three part stop motion animation featuring the same manse in three separate time periods is a stunning piece of craft and wild imagination verging from haunting fairy tale to creepy/weird/funny parable to hopeful cat puppet drama.
Hridayam
I Want You Back
- Excerpt: The end result is that what should be a 91-minute piece of February fluff runs inexplicably close to two hours with only as many laughs as a somewhat promising 20-minute sitcom pilot episode might supply.
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: Eastwoods aside, “I Want You Back” isn’t altogether awful. It’s a perfectly pleasant movie, with an admittedly cute ending, that will inspire the occasional chortle and leave you feeling just fine.
Italian Studies
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Random events leave marks. Memory interprets what those marks are. It’s by no means a perfect system, but it’s what makes us human.
The Last Thing Mary Saw
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The acting is effective throughout and the period aesthetic stays true to a slow and quiet trajectory skewing more towards a menacing air than full-on suspense.
The Long Night
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Fans of the genre may recognize familiar elements, but the craftsmanship and style might be enough to make the viewing experience worthwhile.
- Excerpt: Harrison discusses The Long Night for the 1st Annual JanuScary Special!
The Long Walk
- Excerpt: A rich, complex tapestry of a film, woven together with elements of horror and science-fiction, The Long Walk confirms Do as one of the most intriguing new artists working in genre cinema.
Lotawana
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a production that would be the envy of much larger budgeted films. “Lotawana” is beautiful, with strikingly edited montages escorted into the film by Ryan Pinkston’s lovely piano score and top notch sound mix.
Blake Howard @ Graffiti With Punctuation
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : It plays to the beats of the influential “Local Hero,” right down to its melancholy last scene, while also championing the value of teachers. “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is the very definition of a crowd pleaser.
Master
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Diallo throws the kitchen sink [of themes and motives] on-screen. You must jump aboard and let [her] take you station to station because there’s no express train to clarity.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A film with two sides: one more intellectual and fascinating, and the other undeniably tedious and predictable.
Maxima
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Inspiring, unexpectedly joyful portrait of the shy, funny, humble woman battling environmental disaster, corporate malfeasance, and civic corruption. A harbinger of the resource wars that are coming.
Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: The plot is thin, the characters thinner, and the solution to the puzzle isn’t hard to figure out but a good time is had by all.
Munich: The Edge of War
Betty Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Although we know how the end goes, this thriller keeps us on our toes.
My Old School
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: A stranger-than-fiction documentary.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: That’s where the film’s genius lies; in highlighting the ridiculousness of the situation, and the fact that reality is often stranger than fiction.
Nocturna: Side A
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Calzada has uncannily made his film itself appear haunted, the whole cloaked in a greenish tinge of decay, Ulises’s paternal guilt weighing heavily upon him.
Nocturna: Side B
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: David Lynch’s influence is felt even more strongly in Side B, which has the look of his early shorts…
Palm Trees and Power Lines
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Depicting [sexual grooming] is neither entertaining nor exciting. Dack can therefore push her narrative forward with methodical precision instead.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A powerful and devastating film, which fortunately never victim-blames, and rather manages to intertwine an important message with a well-told story.
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Director Pedro Almodóvar sets out to tell two stories that intersect in Janis, though one somehow manages to make difficulties with the other easier to accept — which is quite incredible considering the magnitude of the trouble.
The Pink Cloud
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Gerbase [is] presenting things with a level of authenticity that demands introspection. This isn’t satire. These are people like [us] being pushed to their breaking points.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Poly’s daughter has done her proud with an intimate, yet all-encompassing portrait of an extremely talented and complex woman. “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché” is yet another in a string of fabulously engaging rock docs.
- Excerpt: The punk anthem “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” was released by the band X-Ray Spex ten years before I was born, yet the first time I heard it as an angsty teenager it felt as prescient as ever. Just as much an outburst against aggressive consumerism as it is a feminist call to arms — if not more so — it’s impossible to hear Poly Styrene’s voice screaming those lyrics and not feel equal parts enraged and empowered. A mixed-race woman fronting a rock band in the 1970s while the National Front was spreading its racist rhetoric throughout the UK, with a mouthful of metal braces and a closetful of futuristic homemade fashions, Poly Styrene was a unique artist who remains an iconic figure to this day, with her influence felt everywhere from Afropunk to Riot Grrrl.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A loving appreciation, but never a blinkered one, of the punk philosopher, a woman ahead of her time and still timely: iconoclastic, creative, ever-searching, a cultural observer who saw deep and far.
Private Desert
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [His characters aren’t] reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes. He draws them as equals insofar as their inability to fully embrace who they are away from external forces.
Resurrection
Cecilia Barroso @ [Portuguese]
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The film had potential, but sadly it doesn’t work very well either as a suspense thriller, or as a drama with supernatural and surreal touches.
The Royal Treatment
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
See for Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Debuting feature screenplay writers Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue reshuffle a bunch of genre clichés so that their deck comes out just off kilter enough to keep us interested by defying expectations
Seobok: Project Clone
- Excerpt: While the film devolves all too quickly into a cavalcade of unfortunate dialogue and confusing double-crossing, Gong’s performance in it is a reminder of his considerable star power—and the main asset of Seobok: Project Clone.
Shari
- Excerpt: Experimental short filmmaker Yoshigai Nao looks at nature in and out of balance in this idiosyncratic observational documentary about rural Japan.
Sharp Stick
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The film tries to bother and generate immediate reactions in the viewer, but unfortunately it only manages to stay on the surface.
The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs
- Excerpt: The personal and the political are fully intertwined in filmmaker Pushpendra Singh’s fourth feature, The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs, which begins a weeklong run at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on January 12. Adapted from a story by acclaimed Rajasthani author Vijaydan Detha—making it the second of Singh’s features to draw upon Detha’s work—the film mixes the magic of centuries-old folklore with the modern realities of human migration.
Shithouse
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It may have some technical flaws – weird cuts, awkward camera movements – but they’re not enough to spoil the good acting and entertaining script.
The Sky Is Everywhere
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Something in the Dirt
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a case where logistics seem to dictate content. The whole looks great and the acting is solid, though. Fans should have a good time.
Strawberry Mansion
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This trippy travel through time and space and dreams is like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by way of “Alice in Wonderland” with the artsy craftsy production style of the “Be Kind Rewind” crew.
A Taste of Hunger
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Contemplative and tenderly observed, a slow-burn romantic and family drama about two complicated, difficult people and what they’re willing to risk to achieve their dream. Plus: Scandi food porn!
- Excerpt: The film moves back and forth through time and is divided into chapters, from their sweet first meeting to a sour betrayal, and the heated climax when all of the elements combine.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
The Tiger Rising
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
The Tinder Swindler
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The direction and editing balances out the details, delving into the intricacies of the fraud and its massive ripple effects.
Cecilia Barroso @ [Portuguese]
Utama
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The best thing about “Utama”, however, is in its honesty; in the conflict between its characters, and how real it all feels.
We Need to Talk About Cosby
The Whaler Boy
When You Finish Saving the World
Cecilia Barroso @ [Portuguese]
Chris Barsanti @ Slant
- Excerpt: Jesse Eisenberg’s satire hits its targets dead on, but he flattens his mother-and-son narcissists to the point of caricature.
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: When You Finish Saving the World doesn’t really have a moment that had me recalling being emotionally resonant enough to care what these characters are going through, although I believe there’s a large amount of empathy with them that could’ve been explored more with a longer runtime.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A very good debut for Eisenberg as a director, so much so that I will be (impatiently) waiting for his next behind-the-scenes job.
Who We Are: A Chronice of Racism in America
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is the nation’s history which Republicans are desperately trying to hide from their constituents…and writer Jeffrey Robinson is just the right tour guide, his concise insights cutting right through their rhetoric.
You Won’t Be Alone
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Powerful at times, but a bit pretentious at others. However, those who can stomach the gore will find something of interest here.