Six 2022 movies to stream right now

By Jake Skubish

Fire Island

Watch on: Hulu

Fire Island is an heir to the path laid by Clueless and Bridget Jones’ Diary before it, in which a Jane Austen tale is reimagined in a modern context. Here, Pride and Prejudice morphs into the romantic entanglements of Noah (Joel Kim Booster) and Howie (Bowen Yang), best friends who have grown apart but still get together every year for a week-long party on Fire Island. Most of the gay men on the island are there for the hookup culture, which Noah encourages Howie to enjoy, but Howie falls into genuine romantic interest with a cute pediatrician named Charlie (James Scully). Noah is determined to just enjoy himself and not fall into the same fate until, of course, he does.

The film is conventionally told with few surprises, but Booster’s screenplay is sprinkled with enough laugh-out-loud moments to keep things rolling. Fire Island is a solid entry into the rom-com canon, a good hang carried by a few charming performances. My favorites were Margaret Cho as Erin, the guys’ island host, who delivers the best speech of the film, and Conrad Ricamora as Will, the Mr. Darcy stand-in whose staid presence grounds Fire Island in its Austen roots.

Rating: 3.5/5

Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel

Watch on: HBO Max

Possibly the most remarkable film I’ve seen so far this year, Jerrod Carmichael’s Rothaniel is headlined by the comedian coming out as gay but shines in Carmichael’s exploration of that announcement’s implications. Carmichael reckons with whether his family and friends can accept his identity, and whether he can continue to love them back. For long stretches of the special Carmichael appears to have no script — meandering through an idea, or taking a moment to collect himself, or responding to commentary from the audience. Bo Burnham directs the special gracefully but intimately, nestling close into Carmichael’s face as he weighs what the future could bring. Rothaniel is miraculous, and I know I will be returning to it to again soon.

Rating: 4.5/5

Kimi

Watch on: HBO Max

The latest in director Steven Soderbergh’s fascination with corporate evil, Kimi stars Zoë Kravitz as Angela, a tech employee tasked with screening audio files from the users of an Alexa-like home device. Angela has developed agoraphobia (seemingly during the COVID-19 pandemic), and never leaves her apartment. But when she hears evidence of a crime that her company doesn’t want to publicized, she is forced to leave the apartment to do something about it.

As with No Sudden Move, The Laundromat, and High Flying Bird, Soderbergh is again interested in the shadowy power of corporate actors and what, if anything, individuals can do to root out conspiracies and reclaim autonomy. Kravitz fits well into this world, giving a twitchy performance that heightens the film’s sense of unease.

Soderbergh characters never bring down the whole system, nor are they completely ineffectual; the director is much more of an interrogator of how and what than a proselytizer of should or what next. The same goes for his visual and storytelling style. Soderbergh is so prolific, and so experimental, that for some critics his latest movies (six in six years) feel half-assed. But each project brings its own nuances, and I have always admired his impulse toward trying new things, even if not everything works. Kimi stands firmly among the best of Soderbergh’s post-“retirement” phase.

Rating: 3.5/5

Navalny

Watch on: HBO Max

Navalny opens with director Daniel Roher posing a question to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny: “If you are killed … what message do you leave behind to the Russian people?” Navalny groans at the prospect of making a movie after his death, and suggests an alternative: “A boring movie of memory.” Roher grants Navalny, who currently sits in a Russian prison with a nine-year sentence, half his wish: A documentary that is an act of political memorialization, but which is certainly not a boring affair.

Like Navalny’s own TikTok videos denouncing the crimes of the Kremlin, the film is a cogent critique of authoritarianism wrapped in pop entertainment ornamentation. The documentary is a hagiography of sorts; Roher occasionally pokes at the less savory members of Navalny’s coalition, but mostly glorifies Navalny as a crusader for justice. Still, it’s hard not to admire a man who willingly returned to Russia in order to resist Vladimir Putin. He is, of course, participating in the creation of a documentary about himself, but as he now sits in prison on bogus charges, his ultimate goal of inspiring the Russian people to fight back feels authentic.

Navalny is most notable for the investigation of who poisoned Navalny, which leads to one of the most thrilling scenes I have ever seen captured in a documentary. Through a frighteningly simple reservoir of data found on the dark web, Navalny and his team narrow in on a list of 20 Kremlin-employed assassins and start calling them. The brutality, and unbelievable stupidity, of the authoritarian regime is put on full display. In this moment, Roher negates the question he posed at the top of the documentary: The memory of dissent, captured on film, is a sort of immortality in itself, as long as it can fuel the continued fight for justice.

Rating: 4/5

The Batman

Watch on: HBO Max

We have had four different Batmen in just the past decade, but there are some things you can always count on. He will be dark and moody; he will wonder if it is his place to dole out vigilante justice; and he will be less interesting than the supporting players in his orbit.

This last point is a highlight of The Batman, a gloomy crime drama with an abundance of terrific character performances. As the core villains, Paul Dano and Colin Farrell elevate archetypes — Dano’s Riddler is an Extremely Online terrorist, while Farrell’s Penguin is a Capone-like gangster — into fully realized characters. Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman is a showcase of flexibility in both physical prowess and emotional shrewdness; even when Batman appears in control, she is liable to scamper off. My favorite performance of the film might come from Peter Sarsgaard as a sleazy district attorney, who in a major scene puts on a memorable display of desperation.

If I had to pick an MVP of the film, though, it would undoubtedly be Michael Giacchino, who composed the score for The Batman. Gloomy and still for long stretches before crescendoing into an absolute banger of a refrain, Giacchino’s score elevates the film but also lives beyond it — I’ve had The Batman score on loop during the workday. Amid all of the excellent performances and sleek cinematography, Giacchino’s contribution is what I will remember most from The Batman.

Rating: 4/5

The Inside Outtakes

Watch on: Netflix

Bo Burnham is inside again, this time with an hour-long compilation of footage that did not make it into his Netflix special Inside last year. The outtakes do not reach the same heights as that special; while Inside had a clear narrative progression, Outtakes is exactly what it claims to be: a grab-bag of leftover footage, some of it worthy of inclusion in the original, some of it fairly pedestrian. “Five Years,” a Drake parody about a directionless relationship, is the standout song, but most of the best bits here are the nonmusical throwaways, such as the podcast interview sequence.

Outtakes wraps with a hilarious and depressing reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, imagining a world where Inside gets the same treatment and the public is clamoring for a Girl Socko film in 2029. Burnham’s smartest observations concern the untenability of the avalanche of content that controls our attention, and Outtakes both condemns that culture and contributes to it. It’s an admonition that resonates with me, and yet here I am, opening wide for even more content.

Rating: 3.5/5