The Twenty Best Films of 2022
This was a phenomenal year for cinema, even though it was also one of its most challenging.
2022 may well be remembered as the year of the death of cinema.
Not movies, mind you, but cinema. See, cinema, to me, means more than just movies. Movies are a very specific form of storytelling, but cinema means something more, something cultural, something bigger than a simple medium of art. Cinema is the communal experience, the joys of shared storytelling, an experience that goes beyond just sitting in front of a screen and finding your escape from your daily grind.
It’s not just about movie theaters either; it’s putting your life aside for two hours and giving yourself to the story. You put the phone down, dim the lights, and surrender to something larger than yourself. You can do that at home, just as easily as you can in a 500 seat theater. But most people don’t do that, not anymore.
We aren’t sharing experiences - we’re trading quips and jokes and memes. We aren’t opening ourselves up to a story transporting us to places we would never go otherwise; instead we chop each moment into tiny bits and pretend we’re cooler than the story. We strive for detachment instead of fully engaging, of allowing us to feel something that may be alien to our own point of view, to feel an emotion we never felt before. We live in a cynical world, as a movie once said, and instead of living in the space between breaths we document everything and store it for future perusal, as if to say I was really there, I experienced this, I existed, and here’s proof, showing others that we get the joke instead of allowing ourselves to be transformed. That’s what cinema is to me - the utter surrender to the moment, and it’s dying.
I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am. And this makes me incredibly sad.
I saw a lot of movies in the theater this year - well, when the numbers pan out it was probably an average year all things considered, but because 2020 and 2021 were so devastating to theaters I feel like I spent much more time there. I also watched a lot at home, and I can safely say that in 2022 I bought more physical media than was probably sensible. The tactile pleasures of holding a movie you love, putting in into the player, not worrying whether your internet will go out, hearing the whirr of the spinning disc - that’s the good stuff for me. I bought a region-free 4K player and went a little nuts buying movies. There wasn’t a Criterion sale that passed me by without grabbing a disc or two.
I didn’t watch a lot of streaming this year. I’ll probably catch up to those shows eventually, but I didn’t want to be a part of the chatter. I wanted to be in my own space, to absorb these stories in my own way and in my own time. That may have been frustrating to friends and colleagues, but I didn’t want to engage with art that way. And I found the experience much more rewarding. As a critic, I still reviewed films, but I didn’t want to watch them under the pressure of the moment but rather its place in a larger sense. Will people still be talking about these films and shows as excitedly ten years from now? I can’t be sure, but I tried to put myself in that place, to examine these movies from a larger perspective than the immediate.
Of course, I couldn’t see everything. There are a few titles I need to catch up on, especially documentaries, which I sadly didn’t watch as much this year as I should have. I’m excited to see them without the pressures of putting them on a list, and these past couple of weeks I’ve been grinding it a bit to try to catch some important titles. But I’m satisfied with the list I’ve come up with.
I think 2022 was an exceptional year. I’m looking at my list, and I’ve seen more than thirty films that absolutely deserve to be here. I’m going to do the standard countdown, but people who know me shouldn’t be terribly shocked at my number one. There are some biases that I can’t overcome, nor do I want to. But I think, even without that bias, my number one would still be the same. When something hits me in that personal way, I am completely unable and unwilling to divorce myself from that and look at it with any detachment. That’s not how I’m built.
To those films I reviewed for Vital Thrills, I’ve linked them in the movie title. I didn’t review everything, sadly, and I wish I had. This is my list. Not yours. If you’re looking for a certain title that doesn’t find its way on here, make your own fucking list.
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING
This is a story about stories. Director George Miller’s follow-up to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is a sumptuous, romantic tale of a genie who comes across a woman who has no need for his wishes. As the genie tells his story, we are swept away in the grandeur of it all, and both Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton are compelling and have a great chemistry together. Miller isn’t reinventing himself or pushing the envelope - he is simply transporting his audience as only he can, and reminding us that love, as enticing and as captivating as it is, can also be a trap, and if we’re not careful it can bind a soul as surely as chains can.
I found myself thinking about this film a lot over the past few months. James Gray isn’t letting himself off the hook, with this clearly autobiographical story of a young Jewish boy in New York City, and his relationship with a Black boy in his class. There are a few critics who responded to this film with disdain, classifying it as another case of white guilt, but I don’t think Gray is remotely interested in assuaging that guilt. I think he’s trying to make amends in the only way he knows how, and he’s going to live with this story for the rest of his life. Sometimes the only way out is through, and in the film’s final shots, we see a young boy taking his first steps towards adulthood on his own terms rather than the terms of his family. Much like a later film on this list, we shouldn’t mistake self-revelation as nostalgia.
TÁR
Todd Field’s 16 years in the desert, cinematically speaking, pays off with one of the most exciting, challenging performances from an actor this year. Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár is enigmatic, abrasive, caustic, and always fascinating. On the surface, this could be a film about “cancel culture” but Field and Blanchett are completely uninterested in that level of examination. They want something deeper. In Tár’s world, she refuses to be a victim, but she also refuses to acknowledge the damage she causes in her wake. I love the verisimilitude of TÁR, the complete immersion into that world, a world previously unfamiliar to most of us. Even the film’s final shot is an all-timer.
I love how Jordan Peele works inside genre, and is able to extract such meaning to what on paper could read as another alien invasion story. On one level, NOPE feels very much inspired by the Spielberg films of Peele’s youth, like JAWS or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. But he’s also using those tropes to tell a story about our need to document the world today, how we define ourselves through tragedy, and how we will compromise ourselves and our principles for a fleeting measure of success and recognition. NOPE has probably the coolest movie monster of the year, and there are images in NOPE that are difficult to shake and unlike anything we’ve seen before. Of all the films on this list, NOPE has the biggest potential to rise in the rankings over time. I anticipate revisiting this quite a bit in the years to come.
TURNING RED
This isn’t the Pixar film that Disney envisioned as being on Best Of lists at the end of the year, I imagine, but while LIGHTYEAR is a perfectly enjoyable movie, this is the one that will likely stand the test of time. The first Pixar feature length fully directed by a woman, this story of a young Canadian girl who finds herself turning into a big fluffy red panda at moments of stress will resonate with boys and girls alike. Sure, the metaphors aren’t complicated, but the story rule of how the more specific your story is the more universally appreciated it will become holds true here. I only wish Disney had let this thing blossom in theaters instead of throwing it on their streaming platform; it deserved better.
THE WOMAN KING
This one’s a late entry on the list, as I only saw this a few days ago, but Gina Prince-Bythewood has crafted an old school historical epic that is as sweeping as the great films of yesteryear. Historically, the film takes some liberties, but who cares - it’s action-packed, exciting, and gives us characters to care about. Viola Davis is tremendous as the general of Dahomey, fighting for her king and her people even as she seeks revenge for her past, and THE WOMAN KING is full of terrific supporting performances from Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, and John Boyega. Let’s give Gina Prince-Bythewood bigger budgets and more epic stories - she’s earned it.
DECISION TO LEAVE
I saw Park Chan-Wook’s latest at Fantastic Fest, and I wish I’d seen it twice in the theater, because DECISION TO LEAVE floored me. This is as restrained as OLDBOY is excessive, but in that restraint is a laser sharp focus on characterization and storytelling. This story of a cop and his obsession with a murder suspect feels like old school Hitchcock in the grandest sense, and while Chan-Wook isn’t giving us sequences like the hallway scene in OLDBOY, the impact and devastation is no less intense or strong. It’s also one of his funniest films, but even as we laugh we are shocked by what it all means. Achingly romantic and old fashioned in all the best ways.
David Cronenberg returns to the horror genre (but really, did he ever leave) with CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, but those expecting his more gruesome films like THE BROOD or THE FLY may be in for a disappointment. This is a film, like so many others this year, where the filmmaker is exploring their own place in cinema, their own impact on art, and how the world has changed. You could also view it through the pandemic, climate change prism, and it would be a perfectly valid view. CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is full of symbolic meaning, but’s it’s also darkly funny, full of Cronenberg’s trademark body horror, and another terrific performance from Viggo Mortensen, who seems acutely on Cronenberg’s wavelength. This movie lasted about 15 minutes in theaters, but if you made the effort, it was well worth it.
Rian Johnson’s murder mystery follow-up to KNIVES OUT is just as wildly successful as its predecessor, but while the first film explored family politics, GLASS ONION widens its gaze a bit to look at our addiction to celebrity and to social media and how we put people on a pedestal who perhaps do not deserve the spotlight. Daniel Craig is as always having tremendous fun as Benoit Blanc, but the film’s secret weapon is Janelle Monae, who catapults herself into the stratosphere with a complex, assured performance. This one deserved more than a week in theaters, and I was very appreciative that I got to see it twice.
My favorite big budget superhero movie of 2022. On paper, this could be another origin story, but Matt Reeves isn’t interested in showing us Martha’s pearls again for the hundredth time as he is in showing us how Batman becomes more than just another costumed vigilante. My biggest concern for any sequels set in this universe is that those films will simply rehash the same tired aesthetic of grit and shadow, because of all the Batman movies we’ve seen so far, this one gives us a Batman most willing to change. When we see him in the light, Batman becomes the bastion of hope we always wanted him to be, and I admire the journey that Reeves and Robert Pattinson take us on with this character. This is epic superhero filmmaking done right, and nothing Marvel put out this year compared to it.
Pound for pound, probably the most entertaining film of the year. I saw TOP GUN: MAVERICK more times than any other film this year. This could have been just a nostalgia trip, but Joseph Kosinski and Tom Cruise instead made a film that could be considered even better than the original. The first film was very much a product of its time, but age those sentiments 30+ years and what once was seen as vapid and surface-level becomes deep and poignant. Cruise examines his own legacy as an actor and a movie star, but it never feels navel-gazing or solipsistic. The IMAX shot flight sequences are jaw-dropping, and if there’s one movie (other than AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER) that kept cinema on life support this year, it’s TOP GUN: MAVERICK.
MOONAGE DAYDREAM
I saw Brett Morgen’s MOONAGE DAYDREAM on the biggest IMAX screen I could find in the area, and it felt like it rewrote my brain. Not so much a documentary on David Bowie’s life as it is a journey through his impact and his own words, MOONAGE DAYDREAM isn’t interested in any kind of linear experiential story, and thank the infinite for that. Instead, at times it feels like we are looking at the world through Bowie’s eyes, and we can feel the power of his music, especially on those impressionable youth who needed a David Bowie to understand their own spiritual, sexual awakenings. I don’t think I could experience this in anything less tan 4K, and all the speakers turned up to infinity. It’s like if 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’s Star Child picked up a guitar. I had to hold onto the handrail as I exited the theater, or I might have just floated away.
Perhaps the most devastating break-up movie ever made. One day, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) decides he no longer wants to remain friends with Padraic (Colin Farrell), and the chaos that ensues changes everyone around them. Martin McDonough’s film is both funny and melancholic in equal measures, and full of rich dialogue and characterization. I know that Brendan Fraser is getting all the acting accolades for his work on THE WHALE, but Colin Farrell, without much fanfare, has had a pretty incredible year, with his turn as the Penguin in THE BATMAN, his grieving father in AFTER YANG, and this. I think he has the harder job here, playing a deceptively simple man in a complicated world that he is forced to navigate. But all the performances are terrific, including Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan, who breaks your heart.
GEORGE CARLIN’S AMERICAN DREAM
Yeah, yeah, I know strictly speaking this isn’t a movie but a miniseries documentary, but who cares, my list, my rules, as George Carlin himself would probably say. I would have happily spent the four hours watching this in a theater if I had the opportunity. Judd Apatow’s film explores Carlin’s life and impact, and his relevance today, which is still shockingly and sadly prescient. Carlin warned us for year about the road we were going down, and if we could only have him back for one more special, it would probably just be him shooting the finger at us, and letting us know how we fucked it all up. We’d deserve it, too.
AFTERSUN
A father and a daughter take a vacation together. And it’s one of the most quietly devastating and beautiful films of the year. I’m a survivor of cancer - not myself directly, but through my father, and I recognized immediately what the film was about, because I’ve heard that coded language all my life, those glances when the parent thinks the child isn’t looking, the stifled sighs, the tears when they think the child isn’t looking… while the film isn’t strictly about that loss, it’s all throughout the movie. This is Charlotte Wells’ first feature, and it’s a hell of a debut, full of beauty, sadness, the memories of a more peaceful time, and looking back with heartbreaking regret. If I had seen this in a theater I’m not sure my heart would have been able to take it. Still, I wish I had.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO
What a beautiful film, and my favorite animated film of the year. Of a piece with del Toro’s THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and PAN’S LABYRINTH, PINOCCHIO isn’t only an exploration of fascism during World War II, but an examination of grief, mortality, childhood, and regret. This turned out to be one of del Toro’s best films, and no wonder, because he’s been working on it for more than a decade. Alexander Desplat’s score and songs are powerful, and the animation is gorgeous. I’m so thankful I got to see this twice on the big screen, including once in 35MM at the New Beverly with Guillermo Del Toro in attendance. If nothing else, my wife got to tell him that CRIMSON PEAK kicks ass in person. This was among my favorite cinematic experiences of the year.
RRR
I was fortunate enough to see this in the theater just as the hype was rising, and let me tell you, this movie nearly blew the roof off. Even as big action adventure franchises seem to be losing their way, along comes this Indian film to show us how it should be done, giving us compelling characters and action sequences so over the top and beloved that they’ll be examined for years. S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR has no interest in any kind of gritty reality, and that’s why it’s so fun. Add to it the amazing dance numbers, the wild CGI effects work, and how each moment builds on the last, RRR is a triumph. If you want to get into the politics of it all, have at it, but if you want to have a grand time at the movies, RRR, like TOP GUN: MAVERICK, is what movie theaters are made for.
BONES AND ALL is many things at once, and in equal measure – it’s a coming-of-age story, a deeply emotional romance, and a gruesome, terrifying horror tale. That Luca Guadagnino can expertly balance all of this and make all of it feel as emotionally genuine as it does is credit to his formidable skills as a filmmaker. With magnificent performances from Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, and Mark Rylance, BONES AND ALL was my favorite horror film of 2022, and I will be living inside the movie for a long time. It’s a horror classic for the ages, even better than Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA (and considering how much I loved his SUSPIRIA, that’s saying something).
I thought for sure that EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE would be my number one for the year, right up until I saw this year’s number one. Still, having seen it a few times, this movie resonates as strongly with me as it ever did, with a career best performance from Michelle Yeoh, supplemented with amazing work from Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The Daniels have made an all-timer here, and if you want to count this as the best superhero film of the year, well, you wouldn’t be wrong. With each subsequent viewing, the majesty of the world the Daniels' have created opens up even more. It’s certain to be remembered fondly as the years pass, and in our attention addled, trauma-carrying, anxiety-ridden multiverse, we just may have found its CITIZEN KANE.
C’mon, did you expect anything else? Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film explores the cost of art and how one must choose between your passion and your family. No onther movie explains the ending of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND so well. This could be a primer over Spielberg’s entire career - you can see his complete history through the prism of the film. I don’t think people are saying enough good things about Gabriel LaBelle’s work as Sammy Fabelman, but the film is full of great work from Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and Judd Hirsch. David Lynch’s cameo is priceless, and Tony Kushner’s script isn’t overly nostalgic; this isn’t a film that looks back fondly. In fact, Spielberg seems to be reopening old wounds with it, but he’s only doing that to let the bad blood out. With the year’s best final shot, THE FABELMANS is a Spielberg classic, and that is indeed saying something.
Not Number 1, But Worthy Of Mention: AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
James Cameron is an interesting contradiction to me - he obviously loves technology, but he seems to hate what that technology means. He’ll happily craft huge action sequences, with guns and explosions, but it’s almost as if he feels guilty about enjoying them so much. But AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER is undeniably a cinematic experience for the ages. I saw it at TCL Chinese in High Frame Rate 3D, and I felt like my brain code had been changed. I have no idea how time will view AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER in the coming years, but as an experience, this was unparalleled. Even the high frame rate looked cool to me. I’m excited to see it again, and I hope it resonates even deeper with me the next time. The only reason it didn’t make the list is because the film itself just doesn’t equal the films I’ve listed here, but as an experience? I’ve never seen anything like it. Bring on AVATAR 3.
Honorable Mentions: BARBARIAN, THE MENU, PREY, APOLLO 10 1/2: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD, AFTER YANG, SHE SAID, THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, SOMETHING IN THE DIRT, AMBULANCE, THE NORTHMAN, LYNCH/OZ, DOG, BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER, CAUSEWAY
Happy New Year to you and yours, and hope your 2023 is grand and wonderful. Enjoy every movie.