The Best Films of 2022
"My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie" - H. Styles
2022 in Film was the year the party ended…
Call it the industry’s post-pandemic hangover, call it the day after “The Slap.” But amid corporate belt-tightening and a generation consuming shorter and shorter content, it feels like a bleaker moment than ever for theatrical moviegoing.
One stat that is especially worrying? Adult audiences have largely failed to return to movie theaters. With some exceptions, like Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, one critical darling after another has struck out at the box office this fall. Many of the films tipped for the Oscars (and on this list) have gone underseen, or have outright bombed.
This feels like the last moment in Hollywood when directors can cash in their blank checks before the bank closes up shop for a recession - before studios make the next great pivot into…whatever they believe the future to be.
In this time of uncertainty for film, I find more comfort in experiences that are explicitly, unapologetically cinematic.
I’ve tailored my Best of 2022 list with an affection for the risk takers - the big swings.
In a year when it’s easy to be nihilistic about the future of the film medium, these films prove ambition and scope can still thrive.
Here are my top ten films for the year 2022…
1. BABYLON
Babylon is an experience that best defines the current cinematic moment, in that it truly feels like an end-times film.
Chazelle’s follow-up to La La Land and First Man attempts to be a) a seedy history lesson on the Wild West of the silent film era and b) a grand summation of 100 years of filmmaking. It is also an expansive, expensive ode to the depravity and corruption that have financed those hundred years.
The first thought that passed through my mind as the credits rolled was disbelief at the number of executive producers - I couldn’t fathom that so many people had allowed this to happen. This feels entirely like the work of one man who took the money and ran - Chazelle’s uncensored (at times unsanitary) vision.
Margot Robbie is rising silent film star Nellie LaRoy, a stand-in for the original “It Girl” Clara Bow. Brad Pitt is Jack Conrad, an aging, several-times-divorced actor inspired by John Gilbert. Chazelle puts these dual rise-and-fall stories in the context of film history - in a long line of talents that Hollywood has chewed up and spit back out. However, instead of dwelling on the tragic truths of stardom, Chazelle gets the pulse racing by putting the audience at the center of the party, along with our POV character Manny Torres (Diego Calva). The jazz score by Justin Hurwitz feels like a sonic drug, as Manny can’t help but fall in love with both Hollywood and Nellie.
The ensemble of characters are soon forced to make the transition to sound pictures, and the “anything goes” morals of early Hollywood are replaced by the rules of the studio backlot.
Chazelle has always been a bravura filmmaker (see: Whiplash and the underrated First Man), but I never expected him to escape the sincerity of La La Land so completely. Babylon is a bold, gutsy statement - proving there are no limits to what Chazelle can achieve in his cinematic oeuvre.
In another era, this is the kind of film that would have bankrupted a studio - and for that, I have to salute it.
Babylon is currently in theaters and will stream on Paramount+
2. THE FABELMANS
Spielberg’s latest may end up being one of the more rich and layered in his fifty-year filmography. As Cuarón and Branagh have before him, the master finally turns the camera toward his own childhood. Co-writer and frequent collaborator Tony Kushner inspires Spielberg to dig deep into the events that shaped his psychology. The film proves that it can be a curse to see the world through a camera lens, and to be as talented at one thing as Spielberg is.
Spielberg’s onscreen persona Sammy Fabelman (played to perfection as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle) films family secrets he wishes he didn’t know, and accidentally makes an onscreen hero out of his high school bully. Sammy seeing art in everything results in crossed boundaries - like when Sammy is prompted to film his mom dancing in the headlights in a see-through dress.
Spielberg’s gift for casting (Cindy Tolan is the casting director) is evident here, as Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play his musical, Peter Pan mom and buttoned-up, computer scientist dad, respectively. If you know anything about the Spielberg story (or have just seen E.T.), you already know the destiny of the Spielbergs’ marriage. However, in looking back Spielberg is able to treat both his parental figures with empathy and even-handedness.
It took me a rewatch to get past the vignette-y quality of the film and appreciate its specificity, as certain details clearly come wholesale from Spielberg’s memories (such as the fact that his mother - a restless spirit - always used disposable silverware). And the final sequence, featuring a starring role for the greatest filmmaker of them all, lives up to the hype.
The Fabelmans is much more than the expected Spielbergian origin story - it’s a deeper, more psychological rendering of how our passions can both lift us up and make us lonely.
The Fabelmans is currently in theaters and On Demand. It will stream on Peacock.
3. THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Speaking of loneliness! After being invited to the Academy Awards with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, writer/director Martin McDonagh reunited the stars of In Bruges (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) for an Irish fable based on his play. Set during the Irish Civil War, Banshees takes place on a remote Irish isle where being solitary is a common struggle. When Gleeson’s Colm Doherty announces that he no longer wants to be friends with Colin Farrell’s Pádraic, it sets off a chain of events that threatens to destroy both men.
This is the most mature film McDonagh has made - far from the Tarantino-influenced action-comedy of In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths but retaining the same fascination with dismemberment. This is film to puzzle over, its script containing immaculate dialogue but no simple resolutions.
Farrell and Gleeson are in top form, with Farrell emerging from movie star purgatory in the 00’s to become one of the most interesting and versatile character actors of his generation. Barry Keoghan shows off his gift for portraying damaged, odd but endearing human beings, and Kerry Condon is a revelation as Farrell’s sensible sister longing to escape the isle.
Banshees is a film I was bound to be partial to, as a fan of McDonagh’s dark wit (an Irish sensibility). However, I think it’s also a significant step forward for McDonagh as a director, as he puts away childish things.
The Banshees of Inisherin is currently streaming on HBO Max
4. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
After seeing their Swiss Army Man in 2016, I always assumed the Daniels would be too weird for general audiences, and that their movies would remain cult objects. Turns out I was wrong, and they’re just weird enough!
Everything Everywhere All At Once was the surprise hit of the year - thrilling with both its hyper-kinetic style and the Daniels’ gift for locating the heart in absurdity. The sheer amount of ideas and creativity embedded in this project makes it an achievement. However, it’s also a career high for Michelle Yeoh, an endearing comeback for Ke Huy Quan, and a thrilling introduction to Stephanie Hsu.
It’s hard to talk about Everything Everywhere All At Once online without using hyperbole. Yes, the cross-cutting is something to marvel at, and the action scenes never stop innovating. However, the moment that made this movie truly great to me was watching two rocks talk to each other in subtitles. It’s the quieter moments of familial connection cutting through the noise that are key to this film’s balance.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is more than sensory overload - it takes advantage of film’s ability not just to project sound and images but also to convey the universal (multi-versal) nature of emotions.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is currently streaming on Showtime.
5. TOP GUN: MAVERICK
Gripping and endlessly rewatchable, Top Gun: Maverick is an achievement in both technical craft and the power of movie stardom. It’s a gift to movie audiences starved of effective, character-driven action films, and a testament to Tom Cruise’s absolute commitment to entertaining us.
Sure, the film tries to mint or re-mint stars in Miles Teller (Goose) and Glen Powell (Hangman). And Jennifer Connelly is a suitable, surprisingly age-appropriate foil for Tom Cruise (both of them seem not to age). But let’s not kid ourselves - there’s only one man who goes Mach 10 in this film, and he’s been doing it for forty years of movie stardom.
Yes, Maverick uses action tropes to achieve its results, and the results of the central “impossible” mission are fairly predictable. But damn it if I don’t shed a tear every when a son and surrogate father finally reconcile on an aircraft carrier, as the score swells…
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Anyway, see you at the movies for Mission Impossible 7.
Top Gun: Maverick is currently streaming on Paramount+
6. ARMAGEDDON TIME
James Gray’s reflection on his upbringing in ‘80s Queens (and one special friendship that shaped his life) perfectly synthesizes the personal and the political. In tracing our current post-Trump moment to the Reagan Revolution, Gray resists being heavy-handed. Instead, he finds his themes naturally occurring in a true tale of haves and have-nots. The character Paul, as a white kid, is able to make it out of childhood unscathed, while his black classmate and friend Johnny does not have the same privilege.
Gray also doesn’t try paper over the complications inherent in history. The people he loves (such as his father played by Jeremy Strong) can be hypocritical - speaking to liberal values but not living them. His grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) can be supportive of his artistic aspirations but was also the one to encourage him to attend an anti-semitic private school (where the first pointed question he receives from donor Fred Trump is “what’s your last name?”)
Armageddon Time is the story of how America’s overt self-interest began - how it became everyone out for themselves and their capital. The film proves its point by calculating the human toll.
Armageddon Time is currently available On Demand.
7. THE NORTHMAN
Robert Eggers is one of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers working - having produced works based on folk tales (The Witch) and sea shanties (The Lighthouse). With a bigger budget for The Northman, he turned his attention to the Norse Gods and the Viking epic. The result was just as uncompromising as his previous works, refusing to dilute the brutality of the age.
Alexander Skarsgård portrays Almeth, a viking prince bent on revenge, as a hulking savage reduced to his animal instincts. The film is worth watching just to witness Skarsgård’s imposing physical presence. However, that would also discount the deep weirdness of the film’s psychedelic imagery, which take the audience to Valhalla and back.
This is a relentless, unsparing film that examines the bloody cost of revenge. Like the main character, it is single-minded - and effective.
The Northman is currently streaming on Amazon Prime
8. TÁR
Cate Blanchett’s performance as embattled conductor Lydia Tár is so epic and undeniable that it is a wonder the film itself can support it, much less do it justice. However, Todd Fields’ first film in 16 years is a morally ambiguous character study in which much is left up to interpretation.
Far from passing swift judgment on the sins of its central character, here is a film that leaves you wondering whether redemption is in store until the final act. The final frames leave you with questions - had it all been a black comedy? Do any of the ways we anoint artists really matter when their lives can fall apart like a house of cards?
TÁR is an interesting film to watch in a time when we’re all wondering if cultural currency really is that valuable.
TÁR is currently available On Demand
9. AFTERSUN
Charlotte Wells’ first film dares to be inscrutable and mysterious. The story of a daughter looking back on a childhood vacation with her father could be about anyone’s memories of their dad or loved one. There are no life-changing events in store - in fact, there’s a curious absence of high drama. Instead, this is a film focused on the everyday - how our age informs the questions we ask of ourselves, and our loved ones.
Mescal never gives away his hand as a father with a turbulent emotional undercurrent. This is one of many indie, under-the-radar roles he’s pursued since Normal People (whereas the equally talented Daisy Edgar-Jones has had her face on billboards for Where the Crawdads Sing). Mescal is slowly building a career as an actor with an enormous emotional reservoir, all behind those blue eyes. The sequence where he dances with his daughter to “Under Pressure” - crossing space, time, and dreams - is one of the most transporting scenes of the year.
I’m excited to see how Charlotte Wells follows up this film, practically a masterpiece in her first outing.
Aftersun is currently available On Demand
10. THE MENU / GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (TIE)
I’ve reserved my #10 spot for two films that defined pure fun at the movies. The Menu is both an anxiety-inducing horror film and a riotous comedy - one that my theater audience delighted in. Glass Onion improves with each rewatch, as it’s a joy to collect the clues and callbacks. The “eat the rich” strand that connects these films is not groundbreaking for 2022, and in both cases that message is only a garnish.
These are the types of films I love seeing theatrically - films that inspire the audience to both laugh and lean forward, to gasp and to engage.
The Menu is available to stream on HBO Max. Glass Onion is streaming on Netflix.
Honorable Mentions (Movies I Loved)
Scream (2022), Jackass Forever, KIMI, Dog, The Batman, Turning Red, Bodies Bodies Bodies, NOPE, Bros, Decision to Leave, Bones and All
Movies I Liked
Barbarian, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Avatar: The Way of Water, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Vengeance, The Outfit, Elvis, Father of the Bride, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Fire Island, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Downton Abbey: A New Era, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Deep Water, This Place Rules, White Noise
Could Have Been Better
The Whale, Triangle of Sadness, Confess, Fletch, Don’t Worry Darling, The Gray Man, The Lost City, Marry Me, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, See How They Run
Movies I Missed
After Yang, Petit Maman, Men, Prey, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Women Talking, The Woman King, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, RRR, The Eternal Daughter, Murina, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Catherine Called Birdy, Emily the Criminal
Thank you for checking out my Best of 2022 list. I hope you check out some of these films that delighted me this past year. I’ll see you next year for my 2023 list.
Until next time…