2022 was the year that the film industry truly started to flourish again after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Massive blockbuster hits such as Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water brought audiences back to theaters in droves, while many smaller, quirkier films such as Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Banshees of Inisherin won major awards and garnered a good deal of attention through more limited theatrical runs and availability on various streaming services. Films of all sizes and styles made lasting impressions in 2022, proving that the medium is still held in high regard.
The many films released in 2022 gave us a wide range of selections that are commercially viable, artistically daring, and socially aware. It was an exciting year to love movies because there was something that could appease every individual, every mood, and every purpose. 2022 made the future of the film industry look far better than it has in recent years, providing a great deal of hope for various forms of its success in the years to come.
10. Deep Water
There were technically better 2022 movies than this devilishly entertaining and titillatingly hypnotic erotic thriller from the great, long-lost director Adrian Lyne (this was his first movie after a twenty-year hiatus), but they didn’t quite make this list because, simply put, they just aren’t as fun. Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas star as a couple in an open marriage whose relationship gets dangerously complicated after the wife’s lovers start turning up dead. Deep Water is an endlessly engrossing throwback to the ‘80s and ‘90s adult dramas and/or thrillers that Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal) built his career upon. It recalls a type of film that used to be made with care, expertise, and frequency but, when scarcely produced today, often lacks the same quality and refinement as this skillfully executed piece of work.
9. To Leslie
Andrea Riseborough not only deserved her much-scrutinized (due to an atypical grassroots campaign) Oscar nomination, she deserved to win for her dazzling and raw performance as a Texas woman battling alcoholism. To Leslie stands apart from other films dealing with addiction because of its blunt honesty, its thoughtful and hopeful script by Ryan Binaco, its skillful and maturely inconspicuous filmmaking by director Michael Morris and his team, and the dedication of its cast with their consistently naturalistic performances. Marc Maron, Andre Royo, Owen Teague, Stephen Root, and Allison Janney all give Riseborough excellent support with performances that are equally award-worthy.
8. Women Talking
A group of women from a Mennonite colony are forced to decide between staying in the security of their home or leaving it and taking a stand against the sexual abuse some of them have suffered at the hands of select male members. Adapted from the fact-based book by Miriam Toews, screenwriter/director Sarah Polley’s exceptionally powerful and thought-provoking film communicates the necessity of female empowerment and independence that is desperately needed in today’s increasingly misogynistic and backward-moving world. Women Talking also features numerous flawless performances from such stellar talents as Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, and Ben Whishaw.
7. Barbarian
A young woman (Georgina Campbell) discovers that she just might be in terrible danger shortly after arriving at an Airbnb. The less said from there, the better, as Barbarian’s primary appeal is its unpredictability. From beginning to end, it is an endlessly surprising and shocking horror film whose events never follow a specific formula. It features numerous, effectively jarring, and expertly executed tonal shifts that consistently keep the audience on its toes. The film also showcases impressively refined filmmaking by writer/director Zach Cregger and his production team and wholly committed performances by Campbell, Bill Skarsgard, Justin Long, and Richard Brake. Barbarian is one of the most original, carefully crafted, and downright haunting horror films in recent memory.
6. I Love My Dad
This internet-centric dark comedy centers on an estranged father (Patton Oswalt) who reconnects with his son (James Morosini) only after pretending online to be a young woman (Claudia Sulewski) who is romantically interested in him. Writer/director Morosini delivers an intelligent and character-based film that is just as emotionally moving as it is uncomfortably and hilariously squirm-inducing. I Love My Dad is a bitingly funny and deeply moving film that comments on the dark side of the internet while also examining the many complexities within father/son relationships. It is a film with numerous large and fascinating thematic ambitions, and it impressively succeeds at all of them.
5. The Whale
Based on the play by Samuel D. Hunter (who also wrote the screenplay), director Darren Aronofsky’s film is about a terminally obese online English professor (Brendon Frasier) who attempts to reconnect with his angst-ridden teenage daughter (Sadie Sink). The Whale is an impeccably crafted film about regret, atonement, obsession, and self-destruction. It is a powerfully cathartic and wholly honest film that, like most of Aronofsky’s films, refuses to compromise or comfort its audience with any form of false hope. Frasier deserves the Oscar he received for the film and his co-stars, including Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, and Samantha Morton, deserve accolades for their flawless support.
4. RRR
This endlessly inventive and hyperkinetically paced Hindi epic is loosely based on the efforts of real-life Indian revolutionaries/freedom fighters Kamaran Bheem and Alluri Sitarama (who are played with passionate and intense dedication by N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan Teja). Gleefully spastic, highly engaging, uniquely staged, and, at times, brilliantly absurd action scenes are featured throughout, providing the film with nonstop excitement that never allows its pacing to drag or its three-hour runtime to be felt. RRR, though obviously heavily fictionalized and heightened, serves as an informative history lesson, but it is a sincerely and playfully executed one that never ceases to be moving, amusing, and entertaining.
3. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage in this cleverly meta celebration of the actor’s enormous and impressive body of work. In the film, Cage is recruited by the CIA to help put an end to a supposedly dangerous and powerful drug lord (Pedro Pascal) who is a massive fan of his. Cage is soon conflicted, however, after the two of them share a bond that is largely formed over their mutual obsession with Cage’s career. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is the ultimate movie for Nicolas Cage fans, as it proudly serves as a love letter to his unique and bold talents and to the many great films in which he has appeared. It is a hilariously quirky, movingly endearing, and wonderfully enjoyable ode to one of the greatest and most unique actors of our time.
2. The Banshees of Inisherin
Taking place on a fictional island off the coast of Ireland during the height of the Irish Civil War in the early 1920s, this character-based dark comedy from the always-brilliant writer/director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) is made with exceptional quality and contains many wonderful surprises. Brendan Gleeson brilliantly portrays a tired musician who decides that he no longer wants to be associated with his closest friend (an equally brilliant Colin Farrell), then makes an oddly and absurdly self-destructive threat when he can’t get Farrell to understand that he simply wants to be left alone. The Banshees of Inisherin is a one-of-a-kind film that leaves an indelible mark on its audience with its beautifully morose and darkly witty writing, exquisite craftsmanship, and downright perfect performances.
1. Mad God
Written, produced, and directed by stop-motion/visual effects pioneer Phil Tippett (Star Wars, Robocop, Starship Troopers), this independently-produced, thirty-years-in-the-making, primarily stop-motion-animated feature film is a massive accomplishment in near-countless ways. Featuring a loose narrative that is set in a hellish post-apocalyptic world that is filled with various grotesque and deadly (though beautifully and skillfully crafted) creatures, the film plays like a terrifying and shocking dream where feelings of security consistently dwindle, only to be replaced by an ever-increasing sense of dread. It is a film saturated in twisted dream logic where just about any atrocity can, and often does, occur. Mad God is one of the most abstract and effective cinematic nightmares since David Lynch’s Erasherhead.
Top Ten Movies That Were Very Painful to Leave Off the Top Ten Movies of 2022:
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (if it were feature-length, it would have made my top ten), The Staircase (if it weren’t a miniseries, it would have made my top ten), Babylon, Not Okay, See How They Run, The Menu, Sam & Kate, Sr., Vortex, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Honorable Mentions:
The Adam Project, All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, Bardo: False Chronicles of a Handful of Truths, Bigbug, The Black Phone, Clerks III, Deadstream, Death on the Nile, Don’t Worry Darling, Elvis, Emily the Criminal, Empire of Light, End of the Road, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Father Stu, Fresh, The Good Nurse, The Gray Man, The House, Kimi, Luckiest Girl Alive, A Man Called Otto, My Southern Family Christmas, The Northman, One Way, The Pale Blue Eye, Phoenix Rising, She Said, Smile, Triangle of Sadness, Vengeance, Violent Night, Windfall, The Woman King
