2022: Top 20 Movies

2022 was a flippin’ fantastic year for movies.

I don’t have much sense of what the consensus is on these things anymore. I feel like I used to. Maybe I’m no longer plugged into the right circles. Either way, I haven’t heard many people talking about what a phenomenal year 2022 was, so I feel the need to set the record straight on this, as loudly as I can manage it: 2022 was a staggeringly great year for movies! Maybe even the best since I started doing this over a decade ago!

And what a breath of fresh air it was. 2021 was so bad I actually started to wonder if I just didn’t like movies anymore. 2022 was a godsend, reminding me: Yes, I do! Quite a bit! Movies have just been pretty bad for a couple years!

I have never been this excited about my year-end list. Even in years I otherwise think are really good, I usually have a few noteworthy reservations about the last quarter of the entries. This year, I have no problem recommending all of these to just about anybody. For the right price, I’d add just about any of them to my collection. This year, there are no “I admire it more than I enjoy it” entries. There are no trollish “I love this way more than I should” entries. I’d go to bat for all twenty of these. The stuff the old veterans made was par for the course; the stuff the new faces on the scene made burst with potential.

Another thing that strikes me: This was a uniquely strong year for genre movies. I pretend to be fancier than I am, and the state of Hollywood blockbusters has covered for me for a while now. It’s easy to have your year-end lists favor arthouse fare and awards contenders when everything else is focus-grouped to death before you even see the first trailer. It’s not that I don’t love those movies, too — but it was action, fantasy, science-fiction that brought me into this, and when I head out to my local theater, that’s usually what I’m hoping for. I pretend to be a hifalutin arthouse guy — I can be, in the right mood — but more than anything, I want to have fun at the movies. I did that way more often than usual this year. I’m excited to finally have a year-end list loaded with movies that are just plain fun — that made me laugh, that put me on the edge of my seat, that stirred my imagination.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this year a sea change — that’s a tough thing to predict in advance — but there’s definitely something in the air that feels a bit different to me. I’m not sure everyone is moving away from the franchises that have dominated the last decade, but it feels like a sizable new audience has emerged looking for something new. This is an unusually creative slate of movies, with more than one entry I can’t easily compare to anything else. And if 2022 really does mark a new era, I can hardly imagine a stronger start.

(Note: This year, I started watching some documentaries as well. I’ve decided to exclude them from this list because rating/ranking real life has always felt crass to me. You can expect this rule to remain in place for future lists unless I say otherwise.)

20. Emergency
When I first saw this, I said to myself, “Oh yeah, that’s top ten for sure.” And here I am, a year later, narrowly choosing it over Till to round out the list. At no point in the interim did my opinion of it change. It walks a tonal tightrope near flawlessly, very funny most of the time but absolutely gutting when it wants to be. The political angle is incorporated very gracefully. Not one member of the young cast misses a beat. Everyone involved in the production of Emergency is worth keeping an eye on. It isn’t self-conscious, it isn’t — quote, unquote — weird, and yet I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it before.

19. All Quiet on the Western Front
I still have mixed feelings about it as an adaptation — it cuts the things that make All Quiet on the Western Front what it is, leaving just another war movie in its place. It makes the list nevertheless because it is a staggering technical achievement — in that regard, a worthy successor to the 1930 version. It contains several of the strongest movie battle scenes this side of Saving Private Ryan. There might not be as much going on under the surface, but few movies have managed a visual depiction of the degradation, corruption, and devaluation of the human soul on this level. Edward Berger is one hell of a director.

18. Three Thousand Years of Longing
This is going to get the mother of all critical reappraisals in a few years’ time, so I think it only prudent to stake out my ground on Three Thousand Years of Longing right now. I am incapable of understanding how it received mixed reviews. I have utterly failed to put myself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t like it at least a little. I am very cognizant of its flaws, chiefly that it falls apart in its last half hour after it abandons its — surprisingly engaging? — M.O. of “woman accidentally unleashes a genie and they just spend two hours telling each other stories about their lives.” But there’s a lot of movie before that happens, and that movie is friggin’ magical. A fairytale for adults that actually feels exactly like that.

17. The Northman
I spent a good chunk of the year thinking The Northman was a lock for my top five. If I had to say exactly what it is about Robert Eggers that appeals to me — other than that he is a damn good filmmaker — it’s that he always goes for it, one hundred percent, nothing left on the table. His movies just…insist upon themselves. They’re the cinematic manifestation of “beatings will continue until morale improves.” Eggers grabs you by the throat and drags you into his world; he has no interest in reaching into yours. I think The Northman is probably his weakest effort, mainly because it has the least going on under the surface. But even if all it wants to be is a blood-soaked tale of vengeance, at least it does you the courtesy of nailing every single beat.

16. The Fallout
HBO released this right at the beginning of the year, and it seems to have been just about forgotten. That’s a shame, because The Fallout is a great movie that I hope heralds big things for all involved. It’s a high school drama that beats with sincerity and, especially, authenticity — these characters, for once, feel like actual teenagers, not an out-of-touch adult’s attempt at replicating what they think the kids are into these days. The two leads are phenomenal. But more than anything, it’s a sensitive, thoughtful portrayal of one of the deepest darknesses confronting American society — not pat, not manipulative, not heavy-handed, and lacking simplistic answers to the trauma of an entire generation. I truly hope The Fallout finds its way back into the conversation someday.

15. Barbarian
You’re probably already sick of me saying this, but I can’t believe Barbarian isn’t top ten. One of the most purely enjoyable movie experiences of the year for me. It’s best seen knowing as little about it as possible, so I won’t say much — just that, as a horror movie, it strikes a perfect balance between “actually scary” and “delightfully deranged.” I watched most of it through my fingers, and yet it also contains my pick for the funniest joke of any movie this year. The gulf between where it begins and where it ends is…impressive. Two thumbs up, more of this, please.

14. Top Gun: Maverick
I flat hate the original Top Gun. I can’t tell you how shocking this is to me. It still feels like a personal, moral defeat that I’m putting Top Gun: Maverick on here. I’d have laughed in your face if you told me that a year ago. But here we are. This is by far THE most dramatic margin by which a sequel has ever been better than the original. Everything I think Top Gun does wrong, Top Gun: Maverick not only does right but does like it’s totally second-nature. It makes all this look easy. Deft, propulsive, fun as hell — Top Gun: Maverick is the first genuinely great franchise blockbuster since…yeesh, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, maybe? A billion-dollar miracle.

13. Decision to Leave
Lesser Park Chan-wook, but lesser Park Chan-wook is most filmmakers’ career-long aspiration. Decision to Leave both is and isn’t a departure for him. There’s no shortage of storytellers who are interested in human beings at their worst; what makes Park Chan-wook stand out is his fascination with human beings at their most twisted — when they are most governed by their primal urges. You could watch most of it with your parents, but it’s still quietly demented somewhere deep within — in the psychology of the characters, the moral lines they cross, the animal wants that drives them. Somehow, there’s also an argument to be made that it’s the prettiest film of Park Chan-wook’s career. Not an easy film to unpack in one paragraph, but rest assured — it’s par for the course, and then some.

12. Turning Red
I remain, as ever, a committed Pixar fan — but even I have to admit that their body of work the last few years has not, for the most part, withstood scrutiny the way it once did. I’m not talking about the “one for Disney” they have to make every once in a while, i.e. Lightyear, although that’s certainly not helping. Their original work, too, has lacked a certain spark recently. Repeat viewings don’t do their movies the favors they used to. Not so with Turning Red. This is the first Pixar movie since Inside Out that I liked more on the second viewing. It’s exactly what the studio needed — new talent at the helm, making something that isn’t a complete departure from the house style but still stands out in tone and style and thematic preoccupation. Turning Red is a lot of fun, beautifully animated as always, and it confronts parent/child relationships in a way that I think is actually very bold for a kids movie. I’m so glad it seems to have found an audience.

11. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
Not even in the top ten. Madness. Yeah, I don’t part much from the consensus on this one. Guillermo Del Toro and stop-motion animation are a match made in heaven; frankly, I’m surprised it took this long to finally happen. And his take on Pinocchio is so beautiful, so well thought out, and so expertly realized that I desperately hope it is also definitive and will forestall any further film adaptations of this story. Del Toro threads a lot of his usual trademarks through the old, familiar tale (I’ll always love the way even his “good” supernatural characters are otherworldly, incomprehensible eldritch creatures), but his main contribution is the way he psychologizes all the story beats — takes the scenes you know and ties them together, gives them new meaning. Mostly I’m OK with Del Toro doing whatever he wants at this point, but I sure hope he tries animation again someday.

10. Nope
It’s looking like Jordan Peele is here to stay, and I couldn’t be happier about that. Nope, even more than his last two films, really solidifies him as a superb technical craftsman — someone who knows where to point the camera, how to light the shot, how to move everything within the frame. It also solidifies him as a guy with a gonzo imagination we still haven’t seen the limits of. Nope is sort of unclassifiable. It is horror, but there’s more to it than that. A lot of critics have identified a Spielberg vibe in there; it’s fun, a sweeping adventure, and it wonders at the mysteries of the universe. But there’s also a tongue-in-cheek meanness to it, a condescending sneer as it picks apart the dark side of the industry. The concept here is bizarre, and yet Peele uses it to achieve what actually might be one of the single most disturbing scenes I have ever seen in a motion picture. I don’t think a single day has passed since I first saw it in July that I have not thought about Jupe’s Claim at least once. At this rate, Movie No. 4 is going to be completely bonkers, and I already can’t wait to find out how.

9. Avatar: The Way of Water
OK, I do get to engage in a little trolling here, so if you’ll indulge me for a moment — ahem — neener neener neener it’s my list you can’t stop meeeeeee. For real, though: James Cameron is The Man, bet against him at your own peril. I don’t know how, in the current cinematic culture, we managed to get not one but two actually-good billion-dollar blockbusters in a single year, but like I said: 2022 was pretty special. It’s funny: No one would ever call Avatar a throwback, the entire selling point is that it’s the future of visual effects, but of all the Stranger Things wannabes out there, it’s Avatar: The Way of Water that most feels like an actual 80s movie to me. Its go-for-broke attitude, its cheesy sincerity, its natural meat-and-potatoes functionality — it’s basically Terminator but pretty. It is an improvement over its predecessor in every possible way, including, by what I can only describe as literal magic, the visuals. Call it precipitously reduced standards, but I’m not going to turn down an expensive movie that actually looks like it was expensive. I’m all aboard the Avatar train; give me a hundred more of these. Payakan forever.

8. Close
With respect to All Quiet on the Western Front, if only one foreign language film can compete for big Oscars in a given year, Close ought to have been 2023’s. It’s masterful on a level I can barely get my head around. I think it’s a movie this moment needs — we don’t have much art that explores the way homophobia causes people to pathologize friendship, especially male friendship, and Close does that with a keen eye. I have no complaints with the way it approaches that central issue. And even when it does change tracks, it has such a strong sense of character that you don’t miss a beat. The performances are tremendous; Lukas Dhont puts a lot of faith in his cast, without whom the movie just plain doesn’t work. Close can tell an entire story in an actor’s sideways glance, a pause in a line of dialogue, a subtle movement. Every inch of it is deliberate, and perfectly calibrated. Broke me, then put me back together.

7. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
I’m happy to watch as many of these as Rian Johnson feels like making. He’s so good at this he somehow gives me impostor syndrome even though I’ve never even published anything. Mysteries are hard, but he makes it look like he writes them in his sleep. I don’t think Glass Onion is as cohesive politically as its predecessor, but it makes up for that by being funnier and more energetic. It leans a lot harder into its genre, and I think that’s the right move to set itself apart. Where Knives Out was challenging, Glass Onion is cathartic. Simpler, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. What it means to be is a blast, and it more than accomplishes that much.

6. The Fabelmans
Steven Spielberg is a wizard. He just plain should not be able to get away with what he does. He’s the only person who has ever been good at making movies like this. I feel about The Fabelmans much the same way I do about Pinocchio — so great it also ought to be definitive, a wrap on an entire genre that has in large part been insufferable. It’s the specificity of Spielberg’s approach that makes The Fabelmans sing — where other movies like it simply slap treacly music over shots of film running through a projector and declare that movies are magic, Spielberg says, “Movies are magic to me, and here’s why.” In telling his own story, The Fabelmans increases my impression of Spielberg as a very instinctual filmmaker — a guy who doesn’t always know why he does what he does, just that he likes it and thinks other people will too — and that quality may be his greatest strength here. On paper, this is one of the cheesiest movies of the year. Maybe not just on paper. But Spielberg always knows exactly how far he can take it, at exactly what point you’ll start resisting. He has navigated that balance his entire career, but may never have done it this effectively. The Fabelmans rates among the very best of his more dramatic fare.

5. Tár
I watch movies for a lot of reasons. I want to have fun, I want to think about something, I want to experience life through another person’s eyes, I want to be affirmed, I want to have hope, and sometimes…sometimes I just want to commiserate. Sometimes I want to see a movie that’s so full of hate it winds back around into being kind of delightful. Enter Tár, the rare film that could accurately be described as searing. Cate Blanchett anchors an incisive character study, and Todd Field’s script incorporates cultural debates I’m sick to death of hearing about in a refreshingly nuanced way. It all culminates in what is easily the best ending of any film this year, one that repurposes the opening credits, of all things, as a retroactively hilarious Chekov’s gun. Unique, intelligent, much funnier than you’d think — Tár is really something special.

4. Aftersun
So Aftersun is probably the best movie of the year. I don’t really believe in that sort of thing — the idea of a film being objectively good or bad, objectively better or worse than another film. I think it’s only kind of possible to separate “what I like” from “what is good/bad/better/worse” — every now and then, I’m cognizant of a movie being very well done while recognizing that I’m not quite the target audience. But I feel I have to make a note of it with Aftersun, because the same thing that makes it a miraculous achievement also makes it impossible to analyze relative to other films: I don’t think I have ever seen another movie remotely like it. Every other movie on this is list is playing by somebody else’s rules. Most art — the vast majority — is. Creating something truly new is close to impossible. I think debut filmmaker Charlotte Wells may have pulled it off with Aftersun. There’s no weird trick here — no twist, no revelation, no nakedly unusual thing. It’s all in the way it comes together. There’s a moment — and I think it will arrive at a different time for everyone watching it — when it suddenly clicks. You have that euphoric “eureka” moment where you suddenly understand why it communicates in the way that it does, why it shows you what it chooses to show you, what the larger context is. And that moment hits like a freight train. My personal journey with Aftersun was unlike any I’ve taken with another film. I went from not getting it, wondering what the fuss was about, to kind of appreciating its rhythm, beginning to file it under the aforementioned category of “I admire it more than I enjoy it,” to suddenly being shattered by it, sitting open-mouthed and shellshocked as the credits rolled, then scrambling to the internet to found out what the hell other people were saying about it and reading all of it, in exhaustive detail, well into the night. Aftersun is, simply, an astonishing achievement. I’m not sure I know what to do with it, and that might well be its most outstanding quality.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin
I feel an obligation, the deeper I go into this list, to say more about the film in question — if it’s one of my favorites of the year, I should have a lot of thoughts about it, right? But every now and then my love for a movie prevents me from putting anything interesting into words — the cast is great, the writing is great, the direction is great, what do you want from me? There’s just some sort of alchemy at play that I almost don’t want to understand — I’d rather appreciate the weird spell it casts. The Banshees of Inisherin is that movie this year. It’s just a good movie, in all the ways you want a movie to be good, and somewhere in there is a little spark of a nebulous “special something” that gives it the air of the iconic. If I had to isolate something specific that pushes it to the front of the pack, it’s that it’s essentially Perfect Line Read: The Motion Picture. The year’s best match of actors to material — witty, and bleakly hilarious.

2. RRR
I’m thinking about quitting my job to become a full-time missionary for RRR — traveling from city to city, knocking on doors, asking: “Have you heard the good news?” I have been downright annoying about this movie. I’ve personally recommended it to everyone I know, and I still periodically check in with the ones who haven’t watched it yet to make sure they’re aware that they’re on notice. I said at the outset that this was a great year for having fun at the movies, and here’s the pinnacle. RRR is the most over-the-top, the most ludicrous, the most hilarious, the coolest, the biggest, [insert multiple synonyms for “amazing” here] action movie I have seen in years. Maybe ever! It’s three hours long, and I would conservatively estimate that I spent the last two of those hours in a constant state of screeching like a howler monkey. This movie turned me into a friggin’ soccer hooligan. It is every genre of movie at once, and they are all great. It could’ve settled for just being a meme movie; it certainly has the goods to get away with only being that. And yet it’s also very well made — well shot, well directed, nice looking, as fun to watch as it is to experience. I keep glancing at movies like Tár and Aftersun that probe the human condition with impossible-to-replicate thoughtfulness and thinking: “Really? This movie over those ones?” And then I think to myself: not one single character in The Banshees of Inisherin uses a leopard as a projectile weapon. And I wonder if maybe I’m lying to myself by not putting RRR in the top slot.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
   Speaking of movies that are every genre at the same time and somehow good at all of them… Look, I get it. I hate being cliched, and even when the Oscars get it right, it’s hard not to feel obligated to pick something different than they did so you can remain one of the cool kids. But this year, being what it was…is this my favorite movie of 2023? The top four or five movies on this list are essentially a tie; they are each spectacularly different pieces of work that I enjoy for very different reasons. I’ve spent months wringing my hands over their positioning. Everything Everywhere All at Once is my favorite…I think? But that margin is so thin in so many directions that it’s hard not to feel like some kind of default, an escape from having to make a real choice. Plus, Everything Everywhere All at Once is so ambitious that it’s almost inevitable that it also feels a bit messy — not quite as assured as the other movies in the top five. But that ambition is sky high, and that the movie reaches its goal so much more often than not is an achievement in its own right. And if it’s a chaotic, messy movie, that’s because it’s about our chaotic, messy lives, in all their beautiful, gross, judgmental, loving, stupid, masterful glory. Everything Everywhere All at Once makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it entertains you, it makes you think; its imagination is boundless and fascinating. It’s all things to all people — that’s the point. That’s the promise. It’s literally in the title. And that brings me back around: yes, this is a worthy choice. I’m content with it. 2023 was a great year for a wide variety of movies. What better to represent it than a movie that has a little bit of all of them in its DNA?