The 20 Best Movies of 2022

What a year this was.

Not since the pandemic has cinema felt as “back” as it did this year. Tom Cruise in fighter jets, Spielberg doing awe-inspiring work, Indian cinema delivering an uppercut in the States, and Jordan Peele bringing us face-to-face with extraterrestrial life.

So let’s try and rank the 20 best.

20. Deadstream

Joseph and Vanessa Winters’ insane mash-up of Evil Dead meets Spree is a bonkers found-footage horror affair. It’s a treat for those of us that love the subgenre and are always hoping for a good found footage.

Deadstream is equal parts scary and funny with goopy special effects that are sure to make you laugh while covering your face with your hands. It’s a spooky ton of fun.

19. Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil is every single fear that you can have as a parent wrapped up in a single film.

From the small awkwardness of someone parenting their child like a brute in front of you, to not knowing where your child is in a strange place, it’s all here and used with expert precision to deliver the most uncomfortable film I think I’ve ever seen. 

This might not be the scariest movie ever made in the traditional sense, but it certainly is the movie that will haunt me the most for the next 20 years. 

18. Three Thousand Years of Longing

While we may not be getting his Furiosa movie for another few years, it’s nice to see George Miller bring his visionary filmmaking to something a little smaller in scale but no less breathtaking to look at.

With Three Thousand Years of Longing, Miller examines how modern society is so inundated with technology, capability, and the comforts of life that the stories and myths of the past have gone.

Certainly Miller’s career has been nothing short of mythmaking and Longing is a beautiful piece of his cinematic collection.

17. Pinnocchio

We got two Pinocchio movies this year and I sincerely hope that Disney looks at Guillermo del Toro’s Pinnocchio take on the story and hangs its head in shame.

Whereas Robert Zemeckis’s live action Pinocchio is ugly, bland and bad, GDT’s film is gorgeously animated and wears its beautiful little heart in its sleeve. I was truly in awe of how wonderful the character designs are here and how the designs speak to the characters so poetically.

Here’s to hoping we get another stop motion animated film from GDT, because this was delightful.

16. Bones and All

A cross-country cannibal love story may not sound appetizing to most, but Luca Guadagnino’s ability to tell unconventional love stories is unparalleled right now by his contemporaries.

Bones and All features excellent performances from Timotheé Chalamet, Taylor Russell, and Mark Rylance. It’s a story of finding companionship, community, and love and the desperation to avoid loneliness at all costs.

Its subtext is beautiful to parse through, and it features gorgeous cinematography that embraces the American road in all of its breathtaking glory.

15. Resurrection

Talk about a tight-gripped thriller! Resurrection follows Rebecca Hall as a successful businesswoman whose well-constructed life begins to topple when she runs into someone from her past at a conference.

Hall is one of those actresses that doesn’t seem to get the recognition that she deserves despite always showing up and delivering a knockout performance; and here she’s going toe to toe with Tim Roth in a movie that is so psychologically twisted that the rabbit hole of depravity here just gets deeper and deeper all the way until its shocking finale.

14. Glass Onion

Apparently I’m in the minority with Glass Onion, though I can hardly believe it.

Rian Johnson’s pulpy detective series continues with Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc receiving a mysterious invitation to join a tech billionaire and his “friends” for a mystery weekend of games and murder.

It doesn’t quite live up to Knives Out, but Glass Onion features another excellent cast of characters, skewers the Elon Musks of the world, and gives us a whole colletion of more Benoit Blanc moments. I was delighted.

13. Barbarian

A double booked AirBNB was the least of their problems.

Zach Cregger’s Barbarian took the summer by storm in the way that (just like its staircase into an underground tunnel) is one rabbit hole after another. There are so many delightful twists and turns in this movie, particularly Justin Long’s performance, that Barbarian might well have been one of the best horror films of the year.

12. Turning Red

Turning Red is Pixar’s best movie since Up. Yes, you read that correctly.

It’s a movie about how puberty is a confusing, enraging, embarassing point in a person’s life and how it can feel like you are more seen than ever while your body changes — but it’s told by a girl who turns into a red panda.

The animation? Excellent. The music? Undoubtedly rad. I laughed, I cried, my daughter cried, my wife cried. It’s fantastic.

11. The Batman

After years of anticipation, complaints from the sweatiest, most foul-smelling nerds on the internet that Robert Pattinson wasn’t “working out enough during the pandemic,” the man showed up and put the doubters to sleep.

And while some may want to act like they found this Batman boring because he wasn’t gunning people down in the streets a la their precious Snyder-verse Batt-Fleck (I like him too, I promise), Pattinson and writer/director Matt Reeves brought us a movie about The World’s Greatest Detective figuring out being the world’s greatest detective as he faces off against the Riddler, played by the most underrated actor in Hollywood, Paul Dano.

Not only are Pattinson and Dano excellent, but the supporting cast all deliver knockout performances, including Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright’s Detective Gordon, and a chameleon-like performance from Colin Farrell as The Penguin.

10. After Yang

And yet, as good as he is in The Batman and his Oscar-nominated turn in The Banshees of Inisherin (coming up on this list), it’s Colin Farrell’s performance in A24’s lo-fi sci-fi drama After Yang that is my favorite of his in 2022.

After Yang is the story of a family whose android malfunctions and the journey to understand what it is that made him “die.” It touches on themes of humanity, love, acceptance, free will, and family.

Imagine if Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell was a nanny. There’s your setup for After Yang.

9. The Fabelmans

Of course Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film was going to make this list.

People like to complain about how Hollywood loves to make movies about itself, and in many cases that is true. But what Spielberg does with The Fabelmans is speak to more than just the power of movies in Hollywood, he is examining how movies of all sizes show us truth.

That may be truth about the world, truth about others, or more often than not, the truth about ourselves. But certainly one truth is that The Fabelmans is a wonderful, beautiful film and maybe Spielberg’s best in years.

8. The Banshees of Inisherin

I was not a fan of Martin McDonagh’s last film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I found it to be sloppy, mean-spirited, and reaching for resolutions that it doesn’t earn.

But The Banshees of Inisherin is a return to form for McDonagh, delivering some of my favorite writing of the year. It’s a difficult needle to thread, to make a movie about two best friends who come to an impasse and somehow still make that film have an emotional core that an audience can get behind.

But McDonagh gives enough for every character in this film to work with to where even in its sadness, there’s still a sense of optimism about life while speaking truth.

7. Decision to Leave

Murder and love–two things that far too often never get resolved–find themselves the main levers with which Park Chan-Wook turns and spins his two leads in this uncharacteristically understated film. 

Is this a murder mystery? Not really. But sometimes the biggest mystery is who you love. And in typical Park fashion, so much of this story takes place between the lines. Things unspoken often carry more weight than those spoken.

…but isn’t that just how love goes?

6. Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise does it again. One of the greatest sequels ever made and one of the best action movies of the 21st century. This man doesn’t miss at this point in his career.

From start to finish Top Gun: Maverick is brimming with life and a love of the craft of making movies. Cruise is getting older, yet here he is, in a world absolutely dominated by blue screen replacement and CGI, teaching the next generation of actors the importance of practical filmmaking.

Count your blessings, folks.

5. Nope

Jordan Peele bringing audiences to the theater to watch a movie where a giant eye consumes the flesh and blood that cannot help but look at it, but destroys itself by consuming artifice in its search for something real to consume?

Jordan, you madman.

Nope is a film that I avoided every trailer for. I went in almost entirely blind and I found this to be entirely arresting. In a year where theaters were fighting for their lives unless they were an event unto themselves, Nope asks if we aren’t actually ending ourselves by being slaves to the things that we can’t help but look away from.

4. TÁR

The fact that there was Inception-style discourse around how much of this film is paranoia and how much of it is reality speaks to how exciting this drama about a composer really was.

Cate Blanchett gives her best performance since Carol in TÁR, a film about a classical conductor whose secret life leads brings her under the critical eye of “cancel culture”.

It’s astounding work. I just hope Todd Field doesn’t wait another 16 years to give us another film.

3. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

You know how sometimes you’ll watch a film that has almost a mind-shattering effect? That makes you say, “YOU CAN DO THAT?!?!” Everything Everywhere All At Once did that to me like 6 times. 

Whether it’s the action, the comedy, the performances, the world-building, the heart, all of it is cranked up to the max and it would not work as well any other way.

This is a gem that demands to be experienced and while the zaniness of its sci-fi world and its excellently choreographed action make it worth the price of admission, it’s the emotional storytelling that makes it such a treasure.

2. RRR

RRR blew the roof off of 2022.

From start to finish, RRR is a joyous celebration of life, love, and friendship… with a ton of death to go around! It very easily makes its case as one of the best action movies of the decade with some of the most jaw-dropping insane set pieces I have ever witnessed.

Every single frame is crafted so delicately and there is so much rich detail here. It’s a cinematic delicacy. 

1. Aftersun

I can’t remember the last time that I watched a movie that felt like a nuclear bomb of sadness was dropped on my chest, and also felt like a film that I so desperately needed in my life.

Aftersun follows Calum and Sophie, a father and daughter on vacation in Turkey. But while Sophie is enjoying herself, things are not as they seem for Calum who is struggling.

Being a good father is difficult. It’s constant effort and especially for those struggling on the inside with more than they are willing to show on their face, it can be even more difficult. Aftersun captures that in such a beautiful, heartbreaking way that after two screenings I was simply unable to get through this without being a puddle on the floor.

A powerful, honest film and the best of 2022.