Goodness gracious, friends – 2022 was the year of content. Provoked by the big shifts from theaters to home streaming in 2020 and 2021, it seems like everyone was scrambling to make movies that could be seen in lots of contexts and in 2022, we hit the crest of the wave with a veritable cascade of new movies. So so so many, y’all! Trust me on this – I’ve had my face buried in the data since early November and it is overwhelming.
Even though the content explosion is kind of causing the film industry to collapse a lil bit, I think this is good news: with so many new movies competing for an audience, we win. Of course you’ll find your indie dramas and serious international films as you might expect, but this year’s list also features action, sci-fi, fantasy, family films, Bollywood, mysteries, horror, comedies, romance, documentaries… there’s truly something for everyone to fall in love with this year.
As a reminder, films make their way onto this list by adding together their scores across three dimensions: popularity (box office, home streaming, online ratings), quality (is it good? critics and online reviewers weigh in…), and cultural influence (winning awards, playing at fests, strong buzz, made by/featuring historically marginalized perspectives, etc.). Only films that were available somehow for regular people in the flyover states to see in 2022 are eligible, so you can track down any one of these films to watch tonight!
As a reminder (since I’ve had a few people ask about this), the films that say they are “available to rent” can usually be found on basic media apps like the Apple Store or Amazon – Vudu is my preferred spot to rent. Click here to search for films by title to see where you can track them down. Renting films online is a great way to expand your horizons beyond what the streamers you subscribe to are feeding you… and most films are just $2-5 to rent for 24-48 hours.
So get ready to update your watchlists, google some movie trailers, and ask your friends if they have Showtime… Here come the 50 most culturally significant films of 2022… plus a few great films that didn’t quite make the cut. Enjoy!
Tip: For the best experience, view in “landscape mode,” aka turn your phone sideways – or pull it up on a laptop.
Buried Treasures
We didn’t get many musicals this year, which makes this lush, gorgeous, heartbreaking banger based on the classic Edmond Rostand romance even more worthy of your time. With music by The National and stirring lead performances from Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett, this film is on its own wavelength – all swirling coattails and soaring violins. It took me some time to catch up. But by the time I did, I was deeply moved – the third act song “Heaven is Wherever I Fall” is kind of making me tear up right now, just remembering it.
Streaming on Amazon Prime
Terence Davies’ (The Deep Blue Sea, The House of Mirth) aching portrait of Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated veteran of World War I, outspoken critic of war, and a poet – as he embarks on a series of affairs and struggles to come to peace with his homosexuality. Jack Lowden’s lead performance is one of the best of the year, landing this film on many critics’ list of 2022 standouts.
Streaming on Hulu
An open-eyed chronicle of the events of 2020 in America, from the perspective of the Siev family: multi-racial small business owners in Bad Axe, Michigan. With humor and heartbreak, filmmaker David Siev patches together a compelling and daringly optimistic snapshot of the identity crisis that haunts the core of our country, drawn into tight focus during the unprecedented events of a year our culture is only beginning to understand.
Available to rent
A sci-fi Afrofuturist musical from NYC-based rapper/poet/actor Saul Williams and Rwandan cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, along with countless artistic collaborators from across the diaspora, Neptune Frost births itself from the embers of the righteous fury of colonial exploitation, a new creation – transcendent, poetic, punk, romantic, radical, queer, dreamy, revolutionary. Also featuring fem and intersex Burundi protagonists, the film earned the highest ranking for marginalized perspectives of all films released in 2022.
Streaming on the Criterion Channel or available to rent
This ultra-low-budget time travel comedy about a TV screen that shows images from two minutes into the future proves that all you truly need to make a fantastic movie is a great idea, a cellphone (and a few go-pros), a dash of storytelling and behind-the-camera experience, and a whole lot of commitment. Shot in just seven days in a Kyoto cafe by a local theater group in the midst of COVID lockdown boredom, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has since delighted audiences and won awards at film festivals around the world – and finally became available in the U.S. in 2022.
Streaming on Amazon Prime or available to rent
One of my favorite films of 2022, George Miller’s follow up to Fury Road was tragically slept on. This movie is fantastic! A visually spectacular fairy tale with extraordinary lead actors, warm humor, and a deep and reverent sense of wonder – Three Thousand Years of Longing pivots around a Djinn, recently released from his bottle, telling a solitary professor the stories of his life in and out of captivity. Midnight family strongly endorsed. Don’t miss this one!
Available to rent
Kogonada’s tender, expansive sci-fi gem, After Yang, mines the same types of questions that science fiction writers and filmmakers have been obsessing about for generations (What makes a being real/alive? Does technology bring us closer together or move us farther apart? What is memory?), but does so with earnest intimacy and tremendous generosity. His contemplative visuals both nestle you into the quiet domestic life of this family and sparkle with imaginative flourishes of a future world. Also, way more talk about tea than I expected. Overall, a total delight!
Available to rent
Watch this one through the lens of what is certainly Weird Al’s first cinematic masterpiece, 1989’s UHF. Like Al himself, this movie is far sillier than it appears on the surface, even a surface as ridiculous as this one. Casting Daniel Radcliffe was a masterstroke too. What a treasure – he is completely committed to the bit with his super cut abs and rockstar/action movie hero delivery, but brings an undeniable goofy sweetness to every moment. Because of him, you never forget for a moment what a doofy nerd Weird Al is… which makes the joke of this biopic so much more fun.
Streaming (free!) on the Roku Channel
In Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg goes hard into all his favorite things – biomachines, squishy sound effects, body cavities, techno-evolutionary paranoia, an overt suspicion of beauty with a whiff of lust – perhaps better than he ever has before. And although the film’s semi-regular meandering philosophizing can be a bit obtuse IMO, underneath all that bluster is an engaging dystopian sci-fi adventure story with a top-notch cast, fully committed to this vision.
Streaming on Hulu
Who knew romantic comedies would be even BETTER with stunning animation? (Kid Cudi did!) Brilliantly combining the vibrant, energetic animation style that made Into the Spiderverse such a standout with a charming, adult, Nora Ephron-style slice-of-life romance created by, with music by, and starring Kid Cudi, Entergalactic is the first-of-its-kind. A stunning, heart-centered, Black love story about art and music and beauty, this film has an astonishingly high quality rating, especially for a Netflix release (it is has the third-highest rating of all 2022 releases on the streaming content juggernaut) – don’t miss it!
Streaming on Netflix
With a light hand and a phenomenal cast (led by everyone’s favorite Wednesday Addams), Megan Park’s The Fallout traces the impact of a school shooting on two young women who endured the event huddled in the bathroom together. Although certainly the difficult subject matter is pivotal, The Fallout is at its core a film about young people, and holds onto the characteristic lightheartedness so effortless to teenage cinema. This film feels as if it’s about to be an iconic portrayal of our current generation’s experience of their youth.
Streaming on HBO Max
A documentary about Katia and Maurice Krafft, volcanologists who are in love with each other and obsessed with their work: getting up close to gather data on actively erupting volcanoes. The Krafft’s footage inspires fear and wonder, and Miranda July’s narration keeps audiences tethered to the film’s wild, beating heart.
Streaming on Hulu and Disney+
The Top 50
Nancy has never had an orgasm – and has decided that it’s about time she did. Enter sex worker Leo Grande. Though it sounds like the setup of a cheeky bedroom comedy or a May-December romcom, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is something much more complex, surprising, and vulnerable – interested in the ways shame and pleasure can twist and tangle our identities, optimistic about the ways kindness and honesty can heal and transform us.
Streaming on Hulu
Despite the unique, dream-like wavelength Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Cemetery of Splendor) clearly operates on, Memoria, like his other films, is generous and unpretentious, inviting you to experience each moment on its own terms. A contemplative meditation on the earth, memory, dreams, and the great mystery within all things – Memoria is fueled by something other than narrative. Perhaps an earnest attempt to describe the indescribable, or translate into cinematic language a fundamental truth so beautiful and terrifying it remains just beyond our grasp.
Ever-new showtimes here or available on Blu-Ray
Certainly the very real paranoia that accompanies the thrills of modern dating is partially responsible for the popularity of The Tinder Swindler, a totally fine documentary about a handsome conman who has defrauded women he met online of more than $10 million. Definitely not in the same league as the best documentaries of the year, but it is about true crime and dating and is streaming on Netflix so… (shrug), it’s a hit!
Streaming on Netflix
An inventive, visceral, suspenseful–and sometimes quite funny–new offering in the “creepy basement” subgenre of horror films, Barbarian will get your spine tingling and will keep surprising you until its sharp and affecting final act. Plus, like all truly good horror films, it has something to say. In this case, about that unique kind of fear that most women – rightly, Barbarian argues – live with as a constant companion.
Streaming on HBO Max or available to rent
A sharp, funny, skewer-the-rich slumber party whodunnit gen-z satire that blazes through its 90-minute runtime. Through the energy of its powerful buzz, awards, and fest showings, Bodies Bodies Bodies seems to have already claimed its place as a cult favorite for the next generation. Apparently the trailer doesn’t do the film justice – so maybe skip that, and instead consider that the director described the film as Mean Girls meets The Lord of the Flies. Does that sound like your thing? If so, check it out!
Available to rent
This is an Aronofsky film, so I’m not surprised that opinion is starkly divided on The Whale. On one side, you’ve got the folks who are genuinely moved, primarily by Brendan Fraser’s heartfelt performance that is clearly drawn from real pain. On the other, there are those who are strongly put off by Aronofsky’s heavy-handed symbolism and self-aware cinematic manipulations that appear quite impressed with themselves, but don’t make a very interesting point in the end. I mean, a movie about an extremely obese person called The Whale should have something to say about the experience of living in a fat body – about alienation, about disconnection, about body shaming, about the way our culture’s obsession with pleasure manipulates our neurotransmitters to harrowing degrees of internal discombobulation – beyond “it sucks” and “look at this guy.” Right? Anyway I’m judging based on what I’ve read and my bias for the latter team is clearly showing. I haven’t seen it. Which side are you on?
Available to rent starting 3/14
We know how this American story ends: the two white men who horrifically murdered a 14-year-old Black child in 1955 were acquitted by the all-white jury, after just a 5-day trial and 67 minutes of deliberation. But because of the extraordinary courage of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who – despite her unimaginable grief – made sure her son’s story would not be lost, we will never forget Emmett Till’s name. Chukwu’s film – part biopic and part courtroom drama – pivots on Mamie’s experience, a tribute to the woman whose activism throughout her life strengthened and mobilized the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. We’re all indebted to this freedom fighter, to this story – and Chukwu’s mature and thoughtful film makes space for us to appreciate the magnitude of her contribution to our continually unfolding struggle for a just and free world.
Director Joanna Hogg has described her lovely, melancholy 2019 memoir, The Souvenir, as a call in need of a response – and The Souvenir Part II really sings, mirroring the melody of the first film, but adding dazzling layers of texture, meaning, memory, and imagination. Lots of peeling to do on this onion. Advice: see part 1 first.
Streaming on Showtime
David Ehrlich aptly described internationally celebrated Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi’s social melodrama films as “dilemmas.” They’re tangles, in which by the end there are no real winners, it’s impossible to say who is right and who is wrong, and your own judgments are subverted at every turn – forcing you to examine them, therefore involving you in the dilemma too. A Hero is another masterpiece of this form – this time, beginning with a man who stumbles across a bag of money. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes.
Streaming on Amazon Prime
The 80s had Heathers, the 90s had 10 Things I Hate About You, the 00s had Mean Girls, the 10s (does that have a clever name?) had Easy A…. and for the 20s, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson would like to nominate Do Revenge. I know – that’s some major, A+ high school troublemaking feminist company to associate with, but this film is ready to support women’s rights and wrongs with a queer, gen-z high school revenge scheme movie wrapped in a colorfully stylized aesthetic and set to TikTok-sourced beats starring ultimate nepo baby Maya Hawke (looking uncannily like an exact 50/50 genetic combo of her parents, even more than usual). Plus: Sarah Michelle Gellar as the school headmaster, a character inspired by Kathryn in 1999’s Cruel Intentions. Try to fight it! You can’t.
Streaming on Netflix
The younger Panahi’s debut film is a stunner: a chaotic, funny, heartbreaking, offbeat road trip movie that weaves together this family of four’s frustration, commitment, aimlessness, adventure, and grief into a tight spring of energy. A gentle but profound testament to the necessity of both screaming and laughter to keep us afloat as we hurtle ourselves toward the unknown.
Streaming on Showtime or available to rent
An ultra-modern J-pop virtual universe cyber-bullying riff on Beauty & the Beast, Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle is a visually explosive, inspiring spectacle. Heartfelt and earnest, Belle gets a little too corny for some folks – but for most, this cute, imaginative, techno-musical fantasy extravaganza about a lonely girl and the healing power of love hits all the right notes.
Streaming on HBO Max or available to rent
TFW your awareness that this little person is so small and special and the world is so big and amazing and dangerous floods over you – and you want to both show them everything and protect them from everything – but you can’t do either because your own life is so confusing, and all you do is mess up, and you always feel lost – but because you must, you just keep showing up, you keep hanging out, you try to make it fun, you try not to lie. But in movie form, compassionate and ruthlessly precise in the way only Mike Mills (Beginners, 20th Century Women) can make it. Totally destroyed me – but it hurts so good. One of my personal favorite films of the year!
Available to buy
Damien Chazelle’s ode to Hollywood is an outrageous 3-hour indulgence. Everyone is the most: Brad Pitt is the most charismatic, most gentlemanly, most movie star; Margot Robbie the most stunning, the most unhinged, the most hungry; Diego Calva the most reasonable, the most hard-working; Jean Smart the most jaded, the most realistic; Tobey Maguire the MOST creepy. (Yikes.)
Everything is the most – the film begs for expletives. It has the most ideas about cinema and legacy and art and it just desperately wants to make the most interesting points. The most orgiastic parties, the most beautiful sunsets, the most stressful soundstages, the most beautiful cars and homes and fashions, the most body fluids, the most drugs, the most uninhibited sex, the most casual disregard for human life.
And that ending. What.
It’s a fun experience, and it’s hard for me not to admire such a committed, passionate, earnest swing – even though all that smacking sure makes a big mess.
Streaming on Paramount+ or available to rent
I admit it – I’ve been kind of suspicious of how unabashedly cute this looks. Like: why are you so impressed with yourself with your little googly eye and your little voice and your little shoes? You’re not even real! Stupid shell. But apparently, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On stays on the funny/sad/life is a miracle side of the line, not veering into overly saccharine/precious/embarrassing territory. According to the overwhelming majority of reviewers across all platforms, this film is an absolute treasure. So put your cynicism away, bust out your kleenex, and start thawing out your cold cold heart. Marcel is going on an adventure and you’re invited!
Streaming on Showtime
Perhaps best known for his 2016 claustrophobic sci-fi gem, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Dan Trachtenberg really brings it – again – with Prey, a new entry in the Predator franchise. Set in 17th century Comanche territory, young warrior, Naru, is desperate to prove herself as a protector of her tribe, but finds herself stalking a killer more dangerous than any her people have ever encountered. The film relies on visual storytelling way more than dialogue, to great effect. Amber Midthunder is intense and brooding, the forests and grasses of the plains shimmer in the clear air, the hunt will keep you guessing, and the action choreography is tight and thrilling. All in all, a really solid sci-fi action movie!
Streaming on Hulu
What a movie! On-the-outs porn star, Mikey, a freight train of swagger and appetite, returns to the Texas hometown that hope has long-since abandoned, where he meets Strawberry – squirrelly and sunkissed. Her naivete blinds her to consequence, as Mikey’s ex-wife, Lexi, lingers on the other side of the chain link fence, wary, exhausted, her numbness not quite concealing the life-cracking heartbreak she wears like sweatpants. Every move everyone makes feels like it could spin the entire world off a cliff. This is an undeniably bleak situation – downright purgatorial. So it’s insane that the sense of possibility in this film, its insistence that anything could happen and who knows what wonderful thing might happen next that bubbles out of Simon Rex’s maniacally charismatic portrayal of Mikey, makes it so much fun. How did Sean Baker do that? This movie feels like a magic trick.
Streaming on Showtime
Yup, the Harry Potter making-of 20th anniversary love fest is fantastic! Everyone is back (except for our beloved Alan Rickman, RIP), and not only does the cast and crew’s clear affection for one another shine through, the opportunity to reflect on the ways telling these stories shaped everyone’s lives – especially the now-adults who began telling them when they were just children – is genuinely moving.
Streaming on HBOMax
In Joel Coen’s adaptation, Shakespeare’s haunting Macbeth, a bloody story of otherwordly ambition, destiny, madness, and corruption – the kind that can re-order the world and not in a good way – goes expressionistic and moody. Coen and his fantastic cast fully surrender to the rhythms and musicality of the play’s language, stripping the production down to a gorgeous, minimalist, otherwordly support system that makes space for the actors and iambic pentameter to do their thing.
Streaming on Apple TV+
Sure, the story isn’t groundbreaking (think How to Train Your Dragon but ocean) and this is a movie genuinely made for children to enjoy (no wink wink pop culture jokes “for the parents” to be found) – but it’s a sweet, funny, empowering, good-natured anti-imperialist adventure story with well-developed characters wrapped up in beautiful animation. Certainly worth checking out for movie night with the kiddos.
Streaming on Netflix
Drawing from the same ancient Viking lore that inspired Hamlet, Robert Eggers’ The Northman is a violent, visually stunning slow-burn revenge horror-fantasy starring Alexander Skarsgaard in full beast mode. I was ready to dismiss this movie for whatever reason, but it was so much more engaging and a lot weirder than I expected… just way more goth, way more feral, way more myth-meets-fantasy kind of stuff. For example, the film features a magic sword that A) craves blood, B) can only be drawn at night or at the gates of hell and C) can only be won by defeating the ancient zombie that wields it in one-to-one combat. (Ok!) I liked it a lot.
Streaming on Amazon Prime or available to rent
People write such beautiful things about Celine Sciamma’s follow-up to the spellbinding Portrait of a Lady on Fire – and since I haven’t seen Petite Maman yet, that makes it pretty intimidating to describe. A childhood fairy tale, a memory that feels like a dream or a dream that feels like a memory, a collapse of the sadness that grows from the necessary and unchangeable separateness between children and parents, a “vanilla pudding of a movie–soft and sweet”…. “I can already feel my love for this blooming in my chest.” Folks’ reactions to this film are extremely warm and quite personal… much like another 2022 film (coming up!) about the complex relationships between children and parents. Seems worthwhile to seek out – I plan to.
Streaming on Hulu
Based on a memoir, Happening is the story of a smart young woman with a promising future, alone with an unwanted pregnancy. In France in 1963, abortion was illegal, and the film follows Annie as she seeks help first through her relationships, then in the medical community, and then eventually, in more dangerous places. A desperately alone, stressful, real life horror story that cuts especially close this year, as women’s rights to safe medical care are under threat – or are being actively repealed – across the United States. A distressing, exemplary film, necessary for us to face in order to muster the strength we’ll need to fight for one another.
Streaming on Hulu
I’m not going to lie to you: I really don’t give a shit about Avatar. I didn’t make it through the first film and have no interest at all in seeing this one (even though I do really love Zoe Saldana!). But I’m clearly in the minority on this – James’ Cameron’s long-anticipated follow-up to the 2009 film dominated the 2022 box office and is one of the most popular films of 2022 across all measures. The people love the world of Pandora! And as far as I can tell, Avatar – The Way of Water is much better than the first film in pretty much every way. So if this is your thing, I’m happy for you.
Pedro Almodovar is back with his best film in 15 years… saturated with the generational impacts of fascism and civil war in Spain and about strong, likable women going through stuff together. This time, because of pregnancy. Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit meet in a hospital room before giving birth – both single, both with accidental pregnancies, though in very different situations and seasons of their lives, and with very different kinds of choices. Cruz is the film’s beating heart and an absolute treasure, as ever.
Available to rent
My expectations are coming in high for a Luca Guadagnino film – no one combines beauty and horror quite like he does. And I really liked so much about Bones and All… the idea of just a few scattered people born as something different, the fringes of America, the beautiful open landscapes of the midwest, the road movie adventure, the two loners choosing to make home together, the Chalamet. But something about this film felt aloof to me, holding us at arms’ length, never quite letting us in on the characters’ desires and struggles and secrets. Which may be part of its tantalizing mystery… I’m not sure! Recommended.
Available to rent
The always fantastic Ralph Fiennes leads a blackly comedic service industry revenge fantasy come to life – which doubles as a mournful, kamikaze war cry for art, beauty and truth to triumph just for a moment over the black hole of commodification and capitalism. It’s pretty fucked up, very funny and deeply committed to its particular thing. I loved it!
Streaming on HBOMax or available to rent
I haven’t seen TÁR, and it seems like such a monumental film that I’m not going to try to get quippy… I’m just going to quote David Ehrlich: “… [Director Todd] Field has come back to us with a savage yet acutely sincere character study that’s slathered in a million shades of gray. TÁR tells the story of a trailblazing woman whose aspiration to embody the grandeur of the past makes her vulnerable to the uniquely modern pitfalls of the present. The film is every bit as brilliant and implosive as she is.”
Streaming on Peacock or available to rent
When Darin J. Sallam’s film portraying one young girl’s real experience of the Nakba, the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948, came out on Netflix last December, it became the target of a coordinated censorship campaign spearheaded by high-ranking officials in the Israeli government. Clearly, stories told by Palestinians about their families’ history of displacement and its legacy still strike a nerve – as good an indicator as any that this story is important to be told, and experienced. Although the film still doesn’t have a Metascore (curious, given the extent to which it is celebrated internationally), the films’ rankings on Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes indicate it is one of the best of the year.
Streaming on Netflix
The king of spectacle does the king of rock and roll. It’s glittery, loud, flashy – somehow eschewing both breadth and depth, only occasionally taking short breaks from its constant music video montage editing to do some light biopic “content” or some weird Tom Hanks stuff, then returning quickly to form. But damn, Austin Butler makes a great Elvis… The scene where his hips melted the consciousness of whole rooms full of people in revival-style mania were absolutely fantastic.
Streaming on HBOMax
Marvel’s influence on cinema culture appears to be waning a bit. Black Panther – Wakanda Forever is the only MCU release in the top 50 this year (Thor – Love and Thunder and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are #71 and #73, respectively), which is somewhat satisfying because it is also the best. Coogler’s film, completely reworked after Chadwick Boseman’s death in August 2020, skillfully grapples with a Wakanda in transition – both opening up to the world for the first time, according to King T’Challa’s final act at the end of Black Panther, but also struggling through the grief of losing their leader, brother, son, great love, friend, and king. It’s a lil bit too long, but a worthwhile choice the next time you’re craving a superhero fantasy epic.
Streaming on Disney+
Amin arrived in Denmark from Afghanistan as an unaccompanied minor – and now, in his mid-thirties, he’s a successful academic about to marry his long-time love. But the experiences that brought him to this place are harrowing, continue to haunt his everyday life with fear, and are told in intimate detail to the filmmaker, a beloved friend. The film uses animation in varying styles to tell Amin’s story cinematically – and to illustrate the sometimes tenuous connection he himself holds to his most traumatic memories. Universally acclaimed, Flee blurs the lines between documentary, animation, and drama – providing a window, through one person’s story, into a crisis of displaced and migrant people that affects us all.
Streaming on Hulu
Ruben Ostlund’s surreal, dry humor is the perfect vehicle for mercilessly poking holes in his characters’ sense of importance or self-delusion – a talent that he uses skillfully for great comedic effect. Though with an Ostlund film, you can never laugh too hard, because he is always slyly pointing at you too, at your own sense of importance, your own self-delusion. He’s been on a real tear for the last few years, with 2014’s ruthlessly excellent Force Majeure and 2017’s very funny cartwheeling send-up of the art world, The Square. Triangle of Sadness takes on the absurdity of the super rich and the industries that cater to them – blending high brow and low brow comedy in a fun, wild careening adventure. Go in as blind as possible and enjoy the ride.
Streaming on Hulu
Surprising everyone, this third installment in a Shrek-spinoff animated franchise that I didn’t even know existed is one of the best family films of the year! Charming, funny, with great characters and blistering, beautiful animation, Puss in Boots – The Last Wish knows it is an animated film about an adorable cat fighting death itself and it goes so hard that by the end, you might be convinced that’s what every movie should be.
Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated take on Batman returned the hero to his roots as a brooding, grimy young detective-type in a gloomy, rain-soaked Gotham City. You can’t argue with the casting choices – Robert Pattinson is a perfectly tortured Bruce Wayne, Zoe Kravitz’ convincing gravitas provides great contrast to her slight, nimble physicality, and you’ve got greats like Jeffrey Wright and Paul Dano making up the supporting cast. Reeves is a boss too, and makes some beautiful images in this film. Though I love some Batman and I realize folks generally really liked this movie, for whatever reason I just can’t muster that much more enthusiasm for it than that! I think it’s because it’s so goddamn long, but I lost the thread at some point in this one.
Streaming on HBOMax
Boy, Steven Spielberg really loves cinema. One of the most fluent and naturally gifted speakers of the language and magicians of the form in the last 40 years, it’s pretty special to experience Spielberg’s attempt to use cinema to work through his personal history, both of life in his family and of his own emergence of self. The film that emerges from this process is part confessional, part invention, part explanation, part coming-of-age drama – certainly wholly an expression of devotion to cinema itself.
Available to rent
There are no winners in war, a thematic statement that Berger’s film grinds into your consciousness with unrelenting, rattling intensity in his remake of the 1930 film, All Quiet on the Western Front. A story told from the perspective of young German soldiers who evolve through their harrowing experiences from enthusiastic volunteers to grieving, soul-craven shells of themselves. Technically stunning, up there with 1917 and Hacksaw Ridge as one of the best war films of recent years.
Streaming on Netflix
Although the history behind the Agojie, the band of all-female warriors the film is based on, is messy and controversial at best, the bigger truth – that Black women have consistently led, fought for, and held together the struggle for freedom and justice for us all – is perhaps more important when it comes to The Woman King, a spectacular celebration of the strength, passion, and beauty of Black women. This is a fastball-style historical action film on an epic scale, with exciting fight choreography, beautiful costumes and a big score – with Viola Davis in its center, oozing gravitas and fire.
Streaming on Netflix or available to rent
I’m going to be honest with you all: despite its great cast and quite stunning visuals, I didn’t like Nope very much. The ingredients are all good but the soup is boring, awkward, and dull IMO. But – my opinion is clearly in the minority on this one! Most viewers found Jordan Peele’s latest to be a clever, suspenseful, multi-layered Spielbergian head-trip, and maybe you will too!
Streaming on Peacock or available to rent
And this year’s best family film is Turning Red, Pixar’s refreshing turn away from generic pretty kids stuff and toward a hyper-specific context: in this case, a 13-year-old Asian girl who turns into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited. A brilliant, funny, wrenching distillation of the anguish of teen girlhood and unconditional love, capturing the complex joy and heartbreak of the moment your friends begin to know and love you in a way your parents can’t. Plus, the animation is beautiful!
Streaming on Disney+
Patient, contemplative, and searching, Hamaguchi’s entrancing film’s characters let us eavesdrop as they wrestle with the choices they can’t unmake, the parts of themselves they are afraid to face, and the profound solace of having another person to move through life with. Drive My Car is such a confident film that I felt like I could rest while hanging out with it, even as I felt the film daring me to stare down my own inner turmoil. Another of my personal favorite films of the past year, Drive My Car carved out its own space in my heart immediately, and along with another film coming up in the top 10, I recommend it with no hesitation, no caveats.
Streaming on HBO Max or available to rent
Park Chan-Wook’s detective thriller is absolutely gorgeous and the most romantic movie I’ve seen in awhile. Though it gives you all the information you are craving about the murder case(s) and the film isn’t obtuse in any way, its sense of haunting mystery leaves a trail through your consciousness, through your heart. Seriously what is the deal between these two!? Love is so mysterious.
Streaming on Mubi or available to rent
A labor of love from Martin McDonagh, Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin is a renaissance painting of a film, all carefully positioned figures and secret meanings. Set in what feels like an enchanted place in the moments before war destroyed the world, two (former) friends struggle to define the parameters of their shared future. The dilemma they play out is quite funny, sad, surprisingly psychologically complex, sometimes shocking. The way McDonagh mixes the extraordinary beauty of the Irish island with the isolated, claustrophobic lives of its inhabitants is downright haunting.
Streaming on HBOMax or available to rent
I enjoyed The Worst Person in the World, but I have been, frankly, kind of surprised by the extent to which everyone fell all over themselves about it. A solid contemporary coming-of-age romcom about the paralysis of having the world at your feet, the soul-drain and ecstasy of the relationships that shape us, the way we become ourselves through one another, Trier’s film about Julie in 12 chapters is beautifully made, well cast, and enjoyable. Certainly worth your time (though I’m not sure it’s worth ALL that excitement…).
Streaming on Hulu
Top Gun: Maverick is exactly what you think it is – a thrilling action movie about fighter pilots. But it is SO GOOD at being what it is – and Tom Cruise is clearly on a mission to not only immortalize himself as a last-of-his-kind industry-defining movie star, but to save movies themselves. And geez – somehow with Joseph Kosinski’s emotionally involving, rapturously thrilling celebration of cinematic awe, he totally succeeds at both. The biggest blockbuster of 2022 is also one of the year’s best films, a rare, winning combination that feels like a throwback to a bygone era, much like Cruise himself.
Streaming on Paramount+ or available to rent
Whimsical and dark, saturated with death and love, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio takes on fascism, father-son relationships, grief and personal responsibility through the adventures of the little wooden puppet against the backdrop of a Mussolini-era Italy populated with del Toro’s fantastical creatures. His singular creative vision is brought to life brilliantly by an impressive voice acting cast led by Ewan McGregor as a singing Cricket and featuring greats such as Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and Christoph Waltz.
Streaming on Netflix
Rian Johnson’s second film featuring the great detective Benoit Blanc is a delightfully unpredictable and very funny skewer the rich whodunit mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end. The dialogue is quick and peppery and the ensemble cast is extraordinarily strong – Edward Norton makes his face oh-so-deliciously-punchable, Kathryn Hahn and Kate Hudson excel at their well-honed schtick, but it is Janelle Monae that completely lights up the film.
Streaming on Netflix
Aching, furious love refracting through a prism of summer vacation goof-offs. Charlotte Wells’ film miraculously creates a language of imagery and memory that stirs up how confusing, beautiful, painful, precious – how singular and extraordinary it is – to love another person. Especially a parent. Intricately specific in every way, Aftersun tugs at, calls to, our own experiences of fractured, complicated love – becoming something more than itself, something we all know, deep in the ache of our own hearts. This is my personal favorite film of 2022.
Available to rent
No matter what you’ve heard, you are not prepared for RRR. This electric, mythic, anti-colonialist action-fantasy epic has it ALL: heartbreaking pain, exhilarating dance-offs, heroic rescues, a people’s revolution, heroes who act like villains, jungle power, team-ups, the takedown of British imperialist assholes, and most importantly – the world-altering power of true friendship. My jaw hit the floor 10 minutes in and I didn’t pick it up until well after its end – and most of the time, the expression stupidly plastered on my face was pure wonder and delight. Absolutely the most electrifying blockbuster experience of the year, RRR is not to be missed.
Streaming on Netflix
It absolutely thrills me that this strange and extraordinary film, made with the budget of a superbowl commercial by the two weirdos who made the music video for “Turn Down For What” and starring international martial arts legend Michelle Yeoh is, without a doubt, the most culturally influential film of 2022. What a joy!
Nominated for a staggering 655 awards, the most of any 2022 film, Everything Everywhere All At Once was a standout in more categories than any other film: best of the year according to its strong Letterboxd ratings, top 2% most popular on IMDB and Letterboxd, an overwhelming favorite on critics’ end-of-year lists, and a word-of-mouth buzz superstar, rising 63 spots on IMDB’s top films list in its first two weeks.
This is a truly bizarre, hilarious, heartfelt, thrilling, sci-fi action spectacle – the kind of miraculous wonder of a film that was made with so much heart and talent and ingenuity that it explodes off the screen and plants itself deep in your heart. I’m grateful for it, and hope its success will make more strange dreams by talented weirdos possible in the future. We could use more of this type of love and laughter in our world.
Streaming on Showtime
What other films from 2022 did you especially love? Share them in the comments and I’ll let you know how they stacked up in the rankings. Happy watching!
Midnight Movie Train 