The Top 15 Films of 2022

According to me

“But Michael,” I can already hear you saying, “it’s March of 2023 — why are you making a list that everyone else put out three months ago?” Well, dear reader, because if I put it out in December then it will just get lost in the shuffle of every other list from people far more notable and reputable than me, a person doing it for fun. Also, this way I get to put it out leading up to the Oscars, a time when movies are (decreasingly so but still) at the forefront of the culture.

Also also, because I just don’t get to see everything I want before the end of the year and I don’t want to leave anything out if I don’t have to.

That said, I still didn’t get to see everything I wanted. After Yang? Didn’t get to it. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed? Wanted to, will get to, just not in time. EO? Sorry, donkeys. You had a breakthrough year in film but your signature movie will not be on this list. That’s just the way it has to be.

And still, I managed to see more than eighty different films released 2022 to this point — that might be a record for any year. That’s what happens when, in one calendar year, we get the releases of the final COVID holdouts and delays, the regular slate we would have expected, plus a glut of projects that were created in the crucible of the 2020 shutdown. Creative minds were at work, and together they made something spectacular.

Lastly, this led to some painful cuts — movies that I love that still won’t get ranked here — movies like Hustle or Fresh that, while not great, I found immensely fun and engaging. A movie like Barbarian that gave me some of the best and funniest jump-scares of any horror movie ever would normally be in my top ten — this year it doesn’t crack the top fifteen. Kimi, an incredible modern paranoid thriller from Stephen Soderbergh got barely edged out for films that gripped me just a bit harder. Maybe it’s the way certain scenes hit just a bit too close to home for me, but James Grey’s great and devestating Armageddon Time just missed out on this list as well. But, alas, 2022 was just a stacked year.

So, without further ado, here are my top 15 films of 2022:
(oh — and potentially spoilers for each of these movies, obviously)

15. Babylon [dir. Damien Chazelle]

This movie is insane. It should not exist. It broke my brain. I think I’m in love with it. I will have a lot more to say about this film soon. Stay tuned.

14. The Batman [dir. Matt Reeves]

Still kind of shocked at how much I liked this movie. I thought we didn’t need any more dark and gritty Batman after Nolan. I was wrong. We just needed a different flavor. Pattinson got the brooding Bruce Wayne down pat, and it turns out that Paul Dano can play insane villains a bit too well (keep him in mind for later). Most importantly, a movie finally let Batman be the world’s greatest detective!

13. Turning Red [dir. Domee Shi]

2022 was the year of a lot of things in movies, and the only theme more prevalent than “movies are magic” was “familial relationships are complicated”, and this one really kicked it off. But too often, movies about this theme tend to simplify near the end, making the resolutions too tidy to resonate with me (I’m looking at you, Encanto…). But when Turning Red allowed the relationship to stay slightly frayed and forever altered near the end, even giving a possiblity that it could never be repaired not long before, I was floored. In a kids movie no less, to allow this amount of nuance in a difficult subject is admirable. Is it Pixar’s best? No, but even second-tier Pixar is better than most artists’ peak.

12. All Quiet on the Western Front [dir. Edward Berger]

It has the unenviable position of being the second remake of a masterpiece adapted from a legendary novel. Absolutely worth watching, certainly has things to say about the aftermath of WWI that the 1930 original just couldn’t without telling the future, but if you can find the first talkie to win Best Picture at the Oscars then make sure you watch that, too.

11. Top Gun: Maverick [dir. Joseph Kosinski]

Call me a cynic, but everything about this movie screamed late-career cash-grab to me. Sure, Tom Cruise has been successful with Mission Impossible, but how could anyone make a 2+ decade-later sequel to a great looking but ultimately hollow ’80s classic, let alone one that actually had something to say about the perils of getting older when you only want to do one thing forever (…meta)? The lesson, it seems, is to never doubt Tom Cruise.

Also strange that I’ve seen every single Joseph Kosinksi movie.

10. RRR [dir. S. S. Rajamouli]

The internet has already said a lot about this gem (and I already waxed poetic about my favorite segment of the movie here), so I’ll keep this brief. What a fun roller-coaster ride of a movie, wish aspects of it weren’t (intentionally or not) problematic.

9. Nope [dir. Jordan Peele]

I would argue this is an interesting compliment to Babylon in that this film so deeply rooted in Peele’s complicated ideas about the way making art (good and bad) requires the exploitation of ourselves and others. That he manages to weave a compelling narrative about a UFO (or is it?) in with the tragic tale of a ’90s tv set gone horribly, horribly wrong is masterful.

At first glance they should be two different stories, but Peele understands the way in which we exploit people/animals for art is not dissimilar to the way we can do the same for mere profit, even when the ends seem justified as they do for OJ and Em. When it’s final form is revealed, even the monster we’ve been chasing looks beautiful. That doesn’t stop our heroes from doing what they feel neesd to be done, but it is less satisfying a victory as a result. And that’s the point.

8. Everything Everywhere All At Once [dir. Daniels Kwan & Sheinert]

What I said about Turning Red goes double, triple, even quadruple here. Families are complicated, and once they’re broken they can never be repaired. The choices we’ve made cannot be undone, no matter how much we may wish to do so. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and try to be kind going forward, understanding everyone is dealing with their own shit that we’ll never know. That is what this movie is ultimately about.

Or, rather, is it about how the choices we make ripple out beyond just our immediate sphere but the world at large? How drastically different could everyone’s life be if we all made different choices? Is it possible there could even be potential realities so alien and different from our own that they are nearly unrecognizable? Could humans evolve to have hot dogs for hands?

Or OR, did Daniels just want to remake The Matrix?

The answer, of course, is all of these and more. Everything Everywhere is a complex knot of a film that doesn’t really get easier to untangle the more you watch it, rather the knot it’s tied into gets tighter and more stringent much like life itself. It’s easy to say you’d rather be an international superstar than be drowning in debt with a dying marriage, but what if doing so meant you didn’t get to have the love of your life? Is there such a thing as having a love of your life? And what if that reality means you won’t have your daughter, who you deeply love even if she’s causing you great pain? You see what I mean — this thing is messy.

I’ll admit I still find this movie a bit uneven — some of the seemingly random plot mechanics find their way to enriching the deeper story and characters, especially upon reflection, while others are just random to the point of absurdity where the unexpectedness is the joke. I’m far less interested in the latter, and I chafe every time it happens. But the former is also more prevalent, and why I ultimately still love this picture.

7. Apollo 10 1/2 [dir. Richard Linklater]

Families are complicated — where have we heard that before — albeit less so here. Your mileage may vary on this rotoscoped animated movie about a boy tapped by NASA in the late-’60s to man a secret Apollo mission because the spacecraft was accidentally built too small. We meet our hero just as he’s plucked to be that kid because of his excellent physical fitness results. We see him train for g-forces and zero-gravity. He’s all ready to go to the moon and back.

Of course, that’s not actually what’s happening here, and Linklater lets the film meander aimlessly as is his wont. The Apollo mission after 10 1/2, of course, would be the one that actually landed on the moon for the first time. Sure, this kid might be (totally factually) testing out one last flight before the big one, but this movie is just as much about what Apollo 11 would mean to the city of Houston and those working in the space industry (like the dad).

Told as an elongated flashback and narrated impeccably by Jack Black, this is more a tale of growing up in a growing American suburb just as it’s main driver was hitting the forefront. The world may have never known about the kid’s flight to space, but they watched along with him and his family as men landed on the moon for all to see. And just like that, any other summer in the suburbs became something so much more.

6. Aftersun [dir. Charlotte Wells]

Families are complicated — again! What is on the surface just a father and daughter on vacation reveals itself to be so much more as you pay close attention to every detail. The change of expression, the choice of words, the constant cutaways to strobe. Something is always a bit off-kilter despite the genuine love between the main characters. When the dad wanders off into the ocean it wouldn’t be a surprise if he didn’t come back.

Some movies require a second viewing to fully get, and this is a prime example of that. I won’t actually spoil it, but there is so much going on underneath the surface it’s nearly impossible to see it all and process without knowing the whole picture being presented. If this is what Charlotte Wells can do in her first feature I can’t wait to see the next decade (hopefully) of her work. Excellent craft, excellent storytelling. Bravo.

5. Crimes of the Future [dir. David Cronenberg]

We go from a new director finding her voice to an old one rediscovering his, er, magic. Not that Cronenberg went away, per se, but he hadn’t made a film in eight years and had mostly moved away from his signature style of gross-yet-compelling pictures. Well, I’m happy to report the wait is over. I can’t think of another director that would have the gall to murder a child on screen within the first five minutes of a movie, let alone somehow make it get darker from there with every passing scene, but Cronenberg does. In a world where pain has been evolved out of the human body, surgery is the new sex. This movie will make you a bit (very) queasy, but the more unsettling thing is how real this future actually feels.

What really stands out to me, however, is just how real this movie feels despite not only being in the future, but the film is intentionally unclear how far into it we really are seeing. There are times when characters act in ways that seem incongruous to ourselves and yet make perfect sense in the world they live in (including the aforementioned child murder). It is easy to see more and more body modification and find yourself desensitized to each more brutal depiction. To say this is some of the best production design in a film all year is an understatement — I cannot truly comprehend how anyone took this idea and ran with it so hard and completely. It’s near perfect.

But what grounds the film, ultimately, is Viggo Mortensen’s impecable performance as a man who’s body has evolved not to feel no pain (it is clear that, unlike so man others, he does), but to instead create unnecessary organs that he has his assistant remove as a form of performance art. So often we hear artists in all forms describe how they would surely die if they could not practice their craft, but in this case that is actually true — Viggo’s body is killing him, and it is the art that keeps him alive.

The world of Crimes of the Future is terrifying and weirdly comforting. There does not seem to be any more issues of overpopulation (though the reasoning behind why might be more terrifying, given other plot elements I will not spoil here). People are compelled to find a way to improve their own lives beyond the natural evolution they have achieved. But would we ever allow ourselves to evolve beyond our natural abilities in such a way? The answer is uneasy, and far from simple.

4. Decision to Leave [dir. Park Chan-Wook]

I like to imagine a ton of people deciding to watch this movie purely because it’s the first big Korean film to reach America’s shores since Parasite, only to discover that Park is a deeply strange and idiosyncratic filmmaker, especially when compared to Bong Joon-Ho. Decision to Leave is an uncompromising three-hour detective story about love that goes to great length to put you in the minds of both the detective himself and his main suspect. We can feel the push and pull of their relationship because the filmmaking won’t let us forget it.

It’s also full of overt symbolism, about the rigidity of duty vs the fluidity of emotion. Park is less interested in solving the mystery (the answer is fairly obvious from the start and it is only our/the detective’s desire to find a different answer that blinds us) and would rather explore how circumstance can dictate outcomes far more than we would care to admit.

The most tragic part of Decision, to me, is how the ending doesn’t feel inevitable. In so many stories like this a tragic ending can feel like fate. But here, Park spends much of the long runtime showing us how the choices the characters make get them to that end, and still gives them outs they refuse to take time and time and time again. Does the rigidity of duty win, or does the fluidity of emotion wash it away until it disappears from view, like sand in waves? Who’s to say.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin [dir. Martin McDonough]

Similar themes, I think, to the previous film on the list. If our two main characters could just talk to each other honestly then maybe they could reach an agreement. Although, Colm is certainly honest (brutally so) to Pádraic about why he doesn’t like him no more. And Pádraic’s sister, Siobhán is honest to him as well about her own feelings on their lives. It’s just Pádraic who won’t listen, doesn’t want to listen.

Then again, neither does the rest of the town. No one wants to discuss unpleasent things, rather pretend their little island off the coast of the terrifyingly warring Ireland is the haven from troubles. And it’s not as if Colm doesn’t care for Pádraic anymore, we see time and time again that he will still support his old friend even if he feels they can’t be in each others lives anymore for his own sake.

That’s what makes Colm’s ultimatum (and enactment of it) so much more sad than gruesome to me. Rather than physically harm Pádraic he threatens to cut off his own fingers instead, removing his ability to play his beloved violin and compose music. It’s saying “if you really cared about me then you’d leave me alone, and if you don’t then I’ll hurt myself to spite you.” Neither character ever finds a way to put this into words, and Pádraics disinterest in trying to understand instead leads to destruction both of what remains of his life in this society and of his small family unit. One alone with his animals (less one donkey) and the other alone with his thoughts and his dog, no more music.

Siobhán would rather leave and be in the middle of the actual civil war than be a part of this one. Have we gotten any better since then?

2. Tár [dir. Todd Field]

Hoo boy — what a towering, totemic achievement of a movie. I will go on record, despite being the penultimate spot on this list, that Tár is the actual best movie of 2022. From beginning to end this slow-burn-turned-raging-fire of a film levitates on another plane. From the moment we see Cate Blanchette after the opening titles we know this is about to be a force of nature on celluloid. The scenes are long but somehow always just right. There is a ton of text in every line and somehow even more subtext to dig into.

I’ve seen Tár described by some as the “first great cancel culture film” and while there is certainly an element to that I find it both reductive and slightly inaccurate. To say it’s a film about “cancel culture”, the way people use that term, would imply that Lydia is taken down by something that shouldn’t be problematic, or at least an overreaction from the public. Writer/director Field seems to understand that and uses it as a weapon, introducing us first to an increasing number of problematic opinions, most of which come from a bravura 10-minute single-take lecture scene in which she, ultimately, bullies a student for disagreeing with her stance on the evergreen “art vs. artist” debate.

But even before her past actions begin to reveal themselves as far more serious and sinister, Field gives us numerous hints (some obvious, some not) that Lydia is a monster. We see a red-headed woman watching from afar as Lydia is interviewed for a crowd, and the implication is unsavory. We hear the way she speaks about one of her apprentices as a problem, a young woman who had “issues”, which another character hesitantly agrees to. We later see a man (himself benefiting from being a victim to someone else’s desires) accuse her of using her position of power to garner sexual gratification, and her response is just a bit too much for believability.

It’s within these many, many nuances that Tár lives comfortably to make us more and more uncomfortable with each passing minute. The performance from Blanchett is and should get a large amount of credit and recognition, but the 16-year wait for Todd Field’s return proves that some people never lose it, no matter how long it’s been. Field has only made three films, all great and each one better than the one before. If we have to wait another two decades for his follow-up to this, so be it. Just as long as it’s as good or better than this.

1. The Fabelmans [dir. Steven Spielberg]

Like I said, Tár is probably the actual best movie of 2022. But I cannot in good conscience give the top spot to just the best movie, but to my favorite movie. With that distinction in mind there was only ever going to be one choice for this spot, and that is Steven Spielberg’s late-career masterpiece, The Fabelmans.

If the two themes of this year were “movies are great” and “families are complicated”, this is the only one that truly fused both into one diamond. It’s honestly hard to believe, but Steven had seemed to have developed a ceiling on how great his movies could still be for the last fifteen to twenty years, despite how prolific he’s been. That’s not to say there haven’t been hits, the vast majority since the turn of the century are at least good (and some, like Minority Report, are classics). But it had felt that the director’s best days were behind him, which happens to nearly all artists in any field.

So when it was announced that his follow up to the ill-advised (and somehow still great) remake of West Side Story was goind to be a semi-autobiographical film about discovering his love of film while his parents relationship crumbled I was cautiously excited. Sure, I knew enough about his story from the wonderful HBO documentary about him and hours of interview footage, but if anyone could tell a compelling story it’s Steve.

What I did not expect, however, was that he was about to make my favorite film he’s directed since 1993’s Schindler’s List (the same year he released Jurassic Park — maybe the greatest year any director has had in the history of cinema). This movie should have felt sacharin (and I know to some it certainly did) but to me this wasn’t a sale of a boy who discovered a love of movies, and I don’t think that’s what it is to Spielberg, either.

Instead, the story being told is that of a boy who, after seeing a movie for the first time, doesn’t immediately want to make pictures. He wants to recreate the train crash that stunned and terrified him, to control and understand how someone could make that happen. That then leads to his love of making movies, as a way to problem solve. The growth of his talent in every scene seems to stem from this compulsion — he didn’t fall in love with movies, they broke his brain. That he happened to have a natural gift for both the artistic (from his mom) and the scientific (from his dad) is just b’shert.

The tragedy of The Fabelmans is how those natural gifts lead the young Sammy Fabelman to notice an ongoing affair between his mom and family-friend Uncle Benny (the nature of which is never fully revealed). It is only when he splices together footage from a recent camping trip (at the behest of his dad, no less) that he sees things he otherwise might never have noticed. The same gifts that have made Spielberg one of the greatest directors ever is the same gift that he feels may have torn his family apart. It is impossible to imagine living with that burden, and yet it explains so much of Steven’s work.

The film is littered with overt homages to the great films of his past. We watch a model train barrel towards a young sammy like the T-Rex does towards Malcolm in Jurassic Park. Mitsi Fabelman chases a tornado like it’s an alien ship from Close Encounters. A gang of kids ride their bikes like they have to get E.T. back home. That Spielberg understands how all of these moments fed into his later work is remarkable, and the ability to weave it into this narrative so seamlessly is impossible.

Why is this my favorite movie of 2022? Because growing up Steven Spielberg was the reason I loved movies so much. He made movies about dinosaurs and aliens and killer sharks and a swashbuckling archaeologist. And he also made movies about The Holocaust and World War II and con-men and pre-crime. No filmmaker captured my imagination and put it on screen quite like him. And to find out he was also Jewish, like me? Well that was the cherry on top.

I love movies —watching them, talking about them thinking about them, occasionally trying to write them in my spare time. They are an important part of my life. That wouldn’t be quite as true without Steven Spielberg. To watch him put his life on screen with the same verve and grace that he has to countless other stories from well before I was born makes me feel a way that I haven’t, maybe even couldn’t, since I was a child. Pure, true wonder.