We’ve reached the end of another excellent year of cinema! 2022 brought us highs and lows, laughs and tears, thrills and chills in spades. What were the best of the best in my eyes? Which films do you need to add to your watchlist before we move on to a new calendar year? Read on to find out!
(See my #11-20 films of the year HERE!)
10. Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron)
Cinema!! That was all I could think about while sitting through Cameron’s 3+ hour odyssey…for all the filmmakers receding into self-insert “celebrations of film” lately, here is a filmmaker so unpretentious, so unconcerned with anything other than entertaining the audience, pure and simple. Every scene, every shot, every frame of this adventure is designed to enthrall the viewer; unlike most other lengthy runtimes this year, I wouldn’t cut a single thing out of this film. It’s not only a visual feast for the eyes, but a reminder of why Cameron is such a brilliant storyteller as well, with well-crafted characters and a plot designed to test their strengths and weaknesses. It’s action filmmaking at its finest, and one that I’ll be looking to experience in theaters again someday soon before it’s gone.
9. Close (Lukas Dhont)
A tender, heartbreaking story about identity, peer pressure, and grief that left a powerful impression on me. It’s a film that understands the value of leaving the most important things unsaid, of trusting the audience to read between the lines and infer character motivation from the subtext alone. That requires a tremendous amount of trust in the actors, and luckily Dhont found an incredible cast for this film, including newcomer Eden Dambrine in the lead role – one of the best child performances I’ve seen in years. I teared up multiple times watching this film, despite its simplicity and familiarity – a great film doesn’t need to do anything groundbreaking or complex, it just has to make you feel, and this film did that exceptionally well.
8. Pinocchio (Guillermo Del Toro)
Only Guillermo Del Toro could take a classic story we’ve heard dozens of times and turn it into something new and impactful. He cleverly sets the story of the world’s most famous puppet in Fascist Italy, a time when men were behaving quite like puppets themselves, always at the command of whoever is pulling their own strings. Pinocchio is ironically the most free of them all, unwilling to bow down or compromise his values for others, and we fall in love with his rebellious spirit while also aching for poor Geppetto who just wants a loving, obedient son by his side. GDT understands that the darkness is necessary for the light to shine through so spectacularly, and this is among my favorite versions of the timeless story strictly because it’s so bleak and despairing at times. You can’t enjoy the things you have in life unless you’ve experienced living in the absence of them.
7. Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniels)
I’m not as head-over-heels about this wild action-comedy as some are, but I still think it’s a superb piece of filmmaking. I cannot even think of another film to compare this to, as it’s one of the most wholly original stories I’ve ever seen with endless opportunities for storytelling. It’s remarkable that it manages to cram so much insanity into the runtime and still deliver an emotionally resonant conclusion, and that’s a testament to the strong character work for the central family, all of whom we fall in love with by the end. Michelle Yeoh has never been better, while Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu get an incredible showcase to catapult their own stardoms, and I’ll be rooting for all three this awards season. Who would have thought that a film about butt plugs, dildos and hot dog fingers would be one of the biggest tear-jerkers of the year?
6. RRR (S.S. Rajamouli)
A three-hour Bollywood musical action epic? A year ago if you told me this would make my list, I would’ve called you crazy. But the filmmaking is just unbelievably strong here, with a story that perfectly sets up these two forces of nature, unexpectedly causes them to join forces, then pits them together in an epic clash of wills that feels just as ground-breaking as any Avengers vs. Thanos mega-plot. There are at least 5 individual scenes that caused me to laugh and cheer at the sheer audacity and commitment to pure entertainment, realism be damned. NTR Jr. and Ram Charan are bona-fide stars, and I can see now why they are A-listers in India, because this would not have worked nearly as well without their charisma selling the shit out of this goofy story. I’ll be humming “Naatu Naatu” in my head until the end of time.
5. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
Would this film have worked as well if it wasn’t about Spielberg? No, it wouldn’t. But isn’t that the whole point? This portrait of a filmmaker gives the audience a sense of satisfaction watching Sammy’s journey BECAUSE we know that he grows up to be the greatest director of all time, and that adds a dimension to the experience that is lacking from other similar projects from lesser filmmakers. We finally get to see how Spielberg thinks, how he views us (the audience), and he is aware of that himself and doesn’t take himself too seriously. He pokes fun at the craft and the audience to keep us on our toes, while also capturing the magic of cinema that enraptured him as a child (and continues to do so for us now). It’s a rare peek behind the curtain at the magician’s secrets, one that still maintains the sense of wonder we get from a well-made film. Gabriel LaBelle deserves to be a star!
4. Cha Cha Real Smooth (Cooper Raiff)
Cooper Raiff has somehow managed to put into words and images what it’s like to be in your early 20’s better than almost anyone, and the fact that he’s still IN that period of his life is simply remarkable. He captures that awkwardness of being stuck in limbo between childhood and adulthood so well, not quite fitting in with any age group (including your own). Something about his personal brand of comedy just works for me as well, and his quiet observational humor just tickles me the right way, as I also came of-age in the early 00’s and enjoyed the absurdist take on the culture of the era. His relationship with Domino (and her daughter Lola) is so sweet and tender but also fragile and dangerous that the natural tension of the story keeps us on our toes throughout. It’s a light comfort watch that also has profound things to say about life and growing up, and I’ll always cherish it for that.
3. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
This film has only gotten better and better the more I think about it. At first blush it’s a simplistic father-daughter tale, a slice-of-life montage depicting various activities on a quiet beach vacation. But there’s a profound darkness hidden just beneath the surface, as Charlotte Wells somehow manages to frame this story through the eyes of a naïve little girl and with the hindsight of an adult looking back at the footage of said vacation. Paul Mescal is devastating as the father, a man who is difficult to understand but whose plight we slowly come to realize and empathize with as it becomes more and more clear that he is bursting at the seams. It’s the kind of film that made me want to call my own parents afterward and tell them that they did a good job raising me, because you never know when it will be the last time you get to say that to them before it’s too late. Months later and I still randomly tear up thinking about this beautiful film.
2. Holy Spider (Ali Abbasi)
I’m a sucker for a good crime-thriller, no matter the subject matter or even the language, and this hit all the right beats for me. I had never heard of the Spider Killer before, a real-life killer of prostitutes in the early 00’s in Iran, so there was tension to be had in not knowing how the story would resolve in the end. The inclusion of a fictional female reporter was a great touch as it added a personal element to the investigation and demonstrated how difficult it was (and still is) for women to gain respect in such a highly-religious society. I loved the cat-and-mouse game between hunter and prey, the philosophical implications of the third act, and the ultra-satisfying (if somewhat chilling) conclusion. It is able to deliver and ending that is simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking, which is not a given these days, and the acting and direction are top-notch, immersing me fully into this world.
1. Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski)
Look, the last three years have been rough. COVID-19 was a drag on our collective consciousness as a society, and we were all in desperate need of a good pick-me-up. Then along comes a movie that is so unabashedly earnest, so sincere and unironic, with no adverse agenda one way or another except to entertain the socks off of everybody. This is the most thrilling action film I’ve seen since Mad Max: Fury Road, with a finale so earth-shatteringly good that I had to go back to theaters four more times and see it on the big screen again and again. And the quieter moments in between are impactful as well, because the dynamic between all the pilots – especially Maverick and Rooster – adds emotional context to the climax and makes us root all the harder for their survival. It’s just good, disciplined filmmaking of the caliber we don’t see much in this century anymore, but hopefully this is a harbinger of more good things to come.
Conclusion
Do you agree/disagree with my picks? What is your favorite film of 2022? What are you most looking forward to in 2023? Let me know below!
All image rights belong to the films’ respective distributors.
-Austin Daniel
Scriptophile 