Chris' Top 10 of 2022
It's time once again to honor the best in filmmaking, which was a good cinematic year so long as you ignore the many disappointing tentpoles.
The cinematic year of 2022 was a decent one… so long as you didn’t pay much attention to the high-profile flicks that months ago were touted as surefire awards contenders.
“Babylon.” “White Noise.” “Amsterdam.” “The Fabelmans.” “Blonde.” “The Northman.” All films that I was eagerly looking forward to, along with most Hollywood Oscars prognosticators. All were disappointing, ranging from merely not living up to the hype to being seriously flawed films.
Other movies that came out of nowhere to garner love from some critics and audiences left me less than impressed. “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” “RRR.” “Aftersun.” Movies that held promise but didn’t live up to their potential.
I still found plenty of films to adore this year. Most of them were smaller pictures that got modest theatrical releases or came out on streaming services of VOD. Some I caught at film festivals and are still searching for distribution. Maybe my giving them a little attention will help others find and admire them.
In general, I think my tastes run toward the mainstream, though there’s nothing I love more than finding a tiny film nobody’s heard of to heap praise upon. I don’t pick off-the-wall stuff to put on my best-of list because I like being precious or snobby. If a movie makes it, that’s because I think it deserves to.
So here is my annual Top 10 list, for posterity. As always, I accompany it with films that didn’t make the list but warranted consideration. This year’s list of also-rans is quite voluminous, underscoring my point there was plenty of terrific cinema if you were willing to look for it.
I don’t do a “worst of” list because ragging on shitty movies doesn’t make them any better, and dunking on them brings me no pleasure. Instead, I’ll mention movies for which I had aspirations that fell seriously short.
Ready? Let’s do it.
The Best
1. Close
It’s fairly rare that I put a foreign language film at the top of my list, but this Belgian drama was by far the most emotional experience I had at the movies this year. The story of two boys who are the closest of friends takes on a tragic note when they move to the American equivalent of middle school and find themselves teased about their relationship, leading to a fracturing in the friendship. Real, powerful, heartbreaking.
2. Till
The tragedy of Emmett Till happened right before the dawn of the mass media age, and as such has continued to exist as a piece of musty history rather than part of our modern sensibility. This excellent film breathes immediacy and life into the story, not just Jalyn Hall’s humanization of Emmett but especially Danielle Deadwyler’s Oscar-worthy turn as his mother, who worked tirelessly to expose the roots of system racism and help launch the civil rights movement.
3. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
The best animated movie of the year, and it wasn’t even close. Animation has lagged in the last few years imho, and this was the first truly great one I’ve seen in awhile. Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp took their YouTube collaboration project and turned it into an endearing tale about the importance of family and community. Slate’s vocal work is just spectacular, empathetic and funny and oddly human.
4. Top Gun: Maverick
Who would’ve guessed at this movie coming to be? After a 36-year gap between original and sequel? And that it would actually top it? A feel-good summer action movie that also contains surprising notes acknowledging the passage of time and the inevitable regrets and lingering loss that come with it. Tom Cruise gives Pete Mitchell a groundedness and vulnerability that lends the cocksure rogue an authentic sense of wisdom hard-earned.
5. Eat Your Catfish
Much praise has been heaped upon the documentary “I Didn’t See You There” for using a camera mounted on a wheelchair to show the world from the perspective of a person with disability. But another film used the same technique, and to much better effect with an actual sense of storytelling rather than just long, wandering pieces of footage. Noah Amir Arjomand chronicles the last year in the life of his mother to devastating and joyous effect.
6. Women Talking
Sarah Polley continues her journey as one of the most interesting filmmakers to segue from acting with this truly ensemble piece about a group of women living in a cloistered, patriarchal society. After a wave of unimaginable abuse, they face an impossible choice and the story chronicles them weighing how to arrive at the decision they know in their hearts they must make. The remove from the #MeToo movement afforded by the setting only makes the issues more poignant and powerful.
7. All Quiet on the Western Front
A movie of immense technical craftsmanship that also has incredible appeal as a piece of existential “you are there” filmmaking. A remake/reimagining of one of the first films to win the Best Picture Oscar that uses many of the same techniques of “1917” from a few years ago. Haunting, human, tragic.
8. Breaking
I have not to date been impressed with the thespian talents of John Boyega, but that all changed with this sensitive, grounded portrayal of a military veteran who holds up a bank not for financial gain, but to declare himself and his pain to the world. A tense, tactile piece of filmmaking.
9. The Whale
I don’t think “The Whale” is a great movie, but it’s a very, very good one and contains the best cinematic performance of the year by Brendan Fraser, who never condescends to his character. Darren Aronofsky manages the rarest of feats: an ending that is totally surprising and yet is completely satisfying emotionally and narratively.
10. Avatar: The Way of Water
I offer no apologies for this pick. Like its predecessor, it’s a fantastic example of first-class spectacle filmmaking. You can walk out of the theater and pick it to pieces. I did. (Unobtainium being supplanted by alien whale brain juice as the most valuable commodity in the universe is just one example.) But while you’re sitting there in the dark, it works. It’s nice to be dazzled once in a while.
The Rest
(In alphabetical order.)
Apollo 10½ — An extraordinary piece of nostalgia filmmaking from Richard Linklater.
The Banshees of Inisherin — Tonally weird but the performances, photography and scene-setting carry the day.
The Black Phone — The scariest scary movie I saw this year.
Bodies Bodies Bodies — A smart, funny horror flick that makes the always-wise decision to kill off Pete Davidson early.
Bones and All — The winner of my “I didn’t expect to like this so much” award.
Call Jane — An observant ensemble piece that looks at the pre-Roe era of abortion.
The Duke — Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren shine in this based-on-true caper.
Emily the Criminal — Aubrey Plaza continues her transition from funnygirl to top dramatic actress.
Empire of Light — Possibly the most beautiful-looking movie this year. A timely ode to watching films in a theater.
Facing Nolan — A documentary that shows us the baseball legend and then humanizes the man behind it.
Fire of Love — I love documentaries that introduce us to a strange community and then make us feel like part of it.
Glorious — An incredibly original horror/fantasy that makes you laugh and cringe.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande — I feel like I’m the only person in the world who saw this lovely flick featuring one of Emma Thompson’s finest performances.
Good Night Oppy — A doc that shows us how deeply scientists fall in love with their projects.
The Inspection — Another sadly overlooked film featuring one of the best filmmaker debuts I’ve seen.
The Last Bus — A career-capper for Timothy Spall that was also tragically ignored.
Living — Speaking of older actors in triumphant turns, this one belongs to Bill Nighy.
Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues — An exhaustive look at the life and art of the jazz icon.
A Love Song — Another “everybody missed this one” gem. The unmistakable Dale Dickey gets a lead role and nails it.
Men — A weird, challenging, icky movie that seems to invade your DNA. I’m not a big fan of gimmick casting, but this one works.
Mr. Malcolm’s List — A multicultural take on the Victorian romance that sadly didn’t find the audience it deserved.
Relative — A tiny, terrific family drama that deserves a wider distribution.
Resurrection — Rebecca Hall is simply one of the best film actresses working today, and proves it again in this discomfiting tale about how abuse is carried forward.
Slumberland — A wild, colorful fantasy adventure with a puckish performance by Jason Momoa.
Terrifier 2 — Quite possibly the most reprehensible splatter horror I’ve ever seen with absolutely no redeeming value — I loved it.
Thirteen Lives — Ron Howard’s riveting rendition of a real-life rescue.
Disappointments
Amsterdam — Starts out strong as the story of an unlikely triangle of friendship but devolves into a kooky potboiler.
Babylon — Damien Chazelle hits a sour note with this repulsive revisionist depiction of silent era Hollywood as a hedonist playground. We don’t care a lick about these characters.
Blonde — Ana de Armas nails the emotional performance if not the accent, in a film that renders arguably cinema’s greatest icon into a pathetic victim for whom we feel contempt rather than empathy.
Crimes of the Future — Once upon a time, David Cronenberg’s movies scared the crap out of me and/or left me with a deep sense of revulsion. This one about surgery as performance art is just laughably awful.
Everything Everywhere All at Once — Very mixed feelings on this one, which is currently cleaning up among the critic awards. It’s technically polished, highly derivative of other multiverse movies (Dr. Strange literally did it better this year), is way too long and I never felt an emotional connection with the characters. People are calling it Ke Huy Quan’s comeback but I found his character and performance cloying and wretched.
The Fabelmans — I’ve never hated a Steven Spielberg movie but I was fairly indifferent to this one. The early sections with the kid filmmaker work better than the high school sequence, which feels like it belongs to another movie.
The Menu — An interesting concept with a great cast that never bothers to explain itself. How would (spoiler ahead) a chef recruit an entire team with similar murder-suicide intentions?
Nope — Not a bad movie but this familiar aliens-among-us flick is a letdown after the crackle of originality that permeated Jordan Peele’s first two features, “Get Out” and “Us.”
The Northman — I enjoyed Robert Eggers’ first feature film, “The Witch,” but “The Lighthouse” and this Nordic flesh-and-swordfest have been laughably over-the-top and silly.
Rifkin’s Festival — People have been trying to cancel Woody Allen for awhile now, but I think he might have just accomplished it all on his own. Know when to fold ‘em.
TÁR — A magnificent performance by Cate Blanchett, but its unwieldy approach to #MeToo themes and a stumbling last act sap its effectiveness.
White Noise — Noah Baumbach brings together two of his favorite pet actors, Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, for a cringeworthy rumination on a ‘80s family’s troubles. Just skip the movie and watch the end credits dance sequence; it’s the only redeeming feature.