My beat as a film reviewer is so divided that it tends to result in my Venn diagram of films seen being quite different from most. With my primary areas of coverage being massive superhero sci-fi films and festival films, I see both the movies that nearly everyone sees, and the ones virtually nobody does. All those awards contenders right in the middle require a lot of catch-up, and with peers trying to shout recommendations for literally everything under the sun, it’s easy to miss some things. Nobody, for instance, made it clear to me that Aftersun was something I needed to pay attention to, so I didn’t. And in the case of documentaries, there just isn’t enough time in the world to delve into what seems like a rich field, but one too vast for me to attempt to encapsulate.
That said, I still see a lot of things. As much as I can, given that my spouse vastly prefers to watch TV reruns when we’re home. For the first time this year, though, I don’t feel a clear ranking hierarchy, so yeah, I’m gonna be that guy who does them alphabetical. At other sites you can find more specialized ranked things from me; here, you will see the list that encapsulates all. You may notice there are more “movies everyone’s seen” on this list; the festival films are often more a case of great potential than excellent execution.
Babylon didn’t make the top 15, though I’m slowly enjoying it even more for the way it needlessly infuriates people for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps because I used to run a website that dealt with fan fiction, I know it when I see it. The movie’s too flawed to make my final cut, but I do appreciate what a big swing it is, and how it seems to encapsulate every thought the director has ever had on the subject. Every Damien Chazelle film is a musical; even the ones that aren’t — and I love the way the entire first half of the film is edited like an atonal ballet of sight and sound
But these are better. And you won’t find that wretched ode to the narcissism of a cult leader’s best bud, Top Gun: Maverick, anywhere near this list.
a-ha the movie – I’m massively biased here, as a longtime fan of a-ha who constantly has to defend that fandom against charges that they only had one hit song. The documentary goes deeply into the history of that one song, of course, but “taaaaakes oooooon” a lot more than that, including the subsequent career they’ve had, and the fact that they really don’t like each other much personally, yet have great musical chemistry. Use of a-ha video-style rotoscoping makes the documentary more visually cool to viewers who may care less about the music, but in a year of solid music docs that also included Nothing Compares (Sinead O’Connor) and This Is GWAR, a-ha kept the sun shining on my TV.
Avatar: The Way of Water – Avatar 2 doesn’t need my endorsement or defense, as it continues to be a juggernaut. Elsewhere, I’ve pushed back against the idiotic notion that the first had no cultural impact; by equaling its box-office takeover, the sequel evidently shows that people care about the property, one of a very few original IPs to break through at the highest level these days. Yes, the story tropes hail mostly from John Carter and Dune (which predate Dances With Wolves by a lot), but it’s the fundamental, earnest optimism that I believe appeals to viewers at the deepest level. As Gene Roddenberry did with Star Trek, James Cameron shows us an idealized sci-fi world, and implicitly challenges us to be better so we can get there.
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths – It’s ironic that just as other critics and audiences seem to have lost their patience with Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, I’ve regained mine. Never much of a fan of his earnestness and tragedy, I gained some respect for The Revenant as western horror, and Bardo, it seems to me, is his masterpiece. Like Fellini’s 8-1/2 or Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, NY, it’s a cinematic, magic-realist autobiography rooted as much in dreams and hopes and media creations as reality. It’s also the first time he’s really shown a sense of humor about himself, and it’s goddamned endearing. I don’t pretend to catch every single cross-cultural reference — though as a bicultural (England/U.S.) person myself, I understand the tension between the Mexican and American sides of him. (Psst: the presence of axolotls in a key plot point is a dead giveaway. Look up the actual Mexican pronunciation if you don’t already know it, relative to the way Americans insist on attempting it based on how we pronounce those letters usually.)
The Batman – It’s a tough feat to push aside The Dark Knight as the best, most comics-faithful live-action Batman movie, but Matt Reeves has done it, compensating for Christopher Nolan’s boring Chicago-as-Gotham City by bringing in the full dark-as-funk dystopia where it always rains on the just and unjust alike. His costumes may need work — brilliant QAnon Riddler certainly captures the character’s deviousness and requires real detective work to beat, though putting him in a costume that looks like the Trailer Park Boys’ Green Bastard does no favors. A bowler hat wouldn’t be ruinous. But Rob Pattinson may be the first actor to really portray Batman as the real person, and not an act for a Bruce Wayne who just wnats to find love and be normal. His interactions with Jim Gordon and Catwoman are aces (but give Catwoman the goggles next time, dammit!), and the Nirvana ripoff in his theme music is admittedly pandering, but as I am the one being pandered to it’s hard to resist.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe – “Uh huh huh huh huh, huh huh” “Heh heh hehe, m, heh heh” Boom be-baww, baw bah-ba-bam-bomp-bom, bom bee-bwee-daw, da da da dah…That familiar intro takes me back. The movie, however, delivers a forward thrust (huh-huh), bringing the horniest cartoon dumbasses of the ’90s into the present via time warp, thereby neatly sidestepping the fact that they’d probably be into MAGA and QAnon nowadays. The movie doesn’t dodge every modern minefield, however. The scene in which the dim duo learn about white privilege and decide it means they can do whatever they want is the funniest moment on film in all of 2022.
Crimes of the Future – Welcome back to body horror, David Cronenberg. We’ve missed you. And sure, you can bring Viggo Mortensen along. The big question: if we’re in a future where humans have evolved to feel no pain, sustain no infections, and heal quickly, does surgery-infused eroticism actually count as S&M? Lea Seydoux looks hot doing it regardless.
Decision to Leave – I’ve been surprised how many of my colleagues have described this movie as hard to follow. I’m as easily confused by an unfamiliar cast in an international film as the next guy. But for at least the first two-thirds, Park Chan-wook seems to be studiously following the Joe Eszterhas erotic thriller formula (in his own way, of course). Cop falls for a suspect, starts to find evidence she’s innocent, then — TWIST! — she’s of course guilty. But Decision to Leave doesn’t end there. It keeps going, to see what happens next, and it’s a lot better than Basic Instinct 2 was. I miss sick and twisted Park Chan-wook, but if being more restrained gets him wider acclaim and Oscar nominations, I hold no resentments.
Entergalactic – Here’s where I do hold some resentment. Entergalactic is one of the most vibrant, visually exciting movies of the year, but because Netflix, of all distributors, has decided that this hour-and-a-half feature is “TV” — whatever that means on a streamer that distributes “movies” the exact same way — nobody is considering it for anything. They should. Combining the attempts to capture urban life in animation of Ralph Bakshi with the visual flair and graffiti art inspiration-made-3D of Into the Spider-Verse, Kid Cudi’s collaboration with director Fletcher Moules is a radical burst of energy, visual and musical. The plot’s relatively straightforward, about an artist romancing his neighbor. What makes it fresh is we don’t normally see these kinds of characters centered in rom-coms, let alone animated features. Nor do we get this kind of art style, which conveys universal truths by making the mundane fantastical. If this list leads you to check out any movie you haven’t seen before, make it this one.
Everything Everywhere All at Once – Michelle Yeoh fights through the multiverse as husband Ke Huy Quan models true sacrificial love for her. The universe is an everything bagel, there’s a weird ripoff of Ratatouille with a raccoon, and hot dog fingers and googly eyes on rocks become universe-defining traits. Lots of movies and shows entered the multiverse this year, but there was nothing remotely like this one. Bringing my childhood idol Short Round back to movies is a delightful metaphorical cherry on top. And a cherry on top of a bagel is something Raccacoonie would make.
A Love Song – Dale Dickey and Wes Studi get to play the romantic leads we always knew they had the talent to play, but figured they’d never get the chance to, given the way they’re usually typecast. Two old friends, both no longer married, reunite later in life to see if the possibly misremembered spark’s still there, on the edge of a lake-centric campground. That’s the plot, but it’s all in the execution. Neither actor ever gets to be this tender, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still keep it real.
Mad God – Phil Tippett took 30 years to make a totally effin’ metal hellscape that feels like it could be the origin story of whatever universe GWAR is from. Barely narrative, seriously dark, and unforgettable stop-motion that makes Guillermo del Toro’s antifa Pinocchio look like Walt Disney by comparison.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – My late father-in-law once met Nicolas Cage, and said he was the most boring human being he’d ever met. That may be the real Cage, but he’s savvy enough to know that we want to imagine him as the craziest amalgamation of all his characters. So in this movie, he obliges, delivering the ultimate Cagefest. One Cage isn’t enough to contain all that energy, so we even get a CGI’d young Cage playing off the current version. Whether going full European disguise like Jared Leto in House of Gucci, learning to love Paddington 2, or ingesting the wrong drugs at the wrong time, the actor brings the thunder, and Pedro Pascal brings the wonder as his biggest fan. Nothing here is remotely unbearable, but the massive talent remains indisputable.
Vortex – Gaspar Noe follows the exact template that the similarly shock-happy European director Michael Haneke did en route to awards respectability. Like the latter’s Amour, he uses his considerable horror instincts to show us the ultimate, yet mundane fear — the end of life. Noe being Noe, he uses a split-screen gimmick to symbolize the way dementia divides a close couple, and of course he pulls away every time the narrative even dares hint at any signs of comfort. Veteran actress Francoise Lebrun plays the wife with dementia; director Dario Argento, in his first and only lead role, plays the film scholar husband with a heart condition. It ends badly, as life always does, but the world goes on. And that, suggests Noe, may be scarier than any evil man waiting in a dark alley.
Wendell & Wild – The real director of Nightmare Before Christmas may well be taking a shot at Disney when he depicts hell as a decaying theme park for wretched souls. When the sons of the demon on whose body the park resides decide they want to make their own, more improved park on Earth, they need to sucker a desperate soul into making a deal with them. They find an orphaned teenager named Kat, who seeks to resurrect her dead parents. In collaboration with Jordan Peele, Henry Selick has once again created a madcap Halloween stop-motion adventure with more on its mind than toxic relationships…like the orphanage-to-private-prison pipeline. It never lacks for ideas, and the animation is the smoothest stop-motion in a year with several great contenders.
Wildcat – Damned if I don’t still tear up thinking about that ocelot coming back one last time to hug the human companion who has to make it leave, but can’t bear to see it go. In an ideal, fiction film, they’d realize they love each other and need to stay together; in real life, had they done that, Keanu the cat might have eaten Private Harry eventually. Keanu’s probably out there fathering kittens of his own now, but in the meantime, the chronicle of his own raising is a must-see documentary for all lovers of danger kitties. So long as they can take the death of Keanu’s predecessor, which is rough. It’s easily the second best “war veteran goes to the rainforest and finds love among felines in the jungle” movie of the year.