By: Henry J. Fromage and Movieboozer Staff & Contributors –
You’ll find a pretty good number of different films making folks’ Top 10 lists this year. As theaters started to make inroads towards pre-pandemic business, streaming held strong despite perhaps inevitable some belt-tightening measures. Here’s to 2022, another great year of movies.
Without further ado:
10. I Want You Back: This Jenny Slate/Charlie Day rom-com is refreshing, fun, and sweet. Plus any film with a Little Shop of Horrors subplot automatically makes my end of the year top movie list.
9. Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe: The whole film is brilliant, but the “white privilege” scene is the funniest thing I saw all year.
8. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Just as fun as the original, with Daniel Craig securing his spot in the great on-screen detectives of all-time. More please! (May I suggest a Glass Onion/Poker Face crossover with Benoit Blanc and Charlie Cale teaming up?)
7. Emily the Criminal: Powerhouse, award-worthy performance by Aubrey Plaza. This one had me on the edge of my seat.
6. The Menu: Watching obnoxious, entitled people suffering at fancy dinners is quickly becoming my favorite movie trope (see also: Triangle of Sadness). The Menu delivers a delicious multi-course feast of satire.
5. Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: Believe the hype. This is the most bonkers, original, and ultimately heart-warming movie of the year.
4. Top Gun Maverick: A rare sequel that improves upon the original, not only better in every way, but also makes you like the 1986 film more (if you haven’t rewatched it in a decade or two, it really doesn’t hold up). This was my first post-Covid theater experience, and I saw it in IMAX. It was, pardon the pun, a blast.
3. Barbarian: Aside from my number one choice, this is the most fun I’ve had watching a movie this year. If you still haven’t seen it, go in as blind as possible.
2. Pearl: Mia Goth was ROBBED. ROBBED, I tell you! She delivered hands-down The performance of the year as the title character in this prequel to X. It’s been described as a “technicolor nightmare” – in the best possible way. This one blew me away on all levels. What an exceptional year for horror!
1. Weird – The Al Yankovic Story: Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know there were “better” films this year (I still have to attempt to watch Tar– for the third time), but this movie makes my #1 slot because it is the one I enjoyed the most. Hilarious, ridiculous, and endlessly rewatchable. Exactly what a Weird Al biopic should be. While Daniel Radcliffe is perfection in the lead role, it’s Evan Rachel Wood who steals the show with her uncanny Madonna impression.
8. Nope
7. Avatar: The Way of Water
6. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
5. The Banshees of Inisherin
4. TAR
3. L’Evenement (Happening)
2. The Fabelmans
1. Aftersun
10. Avatar: The Way of Water: Cameron returns to Pandora after 13 years and it was worth the wait. He expands on the Sully and Natiri story this time with a tale about family and animal rights. He finally gets back into the water, which is why I connected to the film. I could swam with the Tulkun for 8 hours.
9. The Northman It’s a shame Robert Eggers won’t get this kind of money to make another film. This film rips; I wanted to run through a wall after seeing this film. It’s a gorgeous epic that feels new, even if the story is well-trodden territory.
8. X: The first of Ti West’s two films from 2022 which appear in my top 10 of 2022. X was so specifically made for me that I wouldn’t be surprised if Ti could see into my head. It’s Texas Chainsaw meets Boogie Nights and it is a blast.
7. Pearl: Ti West’s prequel to X. Mia Goth reprises her role as Pearl, taking a look at the old woman in X. Pearl is if Douglas Sirk made a horror film. It’s a technicolor horror show centering on a sad women wishing for more. Mia Goth gives one of the best performances of the year.
6. Everything Everywhere All At Once: I love the Daniels’ delightfully weird concept of their films, but deep in their weirdness is an intelligent sincerity that resonates with people because there is no winking at the camera. It’s why this film resonated so well with everyone. I’d rather do laundry with my wife than something “fun” alone.
5. Babylon: Not shocking that this wasn’t a commercial success. It’s a film for cinephiles, not mainstream audiences. It’s a love letter to film but a hate letter to Hollywood. Chazelle is on fire, every technical aspect is more than impressive. All centered with two great lead performances in Calva and Robbie.
4. Bones & All: There is something beautiful about opening yourself up to someone and being accepted as you are. Under the cannibalism of this film is a beautiful story about acceptance. It’s a shame this was completely ignored by the Academy because this was one of the best films in 2022.
3. All Quiet on the Western Front: Different from the original Oscar winner with more of a focus on the bureaucracies of war. It’s one of the most harrowing war films I have ever seen, maybe only second to Come and See. It is a very impressive film that I wish I could’ve seen in theaters and not a home on Netflix.
2. The Banshees of Inisherin: Martin McDonagh is a brilliant writer. He is one of the few writers who can nail dark comedy well. However, with Banshees, he has made a deeply layered film with dark comedy. It is his most mature film yet, and after a rewatch I think it might be his best film.
1. TAR: Todd Field does not miss. He finally returned after a 16 year hiatus with his best film yet. Not only his best film but one of the best of the 21st century. It is one of the meatiest films I have seen. There is so much to chew on. All of this anchored by a titanic Cate Blanchett performance.
8. The Northman
7. The Banshees of Inisherin
6. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
5. Everything Everywhere All at Once
4. RRR
3. TAR
2. Nope
1. The Fabelmans
Mrs. Henry J. Fromage
9. Gold
8. Turning Red
7. Triangle of Sadness
6. All Quiet on the Western Front
5. The Banshees of Inisherin
4. Tár
3. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Top Gun: Maverick
1. Decision to Leave
Henry J. Fromage
10. FRESH/Barbarian: I’ll start right off by cheating, because I’m a goddamn cheater alright. Both of these films were among the most original horror flicks of the year, playing with your expectations with big twists and even more twisted characterizations, and featuring strong female protagonists who will do anything to survive. I recommend them equally as the top of the genre this year.
9. Madeleine Collins/Other People’s Children: While I liked basically nothing else about it, Benedetta launched a star in Virginie Efira who got to demonstrate her range in two different yet equally proficient dramas this year. In the first she plays a woman juggling two families in two countries, and in the second one who finds herself becoming more attached to her boyfriend’s daughter than himself. Both are nuanced, deeply human performances of very different women, and she’s now become an only reason I need to watch-level performer for me.
8. Nitram: This Australian drama never seemed to get much attention Stateside, which is a shame because Caleb Landry Jones delivers one of the performances of the year as the never-named Martin Bryant, Australia’s most notorious mass shooter who claimed the lives of 35 and wounded another 23 in the Port Arthur Massacre (at which point, being a fucking sensible nation, Australia instituted real, effective gun laws). This movie isn’t about the mass shooting, though, but rather the psychology of this disturbed young man, and Jones plays the role to the hilt.
7. The Inspection: Speaking of great performances, it’s a damn shame Jeremy Pope didn’t land a Best Actor nomination for his incendiary performance as a gay homeless man who joins the Marines in perhaps a last ditch attempt to win the love of his mother (Gabrielle Union, also searing and deserving of awards recognition). Based on Elegance Bratton’s own experiences, it’s a story that is told with passion and skill, and announces a pair of bold new cinematic voices.
6. Women Talking: Sarah Polley assembles an all-timer cast of women to adapt the loosely based on a true story celebrated novel about a group of Mennonite women who have discovered their men have been drugging and raping them, and while they are in town bailing out a few of the perpetrators, must decide whether they will stay and fight, flee, or do nothing. This is an ensemble operating at peak capacity, and while it largely is, yes, women talking, it’s gripping from start to finish.
5. The Banshees of Inisherin: Martin McDonagh is a ticket sold, and when you combine his florid pen with his In Bruges pairing of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell and add in Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon, what you get is the most Irish foundation possible for another tragicomic masterpiece that had the TIFF audience in stitches for the duration. I’m not sure it’s quite In Bruges level, but I’ll take this team any day, anytime.
4. Navalny: Bravery of the kind that Alexei Navalny has is rare, but it’s the kind of bravery that the Russian people will need to finally free themselves of the shackles of Putin’s autocratic regime. In a documentary that plays like the most breathless thriller, Navalny essential solves his own attempted murder (by poisoned underpants, because Russian infamy is nothing if it isn’t original), rubs it in the face of Putin and his cronies, and then returns to his homeland knowing full well he’s facing another attempt on his life or worse (imprisonment is what he immediately receives, and he’s still there). A portrait of principles in action.
3. All Quiet on the Western Front: Right from the opening scene, where we follow a uniform from the WWI battlefield to the grave to seamstresses resewing it to our bright young recruit protagonist, you know you’re in for an uncommonly artistic and effective anti-war film, based on one of the most influential literary works in the same theme. Edward Berger announces himself as one of the most interesting directors working in the world today.
2. Decision to Leave: Park Chan-wook decided to do something different with his latest- a film noire romance. Don’t worry, it still has plenty of murder, deception, and depravity, but it’s all in service to an altogether different kind of tone from him it feels, restrained, classical, and suffused with longing and melancholy. A masterpiece from a director who hopefully has many more to deliver.
1. Tár: Todd Field does not compromise on his artistic vision, which is why it’s been 16 years since Little Children and his list of abandoned projects surpasses even del Toro’s. The thing is, when he does finally direct a film, it’s invariably stunning, as this Cate Blanchett-starrer in which she’s never been better incontrovertibly is, all prickly and complex and funny and fierce. Won’t somebody give him the I’m sure perfectly reasonable budget to do Blood Meridian already?
