After eight years of writing film criticism and putting out these annual best-of lists, I’m making a major change. This year, and going forward, my top ten films of the year list (which is really a top 25) will no longer be ranked in a “best to least” format.
I’m doing this because of several different factors which, when I thought about them together, convinced me that it was time for a change. The first was when a good friend, my editor on this site for the first two years of its existence, set down his best-of list for 2022 on Facebook. He put them in no particular order.
The next piece of the puzzle came from a critic I was introduced to last year. Walter Chaw, who is an incendiary and brilliant voice, offered up some wisdom on Twitter last month (I’ve highlighted the pertinent passage):
That idea, that criticism should be the beginning of a conversation (“I took away something completely different from that piece of art than you did, but your thoughts are valid; here are mine.”) as opposed to the end of one (“Your opinion is wrong, let me tell you why.” or “NO! Here’s the opinion about this movie that you SHOULD have.”) really struck a chord with me. Discussions about art should be a dialog, not a lecture.
I now see film criticism as a mosaic, with thousands of disparate thoughts on any one movie shaping a broader, general consensus, instead of being a right-or-wrong, zero sum proposition. Obviously, you have to account for bad-faith actors and opinion based on faulty logic. But, consuming (and creating) criticism should nurture an inclusive, welcoming environment.
Some go to the other extreme and deride using something like a star-rating system. They condemn it as uselessly reductive. I use star ratings, but, honestly, they are more of a short cut for me, especially for films I don’t have the time (or inclination) to properly wrestle with in the form of a full review.
Finally, Martin Scorsese brought it all home for me via comments he made at the 60th annual New York Film Festival:
“…and here’s the key, also with this, there are no awards here. You get it? You don’t have to compete. You just have the love of cinema here. There’s just cinema. Huh? So, please, keep it that way.”
So, I come to you, as Scorsese put it, with “the love of cinema”, and nothing else. My list is broken into two parts. There is my top ten and then what I call “the rest of the best,” which consists of fifteen additional titles that moved me, made me think, or were otherwise examples of excellence in cinema for the year.
This is MY best-of list, not THE best-of list.
I’ve arranged them in the order in which I saw them. That allows me to create a sort of narrative of my movie year, and that’s more meaningful and useful to me than heralding an arbitrary BEST MOVIE OF 2022.
Aside from this sea change with my annual best-of list, 2022 was a watershed year for me as a critic. I saw a record (for me) 244 movies this year. I was able to check off a significant bucket list item: attending my first Ebert Interruptus at the University of Colorado - Boulder. (It was here that I discovered Walter Chaw.) I also covered my first film festival as a member of the press (it was also the first film festival I have ever attended start-to-finish). I’m hoping to cover two fests in 2023 — stay tuned.
Other fun film stuff I was able to do last year included attending a Joe Bob Briggs double-feature and seeing the original Star Wars trilogy on the big screen.
I also wrote a few pieces concerning pressing political issues in our country. That won’t happen often, but when I feel compelled to write about something non-movie related, rest assured it’s because I feel it’s necessary. Sometimes it will be because I messed up, and since the whole point of life is to become the best, kindest, most empathetic version of yourself before you die, admitting to personal failures is also necessary.
Film is an art form that helps me understand the world. I make sense of the universe through movies, so I feel qualified to offer analysis on real-world human behavior in addition to fictional human behavior. Being a film critic is one way I practice being curious about the world around me. Hopefully you enjoy sharing in my attempt at personal growth. That’s more than I could ever hope for.
So, without further ado, please find below my top ten (ok, really, top 25) movies of 2022, in the order in which I saw them:
*Note: Each movie title above the picture is a link that will take you to my review of that movie, with three exceptions.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The end of March held the first cinematic revelation of 2022 for me. Thankfully, I had no clue what I was walking into when I screened Everything Everywhere All at Once, a gloriously bonkers movie from directing team Daniels. This movie has a little bit of everything: an off-kilter sci-fi premise, wildly inventive action sequences, laugh-out-loud comedy, and a heart at the center of it all that deeply moved me. Don’t worry that you’ve heard too much about it if you haven’t seen it yet. I ended up screening Everything three times throughout the year, and it only got more entertaining each time I saw it.
Vortex
Before seeing Gaspar Noé’s most recent film in late May, I would have put the word empathy near the bottom of the list of descriptors to use in regard to the enfant terrible director’s work. Vortex set that notion on fire. This tale of a long-married couple facing the harsh reality of old age — costarring legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento — is brimming with empathy. The inevitable spiral of a deteriorating body and mind — the vortex referenced by the title — is coming for every single one of us. As Jim Morrison said, “no one here gets out alive.” Noé investigates that depressing truth with a gentleness that belies the absolute mundane terror right under the surface of his picture.
Neptune Frost
This movie defies description. I tried anyway: “Neptune Frost is a pure cinema fever dream. Its power lies in the raw experience of it more than its narrative, although that narrative is powerful in its own right. It tackles everything from colonialism, to patriarchy, to westerners’ obsession with technology and how that obsession translates to oppression for the people who are exploited in order to make our electronic devices a reality.” When I saw this in June, I walked out of the theater convinced that I had seen the future of cinema.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
“This is an audience, not a community.” Those words from little Marcel speak to the oppressive weight that social media has put on us over the last decade to become influencers by posting content to our followers, instead of building friendships and support networks. Little Marcel wants more for us than that, and the movie Marcel the Shell with Shoes On wants us to want more for ourselves, too. It nudges us in that direction with the kindest, sweetest voice you can imagine. This was the standout of the 2022 Oak Cliff Film Festival for me, and one of my favorites of the first half of the year.
Give Me Pity!
Give Me Pity! was one of the best, most bonkers things I saw as part of my coverage for Fantastic Fest 2022. The psychological meltdown of a Bette Midler-esque character is fascinating to watch, especially when paired with director Amanda Kramer’s (intentionally) cheesy TV-special aesthetics, complete with fuzzy, VHS quality. As Wendy Ide of Screen International put in one of the handful of reviews for the film collected on Rotten Tomatoes, Kramer’s film is “a singular vision which could resonate with audiences with a taste for lurid cinematic mischief-making.” Yep, sounds like me.
Lynch/Oz
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about The Wizard of Oz” — David Lynch. Another incredible find at last year’s Fantastic Fest, Lynch/Oz is part documentary/part film essay/part academic study of David Lynch’s work as refracted through the iconic director’s obsession with The Wizard of Oz. If you’ve seen my business card, you know that I’m obsessed with Lynch, and I came away learning so much I didn’t know. His masterpiece Mulholland Dr., for example, has been championed by members of the LGBTQ+ community for its representation of a lesbian relationship in crisis. I showed it to Rae — an inveterate Lynch hater — as soon as I got back from the fest, and she confessed that it has made her rethink the director’s work. Believe me, there is no possible stronger praise for this film than that!
Bones and All
The 1980s-set road-trip movie Bones and All, starring Timothée Chalamet as (in the best description of a movie character I’ve ever created) a cannibal lothario who takes a new member of the “eater” community under his wing, left me moved beyond words. I was able to catch it at Fantastic Fest, but I wasn’t able to fully wrestle with it at the time, so I saw it again in order to give it a proper review. Be warned: Bones and All is beautiful and horrifying in equal measure. As the presenter said in her comments before the Fantastic Fest screening, “This is the most disturbing film programmed at the fest this year.”
Moonage Daydream
Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream is a pure cinema wonderland about one of the most creative, sui generis artists of the 20th century. This examination of David Bowie, using thousands of artifacts from Bowie’s own archives, is a psychedelic kaleidoscope from its first frame to its last and explores the meaning of creativity and life itself using the late Rock God’s own words. I saw this in early October, right before “For Your Consideration” season kicked into full swing.
Pearl
Director Ti West released a movie in March of last year called X. Six months later, to everyone’s surprise, he dropped a prequel with almost zero fanfare. Pearl is a bloody and horrifying rumination on our current cultural obsession with fame, filtered through a story set over a century ago. Rae and I were fortunate enough to catch a double feature of X and Pearl — it should be telling to anyone who knows Rae that I’m pretty sure she enjoyed them both even more than I did — at the Texas Theatre. The third installment in West’s surprise trilogy is set to première some time (??) this year. It’s called MaXXXine, and if it’s anywhere near as thrilling as the first two pictures, it’s sure to be a banger (that’s what the kids these days are saying, right?).
Is That Black Enough for You?!?
If you care at all about lifting up artists and art that has routinely been ignored and marginalized in mainstream film appreciation circles, you owe it to yourself to catch up with critic-turned-filmmaker Elvis Mitchell’s extraordinary deep dive into Black cinema, Is That Black Enough for You?!?. Mitchell expertly weaves his personal experiences — as well as those of many other prominent Black figures in entertainment — of growing up with less-than-ideal representations of his culture on screen, and how that began to change in the wildly creative environment of 1970s independent filmmaking.
The rest of the best:
Here’s the rest of my top 25 of the year. Continuing with the theme of not ranking them in a specific “this-one-is-better-than-that-one” order, I have listed them in the order I saw them. I’m not going to comment on them at all. I’ll simply link to my reviews, where available. If any of them grab your attention, check ‘em out:
Turning Red
Crimes of the Future
Fire Island
Mad God
Butterfly in the Sky
After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
Fire of Love
The Banshees of Inisherin
Triangle of Sadness
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
The Fabelmans
After Yang
Empire of Light
She Said
Emily the Criminal
If you’ve made it this far, please enjoy an additional video I found (in a trip down the YouTube rabbit hole) that Scorsese made in praise of the late Roger Ebert for the launch of the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies: