Another Year Gone By: FilmSpeak’s Top Ten Films of 2022

MOVIE THEATERS REBOUNDED, THE WORLD IS COURSE CORRECTING, AND A JAMES CAMERON MOVIE SET ON PANDORA IS BLOWING UP THE BOX OFFICE…NO, IT’S NOT 2009 AGAIN! HERE ARE FILMSPEAK’S PICKS FOR THE TEN BEST FILMS OF 2022.

It’s not the screen, it’s the movie. C’mon, FilmSpeak. Don’t think; just view.

This is the third time now that I’ve convened with all of you at the beginning of a new year to recap life, to talk about some movies, and to look forward to what might lie ahead. At the start of 2021, not only had we found ourselves reeling from a pandemic which had devastated humanity, but - on account of the Top Ten Films of 2020 being published a couple of weeks into the year - January 6th had also just happened, and it was difficult to be too cheery, even as we looked back at the best, brightest films of that year. One year ago, however, as I did the same for the Top Ten Films of 2021, things were certainly far from perfect, but it felt like maybe things were looking up for 2022.

I firmly believe, in every recess of my heart, that my optimism paid off.

On the cinematic front, this is undeniable. While we did get to have an in-person TIFF in 2021, and even spent some of our time at the theater with the bigger films that came out, it still felt like our cinematic experience was diluted. 2021 was a magnificent year as far as its releases were concerned - “Dune,” “The Souvenir Part II,” “No Time to Die,” to name only three of the masterpieces - but there was still a sense that some studios were holding back, waiting to feel out the pandemic and its various surges before really letting loose with their slates. For as much as I got to go to the cinema again in 2021, I was also limited to watching many of the year’s best films on my couch, an experience doubtlessly shared by the FilmSpeak team, as well as any of you reading this.

It feels like one only need look at the fact that “The Batman” and “Top Gun: Maverick” were both released in 2022 - despite a 2021 release announcement for the former, and the latter’s multiple instances of being pushed back - to illustrate this point. If “Dune” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” were the “biggest” films we got in 2021, the most grandiose blockbusters imaginable, then in 2022 it feels like we had about a dozen - many of which you’ll find in our list - to rival both in both scale and spectacle. I said a year ago that 2021 stood as “one of the great movie years,” and I do still believe that…but 2022 was something akin to a 1971, dare I even say a 1939, where not only did we get bombarded with works that pushed the envelope as far as it seems capable of sliding, but their quality was repeatedly awe-inspiring.

And that brings me to what you all came here for: our top ten.

Our team had a growth spurt again, with last year’s total of 14 submitted ballots having grown to a total of 20 this time around. FilmSpeak is bigger and better now than it has ever been, and as much as I enjoy publishing each top 10 list, the ones we had for 2020 and 2021 cannot compare to this one in terms of how excited I am about the work everyone did in contributing to it. Speaking for myself, if you were to ask me, “do you think your entire top 10 is made up of masterpieces?”…well, I would have no choice but to respond with an emphatic “yes.” This feels like a year that spoiled me, a total outlier, and it’s a sentiment I’ve seen expressed by other members of the team as well: there have been a lot more “oh, I hate that I have to bump X film from my ballot” type comments this time than in the previous two years combined. It’s been a year of magnificent cinema, and the films involved are fighting a contest of inches. Same rules again this time: every ballot has ten films, the film at #1 on a ballot gets ten points, #2 gets nine, and so on down to #10, which is awarded a single point. The ten films with the most points at the end of the day win out.

Every year has snubs, it’s the unavoidable nature of the thing. However, to show you the league our top ten sits in, allow me to highlight some of the more surprising exclusions. First, there’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” the latest from the “how the hell is he THIS good when he’s THAT young?” visionary Cooper Raiff, which took Sundance by storm and even took first place on one of our writers’ ballots…yet absent from the final top ten. “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” left Benoit Blanc still searching for clues to solve the question of how it missed the #10 spot by ONE point. “After Yang,” Kogonada’s latest opus which arguably surpasses his beautiful “Columbus” from 2017, had a lot of enthusiastic support, and yet you won’t find it here. Even “RRR,” the Tollywood sensation which took the West by storm in 2022, came up just a couple of dance steps short of our top ten. Perhaps the biggest shock of all, though, is this: “Avatar: The Way of Water,” despite apparently legging its way towards being James Cameron’s third two-billion-dollar film, and having also topped one ballot, will not be found among the ten films below.

And, while the ballots this year did not repeat the same phenomenon as 2021, where there were 14 ballots and 14 unique #1 picks - this time around, there were instead several films that came first on multiple ballots - it also wasn’t quite a blowout victory. The films here fought tooth and nail for every last point available, with some placing higher by only one or two points’ difference, and it was even a photo finish for the #1 spot on our list. Nothing less would have been worthy of the cinematic triumphs which brought us back to the theaters in 2022. -Zach Marsh

#10: “ELVIS”

Written by Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner, and Baz Luhrmann
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
#1’s: 1 (Maxance Vincent)

No, that isn’t a typo above: Baz Luhrmann found a way to credit himself twice in his screenplay for “Elvis,” and maybe that’s just appropriate: “Elvis” is as Baz Luhrmann as a Baz Luhrmann film can be, and would we have it any other way? Not a chance. The film’s spectacle lures you in for its first act, only to spin the roulette wheel around and ask: is the spectacle worth it at the cost of this man’s soul? Austin Butler’s performance of a lifetime as Elvis Presley is a microcosm of what pop culture has been doing for eons: exploiting a person’s talent, constructing an image that can be commercialized and sold, and instigating a constant tug and pull between the soul of the human being behind the image, and the spectacle of the manufactured version of them, until the spectacle saps every last bit of soul away. Elvis Presley has left the building, and all we’ve been left with in the 45 years since is a visage of what we imagined him to be. “Elvis” might be maximalist filmmaking to the highest order, but it’s a film with a deeply ingrained purpose and message. So, sit back and let Baz and Butler take you on a journey, enjoy the visceral concert sequences, but maybe take a moment during the final montage of Presley to reflect on what the film is saying as well. -Griffin Schiller

#9: “BABYLON”

Written by Damien Chazelle
Directed by Damien Chazelle
#1’s: 1 (Griffin Schiller)

Cinematic excess abounds in "Babylon," Damien Chazelle's latest epic. In many respects, it’s spiritual successor to "La La Land" that seems to emblematize Chazelle’s having run out of patience for the industry of the Hollywood machine. It’s still an adoring ode to movies themselves, but it’s paired with a much bleaker viewpoint on moviemaking, and what the machine does to the artists - on both sides of the camera - who make it all possible. Set against the backdrop of the dying days of silent cinema, there are several setpieces within “Babylon” that seem particularly familiar to anyone who might be fans of “Singin’ in the Rain,” but there are also others which are not-so-hidden, for example one direct visual lift from “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” The rather obvious comparison no one seems to be making, however, is to Martin Scorsese’s “Casino,” which shares so many hallmarks with “Babylon” - the doomed romance at its core, its chronicling of the decline of an industry that has fuelled an entire town in the hot Southwest, its three-hour runtime, Tom Cross’ frame-slaying editing that brings the movie within an inch of its life in the same way Thelma Schoonmaker beat Scorsese’s mob epic into submission - and has even been cited as a metaphor for the decline of Old Hollywood. The most important similarity, though? Both films are incredible. If you were to judge "Babylon" off of its first trailer - arguably the year's most misleading piece of marketing for any film - you might mistake it for a trainwreck, but don’t be fooled; with electrifying performances from Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, a beautifully poignant and subdued turn from Brad Pitt that feels like a reflection on his own superstar career, and all brought together by Cross’ Oscar-worthy edit, “Babylon” is the best film Damien Chazelle has ever made. -Zach Marsh

#8: “AFTERSUN”

Written by Charlotte Wells
Directed by Charlotte Wells
#1’s: 3 (Dempsey Pillot, Jack Walters, Tayler Wells)

While the magic of many great films from this year lies in their impressive visual scale and epic filmmaking, the real beauty of Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut, “Aftersun,” is its unique ability to thrive in quiet, intimate moments. The father-daughter story of Calum (Paul Mescal) and Sophie (Frankie Corio) is an incredibly complex and layered one, housing some of the most pointed and precise character work put to screen this year. Both Mescal and Corio navigate their roles with an overwhelming naturalism, one that meshes excellently with Wells’ human narrative. Her screenplay is filled with small moments of reality that make “Aftersun” feel more like a slice of life than a piece of fiction, which makes its message even more impactful: it’s a story of family, parenthood, and childhood independence, one which every audience should be able to see a part of their life reflected in. There’s not a single wasted moment in the entire screenplay, which is rarely found in debut features. It feels almost revolutionary in the same kind of way that Cassavetes’ “Shadows” was over 60 years ago, and to that end, the splash that “Aftersun” has made upon the climate of independent cinema is surely going to be felt for a long time to come. -Jack Walters

#7: “NOPE”

Written by Jordan Peele
Directed by Jordan Peele
#1’s: 1 (Miko Reyes)

More than anybody else in recent years, Jordan Peele has proven that the horror genre is perhaps the one which is seeing the most expansive and versatile filmmaking right now. His first two projects - the Oscar-winning “Get Out,” and the bone-chilling “Us” - were both psychological thrillers dialed to the extreme, using rich characters and layered imagery to burrow their way under the audience’s skin. However, with “Nope,” Peele has displayed a much grander, less restrained form of horror that instead relies on the film’s overwhelming visual scope to raise those hairs on the back of your neck. It’s bolder and more daring than Peele has ever been before, drawing from blockbuster sensationalism to forge a biting criticism of excessive exposure and reliance on entertainment in the modern age. The film is stuffed with genius set pieces, and breathtaking cinematography that keeps the audience on the edge of their seat from start to finish, while reminding them that big-budget cinema is very much alive and thriving. Both Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer absolutely soar in their lead roles, playing restrained characters that are overcome within Peele’s unforgettably haunting narrative, yet drive things forward at an impeccable pace. “Nope” is the kind of story that only comes around once every so often, and when it does, its greatest achievement is reminding the audience of just how powerful movies can be. -Jack Walters

#6: “THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN”

Written by Martin McDonagh
Directed by Martin McDonagh
#1’s: 2 (Michael Winn Johnson, John Shutt)

In a year of great scripts and brilliant dialogue, perhaps no other screenplay from 2022 boasts finer wordplay than Martin McDonagh’s Gaelic odyssey across the fictional isle of Inisherin. Colin Farrell delivers, through the character Pádraic Súilleabháin, his second-best performance of the year - his turn in the underseen, underrated “After Yang” might be the high watermark of his career to date - as he clashes with Brendan Gleeson’s Colm Doherty, a best friend who’s suddenly decided he’s had enough of the person he’s called a drinking buddy for decades. To reunite McDonagh with his two main “In Bruges” stars is something long overdue for our screens, and the results are electrifying. “The Banshees of Inisherin” is a slow-simmering tragedy borne out of miscommunications, stubbornness, and - perhaps saddest of all - an aloof innocence and sincerity that Pádraic cannot keep to himself. Kerry Condon, as Pádraic’s sister, performs an expert tightrope walk of bottled-up anger at the way Colm treats him, which boils over amidst the backdrop of the Irish Civil War of the 1920s. But, if you’re looking for the standout reason to give McDonagh’s tale a shot, look no further than Barry Keoghan’s career-defining turn as Dominic, an equally aloof outsider on the isle who frequently finds himself with in over his head on a conversational level. Keoghan completely steals the show, and if it weren’t for how elegantly composed McDonagh’s script and the two lead performances are, you’d be wondering how the film doesn’t center on Dominic. -Zach Marsh

#5: “TÁR”

Written by Todd Field
Directed by Todd Field
#1’s: 2 (Tina Kakadelis, Ryan McQuade)

While the past few years have seen several films thoughtfully examine #MeToo - “She Said” and “Women Talking” serve as two examples from 2022 alone - Todd Field and Cate Blanchett approach the subject with a touch more akin to a pair of jackhammers in “Tár.” Field is no stranger to peeling back the layers of unseemly individuals - William Mapother’s murderer in “In the Bedroom,” Jackie Earle Haley’s sex offender in “Little Children” - and Blanchett’s Lydia Tár is no exception. “Time is the thing,” Tár says pointedly in an interview with The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, which might be an all-time great instance of a real-world journalist appearing within a fictional universe, and time indeed becomes something that ticks away prestissimo for Tár from that interview onwards. For her, she’s convinced it’s ticking away to her career-defining performance of Gustav Mahler’s “5th Symphony,” but in actuality it ticks away to the unraveling of her career, as her sexual misdeeds are thrust into the limelight with their dynamics marked fortississimo. Tár repeatedly makes things worse for herself, and you find yourself rooting for her downfall, yet Field dares nonetheless to examine her and ask, is there room for sympathy for her? At the very least, is Lydia Tár a person capable of finding a shred of humanity within herself? The best case answer on both fronts is “highly doubtful,” but it’s admirable - even, in many ways, important - that Field dared to examine the headspace of someone so reprehensible. Blanchett absolutely dazes in her rising to meet Field, in a staggering performance that is both fearless and nuanced to the most granular level. She makes all of the big “explosions” - a scene involving an accordion has to be seen to be believed - memorable and deeply intense without ever overselling them, but it is in all of the little conversations and contemplative reflections that Blanchett unearths the deepest folds of her being. Perhaps there is an element of the grotesque in putting a spotlight on someone like Lydia Tár for two and a half hours, but alternatively, maybe a film like “Tár” is necessary in that respect: perhaps witnessing a manipulator up close like this will allow us to see the red flags in our own worlds more easily. -Zach Marsh

#4: “THE FABELMANS”

Written by Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg
Directed by Steven Spielberg
#1’s: none (highest #2)

It’s just about impossible to love movies and not at least hold something of a soft spot for “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical chronicling of a journey that is familiar to all of us: one which begins with the spark of having seen that first film that took us completely out of our world. For Spielberg - and for his avatar, Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) - it was “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and while it might have been a different film for each of us - “Star Wars,” here - the effect was the same. Whether or not you then went on to be a filmmaker, to capture your imagination with a camera, might vary. But that core feeling of wonder, that catharsis, the voice in our heads that echoes out, “God, I love cinema,” is universal. “The Fabelmans” might not have been the #1 film of the year for anyone on our team, but there hasn’t been a single dissenting voice, either, because Steven Spielberg understands what makes our cinematic minds tick. I think that would have gotten the film into our top ten on its own, but Spielberg wasn’t just content to remind us that we love movies. He digs deep, with Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and a beautifully understated Paul Dano rounding out versions of Spielberg’s core family to craft a frank view of the director’s upbringing, his parents’ divorce, and how overwhelming it all so often was for him both behind the camera, and then even further removed from it, in pieces of his life that he had previously left unseen to his audiences. Of course, Judd Hirsch’s absolute wonder of a brief performance deserves praise for speaking frankly to Sammy - and to us - about what the gift of cinema can bring to us, but also of how consuming it can simultaneously be. Is “The Fabelmans” Spielberg’s masterwork? Maybe it sits just one rung below the likes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “Jaws.” But it’s pretty inarguable that this is his most honest work since “Schindler’s List.” -Zach Marsh

#3: “THE BATMAN”

Written by Matt Reeves and Peter Craig
Directed by Matt Reeves
#1’s: 1 (Tom Chatalbash)

It’s the comic book film to end them all. I’m only sort of joking when I say they needn’t make any more now that “The Batman” exists. Well, Matt Reeves can make as many Batman films starring Robert Pattinson as he desires, but short of that, anything else is probably going to pale by comparison. For three hours, Reeves brought the Gotham City of “Batman: The Animated Series” to live-action life, with a seediness and grit that none - not Burton, not Nolan, not Snyder - had before captured on this level. It’s an arresting cinematic world, one which you certainly wouldn’t want to live in, but also one you can’t look away from, because there’s an inexplicable beauty to it even though it deserves avoidance at best and disgust at worst. Pattinson, meanwhile, instantly defined what Bruce Wayne and Batman could be in live action from the words “Thursday, October 31st” onwards, proving himself the inspired casting choice that anyone who had seen “Good Time” and “The Lighthouse” already knew he was. Reeves mercifully skips over making us watch Thomas and Martha Wayne get murdered on screen for the hundredth time, instead opening us on Bruce Wayne in his second year as Batman. It makes him imperfect, it makes him fallible, and most of all, it makes the action sequences that much more thrilling, because - even though Batman is an undeniable badass - he does get knocked down and he does get bruised. It’s Wayne’s intellect that gives him the edge, though, as a noir unfolds around Batman that allows - nay, demands - that he finally gets to be “The World’s Greatest Detective” on the big screen, hunting down clues and solving riddles just as often as he is laying a gauntleted fist into goons’ faces. On the note of riddles, while everyone in this cast - Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle, Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, and an unrecognizably fantastic Colin Farrell adding another feather to his career-defining year as the Penguin - is pitch-perfect, none other than Pattinson match Paul Dano as - and this may be sacrilege - the definitive live-action Batman villain in The Riddler. There have been a lot of long movies this year, even several that cross the three-hour mark, but none of them manage to feel an entire hour shorter in the same way that “The Batman” does. In most other years, it would be an easy #1, but just as was the case for Farrell, cinema managed to somehow have even better in store during 2022. -Zach Marsh

#2: “TOP GUN: MAVERICK”

Written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
#1’s: 3 (Bryce Bailey, Ryan Daly, Arjun Persaud)

“Top Gun: Maverick” and our #1 pick both scored 98 points. The tiebreaker was that “Maverick” came in first place on three ballots, while our #1 pick topped four writers’ lists. But, even at #2, there’s nothing like this film. Even up against “Avatar: The Way of Water,” there is nothing that has ever been put on movie screens that compares to “Top Gun: Maverick.” What Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski did with these F-18s is so ridiculous, so in defiance of what cinema would do - of what, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe would do if it wanted to put its characters in the same planes - that it’s doubtful we’ll ever see anything like it again. You haven’t been to a movie theater if you haven’t seen this film on a square-ratio IMAX screen. And while that in itself would probably merit “Maverick” a spot in this top ten - it is, after all, the movie that saved cinemas in 2022 - what makes this not only superior to the original “Top Gun,” but one of the great Movies-with-a-capital-M, is the pounding heart that beats at the center of its story. Several of 2022’s films tackled grief in poignant, beautiful ways - “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “The Eternal Daughter,” “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” - and yet, out of all of their most powerful moments, perhaps the most poignant and resonant was watching Pete Mitchell stare through a bar window at the son of a best friend who should have been there with them. Miles Teller excels at embodying Anthony Edwards’ cadence and personality through Rooster, and when he and Cruise are on screen together, another piece of magic happens: a second chance at the relationship Maverick was robbed of having had with Goose. Couple that with the sole scene between Maverick and Val Kilmer’s Iceman, one which has become an iconic movie moment in its own right, and “Maverick” is as emotionally gripping an experience as it is a visually enthralling one. -Zach Marsh

#1: “EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE”

Written by DANIELS (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)
Directed by DANIELS
#1's: 4 (Chris Hernandez, Zach Marsh, Marianna Neal, Kaleena Steakle)

Once every so often, a film comes along that represents a watershed moment in moviemaking, one that rests among the movies which can be skipped along like paved stones, a highlight reel of the evolution of the art form. “A Trip to the Moon.” “The Wizard of Oz.” “Citizen Kane.” “Psycho.” “Star Wars.” “Pulp Fiction.” “The Lord of the Rings.” One could argue that, on a technical front, we got spoiled by two such releases during 2022, in the form of “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water.” But the thing that separates the likes of “Citizen Kane” or “Star Wars” from that of “Maverick” is that the entire form feels like it got hit by an earthquake. It’s the kind of film that you walk out of thinking, “I’ve never, ever seen something like that in my life.” It’s a “cinema before this and cinema after this” type of moment. That’s the type of filmic monument that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” stands tall as. On paper, what DANIELS - the pseudonym of electrifying writer-director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert - put together with their masterpiece has familiar echoes. “The multiverse” has practically become a meme thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the toiling of real-life quantum physicists. The idea of “verse jumping” is something that “Rick and Morty” have run aplomb with. The struggle for reconnection between a mother and her daughter, or a parent and child in general has found fertile resonance in countless pieces of powerful, compelling media. Even the electric, magnificently choreographed fight sequences that our #1 film is revered for have been influenced by the past careers of both Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, to say nothing of Tony Jaa, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and Bruce Lee. And yet, when all of this is molded together into the 139-minute frenzy that is its story, switching almost wildly between stupefying excess and intimate beauty in a run of controlled chaos, all of these various elements which may individually seem familiar, create an alchemy in unison that not only enriches the final product, but betters cinema. It’s beyond doubt that the next few years will see many attempts made to capitalize on what made “Everything Everywhere All at Once” such a landmark, but they’ll all come short because they won’t have this screenplay. They won’t have Quan’s performance as an unfailingly wholesome, loving father and husband in all universes, and they won’t have Yeoh fighting to her last as a mother who literally forces life to exist in a universe that hasn’t formed any, just to save and be with her daughter. Almost every single film ever made lacks a scene as powerful and as completely fulfilling as Quan’s “laundry and taxes” monologue, and then “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dares to throw a second instance of such a scene at you with Yeoh’s final speech to Stephanie Hsu’s Joy in the parking lot. Any film that tries to capture what this film did is fighting an impossible fight. I saw this film 20 times in theaters. I went out of my way to make it the last film I watched during 2022. I know “Everything Everywhere All at Once” like the back of my hand, and yet it feels like I haven’t even scratched the surface in talking to you about it. That’s because I haven’t. It’s impossible to do justice to a film like this in only a couple hundred words, for the same reason that it would be impossible to do so with a million words, for the same reason that there’s nothing meaningful I could add to the conversation about any of the other films that have served as touchstones across the history of cinema; it’s so much more, so much greater, than anything I or anyone else could possibly write about it, and that above all else is why FilmSpeak has crowned DANIELS’ “Everything Everywhere All at Once” The Best Film of 2022. -Zach Marsh