It may not have been the best of times at the box office, but 2022 produced a bumper crop of great films. But before we get to my annual, non-ranked list of the best the year had to offer, we need to talk about the worst.
Worst Picture: Jackass Forever
If I wanted to watch 96 minutes of recreational genital torture, I’d go to the internet like Al Gore intended.
Best Memphis Film: Elvis
Okay, so it wasn’t filmed in Memphis, and we’re still a little sore about that. But Baz Luhrmann’s epic musical biopic was a certified crowd-pleaser. And despite the … questionable choices made by Tom Hanks as Col. Tom Parker, Austin Butler’s barn-burning turn as the King shed new light on the complicated psychology of the boy from Tupelo who became the most famous person the world has ever seen.
Best Performance by a Nonhuman: Marcel, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Who would have thought that a film starring a YouTube sensation from 2010 would be one of the most emotionally complex experiences of the year? Jenny Slate’s profound voice performance and Mars Attacks! animator Eric Adkins bring Marcel to life so convincingly, you’ll be hanging on this little shell’s every word.
Best Cinematography: Top Gun: Maverick
Aerial photography has been an obsession of the movies since Wings won the first Best Picture Oscar in 1927. In Top Gun: Maverick, Claudio Miranda did it better than anyone ever has — and his work was rewarded with the top-grossing film of the year.
Best Performance: Daniel Radcliffe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
In a year rife with good performances, no one committed to the bit like Daniel Radcliffe. Playing a well-known public figure like Weird Al Yankovic is hard enough, but Radcliffe went above and beyond in capturing the fabled accordionist’s unflappable manner and egalitarian worldview. He single-handedly carries this deeply strange biopic.
MVP: Mia Goth
In X, the neo-slasher about a group of filmmakers and their exploitative producer who rent a farmhouse in the Texas countryside to film a dirty movie, Mia Goth plays both the young, would-be porn star Maxine and the elderly serial killer Pearl. While they were on set, Goth came up with such a compelling backstory for Pearl that director Ti West started filming the prequel even before the first film hit theaters. Goth’s ferocious performance in Pearl includes a chilling soliloquy for the ages.
Best Horror/Sci-fi/Western: Nope
Granted, it’s a pretty specific category, but even if Nope didn’t have it all to itself, it would still be one of the best films of the year. From killer chimps to a monster reveal that is downright beautiful, Jordan Peele’s latest is original, funny, and above all, creepy as hell. You’ll never look at a wind dancer the same way again.
Best Documentary: Moonage Daydream
Over the course of his 50-year career, David Bowie had many collaborators who claimed he had a knack for bringing out the best in them. That’s what happened when director Brett Morgen got access to the Bowie estate archive and spent four years creating a phantasmagorical tribute to the artist. This powerful ode to the creative spirit is 2022’s most groundbreaking film.
Best Director(s): Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, Neptune Frost
If it were only for the opening sequence, in which laborers sing a subversive work song in an actual Rwandan pit mine, Neptune Frost would still be one of the most stunning works of the decade. But it just gets better — and weirder — from there. This unique blend of Afrofuturism, cyberpunk, and Sondheim musical combines catchy tunes with revolutionary fervor. Most remarkably, it was made on a Kickstarter budget.
Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All At Once
Every once in a while, a picture comes along that captures the zeitgeist so effortlessly it seems to have invented it from whole cloth. The elements of Everything Everywhere All At Once — multiverse stories, a renewed earnestness, a breezy visual style, and kung fu — were all floating in the ether, but it took Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert to wrangle them into one fantastic package. Anchored by Michelle Yeoh at the peak of her powers, a comeback turn by Ke Huy Quan, and a game-for-anything Jamie Lee Curtis, this is the rare film that features both eye-popping visuals and a deeply humane philosophy.
