The 25 best films of 2022 (so far)

The New York City walk-and-talk has become a signature for writer-director Adam Leon. His work speaks a distinctive language of affectionate NYC patter, somewhere between open-hearted sharing and cocky bullshitting. Bits and pieces of Italian Studies resemble a couple of recent and more accessible movies from established filmmakers, including C’mon C’mon and Licorice Pizza. Leon paints similarly open-hearted portraits, and if anyone can make opacity compelling, it’s Vanessa Kirby. Through her guardedness, the flickers of panic chased with flashes of aggression, and her fleeting attachment to Simon, Kirby finds a character, even as that character struggles to find herself. [Jesse Hassenger] Read our review here.

Once you begin looking into the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (often shortened to the acronym MMIWG), the numbers are overwhelming. Faced with such a massive problem, how could any one person fight back? Kaylee (Kali Reis), the heroine of Catch The Fair One, knows she has to try. Writer-director Josef Kubota Wladyka sets up Kaylee’s story with brisk, realistic dialogue and efficient visual storytelling, establishing everything essential within the first 15 minutes of the film, leaving Wladyka’s camera free to focus on Reis, whose distinctive pierced cheeks and tattooed, muscular frame naturally draw eyes in her direction. But it’s her determination and intensity that keeps them there. Kaylee’s bleak reality is a world where hard work is rewarded, and Native lives are celebrated—and it hits like an uppercut to the jaw. [Katie Rife] Read our review here.

Director Kogonada’s second feature After Yang is such a quiet bomb of awesome, it’s not difficult to see why it’s slipped by many people’s radar. Aside from some funny scenes of future family bonding time, the film is a quiet meditation on culture, life, family, parenting, and one’s place in all of that. The basic plot focuses on a family (Colin Farrell and Jodie Taylor-Smith) in the future where AI humanoids are bought to help out around the house. In this case, the AI is named Yang (Justin H. Min) and he was purchased not only to help out as a nanny but also instill a sense of cultural backstory to the couple’s adopted Chinese daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). Yang has become a crucial part of the family. So much so that when he breaks down, as all AIs do, Farrell embarks on a mission to try and have him repaired, thus repairing himself and his family in the process. Writing all that out doesn’t do this quiet, meditative and beautiful film the justice it deserves. [Don Lewis] Read our review here.

Director Domee Shi’s Pixar film could not have arrived at a more important moment, putting complex Asian characters (and specifically, multiple generations of women) at the center of a story that explores and celebrates their multi-dimensionality. Turning Red provides reassurance to those who share these experiences in real life, and an opportunity for those who don’t. Telling a powerful story about adolescence, fitting in, and finding oneself at a time when emotional responses to the world can be the most difficult to manage, Shi brings sharply into focus teenage volatility, a mental state that adults have consistent trouble remembering. Especially at a time when Asian women in North America have endured so much hate and trauma, Turning Red is a little respite that celebrates them and their culture, speaking directly to generations of Asian women in the diaspora when they need to hear this the most. [Todd Gilchrist] Read our review here.

Ti West’s best films have explored the tension between old and new; progressive ideas about sex clash with classic slasher tropes in X, his most crowd-pleasing title to date. Shellacked in blue eye shadow, feathered hair, and a gallon of lip gloss, Mia Goth commands the superstar adulation that her character craves opposite a supporting cast including Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Scott Mescudi, Jenna Ortega, and Owen Campbell. From an opening shot framed like a 16mm film gate to the blaring red title card that resembles the MPAA’s ratings system, West bakes an orgy of 1970s cultural ephemera into a scrappy American International Pictures-era visual look that conjures everything from Deep Throat to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. [Todd Gilchrist] Read our review here.

The other movie about a distraught mom caught up in a multiverse of madness may have fewer flashy Sam Raimi monsters, but it more than makes up for that with an abundance of ideas. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn runs a laundromat in what is probably our dimension, but in another, she’s a rock with googly eyes. Or a chef working with a brilliant raccoon. Or Jamie Lee Curtis’ hot-dog-fingered lover. But the filmmakers known as Daniels aren’t completely crazy, so of course there’s one where she kicks ass too. Facing off against an omnipotent variant of her daughter (played by breakout Stephanie Hsu) who transcends all realities, Evelyn must rise to the challenge not by being the deadliest fighter in the universe, but by learning to love one’s enemies, and give selflessly.

Yeoh may dominate the show, but the comeback story of Ke Huy Quan warms the heart of a generation. Formerly Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, he was a hero to many ’80s kids who wanted to be him. As Evelyn’s loving husband, extolling self-sacrifice, kindness, and hope, he remains a role model for those same kids now dealing with middle age.

And if that sounds too sentimental, just wait for the part where trophies get used as butt plugs. [Luke Y. Thompson] Read our review here.

With Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, director Richard Linklater deliver his version of Fellini’s Amarcord or Woody Allen’s Radio Days: an essentially plotless but engaging and enriching recollection of childhood steeped in warmth, grace, honesty, and crystalline specificity. As with Linklater’s 12-year production Boyhood, the glory is in the details, like focusing on the way kids kill time when it’s raining on a Saturday, or how to write songs for pushbutton telephones. But there’s neither a sense of scolding the past, nor grumbling that this is the way it oughta be. It’s just reporting. Meanwhile, there is no universal experience of childhood; for kids at Stan’s age, they don’t know it also might be the last time, but the way Linklater captures the exhilarating free fall of that moment should make every grownup smile. [Jordan Hoffman] Read our review here.

Cow, Andrea Arnold’s first documentary, is a film in which her directorial hand is felt so lightly that our relationship to Luma, its bovine protagonist, becomes almost personal. There is no narration or dialogue, save for mooing cows and the occasional overheard utterance of a farmhand. This addition by subtraction results in one of the most immersive animal documentaries you’ll ever see. Its observational shooting style is simple yet rich in quotidian detail. Its storytelling is morally neutral, yet charged with moments that obligate the viewer to question our treatment of farm animals. [Mark Keizer] Read our review here.

Even Gaspar Noe’s greatest admirers might describe his films as endurance tests. He wants to provoke, prod, even make you sick, never allowing the viewer the luxury of looking away. But with Vortex, he sets out to make us cry. Not, as most filmmakers would, by being sentimental, but the exact opposite—an absolutely unsparing look at an old couple (Dario Argento and Francoise Lebrun) as their health deteriorates and they die. Literally dividing the screen between the two, as dementia and heart problems push them further apart, it reflects a harshly atheistic view of an uncaring, oblivious universe in which death may be just another part of an endless cycle, but a devastating one on a micro-level.

If Argento sticks to his word and makes this his one and only lead performance, it’s a tremendous one-and-done, worthy to stand opposite the veteran thespian Lebrun, and a serious turn by comedian Alex Lutz as their junkie son. Like every Noe film, it’s punishing in a way that not everyone is up for. But unlike most, it’s not about people wreaking harm upon one another; rather, they do the best for each other as time itself does all the damage. For Noe, that’s quite the evolution. For the viewer, it hurts just as much. In a good way. [Luke Y. Thompson] Read our review here.

Operation Mincemeat, a richly engaging World War II spy drama from director John Madden, opens with voiceover narration which asserts that a good story contains that which is seen, and also that which is hidden. Over the course of two-plus hours, the film then proceeds to both illustrate that axiom and excavate its deeper truths.

Based on fascinatingly improbable real-life events, the film has enough cloak-and-dagger intrigue and period detail to satisfy the type of hardcore sub-genre enthusiasts who made the exhaustive, 39-volume Time Life Books series on World War II a perennial Father’s Day gift. But it’s also shot through with a humanizing sense of uncertainty, moral complication, and even wistfulness about the manner in which this work weighs upon its practitioners, for an altogether rewarding experience even for those viewers who traditionally eschew wartime dramas. [Brent Simon] Read our review here.

Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s top prize in 2021, Happening serves as a chilling reminder of times before legalized abortion. Based on Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical 2000 novel, the film unflinchingly recounts a 23-year-old student’s harrowing ordeal of terminating her pregnancy in 1963 France. Director-cowriter Audrey Diwan approaches the material with the cool detachment of a fly on the wall, resulting in an austere thriller in the vein of 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days. [Martin Tsai] Read our review here.

Nicolas Cage fandom can take many forms. Some viewers prefer his Oscar bids, like Moonstruck and Leaving Las Vegas, where he makes his pain palpable. Many like him giving his all in preposterous, high-concept action movies like Con Air and Face/Off. Others, especially the extremely online, prefer him in ostensibly “bad” movies like The Wicker Man and Drive Angry, which take advantage of his willingness to scream obscenities and deliver nonsensical rants. The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent brilliantly appeals to all those corners, by having a fictionalized version of Cage meet his biggest fan (Pedro Pascal) and get thrust into a CIA plot he’ll have to improvise his way out of. He gets high, he goes crazy, he dons disguises—every version of Cage shows up to play.

Though it’s essentially a feature-length version of various memes, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent has no right to be as consistently entertaining throughout as it is. Both highlight reel and postmodern critique, it appropriately celebrates a performer who consistently gives it his all ... even when that all hasn’t always been deserved. [Luke Y. Thompson] Read our review here.

Movies about childhood trauma rarely come as powerfully understated as Montana Story. Unfolding beneath a Montana sky so clear and expansive you can almost feel the wind whipping through your hair, the film is one of heavy and suppressed sorrow, featuring a brother and sister who each carry a burden of unresolved grief. Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson play Cal and Erin, estranged half-siblings who reunite at their family’s ranch to say goodbye to their dying father. It’s a reunion that neither sibling expected, nor wanted. But the empty skies and endless rolling hills give them nowhere to hide as they finally confront their feelings toward their father and each other. This is a deeply felt work anchored by two earthy performances that stay small-scaled no matter how melodramatic the slowly revealed secrets become... [Mark Keizer] Read our review here.

The brilliance of writer/director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure is not only that it’s a provocative and uncompromising peek behind the lace curtain of the porn industry. Pleasure is also brilliant because it could be about any industry where the line between a worker’s agency and their exploitation is thinner than a G-string.

Sofia Kappel gives a daring and unfiltered performance as Linnéa, newly arrived in Los Angeles from Sweden with dreams of being a porn star. The price of fame is that with every step up the industry’s ultra-competitive ladder, she’s required to debase herself further. The pleasure of Pleasure comes from its unflinching yet surprisingly even-handed depiction of the porn business. Without being didactic or morally definitive, the film addresses the idea of female self-worth in a world of patriarchal power. Thyberg toys with our expectations and almost shames us for assuming her film would be something more cheap and erotic than the exploration of ambition and friendship that she intended. As Brent Simon puts it, “Pleasure is buoyed and elevated by an outsider’s perspective which disengages from both the more voyeuristic elements of its narrative and many distinctly American judgments of them.” [Mark Keizer] Read our review here.

Hold Your Fire, a remarkable and frank documentary from Stefan Forbes, details a 1973 hostage standoff between a group of would-be thieves and the NYPD that could have gone far worse than it did, and essentially kickstarted the art of hostage negotiation as it exists today. Forbes uses a blend of archival footage—some very French Connection-era images of blue police peacoats and city buses advertising WPLJ-FM radio—and interviews of surviving witnesses. At first blush, the incident seems straightforward, but with more scrutiny, nuances emerge. It becomes clear to any mature viewer that the initial impasse was due to serious lapses in judgment on “both sides,” but only one group is currently willing to admit they may have been even slightly in the wrong. (Spoiler: the conciliatory group, it may not surprise you, sure ain’t the cops.) [Jordan Hoffman] Read our review here.

Horror movies based on the trauma of a main character are certainly overpopulating the genre of late. Yet, when there’s so many different types and levels of trauma to explore, it’s a great entry point and way to really dig in on how trauma might manifest itself. Such is the case with Alex Garland’s excellent and creepy third feature. While Men is indeed quite a film, it’s probably a bit less sound than his previous films Ex Machina and Annihilation. But even that take doesn’t mean this isn’t a great film—it is. Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a woman who’s gone through a severely traumatic situation and, as a way to recharge and move on with her life, rents an idyllic cottage in the England countryside. At first, aside from a drippy clod of a caretaker (Rory Kinnear, who plays all the male roles sans that of Harper’s husband), all seems perfect. But soon Harper crosses paths with all sorts of toxic men, plus an ethereal creature in the woods who, although an ancient being, is still a toxic male. Yes, Men is a bit arty and a lot on the nose but it’s also pretty damn weird and quietly engaging. Jordan Hoffman called the film a “thrilling, deranged masterpiece,” and I tend to agree. [Don Lewis] Read our review here.

Top Gun: Maverick is the year’s best and biggest surprise, in large part because it could’ve gone so very wrong. A sequel 36 years after the original? Years after the death of original director, Tony Scott? Without most of the original supporting cast? With Tom Cruise closing in on 60 like an ICBM?

Yet, here we are. Maverick is at $1 billion and still cruising. It’s garnered—justifiably—mostly rave reviews. It recreates the Top Gun formula, with Miles Teller in the Cruise role. Teller nails it, bringing equal measures of cockiness and likability to Rooster. Cruise is in top form, with Maverick taken down a few notches by time, ego, and circumstance, but ready to rise to the occasion when called upon. Cruise gives a generous performance, letting Teller and the other young guns shine, and sharing real chemistry with Jennifer Connelly (versus his spark-less interactions with Kelly McGillis).

Joseph Kosinski directs with style, adding the right amount of nostalgia, from the songs to a game of beach football to shoutouts to familiar characters. And Val Kilmer’s scene as Iceman is perfect. Kosinski leans too much into using Top Gun as a template, and the central mission feels very Star Wars, but otherwise Maverick is everything we want it to be—and more. [Ian Spelling] Read our review here.

During a recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, director Ron Howard was promoting his latest documentary, We Feed People. In talking up the film’s subject, José Andrés, the celebrity chef turned food-based humanitarian, the Oscar winning director said, “Turns out you can make a superhero film without special effects or even spandex and a cape. But you’ve gotta find the right subject.” In Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen has provided hundreds of thousands of meals to disaster victims around the world, Howard found a subject seemingly so virtuous, tireless and, ultimately, successful that Superman himself might defer to his heroic abilities.

We Feed People is the fast-moving and absorbing account of the Spanish-born chef’s efforts. Howard takes us inside Andrés’ operation and inside his head, introducing us to an enthusiastic and heedless globetrotter as he travels from one far-flung crisis to the next, spearheading the delivery of hot meals to locals in need. It’s inspiring and often stirring stuff, and while there are moments when the doc threatens to tip over into hagiography, who cares? Andrés deserves this mid-career tip of the (chef’s) hat. [Mark Keizer] Read our review here.

In the heartbreaking biopic Benediction, director Terence Davies once again uses his art to express his own personal anguish and wrestle with his demons. A tender Jack Lowden plays the tormented writer Siegfried Sassoon, whose powerful anti-war poetry following his service in World War I got him shipped to an Edinburgh psychiatric hospital. Sassoon would never recover from the psychic wounds he suffered during the war, spending the rest of his life in a fruitless search for inner peace.

Benediction’s tragic beauty feels mainlined directly from Davies’ soul and his long-held ambivalence towards his homosexuality and his aversion to Catholicism are echoed in Sassoon’s journey. That journey takes Sassoon to post-war London where the petty rivalries and knife-twisting indignities of his jealous, bed-hopping, gay coterie drive him to a sexless, straight marriage. Peter Capaldi plays the elder Sassoon, a bitter husk of a man who converts to Catholicism in a last-ditch effort to find comfort. Told with a stately simplicity that allows its enormous depth of feeling to absorb into your skin, Benediction contains the gorgeous dialogue and visual flights of fancy that are Davies’ unique signatures. As Jordan Hoffman wrote, “There’s nothing about this film that is uplifting, but Davies’ handling of the material is so exquisite that the overbearing melancholy becomes, in the end, a work of poetry.” [Mark Keizer] Read our review here.

Neptune Frost began a graphic novel, then as a musical, then as three albums produced by [Saul] Williams under the MartyrLoserKing handle. The film boasts Lin-Manuel Miranda and Fela! producer Stephen Hendel as executive producers. It is also the first narrative feature from Knitting Factory Entertainment, best known for its legendary genre-smashing New York City concert venue and avant-garde record label. In short, there’s a hell of a lot that’s cool about this thing.

Oh, and the Frost of the title is a large white-and-red bird that gets a few in-flight close-ups, but is quite obviously just being held by someone moving in sync with the camera. It’s handmade elements like that which makes Neptune Frost more than just the recitation of post-colonial tracts and cool music, but a spirited, one-of-a-kind film worth checking out. [Jordan Hoffman] Read our review here.

It doesn’t take long for Fire Island, Joel Kim Booster’s instant-classic Jane Austen riff, to stake its claim in the romantic comedy canon—or rather, defiantly outside of it. Less than a minute into the opening sequence, Booster refers to Pride And Prejudice, his source material, as “hetero nonsense.” As this story’s Lizzie Bennet stand-in, gay Brooklynite Noah continues to narrate: he shudders at the “boyfriend energy” of the naked man in his bed whose name clearly eludes him, then calls his chosen family, the group of friends on their annual Fire Island vacation, the F-word (the one reserved for gays). “Don’t cancel me,” he tells us, tongue firmly in cheek. “I’m reclaiming it!” Suffice it to say this isn’t your typical rom-com—but then again, how could it be? [Jack Smart] Read our review here.

Full of colorful heroes, fiendish villains, staggering action sequences, dizzying dance numbers, and most of all, virtuous friendship, driven by feverish creativity and a sharp and unambiguous sense of pride for India’s people and their history, writer-director S. S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language epic RRR quickly became the word-of-mouth sensation of the year. Its relentless capacity to please crowds, first in its initial release, then special-event screenings, and finally, as a part of Netflix’s streaming library (albeit in a different language), has catapulted it from appealing counterprogramming to a tremendous and seemingly indefatigable international sensation. While it’s undeniably a product of the film community, and industry, for which it was originally conceived, its growing and deserved success underscores the expansion of cinema as a platform for exploring different cultures and different traditions, as well as for the universality of a well-told story. [Todd Gilchrist] Read our review here.

Nancy is a 55-year-old widow awaiting the arrival of a sex worker who’ll hopefully give her the first orgasm of her entire life. The male escort assigned to this monumental task is the “aesthetically perfect” young Leo (Daryl McCormack) and, as he’ll learn over the course of their four meetings, giving Nancy a chance to premiere her O-face means breaking down her well-established defenses.

If that sounds like the premise for a comedy or even a tragedy, it’s actually neither. Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is a tender and richly satisfying charmer whose themes of self-acceptance and body positivity are delivered with a light and carefully crafted touch. Emma Thompson is at her prickly, vulnerable, fiercely intelligent best as Nancy, a stand-in for every woman who’s suppressed her sexuality out of shame, feelings of inadequacy or a need to please others. Unfolding almost entirely in one room, the film is a two-character study of sexual awakening and a heartfelt, yearning dispatch from the farthest corner of the age divide. It’s a sexually frank and intimate story told in a pleasingly mainstream manner that avoids greeting card clichés and empty “girl power” posturing. [Mark Keizer] Read our review here.

Cooper Raiff, much like his latest movie, is a diamond in the rough. He possesses major talent as a writer, producer, director, and actor. Shithouse hinted at it, and Cha Cha Real Smooth mostly confirms it, but he’s got to get out of his own way if he’s going to stick around long term.

Cha Cha Real Smooth centers on Andrew (Raiff), a recent college grad who becomes a party starter and invests himself in the lives of a protective 30-something mom, Domino (Dakota Johnson, who excels), and her autistic daughter (Vanessa Burghardt, who is actually autistic). They form a bit of a family bond (as a result of him sitting for Lola), and there’s a tease at a Domino-Andrew romance, but circumstances get in the way.

The film is sweet and painless when it should have bite, and the ending disappoints. Also, Cha Cha Real Smooth is shot like a decent TV movie, when it required more directorial flair. Still, its heart is in the right place and there are far worse ways to spend 107 minutes. Plus, one day it may be remembered as among Raiff’s early, formative films. [Ian Spelling] Read our review here.

Even though Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is not the eponymous hero’s first rodeo, it’s assuredly his greatest adventure to date, with an even bigger narrative scale and emotional scope than before. The gregarious, one-inch tall, one-eyed seashell sporting a childish voice and tiny tennis shoes was first introduced to us through YouTube shorts chronicling his daily routine and witty, innermost thoughts, tickling our funny bones and warming our hearts. Now co-creator/director Dean Fleischer Camp and co-creator/Marcel voice Jenny Slate broaden the miniature mollusk’s origins and world in a live-action/stop-motion-animated hybrid film, gifting us with a life-affirming, super charming and sweet-natured journey. It’s a soothing balm unlike any other wholesome feature around. [Courtney Howard] Read our review here.