In my very expert opinion, 2022 will go down as a good year for television, a (surprisingly) great year for music (especially non-mainstream hip-hop), and a terrible year for cinema.
Before I attempt to share thoughts about my favorites of the lousy movie year, I suppose we should talk about the U.S. box office.
Top Gun: Maverick was by far the box office success of the year, selling $718 million in the U.S. and just under $1.5 billion worldwide, making it perhaps the great COVID era success story in the movie world. Is it a good film? Yeah. Very fun. Fan service done right, I guess.
Is Maverick the major masterpiece seemingly everyone is saying it is. Oh, come on. Be serious.
The next eight highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office were, surprise, surprise, all sequels to successful films. Hooray. No. 2 was Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which has sold $419 million in the U.S. (just under $800 million worldwide); No. 3 was Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which sold $411 million in the U.S. ($955 million worldwide).
Let’s pause for a minute. I must rant. Coogler and Raimi are special directors, right? I feel we can agree on that. Are Wakanda and Multiverse of Madness special films? They are not. Sorry, not sorry.
So, if our great directors feel the need to work on these mega-industry projects, should we just accept it? And if we do accept it (which at this point I think we have to), what is our best way forward? Do we simply accept that great artists need to make money, or do we demand that, for example, when you hire Taika Waititi to do a job, you allow him to do his work how he wants to do it.
Can you even begin to imagine what Waititi could do if allowed to freely utilize the resources and budget of a film like Thor: Love and Thunder?
Getting back on track, the No. 4 box office success of 2022 was Jurassic World: Dominion, which sold $376 million in the U.S. and a few hairs over $1 billion worldwide. Minions: The Rise of Gru took the No. 5 spot with $369 million in sales, while The Batman brought in just under $369 million domestically ($770 million worldwide).
So, those are, more or less, the box office winners.
What say the critics?
Now, let’s talk about the critics’ favorite films. Metacritic.com has aggregated a Best of 2022 list based on year-end lists made by critics, and here’s how it breaks down:
10. EO (director Jerzy Skolimowski)
9. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
8. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
7. Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski)
6. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
5. Nope (Jordan Peele)
4. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
3. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
2. Tár (Todd Field)
1. Everything Everywhere All at Once (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
Certainly not a bad list, but also not a great one.
ScreenTime’s Best of 2022
So far, I’ve seen 60-ish of the year’s “most discussed” films, but clearly still have a ways to go. So maybe after watching some of those drop-dead masterpieces, I’ll have to recategorize 2022 as an OK year for film? Color me doubtful (but hopeful).
But enough messing around, here it is, my Favorite Films of 2022, So Far:
15. Barbarian (director Zach Cregger)
14. Fresh (Mimi Cave)
13. Hustle (Jeremiah Zagar)
12. Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino)
11. The Menu (Mark Mylod)
10. Stars at Noon (Claire Denis)
9. The Batman (Matt Reeves)
8. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
7. The Whale (Darren Aronofsky)
6. White Noise (Noah Baumbach)
5. Fire of Love (Sara Dosa)
4. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
3. Tár (Todd Field)
2. Blonde (Andrew Dominick)
1. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
Stray thoughts to close the year
Brendan Fraser is going to win Best Actor at the Oscars, and he should, but also I don’t know that I’ll ever watch The Whale again.
Bones and All could have been really great with better actors.
I don’t get the Jordan Peele love. He makes good movies, but not great ones. Not yet. Several of my filmmaker and critic friends have Nope as their favorite film of 2022, which I just do not get.
I think Noah Baumbach’s White Noise is one that I’ll like more each time I see it. Pretty big shame to see it flop so hard.
Aside from maybe Blonde, I don’t think we really had a rebel/outsider sort of film this year: At least not a great one. Bones and All and Dinner in America both came close, but we didn’t have a River’s Edge sort of film that I’m aware of. And that’s a shame.
