Top 10 movies 2022

What a year. The array of filmmaking on the list below should be shown to anyone willing to suggest that 2022 was somehow inferior in the history of cinema. And these excellent films don't even include some of the most popular flicks of the year like the critically acclaimed "Top Gun: Maverick" or "Avatar: The Way of Water" (although both films will appear on individual lists from our expanded staff that will run on Friday, for the record). This composite site top ten used the same formula as we have since 2014, taking the best-of lists from our regular review staff and compiling them into one big list. Documentaries, blockbusters, an animated film, aliens, donkeys, and even the boys from "Jackass" made the top twenty, and the big ten have been detailed by some of our talented critics. Every blurb in the top ten also includes details on where to watch the film. If you took the time to sit and view all 20 of the movies listed below, you would have an incredible picture of where the art of cinema stands as we head into the mid-'20s. It stands tall. Runners-up: " 10. "Babylon" A bombastic epic as artistically ambitious as those made during the height of the silent era, writer/director Damien Chazelle's "Babylon" takes the audience on a visceral odyssey through the highest highs and lowest lows of late-1920s Hollywood, from orgiastic parties and chaotic film sets to personal triumphs and melancholic moments of utter despair. As the movie business transitions from silents to ta...

Entertain This!, USA TODAY Blockbusters were alive and well in 2022, in quantity and quality. Whether it was Here are 2022's best movies, ranked (and where you can watch them): 10. 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' The Where to watch: Review: 9. 'The Inspection' Director Elegance Bratton's auspicious feature film debut puts a different angle on the well-tread basic training drama (see: "Full Metal Jacket," "An Officer and a Gentleman"). Where to watch: In theaters 'Your job is to love them': 8. 'Top Gun: Maverick' His call sign isn't Wizard but Cruise pulled off an astounding magic trick byhonchoing a Where to watch: 'Top Gun' review: 7. 'The Fallout' Before Where to watch: Jenna Ortega: 6. 'The Batman' Did we need Pattinsonas the 7,439th Where to watch: 'The Batman' review: 5. 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' The Where to watch: In theaters 'Black Panther 2' review: 4. 'Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio' Del Toro, a modern master of the macabre, gives the Where to watch: Review: 3. 'The Banshees of Inisherin' Getting ghosted by a friend or a loved one is a relatable bit of stress and heartbreak. Add a 1920s remote Irish island setting, toss in two of the greatest actors of their generations, and you've got a Where to watch: 'Banshees of Inisherin': 2. 'The Whale' If the thought of Where to watch: In theaters 'The Whale' review: 1. 'RRR' Director S.S. Rajamouli's three-hour, genre-smashing action masterpiece is a muscular slab of over-the-top giddy joy. Set in 1920s India, ...

Below are the 10 best that rose to the top of our highly subjective list, and five dire misfires that landed on our worst. Even in a singularly chaotic year, though, the good still outweighed the bad: our postscript features more than a dozen runner-ups — essential international dramas, indie gems, all kinds of animation — that nearly made the cut. RRR may not be the best movie this year by most traditional metrics, but it is almost certainly the most movie: A dizzy maximalist trip so visually extravagant that the tiger wrestling, flying soldiers, and stadium-size fireballs of the first hour turn out to be merely a little light scene-setting for what comes next. Writer-director S.S. Rajamouli's sprawling Telugu-language story, such as it is, centers on two men on either side of a political and cultural divide circa 1920s colonial India: N.T. Rama Rao Jr. is the insurgent rebel desperate to get his kidnapped sister back, and Ram Charan, the Imperial soldier loyal to British command. Identities are concealed, women wooed, and wild beasts conquered; more than once, there is a dance-off. High melodrama, surreal Bollywood spectacle, epic bromance: It's all here, and it is glorious. In their raw depictions of sex and pain and disintegration, Citizenfour) could easily have made a slick, enjoyable film about the seedy glamour of Goldin's work; instead, she's constructed something far more interesting: a portrait of the artist as a whole person. Goldin's ongoing battle with the bil...

Recent updates: Added Jan. 10: The Film Stage (more criitics), Hot Press, LA Weekly, misc (Ehrlich), mxdwn, Reelviews, Slashfilm (more critics) Added Jan. 4: Brief Take, CriterionCast, The Fiilm Stage (replacing consensus list with individual critics), JoBlo, Lincoln Journal-Star, misc (Adams, Lodge), Nashville Scene, The Reveal, Slashfilm (more critics), Spectrum Culture Added Jan. 2: BBC/Talking Movies, Below the Line, Blast Magazine, Canada's National Observer, CBR, Chicago Daily Herald, Columbus Underground, ComingSoon.net, CTV News, Culture Whisper, FilmBook, Filmspotting, Heat Vision, Idaho Press, In Review Online, Los Angeles Magazine, Metro Weekly, National Post, RTE, San Francisco Chronicle, ScreenAnarchy, Slashfilm (more critics), The Telegraph, Third Coast Review, We Are Movie Geeks, White City Cinema Added Dec. 30: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Boston Herald, Den of Geek, Digital Trends, Hyperallergic, Slashfilm (more critics), The Spectator Added Dec. 29: Deadline (Hammond/McCarthy), Evening Standard, HeadStuff, io9, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Pittsburgh Magazine, PopCulture.com, Salt Lake City Weekly, The Salt Lake Tribune, San Antonio Current, Slashfilm, SLUG, Star Tribune, Tilt Magazine, We Got This Covered, The Week Added Dec. 27: ABC News, Big Picture Big Sound, British GQ, CinemaBlend, CNN, Deadline, Harper's Bazaar, Mashable, MovieWeb, Paste, Screen Rant, Sioux City Journal, Washington City Paper (Zilberman) Added Dec. 24: Boston.com, The Bulwark, Chicago...

Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Scott Garfield/Paramount As the czar was to Russia, so Top Gun: Maverick, the soaring, roaring sequel to his hit movie from more than 30 years ago. Movie and star are inseparable. It's hard to guess whether Cruise, now 60, even knows that he isn't Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, so firm is his grip on the role, his command of the camera and his commitment to his own remarkable stardom. Your Brad Pitts, your George Clooneys, your Dwayne Johnsons — these are also great leading men of the day, but they acknowledge, with a wink or a joke or a light dusting of irony, that their films are just projects, not Herculean expressions of the will. That has not been Cruise's approach — not even in misfires like 2001's Vanilla Sky — because that would cheapen his persona, which is virile without necessarily being erotic. He's determined to repay ticket-buyers in full for their investment. And he does. Maverick, a big, burnished, turbocharged engine of a movie, so far has earned $1.4 billion globally. The plot's logic is subservient to its star's cocky charisma. Maverick routinely thumbs his nose at his superiors, yet they all begrudgingly revere him. Sent to instruct a class of fighter pilots for a dangerous overseas mission, he ends up (of course) the only man capable of leading them all and doing America a solid. Cruise's performance is so concretely, confidently physical that doubts are banished from the get-go. This is top-grade Hollywood entertainm...

This year, the nervous clench of the pandemic eased up (to some extent), with movie theaters fully reopened and film festivals carrying on like they used to before 2020. The industry, and moviegoing itself, is still in trouble, but, at least, there was a host of thrilling work to celebrate and enjoy throughout all that tumult. So many, in fact, that plenty of worthy films—the hushed memoir piece Aftersun, the prickly fable The Banshees of Inisherin, the scrappy found-family drama Broker—had to be left off this list, for brevity’s sake. The ten films listed below shone brightest for me in 2022. ( 10. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On On paper, Dean Fleischer Camp’s film sounds like a mistake. Based on viral shorts from a decade or so ago, Marcel could easily have been lazy, cloying nostalgia, a too-late attempt to cash in on a bygone era of internet quirk. Instead, Marcel is a wistful wonder of a children’s film, one that carefully balances the silly with the serious. The film’s visual invention and graceful writing distinguish it from many of its peers; Marcel speaks to little ones on their level while gently encouraging them to think and feel more expansively about their lives and the life of the world around them. Anchoring the project is the invaluable voice work of co-writer Jenny Slate, who gives the adorable creature of the title some necessary pepper lest he become too cute. Melancholy without being sappy, mordant without being cynical, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On w...