Top Ten Films of 2022: A Retrospective
I like to leave it a few months before taking a look back at the previous year’s releases and picking my Top Ten films of the year – partly because it gives me some extra time to catch up with films I missed, but mainly because often the real test of a film is how well it ages in the months after you first see it.
With that in mind, it’s now time for my retrospective Top Ten review of 2022 – although as usual, there were many films that I really loved that still narrowly missed out on a spot in my Top Ten. So in no particular order, I did want to give “Honourable Mentions” to the films that made up numbers 11-20 in my overall Top 20:
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – a delightfully ridiculous meta-comedy showcasing Nicolas Cage having a whale of the time.
Confess, Fletch – a criminally under-seen and satisfyingly twisty comedic neo-noir crime mystery.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – a very enjoyable Marvel film that was tonally quite different from the others, and that took certain characters in some interesting and unexpected directions.
Nope – an interesting and original sci-fi thriller.
Jurassic World: Dominion – it might not have been packed full of surprises, but it was a joy to see the original cast reunited onscreen again.
Thor: Love & Thunder – I was surprised that this was seen as such a divisive film – I loved it’s blend of comedy and heart, and I’ve cried during the final act every time I’ve seen it.
Violent Night – I loved this R-rated action Christmas comedy, that is basically John Wick meets Die Hard, but with Santa...!
The Woman King – another great film that deserved a lot more widespread recognition – this is every bit as enjoyable as other historical epics (e.g. Gladiator, Braveheart etc) but it didn’t get a fraction of the attention that they received.
Do Revenge – this could have so easily made it onto my Top 10, as I love this clever high school black comedy!
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story – I can’t believe this has missed out on a place in my Top 10, as I absolutely loved this crazy spoof of musical biopics!
But without further ado, here’s my (totally subjective and personal) Top Ten of 2022 (with links to my full, spoiler-free, reviews):
10) The Gray Man: Full disclosure – I may be slightly biased because I got to attend a red carpet screening for this film, but nevertheless, I love this old-school action thriller. It’s not an ‘action comedy’ per se, but it has so many laugh-out-loud one-liners, and Chris Evans’ hissable bad guy was one of the most fun performances of the year (and was also my Villain of the Year).
9) The Lost City: My Comedy of the Year is this delightful throwback adventure/comedy, that captures the fun tone and spirit of Romancing the Stone but still has its own distinct identity. Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock are an inspired comedy pairing, but each and every character gets at least one memorable comedic moment to shine. Daniel Radcliffe is fantastic too, and between this and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story he had quite the year for standout comedic performances. I think I’ve now watched this film four times (with different people), and it still makes me laugh each time!
8) Bullet Train: The stunt-team-turned-production-house 87North produced two of my favourite films of 2022 – Bullet Train and Violent Night. Honestly, if other studios could display half their inventiveness and originality, Hollywood would be a better place for it. Bullet Train takes a brilliant cast (including Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Joey King and many more) and a great premise (a tonne of assassins and criminals with competing agendas are all stuck on the same train) and then delivers some brilliantly choreographed action sequences and a load of darkly humorous comedy. This was a film that left me buzzing as I left the cinema.
7) Prey: A Predator film that (bravely) dropped the name “Predator” from its title, this is unquestionably the best Predator film since 1990’s Predator 2. I know that’s arguably faint praise, but it wasn’t meant to be! Setting the action in 1719 and focusing on the Native American Comanche tribe mean this is a lean, back-to-basics prequel, and Amber Midthunder is fantastic in what my Breakthrough Performance of the Year.
6) Scream (aka Scream 5): This was a sequel (or “re-quel”, to use their in-movie term) that I wasn’t especially excited about – although I’m a massive fan of the Scream series, if I’m being honest, Scream 3 was a pretty big disappointment, and I couldn’t even muster up the enthusiasm to seen Scream 4 in the cinema (although when I did get around to seeing it, it’s actually really good...). But Scream 5 (named “Scream” to parody the long list of legacy sequels that have simple adopted the same name as their originating film) was brilliant – a great whodunit murder mystery, combining interesting new characters and returning legacy ones, while delivering some really gripping (and brutal) set-pieces too. It invigorated my love of the franchise, so I was first in line to see Scream VI on opening night!
And so onto my Top Five...
5) Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: I loved the first Benoit Blanc mystery, but I have to confess, I was a little worried that the sequel wouldn’t be able to match the inventiveness of Knives Out. Thankfully, I had nothing to worry about, and Glass Onion was just as clever, funny and entertaining, while also going in completely unexpected directions compared to the first movie. Plus, it’s a film that really holds up to repeat viewings – in fact, I’ve loved spotting all of the clues that were staring me in the face but that I completely missed the first time I watched it!
4) Avatar: The Way of Water: Speaking of sequels that had a tonne of expectation piled on them, the Avatar sequel was written off by many before it had even opened … but then it went on to become the third highest grossing film of all time (behind only the first Avatar and Avengers: Endgame). There’s a reason why James Cameron has made 3 of the 4 highest grossing films of all time – he knows how to deliver emotionally satisfying spectacle, and The Way of Water provides that in spades. Yes, you can nit-pick about the plot following established story beats (although that’s perhaps understandable, given that this film needed to introduce a new generation – both on screen and in cinema audiences – to Pandora), but you can’t argue that it delivered a cinematic experience like no other. I saw all three-and-a-quarter-hours of it in the cinema three times, and loved it each time. I’m hoping that it doesn’t lose too much of its visual impact when I watch it at home in due course.
Which bring us on to my Top Three…
3) Top Gun: Maverick: I honestly wasn’t much of a fan of the first Top Gun film, so my expectations and excitement levels for this very belated sequel were fairly low. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the involvement of Christopher McQuarrie as a writer and producer on the film, I may not have seen it on opening weekend at all. But boy, am I glad I did. Like Avatar: The Way of Water, it delivers an emotionally impactful, visual stunning blockbuster unlike anything else that came before it, but whereas the Avatar sequel pushed the boundaries of CGI, Maverick provided live-action thrills and aerial stunts unlike anything seen on the big screen before. This time, I felt the need … the need, for speed.
2) The Batman: Full disclosure – I’m a lifelong Batman fan, and that no doubt colours my Top Ten (but then again, I never pretended this was an objective countdown!). The Batman gave me everything I wanted from a new cinematic era of Batman – a fresh interpretation of the source material that managed to feel both faithful to the comics and unlike any of the previous cinematic versions. L.A. Confidential and Se7en are two of my all-time favourite films, and The Batman very much felt like a noir crime mystery/serial killer thriller told through the prism of Batman’s rogue gallery. I loved every second of it, I loved the central mysteries, I loved the new approach to the mythology of Batman, and I loved that even in the course of the film itself (let alone the rest of the planned series), Batman/Bruce Wayne had a character arc and development. I’m very much looking forward to the recently announced The Batman Part II, and in the meantime, we also have The Penguin mini-series with Colin Farrell to look forward to first.
1) Film of the Year 2022 – Everything Everywhere All at Once: I can honestly say that I loved this film way before it started to get any awards or Oscar buzz – which was one of the reasons I never actually expected it to do so well at the Oscars! I mean, it’s a film where probably the biggest laugh comes from a guy attempting to launch himself across the room and on to an office award – not something you normally see in an Oscar winner! The action sequences are incredible, and the humour is inventive and hilarious … but what I didn’t expect was the amount of heart and emotion it has. Evelyn’s relationships with Waymond and Joy are beautifully realised, and have moved me to tears on every viewing. The Oscar success was more than deserved, however unexpected. Plus, a guy gets beaten to death with a sex toy – what more could anyone ask for in a movie?!
While I don’t do a list of the "worst" films of the year (because I try to avoid paying to watch "bad" films), here's a brief run-down of my biggest disappointments of 2022 in terms of the films that I did see:
3rd place – The Contractor: This generic Chris Pine movie was too po-faced to be an enjoyable popcorn action flick, too predictable to be an effective conspiracy thriller, and too far-fetched to work as a straightlaced character drama. In short, I’m not sure it knew what it wanted to be.
2nd place – Amsterdam: It’s not exactly unwatchable, but it’s beyond me how a writer/director and cast of this calibre could take a real-life political conspiracy as interesting and topical as this one, and produce a film as tonally disjointed and overstuffed as Amsterdam is.
Biggest Disappointment of 2022 – The 355: I’m not suggesting that The 355 was the worst film of 2022 … but with a cast as amazing as this one (Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, Bingbing Fan, Sebastian Stan and Edgar Ramirez) it was a huge disappointment that they were completely let down by an uninspired and predictable script. After watching the film, I looked up the film’s writer, Theresa Rebeck, and saw that she had been one of the co-writers of the story for Halle Berry’s truly terrible 2004 Catwoman movie – so the pieces began to fall into place!
I’m not saying that the above films were necessarily the worst films of 2022 (by any stretch), but for me, they were the most disappointing.
Still, let's not end on too much of a downer – you can also check out the earlier rundown of my Cinematic Highlights of 2022, which includes my nominations for categories such as “Guilty Pleasure of 2022”, “Hidden Gems of the Year”, “Best Score of 2022” and “Person of the Year”.
