best biography movie 2022

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The Best Biographical Movies Of 2022

The best 2022 biopics entertain you while also giving you a better sense of who a celebrity or historical person was in real life. My Best Friend Anne Frank  is a Netflix Original movie that offers a little bit of insight into Anne Frank's life through the perspective of her best friend. Against the Ice is a biographical film that shows a historical figure going far and surviving against the odds find evidence to contradict the U.S.'s claim to Greenland. These are just a few of the great biographical films that are coming out in 2022 and there are bound to be a few Oscar contenders on the list below.

But which one deserves to be at the top of the list? You get to help decide by voting up your favorite 2022 biopics and voting down the ones that you think fellow cinephiles should skip this year. Be sure to check back for new and upcoming biopics as they are added to the list once they are released.

The Fabelmans

Though not a true biopic, director Steven Spielberg based The Fabelmans on his own childhood.   

• Directed by : Steven Spielberg

• Directed by : Chinonye Chukwu

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

• Directed by : Eric Appel

The Phantom of the Open

• Directed by : Craig Roberts

Operation Mincemeat

• Directed by : John Madden

We can't help but fall in love with Baz Luhrmann and his glitzy musical biopic of the iconic Elvis Presley. Austin Bulter plays the King of rock 'n' roll from his early days starting out on the carnival circuit to his nights in Las Vegas. The always fabulous Tom Hanks costars as his hustler manager Colonel Tom Parker while some of music's greatest help out with the soundtrack and step in some of the supporting roles, such as Yola and Jack White. 

• Directed by : Baz Luhrmann

Biography Movies 2022 List

Top Biography Movies 2022

Munich - The Edge of War

The Tender Bar

Lamborghini: The Man Behind The Legend

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Jump to: December 23 • November 4 • November 17 • November 18 • November 23 • October 7 • October 14 • October 28 • September 14 • September 16 • September 28 • August 13 • June 3 • June 24 • April 8 • April 22 • February 25 • January 17 • January 21

Released Friday, December 23, 2022

I Wanna Dance With Somebody PG-13

Released friday, november 4, 2022.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Released thursday, november 17, 2022.

Released Friday, November 18, 2022

Lamborghini: The Man Behind The Legend R

Released wednesday, november 23, 2022.

The Swimmers PG-13

Released friday, october 7, 2022.

Released Friday, October 14, 2022

Life & Life

Released friday, october 28, 2022, released wednesday, september 14, 2022.

Released Friday, September 16, 2022

Blonde NC-17

Released wednesday, september 28, 2022, released saturday, august 13, 2022.

The Princess

Released friday, june 3, 2022.

Benediction PG-13

Released friday, june 24, 2022.

Elvis PG-13

Released friday, april 8, 2022.

Aline PG-13

Released friday, april 22, 2022.

Released Friday, February 25, 2022

Gangubai Kathiawadi NR

Released monday, january 17, 2022.

The Tender Bar R

Released friday, january 21, 2022.

Munich - The Edge of War PG-13

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From 'Elvis' to 'The Pianist': 20 Best Biopic Movies of the 21st Century (So Far)

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Oppenheimer , Christopher Nolan 's most anticipated biopic will soon hit theaters this summer (July 21), marking not only Nolan's return but also the newest installment in the biopic genre, which is currently popular in Hollywood. In the meantime, there are tons of great biopics of the 21st century that fans can watch.

What is a biopic? A biopic (short for "biographical picture") is a non-fictional film that depicts the tale of a real person's life. Biopic movies are usually about a historical figure or a well-known individual. However, they can be about anyone as long as the subject exists. A biopic film must focus on a single protagonist and portray the narrative of that person's life across many years (rather than simply one event or era in their life).

Biopics are the goldmines of Hollywood movies, regardless of whose life they show. Many of these films served as stepping stones in the careers of their filmmakers and actors, helping to launch them to stardom. Even though many excellent biopics are produced each year, a special few have gone above and beyond after the turn of the millennia.

Updated on March 30, 2023, by Jessie Nguyen:

20 'bohemian rhapsody' (2018).

Bohemian Rhapsody tells the story of the British rock band Queen and their lead singer, Freddie Mercury , played by Rami Malek . The film traces the band’s rise to fame, from their early days playing small gigs to their legendary performance at Live Aid in 1985. It also explores Mercury’s relationships with his bandmates, as well as his romantic ones and his struggle with his sexuality.

Bohemian Rhapsody nevertheless serves as a good reminder of the band's musical brilliance and Freddie's singular stage presence owing to the film's aesthetically stunning musical moments and Malek's dominating leading role. Despite its limitations, the movie is still an exquisite tribute to the band and its dedicated fans.

Watch on Hulu

19 'A Beautiful Mind' (2001)

Inspired by the 1998 biography of the same name by Sylvia Nasar , A Beautiful Mind chronicles the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. ( Russell Crowe ), who went through it all – from fame's pinnacles to its darkest abysses. He was a mathematical prodigy who was on the verge of receiving international renown when he made an astounding discovery early in his career. Yet he quickly finds himself embarking on a torturous and terrifying quest of self-discovery.

A Beautiful Mind has become one of the most engaging and well-liked movies of all time, despite issues with tone and structure as well as some significant absences from Nash's real life. Because Nash's life is the focus of the film rather than his mental health , and because of Russell Crowe's stirring portrayal, Nash is given a second chance to relive both his success and his failure.

Watch on Prime Video

18 'Elvis' (2022)

Elvis chronicles the life story of American music legend Elvis Presley , played by Austin Butler , from his youth to his 1950s rise to rock and roll stardom while retaining a complicated bond with Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), his manager.

Butler's spectacular portrayal of Elvis humanized the legend by bringing down the spotlight from his physical gestures to the enormous, gruff voice to reveal the troubled man hiding behind the timeless God of Rock. In addition, the wild singing, set design, reenactment of iconic incidents, and compelling performers give the impression that audiences are viewing a documentary instead.

Watch on Max

17 'Ray' (2004)

Ray tells the story of the legendary musician Ray Charles ( Jamie Foxx ) and his struggles with blindness, poverty, and addiction, as well as his relationships with the women in his life. It also delves into Charles' musical career, including his experimentation with different genres such as R&B, gospel, and country, and his collaborations with other musicians.

Ray is a moving and inspiring film that offers a window into the life of one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, and the struggles and triumphs that shaped his extraordinary career. Also, the acting is strong, the directing is deft, the storyline is insightful, and Foxx gives an outstanding performance.

Watch on Netflix

16 'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013)

The story of 1990s stock trader Jordan Belfort , whose company, Stratton Oakmont, participated in unprecedented levels of corruption and fraud, is told in Martin Scorsese 's smash biopic The Wolf of Wall Street .

Scorsese's picture is the ultimate of excess, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort giving a truly outrageous performance. As they are in many of Scorsese’s films , the sins are visited upon the sinner, but the "Wolf" warns us at the end that no number of cautionary stories will prevent future generations from engaging in short-sighted, amoral, selfish ambitions.

Watch on Fubo

15 'A Hidden Life' (2019)

Based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter , an Austrian farmer who refused to fight for the Nazis during World War II, The Hidden Life follows Franz ( August Diehl ) as he lives a quiet life with his family in the small village of St. Radegund. When war breaks out, Franz is called up to serve in the German army, but he refuses to swear allegiance to Hitler and fight for the Nazis.

Through a genuine account of faith, family, and the indomitable human spirit in the face of extreme persecution, director Terrence Malick presents the viewers with a rare image of a special kind of hero. Additionally, it serves as an engaging and oftentimes moving example of how regular people respond to the ills of the world.

14 'Lincoln' (2012)

Lincoln follows the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln ( Daniel Day-Lewis ), as he navigates the political landscape of the Civil War era, trying to garner support for the amendment from both Republicans and Democrats. It also focuses on the final months of his presidency and his efforts to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which would abolish slavery.

Lincoln is one of Steven Spielberg 's most methodical efforts as a director, and it is undeniably a respectable, absorbing film. Additionally, despite having a history lesson at its center, it is deftly concealed by one outstanding performance and a number of steadfast supporting characters.

13 'Capote' (2005)

Capote tells the story of Truman Capote ( Philip Seymour Hoffman ), a famous American writer, as he travels to Kansas to investigate and write about the brutal murders of the Clutter family in 1959, which later becomes the basis for his novel, In Cold Blood . The film explores Capote’s relationship with the murderers, Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock ( Mark Pellegrino ) and Perry Smith ( Clifton Collins Jr. ), as he spends them with them in jail.

Hoffman offers a captivating portrayal of and perspective on a troubled character who is nonetheless regarded by many as one of America's best authors. Moreover, Bennett Miller was able to convey the complexity of human brains and relationships, as well as the source of artistic inspiration, thanks to a fantastic screenplay.

Watch on Roku

12 'I, Tonya' (2017)

After her husband ordered an assault on her opponent, Nancy Kerrigan , Tonya Harding ( Margot Robbie ) went from one of the most skilled athletes in the country to a worldwide laughingstock. Her troubles as an outcast, her dysfunctional family, and her outspoken nature were all depicted in the film.

Craig Gillespie 's film does more than convey Harding's story, it completely reframes the narrative and rewrites her as the hero of her own story in a complicated but persuasive way. I, Tonya also provides Robbie with her first opportunity to demonstrate her entire range as an actor, and she is radiant.

11 'Dallas Buyers Club' (2013)

Dallas Buyers Club follows Ronald Woodroof ( Matthew McConaughey ), a philandering, drug addict, and homophobic electrician from Texas, living a carefree life until his doctor diagnoses him with HIV/AIDS, which will likely kill him in 30 days. Woodroof discovers an experimental medicine that can potentially prolong his life and establishes the titular "Dallas Buyers Club" to import the drug from Mexico to anyone who needs it.

The combination of sharp character study and moving pharmaceutical docudrama is lively and memorable at just under two hours. Moreover, McConaughey and Jared Leto ’s transformative performances are the reason to visit this biopic. Not only do they successfully give voice to the disaffected of the 1980s, but to everyone who is suddenly confronted with unfathomable challenges.

10 'Hidden Figures' (2016)

Loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly , Hidden Figures chronicles the story of a group of female Black mathematicians (played by Taraji P. Henson , Octavia Spencer , and Janelle Monáe ) who played crucial roles in NASA during the early stages of the US space program.

With its recognizable period-piece perspective on a neglected moment in space history, Hidden Figures maintains optimism for what science and technology may accomplish when the sharpest minds work together. Moreover, the film respectfully honors the unheralded female heroines of history by featuring three exceptional performances from the three leads.

Watch on Disney+

9 'Milk' (2008)

Milk is about the life of an openly gay activist and politician, Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn ), who became the first LGBTQ+ person elected to public office in California. The film chronicles the period from Milk's 40th birthday until his horrific killing in 1978, using archival footage from his life.

The film, directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black , immerses us in the political process as Penn's brilliant performance captures Milk's playful intellectual personality. Furthermore, by combining 1970s news footage with newly shot sequences, Van Sant constructed his film around some massive, screen-filling set pieces, making the audience feel as if they had stepped inside the story.

8 'The King's Speech' (2010)

When Albert "Bertie" George 's father, King George V , dies and his brother King Edward VIII chooses love over the kingdom, he is compelled to crown himself king. The King's Speech depicts the narrative of King George VI 's friendship with his speech therapist, who helped the king overcome his stutter to confidently address his subjects.

Instead of being a film about a monarch triumphantly leading his folks to victory, it is about a would-be king battling to find his voice and the strength to lead his people through one of the most challenging periods in their history. Colin Firth as Bertie also imbues his restrained character with complexity, dignity, and wit, making a lasting impression.

Watch on Plex

7 '12 Years a Slave' (2013)

Solomon Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor ) was a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. For a dozen terrifying years, he was subjected to various forms of torture and wickedness before being free once more.

Though 12 Years a Slave is full of intriguing characters, Ejiofor steals the show by maintaining the character's dignity throughout. Moreover, director Steve McQueen immerses the spectators in an unforgivably hideous era from which there is no way out. It's about as intense as a biopic can go and many viewers deem this movie to be too heartbreaking for a second screening .

6 'The Pianist' (2002)

Based on the autobiographical book of the same name by a Polish-Jewish pianist, composer, and Holocaust survivor, Władysław Szpilman , The Pianist follows Szpilman ( Adrien Brody ), who after being forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, loses contact with his family as a result of Operation Reinhard. He then hides in various places among the rubble of Warsaw from this point until the captives of the concentration camps are released.

The unflinching anti-war film is a masterpiece about the struggle between good and evil, the tenacity and mercy of art, and the horrific personal toll left by one of history's worst moments. Like many films about the Holocaust, The Pianist can be difficult to see, but it's important to remember what happened and Brody was mesmerizing in it.

5 'The Social Network' (2010)

Though it wasn’t perfectly accurate, The Social Network covers the narrative of Facebook's early years and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg ’s ( Jesse Eisenberg ) initial social decline, starting with the break-up of his romantic relationship with Erica Albright ( Rooney Mara ) and concluding with the tragic end of his friendship with co-founder Eduardo Saverin ( Andrew Garfield ).

The film is one of the best performing and acclaimed films of 2010 , thanks to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin 's typical quick-witted writing and Jesse Eisenberg's riveting portrayal of the renowned social network creator. Moreover, everyone in the film is on the verge of snapping, which adds to the film's authenticity and realism.

4 'Catch Me If You Can' (2002)

Catch Me If You Can follows Frank Abagnale Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a skilled con man who pretended to be a doctor, lawyer, and pilot while only being 21 years old. Meanwhile, Tom Hanks ' FBI agent Carl Hanratty gets obsessed with finding Frank and later succeeds in persuading Frank to become an FBI assistant for atonement.

The story was brought to life by Steven Spielberg's skill as a filmmaker, exquisite cinematography, elegant editing, brilliant script, and a beautiful score by John Williams . Not to mention DiCaprio and Hanks' incredible chemistry and performances resulting in a gentle, charmingly adventurous film that makes you feel wonderful.

3 'BlacKkKlansman' (2018)

Based on Ron Stallworth ’s 2014 memoir Black Klansman , BlacKkKlansman takes place in the 1970s in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and follows the city's first Black detective ( John David Washington ) as he attempts to infiltrate and out the local Ku Klux Klan chapter.

BlacKkKlansman is timely because it engages in a crucial national dialogue that is full of metaphors and juxtapositions. Moreover, the chemistry between Washington and Adam Driver is crucial to keep the film's rhythm enjoyable as the movie alternates between comedy and crime . Also, through their characters, viewers feel like they have just walked through the lane of history in over two hours.

2 'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' (2018)

Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel , a struggling writer who seeks to revive her career by selling counterfeit letters from celebrities who have died. Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Marielle Heller is one of the finest contemporary films on economic hardship and ethical compromise.

The biopic is an intellectually interesting drama due to the contradiction between blatant deception, undeniable necessity, and a group of victims who, presumably, can afford to be fooled. Moreover, McCarthy's impressive performance is both fierce and compassionate at the same time, constantly improving the material and stealing every scene she is in.

1 'Selma' (2014)

Selma was praised for its historical authenticity as it followed Martin Luther King Jr. as he fought for Black voting rights. The film follows King's frenetic three months leading up to the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Their efforts directly contributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The film focuses primarily on King's role in the events without diminishing the importance of the other leaders' contributions to molding this pivotal moment in American history. Moreover, the screenplay by Paul Webb and David Oyelowo ’s performance as King gives us a profound, gratifying depiction of King as a man capable of errors, self-doubt, and pain.

Watch on Showtime

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2022 Biography Movies

September 2022, october 2022.

The Ten Best Films of 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: “ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed ,” “ Benediction ,” “ Bones and All ,” “ EO ,” “ The Eternal Daughter ,” “ Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio ,” “ Happening ,” “ Hit the Road ,” “ Jackass Forever ,” and “ Mad God .”

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 talkies, characters like aging matinee idol Jack Conrad ( Brad Pitt ), wannabe starlet Nellie LaRoy ( Margot Robbie ), assistant Manny Torres ( Diego Calva ), sensationalist journalist Elinor St. John ( Jean Smart ), jazz musician Sidney Palmer ( Jovan Adepo ), and multi-talented entertainer Lady Fay Zhu ( Li Jun Li ) struggle to find their footing in an industry in flux. 

Although the story follows fictional players at the fictional Kinoscope Studios, Chazelle’s script is steeped in a deep knowledge of old Hollywood’s dark, complicated history and its most pervasive (and perverse) mythologies. Linus Sandgren’s fluid cinematography, coupled with Justin Hurwitz’s hot jazz score, raises this larger-than-life era back from the dead with humor and pathos. Tom Cross’ dynamic editing keeps the film vibrating at a breakneck pace, its three-hour runtime barely registering as one zany set piece after another barrels toward the film’s denouement. Ending on a note as rhapsodic as it is elegiac, Chazelle’s film is ultimately a condemnation of the Hollywood machine that crushes everyone with equitable cruelty and an ode to the innovative artistry and ineffable magic of the movies, whose siren call continues to lure audiences and filmmakers alike towards its warm glow. ( Marya E. Gates )

Now streaming on:

9. “ RRR “

It’s hard not to love a movie where a herd of snarling Big Cats leaps out of the back of a truck as one (in slo-mo) to sic themselves on a crowd of British imperialists milling about in evening dress. It’s hard not to love a movie where two men ( Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), strangers to one another, collaborate on the fly to save a child in peril, their plan involving a motorcycle, a horse, a long rope, a gigantic flag, and simultaneous swan-dives off a burning bridge. S.S. Rajamouli’s “RRR” calls into question all other action sequences in all other films, sequences which may have thrilling moments and impressive stunts but lack the dazzling bravura of the spectacle on display here. “RRR” makes you ask: Why CAN’T we show a bare-chested man wielding a crossbow emerging through a ring of fire? Why CAN’T we include family trauma, political commentary, ahistorical wish-fulfillment, revenge/redemption fantasies, sweet romances, rousing dance numbers, and the Platonic Ideal of a Bromance all in the same film?

Critic Siddhant Adlakha observed that Rajamouli “makes the moving image feel intimate and enormous all at once.” This is key. A golden coin dropped in the sand is given as much visual importance as those rampaging CGI-Big Cats. Rajamouli ignores nothing and prioritizes everything. What this propulsive style encourages is involvement . It’s impossible not to get  involved in the action: the emotion and the characters’ destinies. My only regret is I didn’t see “RRR” with an audience. It’s how it’s meant to be seen. ( Sheila O’Malley )

8. “ Everything Everywhere All at Once “

It’s rare to see a film where you can’t predict what will happen by the end, and rarer still to see one where you can’t predict what will happen from one scene to the next. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is an example of the rarest of all: a film where you don’t know what will happen from one  shot  to the next. 

The filmmaking team known as Daniels ( Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ), who started in music videos, made that kind of movie in their first feature, “ Swiss Army Man ,” a comedy-drama about brotherly love, heartbreak, and the fear and awe of death, focused on the burgeoning friendship between a castaway on a desert island and a flatulent corpse that washed up on the beach. Daniels have done it again on a grander scale with “EEAAO,” which does about a dozen different things simultaneously and hops between timelines as it does it. The movie is a marriage story, a mother-daughter drama, a tale of immigrant assimilation and generational changeover, a satire on bureaucracy, an action picture full of willfully absurd and sometimes lewd kung fu battles, and a science fiction movie that accepts the ideal of parallel timelines/universes as a given and shows how personal decisions alter the course of events in each. 

The film tells the story of a troubled marriage between Chinese-American laundromat owners Evelyn and Waymond ( Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan ), and how their struggle affects Evelyn’s relationship with her adult daughter Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ), who wants her mother to welcome her girlfriend Becky ( Tallie Medel ) and get her reactionary grandfather Gong Gong ( James Hong ) to accept her, too. But the filmmakers never let the storytelling get bogged down in therapeutic or self-help cliches because all of the ideas are dramatized as well as discussed in breathlessly edited micro-bursts of images culled from different timelines—and sometimes in extended sequences that cross-cut between parallel lines of action during a marital disagreement, a spiritual test, or a martial arts brawl in the office building where Evelyn’s family is being audited by cruel IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre ( Jamie Lee Curtis ). 

The cast is fully invested and attacks their scenes with fierce focus—and always with sincerity. For all its blistering and sometimes borderline-pornographic slapstick, this is an earnest and optimistic movie. Spiritual growth is central to every story in every timeline, and the characters’ struggles usually come back to the tension between obligation and selfishness in relationships. There’s a universe where everybody has hot dogs for fingers (Deirdre plays piano with her feet in that one) and a showdown that prominently involves a dildo. At one point we enter a universe where two rocks on a cliff speak to each other telepathically, and their dialogue is subtitled. If you’re not fully on board by then, you never will be. ( Matt Zoller Seitz )

7. “No Bears”

In July, the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison after inquiring about fellow director Mohammad Rasoulof , also in jail. Panahi had completed his latest docudrama, “No Bears,” two months prior; it premiered at the Venice Film Festival that same month. 

In “No Bears,” Panahi plays himself, a filmmaker sequestered in a village near the Turkish border while filming his latest drama. Panahi’s assistant Reza (Reza Heydari) asks him why he didn’t just stay in Tehran. Panahi waves away the question, saying he prefers to be near his cast and crew. However, he still goes with Reza to see and even inadvertently steps over the border. Panahi hastily returns to Iran, where he becomes reluctantly involved with the local villagers’ drama. 

There’s been some confusion: the villagers think Panahi’s taken photos of young lovers Gozal and Soldooz. Those imaginary photos threaten Gozal’s arranged marriage to Yaghoob. There are some parallels between this domestic dispute and the fictional movie that Panahi directs within the film, through a combination of video chats and Reza’s assistance. Still, Panahi struggles to remain disengaged. He does not want to get involved in the villagers’ lives, but they insist. 

In “No Bears,” Panahi tries to maintain his freedom, to blur the lines that separate fiction from reality (as his mentor Abbas Kiarostami did), and between himself and the world beyond. The film’s title comes from a scene where a local villager explains that no bears are lurking nearby; that reassurance is obviously ironic. ( Simon Abrams )

6. “ Nope “

Jordan Peele masters the dense blockbuster, again, with his third and most thematically ambitious project, “Nope.” Once you get to the second act, the film’s brilliant entertainment has an irresistible pitch—”What if ‘Close Encounters’ turned into Jaws’?” and turns the classic Spielberg gaze inside-out to reveal its terror. Its core understanding starts with locking us in the point of view of a terrified child actor who watches his chimpanzee co-star, Gordy, wreak bloody havoc on a sitcom set before locking a gaze with the boy. It’s a pair of shots with no less fury than the Nahum 3:6 Bible quote that comes before: “I will cast abominable filth upon thee … make you spectacle.” And to tackle the totality of how monstrous our need for spectacle has become, parallel to our desire to harness it, Peele takes us back to the first moving image, a Black man riding a horse for the inventor of the moving picture, Eadweard Muybridge. So much of humanity has changed since those shots, including who is in the frame and why they are being filmed. “Nope” concerns nothing smaller than the abyss we have made of being seen—in the case of Peele’s latest horror metaphor, the abyss sucks its screaming prey into the sky, squishes them in its claustrophobic bowels, and turns them into blood rain. 

Peele’s flying people eater is what happens when we treat presidential campaigns as pure entertainment or exploit others on social media for followers—when our coexistence with other souls, animal or human, is devastated by the pursuit of monetary gain. But this is all just the interior for a beast of a sci-fi adventure that constantly transforms, and “Nope” thrives on Peele’s inestimable confidence when guiding audiences. His original script is pure entertainment, boasting the writer/director’s unique touch for spiky pop culture humor and heartfelt characters who outsmart the evil that hunts them: our heroes here are a horse trainer named Otis (a fascinating Daniel Kaluuya , rewriting the stoic cowboy) and his high-energy sister Em ( Keke Palmer , in one of the year’s funniest performances). In a giddy pursuit of what they call “The Oprah Shot,” they collaborate with a Werner Herzog-like filmmaker ( Michael Wincott ) and a UFO enthusiast ( Brandon Perea ) to document this killer thing while trying to understand it. 

The gangbusters third act of “Nope” revels in the work that goes into getting one perfect shot, and it’s no mistake that Peele’s latest has inspired craftsmanship across the board, creating an IMAX-ready scale with a minimal cast and a lot of open range. (For starters, production designer Ruth De Jong conjures a whole Western theme park for our traumatized former child star who still seeks an audience, now played with immense pathos by  Steven Yeun .) All of these talents are storytellers; in revisiting their efforts, bonded by Peele’s golden imagination, it becomes apparent how much is there to be mined. From start to finish, “Nope” gifts the audience with a wealth of reflections to discover, consider, and never forget. ( Nick Allen )

5. “ Aftersun “

I often think about a tinted polaroid my mother took of my father during a family trip to Wisconsin. He’s wearing sunglasses inside our hotel room, looking blankly at the camera. I knew my father for twenty-five years without ever really knowing him. I knew my father for twenty-five years without ever really talking with him, hugging him, or understanding him. We weren’t estranged. He was just raised during the 1950s. And with that upbringing came a wall.

So when he passed away in 2015, though I loved him, I knew no matter how much I tried, I could never fully understand what hurts, desires and dreams deferred occupied his mind. It’s a burden not uncommon for most people who lose a parent at a young age. But it doesn’t hurt any less, no matter how much time has passed.

It’s why at Karlovy Vary Film Festival when I saw writer/director Charlotte Wells’ feature directorial debut, “Aftersun,” a semi-autobiographical film about a woman ( Celia Rowlson-Hall ) looking back on a holiday trip she (Frankie Corio) took with her father ( Paul Mescal ) during the 1990s, I couldn’t avoid being broken open again by regret. Supported by riveting performances and told with acute period detail by Wells’ taut script, “Aftersun” is a deeply empathetic, visceral tale of the haunting heartache and vertiginous, inconsolable meaning that swims beneath one’s seemingly innocuous memories.

The film climaxes with a fitful and stabbing strobe light scene set to Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” a moment that physically rips open the cavern between nostalgia and nightmare to reveal self-annihilating guilt; it is the truth of a picture so open for picking at what must feel like a festering, self-inflicted wound that it plunged me back into my buried remorse. Wells’ “Aftersun” is a tender, unnerving spot of time that, like my father, I will not soon shake. ( Robert Daniels )

4. “ TÁR “

Lydia Tár is an orchestra conductor who has received every possible accolade and award. Cate Blanchett is dazzling as a woman who thought she had created an impenetrable fortress of power and prestige and then sees it collapse suddenly and irretrievably. Her physicality is always precise and dominant, as she confronts an insolent student, denies a wealthy donor a favor, threatens her daughter’s bully of a classmate, and brings down the baton sharply with one hand while using the other to communicate a world of nuance. Todd Field’s script is deeply researched, bringing a sense of authenticity so vivid we almost feel we saw the conductor on “60 Minutes,” or was it “American Masters”? That detail provides a foundation for a provocative exploration of longing, identity, obsession, and status. 

Field, Blanchett, and cellist Sophie Kauer make a restaurant scene into a fugue of shifting power dynamics when Tár tries to maintain her control while trying to seduce a young musician. The movie takes its time with the story, but it is as spare as the superb settings from production designer Marco Bittner Rosser . Not a moment is wasted. The sound design and the score by Hildur Guðnadóttir are almost characters in the film, fitting in a story where so much depends on what is heard, about tone and tempo. Tár is an enthralling character who keeps our sympathies shifting as we consider questions of seduction, privilege, predation, and cancel culture, with an audacious final scene that resonates like the last note of a symphony. ( Nell Minow )

3. “ Decision to Leave “

“Decision to Leave” finds the Korean master Park Chan-wook operating in a more muted palette and tone, but one that’s no less gripping than his bold, beloved works like “Oldboy” and “ The Handmaiden .” As he updates the film noir, he steadily builds tension using rapturous imagery, clever technology, a haunting score, and unexpected humor.

But at the heart of Park’s Hitchcockian thriller is the tantalizing push-pull of the forbidden romance between a Busan detective and his prime suspect. Park Hae-il is the world-weary but meticulous policeman investigating what looks like an accidental death; Tang Wei is the dead man’s widow, an alluring femme fatale who also may be the culprit. He doesn’t really want to solve the case, though, because he’s become fascinated by her—and who wouldn’t be? The Chinese actress is at her most seductive and mysterious. And she doesn’t really want him to learn the truth either, for a multitude of reasons—one of which is she kind of enjoys having him around.

We think we know these characters, these familiar types, but the tight and twisty script from director Park and Jeong Seo-kyeong takes them in unexpected and ultimately devastating directions. The actors’ chemistry smolders and crackles. And as their relationship evolves, so do the look and feel of the film in subtle but substantial ways. The dark wood and colorful wallpaper of the detective’s apartment give way to the soft pastels of the beach at the film’s heartbreaking finale. It’s where sea and sky blend into one, and the waves lap endlessly, with unanswerable questions lingering in the salty air. ( Christy Lemire )

2. “ The Fabelmans “

Contrary to its advertising, this is not a picture celebrating the “magic” of movies or completely espousing them as “dreams.” It’s a picture about falling under a certain spell, to be sure. The opening scenes, in which a wide-eyed little boy is overwhelmed by a fake train wreck in what most of us now dismiss as a cheesy Cecil B. DeMille movie, make the case that the theatrical experience once was, and still can be, a sensory steamroller. But once out of that theater, “The Fabelmans” goes into an affectionately recreated and vividly acted late-20th century real life and a story of a kid who joyfully learns a craft. And then, as his family and social life fall apart, he uses that craft to keep the world at arm’s length or to create worlds one likes better than one’s own. 

The emotions at play in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical story are rawer and sometimes more unpleasant than we’ve seen from the filmmaker in such concentration for a while. We admire Sammy Fabelman’s inventiveness and stick-to-itiveness even as we see him become a kind of voyeur in his own life. His feelings about his passionate mom and his kind but buttoned-down dad yo-yo like crazy, as his moviemaking provides something he can actually control. And then he learns that something he controls himself can also be used to manipulate others. As is common in every Spielberg film, every shot here is a kind of miracle, a celebration in and of itself. But don’t mistake this for an uncritical cheer for image-making. It’s worth remembering that at the end, when Sammy visits “the greatest director who ever lived,” that director is cooling his heels without a project in an office across the hall from that of “Hogan’s Heroes.” Like Sammy’s uncle says, art will tear you apart. ( Glenn Kenny )

1. “ The Banshees of Inisherin “

Martin McDonagh’s black comedy is the rare kind of film that offers a fascinating dissection of the human condition while it entertains. It can be enjoyed thoroughly on its surface as the story of the day that a man named Colm ( Brendan Gleeson ) decided he was done talking to his friend Padraic (Colin Farrell). However, it’s also a film that’s very intentionally set against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War, a conflict wherein former neighbors became enemies. And it’s a film that provokes conversations about our impact on the world around us. Colm becomes convinced that the only impact he can make is through lasting art, but his decision to end a friendship has life-changing impacts on the people around him. “The Banshees of Inisherin” seems to diminish kindness, but it is the removal of the kind of everyday mundane niceties on this small island that shatters it. There’s so much to unpack, even in considering why McDonagh chose to make this movie now. It may be set a century ago, but the theme of a divided country and broken friendships feels very current.

Of course, it helps to have a cast as talented as this one, arguably the best of the year. The phenomenal Farrell had the best year of his career with this, “ After Yang ,” “ Thirteen Lives ,” and even “ The Batman ” serving as a remarkable display of his range. This is the peak of his career, the kind of performance that leads a highlight reel for a Lifetime Achievement Award. It is such a richly detailed acting turn, one that reveals new choices made by Farrell with each viewing. Gleeson gives a quieter performance than usual, but he balances Farrell in a manner that sells both their history and his willingness to destroy their future. Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon provide precisely what their roles need and then some.

Like only the best films, “The Banshees of Inisherin” is so hard to sum up in a blurb like this one because it’s got so much going on. It’s both comedy and tragedy at once. After all, they used to be friends. ( Brian Tallerico ) 

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The Best Movies of 2022 So Far

B ecause our movie-watching habits have changed drastically over the past few years, the movie-calendar year as we’ve come to know it may be shifting too. Traditionally, the first three months tend to be dominated by the Oscar campaigns of movies released in the previous year. The final four months of the year, kicked off by the early-fall film festivals, serve as a runup to the next round of Oscars. With so many people streaming films not just around their release date but long afterward, the lines are blurrier now. But even so, it’s always smart to pay attention to the films released in the first half of the year. That’s when the small surprises hit, movies that you check out on a whim and end up loving. Here are five movies from the early months of 2022 that you don’t want to miss.

A young couple, played by Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith, seek to protect their young daughter (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) from the reality that her “brother,” an A.I. humanoid, has fallen into a state of malfunction and cannot be repaired. The second fiction feature from Kogonada ( Columbus ) is gorgeous and wistful, a meditative reflection on memory that’s somehow both soothing and energizing.

Read More: Kogonada’s After Yang Is the Film to Watch When You’re Feeling Unsettled

Petite Maman

An 8-year-old girl, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), going through some emotional upheaval, meets a girl her own age while playing in the woods near her recently deceased grandmother’s house. Marion (Gabrielle Sanz, Joséphine’s real-life twin) happens to look just like Nelly, and the two become fast if cautious friends—because Nelly understands before Marion does that these two girls come from different planes of time. French filmmaker Céline Sciamma ( Portrait of a Lady on Fire ) has fashioned a gorgeously matter-of-fact fairytale that respects the inner lives of children, celebrating their ability to understand complexities that we assume are beyond them.

Paris, 13th District

French filmmaker Jacques Audiard ( Rust and Bone , The Sisters Brothers ) gives us a film about young people in love—or perhaps only in lust—in current-day Paris: Émilie (Lucie Zhang), a stubborn, prickly young woman working at a dead-end telemarking job, auditions Camille (Makita Samba), a charming young teacher, as a potential roommate and ends up falling for him. Nora (Noémie Merlant), a 30-something real-estate agent who has just decided to return to school, is humiliated when her classmates mistake her for a popular online porn star, Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). The lives of these four characters intertwine and collide, with some awkward misfires, in this loose adaptation of several short stories by American cartoonist Adrian Tomine. Shot in silky black and white, it’s one of the treasures of this movie year.

Audrey Diwan ’s tense, quietly radical film is the story of a young woman in early 1960s France, played by Anamaria Vartolomei, who discovers she’s pregnant and cannot, according to French law at the time, legally obtain an abortion. There are parts of the film—which is based on a 2000 memoir by French writer Annie Ernaux and won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival last year—that are sometimes difficult to watch. But the most harrowing part about it is its vision of a culture, and a country, preoccupied with controlling women’s lives—a past that appears to be looming as our own future in the United States.

Read More: Happening Is a Grim But Timely Warning from 1960s France

Operation Mincemeat

This adaptation of Ben Mcintyre’s hugely popular book of the same name traces a real-life deception pulled off by a group of British operatives in 1943, using a corpse armed with a fake identity and an elaborate backstory to keep the Nazis in the dark about the impending Allied invasion of Sicily. Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen play the intelligence officers who pull off this magnificent feat; Kelly Macdonald and Penelope Wilton are the women who help craft essential elements of the subterfuge. This story has been filmed before, as The Man Who Never Was , in 1956 (based on the memoir of Ewen Montagu, the officer played here by Firth). Director John Madden ( Shakespeare in Love ) guides this new version of the story with a steady hand: his movie is lively and smart, made with a quiet attention to detail and craftsmanship that’s a rarity these days.

Read More: Two Former Mr. Darcys Delight in Netflix Espionage Caper Operation Mincemeat

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Hollywood reporter critics pick the best films of 2022.

A tragicomic Irish fable about male solitude, a twisty South Korean neo-noir, a tempestuous study in abuse of power, a dreamy cannibal romance and a quietly searing remembrance of father-daughter time are among the year’s standouts.

By David Rooney , Jon Frosch , Lovia Gyarkye , Sheri Linden December 16, 2022 6:15am

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The 22 most talked-about red carpet looks of 2022, barack obama reveals favorite movies, music and books of 2022: 'top gun: maverick,' beyoncé and michelle obama's memoir make the cut.

As usual, most of the highlights premiered in the glittering showcases of Cannes and Venice, both of which clocked strong editions. But one by one, the year’s most anticipated prestige releases disappointed, at least in my admittedly sometimes minority opinion.

Despite its fine ensemble work, I found Sarah Polley’s Women Talking too circuitous in its arguments about sexual predation and trauma to build much dramatic vitality. Relating memories of his parents’ separation and his early sparks as a fledgling filmmaker, Steven Spielberg applies a manicured gloss to a messy family breakdown, which made me feel a nagging detachment from The Fabelmans , one of the first times a Michelle Williams performance has left me cold. Likewise, Olivia Colman’s turn in Sam Mendes’ nostalgia-infused but empty Empire of Light , which is four or five different movies all struggling to settle on a tone.

Almost all those films have plenty of impassioned admirers, so go ahead and disagree. In the meantime, read on for my best of 2022 , followed by the picks of Jon Frosch, Lovia Gyarkye and Sheri Linden. — DAVID ROONEY

1. The Banshees of Inisherin Lifting a title from the archives of his early writing but apparently little else of that abandoned project, Martin McDonagh created his most emotionally resonant work, a wry exploration of Irish isolation played out as a two-man civil war. The flawless ensemble is headed by the director’s In Bruges leads, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, in a melancholy duet about a lifelong friendship abruptly broken that’s darkly hilarious until its graceful swerve into pathos.

2. Decision to Leave On its elegant surface, Park Chan-wook’s masterful romantic thriller might subdue the erotic charge of his last feature, The Handmaiden . But this intoxicating encounter between an insomniac detective and an enigmatic murder suspect — played with smoldering conflict by the magnetic Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, respectively — bristles with sensuality and yearning, fusing the seductive currents of cool neo-noir with the stormy peaks of great melodrama.

4. Aftersun In terms of tangible plot incident, relatively little happens in Charlotte Wells’ stunning memory piece. A woman in her early 30s contemplates a summer vacation on the Turkish coast with her father 20 years earlier, when she was on the brink of self-discovery and he was not quite hiding a heavy veil of melancholy. But the drama’s illuminating intimacy, observed with tenderness and precision, is powerfully affecting, as are the subtly revealing performances of a heartbreaking Paul Mescal and the gifted young Frankie Corio.

5. Bones and All It seems inconceivable that the gory odyssey of two young cannibal lovers drifting across 1980s Middle America could be one of the lushest romantic experiences on any screen this year. But Luca Guadagnino finds the pulsing, horror-drenched heart in this dark, poetic dream of a movie, and via the exquisitely tough but fragile performances of Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet, he compresses a world of liberation, life-changing connection and crushing loss into one heady summer.

7. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed With sensitivity, suspense and as much narrative urgency as any fiction feature in 2022, Laura Poitras’ probing documentary takes a candid look at the life on the edge of photographer Nan Goldin, at the gritty immediacy of her art capturing American subcultures and the passionate commitment of her activism, helping to bring down the Big Pharma monolith that had so scarred her family.

8. Armageddon Time James Gray’s most personal film revisits his childhood in 1980s Queens for a family remembrance steeped in corrosive regret, a mournful reflection on white privilege in an America shaped by the rise of Reagan and Trump. Banks Repeta’s emotionally alert performance as the director’s stand-in is flanked by incisive work from Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway as the liberal parents whose blind spots amplify his failings toward his Black friend, imbued with raw hurt by Jaylin Webb. Anthony Hopkins bring restraint, wisdom and a deep vein of sorrow to the boy’s loving grandfather.

10. The Quiet Girl There were countless more ambitious films this year but few that so unerringly and satisfyingly achieve everything they set out to do as Colm Bairéad’s gentle Irish-language drama about a neglected child sent to stay one transformative summer with distant relatives whose kindness is not dimmed by their pain. Led by a gorgeously intuitive performance from newcomer Catherine Clinch, this is an absolute jewel, deceptively modest but overflowing with delicate feeling.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): After Yang ; Close ; Corsage ; Great Freedom ; Happening ; Montana Story ; No Bears ; Nope; Prey ; Saint Omer

Jon Frosch’s Top 10

1. Tár 2. One Fine Morning 3. Armageddon Time 4. The Cathedral 5. Happening 6. Bones and All 7. The Inspection 8. Saint Omer 9. Benediction 10. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Lovia Gyarkye’s Top 10

1. Saint Omer   2. Lingui, the Sacred Bonds   3. Aftersun   4. Everything Everywhere All at Once     5. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed 6. The Eternal Daughter   7. Free Chol Soo Lee   8. Decision to Leave 9. Riotsville, USA   10. Tár 

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): Anaïs in Love ; Descendant ; Funny Pages ; The Inspection ; Katrina Babies ; Marcel the Shell with Shoes On ; The Menu ; Return to Seoul ; Smile ; Soft & Quiet

Sheri Linden’s Top 10

1. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed 2. EO 3. Tár 4. The Cathedral 5. Murina 6. Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blues   7. The Eternal Daughter 8. Aftersun 9. Armageddon Time 10. Dos Estaciones

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): All That Breathes ; The Banshees of Inisherin ; Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio ; Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power ; One Fine Morning ; The Quiet Girl ; Return to Seoul ; Three Minutes: A Lengthening ; Till ; Women Talking

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Eden review: i loved to hate ana de armas in ron howard's completely unhinged thriller [tiff], beetlejuice beetlejuice ending: lydia's nightmare explained by writers.

Warning: This list contains spoilers for several 2022 films.

It's only four months into 2022, but that's a long enough time passed for Redditors to debate what the best movie of the year is so far. In fairness, the year has been chock-full of huge releases. Whether it's an epic multiversal trip, an even more epic superhero noir, or a yet even more epic Viking revenge flick, cinephiles have been treated to no end this year.

RELATED: 10 Huge Box Office Hits That Didn't Get Sequels, According To Reddit

Redditors' favorite movies of the year so far include hugely unpopular opinions, ones that are in line with the general consensus, and everything in between. Either way, the first quarter and change of the year is going to be a hard act to follow. But if the next eight months have half as many great films as the first four months, film buffs are in for a great 2022.

The Northman

Coming off the heels of the 2019 psychological horror The Lighthouse , director Robert Eggers sought to make something even more disturbing and epic. He did exactly that with The Northman , a hauntingly beautiful supernatural Viking movie. BiggDope puts it best by explaining that "the final shot of the Valkyrie carrying Amleth into Valhalla is one of the most gorgeous frames I've ever seen. The entire movie was colossal."

The Northman is a typical revenge movie, but the unique way it's shot and its ambitious scope make it stand out from even the very best revenge movies like Django Unchained and Oldboy . There hasn't been a swords and sandals movie this epic or critically acclaimed since 2000's Gladiator .

Everything Everywhere All At Once

In Hollywood, once one unique movie is successful, that movie's originality becomes a trend that's run into the ground by Tinseltown, and that originality is quickly lost. However, while multiverses have become rampant across movie studios over the past few years, the newly released Everything Everywhere All At Once puts them all to shame.

And it did so for a relatively small $25 million, which is almost one-tenth of Spider-Man: No Way Home's budget. Gr33nman460 loves the indie movie, explaining, "I laughed, I balled my eyes out, I had an all-around excellent time."

Jackass Forever

Redditor Duelpear points to Jackass Forever as the gold standard of movies in 2022. The Redditor claims, "being in a full theater, laughing along to a movie, is such a rare experience these days that I'm going to remember and appreciate it for a long time."

RELATED: 10 Movies That Look Like They Had Much Higher Budgets, According To Reddit

It's a massive win for MTV when it manages to make audiences teary-eyed over a Jackass movie. Along with all of the laughs and grotesque stunts, Jackass Forever is surprisingly emotional, as all these old friends are back on screen together for the first time in 12 years. And the swan song hasn't ended yet, as Jackass 4.5 , which features all of the bonus footage that didn't make it into the movie, will be released on Netflix on May 20th.

Boiling Point

Movies that look like they were shot in a single take are becoming more and more popular. Whether it's the comedy Birdman or the war epic 1917 , inventive filmmakers are continuously finding ways to fool audiences that their movies look like one shot. However, Boiling Point actually was filmed in one take.

User Ionlyspeakfactz gives two simple reasons why they think it's the best movie of 2022, "Filmed in one shot. Superb acting." The movie follows a London chef during his restaurant's busiest night of the year, and anything and everything goes wrong when the health inspector visits. While it sounds like a dramatic version of "Charlie Work," arguably the best ever episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia , the movie is a surprising visual spectacle as well as thrilling.

Director Michael Bay's movies don't often make it into top 10 lists, but 2022's Ambulance is arguably his best work since the 1990s. It might still be typically full of shots of helicopters, huge guns, and machoism, but it's also very much a return to form.

Redditor SendMoneyNow is one of the biggest advocates of the movie, and when considering the best film of 2022, they admit that they're "shocked to say it's Ambulance ." The movie is a fun heist flick, and Jake Gyllenhaal gives a wildly eccentric performance that it's almost as if he prepared for the role by watching Nicolas Cage's most uncaged movies .

So many Redditors referred to The Batman as the very best movie of 2022. A great deal of that could be recency bias and hype, as it's newly released and it feels like fans have been waiting for it for years at this point. However, though whether or not it's the best Batman movie is a different debate, there's no denying that it feels more like a Batman movie than any film in the Dark Knight trilogy.

User Sonder332 thinks it's the best because "Robert Pattinson is great at Batman, Zoë Kravitz is just amazing as Catwoman. I loved the noir take on it. Very excited to see where it goes." The 2022 release is the darkest Batman movie ever , and it's the first movie to actually depict the vigilante as "the world's greatest detective," and fans can't get enough of Batman and Catwoman together.

The Uncharted video game franchise is one of the most beloved series ever and by far the crown jewel in Sony's exclusive game series. The games have always been cinematic and a movie adaptation had always sounded promising. And after finally escaping development hell and being passed around by directors for 12 years, it was finally released this year.

Unfortunately, it went down like a lead balloon amongst fans, and it wasn't exactly a critical hit either. However, in what is something of an unpopular opinion, Content_Pool_1391 thinks it's the best movie of 2022. The Redditor defends it by explaining, " Uncharted was a really fun movie. Very unexpected that it was so good."

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

User Angel-McLeod points to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent as the best 2022 movie so far. The Redditor ecstatically explains, "I knew it was going to be good but that film is full-on glorious. It’s as close to perfect as one could hope for."

RELATED: 10 Movie Endings So Bad They Ruined The Film, According To Reddit

The movie follows Nicolas Cage playing an exaggerated version of himself, and he must remember what he learned from his wildest movies to overcome the outrageous situations he finds himself in. Of all the movies that have been released this year, whether it's The Batman or The Northman , The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent hilariously has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than most of them.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

It's only four months into the year so far, but there have already been two video game movies. But while Uncharted was hated by fans, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was loved by its fanbase. Reddit user DaBrokenMeta thinks it's the best movie of the year so far, and they're not alone, as there were more gasps in the movie theatre for the Sonic 2 post-credits scene than there were at any point in Avengers: Endgame .

Between the introduction of fan-favorite characters, the return of Dr. Robotnik, and all of the hidden Easter eggs and references to the SEGA Genesis games, the sequel deserves all the box office success it has been getting. It isn't even the last video game movie of 2022, as later in the year will see the release of the animated Mario .

Turning Red

Pixar has the best batting average of any movie studio, animated or otherwise, as almost all of their films are rated "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes and loved by fans young and old. NhSnork is no different, as they think the newly released Turning Red is not just the best film of 2022 so far, but they also think Pixar will struggle to top it.

The Redditor argues, "I don't even expect Lightyear to trump it." However, given how Lightyear is based on one of the most beloved animated characters of all time and its trailers are hiding what the movie is even about, the Redditor could be eating their words.

NEXT: 10 Movies That Would Be 10x Better If They Added Dinosaurs, According To Reddit

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The best movies of 2022

Here’s what excited us the most on screen this year

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by Polygon Staff , Tasha Robinson , and Pete Volk

From big theatrical events like Top Gun: Maverick to a shockingly good year in horror , it’s been a memorable year at the movies.

What makes a movie worth including as one of Polygon’s best? We like many different types of movies here, from genre fare to the kind of stuff that makes you think. If it made us laugh, made us cry, made us ponder, or made us squeal in excitement, it’s probably here.

We asked Polygon’s staffers to submit their favorite movies of the year. Some ranked theirs, some didn’t. Some included 25, some included five. We were able to take that data and translate it into this extremely scientific*, definitive** list of the best movies of the year.

Nobody has had a chance to see everything — we’re publishing this in early December, which meant collecting ballots in November. That means only a select few have seen The Way of Water , and very few people have seen Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio , The Fabelmans, or Glass Onion , to name a few examples. But that’s why we’re a team! With our powers combined, we’ve seen nearly all of the relevant 2022 releases, and we’ve sorted through our feelings to determine which ones are the best — just for you.

Below are Polygon’s top 10 movies of the year, as voted on by our staffers. We’ll also have movies that didn’t make the cut but were worth mentioning, as well as our staffers’ top 10 ballots for your perusal. Just don’t be a jerk about it.

And if you like lists, we’ve got more lists — specifically lists of the best TV , games , anime , and books of the year.

* There was barely any science involved. ** There’s no such thing as a definitive list of the best movies. That’s, like, your opinion.

The top 10 movies of 2022

10. everything everywhere all at once.

Genre: Sci-fi action Run time: 2h 19m Directors: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis

People who only know filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert from their tongue-in-cheek 2016 indie-movie parody Swiss Army Man — yes, that’s the one where Daniel Radcliffe spends the whole movie as a vomiting, farting corpse — may be surprised at the sheer scope, scale, and ambition of the writer-directors’ movie Everything Everywhere All at Once , which absolutely lives up to its name. It’s a wild, winning multiverse comedy slash kung-fu epic about a depressed laundromat owner ( Michelle Yeoh ) who’s called on to save billions of alternate universes from evil, but that only scratches the surface of what the Daniels are out to achieve.

Part metaphorical attempt to reckon with the chaos of the internet age, part life-affirming argument against despair, and part reckless absurdist action movie, it’s simultaneously hilarious and touching, an impressive special-effects experiment and a tremendous mental reboot on the order of The Matrix . This is the only movie you’ll see this year (or probably ever) where one man gets beaten to death with oversized floppy dildos, while another changes the world with the Kurt Vonnegut-derived message “Be kinder to each other.” — Tasha Robinson

• Everything Everywhere All at Once is a multiverse masterpiece

Everything Everywhere All at Once is available to watch on Showtime, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

9. Ambulance

Genre: Action thriller Run time: 2h 16m Director: Michael Bay Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González

Ambulance follows two brothers who steal an ambulance after a botched bank heist and lead the Los Angeles Police Department on a chase across the city, all with a couple of accidental hostages in the back. The robbers are played by Yahya Abdul Mateen II, who brings a sympathetic presence to the high-stakes chase, and Jake Gyllenhaal at his unhinged best. But it’s action director extraordinaire Michael Bay who is the real star of the show.

After 10 years in the dark dungeons of Transformers sequels, Ambulance is the best version of Michael Bay. The movie has all the hallmarks of Bay’s best work, like The Rock and Bad Boys , mixed with the mastery of new technologies that he’s shown in more recent works like 13 Hours . Drone cameras soar through car chases, handheld shots give us an up-close view of panicked amateur surgery, and every explosion looks incredible. Does every ounce of the story make perfect sense and conform to the laws of reality? No, it absolutely does not. But it is a tremendously fun two-hour-long car chase, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. It feels good to have Bay back at the top of his game. — Austen Goslin

• Michael Bay defibrillates old-school action cinema with Ambulance

Ambulance is available to watch on Prime Video , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu .

8. Aftersun

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 42m Director: Charlotte Wells Cast: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall

The human memory is, famously, unreliable — faulty to the point of being thrown out even when it’s your sworn testimony. Childhood memories are perhaps the best example of this: Even a small, isolated memory can completely change tone later when seen with the full spectrum of adulthood, filtered through the prism of concern and care that comes with it. It’s a tough concept to wrap your brain around at times. And so Aftersun feels like a small miracle in the ways it not only captures that scope but manages to frame the whole concept with grace.

Young father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) are on a rare resort vacation, a fading moment captured by her on a clunky camcorder (at least partially; you know what it’s like to hand a kid a video camera). While that plot is simple in construction, the execution of it is far more profound, capturing the wistful vantage points of both Calum’s and Sophie’s experiences on holiday with equal, vivid clarity. In Aftersun ’s hands, memory is just as slippery as it’s always been. Sometimes conversations wash over Sophie and threaten to drown Calum; growing up is seeing the full picture of their trip, and Aftersun is quietly devastating in its ability to capture that. It’s a testament to the performances at the center of it (Mescal’s compassionate weariness most of all) that the film manages to suggest so much without overstating its point. After all, memory may be unreliable, but sometimes memory — echoed in a grainy camcorder or the recollection of a warm embrace — is all we have. — Zosha Millman

Aftersun is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Genre: Action horror Run time: 1h 24m Director: Jean Luc Herbulot Cast: Yann Gael, Mentor Ba, Roger Sallah

I don’t want to say too much about Saloum , because part of the joy of the movie is the way it dramatically unfurls in surprising directions. A charming group of mercenaries escorting a drug lord from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal have to land their plane unexpectedly early, and then things spiral from there. But I will say this: It’s a joyous genre mashup with gorgeous characterization, terrific lead actors, and a jaw-dropping third act. You won’t regret it.— Pete Volk

Saloum is available to stream on Shudder and AMC Plus through Prime Video , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Google Play, and Vudu .

Genre: Drama Run time: 2h 38m Director: Todd Field Cast: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant

Todd Field’s first film in nearly two decades stars Cate Blanchett as the eponymous Lydia Tár, a globally renowned (and entirely fictitious) composer-conductor who is faced with a professional and personal reckoning brought upon by her many transgressions and infidelities. Exquisitely well paced, scrupulously detailed, and impeccably performed, Tár marks the return of a director whose small body of work belies a mastery and vision seldom seen in all but the greatest of his contemporaries in their prime.

Field’s film is more ambitious and interesting than any simple screed either against or on behalf of so-called cancel culture. Over the course of its run time, Tár reveals itself as something far more complex and harder to nail down: an incisive exploration of the myriad ways in which the abuse of power, both institutional and personal, manifests, while also a story that attempts to dispel the myth of “genius” and the aura of exonerating virtue in which it is imbued, to probe at the ugly, complicated, and incontrovertibly human truth at its center.

The film accomplishes this by centering on a character who embodies a multitude of contradictions: a woman who is at once unquestionably gifted, indisputably reprehensible, and so coercively charismatic as to nearly, if not outright, elicit reluctant sympathy even when viewed at her worst. Blanchett so thoroughly inhabits the role of Lydia Tár that it feels impossible to even imagine this film existing without her, affording a performance befitting one of the greatest actors of their time. There is more to be said and written about Tár than can comfortably fit in the space of a paragraph, let alone a sentence, but the bottom line is this: Tár is one of the best films of the year, if not the best. — Toussaint Egan

• Tár’s delirious Monster Hunter-themed ending, explained

Tár is available to stream on Peacock, or for rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

5. Barbarian

Genre: Horror comedy Run time: 1h 43m Director: Zach Cregger Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long

Perhaps the ultimate “don’t go into the basement” movie, Barbarian follows Tess, a young woman who has the unfortunate fate of getting double-booked at an Airbnb with a strange man in a less-than-ideal part of town. And then things get way worse. And then things get way worse again .

Barbarian is the rare horror movie that manages to keep upping the ante with new and bigger surprises every few minutes, without ever feeling like it’s holding anything back. Just when you think the creepy guy Tess has to stay the night with is going to be trouble, the movie opens up a whole subterranean basement of horrible twists and shocking grossness.

Maybe the most surprising of these twists is how frequently the movie jumps between its gruesomely violent moments and funny jokes, without ever letting either feel out of place and making the whole movie a shockingly fun time. — AG

• Barbarian’s layered secrets make it horror-movie catnip

Barbarian is available to stream on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Google Play, and Vudu .

Genre: Sci-fi horror Run time: 2h 10m Director: Jordan Peele Cast: Keke Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya, Steven Yeun

Nope is yet another thoughtful and fun sci-fi horror from one of the best filmmakers currently working.

Ostensibly a movie about trying to prove the existence of a UFO, Nope is a profound meditation on the role of cameras and filmmaking not only in our society, but also in the struggle against oppression and racism toward Black people in America. Two siblings on the outskirts of the filmmaking industry (but with deep ties to the history of cinema’s formation) use all the tools at their disposal (and their wits) to capture proof of something they know is true but others will not believe. It is not a big leap to connect their quest to that of the many brave Black Americans who have attempted to document injustices against them on camera, something Peele himself has talked about in the context of this movie. And Peele’s movie goes further, pulling in deeper themes about who gets access to the tools needed to document their stories, what support looks like in times of crisis, Cosmicism, and animal actors , all wrapped within a story of pursuing that one perfect shot.

Nope is also anchored by one of the best sibling relationships I’ve ever seen. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer have an electric chemistry that leaps off the screen, and you instantly believe they’d do anything for each other. It is also Jordan Peele’s ode to the filmmaking style of Steven Spielberg, and thus the most blockbuster-y of his oeuvre to date (with great monster design to boot).

Nope has only grown in my estimation since watching it, as my brain constantly finds itself returning to its powerful images and ideas. Nope serves as further proof of Peele’s mastery of both unforgettable ideas and arresting images, and I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us next. — PV

Nope is available to watch on Peacock, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin

Genre: Dramedy Run time: 1h 54m Director: Martin McDonagh Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan

The Banshees of Inisherin is a bit of a miracle. Writer and director Martin McDonagh’s previous film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , received many Oscar nominations and took home two acting awards, most memorably for Frances McDormand. It’s an ugly film with a misguided interpretation of bigotry in America, but so was Crash , and that didn’t stop its creator from landing a Bond movie. That’s how things work: When an artist gets this much attention, they usually make the most of producers hoping to re-create similar success. Instead, McDonagh took the longest creative break of his career.

Four years later, McDonagh returns with a film that doubles as a conclusion to a loose trilogy of plays he’d abandoned in the mid-2000s. (Don’t worry, you needn’t have seen off-Broadway favorites like The Lieutenant of Inishmore to appreciate this movie.) The Banshees of Inisherin has a cinematic grace, the camera floating through the hills of a small Irish island. But the story has the premise of a killer play: an older artist (Brendan Gleeson) calls off a lifelong friendship with a farmer (Colin Farrell) with no warning and little explanation. The harder the farmer fights to reunite, the more extreme the artist’s efforts to break ties.

It doesn’t take a close inspection to spot McDonagh’s own questions about the prioritization of art and the artist. But McDonagh is too clever a writer to frame the farmer as some pure, noble good. He can be downright annoying. A troupe of characters fill out the spectrum of views between the farmer and the artist, and by the end, McDonagh has seemingly juiced this scenario for every philosophical and existential question it contains — never taking too clear a stance on any answer.

Banshees is the opposite of Three Billboards : vulnerable, beautiful, and utterly obsessed with the aching complexity of even the most banal life. McDonagh could have made a lot of money or a vanity project. Instead he took a beat, then made this quiet masterpiece. — Chris Plante

• The Banshees of Inisherin is 2022’s funniest, darkest comedy

The Banshees of Inisherin is available to stream on HBO Max, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

2. Decision to Leave

Genre: Mystery romance Run time: 2h 18m Director: Park Chan-wook Cast: Park Hae-il, Tang Wei

Park Chan-wook’s follow-up to The Handmaiden is a completely different kind of love story: a police procedural about a detective, Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) falling for an insightful, soft-spoken woman he’s investigating for murder. This slow-burn story crosses through so many genres that it may leave viewers a bit baffled about what they’re watching, until, with a series of almost audible clicks, each segment of the puzzle-piece narrative falls together, building to an unforgettable conclusion. It’s the kind of immaculately crafted experience that may leave people wanting to watch it again immediately, just to appreciate the eventual impact of all the tiny details that didn’t add up the first time around. But by the end , it comes into focus as a portrait of obsession, devotion, division, and some very clever scheming. — TR

• Decision to Leave brings back dark obsessions for Oldboy director Park Chan-wook

Decision to Leave is available to stream on Mubi, or for digital rental or purchase on Apple and Amazon.

Genre: Historical action epic Run time: 3h 7m Director: S.S. Rajamouli Cast: N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan

Every cinematic possibility explodes across the screen in S.S. Rajamouli’s three-hour historical action epic. Too much hype? There is no overselling the spectacle of RRR , which reimagines the real-life Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem as superheroic protectors capable of outmaneuvering ferocious beasts, battling battalions of men into submission, and slapping imperialist assholes with motorcycles like Jet Li in The One . Rajamouli, seemingly fueled by 100 years of Eastern and Western classics, drops the film’s thunderous-applause-worthy moments with the precision of the jokes in Airplane ; just when you think dopamine levels might drop after a physics-defying rescue sequence, Rama (Ram Charan) and Bheem (Jr. NTR) hit the dance floor, snap their suspenders, and fight colonialism through the power of footwork. “Dance like a scorpion has bitten you!” they proclaim in Telugu, though their moves speak even louder than words. Every second of RRR is like this.

This may sound familiar in Hollywood’s mega-scale era, and RRR ’s bombast would be fluff if not for its human, melodramatic core. Charan and Jr. NTR, bona fide movie stars, balance ferocity with chumminess as they carry the life-or-death weight of a nation on their backs and ward off a violent British officer (played with mustache-twirling despicableness by Ray Stevenson). The way Rajamouli rewires the past has been rightfully interrogated for riding a fine line between patriotism and propaganda (in a way similar to Top Gun: Maverick ’s military sales pitch), but the director’s tight grasp on emotionality feels like the antidote. Bheem, a hero of India’s Gond tribe in search of an abducted girl, is a vulnerable man, even as he unleashes a wave of wild animals on his Western adversaries. Rama, the rare Indian member of the Imperial police who unknowingly hunts Bheem while also befriending him, is the definition of a compassionate Best Bud, though we know he’s sold his soul. All the complications and self-actualizing make RRR a dimensional work of pop fiction — and the kind you never see at this scale. — Matt Patches

• India’s wild action movie RRR re-imagines real-life revolt as an epic superhero battle

RRR is available to watch on Zee5 , and the Hindi dub is available to watch on Netflix .

The best of the rest

The movies that just missed the cut (or had dedicated fans on staff who made damn sure they were included).

• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Genre: Horror Run time: 1h 26m Director: Jane Schoenbrun Cast: Anna Cobb

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun has created something truly special: a coming-of-age horror film for the generation that grew up too online. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair communicates the excitement and fear that accompany creating a new self on the internet, as well as the excitement and fear of encountering others online who think they know you.

Casey, an internet-obsessed lonely teenager (Anna Cobb, in an unforgettable feature film debut), stumbles across The World’s Fair Challenge, a horror-themed online challenge that promises physical changes to those who take part. Casey begins to create videos of her participation in the challenge, opening the door to new experiences (and spectators) in her physical and virtual lives.

With effective use of creepypasta aesthetics (including striking collaborations with real YouTube creators), We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an unsettling, immersive internet horror experience that is at once new and familiar to those who have visited these remote corners of the internet. Schoenbrun’s feature debut is one to remember, and they’re a filmmaker to keep an eye on as new projects emerge. — PV

• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair gives creepypasta fans the exact movie they need

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is available to stream on HBO Max , for free with a library card on Hoopla, or for digital rental on Amazon and Apple .

Genre: Thriller Run time: 1h 39m Director: Romain Gavras Cast: Sami Slimane, Dali Benssalah, Ouassini Embarek

A pure adrenaline shot in cinematic form, celebrated music video director Romain Gavras’ feature debut is an unforgettable concoction of escalating tensions in a small French village. After a young boy is murdered, a community is thrown into turmoil and conflict with the police. Featuring some of the most stunning one-take sequences you’ll ever see, incredible leading performances, and the best title drop of the year, Athena is not one to be missed. Just watch the opening scene — you won’t regret it, and you’ll likely just keep going from there. It’s a shame the movie is exactly one scene too long, but even a bad ending can’t take away the power of this one. — PV

Athena is available to watch on Netflix.

Genre: Sci-fi Run time: 1h 36m Director: Kogonada Cast: Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min

The latest from Columbus director Kogonada, After Yang is a melancholy science fiction movie that balances the question of how we should think about artificial life with the more intriguing question about how it should think about us. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith star as adoptive parents raising a young Chinese girl, with the help of a “technosapien” — an android programmed as her language tutor, cultural advisor, and big brother. When his systems fail, the family goes through exactly what they’d experience at the death of any family member, with the added question of what his death tells them about their lives and relationships. It’s a small, quiet, meditative film, but it’s visually rich and packed with ideas about prejudice and assumptions, cultural assimilation, and the way everyone is navigating an inner life that would astonish everyone around them . — TR

• In After Yang, Colin Farrell explores a new take on sci-fi’s eternal question

After Yang is available to watch on Showtime , or for digital rental on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

• Catherine Called Birdy

Genre: Comedy Run time: 1h 48m Director: Lena Dunham Cast: Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper

Lena Dunham’s adaptation of middle-grade historical novel Catherine, Called Birdy is the rare film version that strays from the book in a good way. Bella Ramsey stars as headstrong Catherine, a teenage girl in the Middle Ages who is frustrated with her limited options in life. While she wants to enjoy her girlhood and stomp around the mud with the goat boys, as the daughter of the village’s lord, she’s expected to be married off to whoever pays most handsomely for her hand. The book was a diary, focused on Catherine’s spunky voice and sharp observations, and while the movie keeps Catherine’s narration, it also offers a more nuanced look at the world around her. Catherine’s father, Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), for instance, isn’t a greedy and lazy man who treats his daughter and wife as pawns, but a flawed person trying to rectify his mistakes and provide for his family and village. It’s a lovely little look into the daily life of a medieval lady, but also with a more overarching plot throughline than the book. — Petrana Radulovic

• Catherine Called Birdy does book-to-film adaptation the right way

Catherine Called Birdy is available to watch on Prime Video.

Genre: Thriller Run time: 2h 7m Director: Asghar Farhadi Cast: Amir Jadidi, Sahar Goldust, Mohsen Tanabandeh

[ Ed. note: Farhadi has been accused of plagiarizing the idea of A Hero by a former student.]

Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi returns with another stunner, painting a beautiful, nuanced picture of a man in crisis. Amir Jadidi is phenomenal as Rahim, a charming man who simply can not get his life together, no matter how much his friends and family love him. When his girlfriend finds an abandoned handbag with gold coins inside, Rahim considers using the money to pay off his debt while out on a brief furlough from debtor’s prison. But after a series of events leads him to return the bag and money to a woman who says she’s the original owner, he becomes the subject of a local media frenzy for his charitable act.

A moving, challenging story about the difficulties of trying to do the right thing in an unjust world, A Hero is also a study of how difficult it is to pin down clear motives or objective truth, especially when facing a story filtered through layers of personal and organizational agendas. Even the truth about your own actions and motivations can be difficult to sort through. And if you do actually find it, is it actually for navigating the world? A Hero is a stirring, unforgettable work that should not be missed. — PV

A Hero is available to watch on Prime Video .

• The Woman King

Genre: Historical action drama Run time: 2h 14m Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood Cast: Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega

Gina Prince-Bythewood takes the next step onward from her pivot to superhero action, Netflix’s The Old Guard , and lays out a historical epic that’s rousing, thrilling, and fierce as hell. Viola Davis stars in The Woman King as General Nanisca, leader of the Agojie, an all-female band of elite warriors charged with protecting the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the 1820s, as a larger and more powerful neighboring tribe begins kidnapping Dahomey citizens to sell to European slave traders. The Agojie were real — they’re the inspiration for Black Panther ’s Dora Milaje — and Prince-Bythewood drew heavily from their real-life art, music, fashion, weaponry, language, culture, and fighting styles to give the film texture, though in other ways it’s as fictionalized as Braveheart , Gandhi , or any other Hollywood historical epic. The result is a rich and thrilling underdog story with Prince-Bythewood’s usual attention to character-building, relationship-building, and steeping all the big plot beats in believable human emotion. It’s a familiar good-versus-evil story with familiar beats, but told in a way that’s rare for American screens, and with a level of detail, energy, and verve that keeps it engaging and personal through every epic battle. — TR

• The Woman King has a fierce fire in its belly

The Woman King is available to watch on Netflix, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

• Crimes of the Future

Genre: Science fiction Run time: 1h 47m Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

The master of body horror returns with a shockingly prescient script written nearly 30 years ago, tackling subjects as varied as art and the creative process, our relationships to our bodies and governments’ relationships to them, disability and aging, and (as often is the case with his movies) queerness and sexuality at an angle. There’s a lot going on in Crimes of the Future , and it’s all contained within a fascinating sci-fi tale with efficient and evocative world-building, incredible production design (the chairs in this movie!!! Viggo’s coat!!!), and some of the best performances of the year. — PV

• The sci-fi story Crimes of the Future puts the king of body horror back in his slimy saddle

Crimes of the Future is available to watch on Hulu.

• The Northman

Genre: Historical epic Run time: 2h 17m Director: Robert Eggers Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman

Few things go better together than Vikings and revenge, and The Northman is the perfect proof. Drawing inspiration from the same Norse myth that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet , director Robert Eggers ( The VVitch , T he Lighthouse ) has created a historical epic of the sort we rarely get to see anymore. The story follows Amleth (Alexander Skarsgaard) as he seeks revenge against his Uncle, who murdered his father and usurped his throne.

The Northman is a brutal movie, but among Amleth’s epic battles and lava-soaked duals, there’s a surprising heart and humanity, giving the character more compelling motivation than most revenge movies manage. Eggers brings this balance to every aspect of the movie, whether it’s the beauty and harshness of the Icelandic landscape, or combining incredibly detailed realism with the more operatic side of Norse cosmology. With this careful symmetry of real and surreal, The Northman is about as close as any movie has come to bringing the fantasy of myths to a live-action film. — AG

• The Northman brings Viking history to life with a roar of bloody defiance

The Northman is available to stream on Prime Video , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu .

• Top Gun: Maverick

Genre: Action Run time: 2h 11m Director: Joseph Kosinski Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Glen Powell

“The sequel was so much better than the original” isn’t something movie fans say or hear often, but it’s true in the case of Top Gun: Maverick , a 36-years-later check-in on the high-flying 1986 action movie that gave Tom Cruise the need for speed. Cruise is back as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the Navy test pilot who continually lives up to his name by breaking rules, flouting superiors, and charting his own course.

But Top Gun: Maverick walks far enough away from Top Gun ’s testosterone-scented smugness to consider the cost of the Maverick life: namely, reaching a point where a fed-up military is ready to put Mav out to pasture, and he has to settle for teaching a class of up-and-coming fliers, some of whom as are as cocky and off-putting as he used to be. Maverick is an intense action movie where the actors really are flying planes and filming themselves in the cockpits , and even though the ending is a foregone conclusion, director Joe Kosinski pulls off plenty of breathless “Is this where they all die?” action. But the film is more interesting and more satisfying for its emotional elements, which include a tearjerking salute to (and premature goodbye to) visibly ailing Top Gun star Val Kilmer, and Maverick making it clear that he still keenly feels the loss of his wingman Goose more than 30 years later. — TR

• Top Gun: Maverick is better — and nicer — than the 1986 original

Top Gun: Maverick is available on Paramount Plus, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple , and Google Play.

Baby Assassins

Genre: Action comedy Run time: 1h 35m Director: Yugo Sakamoto Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa

A rare action comedy that is equal parts funny and kick-ass, Baby Assassins is an eccentric slice-of-life story about two (extremely) teenage girls who happen to kill people for a living.

Chisato and Mahiro would like nothing more than to perform their killer duties and then just laze around their apartment all day. When they’re asked by their boss to get part-time jobs in an effort to better integrate into society, the two girls struggle to find an alternative means to conflict resolution… outside of murder.

More a fish-out-of-water comedy than pure action movie, the fight choreography in Baby Assassins is nonetheless great. It features exciting hand-to-hand combat and gunplay that works well with the comedy, with many physical punchlines. Gamers, take note: Action director Kensuke Sonomura is a celebrated video game fight choreographer who has done extensive work on the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil series, as well as Vanquish and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots . — PV

Baby Assassins is available to watch on Hi-Yah!, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

• Turning Red

Genre: Family fantasy comedy Run time: 1h 40m Director: Domee Shi Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh

It’s hard to look back fondly at the painfully awkward middle-school years, but Pixar’s Turning Red considers the tumultuous ups and downs of early adolescence without flinching, and with an astonishing amount of love. Domee Shi, who directed 2018’s Pixar short Bao , makes her theatrical debut with this one-of-a-kind movie that envelopes quirky magic, cultural specificity, and most of all, an absolute love for young girlhood in all its messy glory.

Thirteen-year-old Mei discovers that she turns into a gigantic red panda when she’s overwhelmed by strong emotion — a quirk all the women of her family have been burdened with since ancient times. Mei struggles to control the panda just as other family members have, but she also starts to discover her own identity outside of her family, and to embrace that side of herself. The giant-red-panda-sized emotions she feels at the cusp of adulthood translate into giant emotions for the audience, who can look back on that pivotal time of their lives where everything felt like so much all at once. Turning Red balances those deep emotions with some charming humor and genuine sweetness, and it’s one of the best and most unique films in Pixar’s canon. — PR

Turning Red is available to watch on Disney Plus , or for digital purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play and Vudu .

• Turning Red celebrates awkward teen life in spectacular fashion
• Bones and All

Genre: Romance/horror Run time: 2h 10m Director: Luca Guadagnino Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance

Bones and All is a beautiful little love story between two teens who just happen to be born with the affliction to crave human flesh. It may sound gross, and at times it can be, but director Luca Guadagnino is a master of using grossness as a vehicle for intimacy, and he’s never been better at it than in Bones and All .

The film follows Maren (played marvelously by Taylor Russell), who’s recently run away from home after her latest incident. After a less-than-fortunate meeting with another “eater,” Maren meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet at his most gaunt, playing a careful mix of vulnerable and defensive), and the movie’s love story gets rolling as the two travel the back roads of America’s heartland in a beat-up truck. Guadagnino shoots the Midwest as if America had never seen a building taller than two stories and turns fields of grass and grain into a massive stage to host and contrast some of Maren and Lee’s most intimate and loving moments.

Thanks to the cannibalism of it all, Bones and All is also a movie that’s almost too easy to reduce to metaphors (for growing up, for falling in love, for being an outsider), but the outstanding performances from Chalamet and Russell keep the movie’s feet planted firmly on the floor of their romance, never letting anything, real or metaphorical, get in its way. Even with the cannibalism, Guadagnino’s tender filmmaking and his two excellent performances make Bones and All one of the sweetest and warmest road trip romances in recent memory. — AG

• Bones and All revives an age-old love story in a thrillingly bloody new way

Bones and All is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple, Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Historical fantasy/musical Run time: 1h 38m Director: Masaaki Yuasa Cast: Avu-chan, Mirai Moriyama, Tasuku Emoto

The latest surreal anime movie from Lu Over the Wall , Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! , and Ride Your Wave director Masaaki Yuasa features all his usual elements — wildly bending rubber-band bodies that look like nothing else in anime and energetic musical sequences, both being used to underline and emphasize the powerful emotions on display. But Inu-Oh goes further than usual with both. The story of a spirit-plagued mutant and a cursed biwa-playing monk who band together to revolutionize music in 14th-century Japan is part historical epic, part rock ’n’ roll origin story. There are some deep and painful themes here, about how regimes rewrite and reshape history with no regard for those who lived it, but they’re expressed with a joyful, often manic energy that becomes visually stunning on screen, especially during the extensive concerts that tell the stories of lost battles and lost souls. It’s a unique experience, like all Yuasa’s films, which each play with the range of human emotion in different ways. And like Yuasa’s recent work in general, it stretches the boundaries of anime — of what kind of stories can be told, and how. — TR

• Anime’s wildest creator is back with the ecstatic, rebellious rock opera Inu-Oh

Inu-Oh is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

• Fire Island

Genre: Romantic comedy Run time: 1h 45m Director: Andrew Ahn Cast: Joel Kim Booster, Conrad Ricamora, Bowen Yang

This delightful adaptation of Pride and Prejudice brings Jane Austen’s classic story to the gay vacation destination Fire Island. Comedian Joel Kim Booster wrote the movie and stars as Noah, the Elizabeth Bennet of this story. Noah and his friends travel to Fire Island every year to vacation for a week, but this year appears to be the last. Noah’s best friend, Howie (Bowen Yang, playing the Jane Bennet role here), has never been in a relationship, and Noah makes it his mission to get Howie laid this week. When the pair meet a group of rich guys also on vacation, tensions flare as some hit it off and some don’t.

Fire Island is the rare straight-to-streaming movie that doesn’t look like a cheap TV show, and director Andrew Ahn relishes the beauty present in both the people and the scenery. Every member of the cast is hilarious, with Booster and Yang earning the recognition they’ve already received for their particular takes on these long-explored roles. But for me, Conrad Ricamora as the Mr. Darcy of this world steals the show. While the other characters get lines filled with jokes and gags, Ricamora has to bring out the humor and charm in his character from moments of self-seriousness. It’s an impressive feat, and one that easily could have gotten lost under some of the energetic performances he’s acting across. Instead, it’s a star-making role in a lovely 105 minutes. — PV

Fire Island is available to watch on Hulu .

Thirteen Lives

Genre: “True story” thriller Run time: 2h 30min Director: Ron Howard Cast: Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen, Joel Edgerton

Thirteen Lives , the adaptation of the true story of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, is a perfect match of director and material. Ron Howard is a deeply sentimental filmmaker who loves inspirational stories — Apollo 13 , Cinderella Man , and his excellent sports drama Rush , for instance — and there are few more inspirational stories in recent memory than this one. It’s also one that’s quite impossible for him to overdramatize, because of how unbelievable the true story is.

An old-school tense, edge-of-your-seat thriller, Thirteen Lives avoids the pitfall of similar Hollywood adaptations by not locating the story as a journey of a singular group of outsider heroes (in this cave, the eccentric specialty cave divers portrayed by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell). Instead, the movie effectively showcases how this was a group effort by volunteers from around the world. The heroics of the divers wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of local villagers and other volunteers from around the world, and the movie does not forget it. The diving scenes are electric and incredibly tense, too — Howard and the crew built a gigantic set to replicate the caves, and Mortensen and Farrell shot their own diving sequences. — PV

Thirteen Lives is available to watch on Prime Video .

I Was a Simple Man

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 40m Director: Christopher Makoto Yogi Cast: Steve Iwamoto, Constance Wu

August at Akiko ’s Christopher Makoto Yogi turns this ghost story into a slow-burn meditation on death, memory, and what lives on after we depart. As the elderly patriarch of a fragmented family (Steve Iwamoto, excellent in his first lead feature role) nears the end of his life, he’s visited by family in the present and ghosts from the past, including his long-deceased wife (Constance Wu). Intergenerational tensions arise as the ghosts of past conflicts return, too — squabbles and fights between family members long estranged, and historical conflicts around Hawaii’s path to statehood.

I Was A Simple Man takes us on this journey across different time periods and with evocative use of surrealism and dream aesthetics. A beautiful movie filled with stunning images of Hawaii’s gorgeous landscapes and rich textures, it won the Made in Hawaii Award for Best Feature at the 2021 Hawaii International Film Festival. I Was A Simple Man is an unforgettable experience that ventures to capture the final days of one life on Earth. — PV

I Was A Simple Man is available to watch on the Criterion Channel , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play and Vudu .

• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Genre: Mystery comedy Run time: 2h 19m Director: Rian Johnson Cast: Daniel Craig, approximately every popular actor in the world

It’s certainly true that Rian Johnson’s sequel (and franchise-confirmer) Glass Onion is broader, sillier, and shallower than the film it follows, his 2019 whodunit Knives Out . The latter is as much a commentary on classism and racism as it is a murder mystery, while Glass Onion aims at broader, lighter targets, like skewering influencers, “disruptors,” and the cults built around figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But the lightness actually makes Glass Onion a more agreeably weightless enterprise, where the all-star cast has more freedom in their farcical roles. Daniel Craig seems less exaggerated this time out as world-famous detective Benoit Blanc — or maybe he just feels like a more rational character next to Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Leslie Odom Jr. as a circle of wealthy success stories full of dark secrets. The mystery itself is cunningly constructed, full of verbal and visual gags, but packed with enough twists to feel like the Agatha Christie mysteries Johnson is openly evoking. In a year with even more mocking, scabrous “eat the rich” movies than ever, this one feels like a breath of fresh air — critical but not bitter, observational but not leaden with real-life parallels, and packed with winking surprises. — TR

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is available to watch on Netflix.

Genre: Sci-fi thriller Run time: 1h 40m Director: Dan Trachtenberg Cast: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers

A return to form for a consistently fun sci-fi franchise , Prey dropped on Hulu ( for business reasons ) and quickly became the platform’s biggest success ever. A nice respite from how other franchises have approached world-building and stakes-setting in recent years, Prey relies heavily on the star-making performances of Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers, who shine as Comanche siblings in the Northern Great Plains who are stalked by the Predator.

Midthunder is Naru, a young woman who wants to prove herself as a warrior, despite the mockery of many young men in her tribe. It’s the perfect conflict for the Predator to wade his way into, as a creature whose only concern is challenging himself against the mightiest foes he can find.

A tense, economical thriller from director Dan Trachtenberg ( 10 Cloverfield Lane ), Prey is light on dialogue and high on excitement. — PV

• Prey strips the Predator formula down to basics, but finds some room for style

Prey is available to watch on Hulu .

• Confess, Fletch

Genre: Comedy Run time: 1h 39m Director: Greg Mottola Cast: Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Kyle MacLachlan

Buried by a bungled release this past September, the revival of author Gregory Mcdonald’s charming rabble rouser I. M. Fletcher stands out as one of the hidden gems of the year, a breezy mystery carried by actors at the top of their games. To fill the shoes of Chevy Chase, who played Fletch twice in the 1980s, writer-director Greg Motolla ( Superbad , The Daytrippers ) turned to Jon Hamm, who finds the rare role than support both his leading man swagger and weirdo comedic instincts.

Based on one of Mcdonald’s more revered stories in the character’s run, Confess, Fletch finds the investigate-reporter-turned-gun-for-hire tracking down a set of missing paintings that his Italian girlfriend Angela (Lorenza Izzo) needs to pay off the ransom for her kidnapped father. Not helping his situation: The day he arrives to Boston to track down the masterpieces, a woman is murdered in his rental home. Hamm matches the high-stakes caper like a dance, weaving in and out of police capture while setting up a series of rouses to solve the ticking-clock mystery. His low-key interrogations range from wild (Kyle MacLachlan’s as a germaphobe art dealer) to wilder (Barb & Star’s Annie Mumolo steals the show as a woman who may burn down her entire block making matzah ball soup), but Hamm and Motolla never let Confess, Fletch descend into sitcom territory. There’s a buttoned up, Negroni-sipping sense of cool from start to finish, even while provoking big laughs. The combination makes Confess, Fletch every bit as classic as Knives Out . — MP

• Jon Hamm finally found a movie that fits his knack for comedy

Confess, Fletch is available to stream on Showtime Anytime and FuboTV, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Sports dramedy Run time: 1h 57m Director: Jeremiah Zagar Cast: Adam Sandler, Juancho Hernangomez, Queen Latifah

A love letter to the sport of basketball and one of the better sports movies released in years, Hustle is a terrific display for Adam Sandler’s talents and his love for the sport.

Sandler is Stanley Sugerman, a former college star who is now a veteran NBA scout for the Philadelphia 76ers. He has a close relationship with the team’s owner (Robert Duvall), a father-like figure to Sugerman who sees Stanley’s value as a basketball mind. The owner promotes Sugerman to assistant coach, a position where he can spend more time around his wife (Queen Latifah) and their young daughter. But when tragedy gets in the way of Stanley’s new job, he has to prove himself yet again and find a winning prospect for the team.

That prospect is Bo Cruz (played by real-life NBA player Juancho Hernangómez), who Sugerman spots dominating a local pickup game in Spain. The movie shines as it showcases Sugerman and Cruz’s developing relationship — the two rely on each other, and Hustle delivers a must-have for most sports movies with a terrific training montage sequence, featuring Sugerman repeatedly chasing Cruz up a hill with a car.

Hustle’s performances truly shine. Sandler’s centered, grounded portrayal of a man who loves what he does but would rather have the job he was promised is another terrific, layered role for one of our great modern actors. The cast is also filled with NBA players who deliver memorable performances, led by Hernangómez as the temperamental and talented Cruz and Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards as his trash-talking rival Kermit Wilts, a terrific addition to a long line of sports movie heels.

Bringing in real basketball players for leading and smaller roles lends authenticity to the whole thing, but especially in the scenes where the players actually play basketball. The camera is free to roam as athletes do what they do best, with thrilling basketball sequences that far outdo most sports movies that try to re-create the kineticism of live sports with non-athlete actors. — PV

• Netflix’s Hustle gives Adam Sandler the Jerry Maguire role he’s always needed

Hustle is available to watch on Netflix.

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 29m Director: Mamoru Hosoda Cast: Kaho Nakamura, Ryô Narita, Shôta Sometani

Just when you might think Disney’s permanently locked up the coveted title of “Best Animated Musical Rendition of the Beauty and the Beast Story,” along comes Mamoru Hosada’s Belle , which gives the “tale as old as time” a thrilling futurist spin. This anime feature from the director of Summer Wars , Wolf Children , The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , and Mirai re-imagines the classic fable as a conflict in a virtual-reality wonderland, where everyone’s digital avatars reflect their innermost selves. When withdrawn, mourning high-schooler Suzu enters the VR world, she becomes a beloved pop star, center of an energetic fandom — and equally energetic dismissal and criticism. Then she becomes obsessed with a mystery user whose avatar is a powerful, monstrous beast, and she starts trying to uncover his secrets.

This is a dizzying story that sometimes overreaches — Hosada is trying to take in everything from the addictive but destructive nature of online life to the importance of individual human connection, and there are so many threads (and romances, and secrets) that they aren’t all fully fleshed out. But it’s a heartfelt film full of big emotional beats and stunning animated sequences, and even if it doesn’t answer all the questions it raises, it at least seems determined to bring a familiar story to a bolder, brighter, more ambitious stage. — TR

• Mamoru Hosoda’s gorgeous fairy tale Belle makes an optimist’s case for the internet

Belle is available to watch on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu .

Orphan: First Kill

Genre: Horror Run time: 1h 39m Director: William Brent Bell Cast: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles

Returning to a franchise a decade later to do a prequel with the same lead actor shouldn’t just be a recipe for disaster; it should have been completely impossible. As it turns out, Orphan is a very special series and its lead character/monster, Esther, is a very special child*.

Orphan: First Kill follows a 9-year-old girl named Esther who breaks out of a hospital in Estonia, then scams her way into the good graces of a rich American family in hopes of making off in the night with whatever she can. This setup is nearly identical to the original movie, but the prequel manages to play with those expectations in some very clever ways.

The original Orphan (also great) hinged on a twist revealed late in the film, but the prequel gets the reveal out of the way early in favor of letting audiences feel like they’re in on the secret and the joke that Esther, a 9-year-old, is still played by Isabelle Fuhrman, who is now 25, which the movie uses all kinds of fun tricks to hide. Thankfully, First Kill is in on every single one of its own jokes and manages to perfectly balance its tone between silly and a gruesome, well-made slasher, along with being one of the best “rich people are weird” movies of the last few years. — AG

• Orphan: First Kill is actually a fantastic slasher prequel

Orphan: First Kill is available to stream on Paramount Plus , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Musical Run time: 2h 3m Director: Joe Wright Cast: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr.

Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac has been adapted for film many times in many ways, including as the modern-day Steve Martin/Daryl Hannah rom-com Roxanne in 1987, and the Toshirô Mifune action-drama Samurai Saga in 1959. As with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , its story about unrequited love (and arguably, complete romantic cowardice) resonates in any age, and crosses cultures easily. But there’s never been a production quite like this lavish movie adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s musical version of the play. Game of Thrones ’ Peter Dinklage stars as Cyrano, a French soldier and poet in love with his childhood friend Roxanne ( Swallow star Haley Bennett), but afraid to tell her because he’s certain she’ll reject him. When she falls for Christian ( Luce ’s Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a handsome newcomer in Cyrano’s regiment, Cyrano agrees to ghost-write Christian’s love letters to her, mostly so he can finally, fully express himself, even if she doesn’t know it’s him.

Joe Wright’s production is lush and glowing, with a soft visual warmth courtesy of his longtime collaborator Seamus McGarvey, cinematographer on his Atonement and Anna Karenina , among other titles. Dinklage’s singing isn’t very strong, but he still feels like he was born to play this pained, passionate swashbuckler, and the central trio all deliver fantastic performances that make this an authentic tearjerker. It’s a big-hearted project, full of outsized emotions that hit home powerfully. Don’t watch this right after a breakup, or after someone you’ve secretly longed for marries someone else. — TR

• The epic romance of Cyrano makes way for Peter Dinklage’s greatest performance

Cyrano is available to watch on Prime Video, or for digital rental or purchase on Google Play , Amazon , Vudu , and Apple .

Genre: Superhero Run time: 2h 56m Director: Matt Reeves Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano

Matt Reeves’ reboot of the Dark Knight isn’t as bold as it might be, but it sure is stylish. A long, slow-burning mystery in the vein of David Fincher’s Seven , The Batman infuses a familiar story with darkly beautiful imagery and magnetic performances from stars Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz. When it isn’t too enamored with ideas already explored in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy , The Batman lays exciting groundwork for a richer, stranger sort of Batman movie, which will hopefully materialize as a sequel reuniting everyone who made this one such a pleasure to watch. — JR

The Batman is available to watch on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Thriller Run time: 1h 29m Director: Steven Soderbergh Cast: Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson

The protagonist of Steven Soderbergh’s tech-crime thriller Kimi moves through the world like she’s tapped directly into a power line, and is desperate to burn off all the excess energy. The movie operates at that same level of speed and ferocity. Essentially an internet-age take on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window by way of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (among many other cinematic touchstones), Kimi follows a Seattle tech worker who stumbles across evidence of a crime, and draws some dangerous attention when she tries to report it. Soderbergh and Panic Room screenwriter David Koepp strip that story down to its basics, jumping in and out of the action in a shockingly tight and stylish 89 minutes. The plot is simple and the ethos is go-go-go, which makes the film’s verve contagious and the action breathless. It isn’t deep, but it sure is fun. — TR

Kimi is available to watch on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu .

The Long Walk

Genre: Sci-fi Run time: 1h 56m Director: Mattie Do Cast: Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy, Vilouna Phetmany

Laos’ first and only female film director, Mattie Do, makes ghost stories: movies where characters interact with the dead and learn from them, but pay a price for that knowledge. Some of the themes of her debut feature Chanthaly (which she’s posted on YouTube ) and her followup, Dearest Sister ( streaming on Shudder ) get fuller, richer development in The Long Walk , a genre mashup that’s part time-travel story and part serial-killer story, but still keenly involved with the spirits of the dead, and how they both express their desires and enable the desires of living people.

A Lao hermit living in a tech-oriented future periodically travels 50 years into the past and intervenes in events in his own traumatic childhood, with the help of the ghost of a woman who died in the nearby forest when he was a kid. These are bold, striking elements that don’t entirely seem to fit together, but The Long Walk is exquisitely constructed in a way that reveals its puzzlebox methods slowly, building toward an emotional end that ties all its genres, timelines, and threads together in a startling, impressive way. — TR

• Mattie Do’s sci-fi ghost story The Long Walk defines a whole new wave of horror

The Long Walk is available to watch on Shudder , AMC+ through Prime Video for free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu.

Also receiving votes:

Three Thousand Years of Longing , The Menu , The Fabelmans , Petite Maman, In Front of Your Face, Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul , Resurrection, Mad God , Lost Bullet 2 , Marcel the Shell With Shoes On , Babylon , Bodies Bodies Bodies , Jackass Forever , Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday , Memoria , Elvis , Benediction , Dual , Emily the Criminal , Fire of Love , Montana Story , Thallumaala, Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe , Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , Moonage Daydream , The Munsters , Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio , The Lost City , Goncharov (1973), The Deer King , The Innocents , The Last Thing Mary Saw , White Noise , Armageddon Time

The ballots

Every staff member who submitted a ballot is listed below, in alphabetical order by last name. While some staff members submitted more than 10 movies, only the top 10 are listed here. Some ballots may change as people catch up with more new releases in December — be sure to check back!

Toussaint Egan Associate curation editor

• Decision to Leave
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
• Resurrection
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

Austen Goslin Assignment editor, entertainment

Zosha Millman Editor, TV

• Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul

Matt Patches Deputy editor, entertainment

• The Fabelmans
• Jackass Forever

Chris Plante Editor-in-chief

• Petite Maman
• Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Petrana Radulovic Staff writer, entertainment

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Goncharov (1973) remastered
• The Lost City

Joshua Rivera Staff writer, entertainment

• Bodies Bodies Bodies
• Three Thousand Years of Longing

Tasha Robinson Editor, film and streaming

Pete Volk Curation editor

• In Front of Your Face

Oli Welsh Editor

• White Noise

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The Best Biographies of 2022

From celebrity bios to experimental memoirs, find the best biographies 2022 had to offer to add to your reading list!

Summer Loomis

Summer Loomis has been writing for Book Riot since 2019. She obsessively curates her library holds and somehow still manages to borrow too many books at once. She appreciates a good deadline and likes knowing if 164 other people are waiting for the same title. It's good peer pressure! She doesn't have a podcast but if she did, she hopes it would sound like Buddhability . The world could always use more people creating value with their lives everyday.

View All posts by Summer Loomis

The following are the best biographies 2022 had to offer, according to my brain and my tastes. And I know it might sound like something everyone says, but it was really hard to pick them this year. Like many people, I love “best of” lists for the year, even when I disagree with the titles that make the cut. There is something about narrowing the field to “the best” that makes me excited to read the list and see what I’ve read already and which gems I’ve missed that year. If you want to look back at some of the titles Book Riot chose in 2021, try this best books of 2021 by genre or best books for 2020 . Both will probably quadruple your TBR, but they’re super fun to read anyway.

For 2022 in particular, there were a ton of excellent titles to choose from, in both biographies and memoirs. I am not being polite here but let me just say that it was genuinely hard to choose. To make it easier on myself, I have included some memoirs to pair with the best biographies of 2022 below. If you don’t see your absolute favorite, it’s either because I didn’t like it (I don’t believe in spending time on books I don’t like) or because I ran out of space. And it was most likely the latter!

His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Samuels and Olorunnipa are two Washington Post journalists who meticulously researched Floyd’s personal history in order to better understand not only his life and experiences before his death, but also the systemic forces that eventually contributed to his murder. While very interesting, this is also a harder read and very frustrating at times as there is so much loss wrapped up into this story. Definitely one of the best biographies of 2022 and one that I think will be read for years to come.

Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird by Gene Andrew Jarrett

This is one of those classic biographies that I think readers will just love diving into. Rich in detail and nuance, it drops readers into Dunbar’s life and times, offering a fascinating look at both the literary and personal life of this great American poet. If you are able to read on audio, you may want to check out actor Mirron E. Willis’s excellent narration.

Didn’t We Almost Have it All: In Defense of Whitney Houston by Gerrick Kennedy

Maybe you’re a huge fan or maybe you don’t know who Whitney Houston was, but either way, you can still read this and enjoy it. Kennedy is very clear that he didn’t set out to write a traditional biography. He wasn’t trying to dig up new “dirt” about the singer or to ask people in her life to reflect back on her now that she has been gone for 10 years. Instead, Kennedy tackles something deeper and possibly harder: to see and appreciate Houston as the fully-formed and talented human being that she was and to understand in full her influence over popular culture and music.

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Finding Me by Viola Davis

If you are also interested in reading a memoir from 2022, you could pair Whitney Houston’s biography with Viola Davis’s book. It was a title I saw everywhere in 2022, but didn’t pick up until the end of the year. My only two cents to add to this strong choice is that I was also just about the last person on earth who hadn’t heard about Davis’s childhood. Please don’t go into this without knowing at least something about what she had to overcome. However, despite all that, I still think it is an excellent and ultimately uplifting read. Content warnings include domestic violence, child endangerment, physical and sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault, drug addiction, and animal death. And also the unrelentingly grinding nature of poverty.

Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee by Daryl Joji Maeda 

This is a much more academic presentation of Bruce Lee and the myriad of ways he can be “read” in his connections and contributions to American pop culture. If you or someone you know is itching to read an extremely detailed and deeply considered look at Lee’s life, then this is the book for you. If you read on audio, be sure to check out David Lee Huynh’s narration.

We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story by Simu Liu

If you want to read something much lighter but still connected to Asian representation in Western movies, you could do worse than Liu’s 2022 memoir. In comparison to other books on this list, this felt like a much lighter read to me, but it is not without some heavier moments. While I am not a superfan of Liu (because I’m not really a superfan of anyone), I did enjoy learning about Liu’s childhood and especially hearing little details like that his grandparents called him a nickname that basically translated to “little furry caterpillar” as a child. I mean, is there anything more adorable for a kid?

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya

This is another meaty biography that readers will just adore. Complex and fascinating, von Neumann’s curiosity was legendary and his contributions are so far-reaching that it is hard to imagine any one person undertaking them all. This is a good choice for readers who are fascinated by mathematics, big personalities, and intellectual puzzles.

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

This is another best biography of 2022 that many, many readers will want to sink into. The audio is also by the author so you may want to read it that way. Whether someone reads it with eyes or ears (or both!), this book is sure to interest many curious Christie fans. And if Worsley’s biography isn’t enough for you, you may also enjoy this breakdown of why Christie is one of the best-selling novelists of all time or these 8 audiobooks for Agatha Christie fans .

The School that Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler by Deborah Cadbury

Cadbury writes a fascinating biography of Anna Essinger, a schoolteacher who managed to smuggle her students out of a Germany succumbing to Hitler’s rise to power and all the horror that was to follow. Essinger’s bravery and clear-eyed understanding of what was happening around her is amazing. This is a thrilling and fascinating biography readers will no doubt find inspirational.

The Escape Artist: The Man who Broke out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland

Freedland is a British journalist who has written this thoroughly engrossing book about Rudolf Vrba, a man who managed to escape from Auschwitz. It’s no surprise that this is a very important but difficult read. For those who can manage it, I highly recommend immersing oneself in this historical nonfiction biography about a man who survived some of the darkest events of human history.

That is my list of the best biographies of 2022, with a few memoirs for those who are interested. And now of course, I need to mention several titles I have yet to get to from 2022: Hua Hsu’s Stay True , Zain Asher’s Where the Children Take Us , Fatima Ali’s Savor: A Chef’s Hunger for More , and Dan Charnas and Jeff Peretz’s Dilla Time , to name a few!

Also Bernardine Evaristo published Manifesto: On Never Giving Up in 2022 and somehow it slipped through the cracks of my TBR. I will have to make time for that one soon.

If you still need more titles to explore, try these 50 best biographies or 20 biographies for kids . And to that latter list, I might add that a children’s biography came out about Octavia Butler in 2022 called Star Child by Haitian American author Ibi Zoboi, so you might want to check that out too!

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The Best Films of 2022, So Far

Here are the movies that our critics say have made the year a strong one onscreen.

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A little over halfway through 2022, the year in movies has already been intriguing, with one of the best-reviewed releases so far topping the box office. That would be “Top Gun: Maverick.” But if you’ve already seen it and want to catch up on other strong films, I asked The Times’s co-chief critics, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, for their favorites. Here they are, in no particular order. — Stephanie Goodman

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

The story: A laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) is stressed out. Her husband is filing for divorce. Her daughter is depressed and angry at her. And to top it off, the I.R.S. is auditing her. When she goes in to fight the audit, her encounter with an unbending bureaucrat sets off a multiverse romp that showcases the lives she could have lived (and the hot-dog fingers she could have had) and, more important, different paths for her relationships.

A.O. Scott’s take: “The antic cleverness serves a sincere and generous heart,” our critic wrote of the film directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who work under the name the Daniels. “Yes, the movie is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down — and also right on the surface — it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.”

Read the review , and interviews with Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan , who plays her husband. You may remember Quan, who started off as a child actor, as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

Watch: It’s still in some theaters, or you can buy it on major digital platforms . Also watch an Anatomy of a Scene with the directors.

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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022

Featuring buster keaton, jean rhys, bernardine evaristo, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Assured and affecting … A powerful and bracing memoir … This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.”

–Lynn Enright ( The Irish Times )

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment …

There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

4. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

5.  Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove)

13 Rave • 4 Positive

“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing, even unsettling … With ribald humour and admirable candour, Evaristo takes us on a tour of her sexual history … Characterized by the resilience of its author, it is replete with stories about the communities and connections Evaristo has cultivated over forty years … Invigoratingly disruptive as an artist, Evaristo is a bridge-builder as a human being.”

–Emily Bernard ( The Times Literary Supplement )

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland (Harper)

12 Rave • 3 Positive

“Compelling … We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take … His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read … The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg’s brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.”

–Laurie Hertzel ( The Star Tribune )

3. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour (W. W. Norton & Company)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“…illuminating and meticulously researched … paints a deft portrait of a flawed, complex, yet endlessly fascinating woman who, though repeatedly bowed, refused to be broken … Following dismal reviews of her fourth novel, Rhys drifted into obscurity. Ms. Seymour’s book could have lost momentum here. Instead, it compellingly charts turbulent, drink-fueled years of wild moods and reckless acts before building to a cathartic climax with Rhys’s rescue, renewed lease on life and late-career triumph … is at its most powerful when Ms. Seymour, clear-eyed but also with empathy, elaborates on Rhys’s woes …

Ms. Seymour is less convincing with her bold claim that Rhys was ‘perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.’ However, she does expertly demonstrate that Rhys led a challenging yet remarkable life and that her slim but substantial novels about beleaguered women were ahead of their time … This insightful biography brilliantly shows how her many battles were lost and won.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Wall Street Journal )

4. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Grisly yet inspiring … Fitzharris depicts her hero as irrepressibly dedicated and unfailingly likable. The suspense of her narrative comes not from any interpersonal drama but from the formidable challenges posed by the physical world … The Facemaker is mostly a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, but as Gillies himself well knew—grappling daily with the unbearable suffering that people willingly inflicted on one another—failure was never far behind.”

5. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis (Knopf)

8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life —at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece … This will doubtless be the primary reference on Keaton’s life for a long time to come … the worse Keaton’s life gets, the more engrossing Mr. Curtis’s book becomes.”

–Farran Smith Nehme ( The Wall Street Journal )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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