This year, I got a subscription to a movie theater. So I saw A LOT of movies, many of them from 2022. So while I saw a scattering of other things, especially when filling out my resolution lists, I do want to specifically shout-out the movies of 2022 and how I felt about them.

Best Movie: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

This was just a stunner of a film, and well-worth the two times I saw it in theaters. Multi-verses have been done to death, mostly by major franchises looking to avoid the consequences of their previous story choices, but Everything, Everywhere engages the topic head-on, is as trippy and maximalist as the story needs, and also tells a moving, realistic story of a mother-daughter relationship. Just beautiful.

Runners Up: Glass Onion, The Menu, Bros

Worst Movie: Men

A movie about misogyny made by someone who doesn’t have anything interesting to say about misogyny. And horrifying birth imagery has been done to death, it can’t be all that your climax is built around.

Runners Up: Firestarter, Smile

Most Frustrating Movie: Tie between See How They Run and Barbarian

Worse than a bad movie, is a bad movie with good parts. See How They Run is a whodunnit with some solid performances and a few fun ideas, but it is absolutely drowned by the filmmakers’ obvious contempt for whodunnits. The best satires come from a place of love, and this movie clearly comes from a place of deep disdain.

The first act of Barbarian is a tight, clean horror set-up that had my skin crawling. I would genuinely recommend that people watch the movie exactly up until it cuts to Jason Long’s character, because the back two-thirds are a ludicrous squish-fest that made my stomach turn more than my skin crawl, and squandered all the good will the first act had garnered.

Runners Up: We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Call Jane

Biggest Surprise: Fall

Not gonna lie, the trailer gave me major doubts about how the premise “two women stuck on a radio tower in the desert” could be stretched to feature-length, but they did it. Fall is no, if you’ll excuse the pun, high art, but it’s a very solid dilemma set-up that makes the most of its unique setting.

Runners Up: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies