Todd McCarthy’s Best Movies of 2022

We are fast approaching the end of the third year of Covid and it is now clear that filmmaking will never be the same again. The habit is over, everyone has become accustomed to watching films at home instead of in the cinema, it is unclear what films people actually watch and what they think about them and it is clear that most people, with few exceptions, the incentive have to mobilize, really freak out and plunge into a theater to see a movie. As a lifelong film fanatic and reviewer for more than a few decades, I’m shocked it’s gotten this far, but I can’t help but pretend I don’t see the writing and images — on the wall .

Given these dire circumstances, it’s been a pretty good year when it comes to quality cinema, as long as you can find out if, when and where a movie you want to see is on, or isn’t on TV yet. Film festivals are happening again, and boss and avatar showed that certain films (action films that were sequels to big hits and meant to be experienced on the big screen) still had viewers to come.

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But I cringe every time I drive past the defunct Cinerama Dome, the former Arclight, and the old Vista, and if you want to see a packed house in Los Angeles, you have to go to the tiny movie theaters made possible by the excision of the buildings are old Los Angeles Feliz. After all, it is still in operation. With the Oscars in what appears to be a downward spiral of continued disorder, and top talent crowding home screens in often terrific series and one-off dramas, it’s easy to see why audiences have little incentive to leave the house unless it’s about Tom . . to see. Cruise or James Cameron will do whatever it takes to deliver thrilling flight films that beg to be experienced on the big screen.

Pop Quiz: A bag of real buttered popcorn for anyone who can actually tell who runs the companies that run the former major studios and green light the important big films designed to prop up the industry. It used to be easy.

But no matter what happens creatively, economically and internationally, good and interesting films will always be made that reward someone’s interest and promise that the talent, the desire and the will are still there.

Below are my picks for the 10 best movies of 2022, in alphabetical order:

No news from the western front (Edward Berger)

Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater)

Avatar: the way of water (James Cameron)

The Banshees by Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

bones and such (Luca Guadagnino)

E.O (Jerzy Skolimowski)

The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)

The Fables (Steven Spielberg)

she said (Mary Schrader)

tar (Todd Field)

What is immediately striking is that on the one hand you have Clash of the Titans, both former Oscar winners James Cameron and Steven Spielberg, in a corner with films that could not be more different, and two essentially unknown women, Joanna Hogg and Maria Schrader , in another, and only two directors of foreign-language entries, Edward Berger and Jerzy Skolimowski, the latter of whom, at 84, certainly attracts attention as one of the rare filmmakers who have come back so strongly from such a old age.

Richard Linklater has to be one of the few directors to ever make an autobiographical animated film, but this year he’s joined by Spielberg to search for very specific childhood memories that fueled his creative instincts. And then there’s Martin McDonagh and Todd Field, both of whom have created dramatic works in which their protagonists push the boundaries of their shared obsessions.

It’s an eclectic list, of course, but it’s full of films that are excitingly different and distinctive, all very personal, impressively made, and once you get past Cameron and Spielberg, they come in very different styles and grow out of very different different seeds.