Every Movie I Saw in 2022

Welcome back to the caveat-free list!

For the first time since 2019, this year’s “Every Movie I Saw” list doesn’t have to include any disclaimers about Oscar eligibility or any talk about how we had to skip seeing movies in theaters. This year, the movies just got to be movies, and ain’t that grand? I celebrated by seeing enough movies to make my longest list in quite some time. It doesn’t quite reach my beginning-of-the-year goal of 100 movies, but I got pretty damn close. And bonus: a lot of them were good! Movies, they’re fun, who knew?

Actually, I guess a lot of filmmakers had some sort of idea, because one of the biggest trends this year was movies about making movies or why people love movies or why movies aren’t what they used to, so on and so forth. They ranged from ones I loved (I am a card-carrying member of the Babylon hive) to ones I hated (more like Empire of Blight, am I right) but overall I appreciated the sentiment, even if it was largely navel-gazing. Movies are great, the people who make them should be proud of them, they should be able to dissect them and look back at them with joy/sadness/anger/melancholy, all the emotions that get put into them and come out of them.

Anyway, please enjoy this list of every movie I saw that was released in 2022. For the binary like/dislike distinction, you can hop down to entry 60 with The Bad Guys, a film that was so perfectly “meh” that every movie above it can be considered a movie I liked, and every movie below it I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. Enjoy or writhe in anger, do whatever my opinions inspire you to do.

(One last thing: On the remarkably small chance that he were to ever read my obscure updated-once-a-year blog, congratulations to Jordan Peele on becoming the first director to make two movies that have topped my year-end lists, which I believe statistically makes him our greatest active filmmaker)

1. Nope

2. Babylon

3. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

4. Everything Everywhere All at Once

5. Turning Red

6. Barbarian

7. Glass Onion

8. Funny Pages

9. The Whale

10. Nanny

11. Aftersun

12. The Banshees of Inisherin

13. Descendant

14. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

15. Tár

16. Men

17. Run and Gun

18. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

19. Cha Cha Real Smooth

20. Fire Island

21. Crimes of the Future

22. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

23. The Menu

24. Elvis

25. Broker

26. The Northman

27. Athena

28. Leonor Will Never Die

29. Fire of Love

30. Decision to Leave

31. Prey

32. The Black Phone

33. The Fabelmans

34. Avatar: The Way of Water

35. The Woman King

36. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

37. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

38. Ambulance

39. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

40. Confess, Fletch

41. Bodies Bodies Bodies

42. RRR

43. Do Revenge

44. Bullet Train

45. The Batman

46. Causeway

47. Deep Water

48. The Gray Man

49. Thor: Love and Thunder

50. Jerry and Marge Go Large

51. Windfall

52. Top Gun: Maverick

53. Hustle

54. A Love Song

55. Beast

56. The Bob’s Burgers Movie

57. See How They Run

58. Holy Spider

59. Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers

60. The Bad Guys

61. Emily the Criminal

62. Spiderhead

63. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul

64. White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

65. The Lost City

66. The Good Nurse

67. X

68. Don’t Worry Darling

69. Significant Other

70. Triangle of Sadness

71. Our Father

72. Women Talking

73. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

74. Wendell and Wild

75. White Noise

76. EO

77. The Greatest Beer Run Ever

78. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

79. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

80. Black Adam

81. Lightyear

82. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

83. Ticket to Paradise

84. Hellraiser

85. Uncharted

86. On the Come Up

87. Living

88. Halloween Ends

89. Death on the Nile

90. Smile

91. Empire of Light

92. Jurassic World Dominion

93. Hocus Pocus 2

94. Moonfall

95. The 355

96. Firestarter

And along with the full list, some awards I like to include just for fun:

Best Director: Jordan Peele, Nope (Runner-up: Charlotte Wells, Aftersun)

Best Actor: Paul Mescal, Aftersun (Runner-up: Brendan Fraser, The Whale)

Best Actress: Tang Wei, Decision to Leave (Runner-up: Dale Dickey, A Love Song)

Best Dog: Sarii, Prey (Runner-up: Jenny*, The Banshees of Inisherin)

Worst Performance: Lily Collins, Windfall (Runner-up: Miles Teller, Top Gun: Maverick)

The Chris Pine Award for Best Performance in a Bad Movie: Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Runner-up: Rob Morgan, Smile)

(For the record, yes, Chris Pine was considered for the Chris Pine Award for his performance in Don’t Worry Darling)

Best Accordion Needledrop: “Apartment for Sale,” Tár (Runner-up: “Another One Rides the Bus,” Weird: The Al Yankovic Story)

Best Scene: Captain’s Dinner, Triangle of Sadness (Runner-up: The Opening Party, Babylon)

Movies I Regretfully Didn’t Get Around To: Saint Omer, Argentina 1985, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Where the Crawdads Sing, Morbius, Scream, Dog, Jackass Forever, Violent Night, Strange World, A Man Called Otto, Devotion, Amsterdam, Pearl, Bros, Terrifier 2, Till, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Bones and All, She Said, Clerks III, Moonage Daydream, Mr. Malcolm’s List, No Bears, Meet Me in the Bathroom, Wildcat, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Armageddon Time, After Yang, Blonde, Catherine Called Birdy, The Son, On the Count of Three, Emergency, The Pale Blue Eye, The Inspection, Stars at Noon, Dos Estaciones, Clara Sola, To Leslie

Movies I Specifically Chose Not To Get Around To: Minions: The Rise of Gru

*I am aware that the character of Jenny in The Banshees of Inisherin is, technically, a donkey. However, at least in spirit, Jenny is a very very good dog.