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That does not make this an objective or permanent ranking. “Best” can mean the year’s most acclaimed film, the most ambitious piece of cinema, the most influential release, the best documentary, or simply the movie audiences most enjoyed. This list weighs critical consensus, awards recognition, formal achievement, emotional power, cultural impact, and rewatchability. The result is a ranked top 10 followed by essential recommendations by category.
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The 10 best movies of 2022
The ranking below focuses on films released during the 2022 awards cycle. The 95th Academy Awards took place in 2023, but recognized movies from 2022.
1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
Best for: Viewers who want one film to deliver comedy, action, science fiction, family drama, and genuine emotional weight.
#1 Best Overall
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Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s audacious film is the broadest recommendation of the year. Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a laundromat owner pulled into a conflict spanning multiple parallel universes. The premise gives the directors permission to move between deadpan absurdity, spectacular action, philosophical melancholy, and a deeply personal story about a mother, daughter, husband, and fractured family.
Its greatest achievement is not the multiverse mechanics but the way the film makes cosmic scale serve intimate feelings. The result is chaotic by design, yet unusually accessible. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, and James Hong give the film a human center amid its deliberately overloaded visual and comic invention.
The Academy’s recognition confirms its position as the defining awards-season film of 2022, but its strongest case is its combination of originality and audience pleasure. It is funny, moving, visually restless, and rewarding on a second viewing.
Content note: Frequent violence, crude humor, sexual references, grief, family conflict, and emotionally intense material.
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Own it: If you prefer physical media, check the current region, format, stock, and price for the Everything Everywhere All at Once Blu-ray or A24’s collector’s edition before buying.
2. Tár
Best for: A demanding character study about power, reputation, artistic authority, and institutional failure.
Cate Blanchett gives one of the defining performances of the decade as Lydia Tár, a world-famous conductor whose carefully maintained authority begins to collapse. Todd Field’s film is controlled, cold, and deliberately ambiguous. It asks viewers to study the gap between public achievement and private conduct without reducing its central figure to an easy explanation.
Tár is structured around performance: the performance of conducting, teaching, leadership, public relations, and self-invention. Its long scenes and precise dialogue reward attention, while Blanchett’s physical command makes Lydia’s charisma and intimidation equally convincing. The film received Academy nominations for Best Picture, directing, actress, cinematography, editing, and other categories.
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This is not the most relaxing recommendation on the list, but it may be the richest film for post-credits discussion.
Content note: Psychological abuse, sexual misconduct themes, manipulation, implied violence, and disturbing power dynamics.
3. Aftersun
Best for: Quiet emotional drama, fragmented memory, and films that become more powerful after they end.
Charlotte Wells’s debut feature follows Sophie, who looks back on a holiday she took with her father, Cal, when she was a child. The film appears simple on the surface: a parent and daughter share time at a resort. But the adult Sophie’s memories, partial understanding, and flashes of an older emotional reality gradually reshape what we are watching.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallPaul Mescal’s performance is restrained rather than demonstrative. Cal is affectionate and attentive, but there are moments when his private distress breaks through the holiday’s routine. Wells avoids explanatory speeches, allowing gestures, gaps, video recordings, and disconnected images to carry the film’s meaning.
Aftersun was strongly represented in year-end critics’ selections, including a first-place vote in the Sight & Sound poll, and Mescal received an Academy Award nomination for leading actor. It is an ideal choice for viewers who value emotional precision over plot mechanics.
Content note: Depression, parental distress, implied self-harm, grief, and emotionally difficult family material.
4. The Banshees of Inisherin
Best for: Bleak comedy, unforgettable dialogue, and a friendship story that turns increasingly tragic.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteMartin McDonagh sets this darkly funny drama on a remote Irish island in 1923. Pádraic is devastated when his longtime friend Colm abruptly decides that he no longer wants to speak with him. What begins as a small social rupture becomes an escalating dispute about time, legacy, loneliness, and the value of an ordinary life.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson anchor the film with performances that balance absurdity and pain. Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan are equally important to the film’s emotional structure, providing perspectives beyond the central friendship. The island’s beautiful landscape contrasts with the increasingly harsh consequences of Colm’s decision.
The film earned Academy nominations for Best Picture, directing, acting, screenplay, editing, and supporting categories. It is both a finely crafted comedy and a “feel-bad” film about the damage people can do when pride becomes more important than kindness.
Content note: Animal injury, self-harm imagery, violence, grief, and strong language.
5. The Fabelmans
Best for: Viewers interested in filmmaking, family, artistic ambition, and the way memory edits real life.
Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film follows Sammy Fabelman as he discovers cinema while trying to understand his parents and the tensions within his family. The movie is not simply a celebration of Spielberg’s career. It is also a portrait of a boy using a camera to process experiences he cannot otherwise articulate.
Gabriel LaBelle plays Sammy, while Michelle Williams and Paul Dano bring contrasting energies to his parents. The film is most interesting when it shows art as both a source of connection and a form of escape. Sammy’s growing technical skill does not solve his family’s problems, but it changes what he is able to see.
The Fabelmans received Academy nominations for Best Picture, directing, supporting actor, actress, and screenplay. It is warmer and more traditional than several films above it, but its craft and emotional generosity make it a natural choice for movie lovers.
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6. Decision to Leave
Best for: Romantic mystery, elegant visual design, and stories built around ambiguity and obsession.
Park Chan-wook’s film begins as a detective story. A detective investigating a climber’s death becomes increasingly fascinated by the dead man’s widow, who may be a grieving spouse, a suspect, or both. The investigation gradually becomes inseparable from desire, interpretation, and the impossibility of knowing another person completely.
The film’s visual language is exceptionally inventive without turning technique into decoration. Phone calls, reflections, surveillance images, editing transitions, and changes in physical distance all become part of the romance and the mystery. Park keeps the viewer emotionally involved while refusing to make the relationship straightforward.
Decision to Leave was prominent in international critics’ selections and among the year’s best-reviewed films. It is a particularly strong recommendation for viewers who want a film that is simultaneously a police procedural, a love story, and a study of fixation.
Content note: Death, violence, suicide-related material, marital conflict, and obsessive behavior.
7. Top Gun: Maverick
Best for: Large-scale spectacle, practical aerial action, and a crowd-pleasing theatrical experience.
Joseph Kosinski’s sequel could easily have been a nostalgia exercise. Instead, it gives Pete “Maverick” Mitchell a clear dramatic problem: he must train a group of younger pilots for a mission that may cost them their lives, including Rooster, the son of his late friend Goose.
The aerial sequences are the central achievement. The film communicates speed, danger, geography, and character reaction with unusual clarity, giving its action a physical quality that many effects-heavy blockbusters lack. The familiar story of an aging hero also works because Tom Cruise’s performance is matched by the younger ensemble’s competing fears and ambitions.
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Content note: Military combat, crashes, death, grief, and intense action violence.
8. Nope
Best for: Science-fiction horror with ideas about spectacle, exploitation, labor, and the desire to record the impossible.
Jordan Peele’s third feature follows siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood, who run a California horse ranch used for film and television production. After witnessing an unexplained presence in the sky, they attempt to capture proof of it on camera. Their plan connects with the history of cinema, the exploitation of Black labor, the entertainment industry’s appetite for danger, and the human desire to turn mystery into content.
Nope is both a creature feature and a film about looking. Its most memorable set pieces are frightening because the characters do not fully understand what they are seeing, while the film repeatedly questions whether observation is a form of control. The Western setting, widescreen compositions, sound design, and deliberately strange humor give it a scale different from conventional contemporary horror.
It is one of 2022’s most rewarding genre films, especially for viewers willing to discuss its symbolism as well as enjoy its suspense.
Content note: Horror violence, animal danger, disturbing imagery, death, and intense suspense.
9. EO
Best for: Visually adventurous international cinema and an unconventional animal-centered journey.
Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO follows a donkey through changing environments and human encounters. The film does not turn the animal into a talking human substitute. Instead, it uses EO’s limited perspective to make familiar human institutions, cruelty, tenderness, and absurdity appear newly strange.
Its bold colors, electronic score, unusual camera movements, and episodic structure make it one of the year’s most formally adventurous films. The movie can be humane and playful in one scene, then unsettling in the next. It is less interested in conventional narrative explanation than in sensory experience and moral observation.
EO appeared in year-end critics’ selections and received an Academy Award nomination for International Feature Film. It is an excellent alternative for viewers who have already seen the major English-language awards contenders.
Content note: Animal cruelty and danger, violence, disturbing imagery, and bleak treatment of animals.
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Best for: Immersive historical drama, anti-war cinema, and outstanding technical filmmaking.
Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel follows Paul Bäumer as he enters World War I with romantic ideas about military service and encounters industrialized destruction instead. The film emphasizes the physical environment of war: mud, machinery, fire, cold, noise, and bodies. Its technical accomplishments never make combat feel glamorous.
The Academy awarded it International Feature Film, cinematography, production design, makeup and hairstyling, and original score, while it also received a Best Picture nomination. The awards reflect how effectively the film combines production scale with a consistently anti-war perspective.
This is a powerful film, but not a casual recommendation. Its violence is sustained and its emotional outlook is severe.
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Content note: Graphic battlefield violence, death, injury, trauma, and disturbing imagery.
More essential 2022 films
Best documentary: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Laura Poitras’s documentary connects the life and work of photographer Nan Goldin with her activism against the Sackler family and the institutions that accepted money associated with the opioid crisis. It moves between personal history, art, protest, addiction, loss, and collective action. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Documentary Feature and is one of the year’s most important nonfiction releases.
It is especially valuable for documentary viewers because it does not separate Goldin’s artistic life from her political work. Images, archives, testimony, and demonstrations become parts of the same argument about who gets protected by cultural institutions and who bears the cost of public-health catastrophe.
Content note: Addiction, overdose deaths, grief, sexual abuse references, illness, and archival material involving trauma.
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Best class satire: Triangle of Sadness
Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness sends models, billionaires, workers, and other passengers onto a luxury cruise that gradually becomes a laboratory for class power. The film won the 2022 Cannes Palme d’Or and uses escalating humiliation to expose how quickly social hierarchies can shift when money and infrastructure stop offering protection.
Its satire is broad, deliberately uncomfortable, and often grotesque. Viewers who enjoy social comedy with a taste for provocation should put it high on their list.
Best Irish-language drama: The Quiet Girl
The Quiet Girl is a restrained family drama about a withdrawn child sent to stay with relatives during the summer. Its quietness is not emptiness: small gestures, domestic routines, and the gradual experience of safety carry the story. The film received an Academy Award nomination for International Feature Film and is a strong recommendation for viewers who prefer humane, understated storytelling.
Best animated coming-of-age film: Turning Red
Domee Shi’s Turning Red follows Meilin Lee, a teenager whose intense emotions cause her to transform into a giant red panda. The fantasy premise gives physical form to puberty, embarrassment, family expectation, friendship, and cultural identity. Its warmth and specificity make it one of the year’s most accessible animated films, while its energetic visual style keeps it from feeling like a simple lesson about growing up.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsBest stop-motion film: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
This stop-motion reimagining of Pinocchio places the story in fascist-era Italy and treats disobedience, grief, mortality, and compassion with unusual seriousness. Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson’s film is visually tactile and emotionally ambitious. It won the Academy Award for Animated Feature at the 95th Oscars and is a standout recommendation for adults as well as older children.
Content note: Death, war, fascism, grief, and frightening images.
Best comic-book noir: The Batman
Matt Reeves’s The Batman turns Bruce Wayne into a more recognizably detective-centered figure. Its rain-soaked Gotham, crime investigation, production design, and brooding atmosphere draw heavily from film noir and serial-killer thrillers. It is a strong choice for viewers who want comic-book spectacle with a slower, more investigative rhythm.
Best accessible action alternative: Prey
Set in the Comanche Nation in the early 18th century, Prey follows Naru as she confronts the Predator. The film’s lean structure, wilderness setting, and focus on a capable protagonist gave the franchise a welcome change of scale and perspective. It is an easy recommendation for viewers who want exciting genre filmmaking without the awards-season solemnity of the prestige dramas.
Best Indian action epic: RRR
S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR is a maximalist historical action film built from friendship, rebellion, spectacle, and musical set pieces. Its song “Naatu Naatu” won the Academy Award for Original Song, giving the movie a particularly visible place in the 2022 awards conversation. The film’s scale and heightened performances make it ideal for viewers seeking exuberant entertainment rather than naturalism.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which 2022 movie should you watch?
| If you want… | Start with… | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The best overall recommendation | Everything Everywhere All at Once | The widest combination of emotion, invention, humor, action, and rewatchability. |
| A quiet film about memory | Aftersun | Elliptical storytelling and a performance that grows more affecting over time. |
| A difficult prestige drama | Tár | A psychologically exacting study of power and self-deception. |
| A romantic mystery | Decision to Leave | Detective plotting, obsession, and expressive visual design. |
| Big-screen spectacle | Top Gun: Maverick | Clear, physical aerial action with a strong emotional engine. |
| Ambitious horror or science fiction | Nope | A suspenseful genre film about spectacle and exploitation. |
| A documentary | All the Beauty and the Bloodshed | Art, activism, and the opioid crisis connected through Nan Goldin’s story. |
| International art cinema | EO | A formally daring journey experienced largely through a donkey’s perspective. |
| An animated film | Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio | Exceptional stop-motion craft with serious themes. |
| A crowd-pleasing action epic | RRR | Inventive choreography, songs, friendship, and unapologetic scale. |
How critics and awards shape this list
No single review site can settle the question of the best movies of a year. Sight & Sound’s annual poll is useful for international and cinephile consensus, but its 2022 results drew on 93 contributors and 328 nominated choices rather than functioning as a simple popularity chart. Metacritic aggregates professional reviews and helps surface international films and documentaries that may receive less mainstream attention. Rotten Tomatoes provides another broad “best-reviewed” lens, including both art-house titles and accessible releases such as Top Gun: Maverick, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nope, Prey, and Turning Red.
Those scores are snapshots, not permanent objective measurements. Aggregated scores can change as additional reviews are added or databases update their listings. Awards are also evidence of recognition, not a substitute for personal taste. This is why the list balances consensus with films that offer different kinds of achievement.
What to know before choosing a film
- Check the content notes. Several of the strongest films of 2022 deal directly with grief, war, suicide, abuse, addiction, animal cruelty, or graphic violence.
- Do not assume every title is on the same service. Streaming, rental, and purchase availability varies by country, date, edition, and platform. Verify current United States availability title by title before publication or viewing.
- Expect different kinds of pacing. Top Gun: Maverick, Prey, and RRR provide immediate propulsion. Aftersun, Tár, and The Quiet Girl ask for more patience and interpretation.
- Use subtitles when appropriate. Some of the year’s best films, including Decision to Leave, EO, and The Quiet Girl, are international or primarily non-English-language films.
- Separate the release year from the ceremony year. The 2023 Oscars recognized films from the 2022 awards cycle; that does not mean these movies were released in 2023.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best movie of 2022?
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the strongest all-purpose choice. It combines science fiction, comedy, action, family drama, and emotional depth, and it won Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards.
What is the best documentary of 2022?
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is one of the essential documentaries of the year. Laura Poitras’s film follows Nan Goldin’s art and activism against the Sackler family and received an Academy Award nomination for Documentary Feature.
What are the best international movies from 2022?
Strong choices include Decision to Leave, EO, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Quiet Girl, and RRR. They range from romantic mystery and experimental art cinema to war drama, intimate family storytelling, and large-scale Indian action.
What is the best 2022 movie for a general audience?
Start with Everything Everywhere All at Once for a mix of genres and emotion, or Top Gun: Maverick if you want more conventional blockbuster spectacle. Turning Red is an excellent animated option.
Are the 2022 Oscars films from 2022 or 2023?
The 95th Academy Awards ceremony was held in 2023, but it honored films released during the 2022 awards cycle. The films discussed here are generally 2022 releases.
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Start with Everything Everywhere All at Once if you want the best single recommendation. Choose Aftersun for intimate emotion, Tár for a demanding character study, Top Gun: Maverick for spectacle, Nope for ambitious genre filmmaking, or All the Beauty and the Bloodshed for a major documentary. The strongest 2022 viewing list is not the one that pretends to produce a universal answer; it is the one that helps you find the kind of excellence you want to watch.
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