Without a doubt, the biggest complaint about my film lists from the past few years was the choice to reduce the total amount of films from 20 to 15. Who are these people that still read a Blogspot page in an age where everybody has moved over to Medium or Substack, and are engaged enough to lodge formal complaints? Don't worry about it, just know that they're 100% real and numerous and pissed.
Well you can delete those death threats you were in the middle of writing for the third year in a row, because the top 20 is back! I was surprised to learn when tallying up the 2022 films I watched that the total was less than what I watched in 2021, which was 65 compared to last year's 69. Despite that decrease, I felt better about this year's output, which had enough quality cinema that I never felt like I had to waste much time with the streaming slop and second-tier blockbusters that we always get. (Please ignore the fact that I saw Black Adam in theaters on its opening weekend.)
As has been the case for the last few years though, the future of cinema still seems pretty bleak. Alot of films toward the top of my list barely made a dent at the box office -- with one of them being a flop of epic proportions -- so who knows how long we'll get the amount of interesting movies that we got in 2022. Let's celebrate them while we can.
The rules: Any film that got their first non-festival release in 2022 -- whether that's theatrically, on VOD, or exclusively on a streaming service -- qualifies for this list.
