I initially wrote a massively long post about my love of movies over the last several years, with multiple favorites lists, and then I realized that was ridiculous and I needed to at least split it into two parts. So, my previous movies post became part one, which was kind of just about movies in general and leading up to 2020 and my faves-of-the-decade list… so now we’re at 2020.
I was always up and down with how much attention I gave to new movie releases and stuff, but I pretty much always gave movies some amount of care and attention. And then 2020 hit. The year of 2020 was okay, movie-wise, actually, because theaters shut down, and all new releases were happening on streaming. So I was continuing to pay attention that year, listen to my podcasts, catch as many new movies as I could. I was keeping up enough that I made a top-ten list at the end of that year. I posted that on social media and then I have heavily updated it on Letterboxd over the last couple years, adding ones that I hadn’t seen yet when I made the original list, and moving things around a little (the order is very arbitrary… every time I look at the list I want to movie things around, and there are several I want to revisit and possibly reassess):
And then 2021 hit… that was when things got hard. Movies were being released in theaters but I wasn’t going to theaters. Listening to film podcasts started making me sad. I mostly stopped paying attention to new releases. I started watching mostly TV shows. I started keeping a Diary on Letterboxd in 2021 and logging all the movies I watched—I was still watching movies on streaming sites, but mostly just whatever I came across while browsing. This continued on through 2022. We went and saw Nope in the theater that summer, but we were anxious about it, and it was fine but it didn’t make us excited to keep going to the theaters, so that was the only time we went that year.
In November of 2022 something in me snapped back in to place and I suddenly wanted to watch all the good movies that had been released that year! I started listening to my podcasts again, and started watching some movie YouTube channels. I don’t know why it happened so suddenly, but I just wanted to watch everything! I think it had to do with crossing a line around that time from feeling like I was waiting for things to go back to normal, to coming to terms with the *new normal* and knowing that we were never returning to 2019-life. The movies that had been made were available for me to watch at home, and at that point I’d been watching movies solely at home for two and a half years, so I was used to it, and there was nothing I was waiting for, so I just decided to dive in and catch up on everything I’d missed!
So from November 2022 through January 2023 I watched as many 2022 releases as I possibly could, and then I made a massive favorites list! It was this intense project that I put so much time and thought into, like I was making up for the past two years of not caring about movies. So below is that list in reverse order; it started as my top 25 of the year, and then I since added three more that I didn’t have the ability to watch until later.
Notes about where to watch things: I’ll say where they are currently available to stream at the time I’m writing this, but most are also available for digital rental, and where they are streaming might change by the time you’re reading this. I highly recommend JustWatch (I use the app on my phone but you can just use it in a browser) where you can search any movie (or TV show) and see where it’s available to watch. Also, Kanopy is my favorite streaming service and it’s completely FREE with my public library card! If you don’t have it, look into if it works with your library! (Hoopla is also free with library card and very cool but they don’t have as many movies.)
*JustWatch seems to be having an issue with Kanopy and newer movies—Kanopy is not showing up as an option for a lot of movies that I know are on it, on my app. So if I list Kanopy* that means it’s there for me, but JustWatch doesn’t list it, so maybe it’s not for all libraries, I’m not sure.
And again with the arbitrary ordering… I agonized over the order at the time when I made the list, but now, almost a year later, some of these have stuck with me much more than others and I feel like my order would be quite different if I did it all over again now. I still at least like all the movies though, so whatever it’s fine!
So here they are, my top 28 films of 2022!
28. Three Minutes: A Lengthening. A documentary about a short film snippet of a group of people in a Jewish village in Poland in 1938. Currently streaming on Kanopy and Hulu.
27. Emily the Criminal. (Kinda want to take this off the list because I’m mad at Aubrey Plaza for that fucking milk ad; only partially kidding…) Currently streaming on Netflix.
26. Meet Cute. I think a lot of people didn’t like this because they expected a silly rom-com, which it is not. What it is is a time-travel movie about depression, and I kind of loved it. Currently streaming on Peacock.
25. God’s Country. Intense. Currently streaming on Hulu and AMC+.
24. On the Count of Three. Another comedy about depression, light on the comedy heavy on the depression. Currently streaming on Hulu.
23. Significant Other. Sci-fi horror with some original elements that made me really like it. Currently streaming on Paramount+.
22. Fire Island. Super duper fun. Currently streaming on Hulu.
21. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Icon. Currently streaming on Max and Kanopy*.
20. Riotsville, USA. EXTREMELY relevant today, and also a very engaging doc. Currently streaming on Hulu.
19. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Currently streaming on Netflix.
18. Bros. I know a lot of people didn’t like this, but I thought it was a really cute and fun rom com and I liked the cheesiness and the song at the end! Currently streaming on Prime.
17. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Not for everyone, very slow and not much happens, but it stuck with me and made me think a lot. I will say, I’ve seen people compare Skinamarink to this and I hated that one, so I don’t think they are much alike although I understand the comparison. Currently streaming on Max and Kanopy*.
16. Something in the Dirt. Another weird one that made me think a lot! Currently streaming on Hulu.
15. Prey. Excellent. (A note: I’ve never seen any other Predator movie and that didn’t affect my enjoyment of this one.) Currently streaming on Hulu.
14. Not Okay. I don’t think many people have seen this one, but I think it’s worth watching! Currently streaming on Hulu.
13. She Said. I thought this was fantastic and it hit me very hard and I’m a bit angry that it got little awards attention and I think most people just never watched it. Currently streaming on Prime.
12. Glass Onion. Just a really really fun time! Currently streaming on Netflix.
11. Triangle of Sadness. So much fun. One of the only movies on this list I’ve already watched twice, first alone and then I had to show it to Pete. I had originally squeezed it into my top ten but then I had to add one more later so it got bumped to 11. Currently streaming on Hulu and Kanopy*.
10. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Currently streaming on Paramount+, Showtime, and Kanopy*.
9. Hit the Road. Currently streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Paramount+, and Showtime.
8. The Fallout. Simple but extremely effective for me. Made me a huge fan of Jenna Ortega. Currently streaming on Max.
7. Women Talking. This is one that I wasn’t able to watch until after I made the initial list—I loved it so much that I had to squeeze it into the top ten. Currently streaming on Prime and MGM+.
6. Everything Everywhere All at Once. Currently streaming on Prime, Paramount+, Showtime, and Kanopy*.
5. Aftersun. Currently streaming on Paramount+, Showtime, and Kanopy*.
4. Nope. So so good. These top five were hard to put in order! For awhile I think this was in the number two spot. Currently streaming on Prime.
3. After Yang. One of my favorite genres: quiet drama that’s also sci-fi. By the writer/director of Columbus. Currently streaming on Kanopy*.
2. Petite Maman. By the writer/director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. As an extra bonus, it’s only an hour and 12 minutes long. (This is generally listed as a 2021 release but I went by US release dates.) Currently streaming on Kanopy and Hulu.
And my number 1 of the year: Barbarian! I randomly put it on one night thinking it was just a whatever-horror movie, and WHOA. I tweeted this immediately after watching it: “I just watched this—was planning to do some crafty stuff while watching but once it started I was so tense & not wanting to look away, I ended up watching the entire thing without multitasking (rare for me!!) and pulling Karl onto my lap for comfort when it got scary. Very good!” Then I listened to some podcasts talk about it, and watched some YouTube videos (this is a good one!) and I kept liking it more and more. I watched it again with Pete and it completely held up on a rewatch. It’s just so fucking good. Currently streaming on Hulu and Max (and NO physical media release planned! so sad!!).
So after I finished making that list, I kept on paying attention to new movies, watching whatever I could, listening to my podcasts… I have an in-progress 2023 list where I’m dropping all movies that I give 4 stars or higher, so I’ll finalize that into an official list in January, once I’m able to see all the 2023 releases I want to see. (Frustrating how so many come out right at the end of the year, or have had a very limited release so are on critics’ lists but still aren’t available digitally for the rest of us.)
In the summer we wanted to join the Barbenheimer fun, with Barbie being the one we were actually excited to see, and opening weekend happened to be Pete’s birthday weekend too! So we dressed up in our most Barbie-and-Ken-esque clothes, masked up, and saw it at our local chain theater, which happens to have comfy recliner seats, making it extra spread out. We had a great time and decided we were ready to start seeing movies in the theater again!
The difference between summer 2022 and summer 2023, in terms of comfort level in a movie theater, for me anyway, I think, is that by summer 2023 I’d been required to work in the office part-time for over a year, so I’d gotten very used to being in an indoor space for many hours in a row, wearing a mask, around lots of people not wearing masks. In summer 2022 that wasn’t super normal for me yet and I’d get anxious in a space for a length of time like that; by this year, it’s just life. So being in a theater is comfortable again! Yay!
We’ve now seen eleven movies in the theater this year so far! Some have been great (like Anatomy of a Fall) and others not (hated Saltburn), and there are ones we’ve watched at home that I really wish we’d seen in the theater (most recent was May December). I’m just glad to be going again, I missed it so much!
A final side note, my fave theater experience of the year was not a 2023 film—it was the remastered Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense at the Hollywood Theater, so good!! I’d never seen it before, so seeing it for the first time on the big screen with a crowd was amazing and instantly turned me into a huge Talking Heads fan! I took my Halloween costume idea from it even, Tina Weymouth in the jumpsuit she wore in that doc:
Lee Does Stuff 