The best and worst movies of 2022: From 'Nope' to 'Blonde'

'Wicked': 4 out of 5 stars Film critic Richard Crouse shares his take on newly-released movies including 'Wicked', 'Gladiator II' and more.

BEST AND WORST MOVIES OF 2022

For movie theatres, 2022 was a whole new ballgame. After years of lockdowns and patrons unsure about sitting cheek to jowl with masked and unmasked strangers, the film industry rallied to get audiences back in seats.

And it was a year of big swings and foul balls at the movies.

Filmmakers like Damian Chazelle, Alejandro Iñárritu and James Cameron swung for the fences, delivering three hour plus epics that, love them or loathe them, attempted to lure people back to theatres with spectacle and storytelling. Some films knocked it out of the park, while others struck out. Good and bad, though, returning to theatres reminded us that the cinematic experience is the best way to watch a movie. Movies like “Babylon” and “Top Gun: Maverick” offered unique experience; the chance to have an exciting, communal event after years of pandemic isolation.

Not all of 2022’s movies were great. To torture the baseball metaphor just a little bit more, here are my cinematic homeruns and strikes for 2022

BEST OF THE YEAR:

BABYLON

SYNOPSIS: “Babylon,” an epic film starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, is a tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, that traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.

REVIEW: There is nothing modest about “Babylon,” the three plus hour epic from “Whiplash” director Damian Chazelle. It is unapologetically epic in themes, in length and in sheer off-the-wall exuberance. A multicharacter treatise on the movies and knowing when to leave the party, it is “Boogie Nights” by way of Fellini’s “Satyricon” with a dash of “Singin’ in the Rain” thrown in for good measure. Love it or hate it, and there are valid reasons for either response, it is audacious, chaotic, vulgar, and, like its leading lady, it always makes a scene. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo and a stacked list of supporting players, including Tobey Maguire, Olivia Wilde, Flea and “SNL’s” Chloe Fineman, among others, are given lots to do, but the real star is Chazelle. “Babylon” is big and sloppy, but Chazelle shoots for the moon in a way that few other recent films have dared.

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

SYNOPSIS: In “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Colin Farrell plays a character devastated when his best friend, played by Brendan Gleeson, announces he doesn’t want to be friends any longer. The fracture in their friendship becomes the talk of their tiny island town and leads to some startling consequences.

REVIEW:“The Banshees of Inisherin” would be worth the price of admission only for the inventive use of colloquial Irish swearing. Come for the cussing, but stay for the performances and the palpable sense of devastation that comes when a friendship ends, and there is no one to share a pint with at the local pub. It is a pleasure to see Farrell and Gleeson together again for the first time since they co-starred in In Bruges. There’s an undefinable chemistry between them, one that suggests they have a deep bond, which makes the break in their on-screen friendship so effective.

ELVIS

SYNOPSIS: Told from the point of view of Elvis Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker, “Elvis,” charts the singer’s rise from the birth of rock ‘n roll of the late 1950s, through to the cheesy Hollywood years and legendary 1968 Comeback Special to the Las Vegas rise and fall, as Elvis and the Colonel shimmied and shook their way to the top of the charts and into the history books.

REVIEW: “Elvis” is a great looking movie. A pop art explosion that vividly essays the story’s various time frames and styles, it makes an impact visually and sonically. Director Baz Luhrmann will make your eyeballs dance. Top that off with a performance from Austin Butler, who plays the King, that will make your gold TCB chains rattle, as he plays Elvis through several stages of his life, handing in in a rounded performance that transcends an impersonation of someone who spawned a generation of impersonators.

EMILY THE CRIMINAL

SYNOPSIS:The crime drama “Emily the Criminal,” starring Aubrey Plaza, uses ripped-from-the-headlines topics—student debt, the terrible job market and the gig economy—to fuel a story of a search for liberation.

REVIEW: Director John Patton Ford and Plaza craft a portrait of Emily, a millennial fighting for her piece of the American Dream, even though it remains just out of her reach. She is a complex character, edgy yet sympathetic, messy but focused. Plaza gives voice to Emily’s frustration of being forever punished for a mistake, but never panders to the audience in an attempt to be likable. She has lost faith in the polite society that hasn’t afforded her opportunity, so she steps outside it, and doesn’t look back. We may not make the same decisions as she, but her motivations, under the weight of a future filled with student debt and crappy jobs, come off as understandable. That is a credit to Plaza’s performance that reveals both Emily’s vulnerability and her steeliness.

Thanks to Plaza, “Emily the Criminal” is a fascinating character study, but crime aspects of the story are just as compelling. Like its main character, the movie is a mix of elements. Social commentary, crime drama, a hint of romance and character work, whose sum fit together like puzzle pieces.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

SYNOPSIS: In the wild action sci-fi movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a Chinese immigrant is swept up in an adventure, where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led.

REVIEW: You can say a lot of things about “Everything Everywhere All At Once” but you can’t say you’ve ever seen anything quite like it before. An eye-popping reflection on the power of kindness and love to heal the world’s problems, it is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. The directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known collectively as The Daniels, mix and match everything from family drama and tax problems to martial-arts and metaphysics into a whimsical story that moves at the speed of light.

FIRE OF LOVE

SYNOPSIS: Katia and Maurice Krafft were the Jacques Cousteaus of volcanology. Their groundbreaking footage and photographs of Mount St. Helens and others, are as epic as they are educational, charting otherwise unfamiliar territory. The documentary “Fire of Love” captures not only the Krafft’s (ultimately tragic) love of volcanoes, but their love for one another.

REVIEW: The volcano scenes are truly memorable, but it is the relationship between Katia and Maurice that gives the movie real depth. Their bond is evident in their joy, the sheer exuberance on display. The scenes of them talking are limited to talk show appearances and the odd bit of in situ dialogue, but their bond as soul mates, living and loving the life they’ve chosen, is undeniable. They are not stuffy scientists, but passionate, funny seekers with a philosophical bent to their understanding of the natural world.

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

SYNOPSIS: In “Glass Onion,” the sequel to the Daniel Craig hit “Knives Out,” tech billionaire Miles Bron, played by Ed Norton, invites his friends for a getaway on his private Greek island. When someone turns up dead, Detective Benoit Blanc is put on the case.

REVIEW:There is a lot of talk of disrupters in “Glass Onion.” Each of the guests have caused radical change in their industries, a fact pointed out by Bron as the reason they are all friends. It also applies to writer/director Rian Johnson. He pays homage to a well-worn format, the Agatha Christie ensemble cast and elaborate crime reveal, but breathes new life into the tried-and-true format, updating and disrupting the structure.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

SYNOPSIS: In “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” Jenny Slate voices Marcel, an adorable one inch mollusk with one googly eye and a pair of pink shoes. Once part of a community of shells, Marcel and his grandmother now live alone as the sole survivors of a mysterious tragedy. However, when a documentary filmmaker discovers them, the short film he posts online brings Marcel millions of passionate fans, and the hope of finding his long-lost family.

REVIEW: “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” is shot documentary style, with beautiful stop-motion animation to bring Marcel and Connie to life. The star of the show is Slate’s heartfelt vocal performance, at once childlike and wise. Marcel is a singular character. Adorable, it’s as if he just wandered over from a Pixar movie, bringing with him personality to spare but also a level of self-awareness and empathy rarely played out on such a high level in family movies. It may be big screen entertainment about a mollusk, but it feels personal and intimate

THE MENU

SYNOPSIS: In “The Menu,” a new satire starring Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy, a young couple travel to a remote island to eat at one of the world’s most exclusive restaurants. Unbeknownst to them, the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises and unexpected ingredients.

REVIEW:“The Menu” is buoyed by terrific performances, particularly from Fiennes as the perfectionist chef and Taylor-Joy as the pragmatic Margot, but most importantly, because all the characters are as sour as vinegar, you never quite know where the story is going. That unpredictability is exciting, leaving the characters, and the audience, walking on eggshells and that’s why I gave “The Menu,” now playing in theatres, 4 out of 5 stars.

NOPE

SYNOPSIS: In “Nope,” the new sci fi film from director Jordan Peele, caretakers at a California horse ranch encounter a mysterious force that affects human and animal behaviour.

REVIEW: Like Jordan Peele’s other films, “Get Out” and “Us,” “Nope” has jump scares and disturbing images but this isn’t a horror film. It’s a sci fi movie that explores the fear of the unknown by way of Hollywood Westerns, monster flicks, and of course iconic Steven Spielberg sci fi films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” These homages are lovingly assembled to create something fresh, but students of film will have a hoot dissecting the movie’s visual influences and Peele’s obvious love of the form. It’s an ambitious movie that feels less focused than Peele’s other films, but nonetheless, “Nope” earns a Yup.

MOONAGE DAYDREAM

SYNOPSIS: “Moonage Daydream” is a look into legendary artist David Bowie’s sound and vision like no other. It is an immersive look at the life and career of the legendary artist, that features previously unreleased footage from Bowie's personal archivesand is the first film to be officially authorized by the musician’s estate.

REVIEW: Director Brett Morgen has created an experience, a collage of sound and vision, that over the two-and-a-quarter-hour running time creates a portrait that doesn’t attempt to define the artist as much as it does to illuminate his ever-changing philosophical mindset. To achieve this Morgen mixes never-before-seen footage and performances, forty remastered songs spanning the singer’s entire career and, as narration, excerpts from fifty years of Bowie interviews.

There are no talking heads or re-enactments, and neither is this one long music video. It’s an ephemeral collection of ideas and images about an enigmatic artist who once said, “I’ve never been sure of my personality. I’m a collector. I collect personalities and ideas.”

Fragmented and almost overwhelming in its sensory effect, “Moonage Daydream” is a compelling portrait with a solid intellectual underpinning, a philosophical edge and an emotional component for diehard Bowie fans. It also has a good beat and you can dance to it… most of it anyway.

THE OUTFIT

SYNOPSIS: In “The Outfit” Oscar winning actor Mark Rylance plays a tailor who must outwit a dangerous group of mobsters in order to survive one fateful night.

REVIEW: Manipulation, deceit, double dealings and death are the name of the game in this literate, adult thriller. Although “The Outfit” was written for the screen by director Graham Moore, who took home an Oscar for writing “The Imitation Game,” it feels like a stage play. From the minimal sets—the whole thing takes place in two rooms—to the intimate performances and the intricate, wordy script, it is unabashedly and wonderfully theatrical.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK 

SYNOPSIS: In “Top Gun: Maverick,” the thirty-six years-in-the-making sequel to the sky-high 1986 Tom Cruise movie, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is called back to Top Gun, the United States Navy training program where he learned fighter and strike tactics and technique. This time he’ll be training twelve of the brightest and best recent Top Gun graduates for a dangerous mission to locate and destroy an underground uranium enrichment site.

REVIEW: “Top Gun: Maverick” is a sequel that plays it safe with the story, but lets it rip in the blockbuster action sequences, giving the audience the expected need for speed. But what really sets the new and old films apart is Cruise. He was a movie star then, and he’s a movie star now, but with age, the stakes for his character are higher. Maverick is a still a hotshot, but here the character is tempered by the sins of the past and a real concern for the future. Cruise’s work shaves some of the hypermasculine edges off Maverick to reveal a more human and humane character than the first time around. It centers the movie with some earthbound emotion to counter the sky-high action and that’s why I gave “Top Gun: Maverick,” now playing ion theatres, 4 out of 5 stars.

WOMEN TALKING

SYNOPSIS: Based on a 2018 Miriam Toews novel of the same name, Sarah Polley’s drama “Women Talking” follows eight women who conduct a secret meeting in a hayloft to discuss their options after learning that they have been repeatedly drugged and raped by men in their tightly knit religious colony. Inspired by real-life sexual abuse that occurred at the ultraconservative Mennonite community Manitoba Colony in eastern lowlands of Bolivia, the film stars Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, and Jessie Buckley.

REVIEW: Polley, who wrote as well as directed, ensures that each of the characters bring dynamic notions to their performances, and aren’t just placeholders representing opposing ideas for the sake of drama. The set-up, based on true events in a religious community in Boliva, offers a fascinating window into a fight for survival and the opportunity to examine the situation from a variety of thoughtful viewpoints.

A film, largely set in one room, whose action is verbal, not physical, could have been dry or, at the least, feel stage bound but Polley’s deep dive into the human condition crackles with life. She has carefully calibrated every line, every pause, to create forward momentum as the life-changing deliberations move toward their conclusion.

“Women Talking” is elegant filmmaking buoyed by emotional intelligence and powerhouse performances.

WORST OF THE YEAR:

AMSTERDAM

SYNOPSIS: In the movie “Amsterdam,” the quirky new film starring Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie, and now playing in theatres, three friends witness a murder, become suspects, and uncover one of the most outrageous authoritarian plots in American history.

REVIEW: Reviewing “Amsterdam” stings. The production is first rate, from Academy Award nominated director David O. Russell, to the a-list cast to the ambitious script that attempts to link events of the past to today’s headlines. But, and this is what stings, the film is definitely less than the sum of its parts. From the off-kilter tone, part screwball, part deadly serious, to the glacial pacing, which makes the already long two-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time seem much longer, and the script, which casts too wide a wide net in hope of catching something compelling, “Amsterdam” flails about, lost in its own ambition. This is the kind of story, it’s easy to imagine, the Coen Brothers could make look effortless, but Russell does not stick the landing.

BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS

SYNOPSIS: In “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the latest film from Oscar winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, an acclaimed journalist-turned-documentarian goes on an introspective journey to reconcile with the past, the present and his Mexican identity.

REVIEW: Iñárritu is a master of cinematographic language, but the mix and match of Silverio’s rambling search for meaning with these flamboyant images, adds up to a showy, self-referential film, one that is too much enamored with itself. The big sequences feel as if Iñárritu is flexing a muscle, pumping the movie up with beefy visuals that exist simply for the sake of filling the screen, not filling out the storytelling.

BLONDE

SYNOPSIS: “Blonde,” written and directed by Andrew Dominik, is an impressionistic look at the rise to fame and the demise of actress Marilyn Monroe.

REVIEW: “Blonde” is an art house biography. Fragmented and often impressionistic, it attempts to take you, not just inside Marilyn’s life, but also her psyche and body. Dominik’s camera does offer never-before-seen views of Monroe, from the considerable nudity to literally travelling inside her womb. But to what effect? The insights into Monroe’s life and career, that she was, essentially, two sides of the same coin, Norma Jean on one, Marilyn on the other, aren’t original, even if their daring presentation is. I’m sure “Blonde” won’t be the last Marilyn Monroe biopic, but it will be the last one I devote three hours to watching. Not because it is definitive, but because I think that everything that needs to be said about the later movie star has already been said.

DEEP WATER

SYNOPSIS: In “Deep Water,” directed by Adrian Lyne, Ben Affleck stars as Vic, a man whose wife Melinda, played by Ana de Armas, embarks on a series of very public affairs. When she is killed, Vic becomes the prime suspect.

REVIEW: Lyne, in his first film in twenty years, seems unable to tease out the tension from the love-hate story, sexual or otherwise. The repeated affair/disappearance cycle gets old fast and Lyne does little to make us care about any of them, Vic, Melinda or her unfortunate boyfriends. A tepid psychosexual cuckold tale with a side of murder and loose ends galore, “Deep Water” wastes its stars in a movie that does not rise to the challenge of exploring the story’s themes of morality, murder and marriage.

FIRESTARTER

SYNOPSIS: In “Firestarter,” a remake of the Stephen King story, now playing in theatres, a couple desperately try to hide their daughter, Charlie, from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for turning fire into a weapon of mass destruction.

REVIEW: Set to an interesting score by legendary director John Carpenter (with Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies), who was supposed to helm the original film, the new version gets the soundtrack right, but most everything else feels like a backfire, rather than an accelerant.

THE INVITATION

SYNOPSIS: In the horror film “The Invitation,” a young American woman takes a DNA test and discovers she has an extended family in England. When she accepts an invitation to attend a lavish wedding in the English countryside, she discovers twisted secrets about her family history.

REVIEW: What begins as a fish out of water story quickly turns sinister as the things that go bump in the night start bumping but don’t expect much more than a few carefully crafted jump scares. Director Jessica M. Thompson keeps the horror strictly for folks who thought “Twilight” was the best vampire movie ever. That’s not to say there isn’t a well-staged scene or two in “The Invitation,” but when the best scene in a vampire romance is a sequence where the lead gets a clumsy manicure, it suggests deficits in the horror department.

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION 

SYNOPSIS: “Jurassic World Dominion,” which stomped through theatres worldwide in 2022, takes place four years after Isla Nublar was destroyed. Dinosaurs now live—and hunt—alongside humans all over the world. Will human beings remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history's most fearsome creatures?

REVIEW: “Jurassic World Dominion” has lots of dinosaurs and some fan service but misses the mark otherwise. It is a talky dino-bore with none of the suspense that made “Jurassic Park” edge of your seat stuff. The action scenes are murky and few-and-far-between, there’s lots of dodgy CGI and unlike the reconstituted dinosaurs, it feels lifeless. Near the beginning of the film Dern’s character Ellie sees a small dinosaur and coos, “this never gets old.” She clearly hasn’t seen “Jurassic World Dominion.” Luckily Goldblum reappears after a quick cameo off the top to shake things up with his trademarked droll wit in the third act.

THE LOST CITY

SYNOPSIS: “The Lost City” stars Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Brad Pitt and Daniel Radcliffe in a story about a reclusive author who gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire. He hopes she can lead him to an ancient city's lost treasure described in her latest novel. Determined to prove he can be a hero in real life and not just on the pages of her books, handsome cover model Alan sets off to rescue her.

REVIEW: Not funny enough to be a comedy with some action and not action packed enough to be an action comedy, “The Lost City” is somewhere in the mushy middle. The cast is game but the movie never quite gels.

ME TIME

SYNOPSIS: Kevin Hart (opposite Mark Wahlberg) stars in “Me Time” as a stay-at-home dad whose life is upended by a rare weekend without the family.

REVIEW: “Me Time” wastes its two leads in a sea of wasted opportunities. Individually, Hart and Wahlberg bring the funny, so the comedic combo effect should be doubled, but director John “Along Came Polly” Hamburg keeps his two stars apart for most of the film’s first half. By the time their hijinks really begin, the mix of sincerity and silly has already worn thin. Both actors try hard to elevate the poop jokes and frenetic physical comedy, but are left hanging by a script that attempts to mix-and-match adult concerns with juvenile jokes. The result is a movie that feels like it can’t decide who it is for, the poop joke audience or the buddy comedy crowd. “Me Too” is a childish movie that attempts to examine what it means to be an adult.

MORBIUS

SYNOPSIS: In “Morbius” Jared Leto plays Michael Morbius a biochemist who tries to cure himself of a rare blood disease, but when his experiment goes wrong, he inadvertently infects himself with a form of vampirism instead.

REVIEW: It can only be said one way. “Morbius” sucks… more than just blood. Likely undone by a PG-13 rating that must have shaved off some of, what could have been, effective horror elements, it’s a defanged vampire movie with no bite.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

SYNOPSIS: In “Where the Crawdads Sing,” a mystery produced by Reese Witherspoon, a young girl, abandoned by her family, and raised in the marshlands of the south in the 50's, becomes a suspect in a high-profile murder case.

REVIEW: “Where the Crawdads Sing” is a lot of things. It’s a love triangle, a murder mystery, a story of overcoming the odds and yet, none of it really sticks. What could have been a steamy Southern Gothic, ripe with sex and death, is, instead a sleepily paced melodrama that doesn’t deliver on the premise of female empowerment promised by the film’s intriguing lead character.