Peter’s Top 6 Films of 2022

Hallo! It’s mid-2024, which of course makes it the absolute perfect time to tell you which films I liked most in 2022.

At the end of each year, I watch through as many films for the year as I can. Then, on December 31st, I lock in my picks – sometimes this results in films ranking differently than I expect when I write these lists (several years later 😅) or big films that I didn’t catch in the calendar year being omitted, but I like capturing exactly how I felt at the time.

The commentary is contemporary, but the ranking is historical. Okay, without further ado, let’s gooooo:

I actually saw Elvis midway through 2021, as a preview (one of the benefits of living in LA!) and I loved it. Loved loved loved it. I couldn’t believe I had to wait months to share with the world how I felt about it. As soon as it came out in cinemas for the general population, I went and saw it again.

And again, and again, and again.

This is not only my favourite musical biopic, it’s also my favourite Baz Luhrman film. It got mixed reviews (particularly Hanks’ performance), but it just absolutely worked for me. The offbeat choice of POV character, the performances, the music, the pacing, the cinematography, the editing…everything about this film makes me happy, and even three years after my first viewing, I think about it all the time.

Loved it.

I actually knew nothing about this film – I’d just made a new friend, wanted a reason to hang out with her, and so we went to the cinemas and this was the only thing she wanted to see.

I wasn’t even aware of the original internet phenomenon for a few years ago, so I had no context for the mid-film montage of Marcel being featured on every talk show in the world.

I don’t typically like A24 films – they often don’t care enough about “story” or “internal consistency” for my tastes – but this (and another flick coming up on the list) are the two exceptions.

This film is obviously fun and cute and quirky, but it also has an emotional core far more powerful than you’d expect (or at least, than I expected) when the story began. I found myself completely falling for Marcel and pals. If they make a sequel, I’ll be first in line* to check it out. What a gem.

*probably not literally, I’m a busy man and I assume other people would also be interested.

I missed this one in cinemas – it only got average reviews – and only checked it out during my end-of-year binge.

And oh my god did I love it.

Snatch is one of my favorite films, and Bullet Train is just…2022 Snatch. Brad Pitt also apparently loves this kind of film, because he features in both.

So I was onboard (no pun intended) from the mere fact that it’s a Snatchalike, but then – minor spoilers ahead – the story all ties together at the climax, and has actual emotional beats that land. This is the second film on this list with “unexpected emotional beats” as a selling point: well done, 2022.

When the movie was released, there was a lot of negative press about “whitewashing” – the film is based on a Japanese novel, in which most of the characters are (as you’d expect) Japanese. What I don’t know that people realize is that the author – and the people of Japan in general – were utterly delighted to have so many big-name US stars in the movie. The presence of White folk wasn’t offensive to them, it was a sign that they’d ‘made it’.

I loved Bullet Train, and (aside from the above) am absolutely baffled by the negative reviews it received. In a year where Elvis hadn’t been released, I could easily have seen this being my #1 movie of the year.

Knives Out was my film of 2019, and my 7th-favorite film of the decade. So when I learned the sequel was only to have a single week in cinemas, I drove quite a long way (I was staying in Virginia at the time) to watch it.

And, unsurprisingly, I loved it.

I love murder mysteries, I loved the characters, I love Janelle Monae and was not expecting her to pop up in this film – actually, I love all the actors…this film was just a blast from start to finish. Not as good as the first, but about as good as one could reasonably expect a sequel to be.

It came out on Netflix a few weeks later, but I didn’t get a chance to rewatch it until 2023, when this list had already been finalized and locked in.

This is the advantage of doing these write-ups a few years later (yes, I’ve decided it’s an advantage now, go with it) – I no longer rank this film in my top six for the year. In fact, I probably wouldn’t put it in the top ten.

I still love the cast, I still love the Benoit Blanc character, I still love the Hugh Grant cameo (seriously, I’ll watch any film with Hugh Grant in it), but the actual mystery and message of the film? Two thumbs down.

I don’t think I can say any more without massive spoilers, but I’ll probably do a video essay on it right before the third film releases. STAY TUNED.

By the end of December, my list is pretty locked in. It’d be rare for my #1 to shift, and while there’s a bit of wiggle room at the bottom of the top 6, a film would have to be pretty extraordinary to bump something else off.

Bodies Bodies Bodies was a film I found to be pretty extraordinary. Sorry, Top Gun: Maverick, but this movie relegated you to the runners-up list.

I don’t often love A24 movies – as I mentioned above, they deprioritize structure/worldbuilding/storytelling too much for me to enjoy what they’re doing. But Bodies Bodies Bodies is a murder mystery, and so it comes with an inbuilt structure.

Just as much as murder mysteries (and this one’s a corker), I love stories that couldn’t be made at any point before now. I understand now that the Oscars are more political than merit-based, but in 2010 I was genuinely annoyed that The King’s Speech won Best Picture over The Social Network – one was a period piece that could’ve been made any time in the past five decades, one was a fresh piece of filmmaking about the here and now.

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a scathing look at the way Gen Z treat each other, and I’m not gonna lie, I was absolutely here for it.

I grew up on Roald Dahl books, and spent my early twenties obsessively listening to anything Tim Minchin put out. So when he wrote a musical based on the book Matilda, I immediately got the soundtrack and have probably listened to it hundreds of times.

In 2015, when I first came to the US, I stayed in New York and went to see it on Broadway. To my surprise, I didn’t like the live show as much as the album – it was still a great experience, but my main issue was Miss Honey. In audio form she was whiny (“Stop being pathetic, Jenny”) but on stage she was intolerable.

But I was still excited to see the movie adaptation, and to my surprise and delight, of all four forms – book, soundtrack, stage musical, movie musical – it was by far my favorite. It captured everything I loved from the soundtrack, removed Whiny Jenny, and elevated the whole story.

Netflix bought the rights to make films from the entire Roald Dahl catalogue for something like $700m, and if they keep making stuff like this, I feel like that was money well spent.

If I were writing the list today, Glass Onion would be gone and Top Gun: Maverick would be back, baby. This film was a triumph. I don’t even like the original Top Gun (I saw it for the first time a year or two earlier) so I had to be persuaded to check this one out, so allow me to do the same: Go and see this film. It goes far harder than it needs to, and I was so impressed.

I’m an Avatar defender, and I thiiiink the second is actually stronger than the first? It’s long, but compelling throughout, and a lot of the complaints that I hear (“they brought the villain back” “the main character isn’t morally perfect”) were things I had no issue with – in fact, I respect JCam (one of my favorite creators) for doing what he felt was right to tell this story. Especially loved the ‘nature documentary that made up the middle third of the film’, as I heard it described once.

Fun fact: I saw Avatar 2, Babylon, and two other films (not on this list) all in the same day. And then got deep vein thrombosis (possibly related). It was a day of long, self-indulgent films, and taught me that…I kind of love long, self-indulgent films? Like, Babylon would undeniably be stronger if a lot of it was cut (especially the bizarre ‘crime’ subplot in the final act) but hell, this was the film Chazelle wanted to make, and I sort of liked watching him go for it. Elvis was also described as overly long and self-indulgent, so clearly that’s not a turn-off for me.

I love Romancing the Stone, and this film was quite blatantly “hey, remember Romancing the Stone? Yeah, we’re doing that.” And I liked The Lost City, but didn’t love it. It doesn’t help that RtS is just so well-structured: the presence of an additional antagonistic force (the corrupt policeman/general) means that Romancing is always propelled forward, whereas this film instead cuts to the agent/manager, who did nothing for me. But Channing Tatum is always a good time, Brad Pitt is always a great time, I love whatever the fuck Daniel Radcliffe is doing with his career, and I’m a Sandra Bullock stan. A slightly different script and I could definitely have seen this one making my top 6.

I’ve actually rewatched The Menu since making this list, and I think I’d rank it higher (these runner-ups are in order) – maybe even above Bodies Bodies Bodies. The first time I saw it I thought it was full of plot holes, and while there are still a few things that don’t quite make sense, everything is set up far better on a rewatch than I expected. Not an all-time favorite for me, but still a fun time throughout.

This is a weird one for me – I don’t love period stuff, I don’t love Southern stories, and it was a little slower than I would’ve liked…but the ending really won me over, and the film stayed in my head for a long while after seeing it.

This film was the hotness when it came out, and for good reason. It’s fun, funny – probably my favorite Dreamworks film since Shrek 2. I enjoyed it and would watch it again, but it didn’t have a lasting enough impact on me to make the list. Sorry, kitten, them’s the breaks. If you like animation though, definitely check this one out.