🎥 2022: Top Ten Movies

25 January 2023 🏆 🎥 📋

Welcome back to the Annual Tivies - 2022 Edition.

Next up: Movies. If you didn’t catch the last entry, you can find the TV Top Ten here and also my most anticipated TV Shows of 2023 here. I’ll be back soon with my top ten albums and comics, as well as my most anticipated movies for 2023.

Before we get into the Top Ten, we once again have a slate of awards!

• Best Actors: Cate Blanchett - TÁR and Diego Calva - Babylon (I didn’t see The Whale)
• Best Characters: Captain Thomas Smith and Dimitry played by Woody Harrelson and Zlatko Buríc in Triangle of Sadness
• Best Duo: Pádraic Súilleabháin and Colm Doherty played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin
• Best Writing: Charlie McDowell / Jason Siegel / Andrew Kevin Walker - Windfall
• Best Directing: The Dans (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) - Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Most Underrated: Windfall and Vengeance

And some other honorable mentions (besides our Most Underrated) that didn’t quite crack the Top Ten:

• X - a fun throwback to 70’s slasher films.
• Do Revenge - a really enjoyable new age take on something akin to John Hughes.
• Barbarian - another horror film with some Jeepers Creepers nods that tickled my fancy.
• Hustle - I almost included this in my top ten… it was there until the last minute… and I’m probably the only person in the world who considered it, but I love basketball and seeing some of the machinations of the NBA from training to drafting was right up my alley.

Now, for the main event 🥁…

Top Ten Movies of 2023

This list can also be found on Letterboxd

10. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

I know some people had issues with this, but I thought it was on par with the first. They handled an impossible situation exceptionally well and Angela Bassett gave the performance of a lifetime.

9. Confess, Fletch

I miss this kind of film. A simple, low stakes detective type mystery that we just don’t get much anymore. I never saw Chase as the titular character, but I found Hamm to be absolutely delightful.

8. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

One of the most fun movies I saw all year. Cage and Pascal were wonderful on screen together and the interweaving of plot and set-up just worked.

7. Emily the Criminal

Super tense. This didn’t blow me away at first, but the more I sat with it, the more I dug it. And I just love that Aubrey Plaza continues to take on these types of roles in smaller budget films.

6. The Banshees of Inisherin

A worthy successor to In Bruges, which I just watched again and it still holds up. Both Gleeson and Farrell were terrific. There were just a few decisions in the last third that kept me from completely falling in love with this and keeping it from cracking the top five.

5. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

I love everything Rian Johnson does and while I had high hopes for this, I worried they wouldn’t be met given the whole thing with sequels. But the mystery Johnson weaves together for the wonderful Benoit Blanc, where Daniel Craig appears to be having an absolute blast, absolutely delivered for me.

4. Top Gun: Maverick

What a throwback and surprise. There’s a reason this was huge at the box office and I hope it’s a sign of good things to come for movie-going in general.

3. Athena

Saw this in the 11th hour as I prepared this list and was stunned. The intensity kicked off from the start in a truly powerful way, and never let up.

2. Triangle of Sadness

This film goes in so many unexpected directions and was just a smart delight that has been on my mind ever since.

And the Tivie Movie of the Year award goes to 🥁…

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once

I walked out of the theatre way back in March already knowing this would be my number one film of the year and nothing even came close to having me question that decision. It hit on every level and I’m so glad to see the Oscar nominations rolling in.

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Disclaimer: there are tons of movies I just haven’t gotten around to yet. Some of the big ones are captured in this Letterboxd list.