ALISON WILLMORE: I don't think this has been a great year for movies. There were things to admire, sure. Yet I'm still waiting on that feeling of being utterly obliterated by what I've just seen onscreen.
ANGELICA JADE BASTIEN: Unfortunately, that has been a recurrent theme in moviegoing for me, too. I am hungry for awe, but it is clear to me I will not be fed.
BILGE EBIRI: I will say I saw a number of films in 2022 that I returned to over and over again: Athena, Top Gun: Maverick, Cyrano, Murina, Both Sides of the Blade, Three Thousand Years of Longing.
But I wonder if this speaks not just to my love for those titles but also to my lack of interest in so many others. I have been surprised a lot: I had zero hopes for Fire of Love, Sara Dosa's playfully shattering documentary about married French volcanologists, and I wound up adoring it. Charlotte Wells's Aftersun sounded unremarkable, but it got me in its subtle, disarming, borderline-experimental way. I was grateful to see most of these films in theaters. Sadly, that won't be the case for most viewers.
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