The Best Movies of the Year

Film critics Angelica Jade Bastién, Bilge Ebiri, and Alison Willmore just want to see movies that knock them out. That was hard to find in 2022-aside from a few surprise hits.

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.