A belated welcome to 2023 with one last look back at the best releases of 2022.
As most of us are no longer full-time critics, and many other are understandably wary about seeing movies in theaters at the moment, we haven’t had the same access to films as most film critics. Thus these are snapshots of what we have been able to see, and what impressed us over the last year.
Also, among those we lost in 2022 were friends and fellow film critics John Hartl, whose love of cinema defined the Seattle Times film coverage for his 38 year-tenure as the paper’s head film critic, and Sheila Benson, who was (among other achievements) the chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1981 to 1991 before moving north and making Seattle her home.
Contributors listed in reverse alphabetical orders. Films listed in preferential orders (unless otherwise noted).
Sean Axmaker
- EO (Poland, Jerzy Skolimowski)
- Women Talking (Sarah Polley)
- No Bears (Iran, Jafar Panahi)
- Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniels, aka Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
- Tár (Todd Field)
- The Quiet Girl (Ireland, Colm Bairéad)
- Broker (South Korea, Hirokazu Koreeda)
- The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
- Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
- Athena (France, Romain Gavras)
Honorable mentions: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras), The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh), Decision to Leave (South Korea, Park Chan-wook), Kimi (Steven Soderbergh), Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (Dean Fleischer-Camp), The Menu (Mark Mylod), The Outfit (Graham Moore), RRR (India, S.S. Rajamouli), She Said (Maria Schrader), Saint Omer (France, Alice Diop)
And these films made my year in viewing more fun: Barbarian (Zach Cregger), Catherine Called Birdy (Lena Dunham), Dead for a Dollar (Walter Hill), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson), The Northman (Robert Eggers), Vengeance (B.J. Novak), X (Ti West)
David Coursen (Washington, D.C.)
Adjusted for inflation and in alphabetical order:
Top Tier:
Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis)
Holy Spider (Ali Abbasi)
Rest of the Best:
Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid)
Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moqadam)
Benediction (Terrence Davies)
Boy from Heaven (Tarik Saleh)
Hero (Asghar Farhadi)
Hive (Blerta Basholli)
Hit the Road (Panah Panahi)
In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
Master (Mariama Diallo)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
R.M.N. (Cristian Mungiu)
Honorable Mention:
Armageddon Time (James Gray)
Happening (Audrey Diwan)
Nope (Jordan Peele)
Till (Chinone Chukwu)

Robert Cumbow
No “Top Ten” or “Best” lists for me again this year. As always I prefer to just note my favorites (and acknowledge my limitations):
FAVORITE FILMS OF 2022
Vengeance
Tár
The Outfit
Crimes of the Future
Dead for a Dollar
PROPS TO:
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
X
Barbarian
The Menu
APOLOGIES TO THESE THAT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST BUT I HAVEN’T SEEN THEM YET:
Blonde
The Fabelmans
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Elvis
Decision to Leave
Something in the Dirt
Kathy Fennessy
- EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
- Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
- Benediction (Terence Davies)
- Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
- Lost Illusions (Xavier Giannoli)
- Happening (Audrey Diwal)
- Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
- X (Ti West)
- Great Freedom (Sebastian Meise)
- Compartment Number 6 (Juho Kuosmanen)




Robert Horton
Top tier:
Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg).
Happening (Audrey Diwan).
The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg).
Tár (Todd Field).
Second tier:
The Quiet Girl (Colm Bairéad).
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh).
Hit the Road (Panah Panahi).
In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo).
EO (Jerzy Skolimowski).
Watcher (Chloe Okuno).
Third tier:
Utama (Alejandro Loayza Grisi).
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg).
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
Close (Lukas Dhont).
Three Minutes: A Lengthening (Bianca Stigter).
Murina (Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic).
Benediction (Terence Davies).
(originally published at The Seasoned Ticket)
Richard T. Jameson
The 2022 movie I regarded as the best for most of the year was Watcher, the debut feature of Chloe Okuno — a film of Hitchcockian intelligence with no need to strew Hitchcock hommages.
The movie that now claims top line of my list is Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, the kind of film with the power to adjust the world.
The 2022 movies I love most are The Banshees of Inisherin, by Martin McDonagh, and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.
In alphabetical order, the remainder of my Ten Best are:
Broker (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Dead for a Dollar (Walter Hill)
Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
Happening (Audrey Diwan)
No Bears (Jafar Panahi)
Tár (Todd Field).
I also want to highlight the extraordinary beauty and power of Taylor Sheridan’s ten-part streaming series 1883.
Moira Macdonald (Seattle Times)
(in alphabetical order)
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Tár
Turning Red
(originally published at Seattle Times)
And Moira’s movie highlights of 2022 (in rhyme) can be found here.




Polls / Lists
The National Society of Film Critics awards
The Seattle Film Critics Society awards
The Online Film Critics Society awards
Other lists
2022 additions to the Library of Congress National Film Registry
Kristin Thompson’s Ten Best Films of … 1932
Rotten Tomatoes Top-rated movies of 2022
Here’s the Parallax View list for 2021
Remembering those we lost in 2022