Below are the ten most satisfying and memorable films I saw in 2022:

10. The Velvet Queen A-

The first of four documentaries that managed to make my top 10 films in 2022 (the fact that all four are technically 2021 films is a separate issue, one of the frustrating limitations of the regional market in which I live), The Velvet Queen is easily the most visually beautiful of them. I could easily tell you this is worth watching for the nature footage alone. What makes this an even richer experience as a film is how it is about two men on the hunt for an elusive snow leopard on the Tibetan pleatau—not to kill, but just to get photos of it in the wild. Along the way, they get a lot of stunning footage and images of other wildlife and scenery, in a serene narrative in which they also develop a rapport with the sparsely populated native people. Spoiler alert, they do eventually get hard-won shots of the animal they search for, and not only is it worth the wait, but the entire journey is every bit as rewarding. The sense of joy among these men, just in the search itself, being wholly engaged in an activity they truly love, made this one of the most infectiously joyous films I saw all year.

What I said then: “Joy” is a somewhat tricky word to use for this film, actually, because for Munier and Tesson, emotion that intense comes in short bursts. Most of the time, a better word might be serene. We get voiceover narration of journal entries, and sometimes see conversations between them, about how contented they are just to pick a spot in the wilderness, sit still, and wait, for hours. As they do this, they get the photos and footage that packs the film that is The Velvet Queen, usually of wildlife but often just of landscapes, all of it stunning and gorgeous. Sometimes, you think you’re just looking at landscape and then you’re informed of the camouflaged wildlife you didn’t even realize was in the frame.

9. The Banshees of Inisherin A-

The crackerjack team that brought us In Brudges in 2008 returns this year with a tale set much earlier, on a remote island during the Irish Civil War in the early 1920s, now somehow simultaneously melancholy, shocking and funny. Its plotting suggests extremities of behavior you won't believe they will actually go to, and then it indeed goes there. It is deeply philosophical as well, posing the conflicting attitudes of what's really important in life: leaving a legacy that lasts after death, or appreciating the relationships that exist while you're living. Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell are longtime friends, and one of them decides he doesn't want to be friends anymore. This is the story of the fallout of that decision, told with a depth of humanity that is greater than its simple premise might initially suggest.

What I said then: The Banshees of Inisherin is the kind of movie that, where other films might hint of an uncomfortable path and then pivot, instead leans right into those paths. Colm’s and Pádraic’s story is one of cascading wrong moves, the kind that turn friends into enemies. You know, kind of like a civil war.

8. The Fabelmans A-

When The fablemans began, with its opening scenes shot in soft, dreamlike, Spielbergian tones that felt particularly on the nose given its widely known autobiographical nature, I quickly began to think: oh no, I may not like this movie. And then, what followed was a series of what might best be called "memory vignettes," edited together to create a brilliantly constructed overview of Spielberg's lightly fictionalized life. Once the entire puzzle is constructed, those first scenes fit as perfectly as any other piece. This is all about a young man's unabating interest in filmmaking, both in the face of and informed by the divorce of his parents in his teen years. Admittedly, The Fabelmans only works as an excellent work of art when you have a working knowledge of Spielberg's art and career, but this is hardly unique among great works of many great artists. And Spielber may be by and large a populist filmmaker—garnering him many fans and critics alike—but he is also clearly capable of making great art, this example being hardly his first such example. It does, however, make a case for his crowning achievement.

What I said then: At age 75, clearly Spielberg is a lot closer to the end of his career than to its beginning. He no doubt has several movies left in him, but one can easily understand why he might have wanted to get this one done well before anything might force him to slow down. Nearly thirty years ago, he won his first Best Picture Oscar for Schindler’s List, which was clearly deeply personal to him as a Jewish man. This film, on the other hand, is deeply personal to him as a family man, as someone with a kind of all-encompassing empathy rarely found. You can feel the love he has for his parents, even as he dramatizes some of their less flattering behaviors toward each other. Even more keenly, you can feel the passion he had, and has, for filmmaking—and the respect his parents developed for that passion.

7. Lingui, the Sacred Bonds A-

In contrast to the admittedly far more entertaining The Woman King (which I would honestly place at #11 on this list if it went that high), if you want a sort of immersion into an African culture, but with a far cleaner authenticity, then Lingui, the Sared Bonds is the way to go. This one isn't "fun," nor does it adhere to broad storytelling tropes in an attempt to invite audiences in. Here, the characters do that effectively on their own, a 15-year-old girl seeking an abortion in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the Chad capital of N'Djamena, with the assistance of her increasingly empathetic and increasingly desperate mother. The emotional journey focuses more on the deeply devout Muslim mother, offering a unique perspective on otherwise universal struggles.

What I said then: The story, in retrospect, is more about the emotional journey of Amina, the mother, than that of Maria, the daughter. The daughter knows who she is and what she wants from the start, and doesn’t change beyond obvious effects of the trauma surrounding however she got pregnant. It’s Amina who is a different person by the end of the story than she was at the start, although her deep love for and fierce protection of her daughter is never in doubt. Lingui is also a great movie about a mother-daughter bond, the kind that gets more healthy as the story goes on.

6. Triangle of Sadness A-

One of the great surprises of the year, Triangle of Sadness is basically three short films in one, that being just one of the "triangles" referenced by the title, which is honestly misleading. One might hear that title and immediately assume this is a deeply depressing film, but on the contrary, it's a deeply biting satire, skewering the super-wealthy in ways only Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) can. The three separate stories have only two characters in common, working models who are a young couple, their widely varying environments becoming cause for widely diverse discussions and examinations of finances, wealth and power. This film shifts from a fashion runway to a luxury yacht to a remote island, each location shifting the balance of power and dominance among the huge ensemble cast of characters. The second act is especially thrilling, something I might call an "almost-disaster movie," and then the third act gets darkly funny as people are forced to have their ideas subverted.

What I said then: Sitting through Triangle of Sadness, regardless of its length, is a surprising experience in richly rewarding ways. Its final moments bring things around perfectly, with just the right amount of ambiguity. Honestly, the more I think about this film the more I feel impressed by it.

5. Tár A-

This is a densely intellectual film, another one with satirical undertones, which lives up to the critical hype. That didn't translate into box office success, but no matter; it remains one of the best films of the year. I saw this the same weekend as Triangle of Sadness, seeing this one first, and in the end I found they made fantastic companion pieces, great films to watch back to back. Cate Blanchett gives the best performance of the year as an egotistical and borderline sociopathic genius music conductor, one who gets called out on ambiguously problematic behaviors, and not even its often pedantic dialogue steeped in classical music history could keep it from being fully absorbing from beginning to end. It's a compelling thought experiment to consider how wildly different this film would be if the script were exactly the same but the lead part were a man instead of a woman—just one of the many layers of consideration when contemplating the implications of this acutely nuanced film. I very much look forward to watching it again.

What I said then: Tár is the opposite of populist entertainment, by many accounts a film that succeeds at being a satirical work of staggering genius by being up its own ass about being a satirical work of staggering genius. The way I see it, this film is pretentious about its own commentary on pretension. But, that doesn’t necessarily make it any less genius.

4. Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America A

I can feel readers' assholes pucker in knee-jerk defensiveness at just reading this film's title. Even though anyone with a dismissive attitude could still get more out of this film than they would likely expect, the arguably more important point is how much it has to offer audiences for whom they might expect this is "preaching to the choir." I don't believe there is a single person for whom this documentary, filmed sort of like a TED Talk about the history of American racism, won't offer multiple insights. I found it deeply illuminating, that's for sure, and sincerely appreciated the comfortable accessibility with which writer, activist and lawyer Jeffery Robinson (also Deputy Legal Director and Director of the Trone Center for Justice & Equality at the ACLU) spoke to his audience—the primary target being, of course, White America. And, so long as you approach it open to the experience, this film is not so much "homework" as it is a rich and rewarding kind of education.

What I said then: Nothing about this movie demands that it be seen on the big screen, so hopefully it will be available on a streamer soon. Because it is indeed vital viewing, regardless of the size of the screen. And it won’t be preaching to the choir, far from it—Jeffery Robinson takes the Chronicle part of the title pretty literally, tracking the major “tipping points” of possibly moving toward racial justice in this country, from its founding to the present day. You won’t just be hearing things you already know, and you certainly won’t just be told what you want to hear.

3. Sedimentos A

What a refreshing array of perspectives this film is, previously unexamined in cinema: a multigenerational group of six trans women in Spain, all of them in varying stages of their journeys not necessarily correlated to their age, taking a weekend trip to a remote town in León, all the while being trailed by a camera crew they were trained to ignore in pre-production workshops. It would be easy to mistake this for a narrative film, the editing is so perfectly finessed, but it's actually a documentary. This film presents such a fully dimensional portrait of every one of these six women, simultaneously flawed and a great hang, it was easily the best of the films I saw at the Seattle International Film Festival this year.

What I said then: Sedimentos has a quality to it that is reminiscent of Robert Altman films, with its focus not just on dialogue but on overlapping conversations. Except in this case, they are real, neutrally observed and recorded. Whether this is compelling is a matter of taste, I suppose, but in my view the context alone makes it deeply so. It’s not so much just recordings of ordinary conversations, as the editing creates a rich narrative of six women from as many walks of life, bonding with each other.

2. The Worst Person in the World A

Not anywhere near as funny as marketers want you to believe, nor as unpleasant as the title goes out of its way to suggest, The Worst Person in the World steadily works its way under your skin, leaving you only gradually to register its greatness. Beautifully shot and uniquely told, this is a charming romantic drama in which the protagonist is not just definitively a single woman, but one who only needs to win over herself. Men play a significant part—two men in particular—but this is her story, a woman's journey through genuine attempts at relationships which, spoiler alert, don't work out. Norwegian director and co-writer Joachim Trier offers a sensibility that is all but guaranteed to be obliterated by shoehorned tropes if this is ever attempted as an American remake.

What I said then: And that gets to the heart of why I loved The Worst Person in the World: it succeeds on every level, and on every level it does so unconventionally. All of the characters ring true, as do all of their behaviors, offering a fundamentally realistic portrait of romance and humanity, with a subtly artistic visual flair. Hanging out with Julie is an eminently pleasant experience, even though she’s as flawed as anyone—arguably more so even than the men she gets with. Perhaps this film’s most impressive feat is how it never puts on airs of high-minded art and still winds up being a fine specimen of artistic accomplishment.

1. Flee A

Even if some of its technical aspects were only slightly imperfect—the animation is a bit rudimentary, still unforgettable as a rotoscoping technique—no other movie this year left me so gobsmacked, so stunned into contemplative silence once it was over. This was the first film ever to be nominated simultaneously in the three Academy Award categories of Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature Film, and Best International Feature Film (criminally, not winning any of them, likely due to split votes), the rotoscoping animation being a technique for obscuring the identity of its subject, a gay Muslim man in Denmark telling his story for the first time, of fleeing Afghan militants who killed his parents and kidnapped his sister when he was a child. This is a sad tale, examining how this man's myriad childhood traumas affect his present-day relationship, but it is also a deeply moving one, leaving a more lasting impact on me than any other film I saw this year.

What I said then: Flee has to be seen to be believed. Or perhaps more accurately, seen to broaden your mind, about refugees, about people from Afghanistan, about the tumultuous modern history of Afghanistan, about the human experience. This is a window into a world and a past that puts the privilege of citizens of the Western World into sharp relief.

Five Worst -- or the worst of those I saw (Bearing in mind that I could have seen far worse movies than these if I had made the choice to, but when I already know a movie is worthless, I don't bother watching it at all)

5. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnass C+

Another Marvel movie, another excuse to take a nap. This movie had real potential, being directed by Sam Raimi, and instead he basically phones it in—possibly through no fault of his own, although one would think he knew what he was getting into having to work with increasingly exasperating MCU strictures about plot points, character behaviors, and connective threads to way too many other movies. He gives this movie a recognizable visual quality, but is stifled by way too many clear limitations; we shouldn't have to slog through the mediocrity of the film's first three quarters in order for things to get weird. In the end it isn't worth the wait.

What I said then: There are people genuinely convinced that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a truly great film, and that makes me despair of humanity. Not because this movie is particularly bad, but because audiences are so conditioned by the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” that they can no longer distinguish between that which is quality cinema, and that which is average.

4. Lightyear C+

Here is the Walt Disney Corporation squeezing every last cent they can out of Pixar's flagship IP, and one of its most beloved and iconic characters: Buzz Lightyear, zooming back into theaters after there have already been four Toy Story movies. Never mind how confusing the concept is (we're supposed to understand that this the motion picture that is Andy from Toy Story's favorite movie, and the title character is who his toy Buzz Lightyear, originally voiced by Tim Allen, is based on), the whole universe is stale the moment we step into it. Its one real selling point is the entertaining robot cat named SOX.

What I said then: The principal characters in Lightyear just aren’t nearly as compelling as those in the Toy Story series. That franchise had a novel concept: kids’ toys come to life when they aren’t looking. Lightyear is just a straightforward science fiction tale, with a lot of production design oddly reminiscent of the Alien franchise. Nothing here feels particularly original.

3. Crimes of the Future C+

A seemingly intriguing mood piece with a boneheaded plot point, Crimes of the Future depicts a human race that has suddenly made an evolutionary jump, adapting the ability to digest plastics. Except evolution doesn't jump; it's a gradual process of change over thousands of years. That makes this film the latest of countless that misinterpret and misrepresent what evolution really is, especially when it comes to something as extreme as the ability to eat manufactured plastic. Okay, sure, maybe David Cronenberg was going for something allegorical here (not that that makes it any more comprehensible), but this sticking point made me immediately lose my patience anyway.

What I said then: In the world of Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, from a script he first wrote in the nineties and which still feels like it’s from that era, human bodies have begun randomly generating new organs with no known function. They have also stopped getting infections (one character marvels at how no one ever washes their hands anymore, blech), and people’s pain tolerance has skyrocketed, resulting in a trend of sort of sensual body mutilation just to get to the point of feeling something. And from an evolutionary perspective—ostensibly the perspective this film takes—absolutely none of that makes any sense whatsoever.

2. Jurassic World Dominion C+

This might qualify as the grandest disappointment of the year, I was so excited to see it: Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), from the original 1993 Jurassic Park all together again? Sign me up! When I saw that in this film's teaser trailer, I was so thrilled I literally got chills. That original film is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I even quite enjoy most of its sequels—even the 2015 Jurassic World reboot holds up surprisingly well after seven years. But, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was dumber yet still entertaining—much like The Lost World: Jurassic Park had been as the first sequel in 1997—but then Jurassic World Dominion comes along and insults our intelligence so hard you have to wonder if the filmmakers had turned it into a competition. Other movies in this franchise make little rational sense if you nitpick into the details; this one makes no sense even at a surface level, and the use of the original three characters, hinging on mutant locusts that aren't even dinosaurs, is completely squandered.

What I said then: Jurassic World Dominion is a mess. It’s an entertaining mess, but still a mess, wasting far too much time on dull, one-note characters when it could be spending more time wowing us with special effects its makers didn’t even bother to perfect. With a bit more time and a modicum of effort, this movie, even being the sixth in the franchise, could have been so much better. The return of original-film cast is little more than stunt casting that ultimately serves only to disappoint.

1. Striding Into the Wind C+

If there's anything the other four movies on my worst-of 2022 list have that Sriding Into the Wind doesn't, it's that at least none of the others are straight up dull. This 134-minute Chinese "road trip" movie didn't even get its characters embarking on travel until two thirds of the way through, even then spending most of its time depicting film school students doing reshoots in Mongolia. All of this would be fine if it had much of an overarching narrative to speak of, anything happening to spark interest. What few critics even paid attention to it seemed to like it, which may have been why I went to see it in the first place. I then spent most of my time in the cinema just itching to get out of there, away from this supposed "slacker comedy" in favor of some kind of legitimate stimulation.

What I said then: Striding Into the Wind is relatively quiet, and relentlessly naturalistic, as if Wei had a ton of unusually well-shot home video footage and managed to cut it into something vaguely resembling a narrative. I have to say, I was bored as hell.

Complete 2022 film review log:

1. 1/4 The Lost Daughter B+ *
2. 1/8 Swan Song B *
3. 1/10 Finch C+ *
4. 1/15 Bergman Island B *
5. 1/16 CODA A- *
6. 1/21 Parallel Mothers A-
7. 1/23 The Velvet Queen A-
8. 1/29 A Hero B *
9. 1/31 Flee A
10. 2/2 Moonfall F **
11. 2/5 Last and First Men B
12. 2/11 The Worst Person in the World A
13. 2/12 Kimi B *
14. 2/13 Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America A
15. 2/15 Big Bug B- *
16. 2/19 Death on the Nile B-
17. 2/20 Lingui, the Sacred Bonds A-
18. 2/23 Games People Play B+ *
19. 2/26 February B- *
20. 2/28 2022 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action B
21. 3/1 2022 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation B-
22. 3/3 The Batman B+
23. 3/5 Red Rocket B+ *
24. 3/6 Cyrano B
25. 3/8 2022 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Documentary B+
26. 3/9 A Song Called Hate B *
27. 3/12 Turning Red B+ *
28. 3/13 After Yang B *
29. 3/15 The Adam Project B- *
30. 3/17 Striding Into the Wind C+ *
31. 3/20 Compartment No. 6 B
32. 4/4 Memoria C
33. 4/6 You Won't Be Alone B-
34. 4/7 Everything Everywhere All at Once A-
35. 4/11 Mothering Sunday B
35. 4/12 The Batman B+ (2nd viewing)
36. 4/13 The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent B-
37. 4/14 Cat Daddies B+ */***
38. 4/15 Vera Dreams of the Sea B+ ***
39. 4/16 Nothing Compares A- */***
40. 4/16 Sedimentos A */***
41. 4/25 Neptune Frost B+ */***
42. 4/27 The Northman B+
43. 5/10 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness C+
44. 5/19 Downton Abbey: A New Era B
45. 5/22 The Bad Guys B
46. 5/25 On the Count of Three B+
47. 5/28 The Innocents B
48. 5/31 Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers B- *
49. 6/1 Top Gun: Maverick B+
50. 6/3 Fire Island B *
51. 6/7 Crimes of the Future C+
52. 6/9 Jurassic World Dominion C+
53. 6/17 Lightyear C+
54. 6/21 Top Gun: Maverick B+ (2nd viewing)
55. 6/22 Freedom Uncut B-
56. 6/28 Elvis B-
57. 7/2 Mr. Malcom's List B
58. 7/7 Thor: Love and Thunder B-
59. 7/10 Marcel the Shell with Shoes On B+
60. 7/12 Official Competition B-
61. 7/21 Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris B
62. 7/23 Nope B
63. 7/26 Fire of Love B
64. 7/28 DC League of Super Pets C+
65. 8/4 Bullet Train C+
66. 8/8 I Love My Dad B+
67. 8/13 Prey B+ *
68. 8/16 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 40th anniversary release B+
69. 8/22 Bodies Bodies Bodies B
70. 8/28 Three Thousand Years of Longing B
71. 9/6 Jaws in 3D (no review)
72. 9/13 Hold Me Tight B
73. 9/16 Moonage Daydream B
74. 9/17 The Woman King A-
75. 9/20 See How They Run B
76. 10/1 Avatar (re-release) B+
77. 10/3 Bros B
78. 10/8 Still Working 9 to 5 B *
79. 10/11 The Woman King A- (2nd viewing)
80. 10/22 Tár A-
81. 10/23 Triangle of Sadness A-
82. 10/29 The Banshees of Inisherin A-
83. 11/3 Till B+
84. 11/5 Armagedon Time A-
85. 11/6 Weird: The Al Yankovic Story B *
86. 11/10 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever B
87. 11/12 Aftersun B
88. 11/17 She Said B+
89. 11/21 The Menu B
90. 11/23 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery B+
91. 11/26 The Fabelmans A-
92. 11/27 Devotion A-
93. 11/29 Strange World B
94. 12/3 Violent Night B-
95. 12/4 The Inspection B+
96. 12/10 Bones and All B-
97. 12/11 White Noise B+
98. 12/13 Empire of Light B
99. 12/17 Avatar: The Way of Water B+
100. 12/18 Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths B *
101. 12/20 Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio B+ *
102. 12/22 The Whale B

* Viewed streaming at home
** Advanced screening
*** SIFF Advanced screening