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Split Decision: Best Movies of 2022

Welcome to MovieJawn’s Split Decision! Each installment, Ryan will pose a question to our staff of knowledgeable and passionate film lovers and share the responses. Chime in on Twitter, Facebook, our Instagram, with your pick!

This week’s question: What is your favorite new movie released in 2022?

It’s TÁR, and to avoid repeating the thing I just sent in an hour or so ago, I’m not going to go too far into it. But damn, what a rich movie. We’re all going to be picking it apart for years. And that New Yorker review is going to look sillier and sillier. - Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

I was downright giddy for the entire runtime of Ti West’s Pearl. I loved the bright colors (reds, blues, and greens), the old Hollywood triumphant score, and Mia Goth. Goth is astounding. The best way I can describe Pearl is if Carrie merged with the colors of The Wizard of Oz. Mia Goth lets herself be vulnerable. She doesn’t care how she looks in a moment-to-moment way like a lot of performers do. Big teeth, bugged out eyes, the biggest frowns, agonous crying.  Pearl is simultaneously an adult and a child. She yearns for stardom. She’s a daydreamer. She’s a loner. Oh, and she’s a killer. -Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths will stay with me for a long, long time. It may not speak to you as deeply as it spoke to me, but I really want folks to give this film a look. I found it to be a profound, moving, imaginative and ambitious cinematic "docu-fiction” full of dazzling set pieces and emotional moments. The father/son scene in the middle of the film completely wrecked me, but so did so many other moments. And I love magical realism, which this film contains in multitudes. I was consistently enthralled by the many observations on art and culture and interpersonal relationships as well as identity, nationality, immigration, privilege, aging, creativity fantasy, success, family, and the meaning of home. It is risky, fearless filmmaking, and I can't wait to see this again.. Surrender to it. It is extraordinary. -Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time, but the more distance I get from it, Crimes of the Future is far and away my favorite film this year. So much of it has stuck with me, even months after seeing it. Cronenberg’s vision of dystopia is distinct, a clever and entirely plausible investigation of sex, technology, and the human body. The film offers so many indelible images, complicated performances, and subtle world-building – it’s what I wish all films today were like. –Caitlin Hart, Staff Writer

I didn’t hate Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, MO as much as a lot of folks, but as someone who found a personal Top 5 filmmaker in Martin McDonagh with In Bruges it left a lot to be desired. So of course he turned in his masterpiece with The Banshees of Innisherin. A playwright by trade, this is the most play-like of McDonagh’s films and it fits perfectly in this tale of a broken friendship and it’s repercussions. Ostensibly an allegory for the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s, the best thing about this film is that you can take what you want from it and dig as deep as you want to go. If you want to keep it surface level, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson reignite their chemistry from In Bruges and take it up another level as the feuding former friends at the story’s core. You also get outstanding supporting turns from Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon in addition to stunning cinematography of the Emerald Isle and McDonagh’s brilliantly balanced dark humor. But if you want to dig, and you’re willing to treat this as a parable, then it’s gonna be hard to keep this one off your year end list. –Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

Everything Everywhere All at Once was so outlandish and yet so rooted in truth. Don’t like your reality? Go to the farthest reaches of it and do something you would never normally do. That leap in a new direction catapults you into a new existence. In the film some of these worlds involve hot dog hands and movie star dreams.  But that one big leap can also act to turn the life you have into the life you want, quicker than you think.  Also Jamie Lee Curtis’s performance is (hot dog) hands down the best of the year and maybe the best of her entire career. –Stacey Osbeck, Staff Writer

Fire of Love is pure, unbridled passion. Maurice and Katia Krafft were volcanologists in the 1980s and the subjects of this documentary. They fell in love while they researched these magnificent volcanic events and documented everything. The film utilizes footage and photographs shot by Maurice, Katia, and their friends. It shows them giggly, weird, and happy as they spent their lives trying to understand the science of volcanoes. The documentary is narrated by filmmaker Miranda July and speaks to the larger idea of what it means to dedicate your life to something. The all-consuming adoration of a subject you might never fully comprehend. A subject that can surprise you daily, fill you with awe, and connect you to people who will change your life. –Tina Kakadelis, Staff Writer

My pick for personal favorite movie of 2022 was The Black Phone, a movie I saw because I was bored.  I didn’t expect much.  I was completely caught off guard by how much I found myself enjoying it and getting caught up in it.  I think Scott Derickson has a real knack for character-driven horror.  The Black Phone wisely avoids a lot of issues that instantly derail a spooky yarn like this–it doesn’t bother explaining the power of this phone, or any of the supernatural elements. They merely exist.  Tom Savini’s work on the masks that Ethan Hawke wears throughout is excellent. -Billy Russell, Staff Writer

It wasn’t immediate, but Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun has crept in and stayed with me ever since I saw it in November. A haunting, semi-autobiographical memory piece about a girl and her (young) father’s holiday together in Turkey. The film implies many things, but never gives it all away. It’s a very rich work that reveals its narrative pieces slowly and when it ended, it left me imagining what happened to these characters after the credits rolled. Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal give fantastic performances, subtly showing what it’s like when you see your parents' imperfections reveal themselves, but only realizing it after the fact, through memories and home movies. I can’t recommend it enough. -Kirk Stevens, Contributor


And that is a wrap on MovieJawn for 2022!

Be sure to order a copy of the Winter 2022 zine if you haven’t already (copies are flying out the door!).

Check out the rest of our best of 2022 posts: