The movies are finally back in theaters in a big way! While streaming services do continue to contribute some much-needed variety to the film ecosystem, I was able to catch a ton of my favorites in theaters in 2022. There have been a lot of big swings in film this year, some of which paid off, and others… not so much. More than most years, I feel there are even more diamonds in the the rough that I haven’t been able to catch yet. Here are my favorites of the 60 new films I saw in 2022.
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I really enjoyed having an outlet for other media last year, so I’m going to continue the tradition. The idea of this post is to pay tribute to my favorites of other art of the year, be it TV, video games, books, live performances, or even non-2022 movies. The rules of this post are basically anything can qualify, whether it came out in 2022 or before, so long as I experienced it in 2022.
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While the movie-going status quo has changed significantly, 2021 welcomed us back to movie theaters and saw the return of blockbusters in a big way. Many of the larger films were holdovers unreleased in 2020, while indie films from the festival circuit continued to get major platforms on streaming services. Of the record 85 films I saw this year, I’d say around 2/3rds of them were from home, but most of my favorite experiences of the year were still in theaters. Here are my picks for favorite movies of 2021:
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I’m going to try something different with this post. Every year, I list my favorite movies of the year, but it pigeonholes the post into avoiding any of the other media I consumed throughout the year – books, TV-shows, video games, and even movies that came out years ago that I happened to come across in 2021.
2021, of course, was the second year dominated by COVID-19, so I spent a lot of time at home and discovered a number of new medias that were pretty incredible. Here are my top 5 of the year:
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What a year. There are about a thousand things from 2020 that are more important to talk about than the state of movies, but that’s what I’m going to write about. I saw a record 81 movies from the 2020 season, thanks to a combination of accessibility, length of the Oscar season (it’s April….), and too much dang time spent at home. Of course, the downside from a movie-going perspective is that all of those movies were seen at home. Of the 13 movies in this article, I saw literally all of them from my couch. So what movies had an emotional impact on me from the comfort of my living room? Here is my [spoiler-free] take on 2020.
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2019 was one of the best years for film of the decade thanks to a late surge in quality towards the end of the year. I saw a personal record of 78 movies this year, and had an incredibly difficult time putting together this list. As always, this will be a [spoiler-free] take on the films in question. Without further ado: (more…)
There have been so many memorable movies of 2019! Even outside of my top 10 of the year, there are tons of things, movie “stuff” if you will, that are worth talking about. This post will be pretty much entirely [spoiler-free], so feel free to read on even if you haven’t seen the films. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite movie elements. (more…)
2018 was an extremely rich year for very good movies, even while perhaps lacking in true masterpieces. Somehow when making this list, I went from not having enough films to fill it in November to making extremely difficult cuts in February. Out of the 61 movies I saw this year, it was very difficult to narrow the list to only 10 (plus four extras), and there are probably another dozen that could easily be swapped in. Here are my favorites of the year.
2018 has been a hell of a year, and in many ways has felt like an eternity. In that eternity, we’ve gotten a huge variety of great films. Here are some of my favorite elements and moments from film in 2018. This will be mostly [spoiler-free] unless otherwise noted. (more…)
Even as the general box office continues to decline, the overall quality of films continued to impress in 2017. It was a great year for genre filmmaking in particular, with several comedies and horror films surfacing as a cut above the rest. This will be mostly [spoiler-free], with a few spoilers marked appropriately. Of the 53 films I saw in 2017, here were my favorites:
Backseat Directing 