This year was the comeback of entertainment. After a two-year lull, Hollywood may have returned with a whimper, but dozens of smaller companies, mostly notably Skydance and the Daily Wire, quietly produced cinematic gold.
Here are my selections for the ten best movies of 2022:
1. Man of God – This movie joins the ranks of The Passion of Joan of Arc and Monsieur Vincent as one of the great cinematic hagiographies of all time. Nectarios of Aegina, like his Lord, lived a life of constant suffering and betrayal, but he used it to produce tremendous spiritual fruit.
2. The Bad Guys – Based on a hilarious kid’s novel, The Bad Guys provides beautiful animation, fun characters, and a surprisingly spot-on assessment of morality.
3. Top Gun: Maverick – Tom Cruise is back in a rare sequel that improves on the original. The practical effects are amazing, but faith in the American spirit is what really makes it a masterpiece.
4. Elvis – Baz Luhrmann and the King were made for each other.
5. Prophet – This is a wonderful biopic of Bl. Stefan Wyszynski, a figure relatively unknown in the West, although his prized pupil St. John Paul II is more famous.
6. Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank – This is probably my most unpopular opinion as most reviews were paltry to say the least. However, I found it incredibly entertaining and inventive, a perfect blend of classic Mel Brooks humor, silly samurai tropes, and child-like imagination.
7. What is a Woman? – Matt Walsh’s style might be snarky, but his documentary is an incredibly revealing look at the transgender ideology, mostly that its advocates can’t answer the simplest of questions.
8. Nope – I’m a sucker for alien movies, and this is one of the best in years.
9. Shut In – A classic exercise in minimalism, this riveting horror film takes place in a closet.
10. Goodnight Oppy – Based on the extremely successful Martian probes, Goodnight Oppy is a celebration of God’s creation and human ingenuity.
Honorable Mention: Father Stu, Luck, A Matter of Life, Turning Red, and Weird: The Yankovic Story.
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Re: “The Passion of Joan of Arc”: this film was based heavily on the trial transcript, which (as many historians have noted) is proven to have been falsified on many points by the pro-English tribunal. Dozens of eyewitnesses who were at the trial later said the record was manipulated to make her look more guilty, and a comparison of the final Latin version with the original French shows that it was mistranslated in a systematic manner that could only have been done deliberately. For example, she did not refuse to submit to the Church (in fact she had already done so when examined in March 1429 by high-ranking clergy at Poitiers); nor did she consent to the alleged “relapse” into “male clothing” (i.e. the soldier’s riding outfit that eyewitnesses said she had been lacing into one piece to make it more difficult for her guards to pull her clothing off when they tried to rape her): the trial bailiff, Jehan Massieu, said the guards took away her dress and forced her to go back to the soldier’s outfit so the judge would have a pretext for condemning her for a “relapse” into cross-dressing. There were many other crucial parts of the transcript which are also false or badly misleading, and therefore the film is also false on these points.