If there is a common theme among the best films I saw in 2022, then that theme is pain. Sometimes it’s literal pain, like when the puppet hero of Mad God undergoes surgery without anesthesia or when the Jackass Forever idiots turn their genitals into a literal beehive. Most of the time, however, filmmakers consider a deeper kind of pain, the spiritual kind that can only be felt by a misunderstood artist, or someone experiencing singular loss. That is not to say, however, that this year’s greatest films are dreary. Quite the opposite: Some are laugh-out-loud hilarious, while others feature propulsive storytelling in familiar genres such as biopics and thrillers. To watch these 10 films is to be reminded of cinema’s power, a kind of heightened subjectivity that pushes beyond the pain and finds acknowledgment, often the only solace we can get.   

10. Nope  

Jordan Peele’s latest film is also his most ambitious, a Steven Spielberg-influenced alien invasion flick that considers the commodification of animals and entertainment. On its surface, Nope is about a flying saucer that terrifies two families in California. Beyond that, however, is a shrewd critique about how humankind relates to animals, attempting to dominate them without empathy or understanding. Some characters do not respect the alien, treating it as a commodity, while others regard them with a mix of awe and terror. In trademark fashion, Peele ties this to instantly likable protagonists, the kind who can win over audiences with a single line or gesture. When so many blockbusters opt for broad argument, this is the rare mainstream film that offers—and ultimately demands—mutual respect.

9. Murina

Beaches and crystal-clear water might as well be a mirage in Murina, the stunning debut from Croatian filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović. She follows a tightly-knit family on Croatia’s Adriatic coastline, slowly unearthing how the natural beauty is also a kind of prison. Tourism used to be a solid revenue stream for this family, except now they’re stuck, so the scheming father Ante (Leon Lučev, in a monstrous performance) sees an investment opportunity in Javier (Cliff Curtis), a wealthy American who pays him a visit. The film follows Javier’s visit from beginning to end, using Ante’s sullen daughter Julija (Gracija Filipović) as a way to test the limits of patriarchal control, desire, and friendship. Despite a dearth of characters, Murina remains tense and involving thanks to Kusijanović’s careful handling of the characters, which leads to psychological acuity and naturalistic, quietly devastating performances.

8. Flux Gourmet 

The affectionately repellent Flux Gourmet, a horror-adjacent dark comedy from the cinematic hedonist Peter Strickland, pushes the limits of art and performance to their hilarious boundaries. Strickland follows a troupe of artists whose chosen medium is “sonic catering,” a kind of performance art that mixes food preparation and musical feedback loops in a way that unearths new kinds of expression or meaning. The film could easily veer toward parody, but with Strickland’s unmatched command of tone, he mocks his pretentious characters with a welcome sense of good cheer. The performances are almost incidental as the film continues andStrickland reveals camaraderie among artists as his true subject, something rarely depicted with such precision and eccentricity. And, as if to underscore (or perhaps provoke) how we react to the film, its most dramatic subplot involves a character’s bout with chronic flatulence.

7. Jackass Forever 

The year’s best documentary also happens to be the year’s funniest film, a welcome reprieve and reminder that friends and family are the best escape from the constant, gnawing anxiety of modern life. The Jackass guys, a group of middle-aged stuntmen and comedians who perform pranks on each other (often while nude or close to it), have been at it for decades. In other words, you probably already know whether you’re on board, and if the sight of a grown man getting hit in the balls by a UFC fighter makes you laugh so hard you cry. What you might not expect—and what makes this a great film—is how these fools transcend pain and danger to find genuine happiness, or a facsimile of it, by doing what they love together.

6. Decision to Leave 

South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook is known for disturbing thrillers like Old Boy and The Handmaiden, so the surprising thing about his thriller Decision to Leave is its light, romantic touch. Sure, the film is about a homicide detective and his lead suspect in an unusual murder, except here the procedural details are secondary to the gradual romance that develops between the two. The plot machinations are straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock tale, particularly in terms of clues and double-crosses, and yet there is something more unusual, more beautiful about two people who are seduced by each other, and by seduction itself. A lighter tone and deft touch, however, does not mean Park has lost his nerve: Decision to Leave ends with a scene as beautiful as it is haunting.

5. Blonde

There is a persistent, deeply annoying belief that prestigious films about real people must be fair and truthful. That belief, coupled with a fundamental misunderstanding about the film’s purpose, is why the hallucinatory biopic Blonde is both hated and misunderstood (mostly hated). In adapting the Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, filmmaker Andrew Dominik implicates the audience in the mistreatment of Marilyn Monroe, who dealt with sexism and abuse wherever she turned. No one—not Oates, Dominik, or the film’s star Ana de Armas—would dare suggest Blonde is in any way accurate or fair. But by heightening subjectivity and making it a riot of frenzied style, the film transcends the limits of docudrama. It is a cinematic nightmare, a kind of horror film where history and culture are the real monsters.

4. TÁR 

Inspired partially by former Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop, Todd Field’s TÁR is an instant classic because it captures the paranoia and unintentional self-parody that defines this increasingly bizarre decade. Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár, the genius conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and follows the way her world of prestige unravels through one unforced error after another. What makes this film so insidious, and so fun to talk about, is how Field carefully juxtaposes realism with exaggeration. It is unnerving to see how Tár seems a part of our world, and yet Field includes enough borderline supernatural flourishes to make us question her sanity, and ours. Part cautionary tale and part deadpan satire, TÁR shows what happens when our leaders, cultural or otherwise, mistakenly believe they’re above society, and not a part of it.

3. Mad God 

Mad God, the animated horror film from special effects master Phil Tippett, is a technical marvel 30 years in the making. Using stop-motion techniques, Tippett imagines a unique underworld, one where each figure and set brims with icky detail. He almost dares you not to watch. Mad God is a horror film and unfolds entirely without dialogue, a conceit that requires the viewer to find humanity in one grotesque monster after another. If there is a plot to Tippett’s film, it is almost primordial: You follow one character whose features approximate an ordinary man as he wanders through the underworld, presumably to destroy it and somehow restart civilization on the way. Unabashedly political and gorgeous, like a Hieronymus Bosch painting brought to life, this film offers rich rewards for those who dare not recoil from its exaggerated, ruefully dismal vision of hellish misanthropy.

2. Benediction 

The English poet Siegfried Sassoon is best known for his war poetry, an attempt to recount the horror and psychological trauma he underwent in World War I. Benediction is the story of Sassoon’s life, carefully observed by writer/director Terence Davies and played by dual lead performances: Jack Lowden plays him as a younger man, Peter Capaldi as an older man. Sassoon may have suffered from PTSD—though it was not called that at the time—but Davies suggests that was only one part of the poet’s struggles. An identity crisis was his true, lifelong affliction: He was a gay man who regarded life with solemnity, he never quite fit in anywhere, especially during London’s frivolous “Bright Young Things” scene that immediately followed the war. All this may sound stuffy on paper, and yet there is passion in the filmmaking and in Lowden’s smoldering performance, one that culminates in a devastating final scene. Poetry should not be the only comfort for men like Sassoon, and yet, in moments of genuine struggle, Benediction shows us it can be enough.

1. Athena 

Directed by Romain Gavras with unwavering bravura, the year’s best film depicts an intense, relentless urban siege. Following the death of a brown-skinned youth at the hands of French police, the Athena housing project becomes a battlefield, with outraged residents on one side and the police on the other. Gavras heightens our immersion with stunning cinematography, like an 11-minute unbroken opening shot that sharply draws the film’s battle lines and includes stretches that, frankly, look impossible. Athena follows in the tradition of great films like The Battle of Algiers and La Haine, using action to depict characters driven by a sense of outrage and anger, emotions that hide even deeper depths of feeling. The name “Athena” is a deliberate allusion to Greek myth and tragedy, which grows added resonance as Gavras flushes out his main characters—two brothers on either side of the conflict, at least until the siege calls into question their core beliefs. Bracing and urgent, Athena’s sinewy cinematic power will stir your conscience, so it is all the more frustrating Netflix chose to bury the film on its platform rather than show it in theaters nationwide.