Seems like just yesterday when we couldn’t wait to stretch our legs and experience all the good parts of 2022 after spending almost-forever in the intense lockdown of 2021.
Now here we are again, somehow it’s December already and we can almost say “2022’s shege successfully seen” – not that 2022 didn’t also come with moments of delight and merriment.
During these past 11 months of recovering from the ongoing pandemic surge, with political turmoil and the continued threat of terrorism around us, one major thing that has kept us going is the magic of cinema; to connect us in terms of interests and taken us to all kinds of new worlds and experiences; to spice up a mindful at-home holiday celebration; and to also offer hope for the coming year.
More than anything else, these are the best movies of 2022 that put a smile on our faces and gave us a reason to get out of the house again (or, in some cases, to stay on the couch and surf the streaming services).
- The Woman King
The Woman King is a sturdy, rousing piece of studio entertainment that makes both the new feel old and the old feel new. It tells the remarkable story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen. Inspired by true events, The Woman King follows the emotionally epic journey of General Nanisca (Oscar-winner Viola Davis) as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life.
- Nope
Described by its producer, Jordan Peele, as a film that tells “the great American UFO story,” Nope is an original, atypical sci-fi western film that uses the mode of otherworldly forces to explore the idea of the spectacle and the horror; it is a movie that compellingly questions the good and the bad that come from the relation of this two ideas that derives attention. You can either look away or embrace the horror of everything you see.
Nope tells the story about a mysterious UFO haunting the skies of a sleepy Southern California ranch town, and is all about the danger of looking in our image-obsessed culture.
- Top Gun: Maverick
By these lines from the movie –“It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot”; “It’s time to let go”; “I’m a fighter pilot… It’s not what I am, it’s who I am”– you can already guess what type of movie this is.
Picking up 30 years after the events of its first film, Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick is an action drama film that features the return of Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a test pilot and flight instructor known for his incredible out-of-this-world type of flight skills.
Maverick, however, finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, when he encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”. As the ghosts of the past come back to haunt him, Maverick must make some tough decisions, all leading him to a deadly mission that might just claim lives.
