The 10 Best Movies Of The Year ... So Far
How many of these will hold up on the year-end list?
Edition 184:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
In this week’s newsletter: We’re counting down the 10 best movies of the year…so far. The list has a little bit of everything — blockbusters, animation, documentary, indie, foreign langue — and almost all of them are now available to stream. Enjoy!
The Year In Movies…So Far
One thing people always ask me, when giving feedback about the newsletter, is why I don’t give ratings for the movies I review.
Aside from the obvious fact that people would look at the rating and not read the actual review, doing this newsletter has only deepened my appreciation for different people’s tastes. Movies I love, other people might hate (one of my friends has disliked my No. 1 movies from each of the past two years…it’s a him problem, obviously). So I describe what I find interesting about a movie, what I like or don’t like, and let readers find their own interest level in the interpretation.
However, it is important to put ones opinions out there in black and white, so that you’re not the wishy-washy guy who retroactively says “oh I loved it” about the surprise hit or jumps on the pile of a movie that’s bombing.
So at this critical juncture in the movie year, and honestly in response to pretty much every other outlet releasing their mid-year Top 10s, I wanted to establish my list of the best movies so far this year. In most movie years, I’d tell you that only one or two of these movies had a chance to sniff the end-of-year Top 10, because all the prestige movies come at the end of the year, but this year’s front half has been unusually strong.
Hopefully this guide helps you catch up on the ones you may have missed! Enjoy.
10: Turning Red
(Disney+)
I wasn’t a fan of Lightyear, but my respect for Pixar remains sky high. Their mix of fun, funny, clever, and incredibly sentimental is a winning recipe in this story about mothers and daughters, immigration across generations and reaching hormonal adolescence thanks to a boy band obsession.
9: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
(Theaters)
No movie this year will make you feel more hope or empathy than this fake-documentary about a mollusk wearing sneakers. It’s a ridiculous concept taken extremely seriously, earning the audience’s trust with technical precision and winning its heart with some genuinely emotional storytelling.
8: The Northman
(Peacock)
The appeal of this movie is in some ways its inaccessibility, as the world-building mastery of director Robert Eggers sets up a painstakingly accurate world of Norse mythology that is grimy, bleak, and ultra-violent. Still, the “wolf raid” will go down as the best action sequence of the year, I think, and Alexander Skarsgard’s traps are the eighth wonder of the world.
7: Cha Cha Real Smooth
(AppleTV+)
Filmmakers in their early 20s very rarely display the kind of confidence in their moviemaking that young Cooper Raiff has in spades, especially when filling the frame with his own characters. His stories are thinly veiled autofiction — as in this one about a young post-grad trying to figure out his life — and perhaps a little aspirational, as that postgrad gets entangled with a much-older Dakota Johnson. Its an awkward pairing but it’s hard to deny this kid will be a major force for years to come.
6: The Batman
(HBO Max)
Good blockbuster filmmaking cannot be taken for granted, and as the years pass I think this movie will only become more respected for the risks it took with one of the world’s most popular heroes. It’s too long and its story is kind of gobbildy gook, but it paid off on the goal to create a noir detective story complete with an emo Batman (Robert Pattinson), a worthy villain (Paul Dano), an immaculately rendered Gotham City and a brilliant femme fatale (Zoe Kravitz).
5: Fresh
(Hulu)
Few premises this year are as high concept as this one (try not to have it spoiled for you!). Anchored by fantastic performances from Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar-Jones, this rom-com gone wrong is one of the few movies that threads the needle between differing tones in a way that delights viewers on every side.
4: Top Gun: Maverick
(Theaters…still!)
This movie just passed Titanic in domestic box office gross, and with $600 million worth of Americans now having seen it, it’s safe to call it one of the biggest hit movies of this modern era. Never before has a movie so successfully tapped into fan service, and pulled it off so miraculously. Bottom line, it’s just so so so fun.
3: Navalny
(HBO Max)
Don’t think of this documentary about Vladmir Putin’s opposition candidate as “political,” because it’s much more like a real life spy thriller. The footage captured by Alexei Navalny as he investigates his own assassination attempt will leave your jaw on the floor and your brain shattered into a million pieces.
2: The Worst Person In The World
(Hulu)
This Norwegian rom-com is one of the most profound movies I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean it’s esoteric in any way. It’s pragmatic, but makes me feel the entire spectrum of emotions. There’s no other word to use but “masterpiece,” and the lead acting performance from Renate Reinsve is the best this year could possibly produce.
1: Everything Everywhere All At Once
(Theaters, VOD)
Simply put, this is one of the best movies of the decade. It’s a rarity amongst rarities to produce a legitimate crowd-pleasing blockbuster with an insanely genre movie that also manages to tell a deeply affecting and specific immigrant family story about mothers and daughters. Every element of the production is above and beyond exceptional, from the multiversal costumes and sets to the acting performances and the fantastic action choreography. It’s hard to see anything topping this on the year-end list.
Honorable Mentions
Kimi (HBO Max): Steven Soderbergh’s latest run of smaller, more experimental movies just keeps turning out interesting stuff, and this self-contained thriller is one of my favorite Covid-adjacent stories. Again, Zoe Kravitz having an awesome year.
Petite Maman (VOD): Everything about this movie feels small, from its runtime (72 minutes) to its stripped down crew. But its beautiful, and heart-warming, and one more feather in the cap of rising master Céline Sciamma.
Windfall (Netflix): Another Covid-restricted movie, but you’ve got three really interesting actors thrown together (Jason Segal, Jessie Plemons and Lily Collins) in a room with rapidly rising tension, turning out a edge-of-your-seat domestic thriller with legitimate twists and turns.