By the time the year ends, I will have watched over 150 movies released in 2022. That means that while there are some definite masterpieces to address in my top 15 list in a few weeks, there are also a lot of other movies from the year that warrant attention. In this post, I’m going to highlight five that were a lot better than I had expected and, conversely, five that fell short of my expectations (in some cases catastrophically short). I’m going to alternate back and forth, so the two titles at the bottom of the list will be the biggest surprise and biggest disappointment of the year.
There’s reason to do this beyond just it being an interesting thing to do. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten worse and worse at predicting what I would like. Even this year, my most anticipated film was Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, which doesn’t make the disappointments list but also doesn’t rank among my favorites (it’s around #40 at this point). It’s useful, I think, to take stock of where one’s expectations were wrong, and also share in the joy of movies that turn out to exceed expectations.
#5 Disappointment: The Wonder (Netflix)
I probably wasn’t in the right mood for this one when I watched it, but still, it was significantly disappointing. Florence Pugh does solid work, but the role doesn’t give her space to shine. The story—based on a novel of the same name—takes “slow burn” to an extreme level. I usually like slow burns, but this was too much even for me. Still, this is a movie that might improve on a second watch, but it wasn’t the hidden Netflix gem I hoped it would be.
#5 Surprise: The Lost City
I actually liked The Lost City more than the other surprises to come on this list, but the list order is based on the gap between the expected value and the actual value (“value” is an imperfect way to put it, but you get the idea). In the case of this movie, I expected it to be pretty darn good and it turned out to be really darn good. It certainly helped that it was a packed theater full of people having a good time. Easily one of 2022’s best comedies.
#4 Disappointment: Fresh (Hulu)
I really expected to love this movie. It had good buzz out of Sundance and starred Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan. It appeared to be a dark comedy horror thriller, which is very much in my wheelhouse. But something about it fell flat for me. If I remember right, the story collapsed in the third act. I’d still say it’s worth watching, but it fell well below my expectations.
#4 Surprise: The Outfit
I rank this lower on the surprises list because the expectations were minimal. There was essentially no marketing for this movie—which stars such big names as Mark Rylance and Zoey Deutch—and I, like most people, saw it randomly on Peacock (now it’s on Amazon Prime, I think) and clicked on it. Well, this movie is excellent. It’s a sleek, fast-pasted spy thriller that feels like Hitchcock in the best way. It’s the definition of “Hidden Gem” and one of the best primarily streaming movies of the year. If you like suspense movies, it’s an essential watch.
#3 Disappointment: Blonde (Netflix)
As Blonde got closer, it became more obvious that the movie probably wouldn’t be that great. Still, after I rewatched Andrew Dominik’s sublime The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), I had renewed hope…until a day or two before Blonde released and he admitted to having essentially no regard for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks, 1953). Then I knew we were in trouble. Still just how awful this movie ended up being was shocking, a two- and half-hour slog of trauma porn and the thinnest characters. The “saving” grace of the movie is that Ana de Armas’s Marilyn feels so artificial that you don’t for one moment forget that its entirely a fictionalized version of Marilyn’s life. It’s a horrible movie and we should all be at least a little ashamed of how much attention we gave it.
#3 Surprise: The Adam Project (Netflix)
The first time I tried to watch Netflix’s The Adam Project, I got about three minutes in, thought “I know this movie,” and watched something else. That was partly true. It’s Ryan Reynolds doing his wise-cracking thing (he’s good at this in Spirited, too) with a Shawn Levy script that allow plenty of opportunity for jokes (shout out to Levy’s This is Where I Leave You, a movie I really like). But there’s a lot of heart and a fairly engaging, mostly original, story at the core of this movie. Netflix had a chaotic year on the movie front, but this was a surprise winner.
#2 Disappointment: Men
Released the week between Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Top Gun: Maverick, Men slipped under the radar. Which is fine because it was very bad. Up till now the director, Alex Garland, could do no wrong. Ex Machina (2014) is my favorite science fiction movie, Annihilation (2018) is excellent, and Devs is one of the best science fiction shows of the last decade if not ever. But he went the horror route with Men, and it didn’t work. Jessie Buckley, one of my favorite actors, was very good in her lead role, but the story was very thin with an incredibly outdated view of gender ideology. This movie doesn’t have much to say and whatever it does say, it says clumsily. This movie, and the number one disappointment below, were so bad as the director’s third major features, it had me scared that Nope would be bad, just because the trend of bad third features was so strong in 2022 (Nope was excellent, and may even appear in the top 15 posts).
#2 Surprise: DC League of Super-Pets
I thought this movie would be decent, but it was actually one of the best-animated movies of the year and resoundingly the best-animated movie of the summer. It had a lot more of the DNA of what made The LEGO Movie (2014) so good than it did The Secret Life of Pets (2016) vibes I thought it would have. The “pets” part is secondary to the “super” antics, which were fun, colorful, and funny. This one is on HBO Max now, and I highly recommend giving it a shot if you missed it in theaters.
Before I unveil the top 2, here are very quick thoughts about other notable 2022 movies that won’t appear here or on my top 15 year-end list (in order from best to worst).
- Batman. Two hours of greatness, one hour of something far from greatness. A movie that I suspect will either age great or horribly depending on how the second one is.
- Wakanda Forever. A bit long and Marvel-y in a few places, but a lot of this movie is really excellent.
- Amsterdam. I didn’t hate this anywhere near as much as most people. Not perfect, but far from disappointing in my eyes.
- Elvis. Austin Butler was great, Tom Hanks was terrible, and the movie was too long.
- Top Gun: Maverick. The flying sequences were great, but the “story” was mediocre. Too much military propaganda for my taste.
- RRR. A big, bombastic, fun movie with very troubling politics I can’t ignore. I get why people like this one, but I can’t get there.
- Strange World. A very messy Disney offering, but it looks great and there were parts of the story that really worked, buried in bad marketing and other plot points.
- Morbius. Not as bad as people say, but still pretty bad.
- Halloween Ends. Much better than last year’s Halloween Kills, but still pretty meh.
- Thor: Love and Thunder. I hated it. My pick for the worst-ever Marvel movie. The only reason it doesn’t top the disappointment list is that I had such low expectations for it, it couldn’t fall short enough of them to make the list. But let it be known: I hated this movie.
And the number one disappointment is…
The Northman
If you followed my Instagram this year, this will hardly be a shock. I hated this movie. And I had super high hopes for it. Director Robert Eggers had previously made my favorite horror movie, The Witch (2015), and a very good movie in The Lighthouse (2019). The cast was amazing and nearly all the reviews for this movie were glowing. I was so excited and so incredibly disappointed. All I kept thinking while watching most of it (and fighting to stay awake, which is just never something I have to do watching movies in theaters) was “This movie is a good reminder that Hitler and the fascist powers of the 20th century drew heavily on Viking mythology.” I’ve heard the argument that it’s a takedown of toxic masculinity. And the movie does try to do that. But I think it fails utterly and, in the process, makes its vices look awfully appealing sort of like Taxi Driver, another movie that is widely loved but that I think falls short of its intended critique.
But for this one, the joke is on me for thinking it would be great. I don’t like war epics like this very often, and I gave the director far too much credit for past efforts. I can see some of the merits of this movie, but, again, the dangerous ideological content was a bridge too far for me.
On the other hand, the biggest surprise of 2022 is…
Bullet Train
I thought this movie would be dumb fun, but it worked so much better than that. The acting is hilarious as are many of the scenes. The action is really sharp too, and I’m not usually an action fan. I’m a sucker for Brad Pitt and I think this was one of his most fun performances in a long time. It came out in August and was the perfect movie for late summer, high energy, and high octane. It doesn’t really say anything of course, but it was probably the most fun I had at the movies this year.
That does it for my round-up of disappointments and surprises. Reach out here or on social media to let me know your biggest surprises and what lessons you learned this year from your disappointments. Next time I will continue wrapping up 2022 with reflections on my movie-watching habits in 2022, a look back at my goals and how I did on them, and a look ahead to my 2023 movie-based aims.
