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Ranking 2022 Best Picture Nominees

2022 was a very weak year for movies, so obviously it was going to lead to a very bad Best Picture slate. The Academy hates horror and animation and rarely nominates foreign movies and indies as well, so when you take all of those away, you are left with a list that features a couple of mediocre biopics, one extremely overrated mess and two blockbusters that in any other year would never be nominated. Only two of these ten movies were great, which is a new low for the Academy.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

10. Elvis

Baz Luhrmann is a famously hit-or-miss director and Elvis is clearly one of his misses. Yes, this movie had pretty big office and solid reviews, but it had no business being nominated for Best Picture just on the strength of Austin Butler’s performance alone. Everything else here is incredibly mediocre. Tom Hanks has never been worse than he was here. The decision to make Elvis an afterthought in his own story really backfired. It’s an obnoxiously loud and bombastic movie that has nothing to say about this music legend. It is very easily the worst nominee this year for me.

9. Everything Everywhere All at Once

I have a huge issue with people’s tendency to value originality over strong storytelling. Yes, originality is important, but not all originality is great. Case in point, Everything Everywhere All at Once. This movie is so stupid and so ridiculous to the point that it was a tiresome, cringe-worthy viewing experience for me. The only quality reason to see it is for the acting performances, especially that of the great Michelle Yeoh, who was wonderful in the main role. But everything else was an assault on the senses. It had some solid and important themes, but they were lost in this overstuffed, overlong bore of a film that was frustrating to sit through. It’s by far the most overrated movie of 2022.

8. Top Gun: Maverick

Maverick turned out to be better than I’d expected given my immense distaste for the first movie. This extremely elongated sequel has at least some sort of a story and passable characterization, though both are still only serviceable. The special effects, cinematography and score are all excellent while its entertainment factor for the masses is undeniable. My issue here is that this was still almost as pro-military as the original and the dialogue was just cringe-worthy at times. The fact that this dumb blockbuster isn’t dead last here just goes to show how bad this entire slate is. The Academy nominating it over so many better genre movies this year was beyond questionable.

7. The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg exhibited many of his worst traits in The Fabelmans, a horribly misguided autobiographical drama that is supposedly about the magic and power of filmmaking, but is in reality something entirely else. It is a family drama and a coming-of-age story and it’s a rather unsuccessful mixture of all these narrative tropes. The teenage sequences are cheesy and the family drama is hurt by a couple of mediocre performances from Michelle Williams and Paul Dano. The main actor fared much better than these two veteran actors. The movie also reeked of self-congratulatory narcissism from Spielberg. Yes, the ending is so much fun and the movie is cozy and charming throughout, but it still ranks among the director’s weakest efforts.

6. All Quiet on the Western Front

The 2022 German adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was a big disappointment. While I can certainly appreciate the effort to bring back this source material to the nation that originated it and I did admire its cinematic qualities, the overwhelming emphasis on action spectacle and audio-visuals led to an emotionless, tiresome viewing experience. The 1930 Best Picture winner is one of the best movies of all time, especially impressive for its strong anti-war sentiment, but this one failed to develop its characters properly, which made me not care when they met their terrible faiths. The Academy continues to honor the foreign movies that I personally do not care for, but what can you do?

5. Women Talking

A movie about women who live in a secluded religious community with no technology and no proper education, but they all still speak like activists from liberal college campuses, Women Talking is also filled with overly inspirational and didactic speeches throughout. This is a film that hinged heavily on dialogue and failed in that area, thus it was rather ineffective throughout. It inhabited this odd limbo between a realistic drama and a parable, not really succeeding at either of the two. The acting is strong across the board and so is the cinematography, but the film as a whole was emotionally ineffective. The fact that a passable drama like this one gets the fifth place here just goes to show how atrocious this slate is.

4. Avatar: The Way of Water

While the first ‘Avatar’ movie was also nominated for Best Picture, this one was better and given the terrible state of this slate, it is much more deserving to be here. Yes, the plot is once again very subpar and meant to be enjoyed by the vastest masses of people possible, but the visual effects are remarkable and the world building is incredible. The underwater sequences are breathtakingly gorgeous and adventurous. The movie is cringey in its dialogue, but the characterization is better than expected and the action in the third act is spectacular.

3. Triangle of Sadness

Triangle of Sadness gets the third spot because this slate is very bad, not because it is truly great. It’s a very good movie, but a flawed one nonetheless. It is over-the-top and obvious in its second act in particular, but the first act was superbly written while the final act delightfully twisted everything on its head. Strongly performed by its capable cast and well made overall, this is an uneven, but constantly engaging satirical comedy that actually worked much more often than it didn’t. It was a step-up from Ruben Ostlund’s previous work.

2. Tar

Powered by incredible directing from Todd Field and a powerhouse performance from the always outstanding Cate Blanchett, Tar is the first of only two great movies on this slate. While overlong, it is mostly engaging and at times even riveting thanks to superb dialogue and a phenomenal script. It is a very timely movie that deals with current issues in Hollywood, in particular focusing on the prevailing dangers of cancer culture, the utter ridiculousness of social justice warriors and the ever-growing importance of remembering that art should be always separated from the artist. It is a film that is often misunderstood by those who lean heavily toward the extreme political left, but it is undoubtedly going to age like fine wine.

1. The Banshees of Inisherin

And the obvious number one goes to the best film of the entire year, which is the very Irish and the quintessential Banshees of Inisherin. Unlike Everything Everywhere, this is a highly original concept that really works as it deftly mixed a couple of different genres into a coherent whole. Beautifully shot and scored, but above all else superbly directed by Martin McDonagh, Banshees also features incredible performances from the entire cast with Colin Farrell delivering his career-best work. It’s also a thematically rich picture that explores some fascinating themes, especially focusing on the clash between individuality and communal life, conformity and authenticity, and the extremely confining nature of small town life. Banshees is a miraculous feat in authentically rich and cultured storytelling and a rare saving grace for the weak year for cinema that was 2022.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

Pinocchio – Guillermo del Toro adores animation and that love can be witnessed in every single frame of this gorgeous movie. Pinocchio’s stop-motion animation is brilliant, but its script is even better as he adapted this famous and oft told story and went in some very unique directions with it. It’s a moving film that is the second best movie of the year. Its snub in the Best Picture race this year just goes to show how horribly biased the Academy is when it comes to animation.

To Leslie – To Leslie did garner Andrea Riseborough the much-deserved Best Actress nod, but it’s the best independent film of the year, so it really should have been nominated for BP too. It’s a wonderfully acted and simply heartwarming tale of a woman who decides to change her life and its ending is uncharacteristically optimistic for this cynical era.

Babylon – Babylon isn’t great obviously as it’s riddled with ridiculous plot points and unnecessarily prolonged debauchery displayed on the screen, but it’s an epic spectacle nonetheless that is technically polished, superbly acted and unlike anything else this year in terms of scope and ambition.