Top 10 Films of 2022 (So Far)

I won't introduce this tedious thing that I, from 2020 am doing every year. However, here is a (not so) fun fact: I was to make this a top 20 list like every year. However, to condense it to just 10 is a very conscious one because of my inability to watch some of the most acclaimed films of the year so far on a big screen, for example Top Gun: Maverick and our very own mass films like Vikram and 777 Charlie. 

Yes, a makeshift introduction which is bound to get erased with a subsequent update. Let's get together the best 10 films of 2022. 

10. Dhuin 

Achal Mishra, the indie auteur from Mithilanchal who made a near-perfect debut with Gamak Ghar, follows with a more composed and coldly constructed sophomore feature in form of Dhuin. It isn't a better piece of work- a running time of less than an hour doesn't allow so. However, it uses a perfectly original approach to get into the internalised space of the protagonist Pankaj, a small-town man who aspires to be an actor but restricted by social and economic pain and turmoil. Watch out for Abhinav Jha's extraordinary performance as Pankaj. 

9. On the Count of Three 

A terrific chemistry between Christopher Abbott (who has unquestionably emerged as the star performer in American indie cinema circuit) and Jerrod Carmichael (whose fiercely funny energy has also resulted in the film's direction and writing) elevates this questionable suicide based dark comedy to insanely entertaining levels. Following two best friends who, failed by their lives to two different degrees, decide to take the lives of each other, the film works out an equal parts profoundly tragic and spectacularly entertaining look into the phrase 'living the day like it were your last'. Hehe, that's one deep, scarring look to give. 

8. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood 

Richard Linklater, the famously delightful master of American mumblecore cine-making, makes a charming comeback towards beautiful looking rotoscope animation with this deliberately magical and understated film. Following a very young boy living in the Houston of 1969 as he is narrated through by his own adult version, the film underscores big, dramatic moments and takes them down with a very charming and large-hearted flavour to the proceedings. Above everything, the minuscule story of a boy and his response to his immediate surroundings is simple, but so sincerely done that it's also oddly affecting. 

7. Badhaai Do 

While Amit Sharma's extensively delightful middle-aged pregnancy comedy Badhaai Ho was a crowd-pleaser at its best, Badhaai Do goes a step further into the brave direction and turns out to be my favourite Indian film of the year so far. Director Harshvardhan Kulkarni brings a new direction to this spiritual sequel. Rather than establishing the film around some kind of taboo topic, he uses a small-town story of lavender marriages to foster the LGBTQ identity of one's own on the face of the homophobic and conservative surroundings around. Starring Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar who enjoy a very charming chemistry with each other, the film doesn't deserve applause simply for bringing such a brave topic to the fore, but for giving it the compassionate optimism that it deserves. 

6. Fire of Love 

An accomplished documentarian, Sara Dosa's honesty and skill results in one of the most expressive love stories mounted this year. The film charts the incredible story of a couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft, a pair of volcanologists who loved the heaps of erupting lavas as much as they loved each other. Their romance, however stunning visually and healing for the mind, met a tragic end. While never underscoring this on the face of its fairly observational structure, the processed editing and compelling narration by Miranda July lends the film the kind of potency that I cannot put to words. It's a rare and human documentary that is melancholic, purely moving and supremely earthbound. 

5. Happening 

The top prize winner at last year's Venice Film Festival, Audrey Diwan's Happening has become increasingly relevant this year with each passing day, as the feminist pro-abortion sentiments increase on the face of restrictive laws across nations regarding the same. The film, based on a novel written by Annie Ernaux, follows a young woman in 1960s France and her determined journey to live her life on her own terms and secretly abort the child she's impregnated with. The film powerfully follows her and with an honesty that gets increasingly uncomfortable for a film that doesn't resort for a single moment towards the period-drama aesthetic. Anamaria Vartolomei is a stunning revelation. 

4. Everything Everywhere All at Once 

One of the most worldwide popular films of the year and already a potential winner of the affirmative Oscar, this multiverse film constructed by the incredibly skilled Daniels puts them on the map with the kind of critical and commercial success they have prepared themselves to entirely deserve since their earnest and masterfully done debut with Swiss Army Man. However, in this sophomore feature, as they expand on the loveable, wholesome charm of their material, meanwhile catering to the universal appeal with enough substance to their action and fuelled by unexpected levels of ADHD and Michelle Yeoh greatness, they also reaffirm the sheer core vitality held by ambitions, kindness and possibilities. While I should've loved it more than I did, I'll re-watch it very, very soon. 

3. Cha Cha Real Smooth

I have seen many sensitive and sincere men put together on the silver screen. They're cheerful and emotionally resonant in equal measure. However, none of these guys have the compelling warmth and a sort of wholesome packaging as much as the talented indie superstar Cooper Raiff does. Coming straight out of his lovely little debut feature Shithouse, Raiff takes in Dakota Johnson and newcomer Vanessa Burghardt into the mix to construct an utterly sweet and preciously mounted coming-of-age fable about a young party starter who strikes a friendship and tried to go onwards for love. Anchored by the excellent leading performance and direction of Raiff and the sensitivity showered for topics such as middle-aged yearning and autism, this film is a real winner. 

2. Hit the Road 

The son of restricted Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi, Panah Panahi makes an endlessly beautiful and empathetically designed feature debut with Hit the Road. On its glistening surface, the film is a happy, feel-good family road trip story. The loveable little twerp of a kid is the particular highlight, his delightful histrionics underlining our own emotions in strange little ways. However, it is also a delicate and uncompromising familial portrait about holding on to each other, and yet letting each other go their ways. The strange anatomy of a simple family dynamic is constructed with sprawling sincerity and is shot fantastically, even as the acting works its charms in an irresistible manner already. There have been a lot of surprises this year, but none as resoundingly intimate as this one. 

1. After Yang 

In the world where cinema exists, there is no dearth of films which give the questions of existentialism vivid shapes and forms. However, none of them have been even passably as inventive, magical, moving, warm and comfortably unconventional as After Yang. Kogonada, a true cinephile and cine video essayist who made a therapeutic and cleansing debut with Columbus, follows it with a more direct yet no less electric piece that imagines the dilemmas related to existence as a futuristic comment on family dynamics and cultural identity. Of course, the film is evocative because its gifts are representative of the cinephile that its director is- the smartness of its execution is effortless and inevitable. However, the more important fact is that the film is a byproduct of the fact that its director too, at some point in this wide human history, was a child, curious, observing endless love and fragments of loss, and questioning everything if only remembering little of it all.