Nothing about Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers should work. It’s too weird, too meta, too filled with off-color humor, too reliant on nostalgia. And yet, while all those thing may be true, somehow the film’s humor and brains come together in a way that puts it all together in just the right alchemy. It’s streaming on Disney+.

A too-cool vampire has to change his entire way of life when a daughter he didn’t know existed arrives on the scene. Blood Relatives is a touching, funny blend of horror, drama, and comedy that plays in its genre conventions, but never overuses them. Noah Segan not only stars, but writes and directs, and Victoria Moroles, who plays his daughter, is a real standout. It’s available on Shudder.

For as many sure bets as there were at the movies this year, there were also some pleasant surprises, one of them being Scream. (Technically Scream 5, but what is a semi-reboot if not eager to make title confusing?) With a solid lineup of newcomers and series veterans coming in to be more than obligatory cameos, Scream 5 was plenty of fun, plenty gory, and provided some nice slasher goodness to start off the year with.

Robert Eggers’ The Northman is epic in every sense of the word. Inspired by the Viking legend of Amleth (which also served as inspiration for Shakespeare’s Hamlet), the movie is a brutally real, magically mythic tale of one man’s revenge against the uncle who betrayed and killed his father in 9th-century Scandinavia. It’s the perfect setting for Eggers, who also did the otherworldly films The Witch and The Lighthouse. Alexander Skarsgård stars as the hulking, rage-driven title character, but Willem Dafoe’s mad fool Heimir and Björk’s unsettling Seeress steal the movie in their brief scenes. The Northman is a singular viewing experience that manages to make the millennium-old story feel breathtakingly fresh.

This unhinged concept is a fantastical fan-fiction of what you hope it’d be like to spend hours with Nic Cage as your bestie. It’s made even better by Pedro Pascal who does just that as a crime lord who hires the actor to relive his greatest hits in a sprawling estate dedicated to his fandom. Pascal is endearing and charming, a perfect conduit for the fan. And his chemistry with Cage is off the charts—not to mention Cage’s all-timer chemistry with himself.

One of the most disturbing movies you will ever see relentlessly mines social awkwardness to the point of extreme horror—and that includes scenes where it’s simply people in a room talking. Things do get more visceral eventually, but by that point you’re already in a state of agony watching Speak No Evil’s hapless characters tumbling into a situation where politeness becomes an agent of doom. It’s available on Shudder.

Directed by Chris Williams (who co-wrote it with Neil Benjamin), The Sea Beast was released in the middle of the year and is well worth your time if you haven’t seen it already. It’s a fun, breezy adventure story that succeeds thanks to stellar animation and a sense of scale that ensures that the sea beasts themselves feel big, even on the small screen. Netflix had a strong year in terms of animation, particularly towards the end of the year, but The Sea Beast deserves some more love. It’s streaming on Netflix.

Maybe the least surprising thing to happen in movies in 2022 is that a stop-motion animated Pinocchio movie by Guillermo del Toro is great. Of course, it was going to be great. It’s a stop-motion animated Pinocchio movie co-directed by Guillermo del Toro! Find it streaming on Netflix.

Henry Selick does it again with this Jordan Peele collaboration. The stop-motion weird wonder that is Wendell and Wild speaks to a new generation of odd kids like Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline before it. Selick and his team keep the magic alive for the puppeteering art form with characters who look and feel more real than any CG character. Stream the film on Netflix.

Want to watch a hilarious, creepy, weird, and ultimately fantastical (ish) story about the worst human beings imaginable getting what’s coming to them? No, we’re not talking about Twitter, we’re talking about The Menu, a super tight and biting satire about an extremely exclusive restaurant that goes to some super disturbing places, in the best possible way.

A lonely inventor creates a robot for companionship—then finds his life completely transformed by the curious, irresistibly joyful personality he’s brought into the world. Brian and Charles achieves some surprising emotional depths as it follows these two characters trying to figure out life, but it also contains some of the year’s most quirky and hilarious moments.

Emphasizing the “dark” in the Dark Knight, The Batman begins by showcasing Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) as a rage-filled vigilante, unsure of his role, who finds himself hunting a sadistic, riddle-obsessed serial killer (Paul Dano) with ties to the Wayne family, the Mafia, and more. The Batman thankfully set itself apart from other Bat-movies by focusing on the hero as a detective, but was made equally memorable by Zoe Kravitz’s excellent take on Catwoman and the relentless, utterly fantastic car chase after Penguin (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell). But what truly makes the movie one of 2022’s best is how at the end, it lifts Batman out of darkness—literally and figuratively—as the vigilante learns what Gotham City truly needs is a hero, not an avenger. We can’t wait to see what’s next.

This Disney-Pixar release was a revelation that deserved a wider release. Director Domee Shi captures what being an Asian teen in the aughts felt like, and to an even broader extent the first-generation angst that accompanies stepping out of tradition and cultivating healing for those who came before. A modern coming-of-age classic! Watch it now on Disney+.

Horror breakout Barbarian was a word-of-mouth sensation where the word was “Don’t read anything about it before you watch it!” It’s not a spoiler to say it used its diverse influences—which seemed to include, but were not limited to, The Gift of Fear, Twitter threads chronicling Airbnb nightmares, the MeToo movement, a fascination with gentrification and abandonment in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood, and old-fashioned “Don’t go in the creepy-ass basement!” vibes—to potent effect, with a story that upended itself more than once and kept audiences gasping until the end.

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may not get the attention it deserves from the wider TMNT fanbase simply because its breaks from the traditional turtle formula too much for some fans to bear. But those who found a home in the teenage ninja fandom through its energetic interpretations of the turtles and its sumptuous action were duly rewarded in this year’s Netflix movie farewell to the latest take on the heroes in a half-shell. A fitting epilogue to this version of the TMNT, everything in Rise’s movie is what’s great about the show on a bigger and better level: the same great heart and humor, the same incredible action, ramped up into a celebration of what made Rise so special in the first place. Check it out on Netflix.

Director Masaaki Yuasa returned to film for the first time in three years, and Inu-Oh showed that he hasn’t lost a step. Utterly vibrant from start to end and blessed with gorgeous musical vibes, Inu-Oh feels as big and showy as any live-action music biopic within the last decade, but with a much more personal touch. It’s an animated film unlike anything else this year, and an utter blast.

Of all the Marvel sequels in recent memory, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had the highest expectations to live up to. Between being the first real sequel to the 2018 hit and suddenly having its narrative defined by the 2020 loss of Chadwick Boseman, there was a different kind of pressure around Wakanda Forever than the usual weight that MCU movies are afforded. And though the movie stumbles in spots, it’s ultimately a fitting and moving sequel, the kind that the studio isn’t always capable of making. With an earnest commitment to exploring the messy ways that grief and anger exist, and a new compelling antihero in Tenoch Heurta’s Namor, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever stands as one of the best Marvel sequels in some time, and every bit as impressive as its direct predecessor.

We are not above a fucked-up romance, and Bones and All delivers a poignant coming of age story as Taylor Russel and Timothée Chalamet command your attention and your attraction. Under the guidance of a master director, Luca Guadagnino, the film explores raw, complicated desires and creates an unforgettable experience. The craft of Bones and All is in its seduction and simplicity, creating a whole world that centers around two lovers, trapping them in a legacy of unending (digestive) cycles.

David Cronenberg does not miss, and this gut-churning film deals with art, evolution, and the environment on a visceral, immediate level. The transgender themes of this film are readily apparent and beautifully layered in metaphor, creating a film-going experience that had us laughing in our seats even as everyone around us cringed. The disgust is the point of Crime of the Future, but it’s also incredibly beautiful.

The spectacle of James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time was, against all odds, worth the wait. The Way of Water improves upon the original Avatar on every level—not just in the spectacle, which was a given, but in the story, the characters, and the drama, too. The tale of the Sully family, forced to flee across Pandora and adapt to a new, wetter life, allows Cameron to explore a dazzling new world, while the fight with a Na’vi-fied Miles Quaritch gives the conflict a depth missing in the original. But really, The Way of Water’s most amazing achievement is that exhilarating final act, an unparalleled spectacle that puts the action of entire Marvel movies to shame.

A young filmmaker rents an Airbnb and finds that a talking seashell lives there. This talking shell, named Marcel, has lost its family and the filmmaker decides to document the search for the family, as well as all of Marcel’s quirky life lessons. Brilliant and beautifully animated, Marcel is also flat-out hilarious, intensely moving, and almost unbelievably uplifting. Truly one of the best, most underrated films of the year.

Jordan Peele added a hefty dose of sci-fi into his horror cauldron with Nope, and proved once again that few filmmakers working today are able to subvert genre so cleverly and insightfully. Taking on the idea of “spectacle” with a strong cautionary note about the price of recklessly chasing fame, the film was an alien-invasion film like no other, giving us memorably unique characters and plenty of frights. Check it out on Peacock.

In a fascinating but mysterious future, one family’s stand-in sibling robot malfunctions. As the father tries to repair it, he finds that the robot isn’t the only one who needs fixing in this quiet, beautiful movie teeming with sci-fi tendencies that suck you into a moving story of family and loss. A very powerful, excellent film.

Mamoru Hosoda has spent his whole career engaging with an optimistic imagining of what internet culture can do for the world, and his latest movie Belle is no exception. While its real-world messaging might be a little clunky to the point of naivete, its sumptuous, sci-fi tinged re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast makes for an incredible digital spectacle, with a stunning poppy soundtrack to match its musical, idealistic view of the metaverse, with nary a bored ape in sight.

At the beginning of 2022, if you told us a new Predator movie was going to be on this list, no one would have believed you. The Predator franchise does not have a good track record, but that was before Amber Midthunder was its star. In Prey, she stars as a young Comanche woman, living years before any of the other films, who takes on of the deadly aliens. From director Dan Trachtenberg, it’s a film that has all the genre franchise excitement and lore you could ask for, but is much more interesting in telling a fantastic, unique story. The result is, easily, the second-best Predator movie of all-time and one of the best films of 2022. You can watch it exclusively on Hulu.

RRR is the end-all, be-all of blockbuster films for 2022. Nothing else comes close. Director S.S. Rajamouli has changed everything with his epic (in length and in scope), bromantical historical fantasy adventure and we’re only just beginning to see the impact of it; we can only hope more films take the right notes of this genre rule-breaking feature. RRR 2 can’t come soon enough.