The Best Movies You Missed in 2022—and Where to Watch Them

In terms of critical hits and blockbusters, the year would have gone down as a great one if James Cameron hadn't come up in the last two weeks of the year.

There are a lot of good movies that you might have missed if you haven't watched Top Gun, Glass Onion, Nope, and The Banshees of Inisherin. Some of them are listed here.

The Bears were not included in the list.

No Bears is playing in theaters even though it was released late in the year. One month after Panahi was sentenced to prison for six years for protesting the arrest of two other filmmakers, his new film was shown at the Venice film festival. Panahi was banned from directing for 20 years after he made The White Balloon, a cinéma vérité-style meditation on daily life in Tehran. Panahi went on to assemble a legacy-making filmography that includes The Circle, Offside, and 3 Faces. He made a movie about a film maker who has been banned from making films and takes a trip to the Turkish border to make his art. The film is a reminder of the power of the cinematic art form and the true heroism it takes to fight oppression.

Hit the Road, a movie about family that serves as a perfect complement to No Bears, was written and directed by Panah Panahi, the son of Jafar Panahi.

After sun.

Charlotte Wells made a heartbreaking family drama that is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a poignant representation of mental illness with After Sun. It feels like two different films, each telling a different story from a different perspective. Calum tries to hide his inner turmoil for his daughter's sake, but she easily sees through the facade and tries to strike a real and lasting connection with him. The chemistry between Mescal and Corio is gorgeous. The majority of the film is set in the 1990s, and we see a lot of their holiday through video footage watched by an adult. Wells leaves it up to the viewer to fill in the blanks at the end of the film. That could seem like a cop-out, but in the case of Aftersun, it adds to the movie's poignancy.

The person is Kimi.

Magic Mike's Last Dance reminds us that Steven Soderbergh is still going strong. It is hard to imagine that he will ever stop releasing features because of his prolificacy. His smaller-scale releases are as watchable as bigger-budget films like Magic Mike or the Ocean's Eleven series. In Kimi, Soderbergh shows us what Rear Window might look like. Amygdala is a soon-to-be public tech company that sells smart home devices that eavesdrop on your every move. She hears what she thinks is a violent crime. She was met with resistance when she tried to report it. Forced to face her biggest fears and return to the bad world in order to seek justice, is an assault survivor who can't let it go.

You won't be left alone.

This gorgeously shot horror film is set in an eerily isolated mountain village in the 19th century. In order to spare her newborn daughter's life, a mother made a deal with the town's notorious Wolf-Eateress that she will give the girl up when she is 16 years old. Over the course of the next decade and a half, Nevena is secretly raised in a cave in order to protect her from a witch. When Maria returns and transforms Nevena into one of her own kind, she gives the teen the ability to take on the appearance of any living thing she kills. Not fully understanding what has happened to her, and curious upon discovering the world that exists outside the cave, Nevena uses her newfound abilities to experience the realities of being human.

The child of the eternal daughter.

Between The Souvenir, The Souvenir Part II, and now The Eternal Daughter, there are three films that are cementing their place as one of cinema's most brilliant director- actor pairs. After the death of her father, Rosalind decides to take her mother to a hotel that used to belong to their family in order to make a movie about her mom. When family secrets come to the forefront, it becomes clear that this mother-daughter trip might not be what it appears.