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2022 was such an incredible year for movies, and 2023 is shaping up to be pretty awesome as well! Last year had huge blockbuster premieres like Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water and critical darlings like Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Banshees of Inisherin having great runs as well. But there’s more stuff to watch than ever, and there are tons of movies that came out last year, that were just as incredible, and you may not have even heard of them yet.
Strange World
This science-fiction adventure film was an homage to pulp stories of the early-2oth century and classic films like Fantastic Voyage, but it had a disappointing box office showing compared to its budget. It still garnered fans when it began streaming on Disney+, and it’s a super vibrant and fun film totally worth putting on.
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Nanny
Nanny is a phenomenal psychological horror film, which was the feature directorial debut of Nikatyu Jusu. It stars Anna Diop as an undocumented Senegalese immigrant working as a nanny for a wealthy white family in the Upper West Side to try and get enough money for her son to join her in the United States.
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Fire Island
If you want to see one of the best groups of fictional friends in movies, you’ve got to watch Fire Island. Written by Joel Kim Booster and directed by Andrew Ahn, it’s a queer adaptation of Pride and Prejudice following a group of friends vacationing at the beautiful titular barrier islands south of Long Island.
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Emily the Criminal
Aubrey Plaza makes pretty much any movie she’s in a must-watch, and she went against her usual comedic typecasting to front this crime thriller Emily The Criminal to pretty great results. There’s a great rise of tension here as she gets pulled deeper into a criminal underworld through a credit card scamming ring.
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Saint Omer
Saint Omer is a gripping legal drama, and the fiction debut of the French documentary filmmaker Alice Diop. It follows a novelist who observes the trial of an African woman accused of abandoning her child to die on a beach. It’s definitely a harrowing watch, but absolutely deserves more love and attention following its 2022 premiere.
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The Sea Beast
The Sea Beast is definitely one of the greatest animated films to come out of 2022. It’s always great to see awesome original stories get recognition, and this was critically acclaimed garnering an Oscar nomination and a sequel. Karl Urban and Zaris-Angel Hator star as a monster hunter and young girl who go on a journey to track down the elusive Red Bluster sea monster.
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The Northman
This is so much more than the fantasy action adventure some people were expecting when sitting down for Robert Eggers’ third film. There are some epic and brutal viking battles here, but also a thick layer of family drama and Norse mysticism.
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Ambulance
There’s nothing wrong with action, though! Ambulance is a relentless heist movie which employs some of the most incredible drone cinematography that you have to see to believe. Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen play adoptive brothers who hijack an ambulance after robbing a bank, with the LAPD hot in pursuit.
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Bones and All
This one isn’t for you if you have a weak stomach, but Bones and All served up some chilling moments as well as a touching love story between the two cannibal drifters that come together in this film.
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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
This film is going in the Celebrities Playing Themselves Hall of Fame, with Cage going all-out like he always does in this action comedy. Pedro Pascal plays a super-fan who plays to fly Cage to his private island for a birthday, getting pulled into tons of humorous misadventures.
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Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
This film is absolutely delightful, with Jenny Slate’s amazing voice performance and the distinctive direction from Dean Fleischer Camp. You can still watch the incredible shorts this feature is adapted from on YouTube.
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Aftersun
2022 had some amazing directorial debuts, with Aftersun also standing out as the debut of the filmmaker Charlotte Wells. It received acclaim and some awards attention for Paul Mescal’s performance, but it really comes together beautifully as a meditative character study of both Mescal’s character Calum and his daughter Sophie, played by Frankie Corio.
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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is just as much a parody of celebrity biopics as Yankovic’s music career, and that’s exactly how it should be. This has got to be one of the best career choices Daniel Radcliffe has ever made, and he really sells the part in comedic scenes and musical performances.
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Decision to Leave
This romantic thriller from South Korean director Park Chan-Wook was a highlight of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, where Park rightfully won the Best Director award. An insomniac detective investigates a man’s mysterious death, and begins to fall in love with his wife while staking out her apartment.
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