The 50 Best Movies of 2022

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – January 4, 2023

Here is Metacritic's final list of the 50 best-reviewed movies of 2022, ranked by Metascore. This list only includes films receiving at least 7 reviews from professional critics.

All films released between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022 in at least one U.S. theater or directly to streaming or VOD/digital services were eligible for inclusion. Short films and reissues are excluded. Titles are ranked by Metascore (a weighted average of scores from top professional critics) prior to rounding based on scores as of January 1, 2023.

Additional content by Keith Kimbell.

20 of 25 photo by Neon/Venice Biennale

91 All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Metacritic's Best Documentary of 2022.

(#4) Director Laura Poitras already has one Oscar-winning documentary (Citizenfour) to her name, and she could add a second in a few months with All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, one of 15 films on the Academy's shortlist and the highest-scoring documentary of 2022.

Just the second documentary in the Venice Film Festival's 90-year history to win the first-place Golden Lion trophy, Beauty centers on artist and activist Nan Goldin, and in particular, her ongoing protest against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family. There's a connection between the family and the art world—they have long used some of their pharmaceutical riches to fund major museums—and Goldin, a recovering opioid addict herself, has focused her activism at those institutions. Poitras's film intertwines those efforts with compelling biographical information about Goldin's family life and art career.

First released in late November, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is still playing in theaters and will come to HBO and HBO Max at some point in 2023.

“Both complex and rawly immediate, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras’s film about the 69-year-old photographic artist and activist Nan Goldin, is a great documentary and maybe the most essential film of the year.” —Liam Lacey, Original Cin

Where To Buy