Netflix released a lot of original films in 2022, from animation to prestige fare to especially young adult book adaptations. There was no shortage of feel-good and transporting films to immerse viewers into entire universes, and even a bona fide box office success in the form of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” follow-up “Glass Onion.” Below, we’ve singled out some of our favorites.
Behold, the best Netflix original movies of 2022, listed in order of release.
Windfall
This one flew way under the radar when it was released back in March, but it’s a taut and twisty little thriller that touches on some hot-button issues in interesting ways. Jesse Plemons plays a wealthy CEO who returns to his home in Ojai one day with his wife (played by Lily Collins), only to discover they’re in the midst of being robbed by a stranger (played by Jason Segel). The stranger ties them up and holds them hostage, and the rest of the film plays out in the same location. There’s a healthy dash of Hitchcock in this latest film from director Charlie McDowell, and it boasts a sharp script from Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker (the latter of “Seven” fame). – Adam Chitwood
Along for the Ride
Adapted from the best-selling book by Sarah Dessen, “Along for the Ride” kicked off the summer with a bang. The May Netflix release stars Emma Pasarow as main character Auden, a young girl who feels she has never quite fit in anywhere between her divorced parents and her more mature outlook on life, and Belmont Cameli as enigma Eli, a nocturnal boy who, much like Auden, keeps to himself lone-wolf style. Auden meets Eli when she decides to spend the summer with her father (Dermot Mulroney) and his new wife Heidi (Kate Bosworth) in Colby, a small seaside town where they have settled down. Auden’s loneliness dissipates when she makes friends with the girls who work at Heidi’s boutique, where Auden works for the summer doing accounting before heading to college. She and Eli form a broody, edgy bond that blossoms into more as they embark on a quest, daring each other to confront parts of themselves they’d rather leave in the past. Complete with a secret diner nook that serves great pie and a prom scene that ties the film together, “Along for the Ride” successfully brought Dessen’s vision to life. - Dessi Gomez
Hustle
One of the year’s biggest (and best) surprises was “Hustle,” which could have been a fairly by-the-book sports movie but is elevated, mostly due to Adam Sandler’s sensitive lead performance, easily his best work since “Uncut Gems” in 2019. (Yes, “Hubie Halloween” was very fun.) Sandler plays a scout and coach for the 76s, a pro basketball team always on the hunt for new talent. He finds that talent in an unlikely place: on a neighborhood basketball court in Spain. That’s where he spots Bo (Juancho Hernangómez), a single father with a dicey past that Sandler’s Stanley Sugarman thinks can go all the way. Surrounded by a satellite of outstanding character actors in supporting roles (including Queen Latifah as Sandler’s wife, Heidi Gardner, Robert Duvall and a scheming Ben Foster – is there any other kind of Ben Foster these days?) It’s the kind of midbudget character drama that big studios are too scared to produce anymore but Netflix will happily oblige (especially if it stars Adam Sandler). Few movies this year were as cathartic and openhearted as “Hustle.” – Drew Taylor
Purple Hearts
Director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum’s feature film starring Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine explores the coming together of a couple who each have very different backgrounds. The enemies to lovers trope takes on a whole new meaning when polarized political views become involved. Luke (Galitzine) is training as a marine, about to deploy, when Cassie (Carson) proposes marriage to his friend Frankie (Chosen Jacobs) because she’s in a tight situation with medical insurance — she has diabetes and her dire need for insulin can’t be met by her current policy. Luke, whose father is a retired military policeman, offers to marry Cassie, who clashes with him immediately because she skews more liberal while he leans conservative, so that he can reap the benefits of a stipend to pay off a drug dealer who he owes a lot of money. Cassie gets better health benefits out of the deal, and while Luke gets deployed, her music starts to take off because she has found a theme she really connects to — the love and the sacrifice of military families. - Dessi Gomez
Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between
A grounded Talia Ryder and a happy-go-lucky Jordan Fisher unite to create an authentic young adult love story set in between senior year of high school and freshman year of college. Ethan (Fisher) meets Claire (Ryder) at a party right before their last year of high school is set to begin, and though Claire hesitates to act on their spark because she has moved around a lot, and her high school sweetheart parents didn’t make it in marriage, Ethan keeps pursuing her until she relents. Fisher contributed an original song to this adaptation of Jennifer E. Smith’s popular novel. The up-in-the-air ending reflects the reality of life and romantic relationships. – Dessi Gomez
Look Both Ways
If not for the split dual timelines involving a baby or no baby, this film should be watched for its amazing animation. Natalie Bennett (Lili Reinhart) sleeps with her good college friend Gabe (Danny Ramirez) in a spur-of-the-moment decision on one of their last nights of college before graduation. Later on at their last party during the actual eve of graduation, Natalie’s narrative branches into two possibilities: one in which she gets pregnant with Gabe’s child, and one in which she doesn’t. From there, the film splits into two universes that sometimes parallel each other in certain areas. Exploring the themes of career and motherhood as well as soulmates and true love, Natalie ultimately still gets to pursue her passion for art, animation and drawing in both realities. She learns different life lessons with and without daughter Rosie. – Dessi Gomez
Do Revenge
Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s girly riff on Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” captured the attention of millennials, Gen X and Gen Z alike with it’s colorful basket of easter egg references to films like “Mean Girls,” “Clueless” and more. The ‘Revenger’ cast consisting of Camilla Mendes, Maya Hawke, Austin Abrams, Rish Shah, Alisha Boe, Jonathan Daviss, Talia Ryder, Maia Reficco, Paris Berlec and Ava Capri pack a punch of young starpower, accompanied by cameos from Sophie Turner and Sarah Michelle Geller. Drea Torres (Mendes) falls from grace when her boyfriend Max (Austin Abrams) leaks a sex tape she makes for his eyes only. The former “It” girl stumbles upon Eleanor (Hawke) at summer tennis camp, where Eleanor plants the seed of doing each other’s revenge in Drea’s mind. Some twists and turns dig up true dirt along the way, both literally in the form of acid mushrooms and metaphorically when Drea has to face her true self and the past she thought she had left behind. This one is delectably fun. - Dessi Gomez
Luckiest Girl Alive
Mila Kunis brings the edge as TifAni FaNelli in the film adaptation of Jessica Knoll’s book “Luckiest Girl Alive.” Chiara Aurelia plays Kunis’ younger counterpart. TifAni, who know goes by just Ani, has climbed her own ladder of success, making her way up the ranks of editorial and landing a coveted role at The New York Times Magazine as well as a hot soon-to-be husband (Finn Wittrock). She’ll be marrying into money, but she has deep trauma. When Ani was in high school, she tried to run with the popular crowd, until she gets gang-raped one night and doesn’t know who to tell about it. She confides in her high school English teacher Mr. Larson (Scoot McNairy), who later triggers her memories of the whole experience when he comes back into her life just before her wedding. On top of the gang rape, her at-first friend Arthur (Thomas Barbusca) — who took her under his wing when the popular kids dropped her — organizes a school shooting with their adjacent friend Ben (David Webster). When a producer asks Ani to participate in a documentary called “Friends of the Five” referencing the five lives lost in the school shooting, all the drama and trauma gets dredged up and the tension comes to a head, leaving Ani with some difficult choices to make. - Dessi Gomez
Wendell and Wild
All hail the return of Henry Selick. Stop-motion animation’s elder statesman hadn’t produced a feature since 2009’s Oscar-nominated “Coraline.” After a brief, disastrous stint at Pixar, it seemed like we might never get another movie from him. But thanks to Jordan Peele, who signed on to co-wrote, produce and co-star, it actually happened. And the resulting film, “Wendell & Wild,” is probably more imaginative and odder than if Selick had cooked it up himself. A “Beetlejuice”-style dark comedy about a young girl and her communion with otherworldly demons (played by Peele and his frequent collaborator Keegan-Michael Key), there’s an anarchic spirit that runs through “Wendell & Wild,” with its afro-punk soundtrack, open jabs at current political leaders and storyline that features an army of invading zombies (among other things). It might not be the most prestigious stop-motion animated feature produced by Netflix this year, but there is something incredibly special about having Selick back – and, what’s more – having him produce something so esoteric and grand. Let’s hope he’s got another one in him. The world is better off if he’s making movies in it. – Drew Taylor
The School for Good and Evil
The adaptation of Soman Chainani’s best-selling “School for Good and Evil” book series, directed by Paul Fieg, arrived on Netflix just in time for Halloween. Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie) bond in the classic opposites attract style, but when they get whisked away to the very real School for Good and Evil and Sophie lands in Evil while Agatha lands in Good, the tale of their tested friendship begins. With a staff of starpowered teachers like Professor Dovey (Kerry Washington), Lady Lesso (Charlize Theron), Professor Anemone (Michelle Yeoh) and of course the Schoolmaster (Laurence Fishburne), the girls embark on an education that completely deconstructs fairytales and the notion of good and bad as a strict binary. Fantastical creatures and magical classes abound, just like at Hogwarts, but in a world all its own. - Dessi Gomez
Enola Holmes 2
Millie Bobby Brown returns, epic stunts and all, as Enola Holmes in the sequel to the first installment that came out in 2020. Also returning are director Harry Bradbeer and Henry Cavill as Sherlock, Enola’s older and famous brother. Mycroft (Sam Claflin) unfortunately does not make an appearance in “Enola Holmes 2,” but Helena Bonham Carter does as their mother Eudoria, and Lousi Partridge also returns as the Viscount Tewkesbury. Enola takes on her first independent case as she starts her detective firm, but it turns out that the case intertwines with Sherlock’s own complicated one that has been stumping him recently. Historical events, social etiquette and the continued feminine action main character role makes for a sequel just as strong as the first “Enola Holmes” (2020) with more than a whodunnit conclusion — some life lessons for both siblings are learned along the way. Plus, a very special guest makes his debut in the Enola universe in a post-credit scene that sets up for another wrinkle in the detective story and world. – Dessi Gomez
The Good Nurse
One of the year’s best, least talked about movies was “The Good Nurse.” Based on the true story of the man who could be America’s most prolific serial killer, a nebbish nurse named Charles Cullen (played, chillingly, by Eddie Redmayne) and the coworker who brought him down (Jessica Chastain), the latest feature from Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm is an unsettling and deeply human thriller. “Last Night in Soho” and “1917” writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns’ script wisely focuses on the friendship between Charlie and the nurse who brought him down (Amy Loughren) with the crimes kept in the background until they become unmissable. And what’s more, Lindholm and Wilson-Cairns put as much blame on America’s broken medical system, which allowed for questionable deaths to occur at Cullen’s various jobs for years, as on Cullen himself. (Estimates suggest he could be responsible for hundreds of deaths.) When Amy finally asks him why he did it he responds, “Because they didn’t stop me.” It’s a chilling admission but speaks to how the architecture of hospital administration allowed a killer to drift in and out of its doors. – Drew Taylor
The Wonder
Weirdly overlooked, Florence Pugh’s best film of 2022 is this arresting period mystery based on a novel by “The Room” author Emma Donoghue. In 1862 Pugh’s character, a nurse who served in the Crimean War, is summoned to rural Ireland to investigate a medical conundrum – a young girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy) who claims to be fasting for months but also somehow surviving. Parts of “The Wonder” feel like a Victorian episode of “The X-Files” as faith is pitted against science and skeptical locals frown upon the arrival of an inquisitive outsider. But there’s also so much more going on beneath the surface of “The Wonder,” to the point that the “truth” of the situation slips away entirely, revealing instead a story about what makes us human and the power it takes to believe. Directed and co-written by the great Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, who adds a number of tantalizing flourishes, both stylistically and textually, and who brings along perhaps the movie’s most unheralded MVP, British electronic musician Matthew Herbert, who composes a score made of samples of characters breathing and other propulsive elements. It’s unlike anything you heard in movies this year and only adds to the magic of “The Wonder.” – Drew Taylor
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Guillermo del Toro’s rendition of “Pinocchio” infuses new beauty into the classic Italian folktale. The impressively detailed stop-motion animation combined with an equally impressive voice cast — including Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Ron Perlman, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Finn Wolfhard, Burn Gorman, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson and more — makes for an immersive viewing experience. The film finds multiple ways into the hearts of the audience. Not even 10 minutes into the movie, the emotional themes of love, loss and familial bonds will grip viewers and plunge them into the world of pine puppet Pinocchio, who borrows the soul of Geppetto’s son Carlo, killed tragically too early in a church bombing, to bring Gepetto joy and give the boy’s soul a second chance at life. The telling of the tale from the perspective of Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), who literally takes up residence in Pinocchio’s heart, seals the deal. – Dessi Gomez
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
One of the year’s biggest crowd pleasers (hey, it did play in theaters for six days at Thanksgiving) is also one of Netflix’s very best movies this year. Writer/director Rian Johnson returns to the world of his 2019 breakout “Knives Out” with the same puckish wit and attention to detail. This time detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is drawn into an extravagant thriller on a tech billionaire’s (Edward Norton) fanciful island getaway, where he’s involved a cluster of his closest friends to take part in a murder mystery party that soon gives way to an actual killing. Among the potential victims (or murderers) are Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom, Jr., Jessica Henwick and Kathryn Hahn. And while the characters are broader and the situation more colorful than the cozy, locked-door whodunnit of “Knives Out,” the performers and Johnson craft deeply felt characters that serve to draw you deeper and deeper into the movie’s dark contours. (Johnson, too, has a lot on his mind, about everything from men’s rights activists to the unnecessary lionization of big business revolutionaries.) “Glass Onion” is a minor miracle, in the sense that movies that are this fun are also rarely this good. – Drew Taylor
White Noise
For his first adaptation Noah Baumbach chose a whopper – Don DeLillo’s supposedly unfilmable 1985 novel “White Noise.” Adam Driver plays a professor at a leafy New England college (he teaches Hitler Studios) whose wife (Baumbach’s partner Greta Gerwig) he suspects of popping pills and whose boisterous family, mostly cobbled together from the children of their previous marriages, is a tornado of endless crosstalk and jibber jabber. Baumbach would probably be happy to just stay in their cloistered, dysfunctional enclave, but there are bigger issues here – primarily a train wreck that has unleashed a noxious cloud (classified as an “airborne toxic event”) that threatens their small town and allows for Baumbach to indulge in bigger action sequences that border on the Spielbergian. You can feel, while watching it, Baumbach using the endless runway afforded him after the success of his brilliant, Oscar-winning “Marriage Story,” to make something truly exceptional and definitely sprawling. And the movie’s very end, an elaborate dance sequence set to a killer new LCD Soundsystem song, serves as the perfect postmodern punctuation. What a ride. – Drew Taylor
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