AP Top 25 Movies, ranking 2022’s best: What made the cut? – Entertainment News
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The Banshees of Inisherin.
With hundreds of new movies released each year, many of us depend on the expertise of film critics to help curate our own watching — a thoroughly communal yet deeply personal experience.
To honor the supporting role that entertainment journalism can play in this beloved pastime, The Associated Press on Thursday unveiled its inaugural AP Top 25 Movies list.
The AP Top 25 Movies ranking is a distinctive honor roll of films released in 2022, as determined by a panel of 26 of the U.S.’ smartest movie experts working for AP-affiliated news outlets.
Each voter submitted their own list ranking 25 movies that premiered to the public during the 2022 calendar year. The AP encouraged each panelist to exercise their own interpretation of “best films,” which did not need to align with predictions for awards or even movies’ Oscars eligibility.
The 26 lists that ensued yielded a collective of 176 different movies. The individual rankings were then combined to produce the national ranking using a Borda count, in which a first-place vote was worth 25 points, a second-place vote was worth 24 points, and so on. Ties were allowed and occurred at No. 16, in which both “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Whale” each received 130 points in the AP’s cumulative weighted system.
In a cinematic landscape where it seems only franchise films have a shot at traditional box office success, the top five films on the AP Top 25 Movies ranking were all original — and most found robust audiences in theaters, despite the fact that moviegoing has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Fiercely original films, female-focused stories and theatrical-first releases had the clear edge.
The fight for the top movie of the year was extremely close, separated in the ranking by a mere 8 points. While “The Banshees of Inisherin” won the title with 392 points, it’s the Michelle Yeoh-fronted “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that earned the most first-place votes. The indie sci-fi hit — currently enjoying a Cinderella run during awards season — came in second in the AP rankings with 384 points but was the first choice on six different ballots. Meanwhile, the Irish dark comedy was ranked the top movie of the year on just two different ballots.
And while the final list of 25 movies reflected the year’s critical darlings, individual panelists’ ballots took a distinct turn toward, shall we say, approachability in the bottom half. Movies toward the end of the full list of 176 movies ranged from “Lightyear” and “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” to “Jackass Forever” and “Love, Lizzo.” There were 76 movies that each were only endorsed on one ballot.
1. “The Banshees of Inisherin,” 392 points
2. “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” 384 points
3. “Tár,” 346 points
4. “Nope,” 304 points
5. “The Woman King,” 267 points
6. “RRR,” 263 points
7. “Top Gun: Maverick,” 252 points
8. “The Fabelmans,” 238 points
9. “Women Talking,” 222 points
10. “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” 209 points
11. “Aftersun,” 201 points
12. “Decision to Leave,” 200 points
13. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” 147 points
14. “Elvis,” 145 points
15. “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” 141 points
16. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” 130 points
16. “The Whale,” 130 points
18. “Babylon,” 129 points
19. “She Said,” 125 points
20. “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” 122 points
21. “Triangle of Sadness,” 121 points
22. “Till,” 116 points
23. “EO,” 98 points
24. “Turning Red,” 95 points
25. “No Bears,” 89 points
