Watch List Weekly Recap 12/16/22

Movies awards and Top 20 lists -- it's that time of year.

Watch List Weekly Recap 12/16/22

This is the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”


Post #1: In which I sat down with a group of critical colleagues and we voted on the top movies of the year. There was arguing. (That’s best-picture winner “Return to Seoul” above.)

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
The Boston Society of Film Critics, a reasonably august 30-member body to which I’ve belonged for almost 20 years now, held their annual awards meeting on Sunday, a hybrid in-person/Zoom affair that took up most of the day and saw some contentious discussions and felicitous votes. The BSFC was formed in 1981 – first Best Picture winner, 1980’s “Raging Bull” – and in its four decades of existence has served as a bellwether for whichever way the awards-season wind ends up blowing. We’re not the first of the critics’ groups to meet (the

Post #2: In which I tried once again to come up with a Top 10 Movies of the Year list and ended up, again, with a Top 20. (That’s “EO” above, featuring one of 2022’s two great performances by a donkey.)

The 20 Best Movies of 2022
In the 30-plus Decembers that I’ve been making Top 10 lists for one publication or another, I’ve never encountered a movie year like 2022 – one so hesitant, off-kilter, and out of whack. It seemed like nothing of lasting value came out at all during the first six months – other than the one about the laundromat lady who can jump parallel universes –…

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