There were lots of movies to like in 2022, but the goodies were mostly to be found not in the Hollywood mainstream but on the outskirts. Maybe low-budget films, documentaries, and foreign language fare didn’t always take up the slack, but the best of them at least tried to be more venturesome than the usual ossified studio product.

Trends this year included the emergence or blossoming of several gifted female directors, a preponderance of semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movies, and a plethora of movies that dumped on the venal rich. 

If you craved popcorn movie action, you could be satisfyingly sated by “Top Gun: Maverick” or “Avatar: The Way of Water.” And if the Hollywood stuff didn’t grab you, you could glom onto “RRR,” S.S. Rajamouli’s phenomenally successful Raj-era Indian action epic.

Among the film’s in my Top 10 this year are “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song,” about the genesis of Cohen’s work, and “Thirteen Lives,” Ron Howard’s nail-biter about the real-life rescue of young, Thai soccer players from a mountain cave system. Also included is the family friendly “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical,” which successfully brings the popular stage show to the screen, where the spirited young cast saves the day and then some. 

There were lots of movies to like in 2022, but the goodies were mostly to be found not in the Hollywood mainstream but on the outskirts. Maybe low-budget films, documentaries, and foreign language fare didn’t always take up the slack, but the best of them at least tried to be more venturesome than the usual ossified studio product.

One of the most promising developments has been the emergence or blossoming of a number of gifted female directors, some making their feature film debuts. Sarah Polley, in “Women Talking,” directed what is easily her most assured work. Nikyatu Jusu’s “Nanny,” about a Senegalese nanny in New York’s Upper East Side, is the year’s most evocative horror film. First-time Scottish director Charlotte Wells arrives on the scene with the uneven but affecting father-daughter study “Aftersun,” which also heralds the arrival of a major young actor, Frankie Corio.

I also admired two European filmmakers, Belgian Laura Wandel, who debuted with “Playground,” and Audrey Diwan, from France, who made the timely abortion drama “Happening,” based on a story by French Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux. Their films are both signal achievements and hopefully harbingers of what is to come.

Another burgeoning development this year was the preponderance of semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movies, most prominently James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.” Whatever their faults, both sensibly resisted the impulse to wallow in self-serving nostalgia.

There was also a plethora of movies that dumped on the venal rich, including “The Menu,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” and, easily the best of the bunch, “Triangle of Sadness.” In the documentary realm, the raw, imperfect “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” exposed profiteers of the opioid crisis, though that was not the film’s only focus. In a convoluted way, maybe this is how the issue of income equality gets a seat at the multiplex these days.

Good films, as well as bad, can come from anywhere. And terrific performances can often appear even in middling movies. You wouldn’t want to miss Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton in “She Said.” Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Kerry Condon invigorated “The Banshees of Inisherin.” So, too, did Emily Watson in “God’s Creatures,” Olivia Colman in “Empire of Light,” and Cate Blanchett in the otherwise overrated “Tár.”