For many, the end of 2022 has required a time of looking back and reflecting on a year of great movies. It's hard to believe that in 2020, there were no movies released in theaters and there was concern that movie-going would never return to normal. Yet 2022 offered some incredible films, and now with award season dawning all eyes are on the big prizes.
A notable part of making movies is the cinematography. Cinematography tends to involve a combination of shot composition, focus, lighting a sequence, camera movements, and choices of lenses. It is an important part of telling the story and can make a big difference in what is communicated to an audience. There are many definitions of what defines great cinematography and there certainly is no agreed-upon answer, but one could argue that it should help communicate the story or themes of the movie. It is an art, just like any other job on a film set, and this is the best cinematography of 2022.
10 Everything Everywhere All at Once
Everything Everywhere All At Once features cinematography by Larkin Seiple, his second collaboration with The Daniels after Swiss Army Man. Much like his work with that film, Seiple is able to get the most out of his smaller budget and crafts Everything Everywhere All At Once to look like one of the biggest multiversal epics despite only taking place in banal indoor locations like a laundromat and an IRS office. From impressive fight sequences to absurd yet moving scenes of rocks with googly eyes, Everything Everywhere All at Once has cinematography that, much like the multiverse, contains a multitude of surprises.
9 The Northman
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The Northman marks the third collaboration between director Robert Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke after The Witch and The Lighthouse, and just like with those previous films, the duo craft an impressive-looking and memorable film. The Northman is the strongest collaboration between the two, and blends freighting dreamlike sequences and looming shadows.
Yet it is in the action sequences where The Northman really stands out, particularly the impressive long-take raid sequence early on in the film that informs the audience that this will be a historically accurate, violent, and jaw-dropping film.
8 A Love Song
A Love Song is a movie that rests on the performances of stars Dale Dickey and Wes Sudi, but the achingly beautiful cinematography should not be discredited. Cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo crafts a lovely, sweet, and intimate love story showcasing both the roughness and beauty of nature, even making landscapes out of the faces themselves. Every shot is carefully selected, crafting a feeling of loneliness while also a sense of joy. A Love Song is a heartfelt and moving story that would not be the same if not for its cinematography.
7 Nope
Director Jordan Peele's Nope looks to recapture the scope of 70s blockbusters like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the filmmaker collaborates with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema to capture an epic sense of scope. Nope even incorporates the use of an IMAX lens as part of its story, and given Hoyte van Hoytema's past collaborations with Christopher Nolan using IMAX cameras on Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Tenet, he was the ideal talent to capture the epic monster movie. Additionally, the nighttime photography is some of the clearest and most expansive of all time.
6 Avatar: The Way of Water
Much discussion has been made about how and if Avatar: The Way of Water and other projects with heavy digital effects and backgrounds should be considered cinematography. Yet even a digital camera still requires a thoughtful plan to compose shot compositions.
While Avatar: The Way of Water does feature a variety of completely CGI sequences, it also impressively blends real actors into digital environments and digital characters into real practical elements with ease, and part of the trick is pulled off due to shot selection and advanced camera technology. James Cameron reunites with Russell Carpenter, who previously worked with Cameron on True Lies and Titanic, and Carpenter might walk away with another Academy Award just like he did with Titanic.
5 RRR
One could pull any frame from RRR and see just how impressive the cinematography is, often blending real actors with CGI elements to craft one of the best-looking movies in recent memory. If cinematography was just a collection of cool shots, there is no denying RRR would be at the top of any list thanks to the work of K. K. Senthil Kumar.
Yet what makes RRR's cinematography so impressive is the wide variety of tones and styles that exist in one movie. The film features over-the-top action scenes, a massive dance number, quiet character conversations, and heartfelt moments that are all shot like they are from separate films but are blended together into one cohesive unit. This variety of styles coexist in one movie, and it is no wonder to see how RRR has broken into the mainstream all over the world.
4 All Quiet on the Western Front
The recent adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front has generated a lot of discussions about its cinematography, particularly around an incredible one-shot with multiple extras thanks to cinematographer James Friend. Yet the quiet, less showy moments are just as impressive, truly capturing the sense of scale and loneliness the conflict means. One remarkable sequence early on in the film follows the uniform of a dead soldier and how it is repurposed for a new soldier, and the composition of the shots is so clear that it becomes a haunting thought that hangs over the film.
3 Tár
The brilliant film Tár is obviously in the running for Cate Blanchett's performance, but it also seems like the front-runner for Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards. Director Todd Field and cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister work together to craft a film with a haunting visual palette.
Tár is in a figurative sense a ghost story, one where a looming specter of the lead character's past (and the suicide of someone she wronged) are always hanging over the action and the shot selection enhances that feeling of dread, with wide open frames where characters are isolated and made to feel small. Tár is a gorgeous movie to look at, but also a haunting one that draws the viewer in.
2 Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick has some of the most impressive action cinematography of any movie made in the 21st century, and might even be the best if not for Mad Max: Fury Road, though it's very close. Director Joseph Kosinski brought aboard Academy Award-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda to craft the breathtaking aerial action sequences. Much of the film's overall success can be attributed to the aerial combat footage that captivated audiences.
What is most impressive is due to the cameras needing to be in the cockpits of the plane, the actors themselves had to partially frame their shots while they were in the plane and nobody would know how it looked until the planes landed. This required a great amount of trust and collaboration between Kosinski, Miranda, and the cast making the overall final film all the more impressive.
1 The Fabelmans
The Fabelmans is the 20th collaboration between Steven Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, and despite all these years, the two are still able to make some of the best work in their career. Kamiński implements many of the techniques he has perfected over his time with the director, fittingly using them to tell what is essentially the origin story for a young Steven Spielberg. Yet the greatest trick of The Fabelmans is how the duo goes back to old 8mm techniques that a young Spielberg would have used as a kid.
The most obvious is recreating many shots of Spielberg's old movies he made as a kid, which is a difficult task for a professional to make their work look crude. Yet the other is the use of visuals alone to communicate the story. One could drop the dialog from the movie entirely and only uses the shots and John Williams' music and get the story across, from the beginning scene of Sammy's looking up at his parents and then them coming down into frame but separate to the incredible scene where Sammy discovers the emotional affair, all of this is communicated with just visuals making for some of the best storytelling of 2022.