DrogeMiester's Top 10 BEST Movies of 2022

It’s that time of year again! Time for me to release the list of my personal favorite movies from the previous year! And, man, what a great year we had in 2022. In looking specifically at the three years we’ve had so far this decade, in my opinion 2022 easily blows the other two years out of the water. And I look at my list from those two years and still like how they turned out. Sure, maybe the COVID of it all puts those two years at a slight bit of a handicap, but I also looked at my lists from the previous decade and I think my top three movies of 2022 would take the top three spots of most of those years as well. So that should put a bit of a perspective on things as you read through this.

As per the usual, I didn’t see every movie this year. In fact, my overall count might be a tad bit on the lower side of things compared to previous years, which gives me plenty to catch up on. But that’s an ongoing process for every year. There’s some movie podcasts I listen to where the people have watched over 300 movies. And still have things to catch up on. Meanwhile, I don’t think I even hit 100. But at some point you have to call it and post your list and that list stands as a snapshot in time of what you felt in that moment about the previous year. Then you come back and add to it later and even redo it 5-10 years down the road if you want. That said, I still feel confident about what I’ve put together here as I’m good at keeping my finger on the pulse of what I should be seeing. And I’m excited to finally share it with all of you, especially since I did a lot less reviewing this year, even though I mostly kept up on my watching, which means some of these might be the first time you’re hearing about them from me. Anyways, enough with the chatter. Let’s get into the top 10!

10- Bullet Train

We start this list off with one of the most absurdly entertaining movies of the year. Brad Pitt plays a hitman who is hired to simply board a train and steal a briefcase. Easy enough, right? Well, he’s either the luckiest man alive or the unluckiest man alive, depending on your vantage point, because this briefcase is attached to something much deeper, with many people boarding this train to search for it. Before you know it, this whole movie is littered with various characters, cameos, and story arcs. And while, conceptually, that idea flirts with being too busy and too messy, in this particular case the more layers that were added, the more absurdly funny and wild this action comedy was. Almost the entire movie takes place either on this bullet train or on the various train stations next to it, yet the world of this movie was more deep and expansive than most action movies I’ve seen. And you learn all of that from the various interactions from these characters on the train. The movie definitely does not take itself seriously at all and if you fall in line and just want to have a fun evening, this is a perfect choice. Honestly, out of all the movies on this list, this one might be the most rewatchable.

9- Vengeance

Most of the movies on my list are fairly high profile films in terms of people being aware of their existence. This one, on the other hand, has a very strong chance of you having never even heard of it. It came out in late summer with very little fanfare and made just $4.3 million at the domestic box office. If you happen to be among the few to have actually seen it, there’s a solid chance you probably enjoyed it. But among the best of the year in a very strong year? Yeah, I might be one of the few in that camp. And I will admit that’s because this is very uniquely personal to me. First, it’s about a journalist trying to find his place in the world. Second, it takes place mostly in West Texas, which is where I served a two-year mission for my church. Combine those two elements with the fact that it’s a whodunit mystery/thriller, which is one of my favorite genres, and yeah this hit for me. It got the journalist angle perfectly. It nailed the culture of West Texas. And it was a very intriguing mystery. You could also call it a dark comedy because the movie was hilarious, despite it being about the murder of a woman, who our main protagonist is called in to investigate. Her family is convinced that he was her lover, even though he only had a one-night stand with her. But he stays for very selfish reasons and stumbles on a very intriguing case that helps him grow a lot along the way. If you need other motivations to see it, it’s the feature-length directorial debut of B.J. Novak, star of “The Office.”

8- RRR: Rise, Roar, Revolt

Speaking of absurdly entertaining movies, “RRR” is an absolutely bonkers movie that probably breaks every rule of cinema and certainly follows no laws of physics, but is absolutely better because of it. It’s the type of thing where if you know what rules you are supposed to follow, you also know the proper time to break them. I mean, in your movie about a revolution against the British government, why not have a giant action scene that involves unleashing an entire swarm of wild animals onto your enemies or have one British soldier fight off an entire mob of people in the opening scene? Or come rushing into the heat of the action with one protagonist riding on the shoulders of another protagonist while yielding two rifles. But in the midst of all of this, we do manage to have quite the epic saga between two friends, both undercover, who develop an unbreakable bond while not realizing they are on completely opposite sides. Beautiful character growth and a surprising amount of emotion, with fantastic acting, and a conclusion to their arcs that is fully satisfying. And, oh yeah, there’s a giant music and dance number in the middle of the film that just got nominated for best original song at the Oscars. Because… why not? It’s the best three hours that you’ll ever spend. And I’ve watched it twice… this month.

7- Pearl

Here’s my pick for best horror movie of 2022. Despite not being represented much on this particular top 10 list, it was a solid all-around year for horror, especially when it comes to the indie horror scene. In the said indie horror scene, “Pearl” was quite the unique film in that it was the prequel to the movie “X,” which also came out in 2022. And the third movie in the trilogy, titled “MaXXXine” will be coming out very soon. Sure, horror sequels and prequels are as common as they get, but to have a prequel come out in the same calendar year, when the first wasn’t even a box office hit? Director Ti West clearly got the green light from A24 to make a trilogy of indie horror films, which he appears to have made back-to-back-to-back. Your mileage may vary on whether you like “X” or “Pearl” more. Film Twitter is certainly split. But I’m clearly on the train of “Pearl,” which is the origin story for this murderous female psychopath named Pearl. Set in 1918, stylistically this is shot and presented like a retro 1950s horror film and looks like something the master himself, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, could’ve made. In fact, in terms of following a character’s descent into madness, I saw so many parallels to the movie “Psycho,” a movie I often claim as my all-time favorite. I don’t use that comparison lightly. But this movie absolutely blew me away. Now that the year has officially passed, I can say with confidence that Mia Goth gave my favorite performance of the year. The final sequence alone should’ve earned her an Oscar. It’s too bad that the Academy is allergic to horror, though, because she wasn’t even in the conversation.

6- The Fabelmans

A movie about the movies. From another master of film, Steven Spielberg. But this is not just a movie that celebrates movies, this is a movie directed towards lovers of film that shows how the magic of filmmaking can be a driving force in one’s life, for better or sometimes for worse. Obviously I’m easy prey for that, but I think this is Spielberg’s best work since the 90s, where he put out movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List.” And I say that with the opinion that his recent slate films in the 2000s and 2010s are fairly underrated. But this one is a deeply personal film for Spielberg as he basically tells the story of his childhood, under the guise of a fictional family called the Fabelmans. Hearing Spielberg speak about how difficult this movie was to make and how much it meant to him as the movie he’s wanted to make for decades now really touched me. And I can feel the passion behind this as I watch the story of his life, split into three different sections from his childhood – his time as a kid in New Jersey, his adolescence in Phoenix, and finally his high school days in Los Angeles. And you see how film shaped him in every part of his life in different ways. Not only did that really speak to me, but I also found myself deeply invested in the story of this whole family. Not just the character who represented young Steven, but also his father, mother, and sisters. This is a beautiful coming of age story centered around the relationship between a boy and his mother and the many trials they go through. Even though the writing on the wall is there about what’s going to happen, seeing it all play out was quite the emotional experience that left me rather moved.

5- The Northman

Robert Eggers made a movie about Vikings. That’s all you really need to know here about why this was an incredible experience. For context, Robert Eggers is the director of both “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.” Those two together with “The Northman” shows that Eggers has a fascinating niche in stories he likes to tell as he apparently loves to tell stories from eras past, being extremely brutal and honest about what happened, while using dialogue straight from that era rather than trying to modernize it all or water it down for casual audiences. In doing so, he’s created some movies that are very thematically rich and deep with emotion. And if you think about how brutal and horrifying the Vikings were in history, you can imagine how intense Eggers goes with his interpretation of them. The fun part of this is that the specific story here is based on the legend of Amleth, the direct inspiration for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” So yeah, if you know “Hamlet” or any of its thousands of adaptations or interpretations, this will be a familiar ride. A casual person might directly connect this to “The Lion King,” realizing that they’re pretty much the same movie, but with Vikings instead of Lions. And no, that connection didn’t lighten the experience for me. In fact, it enhanced it for me knowing that Eggers took such a classic story and made perhaps the most brutal and magnificent version of it. According to IMDb, Eggers’ next film will either be a remake of “Nosferatu” or a movie called “The Knight.” Based on what we’ve seen so far, both of those ideas sound rather intriguing.  

4- Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

In 2022 we had, not one… not two… but THREE versions of “Pinocchio.” And according to Wikipedia, the list of “Pinocchio” adaptations is a very long one. And apparently Disney in 1940 wasn’t even the first one to attempt an adaptation of this 1880s children’s novel. Why this is such a popular story to do over and over is beyond me. In fact, going into the year I saw two major adaptions on the calendar and very grumpily put both in the “bad” section of my 2022 preview. Turns out I was right on one account, but very wrong on Guillermo’s account. The third was basically a straight-to-video quality of film, or whatever the 2022 version of that is. But anyways, back to Guillermo, I don’t know how he did, but he somehow took one of the most familiar stories ever told and created what I think is the absolute best version of that. When he starts by telling a backstory of how Geppetto lost his own son and how that led him to create this wooden puppet called Pinocchio, I knew I was immediately in trouble. And yeah, if you’ve lost someone you loved, whether it be a child, a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a friend, or whoever, this movie will emotionally wreck you. It’s all about life, love, and loss, using the story of Pinocchio to tell that. And it doesn’t even do anything drastically different with the story, it just creates a much more refined version of the story around every turn that winds up having much more to say than any version of this story that I’ve seen. And, oh yeah, it’s also done in stop motion animation, which means the actual craft of the film took forever to do as well.

3-Top Gun: Maverick

This one needs no introduction. It’s the highest grossing movie of 2022 at the domestic box office with over $700 million domestically. It was topped by “Avatar: The Way of Water” worldwide, but the latter had a Chinese release and “Maverick” did not, so that’s not the perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Anyways, if you only saw one movie last year, there’s a good chance it was this one. And for great reason. I’ve met very few people, if any, who have had anything negative to say about “Maverick.” And the impressive thing for me is that I watched the original “Top Gun” also for the first time this past year and didn’t care for it. It’s a movie that’s very “of its time” and doesn’t hold up too well. Given that belated sequels for movies from decades past rarely works out, it’s very impressive to me that not only did they make a good sequel, but they made a sequel that’s much better than the original. Yes, that is possible. And I think Tom Cruise is a big reason why. The man has only gotten better as his career has progressed and if you follow the “Mission: Impossible” movies, you’ll know that he puts everything into making his next project better and more intense than the previous one. In which case, “Top Gun: Maverick” feels like a “Mission: Impossible” meets “Top Gun” meets… Star Wars? But yeah, they have the technology today to make a movie like this work much better. They have a star who is much more refined and won’t accept anything subpar. And they had a writer and director who also managed to write a very powerful, emotional story to go along with the best IMAX experience I’ve ever had. There’s a reason why “Top Gun: Maverick” is the movie of 2022 and I fully agree.

2- The Batman

“Top Gun: Maverick” would be a great pick for my favorite movie of 2022 if it weren’t for the existence of these next two movies. Matt Reeves took the reins with the Batman franchise and gave me exactly what I was hoping for and expecting. After directing the last two movies in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy and choosing to cast Robert Pattinson as Batman, I knew we were in for a treat. What he created was a dark and gritty portrayal of Gotham that felt very real and lived in. Sure, that’s what every Batman has been since Tim Burton’s 1989 film, but Reeves took that feel and created what felt like an homage to a David Fincher crime/thriller, with a Year Two Batman played brilliantly by Pattinson that leaned a lot more on the Detective Batman side of things, while also showcasing how unsure of himself he was. It felt very much like Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman hunting down the seven deadly sins serial killer in “Se7en,” but with a combination of Bruce Wayne, Alfred, and Lt. Gordon instead hunting down the Riddler, played hauntingly by Paul Dano, who had himself quite the year. I think his Riddler was on par with Heath Ledger’s Joker and I think the movie itself was on par with “The Dark Knight.” I’m glad it got three Oscar nominations, but it deserved 10+. The fact that a long-time DC fan in myself puts this in conversation of being the best DC movie ever made should’ve made this a slam-dunk pick for my best of the year. Coming out initially, I thought that’s what was going to happen. However, a few weeks later…

1- Everything Everywhere All At Once

Y’alls. This one is an all-timer for me. I’m absolutely stunned and floored that this movie exists and works as well as it does. I also think it’s kinda amusing that, right in between the releases of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” came a small indie film from A24 that completely showed Marvel up. And I really enjoyed both of those Marvel movies. But this is how you do a multiverse movie. It’s as insane and wacky as you want a multiverse movie to be. But somehow, instead of going so insane that it drove itself right off of a cliff, every single frame of this movie comes together in a way that feels calculated and planned out. There are so many off-the-wall pieces to this wild puzzle that somehow come together perfectly to create a beautiful masterpiece of a film. After being sent through an absurdly zany ride that puts a huge smile on your face, you also end up bawling your face off with how emotional of a story this ends up being with this small family. Major round of applause to the Oscar-nominated Michelle Yeoh, Oscar-nominated Stephanie Hsu, Oscar-nominated Jamie Lee Curtis, and the Oscar nominated Ke Huy Quan for putting on an absolute acting clinic in this movie. And a major standing ovation to the Oscar-nominated directing duo of The Daniels, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for being the masterminds behind all this. Clearly I won’t be too upset if “The Fabelmans” or “Top Gun: Maverick” end up winning best picture. But I’m impressed that the conversation behind this film lasted the entire year and resulted in this being an 11-time Oscar nominated film. Crossing my fingers that it finishes the marathon with a best picture trophy.

Honorable Mentions 

With the top 10 behind us, here's the next set of movies that just barely missed the cut. Again, with how great of a year it was, it saddened me that I couldn't fit some of these in, but that's what happens when I commit myself to only doing a top 10.

11- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish 

12- Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 

13- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

14- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 

15- A Man Called Otto 

16- She Said 

17- Violent Night 

18- Turning Red 

19- Babylon

20- Bodies Bodies Bodies 

21- Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

22- All Quiet On the Western Front 

23- The Menu 

24- Barbarian

25- The Black Phone

And a special honorable mention to the movie "Cyrano." Based on my last year parameters in crowning "The Father" as my favorite movie of 2021, even though many considered it a 2020 film,  "Cyrano" would qualify for 2022. And it would slide in at No. 6 on this list. All it got in 2021 was an Oscar-qualifying run, but it didn't hit regular theaters, limited or nationwide, until February of 2022. I don't count Festival releases or Oscar-qualifying runs when putting together these lists. Just its theatrical release. But for some reason it just felt weird to put "Cyrano" on, so I took it off. But regardless of release date shenanigans, you should find it and check it out because it's incredible. Peter Dinklage should've gotten nominated for best actor and the release strategy in general should've been handled much better because it was another one of those movies that deserved 10+ nominations, but it got ignored by everyone and made nothing at the box office. 

Movie Preview: January 2023

Is it 2023 already?

The ending of a year, for me, means that it’s time to start working on my series of year-in-review posts. For this blog that means my top 10 favorite movies of the previous year as well as my preview of what’s coming up this current year. And that’s a lot of fun to dive into, even if only for my own personal reflection. But before we do all that, I like to first get my January movie preview complete. Then after that we’ll dive into the 2023 preview as a whole before finishing by looking back on my favorite movies of 2022.

So… January.

Historically speaking, this has always been an interesting month for new releases. Typically if a studio has a big blockbuster they want to get audiences to, a holiday release the month before is the way to go. And if a studio wants to push a movie for potential awards, releasing the movie towards the end of the year keeps it fresh on the minds of voters. Releasing it during the first month of the year makes it nearly impossible to get any consideration, so the implications of that is such that January becomes a bit of a wasteland for new releases while holiday holdovers dominate the box office and previous year’s awards contenders expand to wide release around the time of Oscar nominations for a final push.

In the latter category, this season was a bit of a weak one for the late year awards movies, at least in terms of reception from general audiences. Movies like “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “The Fabelmans,” “TAR” and “Women Talking,” while getting high praise from critics and attention from the awards voters, have been mostly ignored by general audiences with poor box office totals, comparatively. And in regards to holiday holdovers, there’s one. And pretty much only one. That’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.” The follow-up of my deep dive last month on this film is that it very much succeeded. In less than a month of release as of this post, it’s already become the highest grossing film worldwide of 2022 with $1.5 billion. And its domestic total of just under $500 million trails only “Top Gun: Maverick” on the year. And that’s interesting considering it opened on the lower end of pre-release expectations and fell fairly sharply in its second weekend, causing some to prematurely label it as a disappointment. But the holiday box office is a marathon, not a sprint.

Will it end up matching the totals of the first “Avatar,” that of $2.7 billion worldwide and $760 million domestically (in its initial run)? Maybe not quite, but the fact that those numbers aren’t completely out of the realm of possibilities or that it will come awfully close if it falls a bit short tells enough of a story. Any reports of it being a disappointment in any way, at least financially, are outrageously laughable. But this month will tell the story of exactly how high it can finish as it’s likely to keep the top spot at the box office the whole month, due mostly to the lack of major options.

But yes, there still are new releases on the schedule and since this post is what that’s all about, let’s actually step in and explore what will be hitting theaters this month. As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of boxofficepro.com and the-numbers.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for wide release in the United States and Canada are always subject to change.

January 6 – 8

Universal's "M3GAN"

Due to factors mentioned in this post’s introduction, there is the stigma that “nothing good comes out in January.” Turns out that might be proven false this time around right in the first weekend as M3GAN rings in the new year as a new creepy doll horror film for audiences to check out. This concept is certainly far from original, with “Anabelle” and “Child’s Play” being obvious examples. M3GAN is an artificially intelligent robotic doll that is programmed to be a young girl’s best friend, and to protect her at all costs. And well, like with all movies regarding creepy dolls or anything artificially intelligent, things are going to go wrong as M3GAN is going to become a little overly protective to an extreme fault.

January has actually been a solid month for horror films. This initial weekend of the year has provided plenty of breakout horror films, which thus makes sense for Universal to stake claim on the weekend with “M3GAN.” What might separate “M3GAN” from a lot of these other outings are reviews that are surprisingly very high as the movie is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with a current score of 93 percent. Now if one looks closely, not many are calling this a horror masterpiece, but the fact that critics are nearly unanimous in calling this a fun, self-aware horror comedy should speak volumes to what this movie’s potential could be. It’s had a very aggressive marketing push in the weeks leading up to its release and even has a user-friendly PG-13 rating that should attract even more of a younger audience. Cap that off with great reviews and it looks to have hit the perfect formula for success.

Current tracking for its opening weekend has the movie pegged right in the range of last year’s “Smile” ($22.6 million) and “The Black Phone” ($23.6 million). Positive word of mouth and lack of competition could cause the movie to at least flirt with a $100 million domestically when all is said and done. “The Black Phone” hit $90 million and “Smile” hit $105 million. And considering the $12 million budget of “M3GAN,” that means we should be seeing plenty more of this doll in years to come.

UPDATE: I typed this before the weekend, yet was delayed in getting it out. “M3GAN” opened to $30 million, higher than expectations and with better day-to-day holds compared to the other movies mentioned. Rather than retype this paragraph, maybe it’ll be interesting to some to see what was expected vs. what actually happened. It opened in second place behind “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which had a $45 million fourth weekend – the second best fourth weekend ever behind only the original “Avatar” with $50.3 million.

January 13 – 16

Sony Pictures' "A Man Called Otto"

The second weekend of January has four new wide releases. Whether any of them garner any attention over the four-day holiday weekend, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday the 16th, is a different story. But they will at least be options. Leading the way will be Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto. This is a movie I actually brought up last month. I had it pegged as a Christmas Day release. Turns out it opened on December 30 instead, earning $56,257 from four theaters on that weekend, for a solid per-theater average of $14,064. And it is actually expanding to about 650 theaters in the first weekend of January before officially getting a wide release in this second weekend. And while my tone last month was a bit cynical at this remake of the 2015 Swedish film, “A Man Called Ove,” the surprise so far is that the movie has been decently well received. It’s hanging in there with a critics score around 70 percent and a much higher audience score of 96 percent. While it’s not likely to score too many Oscar nominations, outside Tom Hanks possibly sneaking into best actor, this has the potential to be a decent mid-range hit, especially with the popularity of Hanks and a role that he looks perfect for.

After two positively received options with “M3GAN” and “A Man Called Otto,” traditional January affair is not lost this month with Gerard Butler’s Plane crash-landing this weekend. Say what you will about Gerard Butler, but the man is at least extremely consistent with the types of movies he puts out. And I’m sure that means he has a lot of fun playing these types of action/disaster movies. “Plane” sees him as a pilot who is forced to land his commercial aircraft after he hits a terrible storm and that finds him in the middle of a war zone. So yeah, if one has seen any Gerard Butler films, this seems to be on par with most everything else. And that can be a positive if people know what they’re getting into and are perfectly satisfied with a Gerard Butler action film that requires little brainpower. The movie is expected to open in the single digit million range, although Butler has surprised before in January, with “Den of Thieves” opening to $15.2 million in January 2018. His “…Has Fallen” series has consistently opened around $20-30 million, while “Geostorm” hit $13.7 million, meaning there’s potential for “Plane” to not necessarily be completely dead on arrival.

A movie with perhaps a bit more potential than “Plane” is the comedy House Party. This is a movie about two friends who are out of money and down on their luck that decide to host a big party at the house they were last hired to clean, that of basketball player LeBron James. While the main two leads are lesser known actors and the movie is directed by Calmatic, who is mostly known for directing music videos, the draw of the film comes with the cameos in this party, with LeBron being the big one, as he also produces the film. And the fact that this is a remake of a 1990 film of the same name, which has become a cult classic. Whether or not that’s a positive note in regards to people’s reaction to the movie could be up for debate, but that nevertheless gives attention to the movie. And if it has some attention, that could give it the potential to deliver decent numbers in a quiet month.

While horror movies can do well in January, even with varying degrees of quality, they also have the potential to show up and simply end up on no one’s radar, which seems to be the initial prognosis for The Devil Conspiracy. Based on the trailer, the plot of this movie seems to be more ambitious than your traditional horror film. A Satanic cult steals the shroud of Christ, giving them access to Christ’s DNA, helping them give the ultimate offering to the devil. This appears to lead to an eventual battle of Lucifer and the archangel Michael, each taking hosts from Earth to allow them to return, which seems akin to the TV show “Supernatural.” But if you’re going to release a movie and have it make money, you have to advertise it. I had to search to find even a bit of information on this after seeing it on the schedule. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page and has almost nothing on IMDb. It’s also from a brand new production company called Third Day Productions. So whether or not this is actually getting a wide release and how much it will make is something I’m currently questioning.

January 20 – 22

Sony Pictures' "Missing"

Barring a surprise breakout from one of the films from the previous weekend, a quiet second weekend should be followed by an even quieter third weekend. Leading the light load of new releases will be the new thriller Missing, which is advertised as being from the team behind the 2018 movie “Searching,” which was a mystery/thriller that was essentially a found footage movie, but with social media, computer cameras, news stories, and the like. So a fairly unique concept. Reports are that it took 13 days to film, but a year and a half to edit. Said editing team of Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick are back to… direct “Missing,” also getting credit for writing the screenplay, with a story by the original writer and director team. So I suppose they’re playing musical chairs with their roles, but it’s a similar concept as “Searching.” Wikipedia has it labeled as a “computer screen mystery thriller,” with the story following a teen girl using various technologies to try to find her mother, who’s gone missing. For the sake of box office comparison, “Searching” opened to $6.1 million in its first weekend of wide release and rode good reviews to a $26 million domestic total.

The next entry on this list is a bit of a question. Box Office Pro says in their long range forecast that there’s an Untitled Crunchyroll Film scheduled for this weekend, as well as another on February 3. The-Numbers.com doesn’t list either of those, but has an Untitled Crunchyroll on February 14. Crunchyroll doesn’t necessarily bring a lot of fanfare leading up to their releases, but often are able to get the niche audience in with strong numbers. Last year they released “One Piece Film: Red” and “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero,” which opened with $9.3 million and $21.1 million, respectively. So whatever they have up their sleeve, if anything, it has potential to do numbers on a quiet weekend.

In other animation news, GKIDS has the domestic release of New Gods: Yang Jian scheduled. This is the sequel to the 2021 movie “New Gods: Nezha Reborn,” which made $70.1 million worldwide, most of that in China. In just about every other country, the movie was released on Netflix. “Yang Jian” has already had a theatrical release in China in August of last year, where it made $82.4 million. Whether or not this domestic release of “Yang Jian” is a true wide release in over 1,000 theaters or is in just a couple hundred is something we’ll find out later, but GKIDS films are targeted at more of a niche crowd, so this isn’t going to do huge numbers. GKIDS had one movie last year open over $1 million, that being “Belle” with $1.6 million. The other three were less than $1 million: “The Deer King” ($251,169), “Inu-Oh” ($191,004), and “Goodbye Don Glees!” ($32,096). So that’s the range we’re looking at here.

On the expansion front, Women Talking is scheduled for a wide release this weekend after having underwhelming performances in limited release so far. I talked more about that movie in last month’s preview. Alice, Darling is a psychological thriller starring Anna Kendrick as a woman stuck in an abusive relationship who gains a bit confidence from her two friends and might be out for vengeance. It had its release back at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and got its Oscar qualifying run in December. So it played the game right, but has had no awards fanfare, which doesn’t help it much. But it’ll have a chance to expand wide and see if general audiences will pay attention. Speaking of Oscars, the nominations will be announced on January 24, so those movies that do get nominations will take advantage of that by expanding into more theaters around this time.

January 27 – 29

NEON's "Infinity Pool"

As just mentioned in the most recent paragraph, Oscar nominations are on Tuesday, January 24 and that’ll likely impact this weekend to a degree. Outside that, whatever ends up being the top movie of the last two weekends will likely get another week at top to finish January. At this point, unless “A Man Called Otto” breaks out, that could very well still be “Avatar: The Way of Water” simply due to a lack of competition. The two movies scheduled for a wide release on this weekend certainly won’t do that.

Of the two, the one that’s most notable is Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, a movie about a couple who are enjoying a perfectly good stay at an island resort, until they wander outside the resort grounds and find a culture filled with violence, hedonism, and untold horror. The movie stars Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth in the lead roles. Brandon Cronenberg has made some small films, like “Possessor” in 2020 and “Antiviral” in 2012, but is probably most notable as being the son of filmmaker David Cronenberg, most notable for movies such as the 1986 remake of “The Fly,” “Dead Ringers,” and more recently “Eastern Promises,” “A Dangerous Method,” and last year’s “Crimes of the Future.” Putting it lightly, it doesn’t appear that either Cronenberg is interested in making movies that appeal to the masses. David Cronenberg is most known for being of the principal originators of the body horror genre and it appears that Brandon is attempting to follow in his footsteps. Point in case, “Infinity Pool” was initially given an NC-17 rating, appealed and lost, then was only given an R after re-editing the movie. It will premiere at Sundance a week early before hitting general audiences this weekend.

The final movie of the weekend and the month is not one I’m really sure exists, or will have much of an impact at all. It’s a horror movie called Fear. Maybe I say that because of that extremely original title, the fact that it’s being released by what appears to be a new distribution company called Hidden Empire Releasing, has a no-name cast, and/or a generic premise where group of friends go for a getaway at a remote hotel and one-by-one are forced to face their worst fear. At least I know that in its favor is that it has a director in Deon Taylor who has made real movies that have made money, but with a filmography that includes “Meet the Blacks,” “Traffik,” “The Intruder,” “Black and Blue” and “Fatale,” that still doesn’t inspire of ton of confidence given that none of those have high remarks from pretty much anyone. The highest box office of the bunch is “The Intruder,” which opened to $10.9 million. But most of the rest were movies that opened below $5 million, which seems to be where this latest is headed. But hey, it will at least be an option at some theaters.