National Board Of Review Names ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Its Best Picture Of 2022

When you think of a classic James Cameron action film, such as “Terminator,” “T2: Judgment Day,” “True Lies,” and definitely “Aliens,” you think about huge, violent action set pieces with lots and lots of guns. Today, Cameron is a different type of filmmaker, especially when it comes to gun violence, and he’s not sure if he could ever go back to the type of action he did previously.

We say this every year when we talk about Barack Obama’s annual list of his favorite films, but the former President of the United States actually has pretty great taste in cinema.

In what has become an end-of-year tradition, Barack Obama revealed his favorite movies of 2022. The list is, as usual for Obama, weighted toward prestige films. One title that’s not on the list: Avatar: The Way of Water.

Avatar: The Way of Water‘s mega-publicized opening has brought movies back into the conversation, but movie-makers seem to have been lost in the mist. James Cameron’s persona is ablaze across the media but, by contrast, the very personal work of Sam Mendes, James Gray and even Steven Spielberg has done a fade-out in recent weeks.

It has been apparent in talking to Oscar voters across many branches that the one title that keeps coming up at the top of their lists is Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which is the German entry for International Feature Film. That it has strength across the board though is borne out with the Oscar shortlists in 10 categories released Wednesday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

The wig gives it away, otherwise we’d be hard-pressed to immediately – or even slowly – recognize Paul Bettany’s fast-talking, extroverted and inquisitive artist character in Anthony McCarten’s The Collaboration as that historic icon of cryptic, mumbled monosyllables Andy Warhol.

When James Cameron delivered Avatar in 2009, none of us quite grasped that this was not a movie but a constellation of movies – one that will represent a multibillion-dollar investment in the coming years. One iteration is even booked for 2028.

Judd Hirsch has to be on the verge of making history. The Emmy and Tony Award winner is an ensemble member of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fablemans,” a movie that is almost guaranteed to earn a Best Picture nomination next month.

Greetings from the movies corner of the pop culture world. You remember movies, right? All of three years ago, the brightest and the best offerings shined on the big screen. (Your diverse 2019 offerings included universally acclaimed hits such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Knives Out and Parasite.)

James Cameron always swings for the fences — no singles, doubles, triples or even stealing home for him — and he’s hit a grand slam with the long-awaited Avatar: The Way of Water. This second installment in a five-film series of Avatar features from 20th Century Studios/Disney (with three more to open at two-year intervals through 2028) more than fulfills the promise of the original, which was released in 2009, before some of its fans were even born. The film is beautiful, obsessive and eventful, a depiction of a veritable Eden threatened by voraciously destructive forces both natural and man-made. No one who enthused over the original would think of missing this follow-up, which ups the ante for all that is to come, creatively and financially.

Over the course of 2022, a Nicole Kidman-narrated ad for AMC Theatres has evolved from a campy meme into something of a communal prayer offered at the secular chapel of the movie theater. The fragments she incants evocatively describe the power of cinema when wielded at its maximalist best: “we go somewhere we’ve never been before,” “dazzling images on a huge silver screen,” “sound I can feel.” The year ends for audiences with a movie that genuinely deserves to follow such a paean: James Cameron’s long-delayed, much-anticipated “Avatar: The Way of Water.” READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2022 The specious claims that the original “Avatar” had no cultural impact evaporate all but instantly when Cameron plunges viewers back into the realm of Pandora.

Tom Cruise has become notorious for performing his own stunts, and Top Gun: Maverick is no exception. In fact, the entire cast underwent intense training in order to perform many of the wild aerial stunts that audiences saw on screen when they flocked to theaters in May to see Cruise reprise his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell more than three decades after the first film hit the big screen.

One of the more prestigious stops on the Oscar-season circuit is always the annual AFI Awards Luncheon, and on Friday the American Film Institute revealed its list of Top 10 Movies and TV Programs for 2022 (see this post for TV list). Major studios dominated the movie list for a change, including some box office blockbusters. Streamers were AWOL for the first time since their emergence.

Many decades after her brilliant and unsettling plays became seen Off Broadway, at regional theaters or, sometimes, not at all, the great playwright Adrienne Kennedy is making her Broadway debut tonight when her 1992 work Ohio State Murders opens as the inaugural production at the newly renamed James Earl Jones Theatre.

No other film caused as big a sensation this year as “Top Gun: Maverick.” No other movie made as much money either, with Joseph Kosinski‘s film making $1.478 billion at the worldwide box office. Time will tell if James Cameron‘s “Avatar: The Way Of Water” overtakes “Maverick” on both fronts, but there’s one thing that film won’t do: it won’t be the National Board Of Review‘s Best Film of 2022.

The National Board of Review today named the top-grossing film of 2022 as its Best Film of the year.

Best Film:  “Top Gun: Maverick”Best Director: Steven Spielberg,“The Fabelmans” Best Actor: Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Best Supporting Actor: Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”Best Supporting Actress: Janelle Monáe, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin”Best Adapted Screenplay: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell, “All Quiet on the Western Front”Breakthrough Performance: Danielle Deadwyler, “Till”Breakthrough Performance: Gabriel LaBelle, “The Fabelmans”Best Directorial Debut: Charlotte Wells, “Aftersun”Best Animated Feature:  “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” Best International Film: “Close”Best Documentary: “Sr.”Best Ensemble: “Women Talking” Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Claudio Miranda, “Top Gun: Maverick”NBR Freedom of Expression Awards:“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”“Argentina, 1985”Top Films (in alphabetical order):“Aftersun”“Avatar: The Way of Water” “The Banshees of Inisherin”“Everything Everywhere All at Once”“The Fabelmans”“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”“RRR”“Till”“The Woman King” “Women Talking”Top 5 International Films (in alphabetical order):“All Quiet on the Western Front”“Argentina, 1985” “Decision to Leave” “EO”“Saint Omer”Top 5 Documentaries (in alphabetical order):“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”“All That Breathes”“Descendant”“Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb”“Wildcat”Top 10 Independent Films (in alphabetical order):“Armageddon Time”“Emily the Criminal”“The Eternal Daughter” “Funny Pages” “The Inspection”“Living”“A Love Song”“Nanny”“The Wonder”“To Leslie”The NBR Awards Gala is scheduled

They thought “Titanic” was a disaster. “Avatar” was an expensive mess that would never make a profit.

We are just over one week away from the theatrical release of James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Coming a mere 13 years after the first, record-breaking film, many folks were wondering if a sequel was even a good idea. Could Cameron somehow replicate the awe many felt after watching blue aliens on a distant planet for the first time? Well, if the first social media reactions from critics are any indication, then absolutely.  READ MORE: James Cameron Says No Other Filmmakers Are Capable Of Making ‘Avatar’ Films Right Now Yesterday, many critics were given the chance to watch “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and their reactions are nothing short of ecstatic.