10 Great Dramas From 2022 That Flew Under The Radar

2022 has brought us many great films — "Top Gun: Maverick," "Elvis," and "X," just to mention a few — that quickly became beloved by critics and viewers (not to mention their triumph at the box office). But those are just some of the obvious highlights of the year. There's also a small group of underrated, smaller-scale dramas that didn't get enough momentum or critical praise to reach a larger audience. These days, it's a struggle to compete with larger studio juggernauts.

These quiet, interpersonal dramas that portray families, romantic relationships, and mental health issues, don't stand a chance among big-budgeted features designed to appeal to a mass audience. Audiences rarely choose a melancholy drama to watch in the cinema — or even on a streaming service — over a crowd-pleaser. While that's understandable, we'd like to honor those small indie films here, highlighting their strengths individually, and showing that they can pack a punch even if they have been frequently overlooked.

Having appeared in several Ricky Gervais TV shows and movies, David Earl is a familiar face to fans of British comedy. He's an actor who usually plays shy, introverted, and often miserable outcasts in supporting roles that are inherently funny and relatable by design. In Jim Archer's feature, "Brian and Charles," Earl brings another variation of his typically quirky and pathetic character alive — but this time, he's the main attraction.

"Brian and Charles" follows a lonely man named Brian (Earl), who lives by himself in a village in the Welsh countryside. He spends most of his days scavenging scrap and using whatever he can find to build odd things that nobody really needs (or wants). One day, Brian stumbles upon a mannequin's head along with an old, broken washing machine. Then he begins to work on his newest "invention," with the goal of building a robot. The thing doesn't work at first, but after a stormy night, the robot mysteriously comes alive and learns to communicate. He names him Charles. What follows is a weird but sweet friendship growing between an amusing machine (played by Chris Hayward) and an isolated man who longed for a companion his whole life but never had one — until now.

Although "Brian and Charles" might not have enough meat to keep us locked in throughout its entire runtime — it worked better as the short film that it's based on — there's plenty to love about it. While its humor is delightfully weird and awkward, its most endearing aspect is how it depicts a touching benevolence underneath its protagonist's trauma.

Every time Zac Efron wants to show off his acting skills in a role that demands more from him than being handsome and charming, the stars just never align for him. He always puts in a 150 percent effort, but what comes out on the other end — for reasons generally outside of his control — rarely feels as groundbreaking as intended. That's exactly the case with Anthony Hayes's survival drama, "Gold."

Hayes's dystopian vision is a one-man show for the most part. Virgil (Efron) is a traveler in the near future who pays a local man, Keith (Hayes), to transport him into an area called The Compound. On their way, the two discover a large gold nugget in the desert, stuck underground. They decide to take it with them, but no matter how hard they try or what tools they use, it just won't budge. So Keith convinces Virgil to stay behind and guard their newly found treasure until he gets back with the right equipment to dig it out. What follows are several days of harsh and cruel survival in the desert. Virgil has to endure the unbearable heat, local predators, and the scavengers that he encounters. Under these extreme circumstances, Virgil's mental state begins to crack, and it becomes doubtful whether he can make it until his partner returns.

Zac Efron delivers a powerful performance as his character slowly breaks down physically and mentally. You feel his suffering — inside and out — and root for him with all your heart. And despite the unbalanced pacing, flawed script, and some predictability, Efron's effort comes through. Because of him, "Gold" deserves to be mentioned as an underrated gem.

The only moderate praise for actor Mayim Bialik's directorial debut (which she also wrote) is sort of inexplicable. Her film features a set of great actors (including Dustin Hoffman, Dianna Agron, and Candice Bergen) and a delicate portrayal of a Jewish family spending their last days with their dying father while his physical and mental health rapidly deteriorates.

Abigail (Agron) — the daughter, caretaker, and glue of the family — is a single mother raising two kids while also trying to take care of her elderly father. She has an awful lot on her plate, and her mother is more of an obstacle than a helper. She cares about Eugene (Hoffman), despite the rough and traumatic upbringing he put her and her brother, Nathan (Simon Helberg), through. When death comes scarily close for Eugene, Abigail gives it one last shot to convince Nathan to say goodbye to their father, while he still can.

"As They Made Us" slowly works its way through your heart and crushes it. Dustin Hoffman is phenomenal and gives a performance for the ages, but everyone else around him is just as solid. There aren't any big surprises in Bialik's drama, but it's so well-written and acted that it doesn't need them.

Deirdre O'Connor's feature debut, "One Moment," happens to be legendary character actor Danny Aiello's last film. Aiello — who acted in such classics as "The Godfather Part II," "Leon," and "Do The Right Thing" — passed away in 2019 after a brief illness, according to The Hollywood Reporter. His final role as Joe McGuinness couldn't have been more fitting: As a recently widowed husband, Joe tries to cope with the loss of his wife by becoming more present in his middle-aged kids' lives.

The plot follows the three McGuinness siblings — Caroline (Adria Tennor), Fran (Frankie Ingrassia), and Rick (Sal Rendino) — and how they operate their overwhelmingly busy lives. Besides working and raising kids, they're also trying to comfort their ailing father, who struggles with increasing physical and mental health issues. It provides an excellent opportunity for Aiello to showcase his subtle, charismatic, and charming skills for one last time.

Even in his last year, at 86 years old, Danny Aiello puts in the kind of performance that made him one of the most memorable character actors in an almost 50-year-long career. Although the rest of the cast does a good job, none of them can rise to Aiello's level as an experienced veteran. He's the heart of the movie and the one who makes it work. Whether you're a child or a parent, "One Moment" does an excellent job at making you relate to what Joe and his kids are going through — and empathize with them every step of the way.

In a perfect world, Barry Levinson's biopic, "The Survivor," wouldn't be a TV film produced by HBO but a big-budget studio flick that would earn Ben Foster his first Oscar nomination. But in reality, the movie about Harry Haft — a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp — is a drama that flew under the radar, even though critics praised it after its release.

The plot follows Haft (Foster) post-World War II on his road to becoming a professional boxer after surviving the camps by fighting his fellow inmates to death. Besides making a living, his goal is to gain enough publicity to find his long-lost love Leah (Dar Zuzovsky) who was separated from him during the war. As he continuously grapples with his past trauma, we see flashbacks of him in the camps, depicting how he stayed alive.

Though "The Survivor" is a little uneven and inconsistent, ambitiously attempting to cover several decades of Haft's tumultuous life, Ben Foster's exceptional performance is what pulls it together. He's a little too old to play Haft in his younger years (he's twice the age as Haft was after the war), but it doesn't feel that way. He convincingly conveys all the anger and terror he went through in horrifying experiences that left him with survivor's guilt. "The Survivor" is an important film with a beautiful and heart-breaking true story that should've received much more attention.