Best Films of 2013: An Embarrassment of Riches

2013 was one of the best years in film since the 1970s, with so many good and even great movies that my practice of categorizing the years output into what I term the “Best of the Best” and the “Best of the Rest” is almost arbitrary. Many people who read this idiosyncratic list will love and enjoy movies on my second tier, such as Gravity or American Hustle, far more than some of those on the first list, such as Before Midnight or The Great Beauty. However, with such an embarrassment of filmic riches in 2013, I have restricted my highest accolade to the movies I consider to be the most lasting, the most important, the most “perfect.” In other words, those I deem the Best of the Best are those movies that I believe will hold up over time as true works of art, that resonate the deepest for me, that I believe have something important to say, that are truest to the journey of their characters, or that represent the height of a great artist’s work.

The Great Beauty: A movie as ravishingly beautiful as Rome itself

Even with that stringent criteria, I was unable to narrow my Best of the Best list to less than 8 movies. Most years I can come up with only three to five films I consider great or near great. If I had to say which one movie I believe to be the absolute best film of 2013 I’d be hard pressed to choose between The Great Beauty and Her, because both were cinematically stunning and deeply profound. Beauty is about nothing less than the decay of civilization and the crisis in a man’s soul as he contemplates whether he has squandered his life—yet it is a film literally pulsating with kinetic energy, great humor, and stunning visuals.

But while The Great Beauty is more of an intellectual treat, Her is deeply soulful. Its set-up may sound whimsical, even farcical: At some point in the more technologically advanced but not so distant future, a lonely guy falls in love with his Siri-like computer operating system. The OS, growing more human-like in its evolution, yearns for love and connection in return. But Her is no farce or bloodless sci-fi flick. The movie, brilliantly acted and directed, is full of heart and genuine emotion and raises so many questions about the nature of intimacy and the effect of technology on human relationships that one can endlessly contemplate the questions its provokes.

That’s why films like American Hustle, which seems to be winning every critic’s award in sight, and The Wolf of Wall Street don’t quite cut it for me as the Best of the Best. Both films were thoroughly entertaining, brilliantly acted, and directed with great panache. I enjoyed both tremendously while I watched them. But in the end, did they change my life? Make me see the world in a new and different way? Linger in my soul? No. And while Steve McQueen is one of my favorite filmmakers, whose work (Hunger, Shame) I have been championing for years on my annual best movie list, I didn’t experience 12 Years a Slave as the paradigm-shifting event it seems to be for many others. It has been perplexing to me to hear so many critics say that this movie, for the first time, shows the true horror of slavery. I never had any illusions about the true nature of slavery, and 12 Years a Slave is certainly not the first work of art to show its true ugliness. In fact, we had one just last year, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, that was just as unvarnished and as emotionally wrenching, not to mention the television miniseries Roots way back in the 1960s that was truly a paradigm-shifting event for millions of Americans. I wonder if it is the fact that 12 Years is about a free man, a person of some means and education, being forced into slavery that is actually resonating for such a wider (and whiter) audience—the fear that someone “like me” could end up in such horrible circumstances. That being said, 12 Years is a very good film and I’m glad it has so many people rethinking “our peculiar institution” and I was thrilled to see a movie with such an important message win the Oscar. And I was even more thrilled to see Lupita Nyong’o walk away with an Oscar for her searing performance as the slave Patsey, whose left-behind character has weighed on my heart since the credits rolled.

Matthew McConaughey completely turned his career around with his great work in three 2013 films:  Dallas Buyers Club, Mud, and The Wolf of Wall Street, not to mention his superlative work on TV's True Detective. The great Italian actor Tony Servillo was superb in The Great Beauty. Leonardo DiCaprio gave a bravura performance in The Wolf of Wall Street, quickly righting his career after starring earlier that year in the epic disaster that was The Great Gatsby. Joaquin Phoenix proved that he is back and better than ever after his stunt/bout with insanity with a beautifully nuanced, emotionally raw

Her: Joaquin Phoenix takes a romantic beachside stroll with
Scarlett Johansson...in his pocket.

performance in Her. Oscar Isaac and The Wire's Michael B. Jordan did star-making work in Inside Llewyn Davis and Fruitvale Station. There were even surprisingly effective performances by actors predominately known as stand-up or improv comics: Will Forte (Nebraska), Louis C.K. (Blue Jasmine, Nebraska), and, who would have ever imagined, the much maligned Andrew Dice Clay (Blue Jasmine).

For once, there were a plethora of good roles for women in 2013, with Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Color), and Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) making the most indelible impression. Scarlett Johansson's voice-only performance in Her was amazing, considering she was cast and edited into the movie after shooting had completely wrapped. Shailene Woodley continues to demonstrate talent far beyond her years in The Spectacular Now. And Oprah Winfrey's surprisingly authentic performance as a boozy, dissatisfied wife in Lee Daniels' The Butler made one wish she hadn't walked away from acting after The Color Purple and spent all those years hosting a daytime talk show.

In many ways, 2013 can be summed up as the year of the director, with veterans and emerging talents creating works stamped with distinctive personality and vision.

Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese made two of the best films in their long and distinguished careers while continuing to explore the themes that have obsessed them throughout: the complicated inner lives of women in Allen’s Blue Jasmine and the often brutal, utilitarian world of men in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Underappreciated mid-career directors like Spike Jonze (Her), Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave), Richard Linklater (Before Midnight), Alexander Payne (Nebraska), and Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) brought added maturity and enhanced technical expertise to their unique and often refreshingly offbeat storytelling abilities.

And first-time and other young directors impressed with precocious displays of talent. For the last several years I have been bemoaning a general malaise in American movies, which I attributed to weak-mindedness at the helm. It seemed in recent years even top directors were making movies that seemed half-hearted at best, empty exercises in crass commercialism at worst, without any real purpose or strength of vision. What did last year’s Academy Award winning Best Picture Zero Dark Thirty have to say about the war on terrorism other than that it is bad, dirty, thankless work? What did the usually exemplary director Clint Eastwood want us to take away from his J. Edgar Hoover biopic? That Hoover was a beaten-down mama’s boy? A closet queen? Did he have nothing more profound to express, no more important reason for making J. Edgar? What did Paul Thomas Anderson’s visually stunning and well-acted movie The Master really have to say about cults like Scientology? In the end, not much of real importance.

This year, many young and even first-time directors demonstrated a remarkable depth of talent and vision. Twenty-seven year old Ryan Coogler had only
directed a few obscure short films when he decided to delve into one of the most explosive and divisive news stories in the country, the point-blank killing

Fruitvale Station offers a deeply humanizing look at the man
behind the headlines,the late Oscar Grant of Oakland, CA

of an unarmed young black man, Oscar Grant, by a white transit police officer in Oakland, California, the city in which he was born and raised. His deeply humanizing first-feature, Fruitvale Station, sadly overlooked at awards time, was one of the best movies of the year, as was the similarly humanizing Dallas Buyers Club by the young French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée. James Ponsoldt clearly has something to say about alcoholism, capping off a trio of films on the subject with the The Spectacular Now, a film that in a just world would have vacuumed up awards for best film, director, screenplay, and at least three of its actors. Other promising directors who debuted on the scene in 2013 include first-time feature director Henry Alex Rubin with the Disconnect, who previously made the great documentary Murderball about wheelchair rugby players, Destin Daniel Cretton who directed the touching Short Term 12, expanding his 2008 short of the same name, and Jem Cohen, the Afghan born director of the quietly beautiful Museum Hours.

Former child actor Xavier Legrand’s first film, the Oscar nominated live action short Just Before Losing Everything (Avant que de Tout Perdre), is a brilliant and heartfelt look at a family caught in the grip of domestic violence. Breathtaking in its economy, clocking in at just 29 minutes, it offers a film school clinic in storytelling expertise. No film in 2013 had me more on the edge of my seat and more invested in the fate of its characters. And with its cryptic ending, no film in 2013 has consumed my thoughts more with what may have happened after the screen fades to black. Sadly, only if you lived in one of the few cities in America to screen the five nominated Oscar shorts in the week or two before the awards are handed out were you able to see this unforgettable film.

Prominent themes in movies this year reflected anxieties in the current zeitgeist, such as our increasingly uneasy relationship with technology (Her, Disconnect) and sense of powerless before the vast and uncaring forces of the natural world (Gravity, All is Lost) and the rot at the heart of the American dream (American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, Blue Jasmine). Father and son relationships and the difficulty navigating the seemingly impenetrable gulf was another topic weighing on the minds of filmmakers in 2013 (Mud, Disconnect, The Place Beyond the Pines, Nebraska).

The issue of race and racism gained great visibility this year with the critical and/or box office success of several black-helmed films (12 Years a Slave, Fruitvale Station, Lee Daniels’ The Butler), and a fourth, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, directed by a young white British director, Justin Chadwick. These films offered so many juicy, substantive roles for black actors—beyond the stereotypical “Magic Negro” role so predominant in recent years or the bit parts as “black friend/coworker to white lead” afforded to black actors—that in 2013 a black actor, director, or black-made film would be a deserving winner in all major award categories. (12 Years a Slave or Fruitvale Station for Best Picture, Steve McQueen or Ryan Coogler for Best Director, 12 Years’ Chiwetel Ejiofor

Lupita Nyong'o delivered the year's most
heartwrenching performance in 12 Years a Slave

or Fruitvale’s Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor, Nyong’o for Best Actress (or Best Supporting Actress as her part is categorized by most award bodies), Captain Phillips’ Barkhad Abdi for Best Supporting Actor, The Butler’s Oprah Winfrey or Mandela’s Naomie Harris or Fruitvale’s Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actress.)

As always, this list is my humble, deeply personal corrective to the inevitable miscarriage of justice that is the Academy Awards. Without further ado, here are my nominations for best and worst in cinema in 2013. [Please note as always, films and performances are listed in the order in which I saw them during the calendar year, not ranked within each category.]

The Best of the Best

Before Midnight: An opportunity to check in with the iconic characters of Jesse and Celine is always welcome. They first hooked up on a European train trip in 1995’s Before Sunrise, then met again 9 years later in Before Sunset when Jesse

Before Midnight: Two of films most iconic characters
continue their romantic journey

returned to Europe plugging his novel—based on their brief yet memorable encounter. Now, another 9 years have passed and they are married and parents and their walking and talking brings out lots of insecurities and resentments. Because this director and his two leads know these characters so well, all three helped write the dialogue and it’s amazing, by turns touching, hilarious, and searing. Some fans may be put off by the darker, less fun tone than in the previous parts of the trilogy but Before Midnight is a honest depiction of the evolution of a relationship from romantic fantasy to real life. Here’s hoping for a fourth installment in 2022.

Fruitvale Station: I saw this movie on opening night in an Oakland theater, just a few miles from the BART station where Oscar Grant was killed a few years earlier on New Years Eve. The theater was so packed that all other scheduled movies were cancelled and all four screens were commandeered to show this one film. It happened to be the night before the not-guilty verdict was delivered in the George Zimmerman case in Florida for the killing of Trayvon Martin, another young black man needlessly killed in a racially-tinged shooting, and activists for both victims were leafleting outside the theater while the movie debuted. Watching this beautiful depiction of the life of Oscar Grant unfold was like witnessing a precious moment of grace and understanding, suspended in time. That brief moment of grace was brutally upended the next day when a jury ruled it was OK to shoot another unarmed black man point blank simply because he “looked suspicious.” It was a jarring and depressing turn of event, but it only underscored how important this movie is as a both a work of art and a social statement.

Blue Jasmine: With allusions to A Streetcar Named Desire, Woody Allen’s latest woman on the verge is a society doyenne (Cate Blanchett) brought low by the imprisonment of her Ponzi-scheming husband. Broke and emotionally at

Cate Blanchett's career-topping performance in
  Blue Jasmine made her an Oscar sure thing

wits end, she is forced to move in with her working-class stepsister (Sally Hawkins). Blanchett delivers perhaps the best performance in her storied career. While maintaining his acute sense of humor and absurdity, Allen takes his story in a darker, more serious direction and the longings and vulnerabilities, animosities and affections of both sisters are beautifully realized.

The Spectacular Now: The anti-Rom-com, a love story about two good but flawed people who maybe shouldn’t be together. Written, directed, and acted with such delicacy and honesty that you feel like you know these people; maybe you even are these people.

Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adèle): This movie made headlines for its extended lesbian sex scenes, but it is the aching emotional nakedness in the performance of actress Adèle Exarchopoulos and her character’s desperate

Emotional nakedness is the real highlight of
Blue is the Warmest Color, not the explicit sex scenes

search to find her authentic self that is most revealing. Its 3-hour running time may seem daunting, but it allows the story to breathe and really play out. I felt like I got to witness the entire emotional arc of this woman’s life. Looking over this Best of the Best list, I’m noticing that nearly all the movies that touched me the deepest this year were about relationships. This movie is one of the most honest accounts of a relationship I have ever seen.

The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza): Both a send-up of La Dolce Vita hedonism and a madeleine bite of remembrance and regret, an aging intellectual turned hack-writer and wastrel socialite looks back on his life and his city, the Eternal one, and takes stock. One of the most ravishingly beautiful films ever made, this modern Italian masterpiece is a search for the beauty and meaning in life while also cataloging its decadence, and decay. One could watch this movie a hundred times and still not being able to fully appreciate all its dazzling camerawork, capture its deep layers of irony, or unpack its symbolism.

The Past (Le Passé): The past is prologue in the quietly beautiful domestic drama by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who directed the 2012 Oscar winner for best foreign film The Separation. Again, Farhadi looks at family: what brings people together, what pulls them apart, and how ties that bind are never truly broken. Farhadi’s characters aren’t good or bad; they’re human.


The Best of the Rest

Disconnect:  A cautionary tale about the invasiveness of technology, how the secrets and lies we share on line may come back to haunt us. Told in a Crash-like format, with disparate stories that eventually overlap, each storyline is compelling and the large ensemble cast is terrific.

The Silence (Das letzte Schweigen): In this haunting German thriller, the repercussions of an unsolved child murder resonate anew when an identical crime occurs in the exact same spot 23 years later.

Lore: A teenage girl, left alone with her younger siblings when her Nazi parents are arrested in the waning days of World War II, struggles to survive and to come to grips with her own denial, complicity, prejudices and lost illusions.

Museum Hours: At a time when people spend their lives hunched over tiny screens, oblivious to other people and the world around them, this movie is all about opening your eyes and really seeing.

12 Years a Slave: The high point of this adaptation of Soloman Northrup’s true slave narrative is the lead character’s refusal to surrender his humanity to an inhumane system, even when asked to do something that might seem merciful under horrendous circumstances.

Gravity: The technical realization of this lost-in-space tale is epic, and an inchoate spiritual dimension added depth that made the movie resonate beyond the sci-fi genre.

All is Lost: While I admired Gravity greatly as a superb technical achievement, I responded more emotionally to this movie than the somewhat similarly themed Gravity and Captain Phillips. The decision to provide no backstory and virtually no dialogue was a brave one, and Robert Redford handled the physical and acting challenges beautifully.

Short Term 12: Who has more issues, the residents at an foster-care facility for troubled teens or the young staff members in charge of their welfare? This tender story is drawn from the young director’s own experience doing working in this kind of facility.

Dallas Buyers Club: Matthew McConaughey is a revelation, as is Jared Leto, two actors previously considered lightweight pretty boys, in this affecting story of strange bedfellows brought together by the intransigent public response to the AIDS crisis.

Nebraska: Alexander Payne can get a tad patronizing on occasion (the mutant cousins in this film for example) and he tends to make the same movie (an emotional/physical road trip) over and over again. But minus the gratuitously vulgar June Squibb scenes, this film seemed more heartfelt than snarky, perhaps due to the beautiful black and white cinematography and the integrity of the performances by Bruce Dern and even more surprisingly by Will Forte.

America Hustle: Clever writing and impeccable acting from top to bottom elevates this movie above the routine crime/caper genre. Few directors handle this type of satire better than director David O. Russell, but he and his cast manage to bring wistfulness and heart to this one, too.

Inside Llewyn Davis: I feel bad leaving this off my Best of the Best list because I loved every minute of this movie, from the amazing performance by Oscar

A star is born: While his self-destructive folk-singing character may not
hit the big time, Oscar Isaac delivered a star-making performance
in Inside Llewyn Davis

Isaac to the wonderful music to the decision to make the protagonist his own worst enemy. And I never laughed so hard at the movies all year as I laughed at Isaac, Adam Driver, and Justin Timberlake singing “Please Mr. Kennedy.” But ultimately it fell just short of perfection, feeling slightly less developed than a fully realized feature.

The Wolf of Wall Street:  It’s hard to feel really great about this movie because it does, by its very nature, glorify its protagonist—despite hearty protestations to the contrary by some of those involved with it. But Scorsese romanticizes all his criminal protagonists. And I think he can’t help but bring a descendant-of-immigrants sense of awe to those who manage to get ahead, one way or another. Still it is thoroughly entertaining, laugh out loud funny, and Scorsese pulls out every cinematic device to move the narrative forward and breakneck speed.

Best Actor
Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight
Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station
Miles Teller, The Spectacular Now
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Toni Servillo, The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Joaquin Phoenix, Her
Ali Mosaffa, The Past (Le Passé)

Best Actress
Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
Katrin Sass, The Silence
Saskia Rosendahl, Lore
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Shailene Woodley, The Spectacular Now
Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color
Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Scarlett Johansson, Her
Bérénice Bejo, The Past (Le Passé)
Lea Drucher, Just Before Losing Everything

Best Supporting Actor
Kyle Chandler, The Spectacular Now and The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Will Forte, Nebraska
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Supporting Actress
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine
Melonie Diaz, Fruitvale Station
Octavia Spencer, Fruitvale Station
Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Amy Adams, American Hustle and Her
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Naomie Harris, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Best Ensemble Acting
Disconnect: Jason Bateman, Frank Grillo, Max Theriot, Andrea Riseborough, Colin Ford, Joneh Bobo, Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard, Hope Davis
Blue Jasmine: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg
The Spectacular Now:  Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bob Odenkirk, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
American Hustle:  Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Robert De Niro, Louis C.K., Michael Peña

Sixty-Second Oscar (A small performance that left an indelible impression)
Susan Sarandon, The Company We Keep

Best Performance in a Bad Movie
Ben Foster, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

Worst Performance
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

Best Newcomer

Miles Teller, The Spectacular Now  (I named his Best Newcomer in 2010 for his short but brilliant appearance in Rabbit Hole, but since he still hasn’t broken through I’ll give him another push)
Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color
Brie Larson, Short-Term 12

Breakthrough Performance
Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station

Best Director
Richard Linklater, Before Midnight
Woody Allen, Blue Jasmine
Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station
Paolo Sorrentino, The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)
Spike Jonze, Her
Asghar Farhadi, The Past (Le Passé)

Worst Director
Baz Luhrmann, The Great Gatsby

Best Original Screenplay
Blue Jasmine
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis

Best Adapted Screenplay
Before Midnight
The Spectacular Now
12 Years a Slave

Best Cinematography
Gravity
All is Lost
Nebraska
The Great Beauty
Her

Unexpected Charmer
In a World…

Best Documentary
The Stories We Tell
20 Feet From Stardom
Becoming Traviata
The Armstrong Lie
The Square

A tense scene from the heart-stopping short film Just Before Losing Everything

Best Short Film
Just Before Losing Everything (Avant que de Tout Perdre)

Worst Movie
The Great Gatsby: Fancy sets, showy camera shots, and frenetic editing do not make a compelling movie. You need to tell a story with insight and probity, and this cynical exercise in style over substance – sheer spectacle without a single intelligent thought or genuine human impulse --- is an insult to one of the greatest books ever written. is an insult to one of the F. Scott Fitzgerald provided one of the greatest stories ever written.

August: Osage County: The most dispiriting cinematic experience of the year. Cruel, assaultive, and ultimately pointless when it should be bracing and revealing.


Best Movie Line

From The Great Beauty (La Grande Belezza):
“What’s the matter with nostaligia? It’s the only thing left for those of us with no faith in the future.”

From Before Midnight:
Jesse, arguing with his wife, Celine:  “I am giving you my whole life, OK? I got nothing larger to give. I'm not giving it to anybody else. If you're looking for permission to disqualify me, I'm not gonna give it to you. Ok? I love you. And I'm not in conflict about it. Okay? But if what you want is, like, a laundry list of all the things that piss me off, I can give it to you.”
Celine:  “Yeah, I want to hear.”
Jesse:  “OK. Well, number one, you're fucking nuts! You are. Good luck! Find somebody else to put up with your shit for more than like 6 months, OK? But I accept the whole package, the crazy and the brilliant. I know you're not gonna change and I don't want you to. It's called accepting you for being you.”


Worst Movie Line

The great Judi Dench was forced to utter this execrable bit of dialogue in Philomena, ostensibly the true story of a mother’s desperate search for the son she was forced to give up 59 years earlier by the Irish nuns in a convent in which she was placed as a young unwed mother. In the film, Steve Coogan, co-star and scriptwriter, plays a journalist who initially seeks her out for a sensationalistic scoop, but gets drawn into the story and brings her to America to help her look for her son.

Coogan as BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith, upon the two arriving in America: “Shall we go for a walk? Get rid of jet lag? You said you wanted to visit the Lincoln Memorial.”

Dench as Philomena:  “We could go to see Mr. Lincoln or we could watch on television Big Momma’s House. It’s about a little black man pretending to be a fat black lady...It looks hilarious!”

Forget the Oscars! These Are the Best Films of 2012

Many top filmmakers in 2012 gravitated toward darker themes reflecting the anxieties and uncertainties of our modern age, even if those themes were sometimes embedded in a highly entertaining gloss. Zero Dark Thirty and Argo thus took on real-world terrorism, the former with grim docudrama-like precision, the latter with a literal (albeit ostensibly true) happy Hollywood ending. Lincoln and Django Unchained looked at the thorny issue of race, while Hyde Park on Hudson, like Lincoln, looked to the politics of the past as inspiration for healing our current body politic. Interestingly, four separate films explored the indignities and uncertainties of aging. These ranged from sentimental (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) to caustic (Late  Quartet), from warm-hearted and poignant (Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet) to unsparing (Amour).

 Even the few romantic stories worth seeing in 2012, which excludes most of the studio-released schlock, involved couples as seemingly ill-suited to the general principle of love as they are to each other (Rust and Bone, Silver Linings Playbook, Safety Not Guaranteed, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World). The two films that stood head and shoulders over all others in 2012—Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom—had children as their protagonists, kids who refuse to accept a forbidding or inauthentic world as it is and take control of their own destiny.

With only a handful of truly great films in 2012 it is perhaps more instructive to analyze the ambitious failures, to try to determine why works by serious artists either failed colossally or at least underwhelmed. When I heard Paul Thomas Anderson was making a thinly veiled account of the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, I expected great things. (Remember his brief but sharp characterization of a misogynistic motivational guru, played brilliantly by Tom Cruise, in Magnolia?) So how could a movie so beautiful to look at, with three near-great performances at its core and some of the best scenes on film in 2012, still devolve into a muddled mess? The failure rests solely in the hands of Anderson, who should have sought imput from other writers to rein in the weaknesses and vagaries of his self-penned script (such as its insistent focus on its least interesting character), and exerted more directorial discipline over some of his actors’ distracting indulgences (we’re talking about you, Joaquin, no matter how much we love you).

The failed promise of The Master evidences a weak-mindedness ever more pervasive in movies in recent years. The majority of filmmakers today lack either the intellectual heft or passionate ideological vision to shape films with a clear point of view. What is the point of making a movie about a subject as controversial as a cult like Scientology if the filmmaker doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what he wants to say? One may love or hate the work of Danish director Lars Von Trier (and I have done both), but at least the viewer knows what the director feels about his subject. Von Trier forces you to see the world through his eyes, however painful or dehumanizing that may be at times. Thank God for the mad genius that is Quentin Tarantino, who makes films that are completely unapologetic, that are not afraid to provoke or offend, that have heart and spirit and real intelligence beneath their rollicking surfaces.

The same problem mars the, in my view, greatly overpraised Zero Dark Thirty. I'm willing to cut director Kathryn Bigelow some slack because she set out to make a very different movie: one about the failure to capture Osama bin Laden. When world events threw a monkey wrench into her plans, she had to scrap the whole thing and bust out a completely different story under a tight release schedule, presumably worried that someone else would beat her to the punch. Maybe the film she had originally conceived had a strong and compelling point of view. I have my doubts, because her previous Iraq war film, The Hurt Locker, somehow managed to score the 2009 Best Picture despite having nothing more profound to say than that war is a dirty job and those tasked with carrying it out have to compartmentalize their feelings in order to survive. (Sadly, a far more intuitive film on the psychological fallout of war, The Messenger, went largely unseen and unheralded the year The Hurt Locker stormed to a surprise Best Picture win over Bigelow's ex-husband's Avatar.)

Zero Dark Thirty carries the same basic message as The Hurt Locker, ending with Jessica Chastain not in triumph but alone and seeming emotionally adrift now that her obsessive mission has been accomplished. A puzzling controversy has arisen over whether the film endorses or condemns torture, but the film takes no position on that or anything else that might give the viewer something to chew on. Torture is just presented as a fact of spycraft and not as a subject of any real interest either to the protagonist or to the filmmaker. Bigelow's real interest is the bang-bang, the documentary-like recreation of the daring assault on Bin Laden's compound. The rest of the story seems rather perfunctory, despite Chastain's game efforts, tacked on just to hold the frame up until the picture comes to life during the Abbottabad raid. When the raid is over we as viewers are left with the same empty feeling captured on Chastain's face in the final shot, more entertained than enlightened.

Still the most inexplicable failure of 2012 was Hitchcock. Who could serve as greater cinematic fodder than Alfred Hitchcock, the master of movie suspense, whose work reflects one of the most fascinatingly complex psyches in human history? But Hitchcock the movie was pure camp, without a single authentic idea or genuine emotion. Anthony Hopkins has been able to convincingly portray Pablo Picasso and Richard Nixon by the sheer skill of his acting, without any attempt to look or sound like those historical figures. But his ridiculously mannered “performance” here is more stunt than acting. My ears still sting from the over-enunciation of his character’s name, which sadly lives on to irritate in the turn-off-your-cell-phone ads which theaters continued to play long after the movie’s run mercifully ended, a marketing angle as cynical and predictable as this movie.

On the acting front, Daniel Day Lewis’ performance in Lincoln is a master class in the craft of acting, but its cool calculation left me emotional wanting. The performance that moved me most in 2012 was that of 6-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Some critics have argued, unfairly in my view, that Wallis could not possibly have been “acting” in this movie, simply being herself, because 6 year olds are incapable of that level of abstract thought (so much for Mozart!). The argument is patently ridiculous, as Wallis has never lived in a makeshift junkyard, or stared down mythical beasts, or lost a parent, or survived the melting of the polar icepacks, or experienced any of the other fantastical elements depicted in Beasts. In what she accomplishes in Beasts isn’t acting, I don’t know what is.

Movies in 2012 featured a number of other accomplished performances by children and teens—Tom Holland, the son who comes of age trying to survive a tsunami and reunite his family in The Impossible; Isabelle Allen, the young Cosette in Les Miserable; Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, the runaway lovebirds in Moonrise Kingdom; Suraj Sharma, the intrepid shipwreck survivor struggling to share a lifeboat with a hungry tiger in The Life of Pi. I am excited to see what the future holds for these bright young talents.

On the other end of the age spectrum, Emmanuelle Riva, at 85 the oldest woman ever to receive a Oscar nomination for Best Actress, was superb as an elderly woman trapped in an increasingly debilitated body, matched note for note by her onscreen husband, played with a haunting sense of dislocation and despair by 83-year-old Jean-Louis Trintignant.  Other indelible performances were delivered by Marion Cotillard, an unsentimental accident victim in the lovely Rust and Bone, Denzel Washington, playing against type as a self-destructive alcoholic in the underappreciated Flight, Ann Dowd (in the year’s second most unforgettable performance) as a by-the-book fast food restaurant manager unwittingly enticed into enabling a horrible crime in the squirm-inducing Compliance, an uncharacteristically tender turn by Bruce Willis in Moonrise Kingdom, and nearly the entire cast of Django Unchained, most notably Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a completely against type Samuel L. Jackson.

As always, this list is my humble, idiosyncratic corrective to the inevitable miscarriage of justice that is the Academy Awards. Without further ado, here are my nominations for best and worst in cinema in 2012. [Please note as always films and performances are listed in the order in which I saw them during the calendar year, not ranked within each category.]

The Best of the Best

Beasts of the Southern Wild: The most magical, transportive film of 2012. First time feature director Behn Zeitlin, in an extraordinarily auspicious debut, creates an beautifully realized world known as The Bathtub, simultaneously magical and grittily earthbound, in this Katrina-like parable of a down-and-out Bayou community threatened by an apocalyptic storm. Zeitlin and co-writer Lucy Albar, whose play was the source of the story, made the decision to change the protagonist from a little boy to a little girl, creating one of the best young female role models in film history. No fairy tale princess waiting to be rescued, “Hushpuppy” is tough and resilient, willing to face life on its own terms, come what may. The relationship between Hushpuppy and her sometimes-available father, Wink, is surprisingly nuanced. The superbly moving performances of Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry are all the more remarkable considering that both father and daughter are played by completely untrained actors. The denizens of The Bathtub may be poor but they live and love and hope and experience joy and fight to stay in the only place they know as home and the movie never condescends towards them. Wondrously imaginative, Beasts is visual poetry.

Moonrise Kingdom:  While I’ve enjoyed the work of Wes Anderson in the past, his films

are often too-precious-by-half to provide any kind of true emotional experience.  Kingdom marks a huge step forward in Anderson’s maturation as a filmmaker.  This charming tale of would-be young lovers on the run set among two precocious 12-year-olds—he an orphan fleeing “Khaki Scout” camp, she a dreamy girl with a penchant for stealing library books and listening to French chanteuses—manages to mix deft satire with ineffable sweetness and a European cinematic vibe. The fable-like quality of the movie is enhanced by the stunning composition of its design, which looks like a hand-painted storybook come to life. The visuals are complemented by a beautiful score composed by Alexandre Desplat, with additional music ranging from Benjamin Britten to Hank Williams to Françoise Hardy. The director also elicited great performances from his entire cast, including previously unplumbed depths from Bruce Willis.  

The Imposter:  This astonishingly documentary – the improbable but true story of a European scam artist who managed to convince a Texas family that he was their missing son—is more suspenseful than any thriller released last year and more entertaining than nearly all feature films in cinemas in 2012. Director Bart Layton does a superb job getting his real life characters to tell the story in a way that it feels as if we are seeing the stories events unfold before our eyes. The movie leaves us with a lot to ponder about truth and fiction and the nature of human psychology, especially as even greater questions are raised toward the film’s end.

Django Unchained:  Quentin Tarantino matches and perhaps even tops his last brilliant effort, Inglorious Basterds, once again focusing his eye on one of history’s darkest periods and recasting victim as hero in charge of his own fate. This time, rather than the Holocaust, the director takes on the ugly legacy of slavery, in a way I found much more compelling and insightful than the much lauded Lincoln. No synopsis or trailer can ever do justice to the work of Quentin Tarantino. You have to let his films unfold in all their delirious glory, and look beyond the violence and clever dialogue and audacious setups at what the film is really trying to say. And Django has a lot to say about the corrosive institution of slavery. No other filmmaker working today has the stones to risk offending and upsetting people in the way Tarantino does to express his unique vision, and we are the luckier for it.

Amour:  This movie may be hard to watch for many, but that makes it no less important. The ravages of aging, a topic on the minds of many a baby boomer, has never been examined in such unstinting fashion, without an ounce of sentiment. Director Michael Haneke’s greatest work, with career-capping performances by legendary French actors Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Searching for Sugar Man:  The second documentary, after The Imposter, so accomplished it deserves to be on the best film list. The vicissitudes of fame are explored through the story of an obscure American musician who became an unlikely hero during the struggle against apartheid in South African. Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul employs an extensive array of skills to tell this transformative story, from intrepid reporting to beautiful cinematographic flourishes to simple yet riveting use of animation.

The Best of the Rest

Lincoln:  I was not as enamored as most by Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic. A movie that champions craven compromise in the body politic, even in the interest of an exceedingly greater good, is something that I find a hard time cheering (especially the abnegation by Thaddeus Steven of his view that blacks and whites deserved equal treatment in order to win Southern votes for the Thirteenth Amendment). Not to mention the fact that the movie overlooks Lincoln’s slow evolution against slavery, and disproportionately credits a handful of white men with the demise of the institution. I credit Spielberg for almost completely reigning in the sentimental excesses that mar most of his work. But I suspect the success of this movie lies first and foremost at the hands of screenwriter and playwright extraordinaire Tony Kushner, whose love or words and the rough and tumble of argument is rivaled only by Aaron Sorkin, and who kept the movie tightly focused on the effort to constitutionalize the end of the “monstrous injustice" rather than take a sprawling biopic approach to the entire Lincoln presidency, which would have surely diluted the film’s impact.

Flight:  This movie seems to have been virtually forgotten at awards time. But Flight marked an incredible step up in class for director Robert Zemeckis and provided Denzel Washington with another tour de force opportunity to show off his incredible range depicting a deeply flawed airline pilot in denial over his alcoholism.

Life of Pi:  An incredible technical achievement by the anti-auteur director Ang Lee, who seems to approach every film as an opportunity to master a completely new genre. Here he uses special effects with virtuosic ease to turn a seemingly unfilmmable novel not into a soulless cartoon but a poetically realized tale of faith and fate, man and nature.

Rust and Bone:  An unlikely romance between a physically handicapped woman and an emotionally stunted man by Jacques Audiard, the French director of the 2010 Oscar nominee Un Prophet. Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts are both terrific, and one shot in particular, of Cotillard visiting the underwater whale tank in the sea park where she used to work, is unforgettable.

The Impossible:  Extraordinary special effects and affecting performances by Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland highlight this true story of a family's struggle to survive the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Most Underrated Film of the Year

Anna Karenina:  I fully expected to be put off by director Joe Wright’s decision to set this remake of literature’s greatest love stories in an artificial theatrical setting, replete with stylized gestures and choreographed camera movement, which many viewers and critics felt robbed the romance of some of its heat. But the movie’s sumptuous color scheme and inventive production design created a feast for the eyes, the sinuous camera work a mesmerizing visual ballet. Keira Knightly redeemed herself after earning my worst performance palm twice in recent years for her overwrought turns in 2010’s Black Swan and 2011’s A Dangerous Method. And Jude Law was so transfixing you wondered why Anna could not see that still waters run deep. Only Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s stolid, wimpy Vronsky failed to convincingly hold up his end of the love triangle.

Most Overrated Film of the Year

Silver Linings Playbook:  Sure, the performances were solid across the board, but there was nothing else that set this movie above a garden variety romcom—especially when a seemingly thoughtful story about loss and mental illness took a turn into a bad homage to Dirty Dancing. Another triumph for the Weinsteins’ publicity and marketing machine.

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington, Flight

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Jean-Louis Trintignant, Amour

Tom Courtenay, Quartet

Best Actress

Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Paprika Steen, Applause

Ann Dowd, Compliance

Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Best Supporting Actor

Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Bruce Willis, Moonrise Kingdom

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Jude Law, Anna Karenina

Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained

Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Master

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Sally Field, Lincoln

Corinne Masiero, The Impossible

Maggie Smith, Quartet

Best Ensemble Acting

Moonrise Kingdom: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban

Worst Performance

Anthony Hopkins, Hitchcock

Best Director

Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom

Bart Layton, The Imposter

Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Michael Haneke, Amour

Special Award for Achievement in Direction

Ang Lee, Life of Pi

Juan Antonio Bayona, The Impossible

Worst Director

Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

Best Original Screenplay

Moonrise Kingdom

Django Unchained

Amour

Best Adapted Screenplay

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Lincoln

Life of Pi

Worst Screenplay

The Master

Best Cinematography

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Moonrise Kingdom

Anna Karenina

Life of Pi

The Impossible

Best Production Design

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Moonrise Kingdom

Anna Karenina

Life of Pi

Les Miserables

Best Visual Effects

Life of Pi

Best Documentary

The Imposter

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Bully

The Flat

Searching for Sugarman

Best Animated Short

Head Over Hills

Best Live Action Short

Death of a Shadow

Most Disappointing Movie

The Master

Hitchcock

Best Score

Moonrise Kingdom

Worst Soundtrack

Hugh Jackson's painfully off-pitch warbling in Les Miserables

Best Scene

Two scenes from The Master:  the “free association” exercise between cult leader Philip Seymour Hoffman and acolyte Joaquin Phoenix; and the scene in which Hoffman looses his cool when confronted by a skeptic

The stairwell smoking encounter in Flight.

The "whale ballet" scene in Rust and Bone

Worst Scene

The “wall touching” exercise in The Master

Best Shot

The gasp-inducing minibar shot in Flight

Best Movie Line

Almost any line in Moonrise Kingdom but these bits of dialogue between the runaways lovebirds, Sam and Suzy, were gems:

Sam:  “What happened to your hand?”
Suzy:  “I got hit in the mirror. “
Sam:  “Really? How did that happen? “
Suzy: “I lost my temper at myself. “

In another scene from Moonrise Kingdom:

Sam: “I feel I'm in a real family now. Not like yours, but similar to one.”
Suzy: “I always wished I was an orphan. Most of my favorite characters are. I think your lives are more special.”
Sam: “I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about.”  

This interchange from Beasts of the Southern Wild between Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, a flawed but loving man who has been Hushpuppy’s only parent since her mother reportedly “swam away” form the squalor of the flooded bayou where they live, may seem like simple cliché when read out of context. But delivered with such conviction by Quvenzhané Wallis, it played like a feminist battle cry:

Wink, who has been tutoring his daughter to be more self-reliant, believing his death is near: “Who the man?            “

Hushpuppy: “I’m the man!”

Worst Movie Line

Laura Linney’s Daisy Stuckley, “cousin-with-benefits” to FDR, after her first sexual encounter with the 32^nd President in Hyde Park on Hudson: “I knew then we were not just fifth cousins but very good friends.”

How to Make a Movie

First-time feature director Benh Zeitlin on what inspired his magical, moving bayou saga Beasts of the Southern Wild:  "When you look at the map you can see America kind of crumble off into the sinews down in the gulf where the land is getting eaten up. I was really interested in these roads that go all the way down to the bottom of America and what was at the end of them."

How Not to Make a Movie

Writer and director Martin McDonagh on his self-named protagonist “Marty” in Seven Psychopaths, a stymied screenwriter: “He has ideas and has characters and stuff, he’s just not quite sure how to put them down. It’s not a writer’s block so much as a writer’s self-appraisal of his own past work and where he finds himself in the present.”

Best Films of 2011

Tree of Life: Images of Ineffable Beauty

2011 brought us the largest crop of deeper, more thoughtful, and more ambitious films on screens since the last Golden Age of cinema in the 1970s. It has often happened throughout cinematic history that when times get tough, movies get better, as artists struggle to make sense of the tensions in their society and reflect the often inchoate fears and anxieties facing their age. Let us hope we are moving into era of cinema as golden as that of the '70s (and late '60s), when filmmakers creatively and incisively tackled such topics as changing gender roles and sexual mores (The Graduate, Scenes from a Marriage, Cabaret, An Unmarried Woman), racial and political injustice (In the Heat of the Night, The Conformist, Z, Blow-Up), economic disparity (Norma Rae), corruption (The Conversation, All the President's Men, Chinatown), the nature and value of war and empire even capitalism itself (The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather).

The most challenging, and occasionally infuriating, movies of 2011 fell into roughly three categories of themes dominating the current zeitgeist.

End of the World? Provocative Take Shelter

• A millenialist sense of unease, chaos, and doom—be it fear of economic collapse, family breakdown, environmental catastrophe, the end of life, and even the end of the world itself—pervades many of the years most talked about movies (Margin Call, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Take Shelter, Contagion, Melancholia).
• A  complex and often dark view of sexuality and its impact on the psyche is the subject of a slate of provocative 2011 releases: Shame, The Skin I Live In, House of Pleasures, The Sleeping Beauty, A Dangerous Method, Melancholia.
• The third predominating theme in 2011 is movies about cinema itself, about the power of movies and movie stars, or about larger issues of storytelling, artistic impulse, and the desire for fulfillment through artistic expression (The Artist, Hugo, My Week with Marilyn, Mysteries of Lisbon, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.)

In addition, for better or (in a few cases worse), the work of several filmmakers in 2001 revealed much about their inner world: from the childhood pain to the spiritual longings  of auteur Terrence Malick (Tree of Life); to the romantic illusions versus the ever-present feelings of artistic inadequacy in Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris); to the love of cinema that sustained Martin Scorsese's own childhood to his passion for preserving our filmed legacy (Hugo); to the depths of Lars von Trier's admitted depression (Melancholia).

Pariah: Brilliant Coming-of-Age Film Shunned by Hollywood...and Oscars

Some novice directors showed astonishing prowess. Jeff Nichols followed up his gritty 2007 indie sensation Shotgun Stories with one of the year's best films, Take Shelter. Dee Rees persevered for six years to turn her NYU film school short into the moving feature-length coming-of-age story Pariah, despite being told by countless financiers and distributors that the movie's black/gay subject matter was "too specific" to earn their backing. It opened to wide critical acclaim but unfortunately talk of an Oscar nomination failed to come true.

Some of our greatest cinematic masters rose to even greater heights in 2011. Terrence Malick managed to tell a story both epic and intimate in the breathtakingly ambitious Tree of Life. Martin Scorsese jumped for the first time not only into family movie territory but also into 3D, no less, with remarkable virtuosity with Hugo. The late Raoul Ruiz, the Chilean director whose Scheherazade-style approach to storytelling in the Mysteries of Lisbon proved a fitting cap to a career of tireless artistic experimentation and intellectual probity.

Melancholia: Risible Wallow, Despite Haunting Images

Other usually solid filmmakers stumbled badly. The first five or so minutes of Lars von Trier's Melancholia contain some of the most arresting images in the history of cinema. But the rest is an almost laughable wallow in the psyche of the Danish provocateur at his most nihilistic. The candy-colored warmth and ambi-sexual humanity that usually distinguishes Pedro Almodovar's films seems to have given way to a darker psychosexual view and a colder, even clinical visual style in the horrendously creepy The Skin I Live In.

Clint Eastwood rarely puts a step wrong as a director but his Hoover biopic, J.Edgar, is so reductive it's simply silly. The film suffers some of the same problems that drew opprobrium from many critics regarding The Iron Lady. Neither J. Edgar or The Iron Lady makes any attempt to really grapple with the impact its lead character had on the world and tell us why telling their story, even in an abbreviated fashion, is important. But the scenes of Streep's Thatcher, seeking solace from her late husband in the grip of dementia, are so touching and well-acted that, for me, they rose above being a simplistic or irrelevant framing device.

They showed us both the cluelessness of someone whose let-them-eat-cake attitude toward the lower classes is still causing repercussions today, but those scenes also made us feel, and perhaps empathize to some degree, with how horrible it must be to recognize that you have become an anachronism within your own time. (The irony of this kind of recognition was dealt with brilliantly in last year's epic film by Olivier Assayas on the terrorist Carlos the Jackal, with an even more unsympathetic character.)

J. Edgar: A Lost Opportunity, Failed Biopic

Conversely, the nearly singular focus on Hoover's sexuality in (or at least his sexual leanings) was not developed enough to adequately frame J. Edgar. Eastwood seemed to pull back his hand at every turn and refuse to take a stand. Did Hoover love Tolson? Did they have a relationship? It is never shown. Nor do we see the cost of his hypocrisy, how he used the sexual secrets of others—sometimes gay secrets—for a greater political agenda. Hoover was one of the most important and powerful figures in the 20th Century and except for one brief scene with Bobby Kennedy we never really see how he wielded that power. The horrendous acting by the usually exemplary Leonardo DiCaprio didn't help matters. If only DiCaprio had spent as much time developing a character as he did replicating Hoover's strange accent, which no one watching the film today remembers or cares about and only served to take us out of the emotional tenor of what was being said.

Woody Allen delivered his first genuine hit in ages with Midnight in Paris, but it proved to be more fodder for the ego-flattering fantasies of baby boomers than an actual masterpiece on par with Annie Hall or Manhattan. And I say that with sadness as a Woodman fanatic. It did not make the movie any less delicious going down, just less sustaining.

Brilliant Indie Doc, Shunned by Hollywood

As is par for the course for as long as I have been doing this list, many of the truly best films and performances from 2011 will not win or even be mentioned on Oscar night. While mawkish works like War Horse and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close snagged coveted nods, truly great films like the Korean masterpiece Poetry and the haunting, unforgettable Take Shelter are not even on the public's radar. This is precisely why I compile this list, year after year, to bring some modicum of attention to great artists whose work is sadly overlooked. The fact that The Interrupters, a documentary that is every bit as brilliant as director Steve James' previous film, Hoop Dreams, did not even make it past Academy screeners to the shortlist of 15 films, much less the culled down list of five nominees in contention for the big prize, boggles the mind.

A Better Life: A 2011 Gem!

Equally outrageous is the omission of Michael Shannon from the list of Best Actor nominees for his indelible performance in Take Shelter. George Clooney was great. His performance in The Descendants was probably the best of his career. And Brad Pitt was quite fine in Moneyball and worthy of a nod for an even more effecting turn in Tree of Life. But if I were them or whatever lucky gent wins the statue, I would announce right from the stage that it belongs to Michael Shannon and then drive straight to his house to give it to him. (Demián Bichir getting nominated for his beautiful turn in a movie almost no one saw, A Better Life, does go a long way to redeeming the Oscar farce.)

Meryl Street astonished once again by completely transforming herself into former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher showing us both the core of steel and the lonely befuddlement of the so-called Iron Lady. And Michelle Williams, despite no real physical resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, managed to convey her essence, that alchemical quality that makes a star a star. Either would be a very deserving winner for Best Actress, as would Glenn Close, who pretty much single-handedly brought Albert Nobbs to the screen, a project she nurtured for nearly three decades. But why no recognition from the Academy for Jeong-hie Yun, who at least won the Korean Academy Award for her brilliant work in Poetry, or Juliette Binoche for a performance of extraordinary range in Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy? Those performances stretch the boundaries for what is possible on screen.

It Was Jessica Chastain's Year!

And then there is Jessica Chastain. We've rarely seen a debut like Jessica Chastain's, who starred and shone brightly in about a half dozen films in 2011. She scored a Supporting Actress nomination for The Help but really deserves Best Actress consideration for her indelible work in both Tree of Life and Take Shelter. It will be very exciting to see where her seemingly boundless talent takes her in the years to come. There was other great supporting work: most notably by Kenneth Branagh (My Weekend with Marilyn), Kathy Baker (Take Shelter), Korean actress Yeo-jong Yun (The Housemaid), and by two fellows heretofore considered comedic lightweights, Jonah Hill (Moneyball) and Patton Oswalt (Young Adult). But no one other than Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) should be bringing home hardware on Oscar night. Their performances are what make movies live in our hearts and in our imagination.

This list is my humble attempt to right the inevitable wrongs and honor those I believe represent the very best in cinema in 2011. Please note, a few films still had not opened in my area by the end of February that I believe would probably have merited inclusion here. And I'll admit I just couldn't bring myself to see The Help. I couldn't face one more important African-American story framed around a do-gooding white person. So I regret leaving Viola Davis out of consideration here, who I know is a phenomenal actress and who I have championed regularly on my annual list, and Octavia Spencer, who I suspect is deserving as well. Also a few of the foreign films I mention may have been released in a previous calendar year but did not screen in the U.S. until 2011. Since few of them got the recognition they deserved in the year of their official release, I chose to include them here since they are still worthy of attention.

*A final note: The films listed below are in alphabetical order, not ranked, within each category.

The Best of the Best of 2011

Poetry

Poetry:  A movie as poetic as its title. A Korean grandmother, facing an uncertain future due to a diagnosis of Alzheimer's and the revelations of a shocking crime, looks for a way to express the beauty, meaning, and truth she still manages to see in life by enrolling in a poetry class.

The Interrupters:  A moving and important film about former gang members in Chicago trying the "interrupt" the cycle of violence and save souls one life at a time. Should have won the Academy Award for best documentary but shockingly not even nominated. So good I refuse to confine it to the documentary ghetto; it belongs in the Best Picture category.

Take Shelter:  I don't want to give away the delicious details of this movie because it is open to a variety of interpretations. Suffice it to say that no movie has haunted me more than this one. Not a day has gone by since seeing it that I have not thought about its complex characters, stunning images, and rich layers of meaning. It has its finger right on the pulse of life in America today, right at this moment, in tune with all the fears and pressures and imploding dreams bearing down upon us. The most tragically overlooked film of the year. If one movie could be preserved so that people of the future could understand who we were at this moment in time, this is it.

Tree of Life: An Artistic Triumph

Tree of Life:  With images of ineffable beauty and scenes of hypnotic lyricism, no description can do this film justice. From the vastness of the creation of the cosmos to an impressionistic look one summer in the life of an American family, it is about nothing less than the very nature of our existence on earth. Life and death, pain and suffering, nature and grace, faith and despair are all themes director Terrence Malick touches on in his impressionistic and idiosyncratic way. That being said, many people will hate it, will be put off by its elliptical narrative and philosophical presentiments. That such a reclusive and, frankly, misanthropic individual as Malick-the-man was capable of making a movie so personally revealing and spiritually questing is truly astonishing. The greatest art triumphs over the artist's own doubts, weaknesses, and crippling demons. I fear it will be a long time before we see a movie with the scope and ambition of Tree of Life again.

The Best of the Rest:

A Better Life:  Another simple, universal story—about fathers and sons, love and sacrifice—that cuts right to the solar plexus and, one can only hope, enlarges our sense of humanity.

Albert Nobbs:  Glenn Close returns to a role she first portrayed on the stage as a young actress, bringing to it the full benefit of all the knowledge and craft she has achieved in the ensuing years. The story, of woman truly living in a man's world, had such a hold on her that she spent three decades trying to find funding to bring it to the screen. She even co-wrote the screenplay and some of the music in the film. There are so many moments of quiet beauty and scenes of near perfection in this movie, especially in her interactions with the stunningly good Janet McTeer and a very fine Mia Wasikowska.

The Artist:  As a huge fan of old movies I was beside myself with excitement at the news that someone had the audacity to make and release in 2011 a (nearly) silent black and white film. I must admit that I was a little underwhelmed when I finally saw The Artist, perhaps because my expectations had grown unreasonably high. But I am beyond thrilled that this movie was made, that it found a distributor that really backed it, and that so many people went to see it. It is a delightful lesson in how a film made out of  genuine love and respect for the art form can create an audience.

Beginners:  This funny, touching look at family dynamics and the possibilities for connection is every bit as good as the somewhat similarly themed The Descendants, but for some reason (probably the lack of a Clooney) didn't receive the attention or accolades of the latter. That much of the story is drawn from director Mike Mills' relationship with his own father makes the gift he gave to us all the more precious.

The Descendants:  Great performances from top to bottom and Alexander Payne's trademark mix of wit, heart, and sense of place (check out Sideways and Election if you haven't seen them) elevated what in other hands could have been a middle of the pack work to one of the year's most satisfying movies.

The Housemaid:  South Korean directors are creating some of the most intriguing and resplendent cinema today. Where Poetry is touching and beautifully restrained, The Housemaid is a colorful, stylized potboiler of  love, sex, and betrayal.

Hugo:  In 2011, 3D finally became more than just an excuse to juice-up popcorn movies and jack-up ticket prices. Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog's documentary on the ancient cave paintings of Chauvet, Wim Wenders' documentary Pina on the late German dance choreographer Pina Bausch, and Hugo finally demonstrated that this new technology could be used for high art. Like Herzog and Wenders, Martin Scorsese's goal with Hugo was to preserve something that might be lost to future generations, in his case the work of cinema pioneer George Meliès. While I'm still not completely sold on the necessity for 3D in every part in this movie, the scenes inside the clocks his child protagonist works on are like Escher drawings come to life. Art replicating art, replicating art, replicating art—not a bad mission to which all filmmakers should aspire.

Margin Call:  The pump was primed for Oliver Stone to deliver the ultimate commentary on today's economic crisis with Wall Street II last year but failed miserably. J.C. Chandor's Margin Call works as both a crackling thriller and a sociological study of how we got here.

Moneyball:  I'll admit I never thought this would work as a movie. Where's the story? Where's the dramatic arc? The movie went into turnaround several times, probably for this reason. Leave it to the brilliant screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, just as he did with The Social Network, with the assistance of Schindler's List scribe Steven Zaillian, to find the way to turn something so seemingly un-cinematic into one of the most entertaining movies of the year. Kudos to Brad Pitt, too, not just for his apt characterization of Billy Beane, but for shepherding the project through multiple directors, writing teams, and producing partners. I think the whole movie's a lie in a way—"moneyball" and the A's can't really compete against the big spending teams—and the movie is rife with other little lies and distortions along the way. But who cares. It's really about a man who sees the world in a different way than the prevailing wisdom and tries to make his mark on it. Who doesn't love a cockeyed optimist?

My Week with Marilyn:  The so-called memoir this movie is based on is probably a lie, too. But again, who cares. It's a nice set-up for a behind-the-scenes look at Marilyn Monroe that for once does not feel exploitative. More importantly it has interesting things to say about the dichotomy between acting and screen acting, between great craft and the metaphysical essence that defines a true movie star.

Shame: Exploring Sex Addiction

Pariah:  Director Dee Rees calls on her own coming-out experiences to depict a girl searching for both parental acceptance and her own identity in this assured first feature, with a beautiful debut by young actress Adepero Oduye.

Shame:  This movie seemed to press emotional buttons with a lot of viewers and critics for its joyless, un-erotic depiction of sex. It's about sexual addiction, people, about someone who's every waking minute is spent filling a long-since pleasant need. It's not meant to titillate. Many critics and viewers also seemed bothered that the backstory of its characters was not completely spelled out in neon letters. Everything we need to know about this damaged brother and sister, both needy but in polar opposite ways, is there on screen if you look and listen attentively. Steve McQueen's follow-up to his brilliant feature debut, Hunger, is beautifully composed and crafted, displaying his classically trained artist's eye. The last shot will keep you guessing and debating, as a good work of art should.

A Separation:  A Rashomon-like narrative is employed to tell a story of cultural and marital tensions in modern-day Iran. The appeal of this tale, however, could not be more universal. Impeccably acted, written, and directed.

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Ewan McGregor, Beginners

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

George Clooney, The Descendants

Eric Elmosino, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Brad Pitt, Tree of Life AND Moneyball

Charlize Theron in Young Adult: Hysterically Unsympathetic

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Sandrine Bonnaire, Queen to Play

Juliet Binoche, Certified Copy

Do-yeon Jeon, The Housemaid

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Weekend with Marilyn

Jeong-hie Yun, Poetry

Adepero Oduye, Pariah
Jessica Chastain, Tree of Life AND Take Shelter

Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Christoph Waltz Returns in Carnage

Best Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Kenneth Branagh, My Weekend with Marilyn

Jim Broadbent, The Iron Lady

Christoph Waltz, Carnage

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Patton Oswalt, Young Adult

Moritz Bleibtreu, Young Goethe in Love

Best Supporting Actress

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Yeo-jong Yun, The Housemaid

Carey Mulligan, Shame

Kathy Baker, Take Shelter

Best Ensemble Acting

The Descendants:  George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller, Nick Krause, Robert Forster, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard

The Housemaid:  Do-yeon Jeon, Yeo-jong Yun, Woo Seo, Ji-young Park, Jung-jae Lee

Margin Call:  Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Mary McDonnell

Ides of March: Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood

Moneyball: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, all the guys playing coaches and scouts

Sixty-Second Oscar (A small performance that left an indelible impression)

Robert Forster, The Descendants

Adrien Brody, Midnight in Paris

A Dangerous Method: Keira Knightly's Worst

Worst Performance

Keira Knightly, A Dangerous Method

Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar

Breakthrough Performer of the Year

Jessica Chastain

Stars on the Rise

Brit Marling, Another Earth

Adepero Oduye, Pariah

Hunter McCracken, Tree of Life

Best Director

Mike Mills, Beginners

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Sang-soo Im, The Housemaid

Steve James, The Interrupters

Chang-dong Lee, Poetry

Jeff Nichols, Take Shelter

Terrence Malick, Tree of Life

Lech Majewski's Gem: The Mill and the Cross

Special Award for Achievement in Direction

Joann Sfar, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Lech Majewski, The Mill and the Cross

Young Directors to Watch Out For

Xavier Dolan, Heartbeats

Dee Rees, Pariah

Worst Director

Clint Eastwood, J. Edgar

Best Original Screenplay

Beginners

Margin Call

Poetry

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

Moneyball

Best Cinematography

The Artist

The Housemaid

Take Shelter
Tree of Life

Best Art Direction

The Artist

Heartbeats

Hipsters

Hugo

Best Animated Movie

Chico & Rita

Todorovskiy's Exuberant Musical: Hipsters

Best Musical

Hipsters

Best Thriler

The Housemaid

Best Comedy

The Trip

Best Documentary

The Interrupters

Page One

Worst Movie

A Dangerous Method

J. Edgar

Unexpected Charmer

Queen to Play

Best Score

Cave of Forgotten Dream

Tree of Life

Best Scene

George Clooney seeks the counsel of an unlikely Nick Krause in The Descendants

The music lesson scene in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.

A half-dozen scenes in Albert Nobbs, most notably the two visits to Janet McTeer's home.

Just about any scene with Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons in Margin Call. If forced to choose just one, Kevin's Spacey speech to the traders.
Adepero Oduye's final poetry-reading scene in Pariah.

Best Movie Line

George Clooney, confronting Matthew Lillard, the man with whom he discovered his recently incapacitated wife had been having an affair with in The Descendants:

Clooney: "Were you ever inside my bedroom?"

Lillard: "Once."

Clooney: "You could have lied about that one."

Lillard: "OK, twice."

Elliott Gould in the deadly outbreak thriller, Contagion, referring to the scaremonger writings of blogger Jude Law:

      "Blogging is not writing. It's just gratification with punctuation."

Clooney: "You could have lied about that one."