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."