The Atlantic's film critic picks the year's 10 best titles—and doles out some less-conventional awards.
A few boilerplate caveats: I saw a great many films this year, but by no means all of them.
See the best films of 2012 >
In particular, I missed a few documentaries that might well have made their way onto this list. It was also a very good year for film—the best, perhaps, since 2007—so a number of movies that could have made the list in weaker years ("Argo," "The Dark Knight Rises," "Life of Pi," "Les Miserables," "Skyfall," etc.) have instead been consigned to honorary mentions.
Finally, lists such as this one are inevitably silly, idiosyncratic things, and mine is no exception. So have at it. And after (or before!) you've gone through the slideshow of the best (ranked from one to 10), don't neglect the still-more-idiosyncratic-categories that follow.
10. 'Frankenweenie'
Not quite a kid's movie and not quite a grown-up one, Tim Burton's animated tale of a boy and his (reanimated) dog went largely unseen. Which is a shame, because it's his best film in nearly 20 years.
9. 'Amour'
In the past, I've taken strong exception to director Michael Haneke's cinema of extremity. But here he proceeds not from a horror-movie premise but from an all-too-common facet of modern senescence and mortality.
Be forewarned: You're unlikely to watch a more heartrending film this year, or any other.
8. 'The Cabin in the Woods'/'Seven Psychopaths'
I couldn’t quite bring myself to put either of these devilishly inventivegenre demolitions—by Drew Goddard and Martin McDonagh, respectively—on the list by itself. Together, though, I couldn’t bring myself not to.
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