The Best Films of 2012

Finally, here is my list of my favorite films of 2012. As always I have not seen every single movie, but I have done my best to see those that were most likely to end up on this list. Once again, it was quite a good year for film as an art form. Enjoy. 

12. The Kid With a Bike

The Dardenne brothers are two of the best and also most consistent filmmakers alive today. There's no better example of this fact that even one of their more minor efforts like this film still ends up as one of the best of the year. Once again they focus on a troubled young soul withering on the outside of society, looking for normalcy, attention, and love. Despite its acceptance of the brutal realities of the world, the film manages to be colorful and emotional all the same.

11. Beasts of the Southern Wild

At it's core, this magical, lyrical, and realist film is a coming-of-age story. But in this case, the person coming-of-age is a five-year-old girl who must come to terms with the fact the world is a brutal place in which everyone she knows will eventually let her down. It doesn't sound like a happy story, but somehow Benh Zeitlin and his actors manage to portray the brutal reality of the world in a joyous, imaginative, and even celebratory way.

10. Life of Pi

With visual grandeur and beautiful CGI-enhanced landscapes Ang Lee manages to adapt a book that should have been unfilmable. It tells the story of a boy who has all the reason in the world to let go of hope, but refuses to do so because he chooses to believe in beauty over despair. It is a film that has the philosophical depth of an art house film and a budget as large as the most recent Twilight movie, a rare combination that should be cherished.

9. Rust and Bone

After Marion Cotillard's character loses her legs in an accident, she meets a man who seems to give her a reason to take full advantage of life again. Or that's how it seems at first. Eventually it is not the person who lost her legs that needs guidance, it is the man who has trouble being an only father, financially and emotionally, that needs it. Jacques Audiard and his actors take what should be a sentimental and cliche plot and give it a sense of romantic naturalism to make the film genuinely moving and powerful.

8. The Deep Blue Sea

If it wasn't for another film higher up on this list, this would easily be the best film about love this year. It is a universal film about the tragedy of inevitable dissatisfaction that so many end up facing in their relationships. In this film Rachel Weisz's character faces the choice between a man she feels passionate about and a man who gives her life long-term stability. What provides the kick is Weisz's great performance as a woman who is completely self-aware that her romantic expectations will only lead her down a lonely road paved with discontent and unhappiness.

7. This is Not a Film

This is a film that only found its way to the western world after the USB drive containing the film was hidden inside a cake and smuggled out of Iran to the Cannes Film Festival. But that act of subversion is kid stuff compared to what this film actually represents. It's a deceptively simple film, but its deception is why it works. Jafar Panahi has been banned from making films in Iran, but here he has created the ultimate act of subversion. It's a statement on the failure of artistic censorship and a testament to the artists who will always find ways to outsmart the censors.

6. Lincoln

We actually don't get the long-awaited proud biopic of Abraham Lincoln with this film, instead Steven Spielberg surprises us by giving us a procedural film that focuses mainly on the passage of the 13th Amendment in the House of Representatives. But this film is better than any biopic would be, and better shows the political genius of Lincoln and the compromising nature of politics. The greatest accomplishment of this film is how it shows that a man known as Honest Abe accomplished his goals in the world of politics, a world that is anything but honest.

5. Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson's films have always been about childhood, most of the time though that sense of childhood is portrayed through adult characters yearning for it, but here our main characters are children. With his usual joyous, idiosyncratic  and beautiful craftsmanship, Anderson shows us the dichotomy between children who yearn to be adults and adults who yearn to be children. It's a film about the hope and idealism that exists in the young, and the melancholy and nostalgia that overcomes us when we grow.

4. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

A slow, methodical, procedural film about police work if there ever was one. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's newest is a film about the regularity of brutality in our world and the repercussions it has on the most innocent in our world, like our children. With some absolutely extraordinary and patient cinematography, the film is dedicated throughout to the idea that darkness has overcome our world and innocence is fading. It's a film that that doesn't just give off a theme, but it gives us a full-fledged world view.

3. Holy Motors

There are an endless amount of adjectives that could be used to describe this film, from enthralling to somber to smart. Leos Carax transcends genres and creates something altogether new and refreshing that is specifically relevant to our time. Interpretations can vary on the nine different "movies" in the movie, but it is ultimately a film about the slipperiness of our identity in an increasingly digitalized world. Carax captures the seemingly inevitable reality that everything will be seen by everyone, and our lives will become just one big performance. It is a forward-thinking idea in a film that is structured in a forward-thinking way.

2. Amour

As the title of the movie suggests, this is a film about love. But in true Michael Haneke fashion, this isn't The Notebook, this is an unflinching, morbid, and devastating film about a man who must be there for his wife while she very slowly dies. Only Haneke would make a film about love through the prism of death, but it works brilliantly. It is the horror and despair of the couple that makes their undying love so touching. It's a film that reveals that the true test of love is how a couple reacts when death shows its face.

1. The Master

There are films that satisfy in the moment, and then there are films that slowly open up to you. This film is the latter. It is a film that is about cults, masculinity in post-war America, but most of all the complicated follower-leader relationship. It is about the superiority complex of those who try to lead those who they see as savage and untamable. Paul Thomas Anderson films the central relationship in the film with such detail, complexity, ambiguity, and sometimes even grandeur. It is a film that takes a small focus and broadens it and opens your mind in the process.