I'm not going into a long-winded explanation of "value" and "worth", or even of "eligibility"; simply, these are the films that made 2012 a very good movie year. I know that I've missed a few must-see's - I still cannot bring myself to rent The Artist - and I haven't gotten to some of the currently showing critics' darlings like Silver Linings Playbook. All lists exist as versions of themselves and I may well revisit this list down the line.
Honorable mention goes to The Grey's existential adventure; The Raid's superlative action; Kill List's last 30 minutes; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Salander; and Lena Dunham's mumblecore family drama Tiny Furniture.
Now for the top ten.
10. Wuthering Heights
Andrea Arnold's bold, animalistic retelling of the famous story of doomed love is unsettling and poetic, if not a perfect fit for adaptation purists.
9. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
This is a police procedural by way of detailed character study. In Nuri Bilge Ceylan's glacially paced (in a good way) drama, the frustrating search for a buried corpse over the course of a day brings masculinity and authority into sharp focus.
8. Cloud Atlas
This film appears on as many "Worst of 2012" lists as Top Tens. I found this Wachowski-Tykwer collaboration to be an emotionally engaging, visually breathtaking secular fantasy about human kindness. Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent are standouts in this time-traversing epic.
7. War Horse
I know, I know: Spielberg is an unrepentant sentimalist who never saw a saccharine close-up he didn't like. And yet, what his critics forget is that Spielberg is also an informed lover of cinema, and War Horse is as much an ode to American film as it is an engrossing ensemble drama set against against the backdrop of WWI.
6. Shame
Michael Fassbender stars as an alienated corporate male in Steve McQueen's intense character study. Driven by sexual imagery devoid of any erotic dimension, McQueen shows a man at the brink of implosion when his sister unexpectedly shows up at his apartment. Fassbender is mesmerising.
5. A Separation
Asghar Farhadi delivers one of the most suspenseful films of the year in this story of truth and accountability. The film weaves perceptions of a central event until it becomes a tapestry of memory - and when is memory truth?
4. Melancholia
Danish provocateur Lars von Trier follows the apocalyptic Anti-christ with another apocalyptic drama in this tale of two sisters facing nothing less than the end of the world while at a country lodge. Kirsten Dunst is superb as the younger sister struggling with depression.
3. The Skin I Live In
Pedro Almadovar's mad scientist thriller blew me away the first time I saw it and I haven't been able to shake it from my mind. Featuring Elena Anaya as the object of Antonio Banderas's obession, it's one of the Spanish auteur's best.
2. The Turin Horse
A hansom cab driver and his daughter try to make sense of increasingly strange events on their farm in Italy, 1889. Filmed in crisp black and white, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr's hypnotic final film (or so he claims) is a deeply haunting apocalyptic vision of the world as place of habitual suffering. Like Werner Herzog, Tarr remains one of the most fascinating figures of world cinema.
1. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
This British anti-Bond spy drama is the epitome of meticulous filmmaking. Director Thomas Alfredsson assembles a great cast headed by Gary Oldman as aging British intelligence worker George Smiley who is tasked with finding a mole in the agency. TTSS is more than just a genre film; it's a measured character study with beautifully underplayed moments of betrayal and revelation. Watching the film, it felt like I was unable to breathe for two hours.
