Top 10 of 2012

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*Click on the ‘Lists & Logs’ tab to see lists from previous years.

This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2012 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

  1. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
  2. Blankets for Indians (Ken Jacobs)
  3. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
  4. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
  5. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
  6. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
  7. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
  8. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
  9. A Month in Thailand (Paul Negoescu)
  10. Tchoupitoulas (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross)

 

Polls Top 10 (My favourites of the titles that appear here; will only update this until I turn in my Skandie ballot at the end of January 2013)

  1. Holy Motors (2012, Leos Carax)
  2. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
  3. The Master (2012, Paul Thomas Anderson)
  4. Crazy Horse (2011, Frederick Wiseman)
  5. The Deep Blue Sea (2011, Terence Davies)
  6. Cosmopolis (2012, David Cronenberg)
  7. You Are Here (2010, Daniel Cockburn)
  8. Tchoupitoulas (2012, Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross)
  9. Elena (2011, Andrei Zvyagintsev)
  10. The Turin Horse (2011, Béla Tarr)

 

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2012 (only first-time viewings of films made before 2000 are eligible)

  1. Woman in the Dunes (1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
  2. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)
  3. Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971, Robert Bresson)
  4. Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)
  5. Stormy Waters [Remorques] (1941, Jean Grémillon)
  6. Our Hospitality (1923, John G. Blystone & Buster Keaton)
  7. Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
  8. The Last Picture Show (1971, Peter Bogdanovich)
  9. Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky)
  10. The Game (1997, David Fincher)

 

Other 2012 films I’ve seen

  • Viola (Matías Piñeiro) – 7.2
  • You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! (Alain Resnais) – 7.1
  • To the Wonder (Terrence Malick) – 7.0
  • The Imposter (Bart Layton) – 7.0
  • Amour (Michael Haneke) – 7.0
  • Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan) – 6.9
  • Drug War (Johnnie To) – 6.9
  • Somebody Up There Likes Me (Bob Byington) – 6.9
  • People’s Park (Libbie Dina Cohn & J.P. Sniadecki) – 6.8
  • Eat Sleep Die (Gabriela Pichler) – 6.8
  • Tower (Kazik Radwanski) – 6.8
  • Room 237 (Rodney Ascher) – 6.7
  • In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo) – 6.7
  • Sister (Ursula Meier) – 6.7
  • Holy Motors (Leos Carax) – 6.6
  • East Hastings Pharmacy (Antoine Bourges) – 6.6
  • It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt) – 6.6
  • The Great North Korean Picture Show (James Leong & Lynn Lee) – 6.6
  • A Hijacking (Tobias Lindholm) – 6.6
  • Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik) – 6.6
  • Tabu (Miguel Gomes) – 6.5
  • The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt) – 6.5
  • Blankets for Indians (Ken Jacobs) – 6.5
  • Sightseers (Ben Wheatley) – 6.5
  • Augustine (Alice Winocour) – 6.5
  • Looper (Rian Johnson) – 6.4
  • No (Pablo Larraín) – 6.4
  • Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho) – 6.4
  • Sleepless Night (Jang Kun-Jae) – 6.4
  • Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) – 6.4
  • Sun Don’t Shine (Amy Seimetz) – 6.4
  • Barbara (Christian Petzold) – 6.4
  • Life of Pi (Ang Lee) – 6.3
  • Bestiaire (Denis Côté) – 6.3
  • Only The Young (Elizabeth Mims & Jason Tippet) – 6.3
  • The Extravagant Shadows (David Gatten) – 6.3
  • Man at War (Jacek Bławut) – 6.3
  • Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland) – 6.3
  • How to Survive a Plague (David France) – 6.3
  • Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira) – 6.2
  • Vamps (Amy Heckerling) – 6.2
  • When Night Falls (Ying Liang) – 6.2
  • Tricked (Paul Verhoeven) – 6.1
  • The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra Da Mata) – 6.1
  • Atomic Age (Héléna Klotz) – 6.1
  • Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas) – 6.1
  • Greatest Hits (Nicolás Pereda) – 6.1
  • Fragments of Kubelka (Martina Kudlácek) – 6.1
  • The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield) – 6.1
  • First Cousin Once Removed (Alan Berliner) – 6.1
  • Keep the Lights On (Ira Sachs) – 6.1
  • The Angels’ Share (Ken Loach) – 6.1
  • The Comedy (Rick Alverson) – 6.0
  • Stemple Pass (James Benning) – 6.0
  • differently, Molussia (Nicolas Rey) – 6.0
  • the war (James Benning) – 6.0
  • Reality (Matteo Garrone) – 6.0
  • Aliyah (Elie Wajeman) – 6.0
  • Argo (Ben Affleck) – 6.0
  • 38 Witnesses (Lucas Belvaux) – 6.0
  • This is 40 (Judd Apatow) – 6.0
  • Paradise: Faith (Ulrich Seidl) – 6.0
  • Red Hook Summer (Spike Lee) – 5.9
  • It’s a Disaster (Todd Berger) – 5.9
  • The Dead Man and Being Happy (Javier Robollo) – 5.9
  • Skyfall (Sam Mendes) – 5.9
  • West of Memphis (Amy Berg) – 5.9
  • 21 Jump Street (Phil Lord & Chris Miller) – 5.9
  • Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon) – 5.8
  • The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg) – 5.8
  • Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (Lav Diaz) – 5.8
  • The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (Sophie Fiennes) – 5.8
  • Starlet (Sean Baker) – 5.8
  • Compliance (Craig Zobel) – 5.8
  • Passion (Brian De Palma) – 5.7
  • Leones (Jazmín López) – 5.7
  • Another Night on Earth (David Muñoz) – 5.7
  • Not Fade Away (David Chase) – 5.7
  • Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow) – 5.7
  • Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell) – 5.7
  • Jayne Mansfield’s Car (Billy Bob Thornton) – 5.7
  • Thursday till Sunday (Dominga Sotomayor Castillo) – 5.7
  • Everybody in Our Family (Radu Jude) – 5.7
  • Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley) – 5.7
  • Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl) – 5.6
  • The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, David McMahon & Sarah Burns) – 5.6
  • Camp 14: Total Control Zone (Marc Wiese) – 5.6
  • The Great Cinema Party (Raya Martin) – 5.6
  • Wanderlust (David Wain) – 5.6
  • United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard) – 5.6
  • 3 (Pablo Stoll Ward) – 5.6
  • The Sheik and I (Caveh Zahedi) – 5.5
  • Circle in the Sand (Michael Robinson) – 5.5
  • Just the Wind (Benedek Fliegauf) – 5.5
  • Fuck for Forest (Michał Marczak) – 5.5
  • Memories Look at Me (Song Fang) – 5.5
  • Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon) – 5.5
  • Caesar Must Die (Paolo & Vittorio Taviani) – 5.5
  • The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan) – 5.5
  • Detropia (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady) – 5.5
  • Soldier/Citizen (Silvina Landesman) – 5.5
  • Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz) – 5.4
  • Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Aleksei Fedorchenko) – 5.4
  • Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh) – 5.4
  • Dredd (Pete Travis) – 5.4
  • Flight of the Butterflies (Mike Slee) – 5.4
  • Student (Darezhan Omirbaev) – 5.4
  • Danube Hospital (Nikolaus Geyrhalter) – 5.4
  • Broken (Rufus Norris) – 5.4
  • Maintenance (Adele Horne) – 5.4
  • The Three Stooges (Peter & Bobby Farrelly) – 5.4
  • Gone Fishing (Carlos Sorin) – 5.4
  • I Declare War (Jason Lapeyre & Robert Wilson) – 5.3
  • Perret in France and Algeria (Heinz Emigholz) – 5.3
  • Centro Histórico (Aki Kaurismäki, Pedro Costa, Víctor Erice, & Manoel de Oliveira) – 5.3
  • Winter, Go Away! (Sofia Rodkevich, Anton Seregin, Madina Mustafina, Elena Khoreva, Anna Moiseenko, Dmitry Kubasov, Askold Kurov, Nadezhda Leonteva, Alexey Zhirayakov, & Denis Klebleev) – 5.3
  • Brave (Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman) – 5.3
  • Elena (Petra Costa) – 5.3
  • Fly with the Crane (Li Ruijun) – 5.3
  • A Liar’s Autobiography – The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman (Ben Timlett, Bill Jones, & Jeff Simpson) – 5.3
  • Mystery (Lou Ye) – 5.3
  • Museum Hours (Jem Cohen) – 5.2
  • The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh) – 5.2
  • Savages (Oliver Stone) – 5.2
  • Mud (Jeff Nichols) – 5.2
  • The Pirogue (Moussa Toure) – 5.1
  • Pursuit of Loneliness (Laurence Thrush) – 5.1
  • Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot) – 5.1
  • All That You Possess (Bernard Émond) – 5.1
  • Marina Ambramovic: The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers) – 5.1
  • Project X (Nima Nourizadeh) – 5.1
  • Jackie (Antoinette Beumer) – 5.1
  • Araf – Somewhere In Between (Yeşim Ustaoğlu) – 5.0
  • Low Tide (Roberto Minervini) – 5.0
  • Simon Killer (Antonio Campos) – 5.0
  • Anna Karenina (Joe Wright) – 5.0
  • Les Invisibles (Sébastien Lifshitz) – 5.0
  • Byzantium (Neil Jordan) – 5.0
  • The Last Station (Catalina Vergara & Cristian Soto) – 5.0
  • Final Cut – Ladies & Gentlemen (György Pálfi) – 5.0
  • The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, & Anonymous) – 5.0
  • Clip (Maja Miloš) – 5.0
  • The Iceman (Ariel Vromen) – 5.0
  • Ernest and Celestine (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, & Benjamin Renner) – 4.9
  • The We and the I (Michel Gondry) – 4.9
  • Blackbird (Jason Buxton) – 4.9
  • Journal de France (Claudine Nougaret & Raymond Depardon) – 4.9
  • Future My Love (Maja Borg) – 4.9
  • Miss Lovely (Ashim Ahluwalia) – 4.9
  • Blancanieves (Pablo Berger) – 4.9
  • Ginger and Rosa (Sally Potter) – 4.9
  • Jeff (Chris James Thompson) – 4.9
  • Marley (Kevin McDonald) – 4.9
  • Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson) – 4.8
  • Dormant Beauty (Marco Bellocchio) – 4.8
  • Camille Rewinds (Noémie Lvovsky) – 4.8
  • Lore (Cate Shortland) – 4.8
  • Once Upon a Time Was I, Verônica (Marcelo Gomes) – 4.8
  • Ship of Theseus (Anand Gandhi) – 4.8
  • Fill the Void (Rama Burshtein) – 4.8
  • Chronicle (Josh Trank) – 4.8
  • Shut Up and Play the Hits (Will Lovelace & Dylan Southern) – 4.8
  • Bullet to the Head (Walter Hill) – 4.7
  • Our Children (Joachim Lafosse) – 4.7
  • Confession of a Child of the Century (Sylvie Verheyde) – 4.7
  • Once Every Day (Richard Foreman) – 4.7
  • In the Fog (Sergei Loznitsa) – 4.7
  • White Epilepsy (Philippe Grandrieux) – 4.7
  • No, I am Not a Toad, I am a Turtle! (Elke Marhöfer) – 4.7
  • The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli) – 4.7
  • Nights with Theodore (Sébastien Betbeder) – 4.6
  • Age Is… (Stephen Dwoskin) – 4.6
  • Lincoln (Steven Spielberg) – 4.6
  • The Lebanese Rocket Society (Joana Hadji Thomas & Khalil Joreige) – 4.6
  • Three Worlds (Catherine Corsini) – 4.6
  • On the Road (Walter Salles) – 4.6
  • War Witch (Kim Nguyen) – 4.6
  • The Paperboy (Lee Daniels) – 4.5
  • Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas) – 4.5
  • Flight (Robert Zemeckis) – 4.5
  • Katy Perry: Part of Me (Dan Cutforth & Jane Lipsitz) – 4.5
  • The Company You Keep (Robert Redford) – 4.5
  • Blondie (Jesper Ganslandt) – 4.5
  • In the House (François Ozon) – 4.4
  • Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer & Lana & Andy Wachowski) – 4.4
  • 31st Haul (Denis Klebleev) – 4.4
  • Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard) – 4.4
  • La Sirga (William Vega) – 4.4
  • Motorway (Soi Cheang) – 4.3
  • Imagine (Andrzej Jakimowski) – 4.3
  • Aquí y allá (Antonio Méndez Esparza) – 4.3
  • Capital (Costa-Gavras) – 4.3
  • Lawless (John Hillcoat) – 4.3
  • Inori (Pedro González-Rubio) – 4.2
  • Beyond the Hill (Emin Alper) – 4.2
  • Promised Land (Gus Van Sant) – 4.2
  • The Secret Disco Revolution (Jamie Kastner) – 4.2
  • Children of Sarajevo (Aida Begic) – 4.1
  • Patience (After Sebald) (Grant Gee) – 4.1
  • Marvel’s The Avengers (Joss Whedon) – 4.1
  • Pieta (Ki-duk Kim) – 4.1
  • Three Sisters (Wang Bing) – 4.0
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky) – 4.0
  • Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (Laurent Cantet) – 4.0
  • The Cremator (Peng Tao) – 3.9
  • Pusher (Luis Prieto) – 3.9
  • Antiviral (Brandon Cronenberg) – 3.9
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin) – 3.8
  • Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman) – 3.7
  • The End of Time (Peter Mettler) – 3.6
  • Lines of Wellington (Valeria Sarmiento) – 3.6
  • Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim) – 3.6
  • Ethel (Rory Kennedy) – 3.5
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson) – 3.4
  • Wildness (Wu Tsang) – 3.4
  • Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell) – 3.4
  • Yellow (Nick Cassavetes) – 3.4
  • 7 Days in Havana (Benicio del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Gaspar Noé, Juan Carlos Tabio, & Laurent Cantet) – 3.4
  • After the Battle (Yousry Nasrallah) – 3.3
  • The Suicide Shop (Patrice Leconte) – 3.2
  • Dangerous Liaisons (Hur Jin-Ho) – 3.1
  • Bwakaw (Jun Robles Lana) – 3.0
  • An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Terence Nance) – 3.0
  • London – The Modern Babylon (Julien Temple) – 2.9
  • The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance) – 2.8
  • Nobody Walks (Ry Russo-Young) – 2.7
  • At Any Price (Ramin Bahrani) – 2.6
  • Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) – 2.6
  • L (Babis Makridis) – 2.5
  • Jump (Kieron J. Walsh) – 2.4
  • Kinshasa Kids (Marc-Henri Wajnberg) – 2.3
  • The Dream and the Silence (Jaime Rosales) – 2.3
  • The Taste of Money (Im Sang-soo) – 2.0
  • After Lucía (Michel Franco) – 1.7