The 10 Best Movies I Saw For The First Time In 2012

What's a movie blog without a year-end top 10 post? I didn't see most of the new movies that came out this year, but maybe what I did see will suggest something new for you to watch in the coming year. In order of their initial release.

Hobson's Choice (1954)—Directed by David Lean back when his films were still spritely, tightly-focused affairs, this Charles Laughton comedy about an alcoholic shopkeeper and the spinster daughter who does all the work is a sharp, witty look at the British class system. Co-stars the legendary John Mills as a dim-witted bootmaker and Brenda de Banzie as the daughter who can see past his outward limitations to the talent underneath.

Baby Doll (1956)—Tennessee Williams's Southern Gothic black comedy about a bankrupt businessman who has promised not to touch his young bride until her twentieth birthday, was easily the most controversial movie of 1956—or any other year ending in 6, I imagine. Time called it "[j]ust possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited" and Cardinal Spellman threatened any Catholic who saw it with excommunication. No wonder it was a hit! As Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun put it, Baby Doll is ... sexy in that perfectly unhealthy, steamy, creamy and twisted way—the only way that works." Amen.

Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)—Ninety minutes in the life of a flighty French singer who's waiting to hear test results from her doctor. Light as a souffle yet as serious as the death she's contemplating, this was one of the best films of one of the best years for films ever. By the award-winning director Agnès Varda, starring Corinne Marchand.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)—Luis Buñuel's black comedy about a group of aristocrats who attend a dinner party then for reasons straight out of the Twilight Zone find themselves unable to leave. Buñuel isn't just saying that civilization is a thin veneer easily cracked apart in stressful times, he's saying that civilization is an illusion we have faith in only because we're habituated to our own inhuman behavior. If you don't believe me, just read the day's headlines. Which day's? Any day's.

Chimes at Midnight (1965)—Orson Welles took Shakespeare's greatest comic sideman, Falstaff, and put him front and center where he belongs. The result was the most personal of Welles's films, a lacerating self-portrait of a man fully aware of the cost of his life of excess and wasted potential—but who's had a good time nevertheless. Despite technical limitations arising from Welles' lack of funding, Chimes at Midnight belongs on a list with Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil as the best work of the great director's career.

Love (Szerelem) (1971)—From Hungary. The wife of a political prisoner nurses her dying mother-in-law, comforting her with fantasies of his imaginary life as a successful American film director. Does the old woman believe her stories? The movie never tips its hand. A quiet, warm, gentle masterpiece.

Lone Star (1996)—The discovery of a body buried in the desert sets into motion a series of events that rips the lid off a Texas border town. Writer-director John Sayles's story is both a gripping murder mystery and a thoughtful study of the clash of cultures in an ever-evolving society. Great performances from Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson and Matthew McConaughey.

The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)—This adaptation of Mary Norton's novel The Borrowers is the tale of a family of tiny people who secretly live in the walls of a suburban house, "borrowing" from the human cohabitants what they need to survive. Based on a screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan's greatest director of animation, this is what animation ought to be and rarely is.

Midnight in Paris (2011)— Woody Allen's funniest movie since, well, ever—or at least since the 1970s. Owen Wilson plays a writer who longs so much for the good old days of 1920s Paris that he somehow winds up there and discovers nostalgia isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are any number of hilarious cameos from the Lost Generation, but Corey Stoll's grandiloquent take on windbag Ernest Hemingway is worth the price of admission all by itself. Funny, insightful, and for a Woody Allen movie, surprisingly warm.

Lincoln (2012)— Steven Spielberg's tale of Abraham Lincoln's efforts to shepherd the 13th Amendment (which finally and forever banned slavery in the United States) through a bitterly-divided Congress serves as a timely reminder that commitment, courage—and compromise—are all necessary ingredients to any truly great achievement. Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't just inhabit the title role, he redefines how I imagine we'll think of the Great Emancipator in the future. Another masterpiece from our generation's greatest motion picture storyteller.

Argo (2012)—Inspired by true events, Argo is a stylish thriller based on the real-life escape of six Americans from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-80. The film is so well done, Katie and I were prompted to track down the rest of Ben Affleck's directorial career. Add Gone Baby Gone and The Town to this list and, hey, you've got an even dozen!

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1999)

I had the advantage of living in England when The Sixth Sense came out. Katie-Bar-The-Door and I had never heard of it when we came back to the U.S. for a visit; all we knew was that it starred Bruce Willis and that Katie's mom had seen it—twice! That notion was so incongruous to us that we raced right out and saw it, too, with no idea of what it was about—no hype, no trailers, no spoilers, no nothing, not even a knowledge of what genre it fit into. We might have been the only two people in history who were throughly surprised by its twists and turns: we didn't even know that it had twists and turns.

We've since seen it a number of times. For us, anyway, it still holds up.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Sixth Sense (prod. Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Barry Mendel)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Three Kings (prod. Paul Junger Witt, Edward L. McDonnell and Charles Roven)
Must-See Comedy/Musical:

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) (prod. Agustín Almodóvar and Michel Ruben)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Kevin Spacey (American Beauty)
nominees:

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jim Carrey (Man on the Moon)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Reese Witherspoon (Election)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Pedro Almodóvar (Todo sobre mi madre a.k.a. All About My Mother)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: David O. Russell (Three Kings)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Tom Cruise (Magnolia)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1998)

Katie-Bar-The-Door and I saw The Big Lebowski in Paris during a freakishly unseasonable heat wave in 1998. Along with the Cinema Astro in Florence, Italy, any theater in Paris is the best venue for watching a movie anywhere in the world.

By the way, the French call all those ads and previews before the feature film starts the "séance"—a term Katie and I still use. They are (or at least were) also adverse to translating heavy-duty swearing into the French subtitles, preferring the all-purpose "merde," the explanation being that to see anything stronger in print on the screen would be too shocking for the audience. Which may or may not be true, but certainly it meant that the non-English speakers in the audience missed out on the rather delightful tapestry of profanity that made The Big Lebowski such a great film.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Saving Private Ryan (prod. Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Shakespeare in Love (prod. David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman)
Must-See Comedy/Musical:

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Central do Brasil (Central Station) (prod. Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Arthur Cohn, Robert Redford and Walter Salles)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jane Horrocks (Little Voice)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Bill Murray (Rushmore)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Kathy Bates (Primary Colors)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love)

We Wish You A Merry Christmas!

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1997)

L.A. Confidential—one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time. Happy holidays, monks and monkettes!

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: L.A. Confidential (prod. Curtis Hanson, Arnon Milchan and Michael G. Nathanson)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Boogie Nights (prod. Paul Thomas Anderson, Lloyd Levin, John Lyons and JoAnne Sellar)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke) (prod. Toshio Suzuki)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Russell Crowe (L.A. Confidential)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith (Men in Black)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Judi Dench (Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Pam Grier (Jackie Brown)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Curtis Hansen (L.A. Confidential)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Kevin Spacey (L.A. Confidential)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson, from the novel by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential)