2012 Top Ten List

  • Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
  • The Imposter (Bart Layton)
  • Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
  • First Cousin Once Removed (Alan Berliner)
  • Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Alexey Fedorchenko)
  • Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
  • Amour (Michael Haneke)
  • Eat Sleep Die (Gabriela Pichler)
  • You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (Alain Resnais)
  • Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)

    • Additional 2012 Films By Rating

  • Only the Young (Jason Tippet & Elizabeth Mims)
  • Hemel (Sacha Polak)
  • Drug War (Johnnie To)
  • Looper (Rian Johnson)
  • Pursuit of Loneliness (Laurence Thrush)
  • All the Light in the Sky (Joe Swanberg)
  • It's a Disaster (Todd Berger)
  • Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams)
  • It's Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt)
  • Jack & Diane (Bradley Rust Gray)
  • Argo (Ben Affleck)
  • Sister (Ursula Meier)
  • Seven Psychopaths (Martin McDonagh)
  • NO (Pablo Larraín)
  • Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
  • Ernest & Celestine (Benjamin Renner & Vincent Patar & Stéphane Aubier)
  • Reality (Matteo Garrone)
  • The Central Park Five (Ken Burns & David McMahon & Sarah Burns)
  • Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
  • Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
  • Brave (Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman)
  • Chasing Ice (Jeff Orlowski)
  • The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt)
  • A Month in Thailand (Paul Negoescu)
  • Dead Man's Burden (Jared Moshé)
  • Jayne Mansfield's Car (Billy Bob Thornton)
  • Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard)
  • Broken (Rufus Norris)
  • Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik)
  • Byzantium (Neil Jordan)
  • Skyfall (Sam Mendes)
  • Young & Wild (Marialy Rivas)
  • Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki)
  • Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (Ben Shapiro)
  • The Three Stooges (Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly)
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin)
  • Mud (Jeff Nichols)
  • The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
  • The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)
  • Lawless (John Hillcoat)
  • Bad 25 (Spike Lee)
  • Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
  • More Than Honey (Markus Imhoof)
  • Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
  • Black Rock (Katie Aselton)
  • To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)
  • Wanderlust (David Wain)
  • Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
  • Barbara (Christian Petzold)
  • Ted (Seth MacFarlane)
  • Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
  • Frankenweenie (Tim Burton)
  • Lockout (Stephen Saint Leger & James Mather)
  • Promised Land (Gus Van Sant)
  • Yossi (Eytan Fox)
  • Safe (Boaz Yakin)
  • Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)
  • Eddie (Boris Rodriguez)
  • The Angels' Share (Ken Loach)
  • Still Mine (Michael McGowan)
  • Bwakaw (Jun Robles Lana)
  • Camille Rewinds (Noémie Lvovsky)
  • Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow)
  • Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz)
  • 38 Witnesses (Lucas Belvaux)
  • Wadjda (Haifaa Al Mansour)
  • Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland)
  • Amity (no director credited) [Alejandro Adams]
  • A Band Called Death (Jeff Howlett & Mark Covino)
  • For Love's Sake (Takashi Miike)
  • The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance)
  • The Bay (Barry Levinson)
  • Would You Rather (David Guy Levy)
  • Nights With Theodore (Sébastien Betbeder)
  • Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
  • Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
  • Prometheus (Ridley Scott)
  • The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg)
  • Middle of Nowhere (Ava DuVernay)
  • Compliance (Craig Zobel)
  • The Motel Life (Alan Polsky & Gabriel Polsky)
  • Venus and Serena (Maiken Baird & Michelle Major)
  • Maladies (Carter)
  • Supporting Characters (Daniel Schechter)
  • How to Make Money Selling Drugs (Matthew Cooke)
  • In the House (François Ozon)
  • Sinister (Scott Derrickson)
  • Being Flynn (Paul Weitz)
  • Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan)
  • The Iceman (Ariel Vroman)
  • My Brother the Devil (Sally El Hosaini)
  • V/H/S ([various])
  • West of Memphis (Amy Berg)
  • Me and You (Bernardo Bertolucci)
  • Marvel's The Avengers (Joss Whedon)
  • The We and the I (Michel Gondry)
  • The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata)
  • On the Road (Walter Salles)
  • In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo)
  • Horses of God (Nabil Ayouch)
  • Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
  • Capital (Costa-Gavras)
  • Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
  • Dark Shadows (Tim Burton)
  • Great Expectations (Mike Newell)
  • Kinshasa Kids (Marc-Henri Wajnberg)
  • In the Fog (Sergei Loznitsa)
  • 56 Up (Michael Apted)
  • The Artist and the Model (Fernando Trueba)
  • Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot)
  • Best Man Down (Ted Koland)
  • Future Weather (Jenny Deller)
  • Pieta (Kim Ki Duk)
  • Thérèse (Claude Miller)
  • Enzo Avitabile Music Life (Jonathan Demme)
  • Keep the Lights On (Ira Sachs)
  • Flight (Robert Zemeckis)
  • A Fantastic Fear of Everything (Crispian Mills)
  • Post tenebras lux (Carlos Reygadas)
  • This Is 40 (Judd Apatow)
  • Paradise: Faith (Ulrich Seidl)
  • The Hunger Games (Gary Ross)
  • Lines of Wellington (Valeria Sarmiento)
  • Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh)
  • Red Hook Summer (Spike Lee)
  • Simon Killer (Antonio Campos)
  • The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
  • Bettie Page Reveals All (Mark Mori)
  • End of Watch (David Ayer)
  • Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl)
  • Viola (Matías Piñeiro)
  • The Wall (Julian Roman Pölsler)
  • Anna Karenina (Joe Wright)
  • Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
  • Marley (Kevin Macdonald)
  • 7 Days in Havana ([various])
  • Our Children (Joachim Lafosse)
  • Call Me Kuchu (Katherine Fairfax Wright & Malika Zouhali-Worrall)
  • Inch'Allah (Ana&imul;s Barbeau-Lavalette)
  • Caesar Must Die (Paolo & Vittorio Taviani)
  • Les Misérables (Tom Hooper)
  • Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
  • Ginger and Rosa (Sally Potter)
  • Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
  • The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie)
  • Cloud Atlas (Lana Wachowski & Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski)
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson)
  • Renoir (Gilles Bourdos)
  • Blondie (Jesper Ganslandt)
  • Aquí y allá (Antonio Méndez Esparza)
  • The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan)
  • Emperor (Peter Webber)
  • The Condemned (Roberto Busó García)
  • The Invisible War (Kirby Dick)
  • Not Fade Away (David Chase)
  • The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh)
  • Fill the Void (Rama Burshtein)
  • The Attack (Ziad Doueiri)
  • Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  • Le Chef (Daniel Cohen)
  • Dredd (Pete Travis)
  • The ABCs of Death (various)
  • The Amazing Spider-Man (Marc Webb)
  • The Taste of Money (Im Sangsoo)
  • Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
  • A Girl & a Gun (Cathryne Czubek)
  • Passion (Brian De Palma)
  • After the Battle (Yousry Nasrallah)
  • Girl Most Likely (Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini)
  • State 194 (Dan Setton)
  • Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell)
  • Twice Born (Sergio Castellitto)
  • For Ellen (So Yong Kim)
  • Penance (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
  • Everybody Has a Plan (Ana Piterbarg)
  • Memories Look at Me (Song Fang)
  • Gambit (Michael Hoffman)
  • Beyond Outrage (Takeshi Kitano)
  • Stand Up Guys (Fisher Stevens)
  • Everyday (Michael Winterbottom)
  • The Dead Man and Being Happy (Javier Rebollo)
  • Araf—Somewhere In Between (Yeşim Ustaoğlu)
  • Marfa Girl (Larry Clark)
  • The Patience Stone (Atiq Rahimi)
  • The Sapphires (Wayne Blair)
  • Stuck in Love. (Josh Boone)
  • Forgetting the Girl (Nate Taylor)
  • At Any Price (Ramin Bahrani)
  • Alex Cross (Rob Cohen)
  • Tomorrow You're Gone (David Jacobson)
  • Somebody Up There Likes Me (Bob Byington)
  • The Time Being (Nenad Cicin-Sain)
  • The Paperboy (Lee Daniels)
  • Off Label (Michael Palmieri & Donal Mosher)