Dear Readers,

What a year! I started out 2012 as a man who taught filmmaking, film history and film aesthetics, who therefore might be expected to watch slightly more films than the average person. But then, in July, I was asked to join the Midday with Dan Rodricks show on WYPR, 88.1FM, Baltimore’s NPR News Station, as a film critic, and since that time I have been watching at least twice as many films as I used to. What this means is that I have actually seen – for once – almost all of the movies that we can expect to see nominated for Oscars. Where I am weakest is in the documentary lineup, since I stupidly neglected to attend Silverdocs (a mistake I do not intend to replicate), and they get less theatrical distribution, generally, than even foreign films do.

So here are my lists. I have grouped them as follows:

• Best Films of the Year (a lucky 13)
• Worst Films of the Year (an unlucky 7)
• Most Under-Appreciated Films of the Year
• Most Over-Rated Films of the Year

There would be no point to a film list if it weren’t subjective, so if you have issues with my choices, so be it. Instead of hyper-linking to each film’s imdb page, this time I have linked to my initial review, if one exists. I was surprised to see that some films about which I held strong opinions did not have a review. Hmmmm . . . In any case, if the link takes you to imdb, you’ll know that no review exists. For some films, if I wish to remain in the local press-screening group, I must await those films’ Baltimore openings before I can post my thoughts. Within each list, I avoid rankings, but just put them in alphabetical order. Enjoy!

13 BEST FILMS OF 2012:

• Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman)
• Amazing Spider-Man, The (Marc Webb)
• Amour (Michael Haneke)
• Argo (Ben Affleck)
• Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin) – note – with time, my opinion of this film has been steadily rising
• Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
• Invisible War, The (Kirby Dick)
• Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
• Looper (Rian Johnson)
• Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh)
• Queen of Versailles, The (Lauren Greenfield)
• Sessions, The (Ben Lewin)
• Side by Side (Chris Kenneally)

7 WORST FILMS OF 2012:

• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Timur Bekmambetov)
• Alex Cross (Rob Cohen)
• Hunger Games, The (Gary Ross)
• Misérables, Les (Tom Hooper)
• Ted (Seth MacFarlane)
• Twilight Saga 5 – Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (Bill Condon)
• Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection (Tyler Perry)

4 MOST UNDER-APPRECIATED FILMS OF 2012:

• Dark Horse (Todd Solondz)
• Frankenweenie (Tim Burton)
• John Carter (Andrew Stanton)
• Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley)

7 MOST OVER-RATED FILMS OF 2012:

• Anna Karenina (Joe Wright)
• Flight (Robert Zemeckis)
• Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
• Master, The (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
• Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
• Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

Happy New Year, everyone!