The Best Films of 2012: #6

I'm always excited to see Richard Linklater's name attached to a new film. I know I'll never see the same thing twice from this protean director, who's had his share of dogs (such as the experimental film adaptation of the play "Tape") but has also made my top-ten list three times: with 2001's "Waking Life," 2004's "Before Sunset," and this year's "Bernie," the true-life story of Bernie Tiede, a beloved assistant funeral director in Carthage, Texas.

The Best Films of 2012: #7

"A Prophet" director Jacques Audiard returns to my top ten with his new film "Rust and Bone," a major achievement featuring four or five of the most powerful scenes of the movie year. Marion Cotillard, in her strongest and most feeling performance since "La Vie en Rose," plays the tough and scrappy Stephanie, an orca trainer at a French Marineland, who loses both her legs in an accident during a routine set to Katy Perry's incongruously upbeat "Firework." I will never forget the scene in which Stephanie awakens from her long sleep, alone in a hospital bed very late at night, and discovers for the first time that she has no legs. The scene is a living nightmare, pierced only by Stephanie's otherworldly wail.

The Best Films of 2012: #8

"Maria Full of Grace" director Joshua Marston returned with another potent, immersive look at a world culture, the fascinating "The Forgiveness of Blood," about the Albanian tradition of blood feuds, an extralegal form of homegrown justice in which the family of a murdered man has the right to avenge his honor by killing the murderer or another man in his family. Because the family home is considered sacrosanct, however, hundreds of Albanian families live in virtual house arrest, the sins of the fathers visited mercilessly on the sons, their lives on indefinite hold until, years later if ever, the feuds are resolved through a ritualized process of mediation.

The Best Films of 2012: #9

Director Christian Petzold's quiet, astutely observed drama "Barbara" is set in the Stasi-controlled East Germany of 1980. As the film begins, Berlin-educated Dr. Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss) arrives at her new post, a hospital in the provinces, where she's been reassigned after serving a prison term for having applied for an exit visa. Barbara is as collegial as she has to be, not a bit more. The presiding physician, Andre (appealing Ronald Zehrfeld), takes a liking to her and attempts to engage her professionally and loosen her guard, but she knows he's been groomed by Jörg, the Stasi agent (Mark Waschke) assigned to keep tabs on her.

The Best Films of 2012: #10

Rachel Weisz delivered her most feeling performance to date in Terence Davies' "The Deep Blue Sea," an exceedingly simple yet powerfully poignant postwar story of romantic love so intense and obsessive it becomes the undoing of an intelligent and well-provided-for woman. Weisz’s Hester Collyer is the wife of a respected judge (Simon Russell Beale), but passion has escaped the marriage. He’s sober and undemonstrative; she’s headstrong and ahead of her time, and in need of an outlet for her pent-up sexuality. When that outlet arrives in the form of Freddie, a handsome young RAF pilot, and their affair is inevitably discovered, Hester leaves her uncomprehending husband, explaining without any cruelty that her love for this new man encompasses nothing less than the whole of her. As her world narrows down to him, though, Freddie begins to suffocate, turning to drink and nights out with friends to escape.

The Best Films of 2012: Honorable Mentions

Before we get to my top ten, here (listed in alphabetical order) are eight honorable mentions.

The Worst Films of 2012

Before we get to the very worst film of 2012, here (listed in alphabetical order) are seventeen dishonorable mentions, a cinematic Hall of Shame: