The year in movies will be remembered as a year of apocalypse: the colliding planets of Melancholia, the gathering (and perhaps imaginary) storm of Take Shelter, the vicious rebellion of monkeys in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the peaceful reunion at the other side of the river in The Tree of Life, plus various other assorted explosions, battles, and whatever Michael Bay might have been up to. But the best films were movies about something more lighthearted. They were movies about the movies: the glory of silent films and the imagination of the earliest filmmakers. The world wasn't ending in 2012. It was just looking back.
1. The Artist: An enchanting and unusual film - a black-and-white silent movie - that will have you tap-dancing out of the theatre. French director Michel Hazanavicius borrows from several Hollywood legends and prototypes (including A Star Is Born, Singing in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard) for this ingenious fable about a silent star whose career fades with the advent of talkies and a young starlet who sees her celebrity explode at the same time. It's a tribute to artful silent cinema, but it's also a sweet love story that is wonderfully told in the faces (including that of a terrific Jack Russell terrier named Uggy) of its charming cast.
2. Hugo: Martin Scorsese redefines 3-D in this astonishing family film about a young orphan who lives in the clock tower of a Paris train station in 1930. There's a Dickensian drama in his life, but the movie's plot - all gears and gimcracks - is mostly in service of a tribute to the history of movies, especially the genius of French pioneer, Georges Melies. Scenes from some of Melies' 500 films pay loving and joyful homage to the magical early years of cinema.
3. The Descendants: Alexander Payne's masterful control of tone is what makes this comic tragedy surprising: We may know where the plot is heading, but moments of sudden grief and surreal humour alternately surprise us and provide constant delight. George Clooney, showing the cracks in his smooth surface, has never been as good as he is in this tale of a Hawaiian lawyer who learns that his comatose wife had been cheating on him.
4. The Tree of Life: Reclusive director Terrence Malick emerges from hiding with this magisterial epic about a childhood in Texas under the control of an angry and disappointed father (a fine performance by Brad Pitt), and also - steady now - the very foundations of the universe itself. The poetic, visual storytelling relies on small moments (billowing curtains, a sudden butterfly) to build a slow but moving masterwork.
5. Margin Call: An A-list cast - including Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons - anchor this smart examination of the American financial crisis. First-time filmmaker J.C. Chandor immerses us in a hermetic world of greed and amorality, as the first signs of economic collapse are detected at a New York investment bank and everyone must run for cover. The choice between coming clean or making one last killing is a darkly apt metaphor for predatory capitalism.
6. Bridesmaids: The funniest raunchy comedy of the year, with Kirsten Wiig as a perennial bridesmaid helping a friend organize her wedding. The film has its share of low laughs - the bridal-dress poop scene is a classic of its sort - but it's also infused with a sense of female intimacy. You learn a lot about the conventions of women's relationships (she who organizes the shower, rules the friendship), and also discover, if Hollywood is listening, that there's a gold mine of humour there.
7. Shame: Michael Fassbender gives perhaps the bravest performance of 2011 in this tragic, forbidding and graphically sexual tale of Brandon, a New York City businessman who is addicted to sex. British director Steve McQueen, who is also a visual artist, makes New York into a gleaming nocturnal prison for Brandon, whose illusive relationship with his sister (Carey Mulligan) adds to the sense of unease and sexual adventure.
8. Rango: A chameleon comes to a dying Western town (called Dirt), poses as a sheriff named Rango, and cleans up the bad guys - not to mention a scheme to steal water that wouldn't have been out of place in Chinatown - in this wonderful animated comedy. Johnny Depp shows great comic chops as the voice of Rango, and director Gore Verbinski fills the screen with offbeat jokes, delightfully oddball characters, and a pretty relevant moral, to boot.
9. Drive: A Hollywood staple, the car film, gets a European twist in this existential thriller about a mysterious stunt driver for the movies who doubles as a getaway man for criminal gangs. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn creates a mood of noble pessimism - another salute to the genre - and Ryan Gosling portrays the driver as a kind of anti-superhero. The result is the essence of cool.
10. Midnight in Paris: Woody Allen's time-travel love letter to a golden age in France is set at a time when tough-guy writers like Hemingway and creative madmen like Dali were at the creative centre of the world. It's a light concoction - the message is that the past is always bathed in nostalgic idealism - but it's hugely entertaining.
Honourable mentions (in alphabetical order): The Adventures of Tintin, Cafe de Flore, Contagion, Hanna, The Ides of March, Moneyball, The Mill & The Cross, Our Idiot Brother, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Take Shelter.
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