The best films of 2012

Paul Thomas Anderson, USA

The sheer, radioactive strangeness of the film is what exerts the initial grip – then the outstanding performance of Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell. Perhaps it should have been called ‘The Disciple’.
—Peter Bradshaw

→ Read Nick Pinkerton’s review online
→ Read Graham Fuller’s analysis of the film and James Bell’s interview with Paul Thomas Anderson in our December 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Miguel Gomes, Portugal/Germany/France

In turning a melancholy drama about three lonely women in modern Lisbon into an African colonial idyll of adulterous love, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes pulled off the year’s greatest conjuring trick.
—Graham Fuller

→ Read Trevor Johnston’s review online
→ Read Mar Diestro-Dópido’s interview with Miguel Gomes in our September 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria

A devastating experience that joins Michael Haneke’s icy, immaculate style to an intrinsically emotional subject: what happens to a harmonious marriage when the wife suffers a series of debilitating strokes.
—Kenneth Turan

→ Read Catherine Wheatley’s review online
→ Read Geoff Andrew’s career interview with Michael Haneke in our November 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Leos Carax, France/Germany

Born from the womb of cinephilic history, raised into a many-headed beast, dangerous and passionate, it shows how cinema can recall its past and augur its future.
—Kong Rithdee

→ Read Ginette Vincendeau’s review online
→ Read David Thompson’s decoding of the film in our September 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Benh Zeitlin, USA

I’ll never forget Quvenzhané Wallis cookin’ up a storm with a blowtorch, or the miracles unfolding in the sweaty Cajun bayou. First features don’t get much better.
—Kate Muir

→ Read Isabel Stevens’ interview with Benh Zeitlin online
→ Read Nick Pinkerton’s review in our November 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Peter Strickland, UK/Germany

Sound is pivotal in Peter Strickland’s blackly comic, stylish and off-kilter riff on 1970s Italian horror, which thumbs its nose at English pastoral roots – with a very English irreverence.
—Carmen Gray

→ Read Sam Davies’ review online
→ Read Jason Wood’s interview with Peter Strickland and Geoffrey Macnab’s with Toby Jones in our September 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Wes Anderson, USA

Wes Anderson’s film struck a chord in its exuberant use of Benjamin Britten’s music, but I also loved it for its great humour and surprising (for this director) humanity.
—David Thompson

→ Read Nick Pinkerton’s interview with Wes Anderson in our June 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link] and Sam Davies’ review in our July 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Cristian Mungiu, Romania/France/Belgium

The brilliant final scene cemented my faith in Cristian Mungiu’s sensitive and searing realisation of this story – based on real events – of a disruptive intruder persecuted by a religious community.
—Nick James

→ Read Geoff Andrew’s festival blog post online

David Cronenberg, Canada/France/Portugal/Italy

David Cronenberg’s sleek adaptation of Don DeLillo’s urban road movie, as elegant, cool and rebarbative as the stretch limo Robert Pattinson’s antihero travels in.
—Philip French

→ Read Jonathan Romney’s interview with David Cronenberg and Nick James’s review in our July 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/Bosnia & Herzegovina

Like a nod to Yilmaz Güney’s 1982 classic Yol, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film takes on the multilayers of Turkish life in an epic road movie. Perfect cinema, for me.
—Suzy Gillett

→ Read Geoff Andrew’s interview with Nuri Bilge Ceylan on page 28 and Wally Hammond’s review on page 72 of our April 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]

Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmaseb, Iran

A sketch for an imagined film, an essay on both the nature of reality and the ever-expanding properties of lo-fi digital cinema, this is a funny and moving portrait of the artist as prisoner of conscience.
—Sophie Mayer

→ Read Amy Taubin’s festival report
→ Read Jonathan Romney’s review on page 78 of our April 2012 issue [Subscribers’ link]