Favorite Movie (Period) - Sound of My Voice. I can't get this movie out of my head. Without a doubt, the most thought-provoking movie of 2012. Read my full review here.
Favorite Documentary - Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope. Yeah, I'm a geek, but this should be required viewing for everyone else. Read my full review here.
Favorite Movie Leftover from 2011 - The Tree of Life. When it was released, this was a very polarizing movie. I found myself in the small camp of those who loved it. If you don't worry about a narrative, the emotional experience is overpowering.
Favorite Movie Not from 2012 - The Loved Ones (2009). Very rarely does a horror movie come along that truly raises the bar. It's various components may not be entirely original, but they are masterfully combined by director Sean Byrne into a gory, scary classic.
Favorite Superhero Movies (Tie) - Chronicle and The Avengers. The Avengers is a no-brainer; nevertheless, you can read my full review here. Chronicle, though, was equally effective on a fraction of the budget. I particularly enjoyed how different sources of found footage were combined to seamlessly tell the story.
Favorite Animated Movie - Frankenweenie. Of the three animated "horror" movies released this fall, this one best fit my sensibilities. Read my full reviews of all of them here.
Favorite Discovered "Classic" - Twins of Evil (1971). I never expected to like this movie as much as I did. It offers perhaps my favorite performance by Peter Cushing. I wrote about in a feature about lesbian vampire movies based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla"; read here.
Honorable Mention - The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I didn't like this quite as much as any of the others, but it was darned close. A touching "growing up" story, it takes place just a couple years past the time I was a teenager, so I related, but didn't completely connect.
Favorite Horror Movie - The Woman in Black. 2012 may have been a better year for movies, but not necessarily horror movies. Therefore, this imperfect movie was still my favorite in the genre. Read my full review here.
Favorite Movie I Really Wanted to Hate - The Hunger Games. It reeked of Twilight, but was so much better. Unfamiliar with the series of teen fiction books, what appeared to be a tamed-down version of Battle Royale was instead a fairly dark and adult thriller.
Favorite Comedy - 21 Jump Street. Yeah, not a good year for comedies, but I surprisingly liked this one. Just good, silly fun that made me laugh consistently. For me, it also proved that Channing Tatum can be funny and I can actually like Jonah Hill.
Favorite Guilty Pleasure - Total Recall. I don't really remember why I liked this one so much, but I nevertheless include it on my list. I gave it an "8" when comparing it to the Schwarzeneggar original; read my full review here.
Movie I Absolutely Hated - This Means War. Chalk up another one to Reese Witherspoon. Not even the double-hunk-whammy of Tom Hardy and Chris Pine could save this excruciatingly awful movie.
Please keep in mind that I haven't seen everything that was technically released in 2012. Therefore, there's no mention of Zero Dark Thirty or Hyde Park on Hudson, for example. They may come up in future blogs about the Academy Awards, or even on next year's "Best Of" list as leftovers.
Overall, 2012 was a much better year for movies than 2011. And it got even better at the end of the year. Les Miserables came close to being my favorite movie; and, if there were enough musicals made to have a category, it would be the best. Also, Lincoln was not what I expected. Instead of a long, boring biopic, it was almost a thriller focusing on getting the Thirteenth Amendment passed before the end of the Civil War. If I were writing about my favorite performances of 2012, these two movies would appear due to Anne Hathaway and Daniel Day Lewis.
For 2013, it's going to be a tough act to follow...