You've Got To Accentuate The Positive: What's Good About The 2013 Oscar Nominations?

It's very easy to be cynical about the Oscars, especially since at their worst, they're little more than a smug, self-satisfied display of onanism practiced by people who already have too many reasons to feel pleased with themselves. This year's ceremony could potentially be even worse thanks to the presence of host Seth Macfarlane, a man who is the very embodiment of smug, self-satisfied onanism. At their best, though, the Academy Awards act as a celebration of the pageantry and magic of the movies, and even a disastrous slate of nominations can provide for plenty of discourse, and a car-crash of an awards ceremony promises to be great fodder for the rubberneckers of the world.

Ed's Top 20 Films of 2012

"Now, is my movie going to be Number One, or am I going to have to make use of this?"

As 2012 recedes into our collective rear view mirror, now seems like as good a time as any to look back on what has been in anticipation of what is still to come. 2012 was a pretty good year for cinema, all told. Whilst there weren't too many unequivocal masterpieces - and what there were seemed to all get shoved into the last three months - there was a solid roster of second-tier films that ensured that nary a week went by without something good coming out. To use a tortured, ill-informed sports metaphor, it was a year with few superstars, but a deep bench of good all-rounders.

As such, this was one of the easiest Year End lists I've ever had to draw up since my Top 5 was very clear in my mind, and there was no shortage of good films to fill out the remaining spaces. (I could have easily drawn up a list of 20 more films that didn't make the cut, but which probably deserved to.) It was a year that offered up a varied mixture of extravagant experiments, some of which were more successful (Cloud Atlas) than others (Prometheus, John Carter), as well as one which offered plenty of opportunity to see good stories told well. Even the summer had a better caliber of blockbusters than usual, which is admittedly a very heavily qualified statement, but one that speaks to the generally decent quality of 2012 as a whole. Even its worst films weren't as numerous as in past years. Here's hoping 2013 can clear that (relatively low) bar.

On that somewhat muted note, let's get down to brass tacks and discuss the 20 best films of 2012.

Film Review: The Master (2012)

The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature and his first in five years, is not about Scientology. This needs to be stated early, and indeed cannot be overstated, since the connection between the two has now become so strong that anyone expecting a scabrous disemboweling of that organisation, albeit through a fictional lens, will be left wanting. Though The Cause, the cult established around the teachings and writings of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is clearly inspired by the Church, and Dodd himself is modelled on L. Ron Hubbard, it is not the focus of the film. The Master is about Scientology in much the same way that Boogie Nights was about the life of John Holmes: both use real-life analogues to explore a specific era and milieu, as well as the themes that arise as a result.