The Best New Films (alphabetical):
Almayer’s Folly (Chantal Akerman)
Barbara (Christian Petzold)
A Century of Birthing (Lav Diaz)
Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
In Another Country (Hong Sang-Soo)
In the Family (Patrick Wang)
Life without Principle (Johnnie To)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
The Master (P.T. Anderson)
Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz)
A Simple Life (Ann Hui)
Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
Walker (Tsai Ming-Liang)
Runners-up: Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli), Bernie (Richard Linklater), The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard), Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg), Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman), Dark Horse (Todd Solondz), The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies), Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev), Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel), Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh), Unforgivable (André Téchiné), You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (Alain Resnais), Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
Repertory: The year was bookended by two essential retrospectives, Robert Bresson at Film Forum in January and Pier Paolo Pasolini at MoMA. While I had seen all of these directors’ feature films previously, I was grateful for the chance to see so many of them again in that dying medium of 35mm.
I discovered the films of Keisuke Kinoshita thanks to a series at the Walter Reade. I’ve seen about ten of them thus far and am continuing to work my way through his many films available on Hulu Plus. I would single out two, PHOENIX and WEDDING RING, for their sublime performances by Kinuyo Tanaka. (The latter also featured two scenes of Toshiro Mifune in a bathing suit that, as they say, are worth the price of admission.)
The other major auteur discovery this year was Pierre Etaix, especially for LE GRAND AMOUR, YO YO and the brilliant vampire episode in AS LONG AS YOU’RE HEALTHY. Long unavailable, his films have been digitally restored and are currently making the rounds. Etaix's use of camera placement and sound for comic effect are comparable in some ways to Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, but there is also an undercurrent of melancholy running through the best of his films which is enhanced by his acting persona.
Other top repertory films first seen in 2012:
The Satin Slipper (Manoel de Oliveira)
La chouette aveugle (Raul Ruiz)
The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Nagisa Oshima) (RIP Oshima-san)
Hotel du Nord (Marcel Carné)
Coeur Fidèle (Jean Epstein)
Pièges (Robert Siodmak)
Malina, Dress Rehearsal, Eika Katappa and Willow Springs (Werner Schroeter)
Feu Mathias Pascal and Le Bonheur (Marcel L’Herbier)
Max et les ferrailleurs (Claude Sautet)
Moana (Robert Flaherty)
The Walls of Sana’a and The Paper Flower Sequence (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
San Diego Surf (Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey)
Unfinished Business (Gregory LaCava)
The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch)
Lumière d’été and Le ciel est à vous (Jean Grémillon)
Chung Kuo China (Michelangelo Antonioni)
A Short Film About the Indio Nacional and Autohystoria (Raya Martin)
Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Pedro Costa)
Finally, THE PERFUMED NIGHTMARE (Kidlat Tahimik): I actually first saw this many years ago, but Tahimik’s one-of-a-kind performance piece/Q&A after the screening, in which he discussed his “indie-genius” filmmaking philosophy, qualifies as the directorial appearance of the year.
