Here are my picks for the top 10 movies of 2012:
1. “This Is 40” — Writer-director Judd Apatow’s first great film in five years, rather than being one long joke about getting older, instead chronicles a point in life that many people can relate to, as Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) deal with a bad economy even as they raise kids. I recently re-watched my No. 1 movie of 2007, “Knocked Up,” which introduced these characters, and “This Is 40” is better, with well-developed new characters and a few familiar faces. (Full review.)
2. “Won’t Back Down” — What could’ve been a slog of an “issue” movie is propped up greatly by the irresistibly sunny performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal as an inner-city mom desperate to get her daughter out of a failing school and into a decent one — even if it means starting her own. The film takes us on a step-by-step journey of the incredibly frustrating uphill battle against the teachers’ unions, bureaucracy and community laziness to get a good school up and running. (Full review.)
3. “21 Jump Street” — The real-world friendship between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as two police officers assigned to infiltrate a high school drug ring makes this re-invention of the 1980s TV show a blast. The jokes land consistently, whether the script is observing how high school has changed in a decade (kids don’t seem quite as mean) or whether it’s giving us a ridiculous car chase in a driver’s ed car where both Hill and Tatum can control the brakes. (Full review.)
4. “Prometheus” — The richest science fiction film of the year takes us back (or ahead, as it were) to the time of “Alien” as it explores the origins of human life through scientists, a robot and the Engineers who created the xenomorphs from Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic. Directed by Scott and co-written by “Lost’s” Damon Lindelof, “Prometheus” isn’t perfect, but I gotta say that just adds to the fun of geeking out on its intricacies and perceived flaws. (Full review.)
5. “Sinister” — In what was generally a down year for horror movies, “Sinister” confidently delivers good meat-and-potatoes scares as it chronicles a true-crime author (Ethan Hawke) who moves his family into a house to study up on a murder that happened in that very house. (Full review.)
6. “The Dictator” — Sacha Baron Cohen is too well-known now to surprise people for the sake of awkward footage for “Borat”-style movies. However, he’s still funny in the traditional comedy format; here, he plays a Middle Eastern dictator who is a fish out of water in New York City. A grand-finale highlight is his speech about the virtues of a dictatorship, where every trait on his list could just as easily describe the present-day United States. (Full review.)
7. “The Campaign” — This lighter but still prescient comedy touches on the absurdities of the election process without getting partisan. Will Ferrell is in fine form as the slick incumbent who preaches “America, Jesus, Freedom,” but when he clumsily gets caught up in a scandal, challenger Zach Galifianakis pounces. And the mud-slinging hilariously ensues. (Full review.)
8. “Ted” — This story of a man (Mark Wahlberg) and his best friend (his childhood teddy bear) at first seems absurd. But by movie’s end you’ll be thinking of Ted (voiced by writer Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” fame, in his film debut) as being as real as Wahlberg or girlfriend Mila Kunis. (Full review.)
9. “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” — Following in the footsteps of 2008’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the sequel establishes the “Journey” films as a family-friendly fare for silly-but-fun 3D thrills with just enough of a literary backbone (Jules Verne’s works are the inspiration) that you don’t have to feel too guilty. (Full review.)
10. “Cabin in the Woods” — Penned by Joss Whedon, “Cabin” subverts the horror genre from the very first scene, setting up a crazy ride where you don’t know exactly where it’s going even as it delivers the requisite scares and over-the-top gore. (Full review.)
As always, I have to add the caveat that this list is still in flux. Some films that have a strong shot at making my top 10 didn’t screen locally. Foremost among these are “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “On the Road.” I’ll have reviews of these films when they hit video.