• The opening half of The Tree of Life
• Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling’s seduction sequence in Crazy Stupid Love
• Hugo’s magical train station
• Juliette Binoche’s face in Certified Copy (her mouth was so expressive)
• Stealing from a moving train in Fast Five
• The sex scenes in The Housemaid that somehow manage to be ridiculous and funny and sexy all at once
• The dog in The Artist
• The way the supernatural and the everyday intertwine so seamlessly in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
• The parts of Beginners  about Christopher Plummer and Ewan MacGregor (as opposed to the overly twee parts about Melanie Laurent and Ewan MacGregor)
• The “hell yeah!” moments for all the characters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• Midnight in Paris’s  line: “I just had a minor epiphany” (it’s nice when a movie is so honest about its scope)
• The music in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, especially the final trumpet solo
• The super sexy pairing of Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits
• From Moneyball: Brad Pitt’s eyes, Chris Pratt in a baseball uniform, and Jonah Hill’s newfound non-obnoxiousness
• Elisabeth Olsen as Martha Marcy May Marlene
• The massive final battle in 13 Assassins
• The first 15 minutes of We Need to Talk About Kevin – a fever dream of guilt and memory
• Viggo Mortenson’ Freud
• The scientist parts of Contagion     
• The bright costumes of The Help (and Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain, and Octavia Spencer)
• The fact that the main relationship in Morning Glory is between a woman and her co-worker, not a woman and her love interest
• Attack the Block’s unlikely alliance of alien-fighters

My favorite movies of the year were The Tree of Life, Attack the Block, and Hugo (and half of Beginners).