• 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).

123. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

Hoodlums (and friends) vs. alien gorilla wolf motherfuckers

I LOVE this movie. A very fun action movie that cleverly subverts the genre. If I hadn’t been watching on an airplane, I would have cheered the heroes out loud.

122. The Artist (Michel Hazanivicius, 2011)

It’s very cool that a movie made in 2011 that is black-and-white and mostly silent is getting so much positive press, but this mostly left me cold. I wish it had given me more insights into the nature of silent cinema and the difference between today’s movies and movies of old. Or, if wanted to be nothing more than a nostalgia exercise, I wish it had been more joyful, focusing more on a celebration of old movies than on the pain of technological transition. If I want to watch a movie about the transition to sound cinema, I would rather just watch Singin’ In The Rain  for the hundredth time (spoiler: I think it’s interesting that musicals are the solution to the woes of the transition in both movies).

Side-note: It was interesting to watch this right after Certified Copy, since one of the major concerns of that movie is the authenticity of copies and The Artist is a fairly straight copy of old movie styles.

Despite my disappointment, here are the things in The Artist I loved:

• The dog (I don’t even like dogs, but he was great)
• The hats
• Tap dancing. More movies (all movies?) should contain tap dancing.
• The dream sequence when the silent world gains sound

121. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2011)

This reminded me of Before Sunrise - the bulk of the movie is two people walking around and talking. It’s engaging, both intellectually and emotionally, and beautifully shot (I’m a sucker for long takes).

120. Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994)

I want Hugh Grant’s friends and all the amazing English wedding hats. It’s enough to make up for the fact that Andie McDowell is such a drip in this.

119. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)

118. Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011)

I went into this expecting to be disappointed, but the film won me over in the very first shot. It’s far from perfect (the story is scattered and sometimes the film cares more about gears and old movies than human emotion) and yet that doesn’t stop it from being utterly magical. The world it creates is stunning - I half-wanted to be an orphan having adventures in a train station filled with clocks in 1930’s Paris. It was an enjoyable movie experience and I imagine I will revisit it in the future.

Other notes:

• I’m not a big fan of 3D, but it was well-used here
• It’s nice that this has the possibility to introduce new viewers to the early days of cinema
• Chloe Moretz’s character reminds me of the ones I used to love when I was a child getting lost in books and imagining adventures of my own

117. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)

I wish I had seen this on a big screen. Beautiful and sad.

116. This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)

115. Ten Inch Hero (David Mackay, 2007)

Ten Inch Hero was very amateurish, but that made it kind of charming.

114. Shall We Dance? (Masayuki Suo, 1996)

Lovely.

113. Crazy Stupid Love (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2011)

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling make one hell of a sexy couple. If only the movie had been all about them.

112. Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003)

I had never seen Love Actually before (shocking, I know), so my boyfriend and I watched it for our 1-year anniversary. It’s charming and an excellent anniversary movie - I can see why people like it so much. Bonus points for containing two of my secret celebrity spouses (Colin Firth and Emma Thompson).

111. Caramel (Nadine Labaki, 2007)

A lovely movie about the women of a Beirut beauty salon. It’s not exactly groundbreaking cinema, but there was still something very refreshing about it. Hooray for movies about Lebanese ladies!

110. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011)

Fantastic, creepy movie about cults and identity break-up. I didn’t like it quite as much as I wanted to (the plot felt a little too static?), but it was still an excellent film that would have been worth seeing for Elisabeth Olsen’s performance alone. John Hawkes as a cult leader was brilliant casting as well.