Stuart Klawans | The Nation

Sam Mendez’s Skyfall, David O. Russell’s Silver Lining Playbook, Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, Katheryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.

Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s The Law in These Parts.

Among the standouts at this year’s NYFF are Christian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills and Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers.

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, a drifter meets a rude awakening.

David France’s How to Survive a Plague, Heidi Ewing and Rache Grady’s Detropia, Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage.

A massacre in Aurora and the cinema of social hallucination.

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus

Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator; Emad Brunat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras

Hirikazu Kore-eda’s I Wish, Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope, Shirley Clarke’s The Connection, Mia Hansen Love’s Goodbye First Love, Jennifer Baichwal’s Payback

Gary Ross's The Hunger Games, Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea.