items tagged with Life of Pi

Don’t tell anyone. But usually, when it comes to predicting the winners of the Academy Awards’ major races, it doesn’t take much to look like you know what you’re talking about.

It’s incomplete, with such 2012 releases as Zero Dark Thirty, Amour, Rust & Bone, Arbitrage, The Intouchables, Not Fade Away, and Here Comes the Boom (ha ha!) still requiring my viewing. And it’s certainly eclectic, as even I can’t fathom a double feature of titles number one and two below. But in an all-around outstanding year for movies, the following ranking of 10 selections – with a bonus inclusion – is, as of January 6, my list of the absolute best times I had as a film fanatic this past year.

LIFE OF PI

Some 45 minutes into director Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, there’s an image that’s so deeply resonant and beautiful and sad – one that’s presented with so little melodrama or fuss – that I immediately welled up and felt compelled to stifle a sob. I remember the image clearly because I rarely stopped feeling that way for almost the entire hour-and-a-half that followed.