Kim Wayans and Adepero Oduye in Pariah

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That Focus Features, the distribution company that puts out such highbrow star-vehicles like Brokeback Mountain and Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, would get behind a gritty first feature with virtually unknown actors and a lengthy scene about a strap-on dildo is testament to how affecting Pariah is. Alike (Adepero Oduye), the teenage lesbian hero, has the self-possession of the smartest and coolest girl in school. She is nervous about finding a girlfriend and playing into the butch-femme role-playing that seems to govern the lesbian culture she and her best friend hang out in. But her bravery, not only in her poetry but in her willingness to give up her family and her world for freedom, is inspiring. Wonderfully acted and brilliantly written and directed by Dee Rees, it is among the best lesbian movies ever made.

Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady

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Meryl Streep finally won her third Oscar for her brilliant portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Some people thought she was great and the movie wasn’t, but I loved the whole thing. Told in flashbacks from the perspective of an elderly Thatcher heading into the dementia from which the real Thatcher now suffers, the film is in some ways a typical biopic; we see her go from an eager and brilliant daughter of a grocer to a prickly and ambitious member of parliament to become, finally, the longest-serving prime minister of Great Britain in the 20th century – the century’s most powerful woman. Director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan do what Clint Eastwood failed to do in J. Edgar. They didn’t make a dull history lesson; they created something artful, inventive, intriguing, wry and entertaining. Much – but not all – of this is because Streep gives a performance as towering as any in her career.

George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Nick Krause and Amara Miller in The Descendants

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Alexander Payne won another Oscar for his screenplay to this low-key dramedy about a man dealing with finding out that his comatose wife cheated on him, their problematic children, and a large family squabble about what to do with a huge track of Hawaiian land they inherited. George Clooney is more sensitive, subtle, funny and sympathetic than he has ever been, and as his daughter, Shailene Woodley is wise and prickly and, out of nowhere, a star. By no means Payne’s best movie – that would be Sideways – it is still a moving, affecting little movie about the meaning and power of family.

The Adventures of Tintin

One the most underrated and underwatched movies of 2012, Tintin probably suffered from fear of the “uncanny valley,” the creepy name for the creepy feeling we get when CGI humans look too real. It initially unnerved me, too, but my love for Hergé’s original comic books about a young investigative journalist, his terrier Snowy, and a drunk ship’s captain named Haddock forced me to see what Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson would do with the iconic characters. And, wow, what they did. Stunning visuals, rollicking action, boisterous humor and a classic adventure story all reminded me of the Indiana Jones movies. Luckily, while Americans didn’t embrace the film, the rest of the world made it a massive hit, and a sequel is certainly to follow. Added bonus: Wondering if there’s a homoerotic subtext to Tintin and Captain Haddock’s friendship.

Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin in Like Crazy

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Like Crazy is a naturalistic romance about two young people in love who behave like young people in love. There’s nothing crazy about them or the movie. That it’s still so successful, so entertaining and moving, despite being so honest and realistic, is a testament to the skills of director Drake Doremus, his co-writer Ben York Jones and the two little-known stars of the film, Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones. The movie is sort of like Weekend for the straight people. I adored it.

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill in Moneyball

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On my favorite movies list of 2011, Moneyball manages to make baseball statistics dramatic and funny. Bennett Miller’s crafty use of slow motion, muted colors and slyly gorgeous cinematography creates an epic grandeur for what is really a story of office politics. He and the screenwriters use American audiences’ sentimentality about baseball to wonderful effect; Brad Pitt, as Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane, even comments on it when he asks, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” Even Jonah Hill’s nerdy Peter, whose analytical geekiness is what drives much of the plot (and much of the humor), cannot help but get emotional about the game. Billy’s conflicting emotions – between love of baseball, righteous anger at how the business is run, anxiety about whether his decisions are right, frustration with his team – make this Brad Pitt’s greatest role.

Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy in Warrior

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One of the great surprises of last summer, the mixed martial arts drama Warrior has a somewhat hard-to-believe plot, but that is subsumed by the intensity and authenticity of the performances and the scenes in the cage. Inception’s Tom Hardy seems to be channeling some cross between Rocky-era Sylvester Stallone and On the Waterfront-era Marlon Brando; he is the size of a gorilla and as angry as a rabid one. It would be perhaps too simple if not for a scene with a cowed Nick Nolte toward the end that flips our opinion of Tommy completely – he is more than a furious brute. But Joel Edgerton, in the Aussie’s first major role in an American film, is the biggest surprise here. As the sensitive, guilt-ridden family man and the smarter, rather than the bigger, fighter, he learns more of love and support than the damaged, unnerving Hardy. This is an excellent family drama masquerading as, and slightly hampered by being, a sports film. The final scene, as powerful and gut-wrenching as anything I’ve seen this year, merges the two genres brilliantly. I surprised myself and cried.

Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams in Midnight in Paris

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Woody Allen has been hit or miss over the last decade or so, but his latest film, Midnight in Paris, is one of the good ones; a delightful, fantastical comedy about what happens when one of your greatest dreams comes true. As in most of Allen’s comedies, if Allen isn’t the star, the lead actor is usually a stand-in for Allen. This time that stand-in is Gil, played to wide-eyed, neurotic, self-flagellating perfection by Owen Wilson. Wilson is wonderful, but the star of the film is Allen’s witty and wacky fabulist script.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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If your jaw dropped at how realistic, how life-like and creepy Gollum was when you first saw him in The Fellowship of the Ring ten years ago, it will fall open again and your mouth will dry out when you see Caesar, the super smart chimpanzee at the center of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In this surprisingly good prequel to Planet of the Apes, I was thrilled when the humans (James Franco and Freida Pinto) were off-screen, because Caesar and his fellow apes, communicating almost entirely in grunts and body language, starred in scenes as fascinating, entertaining, suspenseful and action-packed as the human scenes were dreary. By the end, as Caesar and his pals are marauding through San Francisco, you cheer for their dominance. These computer-generated apes just seem so much more alive.

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in The Help

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I must admit that I walked into The Help expecting to be offended. Because I knew it to be about a young white woman writing a book about the black maids in early 1960s Jackson, Miss., perhaps unfairly I expected it to be a prequel of sorts to the insidiously racist Sandra Bullock vehicle, The Blind Side. However, I was thrilled that The Help, in fact, is nothing like that. Despite (or maybe because of) some cloying sentimentality and an overly simplistic binary of good and evil, The Help is strikingly good populist entertainment about morality, ethics and bravery. Yes, it is about a white woman who helps black women rise up; but it is also about why and how these women fight back, why they decide to risk everything and why telling the truth becomes more important than anything else.