Making a List, Checking It Obsessively

When last we checked in, more or less, I still had the whole Fall and Holiday season ahead of me on a viewing itinerary. And this after a crazy year in which almost all of my moviegoing was backloaded into the last five months, and in pretty concentrated binges at that. Now my lists of prioritized titles—before I call in the limos and publish year-end favorites—can almost fit on an index card or two.

A Dozen in Theaters: ✓The Hobbit (already landed in Chicago), ✓The Impossible, ✓Rust and Bone, and ✓This Is 40 (all arriving Friday), ✓Django Unchained and ✓Les Misérables (Christmas gifts, or "gifts"), ✗Searching for Sugar Man (back by popular demand on the 28th), Promised Land, ✓Sister, and ✓Zero Dark Thirty (all hitting the first weekend in January), and ✓Amour and ✓On the Road (no publicly announced Chicago dates, at least as far as I know). I'm sure I'll chase other stuff, to include the gay-themed drama Any Day Now and the gayish-frattish-grannyish gene-splice ✓The Guilt Trip, but these twelve feel like the big stories to me.

A Decalogue on DVD: the Joe Reid-endorsed January sci-fi ✓Chronicle, the Frederick Wiseman documentary Crazy Horse, the Binoche vehicle ✓Elles, the prize-collecting Israeli hit ✓Footnote, the Criterion-stamped Forgiveness of Blood, Mia Hansen-Løve's well-received Goodbye, First Love, the Dardennes' widely loved ✓Kid with a Bike, Maïwenn's Cannes trophy collector Polisse, Pablo Larraín's two-year-old Venice entry ✓Post Mortem, and Michael Winterbottom's flop spin on Hardy, Trishna.

Those are my scheduled pit-stops. Anything I didn't list poses a problem either of availability or enthusiasm.  If the former, you're welcome to hook me up with some fabulous screener.  If the latter, make your pitch in the comments!  What's the best movie released in the U.S. in 2012 that you liked more than most people did, and which you're pretty sure I didn't see but should have?