Friday Five: Favourite FIlms of 2012

I love the end-of-year best lists where critics, journalists and bloggers fall over themsleves to share their opinions on what they thought was the best of the year. I'm not going to do that with films.

I like films and the whole cinema experience a lot. But I know I'm no expert. I can't quote huge passages of dialogue from 1940s black and white masterpieces and I haven't studied techniques and interpretations by revered film directors and cinematographers.

When film critics list their best films ever made, I feel inadequate and sometimes slightly stupid - either I missed something hugely profound with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia or it is the biggest incidence of The Emperor's New Clothes since a publicity-hungry girl from Sandringham set her sights on the heir to the British throne.

So anyway, I make no claims to these being the best films of 2012, but they were my favourites (in alphabetical order, because ranking them is too difficult).

5 Favourite Films of 2012:

1. Holy Motors - utterly bonkers, and the most interesting and challenging film I've seen in ages.
2. A Royal Affair - sumptuous costume drama, perfectly paced, excellently acted and raising intriguing ideas about the dawning of enlightenment in eighteenth-century Denmark.
3. The Sapphires - Feel-good film about an all-girl Aborigine troop of entertainers performing soul for the troops in Vietnam, under the comic tutelage of Dave Lovelace (Chris O'Dowd) - an Aussie Dreamgirls if you will.
4. Seven Psychopaths - A struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) tries to finish his script by calling in his friends and every cliché in the Hollywood canon - great dialogue and acting (Sam Rockwell; Christopher Walken; Woody Harrelson) go a long way towards excusing the smug self-awareness.
5. Skyfall - Warning: this action film contains real acting, with limited CGI crap, and a brilliant opening sequence. Daniel Craig brings the sexy back and with director Sam Mendes and proper actors (Dame Judi, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Ben Wishaw, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney) it's the best Bond film ever - I'm a big fan, so that's saying something. 'Take the bloody shot'.