This week, I wanted to hearken back to the year before Killing Time started, which – in many ways – looks like a parallel to this year in that it was an incredibly weak year for film. This was the year The Artist, which I personally cannot stand, won Best Picture.

What should have won Best Picture was Hugo, the astounding adaptation of Brian Selznick’s The Adventures of Hugo Cabret, by Martin Scorcese. Completely turning my opinion of him as a film maker on its head, Scorcese’s Hugo was a masterpiece; a love letter to film and to the very idea of story.
Not far behind, The Intouchables, featured a transcendent performance from Omar Sy in this true story of a rich quadriplegic and his care taker. I can’t think of a movie that filled me with just….joy more than The Intouchables.
It’s not perfect, but they did it. They pulled off an eight-film adaptation of JK Rowling’s epic Harry Potter saga with a grand finale that brought the house down.
Thor was, until Cap 2, my favorite movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe era. Funny and regally adventurous, it managed to take one of the most difficult comics to translate to the screen and make it completely iconic and grounded in its own reality.
I have no interest in MMA (mixed martial arts) but, Warrior completely took me by surprise and became one of my favorite sports films of all-time. Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and, Nick Nolte, who turns in the performance of his career, make this compulsory viewing.