The Ten Best Films of 2012 That We Saw

Scott Hardie | December 17, 2012
Looking back over this year's reviews, we have such different opinions even though we often saw the same movies. I'm curious what film would be declared the best of the year by the collective Funeratic membership. Let's make it official.

I have rebuilt an old feature for a new era of the site: Vote now for the best movies you saw in 2012. On January 1, our ballots will be automatically tallied and the ten best films of 2012, as judged in our collective opinion, will be named by the site. I built this feature to run again automatically in future years.

There would probably be something like a five-way tie for first place, so I've weighted the ballots according to how many votes are cast on each. If you name 3 movies on your list, your titles are given more points in the calculation than those of someone else who names 2 movies. 10 is the maximum number of movies on any list. If multiple movies tie in points, the one that appears on more lists will rank higher; thank you, A.V. Club, for that idea.

I have an ulterior motive for my tie-breaking method, but it's not to give my own opinions any more weight. It's to encourage more reviews to be written. If you want to help us decide the best movie of the year, you need to have a review on record for that title before it will appear on your ballot. Writing a review is fun and easy, and brevity is favored! (If you review a new movie that's not in the system at all yet, it may take up to 24 hours to appear on your ballot.)

I'd really like to get a broad range of opinions in the mix, so I hope you'll participate. This should be fun!

Erik Bates | December 17, 2012
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Scott Hardie | December 18, 2012
Well, I appreciate the effort. :-) I am delighted to see a flood of new reviews in the system today. Keep it up! This is going to be a great combined ballot -- can't wait to see the results on January 1.

I date movies according to their widest theatrical release in the United States. The Artist played in a limited release in December 2011 and qualified for the Oscars in order to win Best Picture, but it didn't open wide until January 2012, so it's a 2012 movie by Funeratic standards. Feel free to include that movie for your ballot if you've seen it and agree with the Academy.

Erik and Samir, everything that you reviewed today should now be on your ballots.

Scott Hardie | December 18, 2012
Any love for The Avengers?

Erik Bates | December 18, 2012
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | December 20, 2012
Anybody have a favorite trailer they saw this year? I continue to be awestruck by the trailer for Cloud Atlas, which gives a taste of the movie's six storylines and epic beauty without even beginning to spoil anything. (What looks like one big spoiler isn't what it looks like.)

Evie Totty | December 23, 2012
Wow The Avengers unimpressive? /cry

Favorite trailer. Gosh I don't know really. Cloud Atlas' was good but it was over 5 mins so it's kind of cheating. Iron Man 3 is impressive, but you guys know I'm a comic book movie fangirl haha.

I'll get to putting some reviews in ;)

Evie Totty | December 23, 2012
OK! I went through and I believe I have all the (relevant) movies I've seen this year. I might rearrange my Top 10 though ... how long do I have before I can't reset?

Steve West | December 23, 2012
Avengers = Awesomw, awesome, awesome.

Scott Hardie | December 23, 2012
Great reviews! Thanks for adding all of these today. I've added a few more movies to my Netflix queue as a result. :-)

The best-of-the-year ballot can be edited any time up until midnight on the night of December 31.

Scott Hardie | December 30, 2012
Time's almost up! If you want to vote or revise your ballot, you have until midnight tomorrow night. Looking in the database, I see at least one ballot that the creator will probably want to revise (this person added a lot of reviews after voting and has a short ballot). My thanks to the five people who have voted already, and here's hoping for more at the last minute.

2012 has been a fantastic year for movies, hasn't it? I could name a half-dozen films worthy of winning Best Picture, a lot more than last year. And the "popcorn" movies were a blast this summer. Here's hoping 2013 keeps it up.

Scott Hardie | January 1, 2013
The votes are in, and we have a great list! Reflective of a banner year for movies overall, and for superhero films in particular, our list contains ten excellent titles that are worth renting if you haven't seen them. There's a mix of large-scale summer entertainment and small, serious drama.

Each of the four long ballots -- sorry Chris; your sole vote simply got overwhelmed -- was represented well in the final mix, and named a pretty good movie that didn't make the top ten: Brave, Django Unchained, Bernie, and Life of Pi. It's been a good year if those were the also-rans.

My thanks to Chris, Erik, Evie, and Samir for participating, and to other people for writing assorted sentences that I could include on the page. :-) Here's hoping that 2013 produces an even better list!