I am picky about movies—I tend only to see the ones that have gotten critical acclaim, which means I spend the most time watching movies in the latter half of the year. Some years I see everything nominated for Best Picture, but not this time. I don’t want to see Her because the whole premise of it creeps me out. I won’t even talk to Siri, so the idea of falling in love with a computer is just… *shudder*. And despite my abiding love for Leonardo DiCaprio, based on what I’ve heard about The Wolf of Wall Street, I don’t think I’d like it. However, I did see all the other Best Picture nominees.

Out of those nominees, my favorite, surprisingly, was Philomena, which I hadn’t heard a whole lot about before I saw it. Out of the movies I saw that were not nominated for Best Picture, my favorite was Saving Mr. Banks.

Here are my thoughts on last year’s movies, in no particular order.

Prisoners

This was intense. VERY intense. It’s a thriller in which two young girls disappear from a quiet Pennsylvania neighborhood on Thanksgiving. A mentally challenged young man who drove an RV in the neighborhood where the girls were last scene is questioned, but ultimately released. Then the father of one of the girls (Hugh Jackman) takes matters into his own hands, kidnapping the man and torturing him to try to get information out of him. Meanwhile, a detective named Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) searches for the kidnappers in a more conventional way.

I really liked this movie, even though one of the friends I saw it with figured out the ending pretty early. Some things about that ending still confuse me, but the writing is excellent (it’s so literary that I thought it must be based on a book and was surprised to find out that it wasn’t), there’s gorgeous cinematography, and I think Hugh Jackman should have gotten more recognition for this role than he has.

Gravity

In a lot of movies that are shown in 3-D in the theater, the 3-D can be superfluous, but this is the kind of movie that was made for it. I don’t think watching it on DVD at home, minus the objects floating around in space, would be as interesting. Overall, it’s a good movie, but I’m kind of surprised that it’s gotten as much critical acclaim as it has. It’s a very simple story and the characters are kind of flat—George Clooney is basically playing George Clooney as an astronaut (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Golden Globe crack about how the movie’s about “how George Clooney would rather float off into space and die then spend one more second with a woman his own age” was priceless) and Sandra Bullock’s character’s one distinguishing characteristic is that she had a daughter who died.

Enough Said

It’s hard to find good romantic comedies these days, but this is one of those rare gems. Even rarer is that it’s a love story about two people in their fifties about to become empty-nesters. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a divorced masseuse who, at a party, meets a woman (Catherine Keener) who becomes her new client and her friend as well as a man (James Gandolfini) whom she begins dating. Things are going well until she realizes that her new friend is her new boyfriend’s ex-wife. She doesn’t reveal what she knows to either of them and is unable to stop listening to her friend’s complaints about her ex-husband—“She’s like a human TripAdvisor!” she says at one point.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, famous for her work on TV, is great in her first, and hopefully not last, lead role in a film. Sadly, it was one of the last films that James Gandolfini completed before his death last year. It turns out the man famous for playing a brutal mobster was also great at playing a very sweet, regular guy, and it’s a shame we won’t be able to see any more of that.

Captain Phillips

I adore Tom Hanks, so I’m a bit biased towards anything he’s in, but this movie is another in the win column for him. Since it’s a true story that only happened a few years ago, obviously you know how it ends, but that didn’t prepare me for the last five minutes of the movie, where we see the captain crying in shock and covered in other people’s blood as the medics examine him. On the basis of that alone, Hanks should have gotten an Oscar nomination. Barkhad Abdi, as the leader of the pirates, did get a nomination, well-deserved.

12 Years a Slave

I liked this movie, but actually not as much as I thought I would. The main reason why is something that sounds so insignificant if I say it but really did matter to me—I thought the movie didn’t show us enough of Solomon’s life before he was a slave. There’s been a lot of commentary on the light this movie has shown on the horrors of slavery, but I thought that with the lack of humanizing details about Solomon, it became too much the story of slavery and not enough the story of Solomon Northrup, therefore turning him into more of a symbol than a person.

I don’t know. I haven’t heard this criticism anywhere else, so maybe it’s just me. Even so, it is definitely well-done and worth seeing.

All Is Lost

I was kind of wary about seeing this one. I mean, there’s one character in the whole movie and almost no dialogue and the entire thing is about him trying to survive on a sinking boat. I’d heard that it was best to see on the big screen, and I can see how that would be the case, but it was pretty compelling even when watched at home. Robert Redford plays the guy on the boat. We never get any backstory on him at all—not what he’s doing out there, nothing about his family situation, not even his name. But even so, you’re rooting for him all the way, even as things seem increasingly hopeless.

Frozen

I finally saw this after hearing about it for months, and it was wonderful. It has all the best elements of the classic Disney movies—great music (“Let It Go” is the best Disney song in many, many years), cute animals and comic relief (a reindeer named Sven and a snowman named Olaf who dreams of summer, in this case), and romance, although it takes a backseat here. With this and Brave, Disney has put a positive spin on the princess craze by writing princesses who are strong and independent, and this movie has two of them, sisters Anna and Elsa. I love that it’s about sisters and the love they have for each other—I can’t remember the last movie, animated or otherwise, I saw that had sisters at the center of the plot. And it cleverly turns the love-at-first-sight fairy tale trope on its head by pointing out how insane it is to think you’re in love with someone you don’t even know.

Saving Mr. Banks

To quote what a friend of mine posted on Facebook when the trailer for this movie came out: “Emma Thompson? Good. Tom Hanks? Good. Mary Poppins? Gooooood.” I love Tom Hanks, as I said, and Mary Poppinswas like the movie of my childhood, so I was prepared to like this movie. However, I ended up loving it even more than I thought I would. I am shocked that Emma Thompson didn’t get an Oscar nomination. As PL Travers, she’s perfect at showing her persnickety, proper side as well as the hurt and vulnerability she carries with her from her painful childhood. Colin Farrell is also great in flashbacks as her loving but unstable, alcoholic father. And I was also surprised to see what other famous faces popped up here—BJ Novak as songwriter Richard Sherman, Paul Giamatti as a chauffeur.

American Hustle

I actually didn’t like this as much as I thought I would. It’s got great acting all around, interesting and hilarious characters, and plenty of ridiculous 1970s hair. Plot-wise, though? It kind of lost me in the middle. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about what these people were doing or who was scamming whom by doing what. I wonder if it would have been better or worse if they’d stuck more closely to the true story it’s loosely based on. Still, it’s fun, and who wouldn’t want to see Jennifer Lawrence accidentally blow up a microwave?

August: Osage County

This is the kind of movie that’s enjoyable while you’re watching it but leaves you uncomfortable when it’s over. Like most movies based on plays, it’s very talky, and the plot is basic dysfunctional-family-comes-together fare. Some characters are better developed than others—Meryl Streep’s painkiller-addicted matriarch and Julia Roberts’ bitter oldest daughter are among the more developed, while Juliette Lewis’s breezy optimist sister comes off more cartoonish. The acting is terrific, but it’s the kind of movie where absolutely nothing is resolved at the end and you’re left wondering what the point of the whole thing was.

Dallas Buyers Club

This was really good. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto are both excellent as, respectively, Ron Woodruff, a homophobic rodeo enthusiast whose HIV diagnosis leads him to find and sell alternative treatments to the harsh AZT he’s prescribed,  and Rayon, a transgender woman with AIDS who becomes Ron’s unlikely friend and business partner. From what I’ve read, it takes a lot of liberties with real life events, but it’s still a great story and both McConnaughey and Leto deserved their Oscars.

Blue Jasmine

This was actually really sad, which I wasn’t expecting. I think I thought it would be more of a Woody Allen comedy, but while there are funny moments, it’s more of a tragedy about the downfall of a Wall Street wife named Jasmine French after her husband goes to prison. I’ve never seen A Streetcar Named Desire, but from what I know about it, this story has a lot of parallels to it. Cate Blanchett is fantastic as Jasmine, who, even as she does her best to start life anew, ultimately finds herself longing for the riches she’s lost. You root for Jasmine even as her behavior is cringeworthy and slightly insane, and when you finally learn the entirety of the backstory that landed her in her predicament it’s surprising and heartbreaking.

Philomena

I loved this movie, and I actually didn’t know a whole lot about it before I saw it. That’s how I recommend going into it, because although I knew the basics—it’s based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman searching for the out-of-wedlock son who was taken from her and put up for adoption—I’m glad that I didn’t know anything about how that search unfolded. So I won’t tell you much except that it turns out to be simultaneously sad, heartwarming, and life-affirming. Judi Dench is great as the stubborn, loving, occasionally hilarious Philomena, as is Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith, the journalist who’s helping her.

Frances Ha

I feel like I shouldn’t have liked this movie, but for some reason I did. It has all the markings of a pretentious hipster movie—it’s in black and white for no discernable reason, it’s about a not-very-successful twenty-something modern dancer in New York City, the main character is a bit self-absorbed. And yet…it worked for me. Maybe because it’s about a twenty-something’s struggles with friends, career, and figuring out where her life is going, which I can certainly relate to. And also because Greta Gerwig as Frances is pretty damn charming. I didn’t think How I Met Your Dad sounded like a great idea, but I’m more interested in it now that I know that she’ll be starring in it.

The Spectacular Now

It didn’t knock my socks off, but this is an above-average teen movie. It’s very intense—not all about high school social status and the prom, although those are both part of the plot. And the two main characters, played by Miles and Shailene Woodley, actually seem like real people and not teen archetypes. It’s been compared to Say Anything…, and while it’s not quite that good, it is definitely one of the better teen movies I’ve seen recently.

Short Term 12

Wow, this was really good and incredibly underrated. Brie Larson plays Grace, a caring but professional twenty-something supervisor at a foster care facility for teens who’s dating one of her coworkers. Grace comes from a troubled background herself, and the arrival of a new girl at the facility combined with Grace’s recently discovered pregnancy force her to confront her past. Everything about this movie feels very real, and Larson, who reminds me a bit of Jennifer Lawrence, is outstanding. I’m excited to see what else she’ll do in the future.

Mud

I have to say that I’m a big fan of the McConaissance. This and True Detective prove that his Oscar wasn’t a fluke, and while this movie has a lot of flaws, McConaughey’s performance is largely what left me with positive feelings about Mud despite those flaws. He plays a mysterious man who two fourteen-year-old boys from Arkansas find living in the woods. It’s a coming-of-age story more than anything else, and sometimes the screenwriter seems to have consulted the coming-of-age and the Southern stereotype pages in the screenwriting bible too much. (One of the boys is named “Neckbone.” Really?) It’s also the worst kind of Bechdel-test failure, where the female characters are mainly damsels in distress and really exist only as romantic objects. And it leans on the predictable side. But McConaughey brings a certain warmth to his character that permeates the movie, and in the end the story is moving without being too sappy.

Nebraska

Not my favorite, but I enjoyed it. Bruce Dern is an old guy who’s convinced he won a million dollars in a sweepstakes and Will Forte is the son humoring him by driving him from Montana to Nebraska where he can supposedly collect his prize. He learns a lot about his dad along the way, through lines that are mostly sweet and subtle but that sometime err on the side of telling and not showing. And what’s up with both this and Frances Ha being in black and white? Schindler’s List is pretty much the only modern movie that can get away with that. But even so, this is worth a watch.

Fruitvale Station

This is the true story of Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by the police in a subway station in Oakland early on New Year’s Day 2009. Unarmed black man being killed—it’s sadly an all-too-familiar story, but this movie shows you one of the humans behind the statistics. Oscar certainly had flaws, which the movie doesn’t gloss over—he spent time in prison and cheated on his girlfriend—but we also see him as a caring son, grandson, friend, boyfriend, and father to his four-year-old daughter. It’s a bit heavy-handed at times, particularly in one fictional scene where he takes care of a dying dog, but still an excellent movie (and the rookie director, Ryan Coogan, is only twenty-seven, which makes me feel like a slacker). I saw it while donating platelets, and despite knowing how it would end (it’s a true story, so it’s not exactly a secret), I got all teary and the nurse was like, “What movie were you watching?”

About Time

I may have spoken too soon when I said there weren’t any good romantic comedies anymore, because this is the second great one I’ve seen recently. Tim (Domhnall Gleeson, aka Bill Weasley from the Harry Potter movies) is told by his father (played by Bill Nighy, whom I can never think of as anything but Billy Mack from Love Actually) that the men in their family can time travel—specifically, they can travel to places in the past that they’ve been before. Tim uses this power to help him meet Mary (Rachel McAdams), and surprisingly, the movie doesn’t end with their relationship. Instead, it’s more concerned with the day-to-day of their lives and the ways that it changes when Tim uses his power to redo things.

Yes, it’s on the sappy side and yes, there are some plot holes, but the characters are so kind and likeable that I came away feeling moved. There was a moment in the middle when I thought Tim might do something awful, but it never happened. And it’s actually a love story not just between Tim and Mary, but also between Tim and his dad and, to a lesser extent, Tim and his sister. There are some really lovely scenes where Tim bonds with his father.

The Lifeguard

I knew that this hadn’t gotten great reviews, but I thought I might like it anyway. Like the main character, I’m about to turn thirty and worked as a lifeguard as a teenager (one summer at a condominium complex much like the one in this movie). Plus, Kristen Bell! But it was actually pretty boring. One cliché that grates on my nerves like no other is teenagers dying to get out of their nice suburban town, which is found in abundance here. I feel like with some changes, the story—Bell’s character leaves her job as a city journalist to move back in with her parents and resume the lifeguarding job she had as a teenager—could have been a lot more compelling. Instead, it all just feels self-indulgent and low-stakes—and considering that there are subplots about statutory rape and teen suicide, that’s saying something.

The Book Thief

I love the book so much, but I wasn’t quite sure what a movie version would be like. And this was…not bad, but I feel like it was just a story that didn’t translate well to the big screen. In the book, for instance, you never forget that the story is narrated by death, but in the movie, death only speaks at the beginning and end. They made some weird choices about what words should be in English and which should be in German, too, and overall I think it was a better story to read than to see.

This makes three posts in a row about movies. What can I say? I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately.

2012 was a great year for movies. I saw quite a few excellent movies in the past year. I told you a bit about what I thought of some of them in my Oscar post, but here’s a more in-depth look.

The Sessions

Wow, I did not expect to like this movie as much as I did. But I was shocked to find myself in tears at the end of the movie, which is based on a true story. John Hawkes plays Mark O’Brien, a writer who survives in an iron lung after being paralyzed as a child by polio. Since his physical condition makes sex extremely difficult, he hires Cheryl Cohen-Greene (Helen Hunt), a married mother who works as a sex surrogate. Ty Burr’s review in the Boston Globe points out, rightly, that there are a million ways it could have gone wrong and that the premise sounds like a bad joke. What makes the movie work is the great work of John Hawkes (I am shocked that he didn’t get an Oscar nomination) and the compassion the script has for Mark.

One really refreshing thing is the treatment of religion. Mark is a devout Catholic who consults with his priest (William H. Macy) before hiring Cheryl. While the priest mulls over the morality of it, he ultimately concludes that God will give him a pass on the sex-outside-of-marriage part. It’s really unusual in the movies to see a clergy member, particularly a Catholic priest, demonstrating empathy instead of judgment, and I greatly appreciated it.

My one big issue with the film? Helen Hunt’s terrible Boston accent. (It takes place in California, but Cheryl is originally from Salem.) Her performance is great other than that, but it’s an especially noticeable problem since she keeps talking to a guy named Mark.

Silver Linings Playbook

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I loved this movie.

Bradley Cooper’s had such a weird career path. I didn’t watch Alias much, but I remember him as Sydney’s sweet-but-dorky friend Will. Ten years later, he’d reinvented himself as a studly leading man, and now with this movie, he’s made himself into a serious actor who, I hope, will be given more challenging parts in the future. He plays Pat, a man with bipolar disorder and anger management problems who’s just gotten out of a mental institution. He landed there after beating up the man his wife Nikki was cheating on him with. Now he’s lost his teaching job, is living with his parents (Robert DeNiro and Jackie Weaver), and is obsessed with getting back together with Nikki, who has filed a restraining order against him. When he meets his friend’s widowed sister-in-law, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who has a lot of issues of her own, he lets her into his life, reluctantly at first. He agrees to be her partner in a dance competition if she’ll deliver a letter he wrote to Nikki. But as they spend more time together, we see Pat’s priorities changing and both Pat and Tiffany’s issues improving. Meanwhile, Pat’s obsessive-compulsive father is trying to make money by betting on Philadelphia Eagles games.

One thing I really appreciated is how it portrays mental illness and psychiatric drugs—realistically, Pat, who isn’t taking his meds at the beginning of the movie, does see an improvement in his symptoms but not an end to all his issues once he starts taking them regularly and seeing a therapist. Also, the acting is superb all around. Bradley Cooper captures Pat’s insanity so well that you don’t even think about how hot he is. And not to get all hipster about it, but I loved Jennifer Lawrence before The Hunger Games—specifically, since Winter’s Bone—and she does not disappoint. I want to be Jennifer Lawrence when I grow up…even though she’s younger than me.

Speaking of which, that’s actually my one issue with the movie—J. Law looks waaaaay too young to be playing Tiffany. She says at one point that she was married for three years, and although I don’t think they said how long her husband had been dead, I think it was at least a year—was she, like, sixteen when she got married? Bradley Cooper even said recently, while denying rumors that the two of them are dating in real life, something like, “I could be her dad!” But Lawrence is such a good actress that it’s not too bothersome.

Argo

I can’t think about this movie without shaking my head in disgust over Ben Affleck not being nominated for Best Director. This is based on the true story of the Canadian Caper, where the CIA freed six Americans in the Iranian hostage crisis who’d escaped to the Canadian ambassador’s house by disguising them as a film crew, although there are some liberties taken for dramatic effect. It says a lot about how well-done it is that even though history tells us how the movie will end, I was still nervous watching it!

Beasts of the Southern Wild

This is a weird movie. Not bad, but weird. It takes place in a bayou community called The Bathtub cut off by a levee from the rest of the world. A little girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) lives in a little wooden house by herself, while her ailing, sometimes harsh father lives in another one next door. A storm is moving in and threatening to destroy everything. Oh, and there are these creatures called Aurochs that come out of the melting polar icecaps running around.

Yeah, I told you it was weird. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. But I can tell you for certain that Wallis is adorable and very talented, and hopefully she’ll be in a lot more movies in the future.

Life of Pi

Another movie I liked more than I thought I would. All I knew about it before I saw it was kid-on-boat-with-tiger, but there’s a lot more to it than that. There’s what we see of the kid, nicknamed Pi, and his life with his family in India before he is shipwrecked with the tiger. There’s the framing device, the adult Pi telling his story to a writer. There are parallels drawn to religion, which I always find interesting, and there’s the possibility that the tiger is metaphorical. But aside from the writing, this movie is just gorgeous visually, even though most of it was created by CGI.

Lincoln

I did like this movie, but it did not, by any means, knock my socks off or blow me away or have me jumping out of my chair or any other idiomatic phrase conveying supreme enjoyment. It is very well-acted—Daniel Day-Lewis does a great job bringing a historical figure we’re all familiar with to life. But while it’s about a major event, the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery, the road to that passage was paved with a lot of partisan bickering, not unlike Congress today. At times, it seems like the movie is just a succession of long, poignant speeches. And while I can certainly admire the direction and acting in this movie, it didn’t move me, and a movie about something as big as the abolition of slavery really should.

Pitch Perfect

One of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time. How has there never been a movie about college a cappella until this one? I do have to say that I was a little underwhelmed by most of the music, but it’s funny and unpredictable enough (well, as unpredictable as a comedy can be) to make up for that…and for the fact that everyone looks way older than 18-22. Weren’t Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson just playing older characters in Up in the Air and Bridesmaids, respectively?

The Hunger Games

I’ve heard very little criticism of the adoption of this book to the screen, and given what a big following the book series has, that’s a huge compliment. Jennifer Lawrence is perfect as Katniss (actually, I probably could have ended at “Jennifer Lawrence is perfect”), the movie is very well-cast in general, and it mostly stays faithful to the book. I liked the first book in this series but wasn’t as crazy about the second two, but I am interested to see how the movie adaptations of Catching Fire and Mockingjaygo.

Moonrise Kingdom

I had never seen anything by Wes Anderson before this, but I LOVED this movie. It takes place on a fictional island in New England in 1965, where Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman), two misunderstood twelve-year-olds who have been pen pals for a year, decide to run away together. While much about it is surreal—a gigantic treehouse at Sam’s scouting camp teeters precariously in a very narrow tree, Sam gets struck by lightning but springs back up unharmed almost immediately—it’s also very sweet in its depiction of young love. That they care about each other in an innocent, pre-teen way doesn’t diminish their relationship. And aside from being very funny, it’s also appealing in the way that it captures the feel of spending summer on the New England coast.

The Dark Knight Rises

I am not a superhero-movie person, so it says something that I like these movies enough to see them in the theater without anyone making me. The last installment in this series was, frankly, a bit too long, but not bad. The Dark Knight actually made me think with the questions it raised at the movie’s end, but when this one ended, I kind of shrugged and said, “Huh. Not bad,” and then went home to walk Juno.

The Master

Ehh…this was a decent movie, but I kind of doubt that anyone who saw it loved it. It takes place in 1950, and Joaquin Phoenix plays an alcoholic veteran with PTSD who falls in with a cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose religion is a thinly-veiled version of Scientology. It’s definitely interesting, but feels unfinished—like the writer decided to make a movie about L. Ron Hubbard but couldn’t think of a good enough plot, or at least a good enough ending.

Flight

Interesting character study of a movie. Denzel Washington plays an alcoholic pilot who, despite discreetly consuming vodka orange juice in flight, manages to land a malfunctioning plane with the loss of only six lives. Initially hailed as a hero, he becomes desperate to preserve his reputation as his intoxication comes to light. Washington is great as a morally ambiguous man whose actions keep us guessing up until the end, and Kelly Reilly adds a lot as a heroin addict he meets and bonds with in the hospital.

Zero Dark Thirty

Intense and very well-done. Jessica Chastain is excellent as a CIA agent named Maya (reportedly based on a real person) who dedicates her whole career to finding Osama Bin Laden. It’s nine years of false leads, missed tips, bad information, and tragedy (Maya survives the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott and loses friends in the Camp Chapman attack) before she finally tracks down Bin Laden’s compound. While the movie doesn’t hit us over the head of this, it’s clear that she also faces struggles being heard as a woman working with a lot of men. Even with her assertion that she’s 100 percent certain that Bin Laden is in the compound, it takes a long time for any action to be taken. For over four months, Maya writes the number of days it’s been since they found the compound in dry erase marker on her boss’s office window. In one awesome scene, she’s told to step back as the CIA chief briefs everyone on the compound. When he asks her who she is, she’s quick with the response: “I’m the motherfucker who found this place!” We don’t get much background on Maya—she’s single and a workaholic, but the movie doesn’t focus on it—but Maya’s dazed reaction upon seeing Bin Laden’s corpse, and then her silent tears upon leaving Pakistan in a private plane, speak volumes.

Amour

Quiet, elegant, devastating. And very effective. It’s about Anne and Georges, an elderly married couple in Paris, dealing with Anne’s stroke and subsequent decline in health. While the inciting incident—Anne suddenly going silent during breakfast one morning—is shown, and very well-done, a lot of the big moments happen off-screen. Unlike so many movies nominated for Oscars, it’s not about anything big like fighting terrorism or ending slavery, but about something that people around the world go through every day, and about the small ways that love shows itself.

Django Unchained

I’m not a big Tarantino fan, so I wasn’t excited to see this movie, but I liked it much more than I expected to. However, while it was mostly enjoyable, it was also a lot longer than necessary and not something I thought about once it was over. Jamie Foxx is Django, a former slave traveling with German bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) helping him kill people and trying to find his wife Broomhilda. It’s entertaining, and kind of amazing that Tarantino can still think of new ways to show blood spatter, but one thing that really bugged me was how little personality Broomhilda had. Especially since Django’s want to reunite with her is what propels most of the plot.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I adore this book—in fact, when I first read it at age 19, I went on and on about it in my journal. I was really excited to hear that the book’s author, Stephen Chbosky, was writing and directing the movie as well. I was very pleased with it. Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson as Sam, and Ezra Miller as Patrick were all great—although I definitely never would have imagined that the same actress would play both Sam and Hermione Granger! The book is so much about Charlie’s inner life that I did feel like some of it was lost in translation to the screen, and there’s a lot less about his family in the movie. But those are minor quibbles—this was a great movie.

I love awards shows. I really do. I’ve been an awards show junkie since middle school. The Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the SAG Awards, and of course the Oscars are big television events for me. I DVR not just the ceremonies, but the red carpet on E!. I buy the issue of People that comes out after the Oscars, showing everyone all dressed up. I check off the winners as the awards are given, and I try to make predictions and see whether I’m right.

Every year before the Oscars, the two Boston Globe film critics list, for each category, who should win, who will win, who was robbed, and who shouldn’t be in the category. I think it’s coming out tomorrow.

This year, I’m doing my own version of that post. It was a great year for movies, so I’m especially excited this year. I’ve seen all of the movies nominated for Best Picture and all but one of the movies that have acting nominations, so here are my thoughts on this year’s Oscars.

Best Picture

Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty

Should win: Les Mis. Duh. I will admit that I am a bit biased.

Will win: I’m going to go with Lincoln. It’s rare for Best Picture and Best Director to be split and even rarer for a movie to win Best Picture when the director wasn’t nominated. So that rules out Les Mis, Argo, and Zero Dark Thirty, although I would have said that all three of them had good shots before the nominations came out. Lincoln was nowhere near my favorite of the nominated movies, but seeing as it has the most nominations, I’d say it has the best shot at winning. I don’t think Best Picture has been this wide open in years.

Was robbed: Moonrise Kingdom! WTF? That was such a great movie. I can’t believe Best Original Screenplay was its only nomination. I also would have nominated The Sessions, a really underrated movie that I found deeply touching. (Uh…no pun intended.)

Shouldn’t be here: All nine movies are good movies that I enjoyed, which doesn’t always happen. If I had to drop one, it would be Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was decent but very weird and, for the most part, overrated.

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington, Flight

Should win: Hugh Jackman, and that’s not just my Les Misbias speaking. Although, like I said, he doesn’t sing the role as well as most of the stage Valjeans, he does an amazing job carrying the whole movie while embodying a complex, heroic character and singing live on camera.

Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis. I think what Jackman accomplished was harder, but Day-Lewis does a great job capturing the essence of a historical icon. He’d definitely be my second choice.

Was robbed: John Hawkes for The Sessions. He plays a man in an iron lung who hires a sex surrogate to help him lose his virginity, and it’s an incredibly appealing, moving performance. I didn’t expect to like that movie as much as I did, and he was a big reason why.

Shouldn’t be here: They were all pretty good, actually. If I really had to pick one to drop from this category, I’d say Joaquin. Although it is nice to see him move on from that whole fake-rapping-career fiasco.

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Naomi Watts, The Impossible

Should win: J. Law wins at life and should be my new best friend, but while I really wanted to say her, I think I have to go with Jessica Chastain, who was just riveting in Zero Dark Thirty. She’s the very smart, driven CIA agent who has to fight to be heard but whose hard work eventually leads to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. She clearly has lots of emotions pouring through her, but she never overplays the role. The scene where they’re briefing everyone on the compound and the CIA director looks at her and asks who she is, as if seeing her for the first time, and she retorts, “I’m the motherfucker who found this place!” was awesome.

Will win: Toss-up between Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain, two actresses whose career trajectories have really shot up in the last couple of years. I would be fine with either of them winning.

Was robbed: Hmm…I don’t know. I can’t really think of anyone, actually!

Shouldn’t be here: Hard to say. I haven’t seen The Impossible, so I have no idea about Naomi Watts. The other four should definitely be here, though.

Best Supporting Actor

Alan Arkin, Argo

Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Should win: This isn’t a category I have a strong opinion about, but I’m actually going to go to with a less popular choice. I thought Robert DeNiro was pretty great in Silver Linings Playbook, although at this point in his career he certainly doesn’t need any more awards.

Will win: Tough call, but I’m going to say Tommy Lee Jones. Every single nominee in this category already has an Oscar, which is another reason I don’t care much about who wins.

Was robbed: Eddie Redmayne! If you can make me like and sympathize with a character I didn’t think I could ever like, you definitely deserve an Oscar nomination.

Shouldn’t be here: Alan Arkin. He was good comic relief in Argo, but nothing Oscar-worthy.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Master

Sally Field, Lincoln

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

Should win: Anne Hathaway. No one else in this category comes remotely close. If I really had to pick a second choice, I’d say Sally Field.

Will win: I will be shocked if anyone other than Hathaway wins. She’s won basically every other Best Supporting Actress award this year.

Was robbed: SAMANTHA BARKS. Arrgh! My standards for Eponine were pretty high, and she surpassed them. She actually DOES come remotely close to Anne Hathaway.

Shouldn’t be here: Amy Adams and Jacki Weaver. I feel like the Academy got it in their heads that they need to nominate Amy Adams for every movie she’s in—she was great in Junebug but just average in Doubt, The Fighter, and now The Master. Also, a pet peeve of mine with this category is how many roles nominated for Best Supporting Actress are “wife-of” roles for characters defined almost solely by their relationship to the leading man. This year, Amy Adams and Sally Field are nominated for “wife-of” roles and Jacki Weaver, who definitely didn’t impress me as much as everyone else in Silver Linings Playbook, is a “mother-of.” And Helen Hunt, like so many actors do, totally butchered the Boston accent in The Sessions. Basically, they should have just handed Hathaway the award and not bothered with everyone else.

Best Director

Michael Haneke, Amour

Ang Lee, Life of Pi

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Stephen Spielberg, Lincoln

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Should win: Honestly? Ben Affleck should win, but he inexplicably wasn’t nominated. I don’t know if the Academy’s still holding a grudge over Giglior what, but hopefully he’s satisfied with winning basically every other award out there. I don’t have a strong preference among the actual nominees.

Will win: Since I think Lincoln’s going to win Best Picture, probably Spielberg.

Was robbed: Ben Affleck, Tom Hooper, Kathryn Bigelow. Seriously, it’s like they threw the Best Picture nominees in a hat and randomly picked five to nominate for Best Director. I’ve heard criticism of Hooper’s directing of Les Mis, so although I’m disappointed that he wasn’t nominated, I’m not surprised. But Kathryn Bigelow? She won for The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty is a much better movie.

Shouldn’t be here: Michael Haneke.

What do all of you think? Who would you say should win, will win, was robbed, and shouldn’t be here for all of these categories this year?