You may be wondering why I am posting this today when I just posted 2013 yesterday. That’s easy. I forgot to post 2012 back when I put the list together a number of months ago. I just realized it after updating the Lists section to add 2013. Oops.

As I mentioned yesterday, it is difficult to rank recent film because age is the ultimate arbiter. As it turns out, when I dusted off this list, I found that some films had already fallen out of favor. The changes are only minor, but the fact that I made changes this soon means that in a year, two, three, and definitely ten, the changes will be a lot more drastic. Maybe I’ll plan to revisit these lists every so often as an exercise in how tastes change.

For now, this is the list. It is still English-language heavy, but it has six international releases versus four from 2013. There are three documentaries, and the last entry on the list is actually from the Persona Criterion edition. Liv & Ingmar was not on the original list. The only other Criterion title is Frances Ha, which I have not yet seen on Criterion, but I have a suspicion that it won’t hold up as well on a second viewing.

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. The Act of Killing
3. The Master
4. Mud
5. Laurence Anyways
6. Life of Pi
7. Holy Motors
8. Looper
9. Marley
10. Frances Ha
11. Broken Circle Breakdown
12. A Royal Affair
13. The Hunt
14. Cloud Atlas
15. Cabin in the Woods
16. Beasts of the Southern Wild
17. What Maisie Knew
18. Skyfall
19. The Attack
20. Liv & Ingmar