I have to let you in on a little secret that helps me to define just how special a year in film has been. If a narrative or thematic thread emerges, in particular one that laces through the films that end up earning the top spots on my Top 10, then I have to rank the year in question as one of the greats.  

The Swedish translation of the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy is Men Who Hate Women, and the 2009 Niels Arden Oplev adaptation made sure to lay that hatred bare, introducing audiences to the Vanger clan, a Swedish industrial family of the first order with deep and long ties to the Nazis and unhealthy animosity for any with sympathies aligned alongside the better nature of man or God.  

Several performers were working overtime in 2011. Brad Pitt planted The Tree of Life, then scored with Moneyball and even had time to lend vocal support to Happy Feet 2. George Clooney multi-hyphenated himself as co-writer/director/co-star of The Ides of March and then vacationed as a mere performer in The Descendants.  

It is an oft-repeated refrain that the movie industry has settled into what many in the critical circles have deemed lazy practices and thinking, returning to proven ground with a flood of remakes from the (not always so distant) past. The thought process behind remakes is obvious and full of appeal because it is about embracing that feeling of nostalgia.   

With Hugo, Scorsese has completely indulged his inner child, the wildly imaginative free spirit in love with the dawn of the age of moving pictures, that initial time of wonder and magic, when children and adults found themselves ensorcelled by the spells and tricks of showmen like George Melies (Ben Kingsley) who dreamed of life under the sea and rocket ships blasting off and landing in the eye of the man on the moon.   

The old cynic in me, the one never raised to believe in the commercial or the elfin hokum of the season, fought valiantly, but thanks to the fantastically lively British voices and the rollicking international incident caused by a team of flying reindeer, I found myself glad that Arthur Christmas cared enough to make this early delivery.  

Matt King (George Clooney) comes from a distinct lineage. In terms of his own narrative, that of the new Alexander Payne film The Descendants, he is a modern-day land baron, the trustee of a family that owns the last and largest untapped acreage in Hawaii. But King is a simple man with a wife (Patricia Hastie) in a coma and two daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller), who knows that paradise is a dream world for fools. Grade: A.
  

For a series that has been all about the waiting and the longing, it's only fitting that Part 1 leaves audiences twisting in the breeze again. But there could have been some real payoff here, enough to actually add to the highly anticipated clash of the monstrous titans to come.   

Writer-director Drake Doremus graduates from the micro-niche ranks into indie world with Like Crazy, the Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. With works like Moonpie (2006), Spooner (2009) and Douchebag (2010), which screened in dramatic competition at Sundance, in the rearview, it would seem that Doremus would be poised for a breakout.   

Adam Sandler tightens his embrace of broad family hijinks with this story about a set of adult twins (Sandler plays both brother and sister, yeah!) who bicker, bicker, bond, bicker some more and then bond one last time during their annual holiday gathering. The movie kicks off (and ends) with real-life twins engaged in a bit of filmed back and forth about their relationships. The off-the-cuff banter and some of the contrasting visual juxtapositions contain the real gems lacking in what gets sandwiched in between.