10. Kickass (Directed by Matthew Vaughn, starring Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Grace Moretz)

Based on the comic by Mark Millar, Kickass is a snarky deconstruction of the superhero genre that abounds with smart scriptwriting and plenty of heart and crass, amoral and violent humor to go along. Dave (Aaron Johnson) is your average comic-book reading, gawky teenager. Tired of his normal life, he dons a mask and tights in a bid to become a superhero, but bites off more than he can chew when he gets involved in a deadly standoff between a crime boss and the masked vigilante duo Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Why Kickass? Mostly because of the 13-year old Chloe Grace Moretz’s critically acclaimed performance as Hit Girl, in which she cusses worse than a sailor and kills pretty much half of the extras in the film with guns and knives. The film caused a lot of controversy because of her voluminous F-bombs. Ironically, nobody really cared that it depicted a 13-year old murdering people. 

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One (Directed by David Yates, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes)

As the penultimate chapter of almost a decade of Harry Potter filmmaking, Deathly Hallows surely deserves a place on this list. Voldemort regains his power, magical Britain becomes a police state and our three heroes are on the run, searching desperately to find a way to defeat Voldemort. David Yates continues to add depth and danger into the Harry Potter universe, masterfully tying the narrative threads together, setting up what will surely be the most epic Harry Potter film of them all next summer. 

8. Shutter Island (Directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo)

This taut psychological thriller is Scorsese in top form, as he weaves a tale of mystery, suspense and horror and plays with the audience’s perceptions of what is real. It’s 1954, and U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are called to the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane on Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a patient from her room. DiCaprio gives an excellent performance as Daniels, and the film ultimately ends in one of the most shocking, beautifully executed twists of the year. It’s a classic for the psychological horror genre, recalling Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest. 

7. Cyrus (Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei)

Cyrus is one of those slightly experimental, indie hipster movies that people watch to brag to their friends about having watched it. John (John C. Reilly), a seven-year divorcee, finds a new romance in Molly (Marisa Tomei), but is stymied by the antics of her clingy son Cyrus (Jonah Hill). It’s a simple premise that works well, pandering to the indie crowd with its confident direction and capable actors, who in fact ad-libbed most of their lines. It’s darkly funny, melancholic and even a little disturbing, especially given Hill’s performance as a slightly sociopathic man who never really got out of his childhood dependency on his mother. If you have to watch one romantic “comedy” this year, this is the one to check out.

6. The Ghost Writer (Directed by Roman Polanski, starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall)

The Ghost Writer is one of those understated gems that nobody seems to notice, but which deserves greater attention than what they received. It’s political thriller at its finest, and a textbook example of how to depict suspense and tension in film. A successful ghostwriter whose name is never revealed (Ewan McGregor) goes to the Martha’s Vineyard retreat of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) in order to help him ghostwrite his memoirs, but finds out that there are forces at work that seek to prevent him from learning too much. The film is atmospheric and riveting and politically conscious in depicting the figure of Adam Lang as a fictional analogue to Tony Blair, with his too-comfortable relationship with the United States. 

5. The Social Network (Directed by David Fincher, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield)

The Social Network is a portrait of the generation that invented Facebook, perhaps the biggest Internet phenomenon of recent years. In portraying the zeitgeist of college and corporate life, it does well, adding mystique and glamor to what was probably in truth a much less interesting story in real life. It’s by no means intended as a true-to-life account of the story of Mark Zuckerberg, and that is probably one of its strengths. It tells a riveting story through the creative and compelling use of narrative flashbacks, and the characterization of Zuckerberg as a brilliant but manipulative and emotionally stunted individual wins points with a viewing audience more interested in the dramatics of fiction as opposed to the banality of the mundane reality. But even this fictional Zuckerberg is no caricature; he’s a believable and complex individual whose social ineptitude belies his incredible achievement — inventing something that allows people to be more social on the web than was ever conceivable before Facebook. 

4. How to Train Your Dragon (Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, starring Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera)

DreamWorks’ best animated feature to date. How to Train Your Dragon is a heartfelt, candid and unpretentious take on the age-old man-animal friendship in a fantasy setting that pleases both children with its color and visual spectacle, and adults with the wisecracking humor of Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the movie’s protagonist and would-be narrator. Set in a Viking-era Britain, Dragon plays with hilarious subversions of Viking stereotypes, where dragons exist and people fear them and hunt them, until Hiccup is able to befriend one of them. It’s a beautifully animated film that doesn’t sacrifice heart for CGI theatrics. 

3. Iron Man 2 (Directed by Jon Favreau, starring Robert Downey Jr., Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, Gwyneth Paltrow)

I actually preferred this sequel to the original Iron Man movie, even though I consider both to be superb. In the sequel, Tony Stark, plagued by insecurities about his role as Iron Man, descends into alcoholism and a host of other fun problems involving his Russian nemesis Whiplash and industry rival Justin Hammer, who hopes to develop his own line of Iron Man suits. Why did I like this movie better? Not only do we have Robert Downey Jr. delivering his pitch-perfect impression of Tony Stark, we also have Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell, who are downright hysterical in their roles as Whiplash and Hammer. It’s not the most internally consistent of movies plot-wise (and neither was the first one), but the action, the characters and the humor that made the first movie so great are present in the second in even greater amounts. Here’s to Favreau outdoing his past two triumphs in the third Iron Man movie. Honestly, this is the only comic-book hero sequel that I’m really looking forward to. Even The Dark Knight Rises must take a back seat. 

2. Toy Story 3 (Directed by Lee Unkrich, starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen etc.)

This is simply the best Pixar film since, well, their last. It’s a miracle in the moviemaking world that Pixar has been able to consistently produce films of such beauty and honesty. Toy Story 3 is even more miraculous because it’s about the only third part of a film trilogy ever that’s managed to top its predecessors in terms of cinematic achievement. It’s doubly poignant because, we, like Andy, are college students, leaving our childhoods behind and stepping into a wide-open world where there is no space for the artifacts of our childhood. Toy Story 3 is a triumph of the rarest kind — one in which a beautifully conceived film trilogy ends on such a sweet and perfect note. 

1. Inception (Directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past year, you’ll probably have, at the very least, heard of Inception. It’s much more likely that many of you have watched it at least once, and some of you, the most dedicated of the crowd, have watched it multiple times. What other film released this year has inspired such devotion and such discussion? Inception takes its audience on an intellectual journey through the land of dreams in a way that other films with similar themes — Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — have attempted, but never achieved in such style and grandeur. It is perhaps one of the most ambitiously conceived films I’ve ever watched. Nolan is audacious, spending the equivalent of several Hollywood budgets to produce a film as mind-bending as it is action-packed. The film had the potential to soar, or to tank, depending on whether the audience was drawn to the intellectual challenge of understanding the twists and turns of this film. People are still talking about it, debating the ending, basing their arguments on the manifold clues and subtle hints present in the film. That ability to inspire passionate discussion, especially on an original IP like Nolan’s vision, is perhaps one of the most telling signs that we have a true classic on our hands. Out of all the films this year, it’s most likely that it is this film that will retain its staying power and go down into the annals of history as one of the seminal classics of the era.