Top ten films of the year

The Artist

The film to beat Oscar-wise is Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist, besotted as it is with Hollywood’s heyday, the transience of its own art form, the possibilities of great silent acting and the notion that a contemporary audience might be beguiled by the kind of stuff they were doing 80 years ago. Released on December 30, it sneaks on to this survey by a hair, but it won’t be disappearing in a hurry.

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