What’s the best picture of 2012? So far?

It is, after all, the year’s halfway point. I’ve been posting a 10-best list for the first half of each year for about a decade now.

The idea was based on the 1981 Major League Baseball Strike, when a shortened season led to the decision to pit the winner of the season’s first half against the victor of the season’s second half in various playoffs.

It occurred to me: Conventional wisdom has it that, in terms of Oscars and 10-best lists, the bulk of any year’s best offerings don’t reach theaters until post-Labor Day – many of them not until post-Halloween. But the first half of the year inevitably has worthy entries that get overlooked because of the magpie syndrome (fascination with the most recent shiny object they’ve seen) inherent among Academy voters.

In fact, 2012 already has thrown up a host of solid films that have nothing to do with super-heroes, comic books or massive computer-generated special effects. Hopefully, a few of them will stick in memories – or get year-end publicity pushes – when awards season rolls around.

Here, in brief, is my list of the year’s 10 best films at the halftime break: (More…)