The year in movies (2012) ends in... 3 days.

The year in movies (2012) ends in... 4 days.

Silver Linings Playbook

David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" is a surprisingly mainstream romantic comedy, albeit with a compelling kinetic energy coursing through the entire picture owing to the strong direction and some impressive work by the cinematography and editing teams.

Bradley Cooper is winsome and involving as the neurotic hero Pat while Jennifer Lawrence, who created a hurt and calloused shell for the young, damaged Tiffany with a sense of craving, fragility and fury burning right beneath the surface, is just all kinds of wonderful.

Dans la maison (In the House)

François Ozon's "Dans la maison (In the House)" has a beautifully layered and devilishly clever script that, some occasional over-the-top missteps and a rather faint ending aside, deftly plays with the line between fiction/reality and explores the seductive power of manipulation.

The French auteur's direction further toys with audience perception by injecting unexpected shots of theatricality into the picture and blends the absurd with the truly hair-raising to good effect. Young star Ernst Umhauer delivers a charismatic turn as the cunning pupil with a voyeuristic urge bordering on destructive obsession.

Life of Pi

I still remember the moment I turned the final page of Yann Martel's "Life of Pi".

It was a weekend morning in 2003, I was in my dorm room in Hualien, Taiwan, for military service. The days were long and the idle Pacific breeze never far from touch. Out of nowhere came this Canadian author's fantastical tale about an Indian boy and a tiger, and when its last sentence fell, it shook me to the bone.

Nearly a decade later, one of my favorite works of fiction finally made its way to the big screen. Thanks to the uncommonly beautiful images captured by Claudio Miranda, the haunting and emotionally eloquent music scored by Mychael Danna, the seamless visual effects created by a team of thousands and an able cast anchored by the majestic tranquility of Irrfan Khan, this seemingly impossible leap was achieved in front of our eyes, and it was magical.

Faithful as the adaptation is to the original, it also inherited the book's weaknesses, evidenced by some glitches in editing. But as a fan of Martel's work, especially his take on the power of storytelling and the essence of faith, there's really nothing more you can ask for than the vision and craft of an assured and soulful filmmaker as amply displayed in this movie. For that, thank you, Ang Lee.

De rouilles et d'os (Rust and Bone)

The rawness, immediacy and blunt force from Jacques Audiard's previous effort "Un prophète (A Prophet)" are still palpable in "De rouilles et d'os (Rust and Bone)", but here the director applies much more subdued, softly expressive lensing to create a savage lyricism in his frames and allow the vulnerability of the characters to shine through.

The two leads, Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, both playing scarred souls with physical wounds, gave superb performances that bare and dare with uncompromising honesty. It's just too bad the film lacks an overriding narrative punch to bring it all home in the end.

In Another Country

Some scenes in Korean director Hong Sang-soo's "In Another Country" fall flat on a curious artificiality from a stiffness in dialogue, but for the most part, it's a wonderfully organic comedy about cultural clashes based once again on the filmmaker's winning formula of repetition and variations, whereby the follies of life get revealed in a puzzling, dazzling structure.

The deceptively simple story is sprinkled with delightful, observant details, and Isabelle Huppert, as magnificent as always, has seldom been so playful and loose on the big screen, it's a joy to watch.