The 20 Best DVDs of 2012: The Year of the Documentary

 

 The Queen of Versailles

Popping back onto my old blog for an annual post; here, in my opinion, are the best films on DVD from the last year. There are many fine TV series (i.e.: Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad), but they aren’t here. For simplicity sake I am mostly talking about 2011-12 theatrical films released on disk this past year. I’d rate all of these four out of five stars since no one film really stood out for me as a classic.

There are almost no decent US dramas being put out anymore with horror, comic book, sci-fi and action movies still dominating but getting tired due to mass-production. Although a few quality American movies do stand out, intelligent and original Hollywood films in my opinion, are still in a decline, making up less than half of my favorites.  Luckily a new wave of strong documentary filmmakers has arrived to take up the slack.  Foreign films are also continuing to come on strong with character studies similar to American cinema of the seventies 

 DVDs are listed by order of their release dates

1-  Hell and Back Again*	January 24, 2012
2-  Project Nim*	February 7, 2012
3-  The Interrupters*	February 14, 2012
4-  Take Shelter	February 14, 2012
5-  The Myth of the American Sleepover	February 28, 2012
6-  The Descendants	March 13, 2012
7-  Cormans’ World*	March 27, 2012
8-  Tyrannosaur+	April 3, 2012
9-  We were Here*	May 15, 2012
10- My Perestroika*	May 15, 2012
11- Jiro Dreams of Sushi*	July 24, 2012
12- Marley*	August 7, 2012
13- A Separation+	August 21, 2012
14- The Cabin in the Woods	September 18, 2012
15- The Avengers	September 25, 2012
16- Prometheus	October 9, 2012
17- The Queen of Versailles*	November 13, 2012
18- Beasts of the Southern Wild	December 4, 2012
19- Arbitrage	December 21, 2012
20- Looper	December 31, 2012

 *=documentary +=foreign  

Happy Holidays & Happy viewing everyone!