2012 in film

Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, "2012 has been a good year for Hollywood and off-Hollywood. Note, once more, the remarkable Hollywood nexus of the Gotham and Independent Spirit nominees, as the path of independent financing becomes ever more significant for filmmakers whose work doesn’t fit into franchise formatting. And that’s a good thing, from the perspective of filmmaking—whether it means that directors and actors share producers’ risks in getting their work made, or that complicit producers give a director’s vision free rein. But the latter notion makes some critics uneasy. There’s an undercurrent of thought—one rooted in an antiquated and nostalgic vision of a halcyon classic Hollywood that supposedly both reached the masses and made modest and un-self-conscious art—that looks to producers to restrain the idiosyncrasies of directors and fit them into a readily marketable package of popular appeal. These critics yearn for the adversarial relationship of producer and director, seeing the producer as the supporter of democratic values and the director as a sort of egomaniacal élitist who, unrestrained, would spend someone else’s money frivolously to make a movie that would please himself and his friends. Of course, that relationship becomes adversarial only if the producer doesn’t see himself as a sort of benefactor, a patron of the arts whose very role is to finance and to foster individual expression—and, as ever, it all depends on who the individual is and what the nature of the vision is. It’s fairly obvious that strong producers improve films made by mediocre directors but often constrain or dilute the distinctiveness and individuality of the work of good ones. There is a political agenda hidden within the critics’ aesthetic preference for the strong hand of the producer, as critics demagogically put themselves in the position of defenders of the people—defending them from radical outliers and finding popular tastes with which to align themselves. It’s another case of left and right agreeing without common ground and leading to bad policy—and, in this case, bad art."[1]

The top 10 films released in 2012 by worldwide gross are as follows:[2]

• The Hunger Games was the first film of 2012 to pass the $500 million mark worldwide, and is also the first film since Avatar to place at No. 1 at the U.S. box office for four consecutive weekends.
• The Avengers grossed $1.519 billion; it is currently the eighth highest-grossing film of all time.
• The Dark Knight Rises grossed $1.084 billion, becoming the 30th highest-grossing film of all time.
• Skyfall grossed over $1.108 billion, becoming the 28th highest-grossing film of all time. It also became the first film to gross more than £100 million, amassing a total of £102.9 million.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, are also among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time (the 44th highest-grossing film of all time); it grossed over $1.021 billion.
• With their 3-D re-releases, two films achieved new milestones: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace reached $1.027 billion, and Titanic reached $2.186 billion, becoming the second film to surpass the $2 billion mark, following Avatar.
• 2012 was the first year to see four films cross the billion-dollar milestone, surpassing the previous year's record of three billion-dollar films.

• 1st AACTA International Awards
• 18th Screen Actors Guild Awards
• 32nd Golden Raspberry Awards
• 38th People's Choice Awards
• 38th Saturn Awards
• 62nd Berlin International Film Festival
• 65th British Academy Film Awards
• 69th Golden Globe Awards
• 69th Venice International Film Festival
• 84th Academy Awards
• 2012 Cannes Film Festival
• 2012 MTV Movie Awards
• 2012 Toronto International Film Festival

• American films
• Argentine films
• Australian films
• Bengali films
• Bollywood films
• Brazilian films
• British films
• French films
• Hong Kong films
• Italian films
• Japanese films
• Mexican films
• Pakistani films
• Russian films
• South Korean films
• Spanish films
• Tamil films
• Telugu films