May I have the envelope, please . . .

OK, let's start with the easy: my three favorite movies of the year, without any question, were Moonrise Kingdom (for sheer feel-good smiles), Ruby Sparks (for a stunningly tough and smart dissection of romantic narrative), and Cloud Atlas (for audacious and mostly successful ambition).

But if you're asking "best," that's probably Lincoln--which, I hasten to add, is also enormously entertaining, but I use the b-word because it is also so much much of what the movies can do big, to engage head and heart and soul. Unless, of course, The Master--about which I exited the theater of such mixed minds that I didn't even include it last night--is the best for the same reason.

To those four-plus, I'll add six more that moved me or wowed me or tickled me for a top ten or eleven, the ordering alphabetical, the criteria floating:

• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• Cloud Atlas
• Damsels in Distress
• Django Unchained
• Footnote
• Holy Motors
• Lincoln
• The Master (maybe)
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Ruby Sparks
• A Separation