Enough about 2011; let’s look ahead to 2012. This past year was good about offering a diverse set of films that catered to many tastes, especially crowds that wanted something out of the range of standard multiplex fare. But 2012 looks like a much stronger year. We can almost always look ahead to a new year and say that there is a great batch of new films from established favorite filmmakers, movies with wonderful casts, giant event movies and promising indies. But 2012 looks like it has more of those than usual. It’s going to be a good year for movie watchers.

After some deliberation (which no doubt has still allowed me to overlook something for which I’ll facepalm later) here is a list of ten films that I’m very excited to see in 2012, followed by a full page of discussion about a whole bunch of other movies that didn’t make my personal cut but are still bright spots on the 2012 calendar for various reasons. This list could change a lot in the next couple weeks, as Sundance (and then Cannes in May) could reveal a good many new films that will be bright spots on the calendar in ’12.

I’ve also exercised a certain hopefulness here, as there are a few films that don’t yet have official 2012 release dates. Let’s hope they don’t slip.

To some extent, I’ve assumed when writing the blurbs that follow that readers have been following along as we’ve covered news of these films over the past year. To make things easier for those who haven’t, I’ve linked trailers where possible, and pointed to our news coverage of films for which trailers don’t yet exist.

The stuff that didn’t make the list.

There are a great many other 2012 releases that could end up being better than anything I’ve listed above. For various reasons, however, they didn’t make my personal cut.

Additional honorable literary-related mentions go to David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of Don DeLillo‘s Cosmopolis (TBD), and Baz Luhrmann‘s 3D version of The Great Gatsby (Dec 25). Cosmopolis could be Robert Pattinson‘s chance to really prove himself, and a chance for Cronenberg to find liveliness in a story that is mostly constrained to a very small space.

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