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Film:  Lincoln

I'll be surprised if there is a better film this year.  These type of movies are the hardest to make - historical dramas without any action.  How do you keep the audience engaged?  Here's how they do it:  fantastic writing, surprising humor, and top notch acting all the way up and down the movie.  The most incredible accomplishment of the film is how they convey a complicated legal reasoning for the necessity of the 13th Amendment within the dramatic form and how this need drives the movie.

Normally, there are blips in Spielberg movies where it gets overly sentimental and annoying.  There were hints -- he almost went there with the Sally Field character, almost made the Joseph Gordan Levitt relationship too much -- but he pulled back from the brink, probably constrained by the reality of events.

I can't praise this movie enough.  It is my favorite Spielberg film in years and would be deeply surprised if there is a better film this year.