Year in review: DFW.com's best movies of 2012

10. Beasts of the Southern Wild

Set in an isolated stretch of Louisiana bayou, Benh Zeitlin’s fantastical fable about the loss of a way of life is both homespun and haunting. At the center of it is a stirring performance from 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis (pictured).

9. End of Watch

Cop-buddy movies are hardly a rarity, but David Ayer's kinetic, electric and humane exploration of the friendship between a white cop (Jake Gyllenhaal, right) and Latino cop (Michael Peña) on the streets of L.A. is several notches above the competition.

8. The Master

While Paul Thomas Anderson's drama about a man who falls under the sway of a spiritualist leader in post-WWII America has an icy reserve that keeps viewers at arm's length, the performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix turn it into commanding theater.

7. Argo

With The Town and now Argo, Ben Affleck as a director is going from strength to strength. His take on a little-known incident in which a group of Americans were rescued from hiding in Iran by an agent posing as a movie producer doesn't have a lot to do with reality -- the actual incident didn't have nearly as many touch-and-go moments -- but as a taut, thoughtful thriller, Argo delivers.

6. Silver Linings Playbook

David O. Russell, after the dramatics of The Fighter, returns to his more comedic roots with this lightweight but enjoyable dramedy about two emotionally damaged people who find each other. In addition to showcasing Robert De Niro’s best performance in years, it’s the first we’ve seen of Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games) in a role as a woman well beyond girlhood.

5. Life of Pi

Ang Lee's sweeping version of Yann Martel's bestselling novel about a boy lost at sea with wild animals is not only a technical showstopper -- it's one of the few movies worth seeing in 3-D -- but a beautiful meditation on belief and existence. And there's a twist at the end that offers more food for thought.

4. Compliance

True horror has nothing to do with zombies and vampires but the cruelties humans can inflict on each other. Based on a true story, the low-budget indie Compliance, in which a young, low-level employee at a fast-food outlet (Dreama Walker, pictured) is humiliated and harassed by co-workers because an authority figure tells them to, brings to mind such well-known psychological exercises as the Stanford prison experiment (in which those who played guards turned viciously on those who played prisoners) and the Milgram experiment (in which people went against their better judgment to give an unseen victim an electric shock). Ann Dowd, about whom there has been some award-season talk for her supporting actress role, gives an impressive performance as the harried, confused and easily led manager.

3. Headhunters

While Sweden’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has been the breakthrough for Scandinavian thrillers in the U.S., Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters, based on a novel by Jo Nesbo, deserves some of that spotlight, as it’s actually more engaging. When an art-heist mastermind (Aksel Hennie, pictured) targets the new rich guy in town (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game of Thrones), the hunter becomes the hunted in this enthralling, suspenseful nail-biter.