I didn't see as many movies this year as I would have liked (Black Swan, The King's Speech, True Grit all remain unseen so far) but here are some of my favourites from the past year.

Kick-Ass: Vulgar, violent and funny. I was totally blind-sided by this one and when I got out of the theatre with my friend, neither one of us could believe this movie got made — but we were glad that it did. Chloë Moretz stole the show. (Why haven't I seen Let Me In yet? I don't know…)

How to Train Your Dragon: I wasn't expecting much but was charmed by the character designs, voice acting and a decent story. It's cute but not hokey. Plus, Toothless reminded me of one of my cats.

Inception: How could I not love a movie that employs recursion so ingeniously? Second best movie of the year.

The Social Network: Ignore the whole "Facebook movie" nonsense and watch this film for what it is: a character study with great dialogue. The soundtrack is the best I've heard in a while; it fits perfectly in the film and it great to listen to on its own. Best movie of the year.

3D: After sampling more than a few movies in 3D I've come to the conclusion that I don't care about it and that it's not worth the premium to see it. It doesn't add anything aside from gimmicks to a film. (The sole exception has been Avatar, which struck me as something that actually used 3D from the first frame.) And 3D-TV is silly. When we have actual holograms, then I may be interested.

Winter's Bone: I was underwhelmed by this one. The acting was quite good — and Jennifer Lawrence deserves recognition for her convincing portrayal — but the story just didn't grab me and I wasn't sure where it was trying to go. This was probably more a technical thing since I found a lot of the dialogue muddled.