4. Hope Springs
David Frankel's latest film about old people shagging was always going to benefit from strong turns by Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones, but I certainly didn't expect to be this emotionally engaged in what looked like it would be a silly, harmless film about people growing old. Though the subject of the sex lives of the old is something of an awkward topic, Frankel approaches it in an amusingly honest, upfront way, while Streep and Jones deliver emotionally naked performances that has Jones especially in a sort of mode which we've not really seen before. Who would expect we'd ever get a movie scene in which Meryl Streep tries to administer oral sex to Tommy Lee Jones in a cinema? Certainly not me, but it was one of the most ludicrously funny moments of 2012. With its resolute honesty towards the ageing process and how expectations shift throughout the years, the film might not say much new about the fact that relationships are hard work, but the means with which it resolves its story means that we are actively rooting for this couple to make it.