“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”

Summit Entertainment

1 hour, 42 minutes

In the 1980s, John Hughes held the defining vision of high school life, at least cinematically. “Pretty in Pink,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”; the list goes on and on.

“Identity Thief”

Universal Pictures

1 hour, 52 minutes

There’s no question that we live in a time of excess. Just look at fast food. Portion sizes are through the roof and the sloppier the mess you can make while eating, the better. And what is the fast food equivalent of cinema? The lazy studio situation comedy, i.e., this week’s overstuffed, scattershot yukfest, “Identity Thief.”

“Silver Linings Playbook”

Weinstein Company

2 hours, 2 minutes

2012 will, I think, go down as a year of mostly enjoyable movies. Not a lot of greatness to be found, but not much junk, either, at least judging by the list I generated.

I saw sixty-one new films this year, and I noticed that most of the films that didn’t number among my favorites tended to be minor disappointments rather than outright failures. “Prometheus” is a good example of this. Ridley Scott’s epic sci-fi horror film wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. Is it his fault or mine that I had hoped it would be the greatest science fiction film of the decade?