It’s fascinating to go through the list and try to find patterns, even though it’s ultimately sort of pointless. Who cares how many films I watched from a particular decade? TV shows aren’t taken into account, either, even though they are increasingly taking up the bulk of my screening time.

But what can I say? Pattern-searching is truly in our nature.

Here are some hard numbers:

• Total number of films: 91
• The number of films released in 2011 that I watched before the year’s end: 35
• The number of non-2011 films I screened for the first time: 44
• The number of non-2011 films I rewatched: 12

“Viewing Log 2011″ will now live in this post, and is listed, for the record, below:

2011 Films
Kaboom (Gregg Araki)
Beginners (Mike Mills)
Fast Five (Justin Lin)
Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
Win Win (Thomas McCarthy)
Incendies (Denis Villeneuve; premiered at Telluride in Sept. 2010)
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn)
Super 8 (J.J. Abrams)
Submarine (Richard Ayoade)
Rango (Gore Verbinski)
Another Earth (Mike Cahill)
Sarah’s Key (Gilles Paquet-Brenner)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
Red State (Kevin Smith)
Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz)
Contagion (Steven Soderbergh)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar)
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (Rodman Flender)
The Muppets (James Bobin)
Hugo (Martin Scorsese)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird)
Margin Call (J.C. Chandor)
The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg)
Shame (Steve McQueen)
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
War Horse (Steven Spielberg)
Weekend (Andrew Haigh)
Season of the Witch (Dominic Sena)
Senna (Asif Kapadia)

Other Films: January – April
The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)
The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, 1938)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Frank Oz, 1988)
The Living End (Gregg Araki, 1992)
It Might Get Loud (Davis Guggenheim, 2008)
The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki, 1995)
Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004, 2nd viewing)
Edge of Seventeen (David Moreton, 1998)
The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983, 2nd viewing)
Hot Shots! Part Deux (Jim Abrahams, 1993, 3rd viewing)
This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
The Naked Gun (David Zucker, 1988, 3rd viewing)
Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980)
The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1994)
Die Hard with a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995)
In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2007)
The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)

Other Films: May – June
The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984, 2nd viewing)
The Hunt for Red October (John McTiernan, 1990, 2nd viewing)
Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979)
Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004)
My Cousin Vinny (Jonathan Lynn, 1992)
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010)
Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Troll 2 (Claudio Fragasso, 1990)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (David Slade, 2010)
Best Worst Movie (Michael Stephenson, 2009)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003, millionth viewing)

Other Films: July – October
The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009)
When Harry Met Sally… (Rob Reiner, 1989)
How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall; 1962)
The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Clerks. (Kevin Smith, 1994)
Clerks II (Kevin Smith, 2006)
Thank You for Smoking (Jason Reitman, 2005)
Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaugh, 2010)
Dogma (Kevin Smith, 1999)
The Late Shift (Betty Thomas, 1996)
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950, 2nd viewing)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer, 2006)
Stardust Memories (Woody Allen, 1980)
The Bad News Bears (Michael Ritchie, 1976)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969, 2nd viewing)
Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997)
C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2005, 2nd viewing)

Other Films: November – December
The Circus (Charlie Chaplin, 1928, 2nd viewing)
Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000, 2nd viewing)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
The Odd Couple  (Gene Saks, 1968)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1969)
Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010)

Note that I do not call these the “Best Films of 2011.” The beautiful thing about films is that each viewer becomes his own critic. As vehemently as friends and I may disagree with each other, the reason we argue in the first place is because we have developed such a deep passion for the movies. Inevitably, we dish out our loves and hates in equal doses.

But for now, let’s stick to the positives. Listed below are my favorite films from the last year. There are a couple that I have not seen yet — notably “Take Shelter” — but this list will make do for now. If some of these movies don’t ring a bell, that is all for the better. As Roger Ebert notes in his own best-of list, those previously unknown films are the most useful and exciting to discover.

11. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I initially dismissed “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” as yet another lame, money-grabbing prequel/sequel. But my best friend raved about it, and when I reluctantly joined him in the theater for a second viewing, I was happy to discover that it was good — very good. It tosses out the dated and rather nebulous Cold War fears of the original for an even more disturbing notion: that in our desire and hubris to improve our race, we bring about our own destruction.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” masterfully walks the line between silliness and drama, settling on a tone that is pleasurably irreverent and earnest. The sweeping character arc of Caesar (played by the impressive Andy Serkis), the ape who will soon rule humans in the inevitable sequel, is one of the year’s best.

[Dir. Rupert Wyatt | IMDb | Trailer]

10. The Skin I Live In

You walk into a Pedro Almodóvar film knowing that you’re not going to come out the same. Just take a deep breath and plunge into the ensuing madness, knowing that you’re in good hands. Admittedly, they are hands that subject you to not one, but two horrific rapes. But dammit, if it doesn’t make for a ripping story. “The Skin I Live In” is one of the most creative and — literally — gender-bending revenge tales in recent memory. You leave it shaken, but pining for more.

[Dir. Pedro Almodóvar | IMDb | Trailer]

9. Senna

“Senna” is technically a documentary, but it doesn’t have the hallmarks of one. By the end, you know very little about Senna’s personal life; it instead focuses almost entirely on his short but brilliant career as a Formula One driver. This lack of a background holds the documentary back a bit, but it also makes for a very tight and gripping narrative. There are no cuts to talking heads. Interviewed friends and family members are instead relegated to passing on-screen credits, as the filmmakers allow the racing footage do the talking. Gradually, you realize that those races and Senna’s personal life were one and the same.

[Dir. Asif Kapadia | IMDb | Trailer]

8. Margin Call

“Margin Call” is upsetting. I left the theater thoroughly disgusted by the investment firm characters who, in this fictionalized account, trigger the 2008 financial crisis. I initially diverted these feelings — unfairly — to the film itself. But “Margin Call” gradually chips its way into the mind, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I watched it two months ago.

The sharply written script, by J.C. Chandor, who was also the director, is easily the year’s best. Chandor paints his characters as flawed people, but does not let them off the hook. The cast is more than up to the challenge. Kevin Spacey plays a clueless manager with a moral compass; Paul Bettany is a sexaholic who can barely support his family, despite his seven-figure salary; Zachary Quinto is a brilliant, innocent analyst who, after first spotting the disaster, gets quickly eaten up by the system.

And finally, there’s Jeremy Irons, playing the snaky CEO who is willing to destroy the economy in order to keep his company afloat. The scene in which Irons calmly eats breakfast over an unsuspecting New York City may be the year’s most terrifying.

[Dir. J.C. Chandor | IMDb | Trailer]

7. Bill Cunningham New York

This tiny documentary wisely keeps its breadth limited to one remarkable man, the one and only Bill Cunningham. Cunningham, a photographer for The New York Times who maintains a lovely video series on street fashion, is an adorable, shy guy whose passion for photography is completely infectious.

I wrote a reflection on the documentary earlier this year, but what emerges is a portrait of a man who remains quite lonely, holding tightly to his own secrets. The filmmakers don’t push the issue; they slowly and imperceptibly strip away the layers, culminating in an astounding scene in which they gently ask Cunningham if he is gay. The camera stays on him for several minutes as he tries to remain composed and come up with an answer. The moment could have been exploitative, but Cunningham refreshingly comes across as someone who’s just as vulnerable and human as the rest of us.

[Dir. Richard Press| IMDb | Trailer]

6. A Separation

The title of this remarkable Iranian film is more than apt. Here is a collapsing family that finds itself pitted against their former house sitter, who claims they pushed her down some stairs and killed her unborn child. Dark stuff, to be sure, but there are no villains here, just flawed people trying to get by on a lower-middle class income. Unlike “The Descendants’” rather reductive portrayal of family tensions, “A Separation” feels like a film about real people. Where “The Descendents” used Hawaii as a pretty backdrop, “A Separation” gives viewers a complete sense of urban Iran, from the subtle tensions between its men and women, to the bustling streets and courtrooms. Director Asghar Farhadi’s decision to stay on a pointedly ambiguous shot at the film’s end would simply not happen in a Hollywood movie — this film has balls.

[Dir. Asghar Farhadi | IMDb | Trailer]

5. Submarine

“Submarine,” which I wrote about a few months back, is a great film about adolescence, selfishness and self-discovery. Director Richard Ayoade has an impressive, dynamic sense of composition and camera movement. His film is very funny, but its humor is rooted in an honest and serious consideration of identity. We may be the king of our own little worlds, but what happens when that hubris collides with the reality of relationships?

[Dir. Richard Ayoade| IMDb | Trailer]

4. Weekend

“Weekend,” which I reviewed recently, is now the standard by which all other gay films will be measured. Using a minimalist, meticulously composed style, director Andrew Haigh creates one of the most honest romances ever put to film. The movie ends on a perfect, uplifting-yet-ambiguous note, and the chemistry between its two leads continues to sizzle long after the final frame.

[Dir. Andrew Haigh | IMDb | Trailer]

3. The Tree of Life

It took three screenings before Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” fully clicked with me. (You can read my thoughts on my first screening here.) For better or for worse, this is a very personal film. Malick’s bucolic vision of childhood probably does not match that of most of his viewers. Oh, but what a vision. The film has an oddly straightforward, narrative logic to it: Upon learning about the death of their son, the family considers the larger meaning of life, before they jump back into the specific memories of their childhood. The brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki has a knack for keeping his camera unhinged, ready to capture a moment or a character’s face at its most expressive. If he does not win the Oscar for Best Cinematography this year, I will be deeply shocked.

[Dir. Terrence Malick | IMDb | Trailer]

2. Hugo

“Hugo” is love in cinematic form. It shamelessly pulls inspiration from the earliest stages of film history, complete with Ben Kingsley playing Georges Melies. It is the rare case of nostalgia producing a breath of fresh air, life and inspiration for the present. The 3-D is a perfect marriage of art and technology, used to augment camera movements and characters’ emotional states.

With “Hugo,” Scorsese and his longtime collaborators Robert Richardson (cinematography), Thelma Schoonmaker (editing), and Dante Ferretti (production design) are at the top of their game. The result is nothing short of staggering, and its effects can be felt by all audience members. At a screening I attended, several kids in the audience gasped when Hugo discovered that his diary had been reduced to ashes. This is a complex film with a lot of dialogue, but Scorsese’s sense of visual language is so powerful that he easily forges a connection with viewers.

[Dir. Martin Scorsese| IMDb | Trailer]

1. Incendies

“Incendies” is technically a 2010 film, but since it didn’t screen at any other American festivals outside of Telluride, I’ll bend the rules a bit. “Incendies” is a monumental work, and one of cinema’s greatest epics. The fact that it barely had any screen time in theaters this spring is a tragedy.

It begins on a small level, in present-day Canada, where a sister and brother are tasked by their recently deceased mother to find their long-missing father. As the sister reconstructs her mother’s traumatic past, director Denis Velleneuve deftly travels among multiple points of view and places in time. The mother, it turns out, was an outcast who found herself stuck in the middle of a religious-based civil war in an unnamed Middle East country, based loosely on Lebanon.

André Turpin’s masterful cinematography suits every moment, with impressively executed natural lighting that doesn’t draw attention to itself. ”Incendies”‘s unwavering look at the way wars shatter individuals and societies simultaneously is second to none. In its oddly jumbled way, “Incendies” is the perfect anti-war film.

[Dir. Denis Villeneuve | IMDb | Trailer]

A couple of months ago, I complained about the pervasiveness of G.V.S. — Gay Victimization Syndrome — in contemporary gay movies. Such films remain stuck in the past, and refuse to take a chance on the realities of the present. Viewers can find the antidote in a remarkable 2011 film called “Weekend.”

The scope is limited to two men, spending two days together in their working-class neighborhood in Nottingham. Andrew Haigh, who wrote, directed and edited “Weekend,” works within that narrow frame to create one of the most honest romances ever put to film. It begins with Russell (Tom Cullen), a handsome, bearded young man, stopping by his best friend’s party. Haigh, working with the cinematographer Urszula Pontikow, wisely keeps his camera on Russell whenever he isn’t talking. We can tell, just by the way he behaves and looks on at his fellow partygoers, that something isn’t right, that something is missing in his life.

What better way to cure this lack than by going to a gay club? The night is a disjointed blur, anchored only by Russell’s sideways glances at another handsome, bearded man. Suddenly, it is the morning after, and Russell finds himself being interviewed on tape about their post-coitus experience by the aforementioned man, whose name turns out to be Glen (Chris New). Glen, who is staging the makeshift interview for a future art exhibition, is as aggressive and outspoken as Russell is reticent. “Why are you afraid to talk about sex?” he asks a bewildered Russell.

What began as a one-night stand blossoms into something deeper, and Cullen and New have the chemistry to pull the relationship off. Their characters are obviously attracted to one other, but they also exhibit a slight and understandable hesitancy arising from the sudden nature of their romance. Haigh continues to focus on those telling non-verbal moments, from the slightest gesture to the slightest downturn of the eyes. To enumerate all the stages in which their relationship develops in this review would not be fair; they must be seen to be believed. (The film can be streamed on Netflix.)

“Weekend” is most successful at showing how a relationship can bring the best and the worst out of people. For every cute smile that Russell and Glen give each other, there is a hidden insecurity they must surmount. The two men ride the train together, after a night out with Glen’s friends. Russell comments on how it is nice to hang out with gay people, but Glen brushes it off. “You realize they’re just as much idiots as the rest of us,” he says with a knowing smile. “Weekend” eschews homophobic characters and tired coming-out stories for a more encompassing narrative that any couple, gay or straight, can relate to. It isn’t society, but the men themselves who are their own greatest enemy and asset.

“War Horse” can be insufferable. Based on the eponymous children’s book by Michael Morpurgo, Steven Spielberg’s film is a mess of schmaltzy, melodramatic tropes. John Williams’s lush orchestration yanks at the viewer’s heartstrings. And whenever the film moves to the English countryside, the brilliant cinematographer Janusz Kaminski — a frequent Spielberg collaborator — defaults to a “Gone With the Wind” look: imagine silhouetted figures placed against an achingly gorgeous blood-red sunset.

“War Horse” is extremely earnest about its schmaltziness, and about the naiveté of the horse and the boy at the heart of its story. It is this very earnestness that makes the film memorable, even if it is a failure. It opens with Albert Narracott (played by newcomer Jeremy Irvine) crouching behind a fence and fixing his gleaming eyes on the sight of the future War Horse being born on a field. The boy’s titillating fixation is mildly disconcerting, although this is as far as the film hews to the birds and the bees. From that moment on, their bond is sealed.

As their relationship deepens over the next 45 minutes, it is difficult, while sitting through each of those minutes, to understand what Spielberg was going for. The tone is so saccharine, the colors of the English countryside so saturated, that at first, “War Horse” seems to be parodying the typical boy-and-[insert animal] story. But Spielberg remains quite serious about sticking with this sickeningly beautiful pre-war setting. Just when the viewer begins to lose all hope, Europe erupts in war, and the horse is thankfully sold by the boy’s father to the British Army.

This is where things get interesting. No one can match Spielberg when it comes to filming battle scenes, and it was not until watching this film that I came to fully understand how traumatic World War One was. It wasn’t just a futile bloodbath that destroyed a generation of Europeans; it was the destruction of a previous way of life.

The War Horse represents nature and the previous way of life; the tanks, machine guns and tear gas represent total annihilation by mechanized warfare. These are shamelessly obvious metaphors that Spielberg, to his credit, does not shy away from. The two most memorable scenes in “War Horse” concern this traumatic struggle between the past and future.

In the film’s first battle, a line of British calvary charge at a German camp and seem to be winning — until they reach a line of hidden machine gun encampments. A clever wide shot shows dozens of horses, sans their riders, leaping over the steaming, still-firing machine guns. It strikes me as the one truly brilliant Spielberg moment in the film, an ingenious depiction of the charge’s futility that doesn’t exploit its violent failure.

Spielberg is less convincing and less subtle when he attempts to find a common, primordial bond that unites soldiers from warring countries. Take the initially stunning sequence in which the War Horse breaks free and thunders through No Man’s Land, forging a path through the barricades and barbed wire. When a roll of wire finally downs him, a sympathetic English soldier and a sympathetic German soldier hesitantly step out of their respective trenches and reach the horse, armed with wire clippers. “You speak good English,” notes the English soldier. The German soldier gently corrects him: “I speak English well.”

Sadly, the moment is somewhat neutered by the fact that all of the characters, whether English, German or French, have been speaking English throughout the film’s entirety. This is a bizarre oversight, considering how effectively Spielberg used the discrepancy of language in “Saving Private Ryan.”

In any case, no matter how much those two soldiers talk, there is no image quite as powerful or telling as a horse charging a line of barbed wire or machine guns. Hidden beneath this melodrama of a naive boy and his horse is the haunting story of a modernizing world undergoing a violent adjustment period. It is true that viewers need a sense of that seemingly perfect pre-war environment, to contrast with the brutal battles they witness later on. But with an antebellum society as saccharine and corny as “War Horse”’s, it is impossible to take that underlying, larger struggle as seriously as it deserves to be.

I need to be up-front: I have not seen the first three “Mission: Impossible” films. The fourth and latest entry in the franchise did not catch my interest — until I noticed the director attached to the project. Brad Bird has directed three brilliant animated feature films: “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles,” and “Ratatouille.” “The Incredibles” remains Pixar’s best film, in large part because its fantastical, high-energy scenes are grounded by the mundane realities of modern life. If there is anybody who could pull off thrilling action that seamlessly develops character, it is Brad Bird. The only thing is, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” is Mr. Bird’s first attempt at a live-action film. Was he able to pull it off?

There is a lot to admire in “Ghost Protocol.” Take the early scene in which we are first introduced to IMF agent Ethan Hunt, played by an excellent and surprisingly youthful-looking Tom Cruise. It builds slowly, with Hunt stuck in a Russian prison cell, casually tossing stones away from him. A cell down the hall mysteriously opens up. Then another, and more still, until Hunt is finally released, thanks to an omniscient IMF tech expert named Benji (Simon Pegg, providing reliable support as the dork with an acerbic wit). The camera impressively follows Hunt as he rushes through the prison, dispatches riot police, switches direction, and eventually, inevitably, escapes.

So, Mr. Bird is in top form. He continues to make shooting action look easy. Using clean compositions and seamless edits, we gain a clear sense of the geography without losing any of the fights’ momentum — much easier said than done.

But “Ghost Protocol” falls apart when it comes to its story, whose script Mr. Bird did not write. It has something to do with a Russian genius/madman who wants to remake society by detonating a stolen nuclear device. It is a completely forgettable and tired plot, where, since everything is at stake, nothing is really at stake.

“Ghost Protocol” will likely and deservedly be best known for the astounding sequence in which Tom Cruise scales the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai. Cruise, and a heavy IMAX camera, are actually accomplishing the stunt thousands of feet above the city. In IMAX projection, whenever the camera looks down at the desert floor, it elicits a sickening sense of vertigo that is nothing short of exhilarating.

But I do not remember why the IMF agents had to go to Dubai in the first place — or some palace in Mumbai. And since Hunt is already a super-agent, his character does not have much room for growth. He scales the Burj Khalifa because he has to; it is merely a part of his job. Mr. Bird does as much as he can to raise the stakes within these self-contained sequences — one of Hunt’s magnetic gloves malfunctions — but the vacuum in the overarching narrative lessens their impact.

“Ghost Protocol” leaves its viewers in an odd position. It is unashamedly enjoyable, and refreshingly, the filmmakers do not shy away from how comical and ridiculous the “Mission: Impossible” concept is. If the IMF agents are disavowed by the U.S. government, how do they have access to beautiful suits? Or showers? Or a gorgeous concept BMW sedan that Tom Cruise gets to drive? (Kudos to BMW for creating the most effective product placement in a film, ever.)

But I wonder how the film would have been if Ethan Hunt had to live off the land and think outside the box, without the aid of 22nd-century technology. Brad Bird established his reputation on action scenes that developed character. Here, the action scenes are fantastic, but lose their impact because of the story’s utter flimsiness. I am glad that “Ghost Protocol” is as good as it is, but I suspect viewers will leave the theater with the nagging feeling that it could have been much more than a well-executed action film.

It happened again. I was perusing Netflix Instant Watch and quickly skimmed through a bunch of movies, as if sampling a platter of appetizers. How about “Tron Legacy”? It had nice lighting and a great soundtrack, but then it became a full-out video game and I grew bored. Next: “Gosford Park.” It was typical Robert Altman, with a slow pace, pretty photography and lots of seemingly meaningless dialogue overlapping each other, making it difficult to focus on what was really essential. Facebook was more interesting, so after 20 minutes, that film was out, too.

And then I noticed an unusual offering: “C.R.A.Z.Y.,” a nice little film out of Quebec that premiered back in 2005. I recall watching it a couple years after its release, just after I had come out to my parents. In retrospect, it was the perfect film to watch at the time, since it was about a gay teenager trying to come to terms with himself and his parents. Rewatching it again after all these years, I came away more impressed than before with its nuanced look at family dynamics.

Here’s the basic set-up: A middle-class Catholic family in Quebec with five sons, each with very different personalities, growing up in the ’70s. The possibilities for conflict are ripe, and ”C.R.A.Z.Y.” duly milks out all the creative juice for what it’s worth. Most of the drama centers on Zac, played by the attractively enigmatic Marc-André Grondin, who happens to be their strict father’s (the fantastic Michel Coté) favorite son. The only problem is, Zac is a bit of an oddball, and also gay, which his father finds impossible to accept. “A son of mine won’t be a fairy,” he declares at one point. It’s very on-the-nose dialogue, but it still works in the context of all the ups and downs their relationship goes through.

“C.R.A.Z.Y.” is not a perfect movie — far from it. Its treatment of Zac’s sexuality falls victim to Gay Victimization Syndrome (G.V.S.), which I wrote a bit about earlier this year in a profile on filmmaker Gregg Araki:

Contemporary gay movies are often hindered by a victimization trope that ultimately stagnates the genre. People may keep coming out, a la the clumsy, Mormon-o-rific “Latter Days,” but what happens to them afterward? “The most boring movie in the world to me is the coming out movie,” Araki says, laughing. “I will never make one … It’s been done, and you can only tell a story so many times.”

The pattern is familiar to viewers who have watched classic gay films like “Latter Days” or “Edge of Seventeen.” Usually, the protagonist exhibits a passivity that is, frankly, boring in 2011. In “C.R.A.Z.Y.,” Zac stares longingly at a man, grows angsty, and then punishes himself or others because of his own insecurity. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Another side effect of G.V.S. is an aversion to depicting gay romance or sex. For some reason, whenever Zah is about to cross a new sexual threshold, like masturbating with a guy for the first time, the camera pulls away and cuts abruptly to the next scene. It instead shifts to the aftermath, from Zac’s father’s perspective. This shift is admittedly interesting, since the film is really about that father-son dynamic. But it is also a cop-out.

The problem isn’t that I want to see more of Marc-André Grondin having sex. (Correction: It isn’t just that I want to see more of Marc-André Grondin having sex.) ”C.R.A.Z.Y.” has so much going for it, from the excellent cast and lively conflicts to the outstanding classic-rock score. But because the filmmakers were afraid to take viewers all the way through Zac’s journey, it falls short of becoming the perfect, G.V.S.-less film that I’m still waiting to see.