For film lovers, 2012 has not been kind. Hollywood supplied the expected dreck (special shout-out to Three Stooges!), but even the top talent deliv­ered work that was slightly off-target. The biggest disappoint­ment? Perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, which boasted impressive perfor­mances from Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman but whose sorta-Scientology-based story ul­timately went [...]