Visionaries: 2012's Best in Writing and Directing

Screenwriters
Runners-up: Michael Haneke (Amour), Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel), Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master)

5. Reid Carolin (Magic Mike)

Incredibly layered and attentive to even the smallest characters, Carolin's script digs beneath the surface to transform the specificities of this particular group of men into a universal story about love, ambition and the 'American dream.'

4. Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)

Comparisons with the quirky humor and incisive look at young, middle-class New Yorkers in HBO's Girls will be inevitable, but the similarly tailored Frances ups that show's game with whip-smart banter and a personality all Gerwig's own.

3. Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty)

Mark Boal's screenplay is an astounding achievement of journalism on screen. Structured to maximize the intensity in a mundane affair, Boal builds momentum toward the final climax but allows the film to breathe. It's a comprehensive text, as a character study and a propulsive action film.

2. Miguel Gomes (Tabu)

In lesser hands, the major tonal shift would create an imbalance between the comic absurdity of the first half and the swoony romanticism of the second, but Gomes makes them work beautifully in tandem. Its richness is in the simplicity.

1. Tony Kushner (Lincoln)

Erudite and exhaustively researched, the respected playwright's new cinematic work is an engaging and layered work; one that portrays Lincoln as an accessible everyman while maintaining his larger than life character, an antihero clothed in immense power.