Quite reasonably, many of 2012’s year-end reviews focused on the triple celebrations of the Jubilee, Olympics, and Royal pregnancy. For many, the year was quite different. In February, on Blues Funeral, Mark Lanegan’s end-of-the-world vocals presaged apocalyptic weather, war and death. It felt like an Old Testament prophecy being filtered through a Seattle drug addict. Which it virtually was.

Such is the warts and all nature of the rock star biography that something as personal as the addiction memoir has become almost passé. Lucky then that Mike Doughty – one-time frontman of cult 90s alt-rockers Soul Coughing turned eclectic solo artist – didn't write an ordinary addiction memoir.

End of year lists are, of course, wildly arbitrary – based on what raddled writers can scrape from their memory-barrels come deadline day, with half an eye on what we think our colleagues are going to pick so our choices will end up in aggregated lists too.

If the subtitle - The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel - didn't make it clear enough, Hit So Hard was never going to be your average "rockumentary". At about eight minutes in, before the titular drummer properly establishes us in the 1990s US grunge scene that forms much of the backdrop to her story, Schemel is already speaking openly and frankly about the addictions to alcohol and drugs that cost the lives of friends, her role in a platinum-selling rock band and very nearly her own life.

There must be a way out of their Hackney council estate life for brothers Rashid (James Floyd, very sharp on screen here) and Mo (non-professional Fady Elsayed), whose claustrophic home life lived (more or less) to traditional parental rules, contrasts with the energy of the streets outside, where drug-dealing is the most lucrative occupation and there’s always a hint of violence in the air.

Because Brand has become something of a brand – the hair, the clothes, the pantomime gait, the post-Carry On banter – he can be hard to take seriously. Nevertheless, I’ve been an admirer since his jaw-droppingly risqué appearances on Big Brother’s Big Mouth in the mid-Noughties. It was obvious that this man loved the English language and had a ribald wit that wasn’t going to be contained by Big Brother’s sister show for long.

Comedic curio Casa de mi Padre features Will Ferrell in his most surprising role yet – that of a Mexican rancher who “no habla inglés”. This Spanish-language film is a tongue-in-cheek thriller featuring Ferrell alongside Mexican stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. It’s Acorn Antiques meets El Topo: frequently batty, wilfully inept and performed with aplomb by a sporting cast.

We’ve seen a few American film and TV actresses grace the West End stage with surprising potency, but no one surely will surpass Laurie Metcalf for profound emotional truth-telling in Eugene O’Neill’s shattering family drama, given an unbeatably cast new production in London’s West End. Metcalf's by no means famous over here now, so long after her brilliant stint in Roseanne Barr's Nineties sitcom, but this is one of those performances you won't forget, up there in the Vanessa Redgrave class.

He has been called “America’s sharpest musical storyteller” by Rolling Stone, and has enough talent to give Bob Dylan’s talking blues a run for their money. The East Nashville-based singer-songwriter, guitarist, yarn-spinner, troubadour and amiably agnostic stoner has 10 new stories on his 14^th album, the title of which acts as a pretty accurate calling card for the Snider experience: Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables.

The Olympics will be upon us all any minute now, but for the residents of East London they have been physically sprouting at the end of the road in the shape of a futuristic stadium for years. It takes the role of a shy walk-on in Wild Bill, a looming symbol of a local regeneration which was touted as integral to the hosting bid. It’s safe to say that the London seen here will not earn the grateful rubberstamp of the Cultural Olympiad. If you could get onto a podium for knifing, gashing, stabbing, thumping and thrashing, the characters we meet here could have been contenders.