How to manage a huge folder collection in two places
Create your 2012 movie folder.  Hold down the command key and left mouse click to select each movie folder that has a movie made in 2012.  Once you have them all selected (with the command key down) hold down the alt key, and "move" the aliases that are created for all of the movie folders you selected into the 2012 folder.  What this does is create a pointer to the original file/folder, it doesn't actually copy the folder and contents.  It's just a representation and "points" to the location of the original folder.  This way you won't waste space (it's like 1kb per alias).

Do this for each of the year folders, and each of the alphabet folders.  Seems like an easy way not to waste space.