I
disagree with Todd about 2012. I think
it was the best year in movies since (at least) 2009. In fact, I can prove this: That year, Inglorious Basterds ranked 5 on my
year-end list. This year, Django Unchained did not even make my
top ten list. And yet, I would consider Django a slightly better film between
the two (solid Tarantino, not amazing, but still undeniably entertaining). It is also the first year in my life where, if
given choice between going to a theater and staying at home watching a movie, I
would stay at home. Theater audiences
are talking and texting at seeming record-highs. And it’s not a “generational” thing, as the talking
heads love to claim – it’s more often than not 40-50 year olds who can’t shut
up. One of these days, I’ll grow up and
tell them what I think . . . or maybe I’ll just trust the opposite of my instinct. OK,
I’ll stop being grumpy now.
Films
seen: 53
Thumbs up percentage: 56.66%
Thumbs up percentage: 56.66%
Best
Actor: Jack Black, Bernie
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
Best
Supporting Actor: Michael Pena, End of
Watch
Best
Supporting Actress: Cecile de France, The
Kid With a Bike
Underrated
Films: Prometheus, The Dictator
Overrated
Films: Silver Linings Playbook, The Cabin in the Woods, The
Avengers
If
I was an Oscar voter: Zero Dark Thirty,
Michael Haneke (I haven’t seen Amour but
it would be cool if he won), Daniel Day-Lewis, Jessica Chastain, Tommy Lee
Jones, Helen Hunt. I think the Oscar nominations this year absolutely suck.
Worst
Films of 2012: I’ll write this in an article about this later this week. They deserve to be criticized at length.
Honorable
Mention: Django Unchained, The Grey, A Late Quartet, Lincoln, Magic Mike
10.
Compliance (Craig Zobel) Let me
explain this pick. First of all, I would
not recommend you see this movie. It is
absolutely unbearable to watch. Like Funny Games, it is not so much a movie
or conventional story, but an experiment in illustrating human depravity manifested
in its must vulgar forms. The story
(based on real-life events) takes place at a McDonalds restaurant, where a
prank caller posing as a police detective orders one of the young female employees
to strip, while various men are escorted in to “watch over” her. It is neither entertaining nor sensational
nor even particularly insightful. It
simply portrays the events as they surely must have happened, and it is
horrifying. It is like the 15-minute
rape sequence in Irreversible stretched
out to 85 minutes. Some objected to the
film’s sympathy for its characters’ unbelievably stupid actions, but the film
effectively makes audiences question how blind compliance leads to unforgivable
consequences. The jury may be out on whether
this is a “good” film or not, but few films have ever gotten deeper under my
skin.
9.
Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki) When
this film came out in September, most of the publicity it received was a result
of its simultaneous DVD-theater-on demand release (“day-and-date”
release). But refreshingly, it actually turned
out to be an outstanding film, starring Richard Gere (in maybe his best
performance ever) as a hedge fund magnate who is caught in two serious,
coinciding crises: The buyout of his firm, which has been guilty of accounting
fraud for years, and the death of his mistress, for which he is squarely
responsible. The ways in which he is
able to constantly get himself out of the walls caving in around him is
amazing, and really makes you wonder whether the movie is just showing the
powerful connections of Wall Street elite or, in a strange morbid way, romanticizing
the craftiness of corrupt officials like Bernie Madoff (which Gere’s character
appears at least partially inspired by).
Like last year’s brilliant Margin
Call, this is a film rich with details about not just the downfall of Wall
Street after the 2008 meltdown, but about the people most responsible (and
subsequently affected) by the crash.
This is made all the more impressive by the fact that is the first
feature screenplay and film by the 33-year-old director.
8.
Looper (Rian Johnson) Think Minority
Report-meets-The Terminator with
a little bit of Inception on the
side. It’s not just that the story is
ingenious, involving elements of time-travel, black market crime syndicates, and
vigilante terrorism, but that the particular dramatic situations cannot possibly
be described without an intricate knowledge of the sophisticated world the
movie creates. The screenplay is
ingenious in its construction of this dystopian future, but also its creation
of interesting characters and wonderfully unique encounters (such as when
Joseph Gordon-Levitt converses with Bruce Willis, the future version of
himself, over a cup of coffee). Where it
lacks Minority Report’s jaw-dropping
visual palette, it makes up for in a surprising degree of intimacy,
particularly with the characters of Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, who are left
with the unenviable task of (yes, just go with me here) deciding how the fate
of the world will be impacted through their actions. And believe it or not, there is not a second
of it which is corny.
7.
End of Watch (David Ayer) Technically it is a buddy cop film, but
honestly, it is much deeper than that. Not
unlike The Hurt Locker, Ayer’s film
explores the undercurrents of men who seek out dangerous situations for a
living. They do it not necessarily
because they feel a larger duty to improve the world, but also because they are
addicted to the thrill of it. To them,
there is no other worthwhile existence. Jake
Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena play the two LAPD cops at the center of the story,
who monitor the streets of South Central Los Angeles. The film charts roughly a
year in their lives, as they go through various marriages and childbirths in
the midst of ongoing drug busts and homicide investigations. The film is exciting, funny, cynical, tense,
and most of all, real. These feel like
extremely real people, which is the result of a unique handheld visual
aesthetic, career-best performances by Gyllenhaal and Pena, and a story which
at first seems familiar, but delves into quite unexpected terrain at
times.
6.
The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield) Let me describe this film for you (and
hopefully you’re looking at the picture I’ve provided). This is a documentary about Jaqueline “Jackie”
Siegel, a bleached-blonde former model with an impressive boob job. She is married to David Siegel, 30 years her
senior and head of the world’s most profitable time-share corporation. They are billionaires. When the film opens in 2008, they are in the
process of constructing the world’s most expensive private home (which they dub
“Versailles,” pronouncing the “s”). The
first half-hour feels like a Real Wives-esque
exploration into the absurd lives of the rich and famous. But as this film goes along, it turns into
something very different: a portrait of aristocratic people struggling to
retain not only their economic status, but their dignity. It does a tremendous job of showing (but not
convincing) audiences why anyone ever voted for Mitt Romney. And maybe the most amazing thing about it is
that, in a strange way, the Siegels come off as . . . kind of likable. Particularly Jackie, who is less bubbly and
vapid as she is insightful, candid, and self-deprecating. And I hate rich people. I watched this film curious and bored late on
a Saturday night. I have been thinking
about it ever since.
5.
Bernie (Richard Linklater) There was no funnier movie in 2012 than Bernie, and there was no performance as
dynamic, hilarious, and surprisingly deep as Jack Black. He plays an East Texas assistant funeral home
director who befriends an elderly widow who everyone in town hates. From there, the story turns into a dark
comedy of manners by way of Texas stereotypes (always good fodder for Christopher
Guest-inspired mockumentaries like this one).
This is the first collaboration of Black and Richard Linklater since
their wonderful School of Rock in
2003, and like that film, Bernie features
great music, hilarious one-liners, and a story which at first sounds contrived,
but when put in the right hands, is completely unique and fascinating. Also – the scene introducing the juror
members in San Augustine may be the funniest scene I’ve ever seen in a movie. I’m not being hyperbolic. When I saw it, I went into compulsive,
uncontrollable laugher and missed the next five minutes of the film attempting
to be polite to the rest of the audience by controlling myself
(unsuccessfully).
4.
Argo (Ben Affleck) Affleck’s three prior features (Hollywoodland, Gone Baby Gone, and The Town)
showed competency, even while lacking in sophisticated narrative structures,
but Argo is clearly the finest film
he’s ever been a part of behind the camera.
The story is compelling because it is constantly shifting between three
interesting components: The plight of the hostages in hiding at the Canadian
diplomat’s house, the escalating security crisis at the CIA, and the cynical
lives of B-list film executives.
Appropriately, the film is full of heart-pulsing action and suspense, tense
drama, and biting satire. Can you think
of a more unexpected hybrid of genres? Not
to mention, this film is all based on true declassified events. There is not a single uninteresting moment in
this film as the story is shown with great economy, rising tension, and many
surprises. This is one of many major
Hollywood features in the last decade to deal with major crises in the Arab
world, but this may be the only one that does it in such a riveting and
flat-out entertaining manner.
3.
The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre and
Luc Dardenne) The Dardenne Brothers
have never made a bad film (except maybe Lorna’s
Silence, which was only OK) and The
Kid With a Bike is one of their very best.
The story is, not surprisingly, simple: A 12-year-old boy (with, yes, a
bike) is abandoned by his insolvent father, put in an orphanage, and befriended
by kindly hairdresser who eventually becomes his guardian of sorts. He then is tempted into criminal action in
spite of his better instincts. If this
sounds like the plot of Oliver Twist,
you’re not too far off, since the story also deals with issues of peer
pressure, alienation and abandonment, and class divisions. This is one of those wonderful movies, like
last year’s A Separation, which shows
straightforward, easily-understood events, but characters whose thoughts and
actions are fascinating to read into.
Why does the boy resort to the actions he does? Why is the woman so deeply drawn to him? What will happen to these people? In a lesser film, these might be flaws; in a
great film like this, they are blissfully unresolved circumstances left to
ponder by engrossed audiences.
2.
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
Let’s tackle the controversy head on.
First, Republicans have vilified this film because it shows how torture
tactics were used to gain intelligence from suspected terrorists (which they
say had little direct impact on the Seal Team Six raid), while hunches such as
the one Maya has in this film were routinely scoffed at by CIA
bureaucracy. Meanwhile, liberals claim
that the film shows how the Obama administration’s anti-torture policies were met
with resistance by anti-terrorism units.
Roger Ebert attacked the film (unfairly)
as jargon-ridden poor storytelling, while the Academy distanced itself from
controversy by not nominating it in several obvious categories (Best Director,
Best Cinematography, Best Sound). All of
this is inexplicable. First of all, the
torture scenes are shown as part of the larger reality of interrogation
processes that existed in detention camps in the years following 9/11; as
Bigelow herself recently told the Los Angeles Times, no one can deny that
waterboarding was common, if not routine.
To exclude portraying it would be irresponsible and would make Bin
Laden’s capture oversimplistic. The
Obama administration is tacitly criticized in the film, but by its characters,
not its filmmakers, and the intent is to open up a wider discourse about how we
treat suspected terrorists and what appropriate methods of gathering
intelligence should be. Not only is this
masterful cinema, but like all great movies, it begs a meaningful dialogue
afterwards. I don’t know if this is a
better or worse movie than The Hurt
Locker, but for what it’s worth,
Bigelow and Boal are the best filmmaking team working today.
1.
The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) Like two
years ago when I walked into a theater showing the bastardized American remake
of Let the Right One In, I never in a
million years would have guessed this movie would top my list of the year’s
best films, let alone be mentioned on the list (except maybe a spot on the
year’s worst films list). But the truth
is, from its opening moments and through its entire running length, The Hunger Games was the year’s most
entertaining, unpredictable, and captivating motion picture. It was the only 2012 film that, while watching
it in a darkened, packed movie theater, made me completely forget about the
real world around me. Forget the fact,
for a moment, that the film was based on a popular teen book series; this was a
film that had a surprising amount of depth in its treatment of media, culture,
and socio-economic divisions. In an
election year where the Right vilified “47 percent” of listless Americans
(read: anyone not male, white, affluent, or straight), The Hunger Games’ portrayal of the lower districts’ triumph over
the aristocratic elite was uplifting, powerful, and surprisingly relevant in
today’s society. Yes, Elizabeth Banks
and Wes Bentley looked ridiculous, but if you can get past that, the story is
quite deep. But the film also worked as
terrific entertainment, with Jennifer Lawrence giving the best “girl kicking
ass” performance this side of Beatrix Kiddo.
Looking back at the last few years, the films which tend to be number
one on my list share one trait: They take themselves seriously. The
Hunger Games could have been a kitschy, over-the-top action satire for
teens, but Gary Ross and screenwriter Billy Ray knew this story was more than
that, and they made a movie adaptation of the book far better than it deserved
to be.
Thoughts? Disagreements? As long as its not spoilers about Catching Fire, feel free to post below!
