I hope you had as much fun at the movies as I did in 2012. Even as the global artistic community laughed at Mayan end-times predictions, they worked twice as hard to make humanity's "last" films memorable.
It's as if every major studio head kicked off 2010 by saying, "Look, we're not gonna be around in a couple years, so go crazy. You wanna update 21 Jump Street and The Three Stooges? Knock yourself out. But make 'em great, 'cause sequels just ain't happening. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to give notes on my lunar compound blueprints."
In face, there were so many great films that, for the first time in years, I had a hell of a time narrowing my favorites down to a "top ten". At one point, I'd considered expanding the list to twelve or fifteen. But as much as I adored The Cabin in the Woods, Ted, Snow White and the Huntsman, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and Rock of Ages, they didn't stick with me in the same way as those that made the final cut.
Before we get to it, let's talk caveats. First, what you might consider "glaring omissions" are not omissions at all. To be fair to you and to myself, the "Top 10 of '12" is comprised only of the films I managed to see last year. As much as I wanted to squeeze in Lincoln, Les Miserables, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, I simply didn't have the time or the money (mostly the time). Were I paid to alternately sit in a theatre and pound away on a keyboard, this list might look quite different. As it stands, I still have a demanding, wholly unrelated day-job that makes seeing everything impossible.
Second, this is not your typical "Best of" list. There are a lot of genre films on here, which may raise some eyebrows. If you think my decision to elevate horror movies and found-footage flicks over sweeping historical dramas is some indication of immaturity, I suggest you actually watch all the films that made the cut and then get back to me. I'll put the creative and emotional highs of any movie on this list up against Zero Dark Thirty--which, frankly, is struggling to make my top-thirty slot.
Agree or not, I welcome your feedback. Here's hoping that 2013 is just as switched-on as 2012.
Enjoy!
10. Dead Weight Just when I thought apocalypse dramas and zombie movies were played out, along comes Adam Bartlett and John Pata's stirring, meditative twist on both genres. Dead Weight has the best "people are the real monsters" conflict since Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The filmmakers wrench every ounce of greatness from their indie budget and talented cast by focusing on performance and ignoring graphic violence completely. The draw isn't evisceration or CGI head explosions; it's the inventiveness with which Pata and Bartlett weave road picture, survival picture, and love story elements into a sad, sprawling tapestry. And kudos to star Joe Belknap for selling the hell out of his Charlie character--who would have been at the center of an entirely different kind of horror movie, had the world not ended.
9. Sinister What happens when you throw Ethan Hawke into a "fictitious version" of a found-footage movie, co-written by a former Ain't it Cool News reporter? The answer is as surprising as the film is creepy. Creators Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill deliver a film that is part The Shining, part The Ring, and all balls-to-the-wall conviction. They're not afraid to kill kids, have kids kill their parents and siblings, and cut out the requisite "climactic monster chase scene". This movie is about obsession and choice, and the idea that the bogeyman doesn't need to be a hitman: given a nudge in the wrong direction, people have got unconscionable acts down to a science.
8. Chronicle No one asked for another played-out-genre cocktail, but Josh Trank and Max Landis said "Trust us" before beer-bonging Chronicle down our collective throats. I've never been such a happy drunk. More than a superhero story, more than a shaky-cam found-footage movie, Chronicle is a story about bullying and the iffy bonds of high school relationships. What if Carrie White had grown up in the Document Everything Age, and then found out she was Superman? That's not precisely what happens here, but star Dane DeHaan turns in one of the saddest, most quietly terrifying performances since Sissy Spacek swung by the prom in 1976.
7. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World Sometimes, it comes down to a song. The climactic scene in which Steve Carell carries a sleeping Keira Knightley to the helicopter that will reunite her with family on Earth's last day has stuck with me since early summer--thanks in large part to The Hollies' beautiful "The Air That I Breathe". The rest of Lorene Scafaria's dramedy is also twistedly, romantically beautiful, but those last fifteen minutes...damn. Seeking a Friend, like The Cabin in the Woods, is unafraid to stare at the tragic comedy of its dark premise. A lesser, cowardly film would have blinked.
6. Argo In a time when perusing Wikipedia has made reading history books as out-moded a concept as segregated lunch counters, Ben Affleck's Argo makes history cool again. The film tells a formerly classified side-story about the Iranian hostage crisis, in which a group of American embassy workers is hidden in the Canadian ambassador's apartment. Affleck's CIA consultant character devises a wild plot to whisk them out of the country as members of a Star Wars knock-off's film crew--which necessitates putting an actual movie into production. Where Argo lacks twists and turns, it compensates with great performances, nail-biting drama, and the fun of learning about world events through the cracked lens of early-80s sci-fi.
5. Dredd One of the greatest would-be franchise kick-off movies in recent memory is also one of 2012's biggest flops. It's a crime that we'll likely never see more of Pete Travis's dystopian future society and the iron-willed lawman who protects it. More exciting and emotionally satisfying than the sloppy, overly-hyped Dark Knight Rises, Dredd not only proved to be a brutal, honest-to-God superhero movie, but also gave 3D a reason to exist--thanks largely to the artistry of Oscar-winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.
4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey I embarked on my own unexpected journey last year by revisiting--and falling in love with--Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's a good thing, too, because I was able to slip right into the world of The Hobbit and enjoy a ride that I would have found torturous a decade ago. More than Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis' touching performances, Jackson's decision to shoot his new trilogy in high-frame-rate IMAX 3D has (temporarily) legitimized the disposable-plastic-glasses industry and given movie fans a real reason to head to the multiplex. Missing out on The Hobbit in the way the director intended is like settling for 2001 or Lawrence of Arabia on a 13" black-and-white TV.
3. Looper Looper is a hyper-violent, futuristic time-travel movie starring Bruce Willis. I don't blame you for saying "no thanks", considering the actor is at almost the same level of over-saturation as he was before The Sixth Sense came out. But he's made himself cool and interesting again by teaming up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rian Johnson--whose heartfelt sci-if crime drama brings brains back to the blockbuster. In the same way that folks who usually avoid these movies should give it a chance immediately, I must warn fans of badass 'splosion pictures that this one is for grownups. Not everyone can handle the mid-film tonal shift or follow the themes from start to finish. But for the switched-on and adventurous, brain-gasms don't get much joyously messier than this.
2. Django Unchained The more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I get with placing this in the number two spot. Django Unchained is a wonderful movie that's all but crippled by a circuitous, tacked-on, twenty-five minute epilogue and director Quentin Tarantino's baffling Aussie accent. Thanks to home-video technology, though, I'll soon be able to chapter-forward from the end of the Candie Land shoot-out to Django's triumphant return, and pretend it was put together like that in the first place. See this on the big screen, and marvel at Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson (not kidding about the last two). But feel free to zone out in the last act of this flawed masterpiece.
1. Cloud Atlas Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski's centuries-spanning ode to fate was the biggest, most satisfying surprise in a year of big, satisfying surprises. Of course, no one went to see it. A triumph of art, heart, and philosophy, Cloud Atlas isn't just a New Age celebrity vanity project; it's a great ray of hope for a world in which even the most minor of daily struggles can seem like an epic battle to keep everything together. The filmmakers posit that there's something to this, and that every decision we make will not only ripple through the world, but also through time. Don't worry: the film is also very exciting, funny, and breathtakingly beautiful. For those of us who not only keep our brains turned on at the movies but also sharpen pencils, smooth the corners on our notebook paper, and brew two pots of coffee beforehand (mentally speaking, of course), Cloud Atlas is the cinematic Bar Exam of human experience. In this case, the test itself is the reward.
Saturday, March 16, 2013 at 06:47AM