The best around
Around this time last year, I expressed excitement over the then-dawning year 2012 in terms of movies, and even though we never got that Cuaron movie or that Gatsby movie or that Coen Brothers movie, 2012 did indeed turn out to be an excellent year on film. I saw a lot of movies I liked, I saw a lot of movies I liked a lot, and I even saw some movies I could say that I loved. Nonetheless, I felt somewhat at a loss when considering whether I should write a proper year-end essay for PopMatters, as they usually have to be organized around some sort of theme. I guess history plays into a lot of the prominent 2012 releases, from the attempt at historical fidelity of Lincoln to the mixing of Hollywood and real life on and off the screen of Argo, to Tarantino's Basterds-style inventions and intentional anachronisms in Django Unchained. The Master engages in a specific period, and even Moonrise Kingdom, in addition to being set in Wes Anderson's world, is also a period piece.
In fact, now I kind of wish I had written that essay because I'm starting to see a lot of connections. But you can draw connections like that almost every year. What resonated for me this year was the mix of new and established auteurs (mostly directors, but some writer-directors and even some just plain writers!) doing great, distinctive things with the medium. With the media, even: Computer animation! Stop-motion animation! Shooting on 70mm! Shooting on 16mm! Shooting in IMAX! Digital cinematography and celluloid, too! Even 3D had a major triumph! (And I'm not just talking about the fact that I avoided seeing The Avengers that way.) It was such a good year that I thought I might not have enough for my Ten Worst list, but, you know, life found a way, and see the end of this post for more on that.
First, movies I thought I might see at some point that I have not yet seen: The Secret World of Arrietty; Detachment; Goon; The Hunter; God Bless America; Chernobyl Diaries; 360; Sparkle; The Apparition; The Cold Light of Day; Stolen; Won't Back Down; Paranormal Activity 4; Alex Cross; The Man with the Iron Fists; Jack and Diane; The Details; Playing for Keeps; Amour; Oslo, August 31st; Rust and Bone.
I notice that last year's list of movies I didn't get around to seeing contained exactly zero movies that I then caught up with the following year, which does not bode well for any of the above-mentioned films, but I do think I'll eventually see The Details or Oslo, at least. I'm not listing any of the documentaries I didn't see because you know what, I don't really like documentaries. I like things that are made up.
Now then:
THE TEN BEST MOVIES OF 2012
...as seen in The L Magazine, where for once (or for twice, as I guess this happened last year too), my list submitted in mid-December still stands as-is. A few more words on each movie below:
1. Moonrise Kingdom
I watched this on opening night in Union Square and my heart sighed and soared. The sequence that begins "Dear Suzy" made me swoon, and then I laughed so hard at one moment that the lady next to me looked at me funny. By the end of the movie I was so entranced with its delicate beauty that I almost didn't want to breathe. I saw it again while eating brunch at Nitehawk and laughed and swooned again. I saw it again on a thirteen-inch television on a boat in the middle of the sea and it made me so happy. That's when I could really tell, this was one of those movies that would be with me for a long time.
2. Looper
Rian Johnson goes three for three; he's the best American writer-director to emerge in the past decade or so. His movies do so much -- they're funny, exciting, touching, wildly original and inventive, beautifully written -- yet they never appear cluttered or overly fussy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been great in a lot of movies, but in his two Johnson movies, he's especially spectacular; they should become the new Scorsese and De Niro.
3. The Master (review)
A movie as fascinating for what it leaves out as for what it shows you. It's not as epic as There Will Be Blood, moving as Magnolia, or tense as Punch-Drunk Love -- yet I also never had any idea where it was going and the movie has lingered with me months later.
4. The Dark Knight Rises
Do nerds regard this as way worse than The Dark Knight? Do today's nerds enjoy anything besides The Raid: Redemption? It doesn't have Heath Ledger's Joker, no, but for me Nolan's Batman movies strike the perfect balance between epic, character-driven, seriousness, and pulpy comics flair. I had a great time at The Avengers but I was surprised by how much Dark Knight Rises moved me.
5. Haywire (review) and Magic Mike
If Soderbergh really takes a break after 2013, I'm going to be pretty bummed out, because he's on a secret hot streak that sometimes it seems like only me and Rob know about: The Girlfriend Experience, The Informat!, Contagion, and now this year's pair of experiments: a streamlined and beautiful action-movie deconstruction, and a consideration of sex and economics with musical-comedy-romantic overtones. Both make sense alongside The Girlfriend Experience: Haywire is similarly built around a compelling non-actor, while Magic Mike is like GFE for boys.
7. Lincoln (review)
Much attention has been paid to Daniel Day-Lewis's acting and Tony Kushner's writing, and rightfully so, but it's also worth noting just how well Spielberg directs this stuff. It's not just restraint and getting out of the actors' and writer's way. In the movie's relatively quiet and interior way, it is masterful filmmaking.
8. Damsels in Distress (review)
Whit Stillman appears to be entering Woody Allen territory where his characters look and sound less and less like actual humans you may have met in your life, yet at the same time, they convey something that feels true or, failing that, weirdly hilarious. Also: The Sambola! International Dance Craze.
9. Killing Them Softly
Not exactly subtle, but the lack of subtlety pays off in the end. Before that, you get some of the best-written, best-acted dialogue scenes of the year, and plenty of stylistic bravado from Andrew Dominik.
10. The Cabin in the Woods
I liked Whedon's Avengers a lot but as much as Iron Man and the Hulk and the Black Widow and Cap all mixing it up filled me with delight, there's perhaps even more glee in this Whedon-coauthored horror riff.
The Next Ten
In many years, any of these ten would've been fighting for a spot within the first ten. This year, they settle for next-ten status but I thoroughly enjoyed and admired all of them.
Django Unchained
The Avengers (review) and Skyfall
Life of Pi
Wreck-It Ralph and ParaNorman (review)
Seven Psychopaths
Prometheus
Bachelorette
Take This Waltz
Ten More!
In roughly descending order, here are ten additional movies I consider well worth your time: Cloud Atlas; Fat Kid Rules the World (review); Brave; Silver Linings Playbook; Zero Dark Thirty; 21 Jump Street; Chronicle; Safety Not Guaranteed; Celeste and Jesse Forever; Premium Rush
THE WORST MOVIES OF 2012
1. The Deep Blue Sea (review)
I try not to stunt-designate movies as the worst of the year, but I admit, I may have developed some additional rancor toward this movie because it not only got good reviews upon release, but became something of a year-end cause celebre for its apparently sumptuous filmmaking and Rachel Weisz's lead performance. Weisz is fine -- she always is, and she's the reason I decided to attend the movie's press screening in the first place -- and there are some moments where the camera moves in interesting ways, sure, but that doesn't change that the movie itself is a crushing bore during which very little happens, and what does happen, happens with a kind of slow-motion self-serious anguish that I only ever understood intellectually, not emotionally. I don't usually hate movies with this much artistic ambition and this little technical incompetence. But The Deep Blue Sea still a solid choice for worst of the year because it was honestly the movie I most wanted to be over for the greatest percentage of its (not particularly hefty) running time.
2. Darling Companion
Then again, this one only misses the number one spot because technically I haven't seen the whole thing. I saw an edited version on a plane (though the version I saw provided no possible context for anything interestingly objectionable being possibly cut out), and mercifully achieved sleep for a brief period around the two-thirds mark. This is a movie about a married couple looking for their lost dog. That's it. Well, actually, there's more: the movie begins with a lengthy prologue establishing how they got the dog. And then there's an opening section where we see the wedding that has resulted in this couple being in the woods for the weekend, including a fascinating scene where family members decide who's taking who to the airport. And there's a gypsy who claims her psychic powers can help the couple find the dog. If that doesn't sound entertaining enough, the couple also has bitter, endless fights sort of about the dog but actually more about the state of their marriage. So if you boil this movie down to a simple premise, it sounds terrible, but once you figure out what else is going on in the movie, that simple premise -- people looking for a dog -- actually starts to sound better by comparison. And if you want the whole thing to sound not just terrible but deeply insane, consider that Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, and Sam Shepard star in this movie. Doesn't that sound like a cast of actors you'd maybe like to see in a movie? Or at very least, a cast of a movie that wouldn't drive you mad? Because of Duplass's presence, I wondered if writer-director Lawrence Kasdan might be attempting some kind of baby-boomer version of mumblecore. Because the last movie Kasdan wrote and directed was Dreamcatcher, it seems more likely that he has lost his fucking mind.
3. Dark Tide (review)
Funny story: I signed up to review this movie on DVD, because I figured hey, Halle Berry in a bikini fighting off sharks in a movie by John Stockwell, who made Blue Crush and Crazy/Beautiful; not great movies, but he definitely knows his way around bikinis and oceans and stuff. The DVD never arrived, but the movie received a brief theatrical release, so Marisa and I went to see it, and it was the second time this year a movie superficially reminded me of the Sam Jackson/LL Cool J shark movie Deep Blue Sea while being vastly inferior to it. I wrote the review linked above... and then the DVD arrived. Because I'm married to a saint, Marisa agreed to take over, sparing me from writing another 800 words about this terrible movie, which you may have noticed I've avoided again by describing the circumstances under which I saw it rather than the movie itself. Which is terrible. If you don't believe me, read one of two Calyer-authored reviews (at least until Nathaniel gets his in?).
4. Girl in Progress (review)
I'm naturally inclined to like movies about teenagers, so one has to be pretty fucking stilted and misguided for me to hate it as much as I hated watching this movie.
5. Battleship (review)
You all know I'm not a snob about this type of movie. This is just a really bad example of this type of movie.
6. Red Dawn (review)
A lot of the first five on my worst-of list are terrible on a writing or experiential level.
Red Dawn has good old-fashioned technical bungling on its side (in addition to being terribly written and a terrible experience).
7. The Paperboy (review)
Nicole Kidman can give an interesting performance in even the worst of circumstances, and The Paperboy is about as bad a set of circumstances as she could possibly find herself in. I hope.
8. Lockout
I cannot fucking believe there are at least a couple of AV Club writers going to bad for this as a fun movie -- seemingly just because it's fun to refer to it as Space Jail. Obviously I am the target audience for a movie you can refer to as Space Jail, and this utterly uninspired, unexciting, all-around unfun movie did nothing to live up to that fake title. The idea of this movie is awesome. The execution of this movie is depressing.
9. Hyde Park on Hudson
I thought other lists including this movie were just stunt-including an Oscar also-ran, until I actually watched it. The film makes a stunning miscalculation in thinking that Laura Linney's character (who, let's be clear, is FDR's handjob-giving distant cousin who acts like a teenager in love. WITH HER COUSIN) makes an excellent pair of eyes from which to view an important historical event, and has an even better narrative voice with which to convey vital information throughout the movie. In SNL terms, she is the girl you wish you hadn't started a conversation with at this party. At the center of the movie, there is something that's kind of interesting: the uneasy relationship between FDR and King George VI. This is unquestionably the best aspect of the movie, and it's also treated and especially resolved with all the sophistication of a sitcom episode. You have to go through an awful lot of creepy and inexplicable cousin-based romance to get to an okay sitcom episode about world leaders.
10. The Devil Inside (review)
Honestly, a lot of it isn't so much worse than any number of found-footage horror pictures, but the see-our-website-for-more-details chaser to the standard and-then-the-camera-shuts-off ending is a stunning enough miscalculation to push this over from deeply mediocre to pretty fucking stupid. I don't think the filmmakers even necessarily intended it, but the idea that they maybe couldn't tell how off-putting it was doesn't speak highly of their skills.
Now that we're done there: 2013! It looks like enough 2012 stuff got bumped into 2013 that, combined with new movies from Scorsese, Soderbergh, McKay, Jonze, Payne, Refn, Malick, and Green, plus a fuckload of sci-fi, that we might get a two-year streak.
In fact, now I kind of wish I had written that essay because I'm starting to see a lot of connections. But you can draw connections like that almost every year. What resonated for me this year was the mix of new and established auteurs (mostly directors, but some writer-directors and even some just plain writers!) doing great, distinctive things with the medium. With the media, even: Computer animation! Stop-motion animation! Shooting on 70mm! Shooting on 16mm! Shooting in IMAX! Digital cinematography and celluloid, too! Even 3D had a major triumph! (And I'm not just talking about the fact that I avoided seeing The Avengers that way.) It was such a good year that I thought I might not have enough for my Ten Worst list, but, you know, life found a way, and see the end of this post for more on that.
First, movies I thought I might see at some point that I have not yet seen: The Secret World of Arrietty; Detachment; Goon; The Hunter; God Bless America; Chernobyl Diaries; 360; Sparkle; The Apparition; The Cold Light of Day; Stolen; Won't Back Down; Paranormal Activity 4; Alex Cross; The Man with the Iron Fists; Jack and Diane; The Details; Playing for Keeps; Amour; Oslo, August 31st; Rust and Bone.
I notice that last year's list of movies I didn't get around to seeing contained exactly zero movies that I then caught up with the following year, which does not bode well for any of the above-mentioned films, but I do think I'll eventually see The Details or Oslo, at least. I'm not listing any of the documentaries I didn't see because you know what, I don't really like documentaries. I like things that are made up.
Now then:
THE TEN BEST MOVIES OF 2012
...as seen in The L Magazine, where for once (or for twice, as I guess this happened last year too), my list submitted in mid-December still stands as-is. A few more words on each movie below:
1. Moonrise Kingdom
I watched this on opening night in Union Square and my heart sighed and soared. The sequence that begins "Dear Suzy" made me swoon, and then I laughed so hard at one moment that the lady next to me looked at me funny. By the end of the movie I was so entranced with its delicate beauty that I almost didn't want to breathe. I saw it again while eating brunch at Nitehawk and laughed and swooned again. I saw it again on a thirteen-inch television on a boat in the middle of the sea and it made me so happy. That's when I could really tell, this was one of those movies that would be with me for a long time.
2. Looper
Rian Johnson goes three for three; he's the best American writer-director to emerge in the past decade or so. His movies do so much -- they're funny, exciting, touching, wildly original and inventive, beautifully written -- yet they never appear cluttered or overly fussy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been great in a lot of movies, but in his two Johnson movies, he's especially spectacular; they should become the new Scorsese and De Niro.
3. The Master (review)
A movie as fascinating for what it leaves out as for what it shows you. It's not as epic as There Will Be Blood, moving as Magnolia, or tense as Punch-Drunk Love -- yet I also never had any idea where it was going and the movie has lingered with me months later.
4. The Dark Knight Rises
Do nerds regard this as way worse than The Dark Knight? Do today's nerds enjoy anything besides The Raid: Redemption? It doesn't have Heath Ledger's Joker, no, but for me Nolan's Batman movies strike the perfect balance between epic, character-driven, seriousness, and pulpy comics flair. I had a great time at The Avengers but I was surprised by how much Dark Knight Rises moved me.
5. Haywire (review) and Magic Mike
If Soderbergh really takes a break after 2013, I'm going to be pretty bummed out, because he's on a secret hot streak that sometimes it seems like only me and Rob know about: The Girlfriend Experience, The Informat!, Contagion, and now this year's pair of experiments: a streamlined and beautiful action-movie deconstruction, and a consideration of sex and economics with musical-comedy-romantic overtones. Both make sense alongside The Girlfriend Experience: Haywire is similarly built around a compelling non-actor, while Magic Mike is like GFE for boys.
7. Lincoln (review)
Much attention has been paid to Daniel Day-Lewis's acting and Tony Kushner's writing, and rightfully so, but it's also worth noting just how well Spielberg directs this stuff. It's not just restraint and getting out of the actors' and writer's way. In the movie's relatively quiet and interior way, it is masterful filmmaking.
8. Damsels in Distress (review)
Whit Stillman appears to be entering Woody Allen territory where his characters look and sound less and less like actual humans you may have met in your life, yet at the same time, they convey something that feels true or, failing that, weirdly hilarious. Also: The Sambola! International Dance Craze.
9. Killing Them Softly
Not exactly subtle, but the lack of subtlety pays off in the end. Before that, you get some of the best-written, best-acted dialogue scenes of the year, and plenty of stylistic bravado from Andrew Dominik.
10. The Cabin in the Woods
I liked Whedon's Avengers a lot but as much as Iron Man and the Hulk and the Black Widow and Cap all mixing it up filled me with delight, there's perhaps even more glee in this Whedon-coauthored horror riff.
The Next Ten
In many years, any of these ten would've been fighting for a spot within the first ten. This year, they settle for next-ten status but I thoroughly enjoyed and admired all of them.
Django Unchained
The Avengers (review) and Skyfall
Life of Pi
Wreck-It Ralph and ParaNorman (review)
Seven Psychopaths
Prometheus
Bachelorette
Take This Waltz
Ten More!
In roughly descending order, here are ten additional movies I consider well worth your time: Cloud Atlas; Fat Kid Rules the World (review); Brave; Silver Linings Playbook; Zero Dark Thirty; 21 Jump Street; Chronicle; Safety Not Guaranteed; Celeste and Jesse Forever; Premium Rush
THE WORST MOVIES OF 2012
1. The Deep Blue Sea (review)
I try not to stunt-designate movies as the worst of the year, but I admit, I may have developed some additional rancor toward this movie because it not only got good reviews upon release, but became something of a year-end cause celebre for its apparently sumptuous filmmaking and Rachel Weisz's lead performance. Weisz is fine -- she always is, and she's the reason I decided to attend the movie's press screening in the first place -- and there are some moments where the camera moves in interesting ways, sure, but that doesn't change that the movie itself is a crushing bore during which very little happens, and what does happen, happens with a kind of slow-motion self-serious anguish that I only ever understood intellectually, not emotionally. I don't usually hate movies with this much artistic ambition and this little technical incompetence. But The Deep Blue Sea still a solid choice for worst of the year because it was honestly the movie I most wanted to be over for the greatest percentage of its (not particularly hefty) running time.
2. Darling Companion
Then again, this one only misses the number one spot because technically I haven't seen the whole thing. I saw an edited version on a plane (though the version I saw provided no possible context for anything interestingly objectionable being possibly cut out), and mercifully achieved sleep for a brief period around the two-thirds mark. This is a movie about a married couple looking for their lost dog. That's it. Well, actually, there's more: the movie begins with a lengthy prologue establishing how they got the dog. And then there's an opening section where we see the wedding that has resulted in this couple being in the woods for the weekend, including a fascinating scene where family members decide who's taking who to the airport. And there's a gypsy who claims her psychic powers can help the couple find the dog. If that doesn't sound entertaining enough, the couple also has bitter, endless fights sort of about the dog but actually more about the state of their marriage. So if you boil this movie down to a simple premise, it sounds terrible, but once you figure out what else is going on in the movie, that simple premise -- people looking for a dog -- actually starts to sound better by comparison. And if you want the whole thing to sound not just terrible but deeply insane, consider that Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, and Sam Shepard star in this movie. Doesn't that sound like a cast of actors you'd maybe like to see in a movie? Or at very least, a cast of a movie that wouldn't drive you mad? Because of Duplass's presence, I wondered if writer-director Lawrence Kasdan might be attempting some kind of baby-boomer version of mumblecore. Because the last movie Kasdan wrote and directed was Dreamcatcher, it seems more likely that he has lost his fucking mind.
3. Dark Tide (review)
Funny story: I signed up to review this movie on DVD, because I figured hey, Halle Berry in a bikini fighting off sharks in a movie by John Stockwell, who made Blue Crush and Crazy/Beautiful; not great movies, but he definitely knows his way around bikinis and oceans and stuff. The DVD never arrived, but the movie received a brief theatrical release, so Marisa and I went to see it, and it was the second time this year a movie superficially reminded me of the Sam Jackson/LL Cool J shark movie Deep Blue Sea while being vastly inferior to it. I wrote the review linked above... and then the DVD arrived. Because I'm married to a saint, Marisa agreed to take over, sparing me from writing another 800 words about this terrible movie, which you may have noticed I've avoided again by describing the circumstances under which I saw it rather than the movie itself. Which is terrible. If you don't believe me, read one of two Calyer-authored reviews (at least until Nathaniel gets his in?).
4. Girl in Progress (review)
I'm naturally inclined to like movies about teenagers, so one has to be pretty fucking stilted and misguided for me to hate it as much as I hated watching this movie.
5. Battleship (review)
You all know I'm not a snob about this type of movie. This is just a really bad example of this type of movie.
6. Red Dawn (review)
A lot of the first five on my worst-of list are terrible on a writing or experiential level.
Red Dawn has good old-fashioned technical bungling on its side (in addition to being terribly written and a terrible experience).
7. The Paperboy (review)
Nicole Kidman can give an interesting performance in even the worst of circumstances, and The Paperboy is about as bad a set of circumstances as she could possibly find herself in. I hope.
8. Lockout
I cannot fucking believe there are at least a couple of AV Club writers going to bad for this as a fun movie -- seemingly just because it's fun to refer to it as Space Jail. Obviously I am the target audience for a movie you can refer to as Space Jail, and this utterly uninspired, unexciting, all-around unfun movie did nothing to live up to that fake title. The idea of this movie is awesome. The execution of this movie is depressing.
9. Hyde Park on Hudson
I thought other lists including this movie were just stunt-including an Oscar also-ran, until I actually watched it. The film makes a stunning miscalculation in thinking that Laura Linney's character (who, let's be clear, is FDR's handjob-giving distant cousin who acts like a teenager in love. WITH HER COUSIN) makes an excellent pair of eyes from which to view an important historical event, and has an even better narrative voice with which to convey vital information throughout the movie. In SNL terms, she is the girl you wish you hadn't started a conversation with at this party. At the center of the movie, there is something that's kind of interesting: the uneasy relationship between FDR and King George VI. This is unquestionably the best aspect of the movie, and it's also treated and especially resolved with all the sophistication of a sitcom episode. You have to go through an awful lot of creepy and inexplicable cousin-based romance to get to an okay sitcom episode about world leaders.
10. The Devil Inside (review)
Honestly, a lot of it isn't so much worse than any number of found-footage horror pictures, but the see-our-website-for-more-details chaser to the standard and-then-the-camera-shuts-off ending is a stunning enough miscalculation to push this over from deeply mediocre to pretty fucking stupid. I don't think the filmmakers even necessarily intended it, but the idea that they maybe couldn't tell how off-putting it was doesn't speak highly of their skills.
Now that we're done there: 2013! It looks like enough 2012 stuff got bumped into 2013 that, combined with new movies from Scorsese, Soderbergh, McKay, Jonze, Payne, Refn, Malick, and Green, plus a fuckload of sci-fi, that we might get a two-year streak.