OK, with 2012 now behind us, I usually take the time around now to compile lists of the best and worst movies I saw in the recently ended year. For 2012, however, my list of seen films is pretty small, despite my end of year attempt to catch up on some of the year's releases. In spite of this, I feel as if I need to put out tentative lists just to give an idea of what I have seen and what I think is good and bad. These are definitely temporary lists (and they're shorter than the usual Top 10 lists, too), because of the films that I haven't seen yet, such as Flight, Lincoln, The Cabin In The Woods, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, and Zero Dark Thirty, among a whole host of others. So, if you're favorite films aren't on either list, it's probably because I haven't seen them yet, so I'm open to suggestions, of both good and bad movies that you think may topple my current choices for each. I may decide to write up my past year' lists later, to give some ideas of some of my past winners and losers, but for now, it's 2012's tentative turn. Best Movies Of 2012: 1. Argo Man, Ben Affleck has been on a roll since he began directing in 2007. A man who was once a tabloid punchline and whose best performances were either pooh-poohed (Good Will Hunting) or barely seen (Changing Lanes) became a directorial force starting with Gone Baby Gone in 2007 and continuing with 2010's The Town. Now, with Argo, he's easily topped both his past achievements and made 2012's best film. This is the gripping, funny and sometimes unbearably tense true story of the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 and how the US government successfully extracted a group of hostages under cover of the filming of a phony sci-fi movie. Like many true to life stories, some details were heightened and invented for the movie version, but in this case, it doesn't matter at all because every minute of this movie feels true. This is due to its excellent performances, sharp writing and especially Affleck's direction, which captures the late 70s and early 80s absolutely perfectly, from the lens filters that get the look right, to the camerawork, to the amazing use of archival footage (which then transitions into reenactment footage with almost documentary authenticity) and even going as far as opening the film with the 1970s Warner Bros logo. That last touch also emphasizes this film's love and insight into the world of movies. Yeah, the movie's about multi-country diplomacy, and it gets that world right, but it treats the cinematic side of the story just as well (they did have to make their fake movie seem like it was actually being made, after all), with great and sometimes funny insights into the industry and some nice supporting turns by John Goodman and Alan Arkin. And speaking of movies, after seeing this masterpiece, I can't wait to see what Affleck comes up with in the future, because with Argo, he's revealing talents, both as director and a star, that could lead to a legendary career. 2. The Secret World Of Arrietty OK, I'm kind of cheating by including this Studio Ghibli (but not Hayao Miyazaki directed) take on The Borrowers, because it came out originally in Japan in 2009. However, it's still on here because it released in the US in 2012, due to various delays which, I think, prevented it from being considered for the Best Animated Film Oscar this year. And that's too bad, because it'll increase the chance that a quality animated film that, for my money, is 2012's best one, will be wrongly forgotten. As I said, this is an adaptation of sorts of The Borrowers, which has been made into films before (the 1998 one is probably the most famous), but none of them had the quiet pathos, creativity and beauty of this one. It's certainly one of most subdued versions of this story I think of, but that only helps us become further acquainted and involved with the characters, their relationships and the story, which also allows us to pick up on the film's many subtleties regarding them. Personally, I love that this is a animated film that has the confidence in itself and its audience (which includes younger children) to take its time to develop its world and characters, which really makes its messages about bravery, compassion, commitment shine through. I also disagree quite heavily with many people I've discussed this film with, including anime fans, who think that the movie leaves too many elements unanswered and doesn't develop some of them as much as they'd like. That's because they'd be irrelevant to the heart of the film, which is the relationship between the small family and the young boy, and by not explaining them, they add intrigue that makes the film worth discussing afterward and prevent the usual black and white messaging that other films would resort to, such as another animated film from 2012 that's on the other list of mine. 3. Killer Joe OK, I know that pretty much no one saw this film and that, even after this glowing endorsement, many people still won't. They may nod their heads in interest when I say that it's the latest from William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection, Bug) and that it has fantastic performances from a strong cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, Emile Hirsch, and Thomas Hayden Church, and then they'll recoil in fear when I mention that it was an NC-17 rated film. Indeed it was, though I'm convinced that, if it were released by a major studio, it would have gotten away with an R, even with that one scene that will probably never allow you to imagine Kentucky Fried Chicken in the same innocent way again. But that scene (and every scene in the movie, for that matter) doesn't exist just for the sake of perversion or shock value; it's all about creating this dark and twisted world of low-lives that almost seems like a character in and of itself. The set-up sounds pretty familiar; a family plans to murder the father's ex-wife to collect her insurance benefits and pay off a debt to a group of thugs, so they hire a crooked cop/contract killer who takes a liking to the young and "innocent" daughter (played excellently by Juno Temple, who deserves, but won't get, an Oscar nod for this). But this movie is its own intriguing, raw, unique and challenging creation, thanks to its strong writing and performances, transporting lighting and cinematography and, of course, its lurid details that, unlike the similar (and overrated) Winter's Bone, doesn't ever let the audience off the hook or periodically sugarcoat its bleak aura. It also has probably the most thought-provoking ending of the year that, to be honest, comes abruptly and doesn't answer a whole lot, but because it really got my mind going after I saw it and caused me to come up with many ideas about what it all meant, that's in no way a negative thing. In fact, I'd people to see this if only to let me know what they thought the ending signified. But if you do see it, be a man (or woman) and see the Unrated Director's Cut version, which is the original NC-17 one that I saw in theaters.
4. Wreck It Ralph Since The Secret World Of Arrietty has no way of winning the Best Animated Film Oscar, I'd like to see that trophy go to my second choice; Wreck It Ralph, which is something of a miracle, as far as major animated film releases go. Not only is it a movie that actually uses and understands the world of video games in a way that works, but it's also an ingenious concept for a film that totally commits to its unique vision without ginning up unnecessary frenzy and unrelated side elements to keep kids' attention or sell merchandise (I'm lookin' at you, Despicable Me). The set-up is that there's an arcade game, Fix-It-Felix Jr, which is a cross between Donkey Kong and Rampage. The bad guy is Wreck It Ralph, who destroys an apartment building that Felix must fix and, when the player wins, the gracious tenants toss Ralph off the roof of the building and onto his head. But that's just their day jobs; after the arcade closes, the characters can move between arcade games, some fictional and some not (many not, actually), and Ralph is in the game villains' emotional support group, expressing how he feels unappreciated and is tired of being the bad guy in his game. So, Ralph leaves his game in search for a hero's glory, which causes havok in the game world and the real-world arcade. If you've seen the trailers for this, you probably noticed a bunch of real-world game cross-overs (which I won't reveal here and even I don't think I caught all of them that were in this movie) and may be wondering if it's a gimmick or if the movie over-relies on its real-world game connections. It does neither. It uses them much in the same way films like Toy Story and Who Framed Roger Rabbit used their outside sources; as a way to build a rich world, add some insanely clever references that play off the film's original setting wonderfully and set the film's original characters, story and themes into motion. Despite being fun in terms of getting the references and having some very good laughs, the film's emotional core is equally strong and we grow to have a real attachment to Ralph and have an understanding of his feelings and how, through his adventure, his personality and moral compass are put to the test in ways that may or may not make him more of a hero than just having that title. As a game fan, I was really hoping I would love this movie and, thanks to the positives I mentioned, as well as perfect voice casting and a script that actually has some funny commentary on modern gaming attitudes, it did not let me down one bit. Also, after having to deal with video games really being mistreated in movies (and not just with adaptations), it's good to see films like this that actually "get it" and don't embarrass or slime gamers in the process. 5. 21 Jump Street Talk about the biggest shocker of the year. Although I didn't join the legions of people who badmouthed this TV adaptation the moment it was announced (I actually see the movie before doing that; I'm funny that way, I know), I was a bit skeptical on the idea of a 21 Jump Street film. But not since Nancy Drew have I seen a movie that I never expected to fall in love with that... well, I ended up falling in love with. I also didn't expect to find what is probably the 2010s' equivalent to the brilliant Wayne's World, and yes, I can back up that blurb-worthy claim. 21 Jump Street, if you remember, was that cop show that Johnny Depp starred in years ago, and this movie is a really clever take-off on that idea. Instead of actually being an adaptation, it's kind of embodiment of the same concept, with two recent police academy graduates (Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill) being assigned by Ice Cube (who's hilarious here) to go undercover at a high school to bust a drug production ring, the operation of which is based on the idea of the TV show, 21 Jump Street. Pretty postmodern and self-aware, wouldn't you say? That's kind of where I'm getting at when I compare this to Wayne's World, but also, the high-school infiltration plot reveals a brilliantly on-point and hilarious satire on all the cliches we know about high school, especially in an age where teenagers know about vices and evils in the world and are more technologically savvy and privileged than ever before. Yet, the movie isn't just cataloging those concepts or being heavy-handed about them; it's giving us a wide range of students in the school who frequently deconstruct our expectations of them in ways that are very clever, smart and funny without being smug, elitist or self-aggrandizing about it (Easy A comes to mind on those negative qualities). The film also has real bite to it, but it's in perfect control of its R rated risque elements, to the point where they make the points and hit the comedy/satire home just right, without being too pushy or gross about it (even with one detail near the end that, if it were not played for laughs, wasn't in a violent context and wasn't in a major studio film, would have guaranteed it the same NC-17 rating that Killer Joe got). Add in strong and well-rounded performances, both big and small, great writing and its self-aware nature and you have the best TV adaptation in a very long time and a model for every filmmaker who attempts to make others in the future. The Worst Of 2012: 1. John Carter Andrew Stanton of Wall-E fame took a stab at live-action filmmaking for the first time with John Carter, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi/adventure novel. But unlike fellow Pixar director Brad Bird's live-action debut with Mission Impossible 4, John Carter went off probably as bad as you can imagine, scoring poor reviews and being the biggest box office failure of the year, and the biggest one in the last couple of years. In fact, I think the infamous Battlefield Earth made more money than this and, as insane and unbelievable as it may sound, John Carter makes Battlefield Earth look good. As I said before, I try to keep an open mind when I go into movies. With this one, I rented the 4-disc home video monstrosity, bundled with the DVD, Blu-Ray, 3D Blu-Ray and Digital Copy, so I knew this thing's legacy going in and, as it began, I held out hope that maybe it would be interesting. Within the first five seconds, as a self-important announcer announced how the planet we know as Mars is actually called Barsoom, that hope died and the pain began. The plot is about a Civil War solider from Virginia who gets transported to Barsoom (I know that's probably what it was called in the book, but what a stupid name that is) and is apparently the chosen one who will stop an alien civil war and save a princess. The movie also tries, unsuccessfully, to go postmodern on us by injecting the book's author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, in as a character with whom John Carter interacts with, and there's a plot to kill Burroughs or something, but the film mostly ignores it, except at the beginning and end, to the point where it just muddies the movie and doesn't add anything. And that's the movie, in a nutshell; it has a bunch of stuff that makes it impossible to follow and understand and it all adds up to bunch of nothing, except for an insanely dull, painful, confused and overproduced disaster. The dialogue is awful, the film is overblown to the extreme and the acting is bad all over the place (including Taylor Kitsch in the title role who, with Savages, Battleship and this, headlined 3 box office bombs last year). Like Battlefield Earth, I think they're trying to inject some humor in here, but at least that movie was funny in places (even though most of it was probably unintended). This one isn't and its tone is all over the place, often trying to be serious and funny in the same scene (especially that endless and pathetic jail escape scene at the beginning), yet it's never funny, even unintentionally so, and the serious stuff is uninvolving at best and at worst, cheap, ugly and cruel in its misogynistic streak. And the special effects aren't interesting, transporting or good, either, and are more of an exhibition of the film's runaway budget, which even the people who made the infamous Cleopatra would have drawn the line at. Seriously, this movie does absolutely nothing right and I felt nothing but pain watching it. I haven't seen a whole lot of movies I've hated this year but, unless That's My Boy really is as bad as everyone says it is, I can't imagine any movie from 2012 being worse than John Carter and, for that matter, I can't imagine a more infamous movie being released this decade... except Life As We Know It, maybe. 2. The Lorax Remember when I mentioned "black and white messaging in another 2012 animated film" when I discussed The Secret World Of Arrietty? I was talking about The Lorax, yet another failed attempt to do cinematic justice to the books of Dr. Seuss. Admittingly, The Lorax is not one his best books, but at least the book and the 1970s animated short at least attempted to provide some balance to its pro-environmental message and was focused on its story, without adding a bunch of needless frenzy and self-conscious cuteness, but it wouldn't be a film by the Despicable Me directors if it didn't muck around with something that already worked, would it? Yeah, you may notice that I've slapped Despicable Me around hard and often, despite not hating it. But I'm doing it because I hate what it represents in family animated films and I hate that its filmmakers can't get it through their heads that they're ruining what could potentially good to great movies by their cop-out attitude regarding some of their design choices. After Despicable Me and Horton Hears A Who (which was the best Dr. Seuss film we've had, but it couldn't leave well-enough alone, either), The Lorax is their 3rd misfire in a row and it's easily the worst one. You may remember the story; a young boy curious about trees, which no longer exist, goes and visits The Once-ler, a now regretful soul who was responsible for the destruction of the trees in the land. He cut the trees down to create Thneeds, despite the warning of The Lorax, a small create who "speaks for the trees," and even after making massive profits, the world is in environmental ruin. But this movie expands that premise, because the young boy is curious about tree because he wants to make it with Taylor Swift (or the character voiced by her) and he and everyone else lives in a 1984-style utopia run with an iron fist by a business tycoon who has made a market of making fake trees and bottling air and is threatened by the young boy's desire to find a real tree. Thing is, none of those editions feel right at all to the original story (unlike, say, the story elements added into the underlying true story of Argo) and they slap, again, of filmmakers that can't leave well enough alone. Also, the film's one-sided and subtlety-free pro-environmentalist message is shrill, tedious and affords not even a hint of insight or humanity into the other side of the argument. And honesty, I tend not to side with a one-sided movie when some of its "sympathetic" characters attempt murder in the name of their beliefs. This is the animated equivalent of Hotel For Dogs openly and proudly promoting anarchy and lawlessness and, like that movie, it made me sad that they're pushing such irresponsible messages on kids, but I guess it's OK because dogs and the environment are great and cops and businesses are the devil. Riiiight. Anyway, this movie looks really nice and in keeping with the book and there are some funny lines by Betty White, but who cares? This is such a lazy, cowardly and soulless enterprise that only exists to ride the coattails of Dr. Seuss and make money, both of it which, it unfortunately did. And seriously, if I get one more movie like this from the Despicable Me guys (Despicable Me 2 is probably the next one we'll get), I may end up failing it just on principle. 3. The Vow As I said before, these best and worst of lists are tentative, which may explain why I don't hate this movie, exactly. This is only movie left that I disliked enough to have on a worst of list, though there are still things to hate about this all-over-the-place romantic drama that, through some cynically slick marketing and release date timing last Valentine's Day, became an inexplicable hit. But even people I know who were chaffing at the bit to see this didn't exactly come out raving. The plot involves a newly married couple played by Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum and, after a truck rear-ends them, the wife comes out of her coma and has lost all of her memory related to her husband. Her parents, played by Sam Neill and Jessica Lange, hate her husband and went through a period of not talking to their daughter, so they are glad that she doesn't remember him and they try to set her up with her old flame and bring a sense of stability to their broken family. But the husband won't have that, so he tries everything he can to try and spark her memory. The big problem with this movie is that it tries so hard to be everything for everybody, that it satisfies no one. It's trying to depict the wife's condition with some semblance of complexity and open-endedness, which I liked, but then it tries to sugarcoat it with scenes that play to the audience's desire for a gooey, escapist romance. It makes the parents initially look like despicable people who we clearly see manipulating their daughter for their own emotional greed, but then, the movie makes us think they may have a point. The movie is trying to be serious and straightforward, but then it tries to funny and bohemian with its hipster soundtrack (not counting The Cure's Pictures Of You, which, I say, is welcome on most any movie's soundtrack) and its quote unquote "funny" supporting characters who say things so insensitive, manipulative and reprehensible in the name of humor about the wife that, if it were my wife they were talking about, in the words of a certain song by The Offspring, they would all go "to the morgue and the other to jail." Honestly, I don't the filmmakers really wanted to accomplish here. For people who are expecting a hard hitting drama on short-term memory loss, the parts of the film supporting that are undercut by the hipster romantic escapist stuff and, for people who just want an escapist Valentine's Day romance, they won't like how hard-hitting it is. Also, the actors here are certainly talented and are OK here, but they've been much better served by their past projects (including Tatum who, along with 21 Jump Street this year, also got good marks for Magic Mike, unseen for now by me). This movie's a bunch of mixed messages that just don't end up meaning anything and, given the talent of some of the people here, and the good chemistry of Tatum and McAdams, that's a real shame. And finally, as a bonus, I have 2012's most disappointing movie: Brave Like many people, I love Pixar, as their creativity and unique vision for films is amongst the best and most consistently great films to come out of Hollywood. But unlike other people who blindly shower them with adoration, I'm actually objective about their catalog and that makes people mad at times. For example, I didn't like The Incredibles enough to recommend, I liked both the Cars films, and Toy Story 3 is not a masterpiece (that latter one got me an alcohol-induced accusation of racial supremacy; seriously). So, when I told people that I didn't like Pixar's latest, Brave, I got similar grief from people, liked one person who responded by asking "Why do you hate Disney movies?" Then, they saw the movie themselves and realized I might have had a point in not liking it, because they didn't enjoy it, either. Yet, despite all that, I do not hate Brave at all and I'm not saying that it's a sign that Pixar's glory days are gone like a lot of other people are (despite the fact that I think they haven't put out a great film since Up in 2009). It's certainly one of the studio's most ambitious titles, telling the story of Merida, a Scottish princess who, in her spare time, likes exploring the land, riding her horse and engaging in archery. Anyway, given ancient rituals, it's time for Merida to be married off to a young man of a surrounding clan and she doesn't want to have any part of that. So she gets into a row with her mother and, when Merida exacts revenge on her, things don't turn out as expected. I kind of can't go any further with this without a semi-spoiler, but unlike a lot of other people who said, "Is this the best they could come up with?!", I think the development is fine. What's not fine is the fact that this development introduces a truckload of plot and character inconsistencies that collapses the entire film, making it unbelievable that the characters act in ways that are completely out of character from what we know them to be like, very rote and predictable in its third act (an issue that plagued Toy Story 3, as well) and making the title of the movie a complete misnomer. It's pretty well known that Brave had a bit of a troubled production, with writers and directors shifting in and out as it was being made and the trailers significantly changing course as they came out and sadly, you can see that in the film. You can also see that, when they changed directions on this, that they clearly didn't run the script through the typewriter again to knock out all the kinks that the changes introduced and, if they had done that, I probably would have recommended it. And it really hurts because this film does a lot right. The characterizations are strong, the voice acting is excellent, the film's look is beautiful, although seeing in 3D was the biggest mistake I could have made, given how it makes everything look too dark, blurry and indistinct, and the story and situations, even when entrenched into that place I can't discuss, has some interesting wrinkles and deconstructions of the "princess has to marry" formula that hint at a potentially great film. The film also opened with a brilliant short subject, La Luna, which was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Short for 2011 (despite not coming out until 2012, but whatever). But sadly, the issues here kept me from liking the film and made it my biggest disappointment of 2012, though I'd still say it's worth a rent now for what's good. It's just too bad that this, like The Incredibles, ended up being among the lesser entries to the Pixar canon. And that's 2012 in movies, of what little I saw. I may update later with other movies that deserve spots on the list when I see them, but until then, take care!
