Once
more, ladies and gentlemen, we find ourselves sixth months into the year. For
those of you who aren’t all that great at math, this is the halfway point. This
means that we have already experienced about half of the cinematic output that
the world is going to throw at us in 2012. This means that I will continue my
annual tradition of a mid-year report, in which I look back on the year so far
and tell you what I’ve liked, disliked, and everything in between. So strap in,
it’s going to be a bumpy ride! (And other clichés.)
The Best (So Far)
Of
all the movies I’ve seen this year, none have given me as much joy as Drew
Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods, a film that works simultaneously as a
salute to and a criticism of the horror genre. Not only does it brilliantly
deconstruct the horror formula that we’ve seen countless times before, but it
digs deeper than any satirical horror film ever has before. Goddard and
co-writer/producer Joss Whedon (he’s having a good year, no?) clearly had a ton
of fun putting this movie together, and for once this translates quite well to
the audience experience.
Honorable Mentions:
- No
one was excited for a comedy based on a not-good dramatic series from the ’80s,
yet 21
Jump Street proved to be a hilarious and ingenious film about nostalgia
and the horrors of high school.
- Wes
Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom may be the best film he’s made; a quirky but
heartfelt tale of first love and the melancholy that comes with growing up.
-
The Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid With a Bike is a moving
drama about a child that could have been tossed aside by society, but instead finds
a home with the caring Cécile de France. The 13-year-old Thomas Doret is
something to behold.
- I’m
about done with the found footage genre, but the universe of Chronicle
is so engrossing that you forget it’s even using the increasingly tired
gimmick. The central trio of characters played by Dane DeHaan, Michael B.
Jordan and Alex Russell bring it all together brilliantly.
The Worst (So Far)
If
you still refer to yourself as “McG” in the year 2012, I’m immediately inclined
to not care for you or your work. Luckily, his film This Means War is able to
live down to his cringe-worthy moniker. It’s a tale about two horrible secret
agents (Chris Pine and Thomas Hardy) who both fall in love with the same
horrible woman (Reese Witherspoon) and they use their horrible government
powers to spy on her and attempt to win her heart. It’s horrible, and the three
central characters are so disturbingly unlikable that the German supervillian
(Til Schweiger, who has nothing to do) seems pretty cool by comparison.
Honorable Mentions:
- It
wouldn’t be a “worst of” list without mentioning the latest Happy Madison film,
and the repulsive R-rated ranchfest That’s My Boy deserves a special
place near the top.
- I
quite liked the first five-or-so minutes of the thriller Man on a Ledge. After
that, it’s nothing but a parade of incredibly stupid characters making precisely the wrong decision at
every moment.
-
This one came in just under the wire, but The Amazing Spider-Man is all of
Hollywood’s worst qualities thrown into one super-shiny, personality-less
package.
-
As radio host Tom Scharpling recently tweeted: “Project X had a great
message: do whatever it takes to be cool to your high school classmates because
that glory lasts forever.” That about sums it up.
Some other nonsense:
Good Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen
- Richard
Linklater’s comedy Bernie just missed making my list above, but it’s a funny,
fascinating true-crime story that features a great performance by Jack Black.
-
Believe it or not, one of the best performances of the year was actually turned
in by Seann William Scott. “In American
Reunion?” you are no doubt asking yourself. No, I mean the hockey comedy Goon.
If the movie around him as was good, it’d be a masterpiece.
-
The Guy Pearce action film Lockout is as stupid as they come,
but it’s the best kind of stupidity. That the CGI is so atrocious only makes
the overall experience more fun.
- Writer/actor
Brit Marling made something of a splash with last year’s fascinating Another Earth. This year she made Sound
of My Voice, which isn’t quite as good but still shows that she’s got—as
we say in the business—“the goods.”
The Underrated
-
A lot of people have spent the last month crapping all over Ridley Scott’s Prometheus,
but I’ve seen it twice and I still love it as much as I did when it came out.
It’s a brilliant visual film with several effective, shocking moments and some
interesting thematic ideas thrown out there as well. Is it as good as, say, the
first two Alien movies? No, but this
is higher-level blockbuster moviemaking that we don’t see every day, and it’s
somewhat disheartening that people have chosen to focus on the flaws rather
than all it does well.
- I
am much less spirited in my defense of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, which
creates an engrossing universe that was fun to inhabit for two hours.
-
I did not love Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, but it isn’t anywhere close
to being the atrocity that some think it is. So there.
Steven Soderbergh’s Unlikely Companion
Pieces
While
Soderbergh’s Haywire and Magic Mike have very little in
common from a content standpoint, they both exist for similar reasons: to watch
the stars do what they’re good at. In the case of Haywire, Soderbergh just wanted to make a movie about former MMA
star Gina Carano kicking and punching her way through a cast of famous male
movie stars. One of those stars was Channing Tatum, who went on to star in the
recent Magic Mike. Tatum is famous
for starting out as a stripper, and this film tells a story clearly based on
Tatum’s experiences. Since Soderbergh is so caught up with the premise and cast
of each movie rather than the story, both films inevitably fizzle out by the
end. But when they’re good, they are both really
good.
A Rough Year for Tim Riggins
After
making a name for himself on Friday Night
Lights, Taylor Kitsch saw 2012 as the year in which he’d break through and
become a huge movie star. Well, it hasn’t exactly started as planned. John
Carter, directed by Pixar vet Andrew Stanton, became one of the biggest
flops in movie history even if much of the negative buzz leading up to it was
undeserved. It’s not a great movie, but it’s far better than its reputation
suggests. Kitsch had another shot with Battleship, which is just bad and
audiences reacted appropriately. The great tragedy is that Kitsch is quite good
in both these films; he just hasn’t been given a project that people might
actually want to see. Perhaps this changes on Friday with the release of Oliver
Stone’s Savages, but that doesn’t
strike me as the movie that will break his box office slump.
By the way, I just recently watched all of Friday Night Lights and I loved it. You
should too.
And Now, a Look
Forward
I’m not sure I can recall a year with more second
half potential than 2012. Obviously, everything could turn out to be a stinker,
but any period of time promising new movies from Spielberg, Tarantino, P.T.
Anderson, Nolan and countless others sure has a lot of potential. Let’s take a
look at some of the potential highlights:
- Hey, did you know The Dark Knight Rises
comes out later this month? Oh, you did? Moving on…
- If done well, Jay Roach’s The Campaign could be a
hilarious send-up of election season. Or, it could just be a lot of silliness.
Either way, should be fun.
- David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis looks
wonderfully creepy, and if Robert Pattinson signs on to more movies like this
we may be on speaking terms before long.
- Ruben Fleischer leaves the action comedy genre
behind and helms Gangster Squad, which has a killer cast that includes Sean
Penn, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and others.
- Rian Johnson’s Looper has quickly leaped
up to the top of my “most anticipated” list, and there’s no way around this
being a crucial film in his career. If this one hits, he has the potential to
really break out like he should.
- Ben Affleck has proven himself to be a terrific
director, and he finally leaves the realm of Boston crime with his Iranian
revolution tale Argo.
- Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. ‘Nuff said.
- Robert Zemeckis finally returns to the land of the
living with Flight, and let’s hope he’s in top form.
- The Sam Mendes-helmed Bond film Skyfall
has the potential to be the most ambitious film ever made. Or it could backfire.
Let’s hope for the former.
- I keep forgetting the first of Peter Jackson’s The
Hobbit films comes out this December, which may speak to how relatively
indifferent I’ve grown toward the project. I hope I’m won over by the finished
product.
- After you all ignored the underrated Funny People a few years back, Judd
Apatow returns to the Knocked Up
universe for his new film This is 40.
- After winning it all with The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal team up once more
for… wait for it… Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Project! We do know it revolved around the killing of Osama bin Laden,
and that two of its stars are… Chris Pratt and Mark Duplass? Huh. This’ll be
interesting. Kyle Chandler’s also in there, but I suspect it’s because even
Navy SEALs need a good pep talk now and then.
- Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. ‘Nuff
said.
- Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. ‘Nuff said.
(Release date TBD, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of those deals where
it gets a limited release in December then goes wide in 2013.)
-----
Well, that’s about all I have to say that’s of any
substance. As always, you can go to this page to
see a complete list of films I’ve sat through this year. I haven’t necessarily
reviewed all of them in full, so it’s a good place to take a look at what I’ve
liked/disliked/etc. We’ve got an exciting six months ahead, and it will be fun
to see which Weinstein movie wins Best Picture this year. See you then!
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