As always, try
not to take the rankings of things too seriously. The top few spots are pretty
rock solid—though I almost talked myself into another order—but past that you
could probably list any of these movies in any order and I wouldn’t be too
furious. Grades have almost nothing to do with how I put this list together.
It’s more just the product of me staring at the titles and ranking them almost
entirely by gut feeling. What I’m saying is this: making a list of good movies
ain’t exactly math.
The main reason
this is late is that I wanted to see most of the big movies that people were
talking about during the rest of the year conversation. The most annoying
holdout was Zero Dark Thirty, which didn’t
get a major release until long after most of the discussion had ended. Even
with this wait, there are still movies I didn’t see. I collected some of these
unseen titles in a small section below.
Now that all the
business is out of the way, let’s get going. I’ll start with ten movies that fell
just outside the Top 10, and then jump right in to the list itself. Let’s
gooooooo!!!!
The Outside Looking In (Movies
considered for the Top 10 that didn’t quite make it.)
20) Ang Lee’s
adaptation of Life of Pi is a visual wonder that is hurt only by a bumpy
beginning and a problematic end. As long as the eponymous character floats
around at sea, it’s a joy to behold.
19) There have
been some great performances by children this year, but the best may be the
work of Thomas Doret in the Dardennes’ The Kid with a Bike, which examines
the life of a foster child as he searches for a literal and metaphorical home.
18) There are
some truly gut-wrenching moments in Take This Waltz (no review), Sarah Polley’s film
about a comfortably married couple that starts to drift apart when a dashing
rickshaw driver moves in across the street.
17) The
Queen of Versailles (no review) is not just a fascinating documentary. It may well
be one of the best films I’ve seen about the economic crisis in America, despite
the fact it follows an absurdly wealthy family dealing with the fact that they
have suddenly become slightly less wealthy.
16) It’s not
often that an author gets the chance to write and direct the film adaptation of
his highly successful book, but that is exactly what happened with Stephen
Chbosky and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. That turned out to be a great
decision, as he was able to make a thoroughly winning and personal film about
one boy’s lonely journey through his freshman year of high school.
15) The
found-footage thriller Chronicle turned out to be one of
the most pleasant surprises of the year, as it took a familiar subject—teenager
suddenly gets superpowers—and gave it a far darker twist than you normally see
in mainstream movies. Not everyone is an angel like Peter Parker.
14) Comedian
Mike Birbiglia makes a startlingly assured film debut with Sleepwalk With Me, an
extremely personal film about his rise in the comedy world and how that
affected his love and family life.
13) Jack Black
gives one of the best performances of the year in Bernie, which comes from
the great Richard Linklater. It’s a truly hilarious and fascinating Texas crime
story that is so darn wacky it has to be true.
12) Julia
Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet is a quiet movie about a seemingly perfect
relationship that takes an unexpected turn during a hiking trip through the
mountains of Georgia. It’s the kind of movie that says everything while
actually saying very little.
11) Ben Affleck
continues his recent victory tour with Argo, an impulsively watchable
political thriller that gives its real-life story the full fledged Hollywood
treatment. It may look a little too neat and over-dramatized compared to, say, Zero Dark Thirty, but a well-made movie
is a well-made movie. Argo is
definitely that, and then some.
And now, the top ten
films of 2012:
10.
Lincoln
Steven
Spielberg’s Lincoln really stuck with
me after my first viewing, despite the fact that I felt like I had a long list
of problems with it. I eventually gave in and saw it a second time, and then
something strange happened: most of my problems seemed to vanish. I was utterly
enthralled by Spielberg’s unusually restrained film about the end of the Civil
War and the political maneuvering required to end slavery in the United States.
It’s not at all the film people were expecting when this project was announced,
and it’s ultimately better off for it. Of course the cast completely kills it,
and Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance as the titular president is perhaps the most
fully realized portrait of the man I’ve ever seen. The only time it goes into
unnecessarily weepy territory is in the final 10 minutes or so, but before that
it is a beautifully written, acted and directed drama that exceeds almost all
expectations.
(Review)
(Review)
9.
21 Jump Street
Nothing about
this project screams greatness at all. It’s based on an old,
not-particularly-good television show, and one of its protagonists is Channing
Tatum, who had never done anything before this movie to suggest it was funny.
Well, hold your horses, you judgmental Judy! 21 Jump Street is not only a wall-to-wall hilarious action comedy,
but an unusually smart film about nostalgia and the ever-changing nature of the
high school environment. But mostly, it’s wall-to-wall hilarious. Tatum and
Jonah Hill make for an unlikely but perfect comedic duo, and above all this
movie has one thing going for it that you can’t say for a lot of other comedies
these days: it feels like it was thought out ahead of time. In a land full of
rambling, mostly improvised comedies, something as taut and energetic as 21 Jump Street is a welcome sight
indeed.
(Review)
(Review)
8.
Skyfall
As I’ve said
right from the beginning, my love of Skyfall
is based less on it being an undeniably great movie and more on how it seemed
to be made specifically for me. This is the James Bond film that follows
through on all the promises of Casino
Royale, and the most important thing it does is that it examines the Bond
character more thoroughly than any other installment in the series. Sure the
incredible action scenes, cinematography and wonderfully high stakes help a
lot. But the real joy of Skyfall is
in seeing how the series is finally willing to look at Bond as a fundamentally
flawed human being. (It also has quite a bit to say about how a character as
old as Bond fits in to today’s cinematic landscape.) This film is everything
that Quantum of Solace was not. It’s
as purely entertaining as any Bond film ever made, but it also proves that the
franchise is willing to wholly adapt to the 21st century.
(Review)
7.
Django Unchained
Even a sloppier
Quentin Tarantino movie is infinitely more enthralling than just about any
other movie, and Django Unchained is
nothing if not definitive proof of this statement. It certainly resembles a
Tarantino movie in just about every way—the showy dialogue, the bursts of
graphic violence, the lifting of music from other, older films—but this may
also be the most provocative film he’s made yet. However, something tells me he
fully knew what he was getting in to when he put pen to paper here. He’s too
smart a guy to not sense the wave of controversy that was sure to come. All
that aside, this is still terrific entertainment, with great performances from
Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and an unusually villainous Leonardo DiCaprio.
It’s a long film that throws a whole lot at the audience, but those who love
the way Tarantino does things are sure to be rewarded for their time. One more
thing: those who dismiss Tarantino films for being all about the surface should
proceed at their peril. For my money, Django
Unchained has quite a bit to say about how our views of people shape how we
think they should be treated. Watch this film and Inglourious Basterds back-to-back, then look me in the eye and tell
me this is a filmmaker without a point of view. I didn’t think so.
(Review)
(Review)
6.
Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn
Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is first
and foremost a procedural about the hunt for terrorist Osama bin Laden. It’s
also the rare film where everyone who sees it will get precisely what they want
to get out of it. If you want to watch this movie and feel victorious over
terrorism, you just might get your wish. If you want this movie to be a
critique of the CIA’s post-9/11 methods, it can certainly fill that role.
Really, it can take whatever shape you want it to shape, but anyone who says
that this movie takes one side or the other may be barking up the wrong tree.
This is a meticulous film, and it is also a brilliant one. It would have been
far too easy to take Zero Dark Thirty
too far in either political direction, and that would have been to the film’s
detriment. Instead, Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal are careful to
present the film’s events in a disturbingly noncommittal way. “This is what
happened,” they seem to be saying. “Make of it what you will.”
(Review)
(Review)
5.
Looper
Rian Johnson is
one of the cleverest filmmakers working today, but as a wise man once said:
with great power comes great responsibility. There’s no doubt he uses his
powers for good with Looper, a
terrific sci-fi drama that is less about the mechanics of the thing—time travel
nerds sometimes found themselves screaming at the screen—than it is about a
generational war made literal. The scene in the diner, in which Young Joe and
Old Joe finally meet face-to-face, reveals the movie’s true agenda. This is a
film about inevitability, and the various cycles (or loops) that we see play
out throughout our own lives. In Looper,
one of these cycles breaks, and a select few characters try to seize the
opportunity to change their futures for the better. We never quite know if they
succeed, but the mystery only adds to the fascination.
(Review)
(Review)
4.
Moonrise Kingdom
I have a
love/hate relationship with the films of Wes Anderson, but there’s no denying
that he has a knack for seeing his unique vision through to completion. Moonrise Kingdom may be the best film
he’s ever made, and it’s not because he rid himself of his sometimes-irritating
quirks. If anything, he’s doubled down on them, but this movie is a triumph
because of the emotional resonance he is able to find in his story. This is no
empty exercise in style. By contrasting the beaten-down adults with the
romantic naiveté of the children, he is able to find the perfect balance of
comedy and sadness. Anderson loves movies about characters who are unhappy with
where their lives are, but with Moonrise
Kingdom he shows that he’s equally fascinated by the endless possibilities
of childhood.
(Review)
3.
The Cabin in the Woods
The Cabin in the Woods may be the most purely entertaining
movie of the year, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t profound in its own way. It
is a film that works both as a wickedly funny deconstruction of the horror
genre and a well-made horror film in its own right. Director Drew Goddard and
his co-writer Joss Whedon are obviously two of the biggest horror fans around,
or else they could never have made such a fully realized universe. Yet at the
same time, their film is about how formulaic the genre has become, and the
final act is essentially about two typical horror movie characters fighting
back against the machine. Goddard and Whedon may not be able to completely
overhaul the genre—releases like Texas
Chainsaw 3D aren’t all that encouraging—but The Cabin in the Woods isn’t just an evisceration of horror films.
It’s also about how effective the formula can be. Maybe we just need a break
from it once in a while.
(Review)
(Spoiler-filled blog post)
(Review)
(Spoiler-filled blog post)
2.
Holy Motors
The only person
who truly knows what Holy Motors is
about is writer/director Leos Carax, but that doesn’t it’s confusing just for
the sake of being confusing. On the contrary, his film is a triumph of
imagination; the kind of film that seems to demand a second viewing the second
it’s over. (I’ve yet to make that second viewing a reality, but it will
definitely happen at some point.) The real genius of Holy Motors is that it was able to find a way to be truly
unpredictable: it changes identities about every five minutes. It follows a
strange man named Oscar—played brilliantly by Denis Lavant, who deserves every
award ever made—as he goes about his day performing many different roles.
That’s the best way to put it, but this is the kind of film that is best
experienced with almost no knowledge going in. Some movies are just confusing. Holy Motors is confusing in the best
possible way.
(Review)
(Review)
1.
The Master
Paul Thomas
Anderson’s new film had its fair share of detractors when it came out this
fall, but it seems like the overall reception has warmed considerably ever
since. I’m glad to see that, because The
Master felt like a special achievement from the second I laid eyes on its
first few frames. Anderson has changed quite a bit ever since Boogie Nights, and The Master seems like the completion of some kind of
transformation. It no longer feels like he’s borrowing from other filmmakers,
and this film is a wholly original work that examines a certain period of time
in American history and the type of person that was the product of that time.
Or something. This is a film that defies quick analysis, and it only really
works if the viewer allows himself or herself to be fully immersed in
Anderson’s universe. At the center of the whole thing are two brilliant
performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the former being a
military veteran looking for a place in the world and the latter being a
spiritual leader looking to bring lost souls like Phoenix into his world. There
are no real payoffs or bursts of violence, but instead scenes of Phoenix and Hoffman
trying to figure each other out. It’s a puzzling, difficult film, but it’s
profound at all the right moments. It’s the kind of movie that will keep people
thinking and talking for years to come.
(Review)
(Review)
Notable Films I Haven’t
Seen
Amour
Compliance
How to Survive a Plague
The Impossible
The Imposter
Killer Joe
Not Fade Away
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Promised Land
Rust and Bone
Searching for Sugar Man
The Turin Horse
One more film every
movie fan needs to see:
---------
Well, I’m
finally done with 2012, everybody. 2013 content will start to show up this
weekend as I start to wade through the pool of junk that is the January and
February months. Join me, won’t you?
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