Despite an earlier blog post decrying Hollywood as being bankrupt of ideas, there is no doubt in my mind that 2012 was an absolutely spectacular year for film. With the 85th Academy Awards fast approaching, it’s worth looking back at what the film industry has given us this year. Below is the list of most of the films I got the pleasure of seeing this year in theater, roughly in descending order of preference, and grouped in two buckets. It should be noted that the list isn't all-encompassing, but should cover the vast majority of quality films Hollywood released in 2012. I also snuck in a French film.
While you may very well disagree with the exact ordering, I think it is difficult to argue that the best film this year was not The Master or Zero Dark Thirty. Both were independently financed by the same production company founded by the daughter of billionaire Oracle CEO, and both elevated film from a mere medium of entertainment to an art form. And both should garner several Oscar nominations, if not the gold-plated britannium statuette for Best Picture. It’s also worth noting that my vote for Most Underrated Film goes to Cloud Atlas, and Most Overrated Film goes to Argo.
So if you haven’t yet seen some of these films, particularly those near the top of the list, and you have some free time – definitely check them out. Thanks for reading folks, and happy watching.
The Master
Zero Dark Thirty
Cloud Atlas
Django Unchained
Silver Linings Playbook
The Dark Knight Rises
Les Misérables
Lincoln
Moonrise Kingdom
Prometheus
Looper
---------------------------------------
The Hunger Games
Life of Pi
The Hobbit
Skyfall
Safety Not Guaranteed
Bernie
The Intouchables
Argo
Ted
Flight
Arbitrage
Best comedy scene was the Rick Ross song in Django.
While the latest Tarantino film definitely had funny moments, I'll put my vote for best comedy scene for something out of Ted (maybe the one where Ted is discovered at home with four prostitutes). Seth MacFarlane is just too hilarious.
I'd put nearly every movie "above the line" ahead of Zero Dark Thirty. It was poorly cast and hardly had the impact you'd expect from the series of events depicted. The director failed to elevate the movie from its role as the first Osama story movie to hit the market.
Yikes, that's harsh. Strongly disagree. I'll give you that casting Chris Pratt (from Parks and Rec) as a Navy SEAL was a bit odd, but Jessica Chastain's performance was brilliant, a worthy follow-up to her role in Malick's The Tree of Life. Also, the suspense and realism in ZDT was excellent. So much tension for a series of events for which you knew the conclusion from the get-go, I was on the edge of my seat even though I knew without a doubt how the film would end. Also, the film did a great job mimicking reality. How climactic was OBL's capture in real life? Finally, I will add that I don't see the film as an "Osama story" movie, but rather a film about the 10-year hunt for Osama. Subtle but crucial difference. Given that, I literally don't see how it could have been done much better. It's not like Homeland which has been pretty butchered at this point.
Prometheus was a horrendous movie.
Also, Dark Knight Rises was disappointing at most.
Thanks -- now I have a list for Netflix. I've only seen a few of these so far.
Lincoln -- Great Batman -- Pretty good Ted -- Pretty funny, but not as much as I expected
I did see a lot of kid's movies and the best was Wreck-it Ralph, in what was a not very good year for kid's movies.
Didn't see Wreck-it Ralph but heard good things. As far as kids movies go, it seems that Disney has been a massive failure in many years. Back in the day they made much higher quality films that I can still admit to being good (Aladdin, Robin Hood, Beauty and the Beast, etc). Now it seems their films are mostly terrible. They're releasing one in 2013 that could be decent (The Lone Ranger), but that's not a kids film.
Also, word of caution: Django Unchained is definitely not something a kid should see (so violent). Somewhat same story for Prometheus - there was at least one scene where I had to look away from the screen.
Ha! I wrote that blog post and I still stand by it.
Here's my take on some of the big movies of the year:
Lincoln - truly awesome movie (even if Lincoln apparently had a ridiculous voice) Jack Reacher - Go see this...now. Cruise's best movie in years The Dark Knight Rises - Awesome. Bane is my favorite villain of the series Looper - Starts out strong, goes downhill about midway through Skyfall - Pretty good, but drags on a bit in the second half. Some great art direction, though, especially during the scenes in Asia. The big bad of the film was a little shitty, in my view The Master - Honestly awful. Weird for the sake of being weird. The rorschach test scene was funny, though Prometheus - Giant piece of shit. The story line makes absolutely no sense, the characters are laughably stupid and have incredibly unrealistic motivations / responses to situations. Just truly a disgrace
I never said there aren't standouts every year, but there is also a boatload of unoriginal crap / remakes / reboots / whatever that are pumped out each year that are simply awful.
I'm not surprised to hear this kind of reaction. This is not a normal movie. It is a film that you either absolutely love or absolutely hate. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, on many levels. I also saw it opening night in one of the few theaters in Manhattan that are equipped to show 70mm films. Also there is no question in my mind that Paul Thomas Anderson showcased an ability to be as true to the art of film as any director can be.
I guess that's the difference in perspective. I measure the strength of the film industry by the quality of the best 20 or so films that they can produce in a year. I think there has always been and will always be tons of crappy movies made.
I saw it in 70mm as well, didn't make up for the rest of the debacle. It just came off as a movie that was trying to be weird and artsy for the sake of being weird and artsy. Yes, Hoffman is great, but the movie is just too bizzarre and seemingly pointless.
When the movie finished, I was left with one conclusion - it wasn't a movie about cults or Scientology or anything else. It was a movie about a strange man trying to get laid. And American Pie does a better job handling that.
This is a surface level way to view one aspect of the film, and doesn't fit with the overall narrative. If the film was just about a "strange man trying to get laid", he would have no reason to join what was basically a manipulative cult. One could make a similar jab at A Clockwork Orange, which obscures the larger themes that lie beneath the surface of one of Kubrick's best films.
Disregarding the mesmerizing acting performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, disregarding the stunning, hypnotic cinematography by Mihai Malaimare, Jr., disregarding Jonny Greenwood's beautifully haunting, spine tingling musical score...putting that all aside for a moment, here is one way to view The Master.
If you're looking for a film with a clearly defined conflict and resolution that provides catharsis and follows from a linear narrative involving a clear protagonist and antagonist, The Master is not it. This is a film that's ultimately a character study, namely of two characters, whose psyches are each unraveled layer after layer. The first character is Freddie Quell, who talks from the side of his mouth with a twisted lip, walks with hunched shoulders and the gait of a gorilla, is impulsive and primal, filled with physical urges and sexual desires, and whose wartime and childhood traumas leave him to be a damaged mind with little self-awareness. In short, he's basically an animal. On the other hand, you have Lancaster Dodd, who lives his life cerebrally with a devoted focus on the mind and spirt, through an elaborate system of thought that he has constructed, which ultimately serves to simply feed his lust for power and control. In other words, he's a human being...or as he notably puts it, a "hopelessly inquisitive man".
When Freddie joins Dodd's philosophical and religious movement, it appears that Dodd is The Master and Freddie the follower, but as the cult serves as a springboard to further examine the two characters, it becomes apparent that their relationship is symbiotic and the line between Master and Follower blurs further and further. And thus is one focal point of the film: the hedonistic satisfaction of physical desires can not succeed independently of satisfying the mind/spirit, even though they are fundamentally incompatible. Such is the conundrum of life.
This is one of several perspectives that one could take of the The Master, which is a film open to interpretation, not too dissimilar to Nolan's Inception. The Master is confounding, challenging, unsettling, bold...in short, a work of art.
A few quick things:
1.) Kubrick's films are mind-blowing in part because the surface narrative and the hidden narratives are both incredible. Digging for hidden narratives is part of the fun because you end up unlocking so many different hidden (and awesome) meanings.
2.) Ditto for Inception, a mind-blowing movie on the surface and below. Makes you use your head in incredibly satisfying ways.
3.) I see what you're getting at with your analysis of The Master, but I'm not really all that sure that any of that was really hidden. And while the cinematography and soundtrack and individual performances were well-done, it still doesn't save the fact that the movie was a bit of a strange and unsatisfying mess, both on the surface and below it.
Like, I get that we were supposed to view Quell as this sex-crazed and impulsive animal, but it didn't necessarily require us watching him fuck a sand-woman / jerk off into the ocean / see ink blots and spout out shit like "cock in a pussy." While funny, it just struck me as kind of dumb.
At the end of the day, it comes down to taste. So, we might just have to disagree. I just couldn't help but feel like The Master was an artsy mess.
One could say the same thing about life.
Look, I'm not saying The Master was a perfect film. And I see what you're basically saying about the literal narrative lacking a certain 'coherence' compared to a Kubrick or Nolan film. But as far as visionary artistic efforts go in the world of cinema, I thought it was pretty spectacular. The fact that it incites this kind of discussion is evidence enough. I think we will just have to agree to disagree.
I will also add that I am a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson's previous work (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love), especially given that he is one of the few major filmmakers today that is devoted to making movies on film instead of the much cheaper digital option. There is just a very genuine feel of a movie that comes from images being burned onto photochemical film that just isn't captured by a series of 1's and 0's, no matter how high the resolution. It's subtle, but real, and the difference was really accentuated in The Master.
I'm with Going Concern on this one.
On another note: Django was my favorite movie this year.
Yeah, I know there's always been a lot of crap, but there is a difference between a lot of crap and a lot of crap that is nothing but rehashed ideas, remakes, and big budget CGI cartoon monstrosities.
I'll take the crap action movies of the 1980s over the bullshit crap movies that come out today any day of the week.
Am I the only one who didn't like TDKR and Skyfall? They were huge disappointments in my book and had ridiculous plot holes despite being well-shot.
Safety not guaranteed was amazing. Definitely go see
Prometheus - not sure where this Prometheus hate is coming from. Thought it was an awesome sci-fi that we haven't seen in a while.
Safety Not Guaranteed - solid but not without its flaws
Moonrise Kingdom - definitely underrated
Hunger Games - better than I would have expected
Saw a bunch of these movies and agree with your assessment that 2012 was a great year. Although I think movies nowadays are getting much longer (Django - 3 hours, TDKR - 2.5, Skyfall - 2.5, etc)
Agreed. I think the abortion scene was in all honesty one of the most well-conceived and best shot scenes of any movie I've seen this year. That said, that was probably the climax of the movie in my eyes. Everything after that scene, plotwise at least, really made very little sense.
Here's a funny and concise explanation of why Prometheus was terrible, the plot was full of holes, and the characters were empty shells:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/-x1YuvUQFJ0
Flight - I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt that it was an interesting illustration of alcoholism and addiction in its entirety. The first 45 minutes and the crash scene were especially fantastic. The Hobbit - Different feel than LotR, but that was expected. I saw it in 48fps and I liked the HFR a lot, though some of my friends disagree. Good movie overall with some stunning shots. Hunger Games - Entertaining, definitely. Covered a fair chunk of the book too if I remember correctly. Ted - Enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Lincoln - Alright movie, but I thought it was slow at parts. I guess my expectations were just set too high after hearing great reviews.
Link incase the embedding didn't work.
Obviously plenty of spoilers.
Good list. One of the better years for film.
2013 will have some good films coming out as well
Cloud Atlas?!?!?! Are you kidding OP, what a pretentious piece of garbage.
Prometheus gets a lot of hate for its plot-holes and writing, but the body horror really lived up to the original Alien and it was easily one of the best looking movies in the past couple years. Also, great performance from Fassbender.
Translation: "The plot was awful and the writing was bad, but look at the neat pictures!"
Haha, I'm screwing around a bit. Perhaps I take my sci-fi too seriously. I will say, though, that Prometheus did one thing really, really well: It showed how incredibly overrated Damon Lindelof is as a writer (he was the co-writer of Lost, another project that ended in a debacle.)
Non ducimus quis voluptates consectetur in. Ex hic odio optio dolores quia consequuntur earum. Deserunt aut quod quaerat qui et.
Et doloremque veritatis exercitationem explicabo sit. Qui consequatur eaque qui. Qui repellendus hic quod aliquid quis porro. Ut mollitia quisquam et ut deserunt similique. Ratione omnis ducimus consequatur esse corrupti corporis et. Sit quae delectus quibusdam doloremque similique.
Iusto perferendis sequi esse exercitationem. Voluptas repellendus ut nulla consequatur aperiam. Dignissimos qui voluptas nobis sed. Enim labore nesciunt animi aut. Beatae suscipit quos culpa praesentium ea. Qui dolorem molestias maiores repudiandae quasi.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Aliquid unde fugit et voluptates quos recusandae eos. Iure ut et ab optio officia sunt fugiat. Esse voluptates beatae corporis quo. Voluptatem id facere ab.
Voluptatem quam reiciendis voluptatem ullam dignissimos vero qui. Totam reiciendis necessitatibus dolorem est. Ad sit recusandae quidem esse laudantium optio et pariatur.