BY EDDIE THENELL
With the Academy Awards weekend upon us, there is no better time to reflect on our favorite movies of the past year. While many people are already looking ahead, my mind is still focused on 2012, sorting through all the riches that pop culture had to offer.
With the Critic’s Choice Awards and the Golden Globes both in the books and the Oscars imminent, it seems about time for me to discuss the films that most moved me in 2012. And move me they did, whether it was to tears or the edge of my seat.
These films represent the best that cinema had to offer, ranging from big-budget Hollywood actioners to foreign indies, comedies to tragedies, and well-known to barely-seen. In fact, I would call this a truly strong, dynamic year for film. I rarely could find a time of the year where my local cinema wasn’t full of titles that I was dying to see. This made for a year that, truth be told, had it’s fair share of disappointments – *cough* Les Mis *cough* Prometheus *cough* – but held many more pleasant surprises.
10. SKYFALL
The James Bond franchise has long been mired in tired tradition and convention, leading to a decades-long slump leading up to 2006’s Casino Royale. That film gave the franchise a new life, and Skyfall takes full advantage. The film feels like both a reinvention and a rediscovery, making those tired conventions seem fresh once more by focusing on impeccable below the line work and crisp storywriting.
Daniel Craig’s Bond is brutal, yet suave; mysterious, yet vulnerable. In short, he’s the most complicated Bond we’ve been privileged to see on screen. Similarly, Javier Bardem turns in yet another chilling performance and creates what could go down as the most iconic Bond villain since Goldfinger.
Skyfall is the kind of Bond movie every lover of the franchise hopes for. It’s bold, sexy, assured entertainment that is sure to reinvigorate the series in ways we will only see later. Mr. Mendes, take your bow.
9. DJANGO UNCHAINED
Controversial doesn’t even touch the surface of this brazenly entertaining film from master provocateur Quentin Tarantino.Django is a fantasy-revenge tale in the same yarn as Inglorious Basterds, but succeeds tremendously even where it’s predecessor failed. Tarantino’s signature twisted humor is on full display here and has rarely been more effective. To call the film politically incorrect is nothing if not an understatement, but the pseudo-perverse sense of justice we get from watching plantation owners die brutally at the hands of a slave is undeniably satisfying.
As is to be expected from any Tarantino film, the performances on display are all top-notch. Christoph Waltz seems to have been born to deliver Tarantino’s crackling dialogue, DiCaprio and Jackson chew scenery with the best of ‘em, and Jamie Foxx effectively plays the straight man to the madness on display. Their work gives teeth to the horrific displays of brutality that permeate the script and, just as crucially, they never let a zinger fall flat.
8. ARGO
Ben Affleck has steadily reformed his image from pretty-boy washout to elite director over the course of three excellent films, and Argo is the strongest argument yet that Affleck has become an indispensible presence in blockbuster filmmaking. Argo tells the true story of how a CIA operative concocted an unbelievably bold plot to extract 6 Americans from Iran immediately following the 1979 hostage crisis.
Combining an authentically vintage aesthetic, a thrilling covert tale, and surprisingly effective Hollywood comedy may as well be the blockbuster triple-crown, but to pull those elements from a true story puts Argo in a different league altogether.
7. MOONRISE KINGDOM
Coming-of-age films are a dime a dozen, but every so often one comes around that strikes at the emotional core of childhood and transports you back to pain and joy of growing up. Moonrise Kingdom is one of those special films. Capturing adolescent love through the eyes of a child might seem a tall order for any artist but, here, Wes Anderson has proven himself up to the task. It’s an absolute knockout punch, with just the right combination of wit and panache to sell its nostalgic emotionalism.
Anderson has yet to make a bad film, but never before has his characteristic quirk fit the nature of the story so endearingly. Such a marriage of form and content is a thing of pure beauty, and makes Moonrise Kingdom stick in your heart and mind long after the credits roll.
6. LOOPER
Looper takes the genre trope of time travel to a very dark place, where the technology is used almost exclusively by organized crime to dispose of dead bodies. But, to maintain secrecy, each assassin must eventually kill his own future self. The film absolutely takes this daringly bleak premise and runs with it, winding through one plot twist to the next, hardly letting up until the film reaches its breathtaking conclusion.
Along the way, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt have the opportunity to develop deep and authentic characters beyond those that existed on the page. Their work takes Johnson’s story and gives it life, an element that is all-too-often lacking from such brainy sci-fi.
5. OSLO, AUGUST 31st
Joachim Trier’s dazzling debut, Reprise, was a criminally underseen gem of European cinema heralding a Norwegian revival of the French New Wave. Trier plays it fast and loose with the form, mixing a freely moving camera with jump cuts to masterful effect. His style is utterly engrossing and makes his intimate vignettes and deeply flawed characters jump right off the screen and into your imagination.
Oslo, August 31st is, in many ways, a much darker film that Trier’s brilliant debut, following a recovering addict as he leaves his treatment center to interview for a job in the city. While there, he revisits old friends and uncovers old wounds while struggling to reconcile himself with his own inner demons. Anders Lie’s central performance is one of quiet, nuanced power, outwardly hinting at a grief that simmers just below the surface.
4. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
David O. Russell was all but out of the game. The stories of his on-set behavior made a good case for Ron Artest comparisons, and that was before his follow up to I Heart Huckabees was frozen in post-production. Needless to say, you would have been forgiven for thinking his career was headed for an early grave. Then, 2010’s The Fighter saw him return to top form and regain much of his previous critical support, and he has capitalized by releasing what may be his best film yet.
Silver Linings Playbook is a romantic comedy following a mentally unstable former middle school teacher trying to put his life back together after a stint of court-ordered institutionalization. That might not sound like your ideal rom-com setup, but what follows could aptly be described as the feel good film of the year.
3. AMOUR
Michael Haneke is the modern master of making you squirm in your seat. Whether it’s home invasions, bourgeois entitlement, or … um … Nazi kids, Haneke knows how have what’s on the screen get under your skin and stay there. Here, he follows an elderly couple struggling to deal with the wife’s crippling stroke and the results are utterly haunting; an uncharacteristically tender exploration of old age and grappling with the end of life.
The film is unflinchingly meticulous and uncommonly affecting, due in no small part to the uncompromising performances from veteran French performers Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who inhabit their roles so wholeheartedly that you would never once question that their characters had spent their whole lives together.
2. ZERO DARK THIRTY
Kathryn Bigelow has done it again. After The Hurt Locker took the festival circuit by storm several years ago, the high caliber team of director Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal reunite to tackle the CIA’s soten-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden. It is hands down the most complex and detailed exploration of the War on Terror that Hollywood has yet produced, and the skill on display at all levels is never less than breathtaking.
You won’t like everything that you see, but you won’t even think about turning away. More than anything, that is the sign of a truly great film.
1. THE MASTER
If there was any remaining doubt of P.T. Anderson’s directorial prowess, you can safely bet that his latest masterpiece has put those doubts to rest. Each of his films boasts its own distinct pathos, yet they all share a characteristic blend of dramatic homage and a fiercely unique visual identity that is otherwise completely absent from modern cinema. His influences are as wide-ranging as one might expect from a self-taught cinephile, but his filmography is nothing less than a coherent body of masterful work.
Anderson is on record as wanting to create a “great American film.” Even if his latest doesn’t quite hit that mark, his ambition puts everyone else in the business to shame, as does the film. Masterful, indeed.