2012 In Cinema
As I saw a ton of movies last year, here is my choice of top 35 cinematic endeavors. |
| 1 | Silver Linings Playbook
5/5 - Who would have thought that Bradley Cooper could convey such angst and heartache? Or that De Niro still had a great performance in him after a decade of caricaturing his old self? And Jennifer Lawrence - just wow. There's so much more to say but best to just let you experience it for yourself. |
| 2 | 5 Broken Cameras
5/5 - The film shows the Israeli occupation through the eyes of a small village and its people from 2005 to 2010. It's a very honest film that depicts the struggle the Palestinians live through every day being treated like animals and sometimes worse by the young Israeli soldiers who daily harasses them. |
| 3 | The Hunt
5/5 - The Hunt is a harrowing experience that is not an easy film to watch, especially if the viewer has had past experience with the subject. The exceptional performances, however, make it easier to appreciate. |
| 4 | Moonrise Kingdom
5/5 - An accurate and deeply heartfelt depiction of ones childhood. While not his most ambitious, this is defintiely Wes Andrsons most perfect work so far. |
| 5 | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
4.5/5 - A haunting and lovely tale of a boys journey to keep his father alive in his memory. I loved the fact that it centered around 9/11, as I think as painful and emotional as that was, we should never forget it. I loved the message and even though I was emotionally exhausted by the films end, I still felt good after seeing it. |
| 6 | The Master
4.5/5 - "I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all, I am a man, just like you" |
| 7 | Beasts of the Southern Wild
4.5/5 - Like "Life of Pi," "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is another magical-realist fable, this time on an indie budget. This imaginative, emotional debut film by Benh Zeitlin is a euphoric experience. |
| 8 | Amour
4.5/5 - Michael Haneke's "Amour" is an unrelenting look at an aging woman's decline and death and her husband's valiant attempts to look after her in her last days. True to its title, this movie is indeed about love. But it's not about the oft-told beginning of a love affair; it's about the messy 'til death do us part" ending of one. |
| 9 | Sound Of My Voice
4/5 - A paranoid-as-all-hell leap into the world of new age cults, 'Sound of My Voice' makes some of the best use of ambiguity and cognitive dissonance yet put to film. |
| 10 | Beyond The Black Rainbow
4/5 - A spaced-out 'Eraserhead' for the younger generation, this is a trip to an alternate universe 1983 where all that was promised to us in Omni Magazine and Rush album covers has come true. |
| 11 | Bernie
4/5 - A "small" movie that deserved a wider audience, Richard Linklater found something funny, sad, eccentric and timely in the true story about a mortician (Jack Black) who befriends but bumps off the richest and most spiteful woman (Shirley MacLaine) in a small Texas town, then proceeds to give away her money to bail out the local economy. |
| 12 | Life Of Pi
4/5 - Maybe the best use of 3-D yet, Ang Lee's visually intoxicating treatment of Yann Martel's prize-winning novel about a boy (Suraj Sharma) lost at sea with only a tiger for company is an exquisite poetic fable that also bares ferocious teeth. |
| 13 | Zero Dark Thirty
4/5 - "Zero Dark Thirty" is a grim, clinical depiction of the CIA search for Osama bin Laden. But hey, there is also a song from Aesop rock with the same title, and its also awesome. |
| 14 | Chronicle
4/5 - Chronicle is an engaging offspring of two very separate genres. Reality based horror / thriller movies and Super Hero's. Never would you have imagined a super hero origins movie being shot with a hand-held camera. |
| 15 | John Carter
3.5/5 - Really surprised to find a film which had a good plot line (albeit cynics will liken it to Avatar-lite), well acted, reasonable characterisations, brilliant visuals and a surprisingly good hero figure in Taylor Kitsch. |
| 16 | The Hobbit
3.5/5 - A good but somehow extremely disappointing movie. Heres hoping the sequels will be better. |
| 17 | The Dark Knight Rises
3.5/5 - The film has been shot very much in the open, with the Internet creaking under the weight of set videos and photos from observers. And inevitably, it?s led to a cauldron of hype that?s almost impossible to live up to. |
| 18 | Skyfall
3.5/5 - Directed by Sam Mendes, "Skyfall" is a contender for one of the top Bonds ever. It's not so much the probing, psychological script, but the nuanced, inspired performances by Judi Dench, Javier Bardem and Daniel Craig, of course - and stunning cinematography by Roger Deakins. |
| 19 | The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
3.5/5 - The story is very simple yet complicated because of how much goes on. But the way it unfolds is beautiful and sad, sometimes all at once. While it has its funny moments, it also manages to go through dark topics as well such as homosexuality, drugs and death. |
| 20 | Les Miserables
3.5/5 - If you're a fan of Les Miserables or musicals in general, then you're in for a treat. |
| 21 | The Place Behind The Pines
3.5/5 - This is not a movie which will fulfill your guesses if you think you've seen them all. A wide range of strong character and plot development pulls the film together when it looked like the film could burst apart at the seams. Great cinematography by Sean Bobbitt and an ambitious music score by Mike Patton (with a shade of Morricone, I think?) compliment the film's uneasiness and unpredictability perfectly. |
| 22 | Cloud atlas
3.5/5 - Visually stunning, epic in scope, a strong score; the sort of film that you're constantly amazed was ever made and happy it was. Equal parts comedy, romance, thriller, and dystopian speculative fiction, it really is an astounding mix of disparate elements. |
| 23 | Seven Psychopaths
3.5/5 - There are several films that exist about the movie - making process and it is a very difficult genre to make effectively. Seven Psychopaths succeeds in balancing the art of characters and the art of plot coherency. While the actors look like they're having fun, but they make sure we are still amused and connected with the film. |
| 24 | The Grey
3.5/5 - Belying its pulpy animals-gone-wild concept, The Grey resonates with the sort of genuine humanity and emotional punch you'd expect from an award-worthy drama. |
| 25 | Django Unchained
3.5/5 - Genre-hopping Quentin Tarantino tackles a full-on western. |
| 26 | Killing Them Softly
3.5/5 - This movie is actually a brilliant polemical satire on base dog-eat-dog capitalism, played out against the rhetoric of the Obama-McCain election campaign. |
| 27 | Argo
3.5/5 - Tells the astonishingly true story of how a CIA exfiltration specialist attempts to free six Americans who have taken shelter in the home of the Canadian Ambassador during the Iranian hostage crisis. |
| 28 | The Pitch Perfect
3.5/5 - A musical done right. |
| 29 | The Avengers
3.5/5 - I am a huge sucker for the marvel cinematic universe movies, but I still was in doubt about this movie. Well, fortunately it turned out to be pretty entertaining and fun. |
| 30 | Haywire
3/5 - 'Haywire,' is a direct, action-packed flick that hums along to its own definition of perfection and it rightfully earns its spot on the best movies of 2012. |
| 31 | Ted
3/5 - If you don't like Seth MacFarlane's humour, there's a good chance you will not enjoy this film. However, if you like Family Guy and you have the ability to look beyond the obvious, then you might well like Ted as much as I did. |
| 32 | The Project X
3/5 - A humorous pure popcorn movie with no hidden meanings to teach you the values of life, it's pretty good. Probably, The only party movie to have balls. |
| 33 | 21 Jump Street
3/5 - Buddy cop movies have been losing their waves. The thing is that all the buddy cop movies after Rush Hour 1 have been either too dull to comprehend or just mildly interesting and could just pass as a movie you've seen just to mark the register that you've seen it. |
| 34 | Men In Black 3
3/5 - Being a fan of the previous mib movies, I found this one to be a decent sequel. |
| 35 | The Expendables 2
3/5 - First of all, this is much better than the first part. It's really action packed. You're blasted off in the first few minutes leading up to the actual story. Obviously, this is not a film with a great script or impressive acting. However, the story works well for what it's supposed to do! It is greatly entertaining if you are looking for an action packed movie loaded with iconic action stars like Stallone,Willis and many more. |
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