Best of 2012: My Top 5 Movies of 2012

Here are my Top 5 Favorite Movies of 2012. (I’ve also included one Wildcard Pick and an Honorable Mention so I suppose altogether this is my Top 7.)

The Wildcard Pick: Savages (Original Review)

My wildcard pick this year is Oliver Stone’s addictive, blistering Savages about the weed business. Depending on how you look at this brash and reckless movie, you may deem it a frustrating failure or an exhilarating entertainment. Then again, why choose? Oliver Stone does the equivalent of bringing an Uzi to an archery range. He makes quite the mess of things but you can’t say he doesn’t hit his target. The movie is too long and the ending is a strange, ungainly disaster but I can’t say that any other movie this year shocked or thrilled me more. If you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, look no further.

Honorable Mention: Argo (Original Review)

A terrific audience-pleaser and perhaps the best thriller of the year, director Ben Affleck’s Argo is great, edge-of-your-seat entertainment. It tells the absurd, true story of a CIA mission that faked a movie production to retrieve a group of American citizens during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. The movie acknowledges the fraught international politics of the time but is first and foremost a daring rescue movie. This one is loads of fun and smart to boot.

5) The Master (Original Review)

At the end of The Master there are loose ends left untied and mysteries that go unexplained. Frustration with the film’s anticlimax and lack of a resolution is perfectly natural. But part of the fun of this movie – and this is assuming you share my idea of fun – is sifting through this strange and fascinating drama and guessing at what it could all possibly mean.

This is not to say the film is some sort of scholarly exercise; it’s much better than that. Watch the bizarre bond that forms between a mentally unstable WWII veteran named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, unhinged and with a wild look in his eye) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, never better), the charismatic leader of a dubious New Age church. Their relationship twists and turns as the two men gain power and leverage over one another. The Master is a half-mad swirl of sexual impulses, pseudo-scientific babble and violent outbursts. I can’t say I understood it all but I was never bored.

4) Zero Dark Thirty

There are a number of thorny issues at play in Zero Dark Thirty – the use of torture on political detainees, the gender politics of women in government – but the heart of the film drives at a larger, more encompassing question: Is the ultimate objective of the War on Terror to protect the homeland from future attacks or to punish those responsible for 9/11? For Maya (an intensely focused Jessica Chastain), the distinction is irrelevant. Either way the goal is the same – take out Osama bin Laden.

The film is a historical approximation of the leads and events that resulted in bin Laden’s death on May 2, 2011, but what elevates it beyond the level of a made-for-TV movie is director Kathryn Bigelow’s remarkable craftsmanship and eye for poetic detail. The final assault on bin Laden’s compound – a flurry of night vision green and fiery explosions set against the darkness of night – is as tense as any action movie. When the dust clears, the human drama ends on a note of bittersweet uncertainty. Whether bin Laden was killed for the sake of homeland security or justice may not matter from a military perspective but emotionally how does one reconcile the two and move on?

3) Amour

Amour is a movie of few words so it seems wrong to use too many here to describe its greatness. This quiet, poignant love story follows an elderly couple as the husband grapples with the deteriorating health of his wife. Through the keen direction of Michael Haneke the film reveals intimate depths of its characters’ emotional lives often with little or no dialogue.

Amour is a devastating study of life and love in its final stages. It explores the difficulty of dying with dignity and of finally letting go when the time is right, but it is not all doom and gloom. Few movies are this honest and true. Every moment in it feels real and its message is ultimately life affirming.

2) Lincoln (Original Review)

There’s no sense in hiding it. Director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s Lincoln is a history lesson. But what this impressive, entertaining movie shows us is that the participants of history were real people with large personalities, not some culmination of dates and facts like our high school curriculum might have us believe. They were politicians who were as prone to grandstanding and as stubbornly biased as today’s elected officials are. Lincoln’s thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, was an ambitious piece of legislation and its passage required bravery and political cunning, but also bribery.

There is no mistaking that Lincoln is a Steven Spielberg prestige picture – it is beautifully shot and features a slew of exceptional performances that will no doubt make the Oscar voters swoon – but it is also vibrant and alive in a way few period pieces are. Abraham Lincoln and the congressmen of his time understood they were making history but for them it was a very real present where victory was far from certain. History lessons are rarely as fascinating and exciting as this one.

1) Moonrise Kingdom (Original Review)

Moonrise Kingdom has the warm feel of a half-forgotten childhood memory and director Wes Anderson brings it to life with the visual whimsy of a picture book. The movie breezes by, telling the story of Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, each pitch perfect), two lovesick kids who run away from home to be with one another. They are mature beyond their years and yet also heartbreakingly naïve, blissfully unaware of the crushing reality that awaits them outside the bubble of childhood.

This sad fact of life is not lost on the other inhabitants of the small New England island where the film takes place. The remaining cast of characters, a motley crew of melancholic grown-ups, drift in and out of the picture, desperate to find Sam and Suzy while also preoccupied with their own adult problems. Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s script finds bittersweet humor in their characters’ lives but never condescends to them. This blend of comedy and pathos is a delicate balancing act but Wes Anderson and his terrific cast – including Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Ed Norton and Bruce Willis – walk the tightrope wonderfully.

Much like the private cove its young heroes discover and seek refuge in (and also gives the film its name), Moonrise Kingdom is an inviting paradise. One visit is not enough.

- Steven Avigliano, 2/24/13

Best of 2012: My Favorite Performances

The Oscars have it all wrong. By trying to determine “the objective best” performances of the year, the same sorts of roles get nominated year after year and a lot of strong work gets overlooked. What follows are my favorite performances of 2012. Are they the best? I’m not sure I even know what that means. These are the performances that made bad movies decent and good movies better. These are the actors I was talking about with my friends as I left the theater. These are the ones I’m still thinking about.

I’ve listed them in alphabetical order, selecting one as my favorite of the year and one bonus prize for the best ensemble.

Josh Brolin – Men in Black 3

Doing his best Tommy Lee Jones impression, Josh Brolin as Agent K’s younger self was the highlight of the second, time-traveling sequel to Men in Black. He may even play the straight man to Will Smith even better than Jones did. Getting laughs with nothing more than a mean mug and a dry Southern drawl, Brolin made this thoroughly unnecessary movie a pleasant surprise.

Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln

At the heart of Steven Spielberg’s superb film is Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. He disappears into the role as he always does but he doesn’t dominate the movie. The performance is low-key, painting the former president as a thoughtful, intellectual man. Of course, Lincoln is known as a great orator and Day-Lewis gets a few moments to shine in this capacity. But note also the quieter moments when he jokes with cabinet members or discusses with his wife the fate of their enlisted son. The performance is another in a line of great ones in the actor’s impressive career.

Andrew Garfield – The Amazing Spider-Man

There’s a moment in The Amazing Spider-Man when Andrew Garfield shakes his head, grinning, mouth agape, apparently speechless. I imagine I’d look much the same way were I lying in the arms of Emma Stone while she tended to my wounds. Garfield is thoroughly convincing as a teenager suddenly given super powers – a little cocky and a little clumsy but well intentioned. His Peter Parker is a charmer in a way Tobey Maguire never was in the role and his performance helped make The Amazing Spider-Man the most fun I had at the movies this summer. 

Salma Hayek – Savages

A wildly over-the-top Salma Hayek devours her role as a drug kingpin in Oliver Stone’s Savages. Cursing in two languages and wearing some fantastic wigs, she gives a movie that is already high off its own supply an added jolt of adrenaline.

Anne Hathaway – The Dark Knight Rises, Les Misérables

Yes, Anne Hathaway steals the show with her stellar rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” in Les Misérables, but I enjoyed her turn as the sexy, wise-cracking seductress Selina Kyle (a.k.a. Catwoman) in The Dark Knight Rises even more. The movie, which very nearly collapses under the weight of its own seriousness, is actually a lot of fun whenever she’s on screen and if there’s one thing it could have used more of, it’s her.

Philip Seymour Hoffman / Joaquin Phoenix – The Master

Any interpretation of Paul Thomas Anderson’s maddening new film hinges on how you view the relationship between Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman) and Freddie Quell (Phoenix). Is their bond that of a father to his son? A teacher to his pupil? A scientist to a lab rat? All of the above? Each actor makes his part nuanced and complex. We can never pin these men down and this inability to fully understand their relationship is what makes the movie so compulsively fascinating.

Samuel L. Jackson – Django Unchained

In a film that mostly ignores the complexity of race relations in the Old South, Samuel L. Jackson fearlessly digs into some very tricky material as Stephen, the loyal servant of a cruel and violent plantation owner. He is frighteningly intense but, being a Tarantino veteran, Jackson is more than capable of navigating the sudden tonal shifts from drama to comedy and back. Stephen is a fascinating variation on the Uncle Tom archetype, muddying the waters of Tarantino’s overly simplistic morality and enlivening the movie’s last act.

Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook

A far cry from her solid-as-a-rock performance as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence shows off her range playing the romantic foil to a manic depressive Bradley Cooper. She is emotionally guarded and prone to mood swings but watch how her face shows you everything her character is thinking and hints at the sudden outbursts just before they happen.

Channing Tatum – 21 Jump Street

Channing Tatum is hilarious. Who knew? He has comedic timing to match his good looks and his presence here helps freshen up Jonah Hill’s fast-talking shtick in one of the year’s most unexpectedly funny movies.

My Favorite Performance: Martin Freeman – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

If Peter Jackson’s first Hobbit movie wasn’t quite perfect, there was at least one aspect of it that was: Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins. Freeman gets the part exactly right. His Bilbo is a homebody, curious about the outside world and with an impish streak in him, but mostly content to curl up by the fire with a good book. Whenever the movie threatens to get lost in a computer-generated frenzy, Freeman can be counted on to right the ship’s course. Though he is too often relegated to the sidelines in this first film, the next two parts of the trilogy would be wise to turn to Mr. Baggins more often.

Best Ensemble – Moonrise Kingdom

The cast Wes Anderson collects for his latest feature is an enviable one. Some of them play roles we’re familiar seeing them in. Bill Murray is as reliable as ever playing a sad sack and Frances McDormand is a joy to watch as his wife, a Type A personality who wears the pants in the family. But others play refreshingly against type. Ed Norton is a lot of fun as a scout leader who is still a boy at heart and Bruce Willis is touching as a lonely police officer. Add to that some fine supporting roles from Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman and Tilda Swinton, not to mention some excellent young newcomers (including Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the eloping young lovers), and you have an excellent ensemble led by Wes Anderson, one of the best maestros around.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/23/13

Best of 2012: My Favorite Reviews I Didn't Agree With

When did we stop engaging in good-hearted debate? Whatever happened to the lost art of agreeing to disagree? Personally, my favorite part of analyzing a movie is never writing the review. I enjoy the conversations that follow, the heated discussions and debates. I like trying to convince someone to give a movie they hated a second chance and I love when someone forces me to reconsider an opinion of my own.

So in the name of that lost art, here are my favorite professional reviews I read this year that made me reconsider and reevaluate a select few movies.

Though the movie didn’t do much for me, I understand why people enjoyed The Avengers. But I’ll always be amused at the outrage some people felt when they found out someone actually could have been unimpressed by the movie. I thought it was the same old product I'd seen a hundred times before (except this time a little bigger, a little louder and a lot longer) but Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe gave what I found to be the most persuasive argument for its existence. The movie, he writes, “is as close as a movie can come to the fantastical reality of a really good comic book.” And the fact that the movie offers no surprises isn't important. “I might not remember any of the sequences in The Avengers, but I’ll remember the rush. I don’t need anything else.” Fair enough.

And besides, how I felt about The Avengers is pretty much how a lot of other people felt about The Amazing Spider-Man, a movie I had a blast at. Its story, writes Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, is one “that many moviegoers older than 10 may think they’ve seen because they probably did when the first movie burned up the box office.” The filmmakers, she contends, “weren’t allowed to take true imaginative flight at a company that’s conspicuously banking on a resuscitated franchise to carry it through its next fiscal quarters.” Ouch. I suppose corporate products are as prone to subjective interpretation as art.

Speaking of art, I was one of many left in awe by Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, The Master. But I completely understood the reactions from friends and critics alike who were left cold by what they felt was a pretentious mess. Richard Corliss of Time magazine points out a number of issues that he feels holds the movie back from greatness. It “violates the cardinal rule of the father-son or master-servant plot: that the acolyte will somehow change his mentor” and once this becomes clear, “after about an hour, the story flatlines into repetition without development.” It’s a solid argument and one that I can't yet counter. But I suspect that this lack of change, while certainly counter to any intuitive sense of what drama should be, is part of the film's challenging message.

On the other end of the spectrum, I was thoroughly disappointed by Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. But I found New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s scholarly defense of the film enlightening. I felt Tarantino’s characters were flat and one-dimensional. Scott argues, however, that Tarantino “does not hesitate to train his revisionist energies on some deep and ancient national legends” and “exposes and defies an ancient taboo” – that a black man can be the agent of that classic literary motive: revenge. And the violence is not exploitative as much as it embodies Tarantino’s “moral disgust with slavery, instinctive sympathy for the underdog and an affirmation (in the relationship between Django and Schultz) of what used to be called brotherhood.” Scott views the movie from an interesting perspective, one I wouldn’t have thought to take. I’m still not sure the movie clicks for me but let’s just say I agree to disagree.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/23/13