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

REVIEW: The Master

The Master (2012): Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. Rated R (Sex, nudity, language). Running time: 137 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Many of the characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, and particularly the two at the center of his latest, The Master, are unhinged and unpredictable. His films tend to be unpredictable too (I’m thinking specifically of the milkshake monologue in There Will Be Blood, the frogs in Magnolia, every scene in Punch-Drunk Love), but they are far from unstable. The style of Mr. Anderson, who wrote and directed this film, his first in five years, is always focused and assured. The actions of his characters are often bewildering and bizarre but the steadiness of his camera and the methodical pacing of his storytelling give us the sense that we are in good hands, that he knows where he is taking us.

Through the patient, almost voyeuristic lens of the film’s opening scenes, we meet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a World War II Navy veteran just beginning his post-war life. The military has diagnosed him (as well as the rest of a roomful of vets) with an anxiety disorder but, this being 1950, he receives little treatment aside from a pat on the back and a “Good luck, son.”

On top of that (or perhaps because of that) Freddie is also an alcoholic and quite possibly a nymphomaniac. He stumbles about his life, leering at strangers, taking swigs from a flask that contains a potent homemade cocktail – a toxic blend of booze and household chemicals – and is fired from more than one job.

On an impulse one evening, he hops aboard a boat where he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of The Cause, a dubious religious organization, who is celebrating the marriage of his daughter (Ambyr Childers). The organization (is it a church? a school? a cult?) practices a pseudo-science referred to as “processing.” The “processing” method is essentially a psychotherapy session and at first does not seem to be so different from Sigmund Freud’s interest in therapy as a way to root out past traumas. The Cause’s ultimate goal, however, is to reconnect an individual with their past lives, some of which, Dodd claims, date back trillions of years. (Dodd is none too pleased when a vocal critic of his work reminds him the Earth is only several billion years old.)

It is easy to see how The Cause has gained followers. Dodd is a charismatic speaker and, in comparison to Freddie, who he soon befriends and takes under his wing, Dodd is a seeming picture of poise, authority and intellect. But does he actually believe in what he preaches or is he, as one character puts it, just making it up as he goes along? Dodd’s public image is further complicated by a family life that includes his domineering wife (a quietly menacing Amy Adams) and his son (Jesse Plemons), a member of The Cause but also a skeptic.

The relationship between Freddie and Dodd is an elusive one. Dodd seems genuinely keen on helping Freddie and, for all the questionable implications of “processing,” Freddie’s early sessions provide real breakthroughs into his repressed past. From there, things get murkier. Their relationship all but consumes The Master and yet, by the film’s end, it is difficult to know what to make of it. Dodd cares for Freddie with something resembling paternal love and Freddie reciprocates with an unwavering loyalty toward his mentor (sometimes violently so). There are also deeper layers to their bond that only occasionally bubble up and reveal themselves.

The performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman are stunning. Mr. Phoenix disappears into his role to a frightening degree, raving and shouting and physically abusing himself, while Mr. Hoffman’s subtler performance offers an interesting foil to Mr. Phoenix’s maximalist approach. Dodd’s silence and self-control make him even more inscrutable than Freddie.

Paul Thomas Anderson gives his actors plenty of room, shooting them in extended wide shots, then closing in for prolonged and mesmerizingly expressive close-ups. Working with cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., Mr. Anderson gives his film a lustrous visual style (worth nothing, the movie was shot on 65mm film, a rarely used format nowadays). He meticulously places his characters in the center of a shot, leaving vast amounts of open space in the frame.

In more ways than one, The Master may be seen as a companion piece to Paul Thomas Anderson’s last movie, 2007’s There Will Be Blood. The legitimacy of religious figures and the power they hold over people was a peripheral theme in that film and it is the main focus here. Mr. Anderson raises interesting issues regarding the crossroads of intellectual and spiritual pursuits and the degrees to which anyone can trust either.

But The Master is foremost a dual character study and the most pressing questions lingering in the air after the final scenes are about Freddie and Dodd’s relationship. There are a number of deliberately open-ended mysteries, loose ends left tantalizingly untied. The lack of closure makes The Master Paul Thomas Anderson’s most vexing movie to date but also begs an interesting question: If its characters are frauds who speak in empty language, does that make the movie empty of substance as well? What was all the tension and drama building toward?

I don’t know. And I suspect my own uncertainty is part of the point Paul Thomas Anderson is driving at, or it is at least an intended effect of the film. Who’s to say for sure?

- Steve Avigliano, 9/27/12

BEST OF THE DECADE - #5: There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood (2007): Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel, Oil! by Upton Sinclair. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. Rated R (some violence). Running time: 158 min.

**NOTE: This review freely discusses the ending of the film, so be forewarned of spoilers.

“I’m finished,” says Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the final line of There Will Be Blood, as he sits in a bowling alley beside a pool of blood from the recently bludgeoned Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). This strangely understated and ambiguous statement has a few layers of meaning. In the most literal sense, he is calling to his butler in the next room to announce that he has finished his meal and his conversation with Eli, who was shown in by the butler a few minutes earlier. In a more figurative sense, the line is more of a declaration of victory, having ended his longstanding rivalry with Eli by murdering him. In yet another sense, Plainview, living in his luxurious mansion, has finished his life’s goals and has lived out the American Dream. He has built a prosperous business from nothing, beat out his competition, made all the money he could want, and now he sits with nothing more to do.

The film is set at the turn of the 20^th century when such dreams of boundless potential were on the minds of so many pioneering Americans out West. California was an open frontier for business prospects, and railroads stretched across the country taking workers and businessmen to burgeoning towns to start their lives fresh. In the film’s first shot of the expansive California landscape, director Paul Thomas Anderson presents us with an idyllic view of a railroad track that extends out to the horizon, a beautiful visualization of the limitless possibilities offered by the open country. The camera rests for a moment with the tracks in the center of the frame, before panning to the right and following Plainview’s car as he drives through one of these developing Western towns. The camera moves down the track until Plainview’s car comes to a stop, centered in the frame. In one fluid shot, Anderson presents us with an image of the American Dream, and makes a visual association with Plainview by also placing him in the center of the frame. Later in the film, Anderson constructs a similar moment, showing an oil pipeline stretching into the horizon before panning over to Plainview and his son, once again centered in the frame.

Daniel Plainview does not simply represent the American Dream in the film; he is consumed by it. He lives for nothing else but to be the best. He despises his competitors in the oil industry and distrusts all who work for him. He refuses to yield to anyone, least of all Eli Sunday, a young preacher who invests in Plainview’s oil rig as a way of funding his church. Plainview answers to no man but himself, and Eli’s attempts to bring God into Plainview’s life only serve to antagonize him. Eli, like every other man on the Western Frontier, wants to capitalize on the opportunity to build something. In his case, he desires to build a church, establish a congregation and have them look up to him for guidance. For Plainview, Eli’s determination represents a threat to his own goals and he refuses to allow the young boy to gain control over his land. As Plainview’s ambitions turn to greed, he becomes obsessive and violent, revealing a madness beneath his businesslike demeanor.

This development in Plainview’s character, however, is hardly a surprise considering the film’s foreboding title. Anderson plays with our expectations by naming his film There Will Be Blood and by using a score by Johnny Greenwood that frequently sounds as if it was lifted from a horror film. Even the opening shots of beautiful Western landscapes become ominous when accompanied by Greenwood’s score. The title itself could be that of a horror film (in fact, Saw II used the phrase in its tagline two years prior). The title also makes reference to America’s history of violence in pursuit of oil, and makes an interesting contrast to the title of Upton Sinclair’s novel, Oil!, from which the film is adapted. Though the actual violence in the film is not as rampant as the title suggests, it becomes all the more shocking in its sparsity, and Anderson’s gradual pacing allows the tension to build and release at unexpected moments.

Much of the film, including its deliberate pacing and musical score, is reminiscent of the late Stanley Kubrick’s style. Anderson has never been shy about admitting his influences, most notably Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese, and has cited Kubrick as an influence on this film. In the opening fifteen minutes, Anderson has the patience to let wide-angle landscape shots establish a setting while scenes free of dialogue introduce the story, not unlike 2001’s “Dawn of Man” opening. The film is also a spiritual cousin to many of Kubrick’s films, sharing their bleak outlook on humanity.

However, Anderson includes enough mystery and strangeness in the film to make it his own. Several elements of the film go largely unexplained, such as the identity of Eli’s twin brother, Paul, who only appears once in the film to sell Plainview information about his family’s land. The two brothers might be separate individuals, but there are enough suspicious moments to suggest that Paul might be an invention of Eli’s to keep a clean conscious about selling his family’s property to an evil man. Other scenes, including Eli’s strange and passionate sermons, and Plainview’s now-infamous milkshake analogy, are as startling as they are funny, but Anderson pulls everything together with complete mastery into a bleak interpretation of America’s most treasured values – family, faith, and entrepreneurship.

Before the final, violent confrontation, Anderson presents us with an establishing shot of Plainview’s bowling alley, two parallel lanes centered in the frame, looking curiously reminiscent of the earlier railroad shot. In place of the horizon, however, is a wall. Plainview has reached the end of that supposedly infinite reach of possibilities, revealing there to be nothing more than death and self-isolation as he sits in the center of the frame once more. He has lived the American Dream from start to bloody finish.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/8/10