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

REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012): Dir. Marc Webb. Written by: James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves. Story by: James Vanderbilt. Based on the comics by: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. Rated PG-13 (No worse than a Saturday morning cartoon). Running time: 136 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Could it be the superhero genre is entering a period similar to, say, the western in its heyday, where originality is less important than deft execution of a sturdy formula? The Amazing Spider-Man is a bright and flashy reboot of the franchise, and more or less a remake of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film that kicked off Hollywood’s obsession with spandexed heroes ten summers ago.

In that intervening decade superhero movies have become increasingly bloated and out of hand, and I started to forget what it is I expect from them. The Amazing Spider-Man has a dashing and charming hero, a pretty girl and a bad guy to save her from. The movie is also marked with a cheerful levity; it doesn’t ham it up or anything but keeps in mind just how silly these movies are if you stop to think about them.

And you don’t have to think too much to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man. The script, written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, is clunky at times and rushes through a few key moments in the character’s early development. The previous telling of Spider-Man’s origin will be fresh in the minds of many and there are few surprises with regard to the basic story here. The surprises and pleasures of this movie instead come from director Marc Webb’s lightness of touch and the giddily fun moments he creates with his graceful cast.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a teenaged brainiac whose parents mysteriously left him in the care of his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) and disappeared when he was a boy. He is a skateboarding loner with a love of photography and who occupies one of the lower rungs of the high school social ladder.

Mr. Garfield plays Peter as a goodhearted showboat, awkward and a little angsty but more than ready to take on the world when the time comes. Even after he dons the suit, Mr. Garfield does not lose the tics and mannerisms of an overexcited adolescent. These particularly come out in Peter’s scenes with Gwen Stacey (the always lively Emma Stone), a girl at his school who he is crushing on big time. They share some awkward flirtation and these scenes are the best in the film.

Marc Webb’s debut was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, the movie that revealed to America just how adorable Zooey Deschanel is, and he has a keen sensibility for the tone of these scenes. He gives his actors room to play, trusting that their onscreen chemistry will create a sweetly romantic atmosphere. Ms. Stone, a wonderfully subtle and immensely likable actress, understands her role – she is on hand to look cute and alternately cheer, gasp and smooch – and is no less appealing than usual, though she may be a bit underused.

Gwen works as an assistant for Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist who believes the regenerative powers of reptiles holds the key to curing countless injuries, not the least of which is his own severed right arm. And now we have our bad guy. Dr. Connors is that familiar movie scientist; he is noble and wise and working on something momumental, the power of which he does not yet fully grasp. Perhaps inevitably, he becomes (spoiler alert!) a giant lizard.

Dr. Connors is of particular interest to Peter, whose father once worked alongside Connors on some rather sensational projects. One of these involves genetically altered spiders that shoot webs with the strength of industrial cables. I don’t need to tell you one of these little guys bites Peter while he’s poking around in Dr. Connors’s lab.

Before long, Peter has designed a tight-fitting red-and-blue suit and a mechanism that shoots webs (both introduced in the requisite training montages), and becomes a masked vigilante. This draws the ire of Gwen’s father, Captain George Stacey (Denis Leary), who naturally sets the entire police force on a manhunt to catch Spider-Man.

There is something almost classical about this film’s approach, as though it were paying tribute to the 2002 film. This is, of course, ridiculous. The original Spider-Man is hardly old and, yes, a franchise reboot is totally unnecessary but the gluttonous studioheads have demanded it into existence and, like it or not, here it is. This is a gleeful, dopey, discardable bit of summer entertainment but something about it kept me hooked.

Like the best Hollywood formulas, the superhero movie is designed to entertain. In The Amazing Spider-Man, all the pieces are in place and it works. With no end in sight for the genre’s box office domination, these movies will continue to be produced for at least another decade if not longer. Some of them will be awful, others will hopefully be great. This is a good one.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/7/12

REVIEW: The Social Network

The Social Network (2010): Dir. David Fincher. Written by Aaron Sorkin based off the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer and Max Minghella. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language). Running time: 121 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

In the opening scene of The Social Network, Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) explains to his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) how gaining membership into one of the school’s prestigious final clubs will inevitably lead to a better life. The parties are great. You meet rich, influential people. You even have a better chance of one day becoming the President of the United States. When he gets into one, he promises, he’ll bring her along for the ride. After his girlfriend stands up, insulted, and breaks up with him on the spot, Zuckerberg seems surprised. She assures him though that the break-up is not because he’s a nerd, but because he’s an egotistical jerk.

Similarly, the story that follows, which dramatizes the creation of the now multi-billion dollar social networking website Facebook, is not about computers but rather the personalities behind them. Zuckerberg’s problems do not come from writing endless lines of programming, which he could do in his sleep, but from his interactions with other people.

The film begins with Zuckerberg’s first seed of an idea. Following the bitter breakup, he seeks revenge on the girls of Harvard by drunkenly creating Face Mash, a site that allows students to rank pictures of female students. Heavy traffic on the site causes Harvard’s network to crash and Zuckerberg finds himself invoking the ire of both school administrators and the female student body. The site’s initial success, however, draws the attention of fellow computer programmers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) who want to recruit Zuckerberg to help create a social networking site exclusive to Harvard called ConnectU. Almost as soon as he accepts their offer, he begins work on a site of his own with help from his roommate and best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who has the money to finance the project.

Zuckerberg’s partnership with Saverin begins to sour, however, when Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of the file-sharing network Napster, enters the picture. Parker, who has accrued millions of dollars through his involvement in several web companies, lives life like a rock star. He knows a thing or two about getting rich quick in the Internet Age and even more about how to spend the subsequent wealth. Seduced by Parker’s life of luxury, Zuckerberg moves out to Silicon Valley and begins to gradually cut Saverin out of the site’s development. We know the end result of Zuckerberg’s actions through scenes of two separate lawsuits against him: the disgruntled ConnectU founders who claim Zuckerberg stole their idea and the betrayed Saverin who feels his friend has robbed him of his fair share of the company.

The scenes of the hearings might have been dull in lesser hands, but screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing) transforms them into engrossing drama. He manages to make dialogue about computer programming and copyright laws (and there’s a lot of both) easily understood, and keeps his focus on the characters. Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg is a thoroughly unlikable individual but Sorkin’s script allows the performance to become a character study. Eisenberg had already proven himself capable of creating likable personas in comedies such as Adventureland and Zombieland, but he broadens his range here. Though he spends much of the film sitting and typing behind a desktop, he develops a subtle and fascinating character.

The rest of the cast is filled out with talented young actors. Andrew Garfield, who was recently tapped to be the new Spider-Man, makes Saverin the most relatable face in the film, and Armie Hammer steals a number of scenes talking to himself as the buff crew team twins who seek financial retribution. Justin Timberlake is well (and perhaps ironically) cast as the young man who effectively ruined the music industry. Some questioned Timberlake’s acting potential a few years back, but he’s wonderful here as the cocky hotshot, giving Parker a layer of vulnerability late in the film.

Holding the film’s many excellent parts together is the emerging style of director David Fincher. Fincher’s underrated Zodiac was one of the decade’s best and though his follow-up, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was less exceptional it still bore the mark of a talented director. As with those films (and earlier works such as Seven and Fight Club), Fincher’s style uses muted colors and claustrophobic angles to bring a dark edge to the material. In Fincher’s hands, Zuckerberg’s success story is filled with images of isolation and detachment. There are also a few stylistic flourishes that you can’t help but just sit back and enjoy. One sequence involving the Winklevoss twins’ close loss at crew match is a virtuosic moment of style that also showcases the exceptional work of editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall.

Fincher and Sorkin craft a story with themes of betrayal and victory worthy of a Greek tragedy, but while the film succeeds in broader terms, it falls just short of making a definitive statement about life in the Internet Age. Fincher presents honest and cynical portrayals of young entrepreneurs who want to get rich quick with the Next Big Idea, but the film never quite confronts the moral implications of what sites like Facebook introduce into the culture. The full disclosure and lack of privacy that are necessarily a part of social networking are occasionally brought up but the film never truly deals with them.

As it is, The Social Network is a fascinating portrait of the world’s youngest billionaire and what he did to get there. There is some debate regarding the film’s accuracy – which is reasonable considering Saverin was a consultant for the source material and no doubt had a biased take on the events – but this comes with the territory of a fictionalized account of real life events. The film is ultimately not about who did what and when, but rather why they did it. The who and what involve computers and a lot of dates and facts, while the why opens up a world of motivations that include sex, friendship, fame and prestige. Factually, this is murky territory to be sure, but it makes for an engrossing human story.

- Steve Avigliano, 10/6/10