10) Prometheus - Is it a prequel to Ridley Scott’s breakthrough film Alien? You can certainly see the ties - some subtle and some obvious - to the original movie. Even so, as a stand alone film, it is one of the most visually stunning, hauntingly beautiful, and epic sci-fi flicks of recent years about a space crew researching artifacts in outer space that may hint to the origin of mankind. Michael Fassbender gives a brilliantly calm performance as David, the ship’s maintenance android, and there are also equally strong supporting performances from Noomi Rapace (from the original The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron, and an unrecognizable Guy Pearce. Plus, halfway through, we are treated to one of the most frightening, intense, cringe inducing, yet darkly humorous scenes in sci-fi film history that could very well rival the original Alien creature chest pumping scene with John Hurt. Whether you wanna view it as the prequel to Alien or just view it as a story on its own, one thing’s for certain - you’re in for one beautiful, disturbing, and exciting ride.
9) Killer Joe - Matthew McConaughey easily gives the best performance of his career in this superb thriller in the vein of Joel and Ethan Cohen’s Fargo. McConaughey plays a charming, smooth talking, Texas detective by day that moonlights as a contract killer by night. When asked by a young, local drug dealer to help kill his mom in order to pay off some loan sharks through her insurance policy, he takes the job on the condition he can either get paid up front or take the dealer’s sister as a retainer. When things naturally go south, Killer Joe’s charm quickly fades into a cold menace. With a great supporting cast that includes Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon and Thomas Haden Church, this is a simple yet sinister story that’s part dark comedy (emphasis on the dark) and part murder thriller. It’s also great to see director William Friedkin, who has helmed such great masterpieces as The Exorcist and The French Connection, back in top notch form. I will warn you, having been rated NC-17 at first, it is a very disturbing film, but given the story it should be expected. I’ve been critical of McConaughey before for churning out one cheesy chick flick after the other, but it’s performances like these that goes to show when given a great role, he will definitely not disappoint.
8) The Dark Knight Rises - Academy Award winner Christian Bale once again leads an excellent all-star cast that includes fellow Academy Award winners Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and Morgan Freeman, as well as Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this fitting finale to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Following the late Heath Ledger’s sinister take on the Joker, Tom Hardy is the third Batman villain, the mercenary Bane. Hardy gives a chilling performance that’s intelligent, eloquent, and menacing all at once. Not only that, being that his lines we’re recorded afterward, his body language performance is equally as impressive as his Shakespearean like voice-over work. This is director Christopher Nolan’s last installment to his Batman series; however, the final scene does offer a glimpse of what may be a continuation through Gordon-Levitt’s character. Whether or not that will be a success remains to be seen (Please, God, no Joel Schumacher!), but Nolan, with credit also going to screen writers Jonathan Nolan (Christopher’s brother) and David S. Goyer, at least brings about a satisfactory conclusion to what is by far the greatest comic book film series ever.
7) Silver Linings Playbook - Bradley Cooper from The Hangover gives the best performance of his career so far in this brilliantly written comedy-drama from writer/director David O. Russell. Cooper plays Pat, a man diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, trying to get his life back on track, yet finding it continually hard to move on from the past demons that still haunt him. The fetching Jennifer Lawrence from The Hunger Games gives another terrific performance playing opposite Cooper, and the two of them have such a natural chemistry together onscreen. Robert De Niro gives one of the best performances he’s given in years in a nice, restrained role as Cooper’s die-hard, extremely ritualistic, Eagles fan dad, and it’s great to see Chris Tucker back on-screen in a small yet memorably funny role.
6) Flight - Denzel Washington has given a number of memorable performances such as Glory, Malcolm X, The Hurricane, Training Day, and American Gangster, but here he gives the performance of his career as an airline captain that saves 96 out of 102 lives in a plane crash. The problem though is that he finds himself facing manslaughter charges when his post-crash blood test reveals traces of both alcohol and cocaine in his system. We all know Washington can play the intimidating, take charge kind of role, but the brilliance of this emotional performance is that this time it’s exactly the opposite. Here he plays a man who’s life is quietly spinning out of control yet either doesn’t know how to handle it, or just simply doesn’t want to. He knows he’s an alcoholic, yet doesn’t wanna admit it, and why should he? In his mind, so what if he had drugs and alcohol in his system? He’s a hero that saved many lives. In his mind he should be praised, not publically crucified. Kelly Reilly is equally strong playing opposite Washington as a recovering heroin addict trying to help him battle his demons while, at the same time, keeping her own at bay. Don Cheadle and Bruce Greenwood are also solid as well as Washington’s attorney and union representative respectively, and John Goodman provides some dependable comic relief in a few scenes. Director Robert Zemeckis has been able to "wow" his viewers visually since all the way back in the eighties with Back to the Future, and here within the first twenty minutes, director Zemeckis, puts together a plane crash scene that visually is heart pounding exciting and terrifying at the same time, once again showing why he’s one of the best directors around.
5) The Sessions - Based on a real-life article by Mark O’Brien, this retells O’Brien’s struggle of living paralyzed neck down from a bout with Polio as a child. He lives in an iron lung most of the time, but still wants to experience “knowing a woman in the Biblical sense” before, as he puts it, his “use-by date” is reached. John Hawkes gives a phenomenal performance that’s both genuinely moving and at times light heartedly funny. It’s always a challenge for any actor to take on a disabled role, but like Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Hawkes strikes just the right tone without being cheesy or overly sentimental or emotionally manipulative. This isn’t just a “let’s feel sorry for the guy in the iron lung” kind of performance. He’s a college graduate, writes poetry, and cracks jokes, even about himself. Helen Hunt gives one of her best performances as the sex therapist helping O’Brien, and the always dependable character actor William H. Macy is once again solid as the priest O’Brien seeks out for counsel in the matter. This is not just a movie about sex. It’s more than that. It’s about a man not knowing how much longer he has left to live, and wanting, just once, to connect intimately with a woman, having never had the chance to do so before. The fact that he’s Catholic and conflicted about what he wants, as well as the fact that he becomes emotionally attached to Hunt’s character in contrast to what she tries to see as just a therapist-patient relationship and nothing more adds so much more to this moving story.
4) The Impossible - Based on one family’s personal story set in Thailand during the 2004 tsunami that devastated the surrounding Indian Ocean nations, this film is part disaster movie and part tale of survival. Naomi Watts gives an Oscar worthy performance, in a role that’s both grueling and physically demanding, as a wife and mother of three separated from her husband and two of her kids following the tsunami’s aftermath. Her scenes of pain and suffering are perfectly acted, never appearing to be too much or fake, and are the most powerful in the quieter moments. Ewan McGregor also gives a strong performance as Watts’ husband, desperate to find his wife and children, and newcomer Tom Holland is great as the oldest son who finds himself having to unexpectedly take charge in order help his wounded mother. Director J.A. Bayona does an impeccable job crafting a tsunami disaster within the first fifteen minutes that is just as breathtaking visually as it is horrifying. It’s not just a typical over the top, special effects bonanza disaster scene. This isn’t Michael Bay at the helm throwing every bit of CGI he can at the screen. Instead, Bayona wisely cuts away from the tsunami wave at first and instead focuses the shot on quiet closeups of the vacationers witnessing the impending destruction for the first time. The moments of terror during the tsunami’s impact and afterward when you see those affected are never sensationalized and strike a realistic tone that genuinely moves you and makes you realize just how much of an impact this one disaster had on not only the main family of focus, but the countless number of others involved.
3) Django Unchained - Once again, Quentin Tarantino delivers another intense, freshly written hit this time about a freed slave on a quest to rescue his wife from the hands of a brutal slave master. Jaime Foxx is perfectly cast in the lead role as Django. Christoph Waltz, following his much deserved Oscar winning performance in Inglorious Basterds, returns to Tarantino territory again playing the bounty hunter willing to help Django. This man, like Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman, could recite a phone book with enough charisma and panache to have you clinging to every word. Leonardo DiCaprio gives, by far, the best supporting actor performance of the year. Here he’s charming like his past roles, but this time he’s twice as sadistic. It’s a type of performance I had yet to see him tackle, but he hits it out of the park. The lovely Kerry Washington is solid as Foxx’s house slave wife. Both Jonah Hill and Don Johnson have small yet comically dark roles, and Tarantino staple Samuel L. Jackson (who should’ve won Best Supporting Actor for Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction) gives his best performance in years as DiCaprio’s Uncle Tom butler Stephen. Like past Tarantino films, it’s dark, funny, intense, brutal, violent, and disturbing... but I loved every minute of it.
2) Argo - Say what you want about Ben Affleck’s past movie choices, and
he sure has acted his way through a lot of crap (Armageddon, Bounce,
Reindeer Games, Forces of Nature, Gigli... need I go on?)... That being
said, having directed Gone Baby Gone, The Town and now here with Argo,
Affleck is slowly but surely setting himself up as one of the finest
directors of today. Argo, based on events surrounding the U.S./Iranian
hostage crisis in the late seventies, is about CIA specialist Tony
Mendez’s mission to fake a movie production overseas in the hopes it
helps free the hostages by posing them as his film crew. It’s part
historical drama, part taut thriller, and even part Hollywood satire all
in one movie. Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman,
and Affleck himself all deliver excellent performances, and Affleck’s
direction is spot on. Right out of the gate, Affleck has us on the edge
of our seats from the moment the opening credits stop to the very end of
the film. There’s not just one, not two, not three, but at least four
intense, heart racing moments in this film, and I guarantee you, one day
Affleck will be holding a Best Director statue in his hand.
So now we’ve finally reached the number one spot. What could it be? As the Joker himself would say... And here... we... go!
1) Zero Dark Thirty - In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow directed what I believed to be the best film of the year with The Hurt Locker. Here she does it again. Based on the decade long CIA manhunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty focuses on a young CIA officer, Maya, who’s determined to bring down the number one most wanted man in the world, even when others in her own camp don’t believe she’s up to the task. Jessica Chastain gives an amazing performance in the lead role of Maya. Even after setback upon setback, she’s still confident in her mission, and when others doubt her along the way, it only boosts her confidence all the more. Jason Clarke (from Showtime’s Brotherhood) gives a strong supporting performance as the CIA interrogator that as he says to one suspect, “I’m bad news. I’m not your friend. I’m not gonna help you... I’m gonna break you.” James Gandolfini also turns in some nicely restrained work as the CIA Director. Bigelow doesn’t shy away from the interrogation scenes in the slightest, yet credit both her and screenwriter Mark Boal - who also wrote The Hurt Locker - for not taking political sides on the issue. They present everything as is, but leave the issues for the viewer to debate. Even in the quiet moments, the tension is exhilarating, and the final fifteen to twenty minutes of this movie is some of the best directing and film editing that will have your eyes glued to the screen while dangling from the edge of your seat. Walking out of the theater, the only thing I could say to myself was that I am definitely looking forward to Bigelow’s next project.
There you have it. 2012 was certainly a great year for film. Feel free to post your top ten or favorite movies of the year in the comments section. I'd love to read what you thought of 2012. Here's to 2013 being another great year!
REVIEWS COMING LATER NEXT WEEK...
Bullet to the Head
Side Effects
Identity Thief
2013 Oscar Predictions
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