Best and Worst Films of 2012

In a cinemascape increasingly populated by 3D/IMAX/fX phantasmagoria, the scarcest qualities are the most basic: purpose, earnestness and genuine emotion. Virtually all the films in my Top 10 of 2012 shares one or more of these attributes.

But above the worthy—coming-of-age dramedies, an epic biopic, thought-provoking science fiction, and lessons about the high cost of terrorism—stands a little-seen film from director Craig Zobel that won’t dissipate from my consciousness even weeks after absorbing it. The fact that it’s drawn from a tragically true story is essential to its power as a graphic illustration of both the psychology of victimhood and the Milgram-tested capacity of humans to commit horrible of acts in obedience of even perceived authority. Dig deeper and you’ll also find a deconstruction of femininity and a searing critique of isolation in our fast food culture. Evocative of the gritty best of Roman Polanski and Michael Haneke, the best film of 2012 is Compliance (dir. Craig Zobel).

2. Silver Linings Playbook (dir. David O. Russell): A delightful, virtuoso marriage of humor, poignancy, fluid camerawork, lighting and music, this eclectic stew navigates its darker and lighter moments with equal aplomb. It also features some of the best ensemble acting of the year, headlined by award-worthy lead performances from Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

3. Lincoln (dir. Steven Spielberg): Both a biopic and a revealing insight into the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including the horse-trading and skullduggery that’s always been grist for the political mill. Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance is monumental, wholly capturing both Lincoln’s grandeur and frailties. Day-Lewis lifts Lincoln off Mt. Rushmore and makes him mortal, forging an emotional connection with the audience and compensating for Spielberg’s ever-hovering penchant for schmaltzy grandeur.

4. Looper (dir. Rian Johnson): Science-fiction with a brain and a subtle helping of social and cinematic commentary. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt are outstanding, and if it wasn’t for Moonrise Kingdom, it’d be Bruce Willis’ best work this year.

5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (dir. Stephen Chbosky): While I normally recoil from coming-of-age dramedies, this whip smart screenplay doesn’t overplay its sass or sentimentality. Logan Lerman continues to build a sturdy resume in the lead role, and Emma Watson and Ezra Miller are pitch-perfect as best pals and high school misfits.

6. Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Kathryn Bigelow): The backlash against this account of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden misses the subtle power of Mark Boal’s screenplay, which educates through exposure rather than didactic explication. There should have been a wee more character development, particularly Jessica Chastain’s dogged lead searcher. But the final 45 minutes are the most taut and gripping you’ll experience in a theater all year.

7. Argo (dir. Ben Affleck): Efficient, funny, entertaining and, yes, captivating. For his third directorial effort, Ben Affleck (who also stars) graduates from well-crafted genre pictures (The Town; Gone Baby Gone) to more formidable filmmaking, chronicling the CIA plan of posing as movie producers in order to enter Iran and rescue a group of Americans from the 1979 hostage crisis. The film isn’t just an ode to American heroism. It’s a salute to its most durable, exportable commodity: movies.

8. Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson): Although Wes Anderson’s films are an acquired taste, this quirky romantic comedy-drama (yep, all that) is a funhouse reflection of Rockwellian America. There’s a scoutmaster (Ed Norton), child runaways, island police (Bruce Willis), an uptight lawyer couple (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) and a Nor'easter bearing down on the 1960s New England isle where they all leave. Trust me—it all works.

9. The Master (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson): Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s central focus isn’t the nature of personality cults, as viewed through the relationship between returning WWII sailor Joaquin Phoenix and a spiritual leader partly inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Instead, Anderson returns to familiar themes found throughout his short but resplendent filmography: the search for a father figure or lost son, dysfunctional family relationships, and flawed men fated to self-destruction.

10. The Raid: Redemption (dir. Gareth Evans): If there was ever a Dogme-style revolution in action filmmaking, it could start with this unadulterated adrenaline rush. This Indonesian import from Welsh-born director Gareth Evans is raw and frenzied, heavy on blood, ballistics and balls-out martial arts. The action starts flying at the audience mere minutes in and doesn’t let up until the final credits. Moreover, the fight scenes are as exquisite as ballet in their choreography, and the action is visceral sans an over-reliance on digital effects




Worst Film of 2012 — That’s My Boy: I wanted to pick some film, any film other than Adam Sandler’s annual dreck submission. But Jack & Jill, last year’s worst, is Citizen Kane compared to this blight on cinema. It opens by glorifying pedophilia for guffaws and ends by doing the same with incest. But chronicling the film’s many sins—and flat-lined follies—would require a R-rated review. Suffice it to say the film levies a taxing onslaught of racist, sexist and scatological bile, and you know a script has problems when Vanilla Ice has the funniest lines.

Rest of the Worst: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; Alex Cross; Battleship; The Dictator; Men in Black III; The Odd Life of Timothy Green; Red Dawn; Rock of Ages; The Words


Pleasant Surprises: 21 Jump Street; Cloud Atlas; Haywire; Hope Springs; Life of Pi; Marvel’s The Avengers; The Raid: Redemption; Silver Linings Playbook; Sinister; Skyfall

Biggest Disappointments: The Dictator; Flight; Hyde Park on Hudson; Killing Them Softly; Les Misérables; Promised Land; This is 40

2012

Ah-ha, I think I found your leak.

Grade: D +

Director: Roland Emmerich

Starring: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, and Danny Glover

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours, 38 minutes

In every Roland Emmerich disaster flick, there are always the digital money shots that not only sustain Emmerich’s inexplicable filmmaking career but seemingly redeem the poor audience members who plunk down their hard-earned scratch to witness tsunamis swamping Manhattan and aliens imploding the White House.

They also usually come about midway through any one of his excruciatingly long apocalyptic forays – Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow – leaving the rest of the time wasted with the same character archetypes. There is the intrepid scientist who warns the noble U.S. President and some skeptical member of his staff about impeding doom, along with a third-party hero who just wants to save his family and the world, in that order. And, always along for the ride are barely realized secondary players who supply annoying comic relief and/or cannon fodder for all the CGI cataclysms.

So it is in 2012, Emmerich’s latest act of paranoia profiteering. Scientific advisor Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor, mortgaging his talent for a paycheck) discovers three years out that on December 21, 2012, the occasion of the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, the moon and stars will align for the first time since the demise of the dinosaurs, igniting solar flares and flinging neutrinos into Earth’s core that will heat and melt the mantle, causing massive tectonic shifts and, more importantly, lots and lots of F/X earthquakes.

World leaders, including President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover, slurring his lines like a punch-drunk pugilist), are forewarned, but the cursory, slipshod preparation montages are merely an appetizer for the calamitous main course. Chasms open, buildings crumble, tidal waves crash down, and volcanoes erupt. Our principal tour guide through the Book of Revelations is middling author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), whose chance encounter with another Emmerich archetype, the nut-job conspiracy theorist (played here with ease by Woody Harrelson), sends him on a mission to rescue his estranged wife Kate (Amanda Peet), her new boyfriend (Thomas McCarthy), and his kids from peril.

The disaster scenes are loopy, but they do constitute popcorn-chomping amusement to a point. Where this and every Emmerich cinematic shipwreck runs aground is its woeful attempts to interject character development, sentimentality, and morality into their narratives. Endless aerial escapes from danger are punctuated by unending tearful telephone goodbyes (yes, apparently satellite and cell phone technology will survive the End of Days as long as cockroaches). Scenes of a tsunami engulfing Washington, D.C. are juxtaposed against Curtis and his wife blithering about why their marriage hit the skids.

The rendezvous point for the lucky or lucrative few is a series of metallic arks anchored in the Himalayas that will house man and beast until the flood waters recede, a comical incarnation of Strangelove’s mine-shafts. When Helmsley and comely First Daughter Laura Wilson (Thandie Newton) protest the fate of those who slaved to construct the mammoth boats, a grouchy bureaucrat (Oliver Platt) sarcastically invites them to give their boarding passes to a couple of poor Chinese workers. The moment is cloying enough. What’s unintentionally hilarious is Helmsley and Wilson’s reaction: They shrug their shoulders and climb aboard their ship, summarily leaving the peasants and Emmerich’s principled pretense to a watery grave.

Emmerich doesn’t just pander to tableaux of death and destruction; he relishes in them. Indulging in new levels of rank nihilism, the director conspicuously razes St. Peter’s Basilica upon the heads of the Papacy and thousands of praying parishioners. This is the second or third time he has demolished the White House, this time using a tidal wave carrying the USS John F. Kennedy (the motive behind Emmerich’s choice of ship is peculiar considering the actual “Big John” is decommissioned and berthed outside Philadelphia).

Ultimately, Emmerich rationalizes the end of the world and the deaths of millions as an excuse for Helmsley and Wilson to hook-up and a way to get Kate’s boyfriend out of the picture so Curtis and his family can reunite. Lovely. If the apocalypse ever actually arrives, let’s hope every copy of 2012 is among its first casualties.

Neil Morris