Best Films of 2012

I don't really understand it or know how widespread it is (it apparently wasn't on honeykid's vid), but youtube has for a while now been deploying http-Secure (so the url starts with "https" instead of just "http"). The embedding code works for me when I drop the s and otherwise use the tags just as honeykid did.

I decided to watch this based on your placing it in your best of the year list.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

And? What did you think?

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

This has definitely been a solid year for both commercial and independent films. From the British indie scene to big American epics, film seems to be on it's way up.

Here are my pics for the top 10 films of the year, with number 1 being the best.

10. The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan)



It's not often that a Nolan directed film isn't first place, but for all it's positives, Rises has far too many flaws to go beyond 10th place. It lacks the lyrical elegance of Batman Begins and the intensity of The Dark Knight, but it's still a big epic sweeping effort from the best in the business. It also contains my favourite sequence out of the entire trilogy.


9. Dredd (Travis)



I was somewhat excited to see this when it was first announced, but then rumours of rewrites and post production delays sort of put me off. I didn't care about the plot similarities to The Raid, but I did feel that such a film would be better off not being restricted. I stand corrected, however, as Dredd is a very entertaining saturday night B-movie. It's biggest strength is it's all-forward-movement approach. It acts as a film that's got nothing to lose. It doesn't care about franchises, political correctness or star power, it just is. And for that I am grateful.



8. Cabin In The Woods (Goddard, Whedon)



Easily the best horror comedy since Scream. For those that haven't seen it, the less said about it, the better. . Scary and funny with likeable characters you root for all the way, this is arguably the most entertaining film of 2012.


7. End Of Watch (Ayer)



Must admit, I didn't think I would rate David Ayer's new cop thriller much. His films have been a bit predictable over the last few years, and despite the cliched 'found footage' technique used, this remains a strong buddy cop thriller. The relationship between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena's L.A cops is believable to the point where you feel you are actually watching two friends go on about their daily lives. The inevitable shoot outs are quite shocking when they do come about, too. Surprisingly good film.

6. The Kid With A Bike (Dardenne's)




I had only just discovered the Dardenne brothers around January last year when I watched The Silence Of Lorna, which I thought was excellent. Since then, I have become quite fascinated with their work. This effort is continues their thematic obsessions of confused, pained down on their luck protagonists who seek redemption. Except this time, the protagonist is a young boy who's been abandoned. It's a film of quiet intensity and the kind of brilliant performances you only really get in films like this.

5. Killer Joe (Friedkin)



I like my comedies black. Pitch black. But this may have been a bit dark, even for me. This is not a film for everyone. I genuinely believe you need to have THAT kind of sense of humour to get anything out of this film. I think this is William Friedkin's first film since the misstep that was Bug. This is a sweaty noir with not one sympathetic character. This is a world in which characters are frighteningly unintelligent, and the patriarch is pliable and would sell his own daughter for money. It's a ****ed up world, but a very compelling one too.

McCougney has, frankly, never been better. The hints of darkness he showed in the wonderful Frailty are on full display here. His title character is so powerful, such a towering figure of latent menace and violence that when you do see him 'let go' in the film's controversial ending, it's almost a release. Up until then, every line he delivers, even the charming ones, are blood curdling. You'll never want to eat chicken drumstick again.


4. Headhunters (Tyldum)



Another noirish thriller with shades of dark humour, except this one is Norwegian and features far more sympathetic characters. It's a tale of a insecure con artist/theif, who's grip on his world loosens every min to the point where he has to fight for his life. His troubles escalate to epic proportions when his latest target turns out to be a ex military man who hunts him down, one crazy set piece after another, with our somewhat arseholey protagonist becoming more likeable throughout.


3. Looper (Johnson)



Rian Johnson's tech noir recalls everything from Terminator to Memento, and while it has nowhere near the depth of the latter, it's still one of the most inventive and stylish science fiction films of the last two years. Ably headed by the ultra charismatic and mesmerising JGL, it's another one of those the less-you-know-the-better types. The only thing that lets it down is a flat ending, otherwise, you'll not find a better sci fi film this year.

2. My Brother The Devil (El Hosaini)




Part coming of age drama, part urban thriller. This is no ordinary 'hood' film. There are moments within the film that subvert genre expectations. There is one particular moment I won't give away, but will become quite obvious as you get half way through the film.

It's the story of two Egyptian brothers, older well connected drug dealer, Rash, who, following a tragedy, has a change of heart about the life he leads; and his more academically brighter, yet not as tough on the street younger brother, Mo, who has always idolised his brother and his street cred. Once Rash starts to drift apart from his old gang, Mo see this as an opportunity to become the man he always wanted to be and attempt to replace his brother.

Again, that's the somewhat simple version of the story. It sound predictable, but I guarantee that it's not. Both James Floyd and Fady Elsayed are nothing short of brilliant as the brothers. Watch out for the always excellent Said (La Haine) Taghmaoui, another performance and role that subverts expectations.

It's also got some outstanding cinematography for a film set in unsexy urban environments. Debut filmmaker Sally El Hosaini clearly has a love/hate relationship with that part of the city she lives in, as daytime sequences are captured in a bright, clear style, giving more emphases on the summer season the film is set in, whereas night time scenes have a slight gritty edge to them.

1. Shame (McQueen)



This is the type of film the tosser american academy won't even dare nominate. They're too scared. Had this been a film about drug addiction or something, it might have had a chance. But noo, nobody wants to talk about sex addiction. These academy slags have no balls whatsoever, which is why this fascinating film wasn't even acknowledged for anything. But i'm not surprised, Shame is too honest, too raw, too emotionally draining for the average person. Sex addiction is, for whatever reason, a taboo subject. Everyone's cool with people being tortured and having their limbs blown off and ****, but nobody wants to get down to the root of sex addiction. That's ok.

Anyways, see this film. I urge you. It's important. It's adult, beautifully directed and photographed, plus Fassbender gives the performance of a life time. Gives new meaning to the term 'f_ckin' the pain out'

Gutted about missing The Hunt. Mikkelsen is wicked and i've heard such great things.

Whoops, one more that I completely forgot. I forgot that Treacle Jr came out this year. For some reason, I was thinking it came out last year.

Treacle Jr, I tie that alongside Shame as the best film of 2012.

Treacle Jr (Thraves)



Jamie Thraves is probably the most underrated British filmmaker out there. Reuniting with his The Low Down, star, Aiden Gillen, he set out to make a film, and almost crippled himself financially for it. How's this for a REAL low budget indie film? Thraves remortgaged his house to get this film funded. And whilst it didn't pay off commercially, it still didn't stop it from being one of the most engaging, hysterically funny and poignant films of last year.

I actually met the equally criminally underrated and gifted Aiden Gillen around November last year. A true wonderful man, genuinely pleasant and incredibly humble. When I mentioned Treacle Jr he seemed pleasantly surprised that I had seen it, because he hadn't met ANYBODY who had seen. He claimed to have had a lot of fun filming it with Thraves, and it shows. Aiden's scenes have so much going for them as far as humour goes. But he's also an intelligent enough performer to give his character (also called Aiden) a sense of world weariness that he tries to keep hidden through a exuberant and eccentric exterior. It's a wonderful film and it's a shame that nobody has bothered to watch it.

Shame was released in 2011 if I am not mistaken, but it's a true masterpiece. +1 rep for this!

It didn't hit cinemas in the UK until mid January. It may have been released in America in late 2011, but it was definitely January 2012 over here.

Still too early for me, by my four favorites by a bit are The Dark Knight Rises, Life of Pi, The Hobbit and Cloud Atlas. Four of my very favorites from the last several years, actually.

1
Lincoln

2
The Dark Knight Rises


3
Looper


4
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia


5
Take This Waltz


6
Oslo, August 31st


7
The Avengers


8
Moonrise Kingdom


9
Django Unchained


10
The Master

I thought Lincoln was a near perfect film, absolutely loved it. Great year for movies also really enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook, Beasts Of The Southern Wild and Zero Dark Thirty. I can't wait to see Amour, hasn't been available anywhere near me.

1. Django Unchained
2. The Master
3. Life of Pi
4. Killer Joe
5. Silver Linings Playbook
6. Bernie
7. Argo
8. End of Watch
9. Chronicle
10. The Avengers

Still a few here and there I need to catch, in addition to every foreign film!

Still lots to see, but here's what I've enjoyed so far:

:
Django Unchained
The Cabin in the Woods

:
Moonrise Kingdom
Looper
Zero Dark Thirty
The Dark Knight Rises
Silver Linings Playbook
The Hunger Games

:
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Sessions
Ted
Sleepwalk With Me
Side By Side

1. The Turin Horse
The loss of Bela Tarr is a great loss for cinema. Luckily, his final film is no less than superb. The film follows the horse that caused Neitzsche to go insane, and the six days that follow with the owner and his daughter. Open on a 5 minute tracking shot following the horse as it thrashes forward. Accompanied by Mihaly Vig's superb score that builds but never climaxes, this kinetic charge forward that never loses momentum. By the time the film's first cut, you've been hypnotized. Tarr draws the audience in kinetically, so that the hypnosis carries through the static of the rest of the film. Tarr's camerawork is astounding. Every shot is a long take, often in motion. His camera has a weight to it. It always moves, but gracefully, steadily, unflinching. There's a scene where the daughter goes outside , the camera follows, but then shirks away until it needs to go to see her. Something is wrong, and Tarr feels it. Tarr is the camera, and we feel him advising us while not saying exactly what's happening.

The Turin Horse is also a study in film kinetics. As I said, the opening scene had me more tense than any action scene I witnessed this year due to the constant onscreen kinetic energy. There is an ominous and ever present wind. The narrator tells us that the wind only blows in one direction. And so it does. The wind is always blowing left to right across the screen. For almost the entire film, the characters move from right to left. There is a point when the two try to leave their estate. They move across a hill, but something not seen on the other side makes them turn around. The begin to move left to right, and soon after, their world ends. A magnificent film in all aspects.

2. Holy Motors
Leos Carax has made the first great surrealist film since Lynch finished “Inland Empire.” “Holy Motors” is a brilliant film about films, about acting, about life. It begins with Carax himself unlocking a hidden door and entering a movie theater where everybody has fallen asleep. Film is dead in “Holy Motors,” which makes it even more relevant as, in the words of David Bordwell, film is dead criticism is now a significant genre of criticism. The film follows M. Oscar through a typical day. He has appointments in which he immerses himself in a new role and runs around doing bizarre or just surreal things. Oscar is an old beggar, an assassin, the leader of an accordion band, an many more things. I’d have faith in the Academy again if they nominated Denis Lavant for this film. As M. Oscar, he repeatedly creates characters out of thin air, and is to be credited as much as Carax for the film’s successes. Lavant transforms so many times and so well, it makes “Cloud Atlas” look like it was made by children (not that I dislike that film, I enjoyed it very much in fact). The real genius of “Holy Motors” is similar to Lavant’s. The film essentially creates beautiful, strange, touching, and thrilling moments out of thin air. There’s no preamble, just these moments. This ability is what film is all about, it’s pure cinema.

There’s a very fine, maybe even nonexistent line between real and fantasy is “Holy Motors,” as we would expect from a surrealist film. It would seem at first that everyone is like Oscar, switching roles minute to minute, but then again, it seems that the only people that do that are those that are taken around in limos. So cinema is dead here, sort of. “Holy Motors” suggests at first that with the death of cinema, everything becomes art, but maybe what Carax is actually trying to say is that everything can be art if it chooses to, and if this happens enough, why would we need film?

3. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s incredible film about life and death is a visual masterpiece. The film’s first half follows a team of police officers, a doctor and prosecutor as they canvas the Turkish countryside for a body that their prisoner admitted to burying. He seems to be purposely distracting them. Ceylan hides a story about life within a seemingly dull police procedural. The countryside is dark, lighted only by small, yellow headlights. Ceylan loves long takes and implements them well here in making the night seem endless, as each member of the party starts to see their evening as much more than just a case. The prosecutor and the doctor discuss a story of a woman who predicted her death that seems at first a battle of realism vs. mystery but turns out to be about something much more profound.

We follow the film’s central characters through many revelations all brought by the same thing. The film boasts, as well, many beautiful and perfect scenes. An apple’s journey from a tree through a stream captured in a single take, witnessing the supreme sadness of seeing a face too beautiful for words, the camera forces us to experience the tragedy of children experiencing the effects of the sins of adults. Ceylan’s film is slow, it needs to be. His film is life. We experience characters fruitlessly searching, guided faintly by just small flashes of light, and what do they find in the light of morning? Death.Once Upon a Time in Anatolia haunts you for days on end. It’s the kind of film that makes you slow down, and cancel your plans. It’s one of the best of they year.

4. The Deep Blue Sea
What appears to be a cheap 50s British period piece turns out to be much more. Terence Davies film about love is dazzling and forward moving. There's a swift efficiency to Davies' direction. He knows how to convey the events briefly, and effectively (a suicide, an affair), but also is able to rush past those and then slow down and settle into emotions almost instantly, it's great filmmaking. Rachel Weisz plays Hester in a powerful and unabashed performance welcoming back truly strong female protagonists. She falls in love with an RAF pilot (Tom Hiddelston) because of his boyish charm and passion. What follows is a series of falling outs between characters.

The interest arrives when it is revealed that the location of her attempted suicide was at Freddie’s place, not her husbands. Her husband (Simon Russel Beale) loves her too much to let her be with Freddie, but Freddie does not really love her, or not in the same way, as Hester says. Freddie did not asked to be loved, it was thrust upon him and he doesn’t know how to do it back. Hester’s husband is an intelligent man and the two get along well, it’s obvious that Hester must’ve been the one to initiate their romance. Hester is stuck between a man whom she doesn’t love and a man who can’t love her. I may sound very melodramatic, but it’s carried out with weight, due to three grand performances. It’s a poignant story about the pain of unrequited love, and pain in general.

5. The Kid With a Bike
France's premier filmmakers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes, turn in another beautiful film. The film follows Cyril (Thomas Doret), a young boy who's living in a foster home since his father left him a month ago. Cyril is constantly looking for him and has the forceful determination only a child can muster. Cyril finally meets someone who will tolerate him. He grabs Samantha (Cecile de France) while running from security at his dad's old apartment and she responds, "You can hold me, just not too hard." It's a beautiful scene that resonates throughout the film. As viewers, we hope that his meeting Samantha (she takes him in on weekends) will halt his continually troublesome momentum. It only aids it. Samantha helps him locate his father.

The Dardennes exploit no emotion and refuse to dramatize this event. His father gets him a drink, talks to him a little, but then says he's too busy. The father tells Samantha not to see him anymore, but she makes him tell Cyril. The scene that follows in the car is devastating in a way that no dramatization of the situation could provide. The Dardennes know this and are very delicate in their storytelling, avoiding cliche's and following a logic instead, what results is devastating because this is what would happen in real life. Finally there's another child in cinema that's not stupid or in the way, or one of those unusually perceptive ones, but real.

6. Oslo, August 31st

A story so specific, it’s universal. Joachim Trier’s story of a dry but not sober drug addict is almost so perceptive of live at times that his addiction becomes completely irrelevent. Trier’s protagonist, Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), tests our sympathy. He came from an advantaged family (their house has a name), he’s smart, and he’s an ******* (or so people tell him, the film almost constantly references the past though we never see anything but the present). Anders feels bad for himself though he knows it was him that “****ed up,” as he so constantly says.

As Anders meets people from his past, he looks for sympathy constantly, but finds nothing. The film’s best scene involves Anders in a cafe, where he follows the lives of the people who walk by in his head. Nobody is without great pain, that’s all that the world is, to Anders. The cinematography first expresses Anders’s attempt to be happy by living vicariously. Later, it distances us from him as we watch his helpless demise. The cinematography is simple and yet it’s so effective. Trier’s simple last day with a man not psychologically capable of living is the most moving film of the year. It’s a test of our sympathy, and a reminder of why people live, and why they die.

7. Berberian Sound Studio
Peter Strickland has created the second scariest film of the year (next to Amour), and possibly the most innovative. Berberian Sound Studio follows a sound engineer's unlikely work on a 70s Italian horror film. There's something ominous in the works, we can feel it. The tension builds uneasily, mostly through sound. There's a very Lynchian element to the film, and it contains some of his familiar themes.

The most extraordinary thing about the film is, of course, the use of sound. While watching, we're compelled to ask where the music is coming from. Well, obviously it has to come from the movie we're watching, but is it in the film's environment, or over top of it? The interesting thing is that it's always in the environment, but doesn't always feel that way, as if we're merging with this art just as its protagonist is. Brilliant.

8. Amour
Michael Haneke has established himself as the greatest horror director of all time with Amour. It sounds strange to put Amour in the same category as Silence of the Lambs or the horrendous #1 at the box office currently, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D, but what else does Amour invoke but pure horror at death. He's the greatest because he elevates the genre to a truly terrifying nature. The second scene of Amour is similar to the penultimate shot of Cache. The couple (with the typical Haneke names Georges and Anne) is in a crowded theater. They don't enter first or last, and they're not center, they're just there, they're just people. This is the only scene outside of the apartment, which feels very claustrophobic, especially with Haneke's unmoving camera. It feels trapped.

After the theater, the rest of the film is spent watching Anne's degeneration into death after a stroke. First she can't move her arm, then one side of her body is entirely paralyzed. Georges becomes Anne's caretaker, though he hires a couple of nurses for the more difficult things. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are a perfect couple together. Their body language makes it feel like they've been together for 50 years. It's hard to separate Amour from its actors. Trintignant is 80, Riva 82. They will both be dying soon for sure, and we're not sure how, but we know it won't be glamorous. There will be disgustingly plain showers, slow failures of body, and horrifying truths. The real horror in the film is how honest it is. All of it makes too much sense, too much heartbreaking sense.

9. Margaret
Sure, Kenneth Lonergan’s latest might be clumsy, messy, awkward and melodramatic, but that’s just what give it its charm. After many years of fighting over the final cut, a very broken and abridged version of Margaret was released and made under $50,000 at the box office. This year, a director’s cut was released which not only fills in holes, but also provides a new score. Having seen both (For a total of 5 and a half hours of film), I’m still not sure which one’s better. Both are so good that they molded together in my mind to create a masterpiece. The film is about a teenager, Lisa (Anna Paquin), who believes she is to blame for the death of a woman in a bus accident. Lisa believes that the world revolves around her, ironically since the film does. Lonergan, in his recut version, makes it clear that though the film follows her, she’s no more important than anyone in the city. As the camera zooms in on Lisa and a boy hopelessly and depressingly in love with her at a diner, the conversations of 4 other people are heard over top of theirs for the majority of the scene. He doesn’t want anybody left out in a city that’s suffering, Lisa’s story becomes a synecdoche for the city and for America as a whole.

This joins Spike Lee’s 25th Hour as the two most perceptive films about post 9/11 New York. Margaret is also the best example of human behavior I’ve seen in film all year. There’s a painfully awkward scene where Lisa loses her virginity to a laughably relaxed Kieran Culkin. It’s not awkward because its bad. It’s awkward because we’ve all experienced it. We see ourselves onscreen and are disgusted. I swear its, for me, a word for word parallel with my life. Lonergan’s dialogue plays out like a Derridian version of Aaron Sorkin. His script is smart, it’s fast, but it also has meaning within itself whereas Sorkin’s scripts usually work off of current happenings. It makes Lonergan timeless. Lonergan’s meditation on post-9/11 New York, death, and the failures of communication is a magnificent success.

10. In the Family
Remember the name Patrick Wang for he is poised to become America’s next great director. His first feature, In the Family is brave, artistic, and beautiful. Wang’s story revolves around a child custody case that develops when Joey’s (played by Wang himself) partner Cody (Trevor St. John) dies in a car accident, but Joey has no legal right to be their son’s guardian. The story reveals the terrible but true nature of people. The characters in In the Family would never call themselves racist or homophobic. In fact, there is never a negative reference by any of the offending characters to Cody and Joey’s relationship. The disapproval is there, but they are not the kind of people who would allow themselves to admit it.

Wang has a real directorial eye which, though flawed, lends itself to some beautiful compositions in some unexpected places. Wang has skill and relies on longer, thoughtfully composed, takes, many times with the action is going on in the background with something else blocking or crowding the frame. While not Citizen Kane like blocking which adds to each individual shot, Wang’s style does achieve a level of thematic resonance with his cinematography, a true achievement. This film teeters so close to being a Lifetime or Hallmark movie, but evades every opportunity through Wang’s discipline. This is the start of a potentially great film career.

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Mubi

I've not seen Amour, but if you're putting it in the same genre as Silence of the Lambs, then it's not horror.

Substitute your choice of horror then, and the point wasn't really to classify or confine the film to a particular genre. Amour would exist in an expanded genre of horror. It holds none of the cinematic or narrative conventions of the genre, I called it horror because that's the central feeling invoked. There's nothing greater evoked in the film than a crippling sense of terror.

I really enjoyed reading your list even though I have only seen 4 of the films. The Kid With A Bike has been in my netflix que forever so I will have to catch up with it real soon. I cannot wait to see Amour, I have been so disappointed that it hasn't come to any theater in my area. With all the praise it's getting I just hope my expectations aren't too high. Didn't consider Margaret for my top ten, don't really have a good reason why since no one saw it before this year. I have to say it would probably have made it, I have really enjoyed both of Lonergan's films. I do feel that he has a closing problem, which is what probably keeps both his movie from being dramatic masterpieces for me.

There's only 4 that really appealed to my movie tastes...

The Dark Knight Rises... I rated at 98% ++
Dredd... I rated at 96% +
The Expendables 2... I rated at 92%
Prometheus... I rated at 89%


I guess I'm just a sci-fi and action fan.

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Surprised you liked Prometheus, Rodent. I was disappointed by it.

Then where's looper ?!

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I'm up to 54 movies so far for 2012. It's been a pretty positive year. I keep a log of the movies I enjoyed most and least (along, of course, with a complete list). Sometime during February I do a "Best Of" post for each year picking the top and bottom 5.

My top films so far:

Les Miserables
Life Of Pi
Flight
Searching For Sugar Man
Moonrise Kingdom
Headhunters
Safety Not Guaranteed
Your Sister's Sister

Headhunters isn't even getting mentioned at awards shows and it's winning everyone over I get to see it.

Alright folks, another update:

1. Flight 9/10
2. The Avengers 8.5/10
3. The Impossible 8/10
4. The Dark Knight Rises 8/10
5. Silver Linings Playbook 7.5/10
6. Django Unchained 7.5/10
7. Argo 7/10
8. Skyfall 7/10
9. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
10. Ted 7/10
11. Life of Pi 7/10
12. Guilt Trip 6.5/10
13. Rise of the Guardians 6.5/10
14. Lincoln 6/10
15. Hotel Transylvania 6/10
16. Amour 5/10
17. The Vow 5/10
18. The Master 1/10