With fall starting, we reach what I call the halfway point of the year. Yes, the year is more than half-over, but when adjusted for movies, this is where I stop and think back on everything I’ve seen so far. The studios tend to reserve all their potential awards candidates for the end of the year. This is to make those particular features fresh in the minds of board members, judges, and the general public consciousness when it comes time to pick the nominees.
With all those
movies that scream for attention on the way, I like to stop and reflect on what
has had an impact on me. What’s the value of doing that? Well, the
pretentiousness of the awards season can inhibit the most objective film
enthusiast from realizing what movies are destined to become future classics.
I’ll start off on my
favorite movie so far this year: Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. Like all
Anderson’s films, it isn’t about anything particularly important and is mostly
style over substance. However, unlike my experience with other Anderson films,
I had a smile on my face from beginning to end. Co-written by Roman Coppola and
Anderson, this adventure story of runaway children on a New England Island in
the nineteen-sixties is nostalgic, funny, and just so damn beautiful looking.
It is a reminder of the naïve childhood ambition to become independent of the
adult world.
The Hunger Games
was so surprisingly engaging as a dystopian science-fiction film, I decided to
catch up with everyone else and read the book too. I am very sure, that this is
a great adaptation. The film is handled with insightful creativity by director
Gary Ross. Jennifer Lawrence led a great cast that makes the nightmarish
bizarre future feel intensely real.
Margaret was a
film made in 2006, which ran into legal troubles during post-production and
wasn’t shown until recently. Early reception was not positive as the first cut
made the film feel messy. This year it was released on Blu-ray and included a
bonus disc that contained a three-hour cut of the film, which finally gave this
drama about the emotional crisis of a New York teenager (Anna Paquin) the right
kind of pace. Director and playwright Kenneth Lonnergan (You Can Count On Me)
has made a movie that is wonderfully acted and strangely experimental at times.
It is one of the most unique dramas I’ve seen in a long time.
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry -An excellent in-depth documentary on the daring Chinese artist and
activist. The film is directed by Alison Klayman who started the project after producing
several PBS and NPR stories from China.
The Avengers
–Leave it to Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly) to do a
balancing act that gathers characters from multiple movies, putting them
together in one, and pulling it off. No nitpicking allowed with this one. I
will be surprised if this works a second time.
There were a couple
of movies this year that satirized the horror genre better than Scream did,
with unusual twists. The first, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, was filled with
huge laughs involving two well-meaning hillbillies trying to enjoy a summer in
their creepy cabin while inadvertently terrifying the college-age campers
across the lake. Fatal horrific accidents ensue inspired by paranoia. It’s dark
and hilarious all the way through. Second, is the Joss Whedon-produced The Cabin in the Woods, which lets you know with its pre-title sequence, that you are in
for an atypical ride of absurd entertainment. It’s scary, funny, and you won’t
believe where this movie goes.
The Grey, directed
by Joe Carnahan and starring Liam Neeson, is a no-nonsense survival movie about
stranded men in Alaska who are stalked by wolves. It handles the survival theme
boldly by having the characters know that they are doomed without a chance but
fight for their lives anyway. It’s also a movie that has a very truthful
portrayal of manhood and dismisses the all the macho B.S. associated with this
subgenre.
Other stand-out
films include the seemingly exploitive but straight-forward Magic Mike; Disney’s
underrated John Carter; Seth MacFarlane’s mostly-hilarious Ted; the
Karina-esque pre-apocalyptic Beasts of the Southern Wild; David Koepp’s urban
bicycle-chase thrills in Premium Rush; the shoestring-budgeted psychological
thriller, Sound of My Voice; Kill List –a brutal British thriller that goes
in very unexpected directions; and the poorly-written but beautiful-looking, Prometheus,
directed by Ridley Scott.
Aside from a huge
list of movies I have yet to catch up with, I am looking forward to Rian Johnson’s Looper, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Ben Affleck’s Argo,
the Wachowski’s and Tom Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas, Sam Mendes’ Skyfall, Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
There are many more
movies that I am curious about as well as independent and foreign releases I
probably won’t find a good way to see until 2013. Until then, I will continue
to obsess.
I've only seen a few 2012 releases, and to be entirely honest, I can't even say there have been many that interested me that I've missed. I've had a terrific time catching screenings of classic movies this year, and those viewings outnumber new releases nearly 2 to 1 for me.
ReplyDeleteThe Avengers was highly entertaining, though I didn't go as gaga over it as some did. I quite liked John Carter, but I came to that film as a reader of the first few novels in that series so I was biased in its favor from inception. Both Brave and The Dark Knight Rises disappointed me greatly.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was technically a 2011 release, but it didn't play in Louisville until its wide release in January and I quite enjoyed that, too. I took my niece to see the new Ice Age for her birthday, but the stream screwed up and we never even got to the opening credits. We did, however, sit through The Simpsons short, The Longest Daycare, twice. It was likable enough, though I've never been a Simpsons fan.
That's...pretty much it for me. I'm eager for Skyfall and I'm interested in Lincoln enough that I plan to see that, but otherwise I'll likely wind up passing on the majority of new releases the rest of the year just as I have so far.