"Ain't no rainbow in the sky
In the middle of the night
But the signal's coming through
One day I will be alright again." - Mr. E
-Lee
Wish I Could Forget (in alphabetical order): Casa de mi Padre, God Bless America, Lawless, Piranha DD, Prometheus, Savages
Wish I'd Loved (in alphabetical order): Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Cloud Atlas, The Deep Blue Sea, Flight, Killing Them Softly, The Loneliest Planet, The Master, Paranorman, The Queen of Versailles, Red Hook Summer, Take This Waltz
Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order): Attenberg, Bernie, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Chronicle, Compliance, Damsels in Distress, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, The Grey, Magic Mike, Premium Rush, The Raid: Redemption, Safety Not Guaranteed, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Silver Linings Playbook, This is Not a Film, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Zero Dark Thirty
20-11
20) 21 Jump Street dir. Phil Lord and Chris Miller
19) The Loved Ones dir. Sean Byrne
18) Alps dir. Giorgos Lanthimos
17) The Five-Year Engagement dir. Nicholas Stoller
16) Skyfall dir. Sam Mendes
15) Jiro Dreams of Sushi dir. David Gelb
14) The Dark Knight Rises dir. Christopher Nolan
13) The Turin Horse (A torinói ló) dir. Béla Tarr
12) The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo) dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
11) Killer Joe dir. William Friedkin
Top Ten
10) The Perks of Being a Wallflower dir. Stephen Chbosky
It's one thing to adapt your own novel to the screen...it's another thing all together to make it your directorial debut and do it thirteen years after the book was first published. And yet, that's exactly what Stephen Chbosky did, with stunning results. He proves himself a natural born filmmaker, not just behind the camera, but also with a knack for finding the right actors to bring his characters to life. Logan Lerman is Charlie, a troubled high school kid who finds solace in brother/sister team Patrick (an outstanding Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson, also amazing). On the page, the material was on the brink of spilling into sappy sentimentality, and the same risk was even greater for the movie. But by scaling things back and trusting in his cast, Chbosky's picture nails the pain and unexpected exhilaration that comes with growing up. We see this material tackled a lot, but rarely with this much raw truth.
9) Django Unchained dir. Quentin Tarantino
Sally Menke's absence is evident, but the change in rhythm doesn't stop Tarantino's latest from being a potent blast. QT gets stellar work out of regulars Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson (in possibly his best role since Pulp Fiction), plus juicy work from Jamie Foxx as Django, a freed slave bent on rescuing his wife from slave owner Calvin Candie (a delightfully devious Leonardo DiCaprio). As expected, ultra violence erupts, but not without a price. There's real weight to the vengeance in Tarantino's movies...he doesn't just want us to relish in it; he wants us to see how deeply it cuts the insides of those who carry it out. By taking a brutal period of American history as his subject, Tarantino is able to challenge us in ways at once surprising and gleefully disturbing. Those who accuse him of being derivative need to look closer.
8) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da) dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
It starts out with a bunch of seemingly clueless cops searching for a dead body, and later reveals itself to be a study in procedure. The characters of Nuri Bilge Cevlan's picture are creatures of habit, locked in an endless cycle of their day-to-day routines. The longer an investigation takes the better, as it avoids having to face realities such as families or domestic duties. This is one of the most visually gorgeous movies of the year, one that almost acts like it might favor being swallowed in the massive countryside (where the corpse is supposedly buried) as opposed to the drab surroundings of an office. Brilliant and haunting, the movie has moments that live up to the title's fairy tale implications...any encounter that isn't part of the routine is dreamlike and too much to bear. The only thing certain is that it will end and reality will make its inevitable return.
7) Oslo, August 31st (Oslo, 31. august) dir. Joachim Trier
Life has run its course for Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) in Joachim Trier's quietly tragic follow-up to his wonderful Reprise. A recovering drug addict just two weeks away from finishing his rehab program, 34-year-old Anders wakes up one morning and decides it's too late for him to start over. He spends the day re-connecting with old friends and even goes to a job interview, although he decides pretty quickly that it will never work out. A somber and occasionally beautiful portrait of being hopelessly lost, Oslo, August 31st is as much about embracing our memories of the past as it is rejecting our future. But will the memories created on this present day be enough to encourage us to move forward? That's the question that sticks as Anders slowly spirals downhill.
6) Holy Motors dir. Leos Carax
Denis Lavant gives a performance for the ages as Oscar, a man who spends his days in a limousine going to various "appointments." Often surreal, strange, creative, hilarious, and even poignant, the movie is a tribute not just to the nature of performance, but also a meditation on identity, aging, and, loneliness. It's a beautiful nostalgia trip that also mourns the future, and does so with visuals that channel David Lynch and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. After two viewings, my head is still spinning, and that's a good thing...I'm certain that multiple viewings will unlock more of this movie's enticing mysteries.
5) Looper dir. Rian Johnson
If good sci-fi movies are rare, great sci-fi movies are a revelation. With that in mind, let's just say that Looper blindsided me. The ambitious premise, which revolves around hitmen who kill targets that are zapped to them from the future, is given loads of texture due to Johnson's complex-but-not-too-complex script. There are hints of darkness too, specifically in the way the movie shows how the hitmen, called Loopers, deal with coming into contact with the older versions of themselves. Can you change the course of your life and the lives of others by going back and talking to your younger self? Can the younger self fix mistakes made down the line if they don't kill their older counterpart? These are just a few of the fascinating questions this heady and exciting movie asks. It doesn't hurt that it also features career best work from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis.
4) Lincoln dir. Steven Spielberg
I am still a bit shell shocked by how much I love this movie. While most write off Spielberg's projects these days, I believe his work continues to be vital and holds value. Even despite this, he still tends to tread into corny territory, particularly with his endings, as if he's not satisfied unless he sends us home happy. The trailer for Lincoln made it come off like a heavy handed train wreck, a cheap piece of Oscar bait. How thrilled I was that the movie itself turned out to be something much more special. Everything is in synch here: Tony Kushner's smart and absorbing script, Janusz Kaminski's elegant cinematography (some of his best ever, methinks), Spielberg's patient direction, and Daniel Day-Lewis' sympathetic performance. Day-Lewis, who is amazing in just about everything, is a revelation here. And it's not just about the look...the details of his performance are remarkably rich. From the perfectly staged opening scene to the final speech I didn't appreciate until my second viewing, Lincoln is an essential portrait of how politics can be about more than personal gain.
3) Girl Walk//All Day dir. Jacob Krupnick
The most joyous movie in recent memory, Girl Walk//All Day had me from its opening moments. A Girl (Chaplin-esque dancer Anne Marsen) goes into a ballet class and awkwardly tries to stay in synch with the other dancers. All of the sudden, the music on the soundtrack changes and the Girl begins to dance to her own groove, blasts out of the studio and into New York City. What follows is 71 minutes of non-stop dance (set to Girl Talk's album All Day) as the Girl works her way through all areas of the city, occasionally interacting with others (some of it staged, some not) and rarely stopping for a breath. Her energy is first met with shrugs, but as the journey continues, her happiness becomes infectious. Shot with as much flair and innovation as a movie with a budget one hundred times its size, Girl Walk//All Day is a testament to how powerful cinema can be as a medium for all the senses. It gets us involved on multiple levels at once, and there wasn't a single moment of it that I wasn't smiling and tapping my foot. If you don't get the desire to jump up and dance after the first ten minutes, you might want to get your pulse checked.
Watch the entire movie at: http://girlwalkallday.com/watch-the-film
2) Cosmopolis dir. David Cronenberg
Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson, terrific) looks like a cobra perched in the throne at the back of his limousine, which is appropriate given this is the world of David Cronenberg. Even more appropriate is the fact that Eric's prostate is asymmetrical, a revelation that will be the least of his worries as he travels through New York City to get a haircut. The city as a playground we saw in Girl Walk//All Day has been replaced with a metropolis on the verge of extinction. Eric is ridiculously wealthy, and every word that he and his colleagues speak sounds as if they read it off a trade report. They've been shaped by a capitalist society, turned from human beings into commodities. You can hear the struggle when Eric tries to have a "normal" conversation with his wife (Sarah Gadon)and makes desperate attempts to have sex with her because that's the only way he can express any feelings. Ultimately bleak but also strangely comic, Cosmopolis shows Cronenberg in top form, mixing his signature themes of flesh and technology with issues of a world crumbling under its own greed and a frenzied excuse to exist. The climax where Eric faces off with a former employee (Paul Giamatti) is one of the great showstopping scenes of the year. Seeing it once is not enough.
1) Moonrise Kingdom dir. Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson's movies exist in world completely his own, yet it's a world he wants us to embrace and understand. I'm of the firm belief that his movies are best grasped after multiple viewings; the first one is merely to hook you, and then you return to dissect the deeper meanings. Those who write Anderson is whimsical for whimsical sake are not paying attention. In each of his pictures, there's a sadness beneath the trademark quirky dialogue, and it deceives you when you first stumble across it. His movies are very much about him, and the ones that are spoken of the least are the ones that reveal this the most (like his incredible The Darjeeling Limited, which I have come to value even more than The Royal Tenenbaums). There's a certain messiness to his work too, but it's appropriate, since his movies are about messy lives. His central focus is, for the first time, children in Moonrise Kingdom, and given how he's dabbled a little with it in his past pictures (and given their storybook quality), I'm surprised it took him this long to get there.
First time actors Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward (star making performances for both) are Sam and Suzy, young lovers in 1960s New England who run away together so they won't have to worry about disappointing the adults around them anymore. As is often the case in Anderson's world, the sins of the parents (usually the father) have become the sins of the children. Sam and Suzy are already anticipating that adulthood will be as melancholy and strenuous as being a child, so the only shot at freedom is a special place where those problems don't exist and hopefully never will. Anderson creates a luscious visual palette for his heroes to get lost in, and his dialogue between them is his most natural and controlled yet.
A manhunt is arranged to find them, giving the adults of the town a break from their deadening routines (like the characters of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, they're stuck in an endless cycle). As expected, Anderson fills his movie with great actors, all of who fit comfortably into his universe and deliver his signature dialogue effortlessly. Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's most tender work to date and possibly, his funniest. It is also, at moments, his most surreal, showing a filmmaker who has established himself as one of the most important voices in American cinema. Each picture has shown tremendous, often startling growth, but this time, it's a leap. Still undervalued, Wes Anderson may be one of those filmmakers whose true genius is not recognized for years to come. I see his Moonrise Kingdom as a launching pad for many more significant and comically challenging works. It is the best and most magical movie of the year.
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