2012 in Review... now all in one place!

All of my 2012 in film retrospective essays in one convenient location.  This includes the six 'best/worst' movie lists, the three trend pieces from the last couple months, and the two 'good movies news in 2012' pieces that I wrote back in June which darn-sure still applied over the rest of the year.  Please share, comment, and enjoy.

Scott Mendelson

Good Movie News in 2012: The return of R-rated movies.

Good Movie News in 2012: The return of the "movie".


2012 in Film: Pre-thatrical Video On Demand goes mainstream.

2012 in Film: Audiences show (relatively) good taste.

2012 in Film: The female-driven blockbuster is no longer a surprise, no longer written off as a 'fluke'.


2012 in Film: Good films you probably missed in theaters.

2012 in Film: The Underrated of unfairly maligned.

2012 in Film: The Overrated.

2012 in Film: The Runners-Up.

2012 in Film: The year's "Worst" films.

2012 in Film: The year's "Best" films.

2012 in Film: My Favorite movies of the year...

We come to it at last, the great list of our time (err... our year).  Anyway, after plenty of foreplay, it's time to actually rattle off my picks for the ten very "best" films of the year.  As always, these are not the 'objective' "best" films of the year, but merely my out-and-out favorites of the last twelve months.  As always, we'll do the first ten films in alphabetical order, with a final summation for my personal pick for the top film of 2012.  Without further ado, onward and downward!

The Avengers (review/spoiler review):
Unlike a number of blockbusters that I've discussed elsewhere, this one actually got better with repeat viewings.  I nitpicked the first time around, found problems here and there during my initial viewing, but still found it to be a relative triumph of blockbuster film-making.  But upon additional viewings, I began to appreciate the coup that Whedon and company pulled off even more.  The minor problems (a clunky first scene, issues with how a major second act plot twist is handled, the lack of a specific lead character, the lack of a definitive climax) began to fade away into the sheer joy that is The Avengers.  The film is well-acted across the board, including a superb starring turn by Mark Ruffalo who makes Bruce Banner into the most interesting character in the group.  The plotting is relatively basic, but the picture is crackling with wonderful dialogue throughout.  The action sequences steadily improve as the film goes on, and the entire escapade has a casual hugeness ("Oh, we've got a giant invisible flying aircraft carrier?  Why not?") that reminded me of Richard Donner's Superman film (moments that would have been the main event for other blockbusters came off as blink-and-you-miss em action beats here).  The character arcs worked better the second time around, the musical score clicked into place, the second-act plot turn worked in the context of the film as opposed to operating as part of a long-running franchise, and a major character's selfless decision felt right.  The sheer excitement of seeing all of these already established heroes (established both in the comics and the prior films) doing battle side-by-side on a truly epic superhero showdown is only topped by how good it all is.  Whether or not it is a great film will no doubt be endlessly debated, but it is surely a great movie, one that I look forward to watching over and over again over the years.

2012 in Film: The Year's "Worst" Films.

Almost to the end, folks.  But before we finally recap the best (or, err, my favorites) of 2012, let's take a pit stop to discuss what are arguably the worst films of 2012.  Now as always, I can't presume that I've seen every probable terrible movie out there (I generally avoid Adam Sandler comedies and didn't catch Parental Guidance in time), but I tried to highlight films that were both very bad and whose respective failures meant something more than just their artistic inadequacy.  As always, the films below are in alphabetical order.  So, without further ado, let's dive in!

Alex Cross:
To William Hurt in A History of Violence, "How to do you f*** that up?!"  You have a long-running detective series filled with larger-than-life villains and often insanely over-the-top violence.  You have Tyler Perry, if perhaps cast against type than at least hungry to prove that he can do something different.  You have Matthew Fox theoretically willing to chew up every bit of available scenery.  And you have audiences primed for a kind of old-school adult-skewing genre picture that the previous two Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross films (Kiss the Girls and Along Came A Spider) represented back in the 1990s.  How in the world do you make this film this incredibly boring?  First of all, you take an explicitly R-rated story and neuter it into a still-inappropriate PG-13.  Then you pile on generic cliche on top of generic cliche.  Then you instruct every actor other than Fox to be as lifeless as possible.  Finally, you never decide to make a down-to-Earth crime thriller or a would-be superhero/super villain story.  The end result is a painfully dull would-be thriller that can't hold a candle to the most average episode of Criminal Minds.

2012 in Film: The Runner-Ups.

As we continue recapping the movies that arguably defined 2012, we move on to what I like to call 'The Runner-Ups'.  These films are all very good if not great.  Either they didn't quite make my 'favorite of the year' list or they aren't the kind of thing that belongs on a traditional best-of-year list (you'll see which ones I'm referring to below).  Anyway, consider this a 'great films that aren't among the very best but I darn-well wanted to highlight them' list.  As always, the films below are in alphabetical order.  Without further ado...

Argo (review):
In a year where old-school big-studio genre films for adults solidified their comeback, this Ben Affleck political period piece is the defining example of everything going right.  It cost just $45 million, so it didn't need to be a massive hit to make a profit, but a massive hit it was.  With around $105 million at the domestic till so far, it's among the year's top Oscar contenders, and I still have an inkling that Ben Affleck is going to walk away with the Best Director statue this year (the somewhat false 'comeback kid' narrative is too good to resist).  Argo, concerning a true story of the CIA's attempts to rescue six Americans trapped in Iran during the embassy hostage crisis of 1979, is a pretty terrific film through-and-through.  The only reason it doesn't rank higher is that it's really not about anything other than itself.  It's a caper film, a procedural, but with no attempts at any additional relevancy.  That's not a bad thing per-se, but it arguably prevents the film from being anything other than a terrific piece of old-school moviemaking.  That's not exactly an insult, as it's still a top-notch piece of meat-and-potatoes entertainment.

2012 in Film: The Overrated...

I wrestled with even doing an 'overrated' list this year.  First of all, the very idea of such a list is to merely tell other critics and/or the masses that they are dead-wrong for liking something, which I'd argue is very different from telling someone they're wrong for disliking something.  Second of all, the Internet has become such a vast land of film criticism that few films completely escape the wrath of critical scrutiny even if the popular consensus happens to lean in the "wrong" direction.  Nonetheless, in the end I enjoy writing about the year in film, so far be it for me to cheat myself out of some arbitrary concern for maintaining the proverbial higher ground.  So, in alphabetical order as always, let's dive right in...

Brave (review/guest essay):
Had this not been Pixar's first animated feature with a female lead, had this not been marketed within the context that Princess Merida was a kind of sword-wielding/bow-clutching warrior, the the film would have been seen for what it is: a deeply problematic character drama that ignores the icky realities at the center of its tale in order to tell an audience-reassuring mother/daughter story.  The film basically tells the same character arc as The Little Mermaid but was declared a feminist milestone because the female lead A) carried a weapon and B) didn't want to get married.  But good intentions cannot get past a story line that treats mother and daughter as equally culpable even when one party is advocating forced marriage.  Make no mistake, say what you will about 'customs of the time' or 'arranged marriage versus forced marriage', the film tells a story of a child who doesn't want to get married to (and yes, have sex with) a man she doesn't know and treats it like a minor inconvenience.  There is a clear right and wrong here, but the film absolves the father of any responsibility while basically stating that the mother (who again, wants her daughter to have sex against her will) kinda-sorta has a point and that the daughter really needs to have empathy for her dear-old mum.

2012 in Film: The Underrated and/or Unfairly Scorned...

Now we continue our 'the films of 2012' lists with another favorite, the Underrated!  And as always, this list won't just be good films that were labeled as 'bad', but also mediocre films that got unfairly pounded, or genuinely bad films that nonetheless deserved credit for one element or another.  If I do decide to compile an overrated list (still not sure, honestly), there is a good chance that many of the films on that list will still be better than many on this list, but I hope dear readers can understand the potential contradiction.  All of the films below are either worth seeing, either because they are in fact good or because they are bad but containing elements of note or are bad in interesting and/or entertaining ways. As always, the following are in alphabetical order.

2012 in Film: Good Films You Probably Missed in Theaters.

And so begins my annual 'films of 2012' list round-up, where I try to do more than merely compile the '10 best and 10 worst' of the year.  It's often just as much fun to talk about films somewhere in the middle, the underrated gems, the hidden gems, and the overrated would-be critical darlings.  This time I'm starting it off with a list of ten very good or great films that you probably didn't see.  This is often among my favorite lists to compile, as it allows me to shine a spotlight on films that perhaps didn't get the attention they deserved.  These are not "underrated" per say.  Most who did see them in fact enjoyed them, but the audience was too small in number for all of the films mentioned below.  As always, the following are in alphabetical order.  So, without further ado...

Detention:
Joseph Kahn's genre-twisting and post-modern horror freak-out had the bad luck to open in limited release on the same weekend as the wide release of another somewhat more mainstream self-aware horror exercise.  Of course, opening a youth-skewing genre film in limited release is pretty much box office death anyway, since those who might see it won't know to seek out an art-house and those who frequent art-houses aren't going to see a movie like Detention.  This future cult classic is a completely whacked-out little film, basically playing the conventions of horror films against the hyper-connected constant-communication age that is today's youth.  That's somewhat of a simplistic reading of this film, which blends 90s-era nostalgia with modern-day apathy in a way that comments on both, but I don't want to give away too much.  Let's just say the film goes in completely unexpected places in its final half and it's a hell of a ride.  Does it all work?  Not entirely, but the effort and ambition deserves notice and I can't wait to see what the director of the slightly underrated Torque does next.

2012 in film: The female-driven blockbuster is no longer a surprise, no longer written off as a 'fluke'.

2012 isn't just the year where we saw one female-starring and/or female-centric blockbuster after another.  2012 was the year when such a thing no longer merited any real surprise.  Back in 2008, we also had a solid run of female-centric smash hits.  Sex and the City, Mama Mia!, and finally the initial Twilight installment.  But we also had endless hand wringing about what these successes meant to the industry and/or how these various films (especially the first and last) were oh-so harmful for their target demographic.  What a difference four years can make.  This year we had The Hunger Games, Snow White and the Huntsman, Brave, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II, and what looks to be a surefire smash in Les Miserables in a couple weeks.  And you could certainly make the case for the likes of the male-stripper dramedy Magic Mike, The Vow, and Prometheus (which of course starred Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron), as well as the rather successful Pitch Perfect which slowly grossed $65 million.  What's important isn't that these female-centric films all were pretty huge hits, with several achieving genuine blockbuster status.  What's important is that nobody really gave a damn.

2012 in film: Audiences show (relatively) good taste.

We won't know what effect the 2012 movie year will have long term for quite awhile, but we may very well come to see 2012 as the year audiences said "Thanks, but no thanks."  No, I'm not talking about some imaginary movie going slump that never was and arguably never will be.  I'm talking about the fact that this year, seemingly moreso than in recent years prior, American audiences seemed actually almost... picky?  If you glance at the films that were hits and the films that were bombs, you'll notice at least a token quality curve, especially when dealing with the mainstream and/or blockbusters.  Time and time again, audiences seemingly rejected the prepackage blockbusters that were tossed their way as if to ignite some kind of Pavlovian response.  While on the other hand, they seemed to embrace not so much the 'good' would-be blockbusters but ones that existed somewhat outside the conventional wisdom about what could or couldn't reach mega-gross levels. To a certain extent, at least to a degree worth acknowledging, conventional wisdom went out the window in 2012.

2012 in film: Pre-Theatrical VOD goes mainstream...

This will be the first in a series of essays detailing 'the year in film', spotlighting certain trends (mostly positive, I'm taking a break from complaining for a bit) of the nearly finished year.  Obviously I can't amass a best-of list until I see a few more alleged gems, mainly Les Miserables and Django Unchained, but I can start a retrospective of the movie year that was 2012.   

Normally when a film opens with $3,181 on three screens it's considered a pretty big flop.  Yet this past weekend saw the theatrical release of the surprisingly very good Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which marked the proverbial end of a seemingly successful run on pre-theatrical video on demand.  I say 'seemingly' because studios aren't yet releasing the proverbial grosses of films on this format, even ones that debut on VOD prior to theatrical release (Bachelorette made news as the top iTunes download on its opening week, but we have yet to know how much money that is).  It's release followed on the heels of Barry Levinson's The Bay, which is quite frankly the scariest American horror film I have seen since Frank Darabont's The Mist.  It opened in theaters and VOD on the same day and earned a whopping $30,000 during a two-week theatrical run.  Following the somewhat surprising VOD performance of Margin Call, which debuted day-and-date in theaters and VOD and rang up decent numbers on both formats (the $3.5 million picture earned $16 million worldwide in theaters), 2012 has seen an explosion of pre-theatrical and/or day-and-date theatrical/VOD content like never before. The sheer amount of content, relatively high-quality content, available on VOD amounts to a second film release schedule.

Good movie news in 2012: The return of the "movie".

I've written a bit about this over the last couple years, but this weekend is surely as shining an example as anything about how the mainstream film landscape has somewhat self-corrected.  This weekend sees the release of four wide releases.  We have two R-rated films, one a vulgar (but surprisingly smart) comedy about a talking bear and the other a $5 million indie dramedy about male strippers directing by one of our most successful experimental filmmakers.  We've got a bawdy PG-13 comedy aimed primarily at African-American audiences and a PG-13 star-driven drama.  Ted, Magic Mike, Madea's Witness Protection, and People Like Us are all coming out tomorrow in wide release.  What we've seen over the last year or so and what we will continue to see throughout the remainder of 2012 is the return of what can only be called the old-fashioned 'movie'.  In a time when it seems that every week brings another $150 million male-driven action tentpole based on a comic book or action figure series, a glance at the release schedule shows something very different.  Amid the big-budget animated films (which I generally like), the mega-budget comic book films (which are sometimes very good) and the various remakes and reboots, there exists a plurality of old-school, often star-driven dramas, comedies, and often adult-skewed fare being released by major studios on thousands of screens every weekend.  It seems that Hollywood is getting the message that one cannot subsist on a diet of nothing but tentpoles.

Good movie news in 2012: the return of R-rated movies.

Normally, I wouldn't be one to consider Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (which to be fair I have not yet seen) as a shining example of a positive trend in movie-going.  But the historical fiction action-thriller may be many things, but one thing it is not is PG-13.  Oh no, it is a mid-summer major studio spectacle that is going out into 3,000+ theaters with an honest-to-goodness R.  Said rating is officially for "violence throughout and brief sexuality".  Whether or not the film could have been edited down to a PG-13 is arguably a moot point.  20th Century Fox spent $70 million (a refreshingly reasonable sum) on a major summer production that was conceived and produced with the intent that it would indeed be R-rated.  And most shockingly, it was not even the only R-rated wide release last weekend, as Focus Features unspooled Seeking Friends at the End of the World in 1,400 theaters.  I've written/ranted for years about how the R-rating became an endangered species for major-studio releases due to the 2001 FEC regulations regarding the marketing of R-rated films, but the tide does seem to be changing over the last couple years.  And it's reached a glorious peak at this very moment, with an avalanche of R-rated wide releases filling up the multiplexes.