1. Prometheus
Every year needs a sci-fi event, and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus came the closest. Yes, the film has flaws, but it’s my favorite movie of the year. Why? Because I’ve always been fascinated by the Alien saga, and this film provides a worthy introduction to those creature features, with the strengths of Fassbender’s performance as a free-thinking android; Ridley Scott’s flair for memorable visuals; and the always gripping med-pod scene, in which a machine does an emergency caesarian on Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in order to extract one of those nasty beasties that love to incubate inside nice warm human bodies.
2. Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell in The Master
The film as a whole may wander back to where it began, but Phoenix’s solidly quirky performance as Freddie Quell grounds the film in the kind of quality filmmaking we expect from Anderson. Within this year's body of films full of characters from novels, musicals, or previous films, the character of Freddie Quell is the best original creation of the year.
3. Kara Hayward as Suzy in Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson delivers a whimsical, thoroughly enchanting entertainment about the innocent young love on the run from disapproving adults and an impending storm. Some moments don’t quite work as well as others, but the performances of Gilman and Hayward as the oddball young lovers are always spot on in the emotions they evoke. Suzy, the free-spirited but tightly oppressed rebel who runs away from home with her young admirer, Sam, is the film’s most touching creation, her delivery toneless but her depth always there. Suzy is my favorite film character of the year.
4. The USS Missouri in Battleship
Admittedly, it’s kind of embarrassing to say that one of my favorite films of the year is produced by Hasbro, maker of the game from which this film gets its title and its main premise, but Battleship turned out to be one of the most entertaining action movies of the year. On DVD, I found myself watching it repeatedly and preferring it, as an action movie, to The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall. I'd much rather watch Battleship again than revisit The Avengers or The Amazing Spider-Man. Those films have too much flitting CGI going on; Battleship focuses narrowly on a single ship pitted against alien watercraft. The film has rousing action and lots of sci-fi aliens and contraptions for sci-fi geeks, but it also has the great moment when the old World War II battleship steams round Diamond Head to do battle with the big bad alien machine. Boom!
5. The Words: A Story Within a Story Within a Story
Yeah, it’s got Bradley Cooper, but this film was my favorite story of the year; it combines what plays like an autobiographical Hemingway short story set in post-WWII Paris within the story of a struggling present-day writer (Cooper) within the story of a successful novelist (Dennis Quaid) speaking about his latest bestseller and coming on to a young admirer (Olivia Wilde – a plus for any movie). The film portrays the publishing world realistically and has one of the best scenes depicting the act of writing since Yuri penned poetry in his frozen study in Doctor Zhivago.
6. The Multiple Lives of Cloud Atlas.
Read the book. It’s better. But I applaud this imaginative film for its creative ambition, and much of it works with thought-provoking drama. Tom Hanks and the use of a core of performers in hyperbolic makeup are regrettable choices, but the film delivers much to look at and lots of suspense achieved by masterful editing between stories that range in time from the 1850s to a distant post-apocalyptic future.
7. Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln in Lincoln
Day-Lewis does a wonderful job of portraying Lincoln as folksy spinner of yarns, tender-hearted father, and shrewd politician, in a film made uneven and not always dramatic due to its focus on endless House debates and political rivalry. The film is definitely about Lincoln when Day-Lewis is on screen, but the film as a whole should be called The Thirteenth Amendment: A History Lesson.
8. The Cold and Grey: The Grey
Liam Neeson stars in a suspenseful, raw outdoor adventure that plays like an updated Jack London short story: survivors of an airplane crash are tracked and taken down one by one by a pack of wolves. Suitably, the film makes you feel cold, and the terror of the wolves builds throughout the film. In one great image, the vapor rises in the night air from the mouths of many howling wolves. In another memorable image, Neeson, wet and freezing, gets ready for a hand-to-claw finish-fight with the wolf pack leader.
9. Horse Fall in Anna Karenina
In this visually splendid but ultimately flat depiction of Anna’s illicit passion, Joe Wright presents the story as a stage drama – sometimes as a play within a play – and the calamitous horse race in which Vronsky and horse plummet from stage to audience is a dramatically shocking moment.
10. Edgar Rice Burroughs's Star Wars: John Carter
I've always loved the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs - a collection of three of his Barsoom (Mars) novels was one of the first paperbacks I owned - and I'm a sucker for adventure. This movie has battles on land and in the air; four-armed alien desert tribesmen; savage monsters and faithful creatures; a brawny sword-wielding hero and a ravishing sword-wielding maiden. Just like Star Wars! Hey, and if Burroughs wrote his books in the early 1900s, I wonder where Lucas got some of his ideas!
11. The Best On Demand: The Hunter
Though I saw 80 2012 movies in theaters this year, there were some I saw On Demand because there was no hope of their coming to Cape Cod: The Hunter, Bel Ami, Arbitrage, The Bay, The Loneliest Planet, and Deadfall.
Of these films, The Hunter stands out for its unique story: a contract mercenary is hired by a drug corporation to hunt down the last remaining Tasmanian tiger. More than that, it stands out for the most memorable cinematography of the year: raw, moody images of Tasmanian wilderness that looks like the terrain of an alien planet. But it's real! No CGI!
12. The Best of 2011 Late Releases: Coriolanus (2011)
This tremendously gripping and relentlessly bloody adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy features wonderful performances by Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Jessica Chastain, and Vanessa Redgrave, who steals the show whenever she is on screen. Set in a war-torn circa 1990s Balkans state, the film seamlessly stages Shakespeare's lines as CNN news reports; it's amazing how the lines fit! And the drama of Coriolanus's excessive pride and his betrayal of his country is riveting.
13. A Few Trusty Little Movies:
Finally, amidst the onslaught of bloated CGI super-hero movies, amidst a familiar sea of sequels, prequels, and remakes, a number of littler films stood out by delivering original stories and solid entertainment. We can all pay tribute to the modest films that came through for each of us personally amidst the dreck. For me, some of those films were Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, for the touching chemistry between Steve Carell and Keira Knightley; Safety Not Guaranteed for its bizarre story and the affecting relationship that grows between Darius (Aubrey Plaza), a wannabe journalist, and Kenneth (Mark Duplass), a regretful loner building a time machine in order to make up for the past; and Chasing Mavericks for its exhilarating surfing scenes and its tremendous cinematography of massive waves off Half Moon Bay, California.
Note: The above image is the Landmark E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C., where, over the past eight years, I have seen many movies during my yearly visit to D.C. to take in the sights and see movies with my nephew, Jason Bellamy, a moviegoer whose passion for seeing movies in theaters equals my own incurable obsession for the widescreen cinematic image; a Terrence Malick fan willing to meet me in New York City to see The Tree of Life on opening weekend - twice; an accomplished and perceptive film observer and writer; and a prolific correspondent and fun-loving friend who keeps me seeing the wonder even during the hardest of times.
14. Here is a list of the movies I saw this year in theaters, most of them 2012 releases, some of them 2011 releases, a couple of them 3D re-releases:
The Devil Within, Contraband, Red Tails, The Grey, Man on a Ledge, The Lady in Black, Chronicle, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, A Separation, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Act of Valor, The Secret Life of Arrietty, We Need to Talk About Kevin, John Carter, Silent House, The Hunger Games, Wrath of the Titans, 21 Jump Street, Titanic, The Cabin in the Woods, Lockout, Coriolanus, The Lucky One, The Deep Blue Sea, Chimpanzee, The Raven, The Avengers, Dark Shadows, Battleship, Chernobyl Diaries, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Snow White and the Huntsman, Prometheus, Moonrise Kingdom, Brave, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Your Sister’s Sister, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Safety Not Guaranteed, Katy Perry: Part of Me, The Amazing Spider-Man, To Rome with Love, The Dark Knight Rises, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Total Recall, Hope Springs, The Bourne Legacy, Premium Rush, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Take This Waltz, Lawless, The Possession, Killer Joe, The Words, The Master, End of Watch, Looper, Frankenweenie, Taken 2, Argo, Sinister, The Eye of the Storm, Paranormal Activity 4, Cloud Atlas, Flight, Chasing Mavericks, Skyfall, Pitch Perfect, Lincoln, Breaking Dawn Part 2, Red Dawn, Life of Pi, Anna Karenina, Killing Them Softly, The Sessions, Playing for Keeps, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Jack Reacher, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, This Is 40
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