Top Ten Movies Of The Year

OK, fine! I guess I better get my top ten list out now too, since everybody else already did it. Of course, established critics have had the luxury of seeing the five or six great-looking movies all being released on Christmas weekend, and I haven't. Producers release the big Winter movies as late as possible every year, but this time it feels especially excessive, right? Like, how am I going to find the time to see Les Miserables, This Is Forty, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained before they all drop out of theaters? Especially since they're all going to cancel each other out and bomb? After all, that's what happened last year, the major casualty being David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a damn fine movie that never got its due at the box office or anywhere else due to an over-stuffed December calendar. It was an awards-bating gambit that failed, and yet it's happening all over again in 2012. So I'm taking a bit of a populist stand: The films mentioned above will be eligible for next year's list, since that is when most people will see them. Will they actually make it on? Eh, I'll probably forget. I have the memory of an Academy voter.

My honorable mention votes this year go to Prometheus, which was gorgeous, pulpy, and squirm-inducing beyond belief but also completely and utterly brainless, and also to The Amazing Spider-Man, which crackled with chemistry but seemed chopped to pieces in some kind of 11th hour editing overhaul.

10. Lawless

It's pretty weird that this movie came out in 2012 and not like, 1997. It feels like a throwback, like Kevin Costner must be involved somehow, you know? But it was not unwelcome! Lawless manages to both make you want to study prohibition AND listen to The Velvet Underground, and that obviously makes no sense until you learn that it was scripted by Nick Cave. It also features a weird vocal performance by Tom Hardy, one that is actually successful, as well as Jessica Chastain looking mysterious and getting naked. Need I really say more?

9. Skyfall

You honestly can't complain about this movie being a Christopher Nolan knockoff, because this year, Sam Mendes managed to out-Nolan Nolan. Which is why this movie is on my top ten and Batman isn't. I found this movie far more enjoyable, far more visually awe-inspiring (interesting to see that Nolan's DP Wally Pfister went out of his way to talk shit about The Avengers while Roger Deakins was quietly kicking his ass over here), and also just as emotionally resonant as The Dark Knight Rises. To be fair to Tom Hardy: Javier Bardem's Silva is partly a more entertaining villain because you can see his face and his voice isn't 4x the volume of the rest of the movie. To be fair to Christian Bale: he's aging weirdly, and Daniel Craig isn't. But even allowing for those handicaps, and despite the awkward Heineken tie-ins, Skyfall was a hugely entertaining, epic-feeling movie, and TDKR was just kind of a slog.

8. Looper

My second-favorite Bruce Willis movie this year was directed by my second-favorite new director, Rian Johnson. It's a wonderfully stylish little thing containing both what is probably the coolest decades-compressing montage of all time and what is certainly the most existentially horrific torture scene of all time. It has a fantastically decisive ending and is also fantastically dismissive of the need for overly cohesive time-travel logic. GET OVER IT, NERDS.

7. The Master

This movie and Skyfall are like two sides of a coin. For every way in which Skyfall is watchable and enjoyable, this movie is taxing and frustrating. The common ground is that both films are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Neither rivals The Tree Of Life, but their combined impact certainly rivals that movie. And anyway who says a movie has to be "watchable"? Why can't a movie be an ordeal? OK, well, there are lots of good reasons why a movie shouldn't be an ordeal. But I liked this one anyway.

6. Silver Linings Playbook

For about the first hour, and maybe more, I was pissed at this movie. It's basically just a bunch of people yelling at each other, and it only holds your interest as much as it has to. You're as irritated and bored as you are compelled. And then, I don't know. Something happens. You fall in love with it.

5. Lincoln

This is another one that's just people yelling at each other in rooms, but with zero irritation and 100% rapturous interest from the audience (ok, from me anyway). I actually heard people complain about the star-studded nature of this movie--a familiar face every time the camera turns a corner--but, you know, these people are famous actors for a reason. And letting them yell at each other in a room for a while? With all that rich, old-timey dialog? My god, it's a thing of beauty.

4. Argo

My first favorite new director nailed it AGAIN. Affleck Hat Trick! This movie is unbearably tense and hysterically funny. It's all the more remarkable when you realize that it's funny despite being an historical drama and tense despite mostly being a movie about standing in lines and trying not to draw attention to yourself. Alan Arkin and John Goodman stand shoulder to shoulder with Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader and Bruce Willis this year in proving that our best work is almost never behind us. Is that a little sentimental and cloying? So was some of Argo and Lincoln! And I loved it! Argo fuck yourself, Bret Easton Ellis!

3. The Avengers

A bright, shiny oasis in a sea of superhero grit. This movie was so much fun! And what's crazy is Joss Whedon initially shot this dark frame story, in which Robin Scherbatsky bitterly recounted the tale of how The Avengers almost destroyed New York or whatever (folks who complained about too much 9/11 gladhanding as it was would have had an aneurism). Lucky that he blinked! I loved this movie; even the shaky first half hour beats most of the movies that led to it (looking at you, with your silly dutch angles, Thor! And you, with your nonsensical montages, Captain America! I love both those characters and their portrayals, though). And that epic battle scene at the end was so good that I completely forgive it for being a complete and utter ripoff of Transformers 3 (though for superior. But STILL).

2. The Cabin In The Woods

Far and away the most fun I had at the theater this year, and very nearly my choice for number 1. My friends and I were cackling with glee from the title card onward. Don't look up anything about this movie if you haven't seen it yet. Just see it.

1. Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom is everything Wes Anderson does best, and with one of his strongest casts yet. (The opposite of this movie, along those lines, is probably The Darjeeling LTD. And yet I love that one too. Sorry, haters!) Shoutout to Bruce Willis and Edward Norton and shoutout to Baby Lana Del Rey and Baby Joe Mande. It's wonderfully crafted and as usual, a lovely brightly painted box in the form of a movie. It also really makes you want to go walking in the New England woods. There are things I would change about every movie on this list, except for this one.