Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: 2012 in films

6/26/2014

2012 in films - according to Film Excess

The 10 Best Films of 2012:

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

2. Flight - Robert Zemeckis

3. Love Is All You Need/Den Skaldede Frisør - Susanne Bier + Best Danish Film of the Year

4. Hope Springs - David Frankel

5. The Sessions - Ben Lewin

6. The Impossible/Lo Imposible - J. A. Bayona

7. Mud - Jeff Nichols

8. The Place Beyond the Pines - Derek Cianfrance

9. Frances Ha - Noah Baumbach + Best New York Film of the Year

10. Amour - Michael Haneke

Other great movies of 2012: (in random order)

A Royal Affair/En Kongelig Affære - Nikolaj Arcel

Zero Dark Thirty - Kathryn Bigelow

Men in Black 3 - Barry Sonnenfeld

Looper - Rian Johnson

A Hijacking/Kapringen - Tobias Lindholm

Argo - Ben Affleck

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Benh Zeitlin

Wadjda - Haifaa Al-Mansour + First Saudi-Arabian Film in History

A World Not Ours - Mahdi Fleifel + Best Documentary of the Year

Hyde Park on Hudson - Roger Michell

Recommendable, good movies of 2012: (in random order)

Prometheus - Ridley Scott

The Paperboy - Lee Daniels + Strangest Film of the Year

Jack Reacher - Christopher McQuarrie

Iron Sky - Timo Vuorensola

Here Comes the Boom - Frank Coraci

Dark Shadows - Tim Burton

Get the Gringo/How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Adrian Grünberg

The Devil Inside - William Brent Bell + Best Horror Film of the Year

The Avengers/Avengers Assemble - Joss Whedon

The 10 Worst Films of 2012:

1. John Carter - Andrew Stanton + Most Expensive Flop of the Year

2. Aftershock - Nicholás Lopez + Most Tasteless Film of the Year

3. To Rome With Love - Woody Allen

4. Cosmopolis - David Cronenberg

5. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Timur Bekmambetov

6. Battleship - Peter Berg

7. Painless/Insensibles - Juan Carlos Medina

8. Chernobyl Diaries - Bradley Parker

9. Piranha 3DD - John Gulager

10. The Expendables 2 - Simon West

Not favorites of Film Excess/undistinguished/poor/ mediocre movies of 2012: (reviewed 2012 movies that aren't good or bad enough to fit anywhere else)

The Woman in Black
Skyfall
Silver Linings Playbook
Promised Land
My Brother the Devil
The Possession
The Dark Knight Rises
American Reunion/American Pie: Reunion
Big Miracle
The Amazing Spiderman

Notes:

2012 was a great year in movies. The top 10 includes 5 masterpieces, - good for any year. And the best film of the year, Stephen Chobosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a youth romance dramedy keeper that'll live for decades to come.
Robert Zemeckis' Flight is the resounding character study of the year; Susanne Bier's Love Is All You Need a charming, funny, moving romcom, - her (as with Zemeckis) best film to date. Dave Frankel's Hope Springs brought us some favorite actors in an extremely delicate marriage counseling dramedy, and Ben Lewin's The Sessions was a surprise sex dramedy smash. Dramedies of different kinds have been favorites of the year.
J. A. Bayona's The Impossible is technically stunning, as well as stunning due to actors' performances; the 2004 tsunami couldn't have gotten a 'better' film. Jeff Nichols' Mud is an unusual coming-of-age drama revolving around the Mississippi River. Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines is a magnetic, hard crime epic. Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha is the witty, melancholic portrayal of a young woman's struggles in New York and elsewhere. And finally, Amour is Michael Haneke's uncompromising, unrelenting film of an old, loving couple's disintegration through sickness and death. Whoa, what a year!
In the 'worst of 2012' section, some really expensive, stupid, huge movies made their mark; Andrew Stanton's John Carter above all, a desert walk to get through despite its lavish production, but also Peter Berg's Battleship and Simon West's The Expendables 2 fell through. Filmmaker masters David Cronenberg and Woody Allen both had terrible releases in 2012 with Cosmopolis and To Rome With Love respectively.
In other news, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy came to a disappointing end, Daniel Craig continued his Bond-travesty with the slightly better Skyfall; Spiderman got an unnecessary reboot, and America went nuts over Silver Linings Playbook and their new best actress friend Jennifer Lawrence, who won an Oscar for her work in the film before four other, way more deserving actresses.
At the 2013 Oscars, the Academy threw most of their love over Ben Affleck's Argo and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, but also admired Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, his biggest hit yet. Both Lincoln and Django haven't been officially reviewed at Film Excess yet, but have been seen, and are both very good films indeed. As are Oscar favorites The Master and Life of Pi, the latter, however, a little less so.
Many big 2012 releases remains to be seen and reviewed by Film Excess, among them such titles as:
21 Jump Street, Pitch Perfect, The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, Magic Mike, Spring Breakers, The Lucky One, Think Like a Man (seen - good), Stuck in Love, Ted, Les Misérables, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Girl Most Likely, Cloud Atlas, The Vow, Moonrise Kingdom, Wreck-It-Ralph, The Cabin in the Woods (seen - bad), This Is 40 (seen - very good), The Hunt, Lawless, Brave and many others.
As always, lots of movies left to see, - yeah!

Do you agree with Film Excess' 2012 lists?
What films would top and bottom your lists of 2012 movies?
What movies are missed here?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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6/26/2014

2012 in films - according to Film Excess

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