The 10 Best Films of 2012:
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky + Best Director's Debut of the Year
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 + Best Spanish Film of the Year
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. Keep the Lights On - Ira Sachs + Best Queer Film of the Year
Other great movies of 2012: (in random order)
A Royal Affair/En Kongelig Affære - Nikolaj Arcel
Amour - Michael Haneke + Best French Film of the Year
Zero Dark Thirty - Kathryn Bigelow + Best Thriller of the Year
Men in Black 3 - Barry Sonnenfeld + Best Science Fiction Film of the Year
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
Hyde Park on Hudson - Roger Michell
The Act of Killing/Jagal - Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and Anonymous + Best Documentary of the Year
Kon-Tiki - Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning + Best Norwegian Film of the Year
Brave - Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell and Brenda Chapman + Best Animated Film of the Year
The Hunt/Jagten - Thomas Vinterberg
Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson
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 + Best Comeback of the Year
The Devil Inside - William Brent Bell + Best Horror Film of the Year
The Avengers/Avengers Assemble - Joss Whedon
Magic Mike - Steven Soderbergh + Best Dance Film of the Year
Maniac - Franck Khalfoun + Wildest Film of the Year
Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell
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 + Silliest Film of the Year
6. Battleship - Peter Berg
7. Painless/Insensibles - Juan Carlos Medina
8. Chernobyl Diaries - Bradley Parker
9. Antiviral - Brandon Cronenberg
10. John Dies at the End - Don Coscarelli
Mediocre movies of 2012:
Piranha 3DD
Laurence Anyways
Girl Most Likely/Imogene + Worst Poster of the Year:
The Expendables 2
The Woman in Black
Skyfall
Promised Land
My Brother the Devil
The Possession
The Dark Knight Rises
American Reunion/American Pie: Reunion
Big Miracle
The Amazing Spiderman
Remarks:
This first update of the 2012 film lists increases the amount of reviewed, mentioned films from 48 to 60.
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, Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On is a devastatingly intimate look at a gay couple's relationship, as one of them increasingly falls prey to his drug addiction. - 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 fell through the roof. Filmmaker masters David Cronenberg and Woody Allen both had terrible releases in 2012 with Cosmopolis and To Rome With Love respectively. Cronenberg's son Brandon Cronenberg also debuted in 2012 with a sound dud, Antiviral.
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 remain 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, Spring Breakers, The Lucky One,
Think Like a Man (seen - good), Stuck in Love, Ted, Les
Misérables, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Cloud
Atlas, The Vow, Wreck-It-Ralph, The Cabin in the Woods (seen - bad), This Is 40 (seen - very good), Lawless, Chronicle, Seeking a Friend For the End of the World, The Broken Circle Breakdown, Rust and Bone, Quartet, Holy Motors, Casa de mi Padre, Ernest & Celestine, A Late Quartet, Middle of Nowhere, Here Comes the Devil, No and many others.
As always, lots of movies left to see, - great!
Related posts:
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Do you agree with Film Excess' 2012 lists?
What films would comprise your lists of 2012 movies?
What movies are missed here?
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