Dan: Now that movie season is officially turning over to 2013, Caryn and I felt we should take a look back at the year that was in cinema. We saw a pretty hefty amount of movies in 2012, some terrific … but most terrible. So let’s dissect what we thought were the best and worst movies of 2012.
A disclaimer first: While we did see most of the great and goofy movies that came out this year, we couldn’t catch every last one. Some of the movies we missed that might be on your best list: Anna Karenina, Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. Some of the movies we missed that might be on your worst list: A Thousand Words, Oogieloves, Madea’s Witness Protection and The Watch. With that said, here are my top three movies of 2012.
3) The Dark Knight Rises. The final installment to Christopther Nolan’s Batman trilogy might have been overly complicated and copped out at the end, but boy, was it a spectacle. Great acting and great chemistry brought in by Anne Hathaway (maybe my leading candidate for actress of the year after being Catwoman and Fantine in Les Mis) coupled with a top-notch villain in Bane gave the series the sendoff it deserved. Not everyone is a fan of overly long movies, but I say, if a movie makes me never want the action and story to end, let it go on as long as it can continue to provide.
2) Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World. Words cannot adequately express the love I have for this movie. It runs the full gamut of emotions but never once comes off as corny or manipulative. The relationship between Steve Carell’s and Keira Knightley’s characters is one of my favorites of any movie I’ve ever seen. The movie takes very subtle looks at how all aspects of humanity would react if the world really were coming to an end, all while employing just enough terrific comedy to keep the hope up. It’s a beautiful film, and it’s a shame it didn’t do better at the box office.
1) Skyfall. I’ve been a Bond fan pretty much my whole life. Though I haven’t seen every installment, I feel safe in saying Skyfall offers things no other 007 film does. Few of the films actually center around a theme; Skyfall does. Few have as well-developed and dangerous a villain as Javier Bardem’s character. Few have so much of the main plot revolve around a character other than Bond; this is closer to M’s story than Bond’s. It’s slick, it’s smart, it’s all the classic fun of James Bond with the intelligence and sophistication of a modern-day classic. It might not be the best Bond ever, but it’s my pick for the best of 2012.
Caryn, what made your list?
Caryn: My top 3 movies are mostly the same, and for the same reasons, except I would probably replace “Skyfall” with “Les Miserables.” I can’t rank any of my favorite movies this year as being the absolute best, because they’re all good in their own way.
I’m a huge fan of Anne Hathaway. She was great in “Dark Knight Rises” and exceptional in “Les Miserables.” In “Les Miserables,” Fantine’s part tends to act as a catalyst for the rest of the operetta’s plot, but Hathaway held her own and made the half-hour or so she spent on screen something amazing. As Catwoman in “The Dark Knight Rises,” Hathaway played a completely different character: one that could go from sweet and simpering to venomous and psychotic with one look. She’s a classy actress who demonstrates extreme devotion to her work.
To add to the list, I’d probably include “The Hobbit,” if only for its music. We rant and rave about movie soundtracks here a lot, and the soundtrack to “The Hobbit” is one that can be heard on its own, but doesn’t drown out the action in the movie. It included themes from the “Lord of the Rings” soundtracks, but it also included some new themes for the new characters. The soundtrack from “The Hobbit” was like candy for my eardrums.
Moving on to worst movies.
I really thought I had seen the worst in May when “Battleship” came out. It was during that time that we reviewed “Jumanji” and determined board game movies are a terrible idea. About the same time, “The Amazing Spider-Man” came out, and that was really nothing special, but it wasn’t actively bad.
Then summer rolled around and the biggest, loudest cinematic spectacle was let loose in theaters: “The Avengers.” Some scenes from “The Avengers” reminded me of “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” which had to be one of the worst movies of 2011. I don’t really read comic books and I didn’t see many of the prequels to “The Avengers.” But even having no experience with the franchise, I couldn’t understand what made the movie so great. In fact, I thought it was pretty terrible. The characters were walking, talking wooden cliches with no motivation. The villain was flamboyant and annoying (obnoxious, gilded horn hat, anyone?) And in the end, everyone banded together, worked as a team and no one (except one minor character no one cared about) died! The bland characters and bland message was heavily smothered with bright, loud explosions and CGI, so somehow we weren’t supposed to question the rest of it or ask for our money back.
But one movie I saw in the past year overshadowed all movies with terribleness. No movie in 2012 could have ever competed with how atrocious “Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ was. It deserves every last one of the 11 Razzies for which it was nominated. I spent 2 1/2 hours of my life watching attractive actors stare at one another. Then, the final battle ended up just being all a vision, so all of the characters walked onto a snowy field, stared at each other for a while, decided not to fight and went home to stare at each other some more.
I’ve seen corny, melodramatic soap operas, and the final “Twilight” movie played out like a soap opera, only it was way more boring. The dialogue was completely inane. No one said or did anything of substance in that movie. Unlike must-see films such as “Fight Club” or “The Godfather,” the “Twilight” franchise contributes nothing even remotely meaningful to film history. It attracted an audience because of the books, but the books were terrible as well, so I’m not sure how or why that franchise has a following. I hope it comes out on DVD to a respectable few more fans, and then we can never again speak of it.
What were the worst films of the year on your list?
Dan: I’ll preface this by saying I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing “Twilight,” which almost certainly would have topped my list judging on all I’ve heard about it. That said, here are my bottom three:
3) October Baby. It had all the things one would come to expect from a terrible movie: horrible acting, an obnoxious soundtrack, a bland story and stereotypical characters. But what puts this movie over the edge is the blatant propagandizing. The sole reason this movie was made was to sell the anti-abortion message. While it’s perfectly fine to state that case in a movie, to do it while ignoring real-world situations, especially when dealing with an issue as touchy as abortion, comes off as lazy and out of touch.
2) John Carter. The flack this movie got once it bombed at the box office was well deserved. The plot was utter nonsense. The characters were the same token characters in every sci-fi movie. Even the action was boring. Just about all I remember about this movie was laughing at its ineptitude. 2012 was not a good year for Taylor Kitsch, who starred in two major flops last year (“John Carter” and “Battleship”).
1) Silent Hill: Revelation. This is a very personal choice for the worst movie of 2012. I love the Silent Hill games, and “Silent Hill 3,” the game upon which this movie is based, is my favorite of the franchise. I did not have high hopes going into this movie after seeing what was done with the first Silent Hill film. I knew the main story was going to have to be drastically altered to fit with the story set up by the first movie. I knew some of the central characters were going to be changed from the source material. I knew that it was not going to feel like the game I’ve come to love.
All that would have been OK if the end product had been a better movie than the first. It couldn’t even deliver that. In trying to fix the holes in the first movie’s story, “Revelation” managed to make it a thousand times more confusing. In adapting one of the classics in horror gaming, “Revelation” found a way to make every monster, enemy and environment as absurdly goofy as possible. There is one moment that comes close to matching the atatmospheric horror that made the games beloved … and it ends with company mascot Pyramid Head chopping off hands of prisoners who, for some unknown reason, keep their arms stretched out beyond their bars even though it’s clear some giant creature is lopping off everything in sight. Anyone who might have been interested in “Silent Hill 3,” a game with a brilliant, intricate and captivating story, would have been turned off of the series by the sheer dreadfulness of the movie adaptation.
Would it have been my worst movie of the year if I had seen “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″? For the history I have with the franchise, I think so.
What are your picks for best and worst movies of 2012?
