This is one of the “Best of 2012” lists that is a part of the Great Movie Challenge of 2012. For all of the “Best of” lists, please see the post: All the Best Movies of 2012 Lists.
Carman and I go back years. I have many fond memories of sitting around the UCLA Radio station (where we both were DJs), arguing about music while eating Panda Express. Seriously. -Eric
The Best Films of 2012
by Carman Tse
Big ups to Script Doctor Eric for holding this contest and personally inviting me to participate in it after I berated him last year for not having a single film in a foreign language on his Best of 2011 list.
Alas I won’t be listing everything I’ve seen here because I doubt the 37 films I saw that came out last year would be enough to win the contest anyways (not that I particularly care to win the contest), nor do I feel the need to share that I saw The Avengers like everyone else in the world or any particular thoughts I had on movies that hardly moved me. Instead, I’ll be sharing the ones that affected me the most with a few stray thoughts.
This list isn’t quite complete yet, as there are still a handful on my mental queue that need to be gotten to. Unfortunately, Eric’s deadline looms so I gotta get this over with. It should be final by the time the Oscars roll around. A few of these I saw in 2011 and in 2013, but I’m going by official US release date so don’t argue with me over that shit.
Directors are named in the brackets.
19. Holy Motors [Leos Carax]
Holy Motors probably doesn’t deserve to be on my list, but I’ll admit that it has an irresistible charm in between being absolutely aggravating. I just couldn’t do a Best of 2012 list without mentioning Kylie Minogue’s performance as a 21st century meta-update on Jean Seberg’s Patricia from Godard’s Breathless. Perhaps no other singular movie scene moved me as much as hers in 2012.
18. Django Unchained [Quentin Tarantino]
My favorite scene in this overlong movie comes quite early on when Dr. King Schultz tells Django the tale of Wagner’s Brünnhilde and Siegfriend by the campfire. As he gesticulates before the fire, his shadows are projected onto a bare rock face, thus providing the most obvious metaphor for cinema. That Django sits there, wide-eyed, taking in this violent hero’s tale pretty much sums up what Django Unchained is really all about.
17. Haywire [Steven Soderbergh]
Speaking of violence, what I appreciated most about the underappreciated Haywire is that it pretty much was a no-nonsense action movie that made absolutely no pretentions beyond just that. It’s a movie of performance, not one of actors but of Gina Carano’s neck-crushing thighs.
16. Silver Linings Playbook [David O. Russell]
While I can’t speak to how accurate its portrayal of diagnosed mental illnesses is, Silver Linings Playbook is probably the best film depiction of the mass hysteria that is sports fandom. Despite the rather conventional romantic comedy trappings it falls into, the film ends with a heavy dose of melancholy as a) you realize that, despite finding each other, these are two still severely damaged people and b) the 2008 Philadelphia Eagles that Robert de Niro’s character devoutly follows through the movie lose in the NFC Championship.
15. In Another Country [Hong Sang-soo]
Hong Sang-soo often gets criticized for making the same movie over and over again. And while it may be a fair assessment of his work, it completely misses the point as each of his films (and the vignettes within the films) act as a different take on the rhythms life and the interactions we go through on a daily basis with the people that surround us, like John Coltrane reinventing “My Favorite Things” through his career.
14. Declaration of War [Valérie Donzelli]
More often than you’d like Donzelli can’t get out of her own way (that slow-motion ending, sheesh, it’s not like this kid turned out to be Max Fischer), but from nearly the beginning I was all in on the ride. It’s mostly-Truffaut-with-some-Godard but without being pandering, not just in form and style but also in its (sometimes cursory) dabs in Greater Social Context. Narcissistic but not solipsistic, you can’t help but be won over by its sincerity.
13. The Turin Horse [Béla Tarr]
Perhaps the most complete vision of marrying the depiction of the events on the screen with the experience of watching the same film. Thank you for your service, Mr. Tarr.
12. Barbara [Christian Petzold]
Simple in its stakes and construction, but also perfectly understated and executed. Barbara is an elegant political thriller without the muck of politicking or morals.
11. Cosmopolis [David Cronenberg]
Cosmopolis is like an update on Godard’s Week End, except this time the rich is the one doing all the eating while the world falls apart for the rest of us.
10. Crazy Horse [Frederick Wiseman]
In a perfect world, Wim Wenders’ bloated 3-D mess of what could’ve been a nice tribute to Pina Bausch would’ve gone by the wayside and Wiseman’s tribute to the female form would be the dancing documentary that got all the praise. While Wenders can’t get out of his own way to tell of Bausch’s dedication to her craft, Wiseman’s unobtrusive (to the point of voyeuristic) camera lets the figures (in both sense of the word) do the storytelling of the world’s most famous erotic cabaret.
9. Moonrise Kingdom [Wes Anderson]
In Wes Anderson’s worlds, the adults act like children as an expression of the primal, almost infantile id that exists within each of us. In Moonrise Kingdom, he finally has children acting like adults, as an expression of the complexity that lies in the emotional and intellectual desires that are innate, even in pre-adolescence. Moonrise Kingdom might not be his finest, but it is certainly the perfect culmination of Wes Anderson’s career to date.
8. Bernie [Richard Linklater]
Despite the title and the magnetic charm of Jack Black’s performance of the titular character, ultimately Bernie is about the sense and warmth of community in Smalltown, America. An especially powerful message in the wake of the divisive political Red State/Blue State rhetoric that is so prevalent today.
7. ATTENBERG [Athina Rachel Tsangari]
The wonder of ATTENBERG is that despite its cold, clinical look at the ceremonies, motions, and activities that make up our natural life cycle (birth, sex, death), the innate humanity is impossible to be fully exhumed from them. Plus it has a badass Alan Vega soundtrack.
6. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia [Nuri Bilge Ceylan]
I mean it’s basically a Malick movie set in the Turkish countryside. I’m all about that.
5. The Master [Paul Thomas Anderson]
Boy if you thought Les Misérables was full of awkward close-ups, you’ll get up close and personal with Joaquin Phoenix’s craggy face like you never thought you would in The Master. In 70mm glory too, if you were so lucky.
4. Zero Dark Thirty [Kathryn Bigelow]
So much has been made of this film that it has practically been dissected to death so I wanted to highlight a small moment that I thought captured it quite nicely. There is a moment where Jessica Chastain’s Maya is sitting at her desk and over her head on a shelf are plain white binders each labeled with some War on Terrorism buzzword, one of them is notably “UBL.” Those letters, frequently recited by every character in the film quite dutifully, serve as the Rosebud of Zero Dark Thirty. Whereas bin Laden himself was an individual, here is he conceptualized into a fragment, a spectre that haunts the characters of Zero Dark Thirty and a post-9/11 America. He is the ultimate goal of Maya, but is nothing more than that achievement, hovering over her until her mission is completed.
3. Tabu [Miguel Gomes]
The Artist was a nice in anachronistic film techniques that did nothing more than trivialize the past of cinema (weren’t silent films just so cute?). Here in Tabu, Gomes utilizes these techniques to create the most otherworldly cinematic experience of 2012 that both romanticizes and critiques our dangerous romance with the past.
2. The Day He Arrives [Hong Sang-soo]
Hong Sang-soo often gets criticized for making the same movie over and over again. And while it may be a fair assessment of his work, it completely misses the point as each of his films (and the vignettes within the films) act as a different take on the rhythms life and the interactions we go through on a daily basis with the people that surround us, like John Coltrane reinventing “My Favorite Things” through his career.
1. This Is Not a Film [Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb]
Igi the iguana for Best Actor.
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There ARE films on there I haven’t seen. Thanks Carman, will check those out! 🙂 -Eric
