Cutting movies from my annual top 10 list was simply too
difficult, so I did what any other list-compiling person would do in a similar
situation — I expanded the list.
Here are my 12 favorite movies of the year. Happy New Year!
— Michael Clawson
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1. Silver Linings Playbook
No movie threw me through as many loops as Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell’s wacky descent — and
then ascent — into mental illness. The jazzy overlapping dialogue is very sharp
and reveals a clever comedy, but what sold me were brilliant performances by
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who play wounded old souls so delicate
that you want to embrace them from your theater seat.
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2. Moonrise
Kingdom
Of course the year’s best adventure movie is about a Boy Scout, a
knot-tying, tent-pitching, trail-blazing, knife-sharpening little dweeb with a
heart as big as his overstuffed backpack. Wes Anderson’s heartwarming romance
about a scout (Jared Gilman) and his runaway girlfriend (Kara Hayward) is a
touching portrait of being young and daring during an exploration of love.
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3. Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild
is about the creation of the Earth according to a 6-year-old girl who is wiser
than most adults. Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané
Wallis) and her father, Wink, live in a makeshift compound on an island in a
bayou basin called the Bathtub. When the waters flood them out as Biblically as
Noah, Hushpuppy begins an odyssey that is part myth, part fable and all poetry.
Ben Zeitlin’s raw allegory is beautiful and enchanting.
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4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
High school movies usually smack of bad writing and stereotypical
teen portrayals, but not here with Stephen Chbosky’s adaptation of his own
book. The first-time director gives his characters — played by Logan Lerman,
Ezra Miller and Emma Watson — their own hopes, fears and dreams, and each one
feels like an individual and not a name on a page. It’s a rare thing to see so
much honesty in so many characters within one movie.
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5. Lincoln
More C-SPAN than Young Mr.
Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s long-gestating Lincoln Lincoln before, but now we have a living
breathing giant among men, as close to real footage of the famous president as
you can get.
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6. Zero Dark Thirty
It begins with a black screen and the sounds of 9/11 and ends
with Osama bin Laden in a bodybag, but the best parts of Zero Dark Thirty take place between the two, when a lone CIA agent
had a hunch and acted on it to find the most wanted man in the world. Jessica
Chastain stars in Kathryn Bigelow’s first film since The Hurt Locker. It’s like an episode of Law & Order with the biggest payoff in military history. It’s
riveting.
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7. Argo
Here’s another CIA story, this time with Ben Affleck starring
(and directing) in an espionage thriller about the rescue of American embassy
workers from Iran .
Analysts suggested we airmail them bikes so they could cycle out of hostile
territory. Affleck’s character had a different idea: fly into Iran , pretend
to make a big-budget sci-fi movie and then fly out with the hostages as they
pretend to be members of a film crew. It was so crazy it worked.
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8. Looper
Ambitious science fiction lives! Rian Johnson directs a
complicated little thriller about hired assassins who murder riff-raff dumped
from 2074 into 2044, when no one will be looking for the corpses. Things get
hairy when a killer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has a morality crisis after his
future self (Bruce Willis) turns up on the killing field. Held together with
edgy-cool performances and post-modern tech predictions, Looper is a dazzling sci-fi film.
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9. The Hunter
A hunter is sent out in the wilderness to hunt the last fabled Tasmanian
tiger, a species that went extinct in 1936. Alone in the wild with nothing but
his thoughts and his decaying principles, the hunter (Willem Dafoe) is shaken
to his core when he simultaneously finds the tiger and falls for a family
living on the edge of the wilderness. The
Hunter was not widely seen, or even shown, in the United States .
Don’t let that shape your opinion of it — it’s a devastating film.
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10. ParaNorman
Stop-motion animation is now routinely more interesting than most
other CGI animation films. Just look at ParaNorman,
about a zombie-obsessed boy who unlocks a scary curse in his quaint little
town. The animation is wonderful, the jokes are creepy-funny and the
voice-acting is fantastic. I love how these stop-motion movies invent their worlds
from the ground up: every doorknob, keyhole, car antenna, soda cup and tuft of
hair is crafted by human hands. It’s amazing filmmaking. Also noteworthy: Pirates! Band of Misfits.
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11. Prometheus
Ridley Scott’s quasi-prequel to Alien disappointed many, and I must admit that the story could have
used some tweaking. But even including those faults, Prometheus is still one of my favorite “big” movies of 2012. It
expanded the Alien universe in a
philosophical direction that I didn’t think was possible. And I just adore
Noomi Rapace; I hope she has many more American films in the works. I can’t
wait to see if Prometheus gets its
own sequel (word on the street is that it will).
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12. The Sound of Noise
This farce about musical terrorism was released in Sweden
in 2010. It’s only just this year made it into American theaters, and I
strongly urge you to find it if you can. It’s about a gang of musicians who
invade and then terrorize public spaces using the city as a percussion
instrument. Bulldozers roaring to life, coins flicked and spun, metal trays
banged, high-tension wires plucked … these are the sounds of noise as the
musicians hold an entire city hostage with music.
