Created Mar 03, 2012 02:02AM PST • Updated Apr 27, 2013 03:43PM PST
The Great, Really Great and Perfect new movies I saw in 2012.
8 Forum
Replies
- Really Great
- 81 Points
| Title Released Trust Weighted Summary ▲ Viewable | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
 2 Forum Replies
Think of Act of Valor as real US Naval Special Warfare come to cineplexes, not as a normal war movie. Thus the valor is certain, the acting not so much. Directed by a couple of former stuntmen and starring a bunch of active duty SEALs, it is earnest in the extreme and often wooden in its non-firefight scenes. So what, given how exciting and enlightening it is. Before going on, let's quibble with the title's misleading first word: It should be Acts of Valor. Valor at home but mostly valor down-range, up to and including several acts worthy of the Medal of Honor. Heroism is ra… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
2 Forum Replies
High-powered action thrillers should all be this accomplished. Contraband smuggles a slyly clever plot, heavy-metal action and solid exploitation of an underexploited setting into theaters. A strong cast led by Mark Wahlberg is less a secret but no less an asset for this savvy crowd-pleaser. The heavy-metal action is the best since "Unstoppable":http://www.viewguide.com/movie_reviews/2898-unstoppable, the last action movie to adroitly use massive machinery – trains and rail-yards in Unstoppable, freighters and ports in Contraband. The merchant marine milieu perfectly supports a s… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
Better to think of Jeff, Who Lives at Home as affecting drama with LOLs than as comedy with some stinkers. Consider the title as Exhibit A. Funny and intriguing to me, others might say "What The …?" Many will reject Jeff@Home on stinkers alone, though it ends up as serious as a shot to the solar plexus. Oh yeah, it's also quite precious, though what do you expect from a movie about a 30 year old man-child. If you're not scared off yet, prepare yourself for a great movie. The story revolves around a pair of dumb and dumber brothers, a nice guy and a jerk, each self-pitying … |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
2 Forum Replies
The 21st century 21 Jump Street bangs the gong — comedy style — by expertly exploiting high school and cop show cliches. Well mounted, creatively inspired and charismatically performed, it's almost enough to give commercial crap a good name. OK, maybe not, but it's entertaining as hell. Hell-on-wheels is a major part of the program in a movie that is a deal-with-the-Devil high concept done up with major production values. The Big Booms do take a while to appear though, leading to a running joke. A big bromance between Channing Tatum's manly-man and Jonah Hill's loser-man works ver… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
An important but hardly perfect movie, The Hunger Games is however great enough to justify the fuss. The monster box office generated by this first installment of Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy of YA novels is helping The Hunger Games and heroine Katniss Eberdeen become primary cultural influences on tens of millions of real young adults. In short, The Hunger Games is the American "Harry Potter":http://www.viewguide.com/movie_reviews/3202. It does suffer from phoniness in how it depicts humanity operating under grotesquely insane situations. People don't easily hunt people…. |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
Discuss
Youth is wasted on the young – the saying goes. The same can be said about Chimpanzee. Not that children won't appreciate it. They'll love it. It's just that grownups will appreciate it more, though how many adults without kids in tow deign to see "family" nature documentaries? Dramatic nature documentaries like Chimpanzee – combining up-close nature with major dramatic development – are a new breed. The never-seen-before nature is bracing and the drama is hard to believe, even if there's no reason not to believe it. "The Last Lions":http://www.viewguide.com/movie_reviews/3030 … |
||||||
Released in the States early May 2012.
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
The slang for corporate recruiter once connoted a frisson of danger. Then "Headhunter" lost its edge. Headhunters returns it and then some. An insanely funny thriller, it rivals fellow Scandin… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
There's lots to sink your teeth into – lots to like and chew over – in the reimagining of Dark Shadows. Camp-classic TV soap opera, it stands up to eccentric genius Tim Burton's silver screen amplification. Chortles count as laughs and Dark Shadows triggers more than a few of those. Johnny Depp never strains as Barnabas Collins, 18th century dandy turned vampire dropped into the 1970s. Depp's droll otherness is perfect for a largely fish-out-of-water comedy. Droll melodrama is a tough ticket when it comes to LOLs however, even with… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
The best MIB? Indeed. MIB3 is clever and fun, as expected, with a surprising inventiveness that MIB1 approached and MIB2 didn't. Now … it's not especially LOL, chuckles and appreciative guffaws notwithstanding. Charisma it's got in abundance, courtesy of major moviestar turns by Will Smith and the two Agent Ks – Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin. Speaking of doubles, a great action movie needs a worthy villain, which Jermain Clement's Boris the Animal assuredly is, twice. The love interest is doubled also – Emma Thompson and Alice Eve, Miss Brilliant and Miss Aphrodite. |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
Wes Anderson movies are an acquired taste – highly stylized, absurdly droll comedies. Moonrise Kingdom? Stylized well into pronounced surrealism. Yet it works due to a lovely and improbable romance between a couple of emotionally disturbed twelve year-olds. Being a Wes Anderson movie, the star-crossed lovers are surrounded by dysfunctional families and quasi-families, plus some haplessly officious functionaries. All's well that ends well, wrote the Bard. True enough with Moonrise Kingdom, which uncorks delightful surprises right through to its happy ending. Bravo. |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
Imagine Spider-Man as if Toby Maguire never wore the suit and James Franco were still a sensitive nobody. Seen thusly, The Amazing Spider-Man is a great movie, notwithstanding a treacly story that's often tinny. Did Columbia & Marvel need to reboot Spider-Man just a decade after "its first big screen incarnation":http://www.viewguide.com/movies/211532? No, but they've done a creditable job, in part by locating the story when Peter Parker was still a school kid. This makes it a nifty hig… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
Safety not guaranteed, but viewing pleasure is assured from this endearing romcom. It features a smart story about a Miss Lonelyheart falling in love with an apparently crazy time-traveler she's researching for an exposé. His crazy but real (crazy-real?) scenario meshes well with today's über-ironic audiences. Unfortunately, Safety Not Guaranteed is not easy for audiences to find. It was in a couple theaters in June, then went missing. This week "CineArts at Santana Row":http://www.cinemark.com/theatre-detail.aspx?node_id=1679 has it at 5:30 and 10:15. I caught the late show last ni… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
Discuss
The complete story of Quadrophenia is essential viewing for Quadropheniacs. You know who you are. Pete Townshend takes us on an hour-plus tour through his magnum opus, the greatest of rock operas, followed by twenty minutes of Quadrophenia concert outtakes from the decades. Felt complete to me. Roger Daltrey gets a few words in edgewise, consistent with their fraught relationship. Additional commentary comes from members of their early 70s entourage: their sound engineer, the manager who became their manager after they fired their previous manager, their gorgeous office girl and a … |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
Premium Rush deserves to be a huge hit. Aptly titled, it delivers as declared. A premium rush it is. It's also the best smartphone movie yet, even if the app-tivity mostly happens in nifty animated sequences between the surreally hyped-up action. How surreal is it? NFW is the proper reaction to many scenes. Occasionally NFW!!! Baba O'Riley's synth opening opens David Koepp's perfectly directed film. Choosing one of the Who's signature rock intros? Bold choice, but … |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
Discuss
Seven psychopaths, a Shih Tzu and an alcoholic screenwriter add up to a damn funny movie. Each psycho gets featured in a short within the larger movie, then gets additional screen-time based on how immediately expendable they are. As with horror-comedies, most are introduced just to get entertainingly bumped off. We're talking over-the-top violence played for laughs. The laughs do come, some hearty and from the belly, others chortles from the throat. However, the horrid level of sacrilege means you can't wash the stench off, though funny is funny and Seven Psychopaths is damn funny… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
4 Forum Replies
Flight is a heavily Hollywoodized Great American Movie, with a superstar anchoring a tall tale that apes an American triumvirate of powerful popular experiences. Denzel Washington's Whip Whitaker echoes Sully Sullenberger; the crash site of Whip's plane resembles 9/11's Shanksville field; and the phenomena of the modern insta-celebrity who wilts in the limelight is the crucible in which it all plays out. It's also perhaps the most powerful movie about a hardcore alcoholic ever committed to the silver screen. The producers needed a powerful star to play the super-high-functioning alco… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
2 Forum Replies
The Avengers do more than avenge. They dominate – the box office and Disney's financial performance. More personally, they fulfill the hopes of fanboys everywhere, including older generations who don't even know they are fanboys. Ever love a Marvel comic? Prepare to be fulfilled, fanboy. We're talking the biggest opening weekend ever, a fitting achievement for the culmination of five huge prequels, each the cinematic distillation of half a century's comik brilliance. Literature even. It shows on screen through a six pack of Marvel heroes, each with a deep backstory, personal … |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
A Separation fascinates both as an absorbing domestic drama and a lens into contemporary Iran. That compelling combination has made it a worldwide sensation, the odds-on favorite to win Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Oscars. It presents two families drawn together by domestic needs who are then drawn into dire circumstances due to pique and familial love. A middle-class family's elevated aspirations – leaving Iran; taking dignified care of a grandfather – bring them into conflict with themselves, while a lower-class family's survival requirements bring them into conflict… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
2 Forum Replies
Bernie – the most genuinely funny movie of the year and the most pleasant surprise – mixes amateur townsfolk with big name stars to create an only-in-America story, and a true one at that. Well, truthy. Assistant funeral home director Bernie Tiede really did murder the richest widow in his small town, only to have the town rally to his defense, a story documented in Texas Monthly as "Midnight in the Garden of East Texas":http://www.texasmonthly.com/1998-01-01/feature4.php. The author of that piece went on to write Bernie with Texan director Richard Linklater, who recruited two of h… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
Comic genius, thy name is Seth MacFarlane, the writer, director and voice of Ted, a wildly ill-behaved "living" teddybear. The movie's conceit is that a grown man's arrested development gets enabled by this magical best buddy, who has taken on nothing but bad habits since leaving chronological boyhood behind. Wake and bake? Check. Fortunately MacFarlane's creation – coupled with a tremendously appealing cast – makes for a flat-out hilarious movie. Often appalling, yes. But … |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
8 Forum Replies
The finale of the Dark Knight trilogy rises to the occasion, delivering a compelling and consummately produced big screen experience. Famously long at almost three hours, it does indeed fly by, the rich story and characters well harnessed to Christopher Nolan's masterful direction, the closure complete… yet open. That said, DKR's twists are often grossly manipulative, its double-crosses and dubious motives wearying. Thus "The Dark Knight":http://www.viewguide.com/movie_reviews/1379 remains the peak of the trilogy, followed by DKR, with "Batman Begins":http://www.viewguide.com/mov… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
Heard of the Bondurant School of Driving? Lawless is the Bondurant school of bootlegging, V8 Fords careening along dirt roads included. Indeed, the story of a legendary family of moonshiners from Western Virginia – the Bondurants – gets a monumental telling in this powerfully assured and entertaining movie.1 Nominally "based on real events," Lawless soars to fictional heights reached by precious few crime movies. It's more than enough to induct the Bondurants into the cinematic Valhalla that houses legendary crime families like the "Corleones":http://www.viewguide.com/movies/136… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
Monumentally accomplished storytelling plus bravura cinema done in rich and deep 65mm images make The Master another Paul Thomas Anderson masterpiece. Plus there's the Best Acting trophies all around. Intoxication unites its leading men – hooch for one, power the other. Joaquin Phoenix's hardcore alcoholic latches onto Philip Seymour Hoffman's sophisticated cult leader and his luxo lifestyle. A destructive boozer gets enabled by an uppity bamboozler, basically. It's not a healthy bromance. Amy Adams' Queen of Scientology, er, Queen Bee completes a powerhouse thespian triumvirat… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
Looper is one of the most satisfying movies of the year. An outstanding action picture, a mind-bending time-travel yarn and a charismatic moviestar showcase, it's exciting, thought provoking and often damn funny. Writer-director Rian Johnson must be a very hot commodity in Hollywood now based on his Super Duper Looper. Plus, he's constructed it as an origin story, more about which later. Mob assassins – so called Loopers – travel back 30 years from the late 21st century to whack unfortunates also sent back … for elimination. This sets up one hell of an identity conflict between J… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
Two political movies were released this third weekend before the Obama retention election – one on heroic capitalism, the other recreating a little known cloak-and-dagger success during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, an otherwise dismal chapter in American history. The second movie – Argo – is the great one. Tense and funny, it's nothing less than a Great American Movie, three decades removed yet timely as hell. How timely? George Clooney and Ben Affleck – Left Wing royalty – premiered their movie1 exactly one month after the September 11th sacking of the American Consulate in Beng… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
2 Forum Replies
A fine, fine movie, Lincoln delivers an outstanding history lesson centered on an iconic performance for the ages. With it, Stephen Spielberg continues his own ascent into the American pantheon, while Daniel Day-Lewis creates his single most memorable role. The movie focuses on a great legislative battle Lincoln fought in the last months of his life, an apt lens through which to view the man in full. Canny and idealistic, melancholy yet jovial, riven by familial tension, Abraham Lincoln comes alive in the movie as fully human yet worthy of his demigod status. Lincoln delivers a … |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
A Royal Affair is truly regal, with a King, his Queen, their courtiers, grand councils and balls in castles.
Princess Movies have a new member in their esteemed royal court, right up there with "The Young Victoria":http://www.viewguide… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
Django Unchained is an absurdly good movie that goes where few filmmakers dare tread, and succeeds so completely that only Tarantino could pull it off. What he's pulled off is a Tarantinic take on the first of the two racial decimations to occur in the heart of Western Civilization, three years after addressing the other. IOW, Django Unchained does to African-American Slavery what "Inglorious Basterds":http://www.viewguide.com/movie_reviews/1977-inglorious-basterds did to the Holocaust – recreates it in the form of exuberant revenge fantasy. Further, Django is to Basterds what "Roo… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
Zero Dark Thirty tells the truthy tale of the deadly hunt for Osama bin Laden, making it one of the most potent political movies of all time. The certain reverberations are hard to predict. Wikileaks? Wikiflick. It starts with a dark screen, then a title card. September 11, 2001. Screen still dark, radio chatter fills the air, capturing the desperate last words between al-Qaeda's doomed victims and feckless 911 operators. It ends with a statement that any character, characterization, dialogue and – you know – most any "fact" can and may be bullshit. Any resemblance between a… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
1 Forum Reply
Is there a funnier scary movie? While not laugh-your-guts-out, The Cabin in the Woods is LOL all thru. The comedy just keeps coming and coming. Bloody deaths come too, soon a welcome part of the comedy. Some reviewers decline to describe the movie. Just go they say. Why not describe it? Everyone knows that most characters come to gruesome ends in zombie movies. How and in what order are the questions. The Cabin in the Woods gets its charm by establishing a method to the madness, an evil "deus ex machina":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina writ large. Think "The… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
3 Forum Replies
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the Best Movie of the Year, indeed the Great American Movie of 2012. Silver Linings Playbook serves up a perfect stew of current American enthusiasms, including the NFL, psychiatric meds and Dancing with the Stars. Oh yeah, it's also an ultimate Philly movie. What's it to ya! About the title, sometimes you need a plan to find life's silver linings. Presto. Silver Linings Playbook. It's not surprising that SLP reaches perfection. David O. Russell has proven a great writer and director time and again. "Three Kings":http://www.viewguide.com/movie… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
2 Forum Replies
David Chase & Little Stevie should've released Not Fade Away here in January, instead of at the October film festivals. It coulda been the first great movie of 2013. Instead it's yet another great movie from 2012. OK, that ain't chopped liver. Still, it coulda set the pace for the New Year, coulda been a contenda. That's because it's a perfect little Sixties coming-of-age movie from somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. Written and directed by Garden State auteur David Chase, with music mastered by Steve Van Zandt, it features James Gandolfini's perfectly drawn Joisey Dad. Yes, Da… |
|
Dec 23, 2012 4:25PM
Wick
|
Yeah, felt the effects of it being drawn out so much. |
|
Dec 23, 2012 1:59PM
BrianSez
|
Ah – so you ended up being annoyed by the 3-way Hobbit split up |
|
Dec 23, 2012 12:41PM
Wick
|
Upon further reflection, I’m rating The Hobbit as Very Good, not Great. So pulled it out of the list. |