froghawk on 9/1/2013 at 14:46
For me: Moonrise Kingdom, Django Unchained, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Dark Knight Rises. Life of Pi and Brave were pretty good, too.
Yes, TDKR was a bit of a mess, but it was a very enjoyable mess that I found entirely satisfying.
Biggest disappointments: The Hobbit, Cosmopolis (It's like Cronenberg has been trying to get back to doing his usual thing after some mainstream excursions but not quite pulling it off)
Kuuso on 9/1/2013 at 15:27
Forgot that I saw the new Judge Dredd movie as well. I saw it on my laptop, so no 3D-shizzle. It was surprisingly good for what it is with a tight little story. Would have been ten times better, if they had gone full on and done away with idiotic one-liners, general hollywood cliches and concentrated more on the themes Dredd and the universe present. In this movie, Dredd is basically a good cop and the gangsters are simply bad, which is a bit too simplified considering the whole point of Dredd is looking at a fascist monopoly of judgement the cops have.
Anyways, too bad it flopped, since I would not have minded seeing a sequel. It was also hilarious seeing thar our lovely Avon Barksdale has lived to see a dystopian future. :D
faetal on 9/1/2013 at 18:15
Spoiler tags!
(assuming The Wire Season 6 gets made and it ties in with 2000AD of course)
Renault on 11/1/2013 at 22:31
Hopefully I won't have to turn in my man card for saying this - just saw the new Les Miserables last night. I thought it was pretty solid, although far too long for my taste. Hadn't seen it before in any format, and I'm not really one for musicals for the most part, but it kept me interested the majority of the time. I was however super impressed with Hugh Jackman though, the guy just seems so talented. He really did an excellent job of carrying the lead role throughout - hard to believe he's playing Wolverine in his alternate life. Haven't seen Lincoln yet, and I'm sure Daniel Day Lewis will win Best Actor, but I would say Jackman could probalby give him a run for his money with this performance. Anyway, everyone's mileage varies on musicals, but as an overall production, this one probably belongs on a "top of 2012" list just in principle. And of course Anne Hathaway's version of that famous song was pretty heartbreaking, even for a tough guy such as myself. :rolleyes:
One of the strangest things about this production/musical for me was this: just about every musical I have seen has been a mixture of dialogue and singing, and this was literally all singing, which was kind of bizarre. Even if there was only a 2-3 sentence exchange between characters, the lines were sung, even without music. :weird:
Muzman on 12/1/2013 at 00:28
I hardly saw anything last year, that was from last year at least.
Cabin in the Woods was probably the best. Very fun and novel flick. Great to watch in a theatre.
Avengers was pretty great too actually. It doesn't make much sense in a lot of ways, but they held it together. Part of the fun of watching it is being amazed that it works at all I think. And then that it works so well at the same time.
I think about all the people who gave Transformers a pass back in the day because it was a 'popcorn movie'. It was allowed to be pandering incoherent dribble because the explosions were loud and got your heart rate up, or something like that.
Nnonono. Avengers is a popcorn movie. It actually slightly above the minumum standard we should expect to call something a popcorn movie. Anything below that is not a popcorn movie, it's a shit movie.
The Dark Knight Rises: speaking of shit movies... Well, that seems a little harsh. There are good things in it. I'll probably forgive it some later on. But I am still amazed what a mess it is and how little it seems to care about anything. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens, and it makes no sense. The whole story makes no sense, the characters make no sense, the plot makes no sense. It's like nobody gave a damn. But that's not true; there's nice cinematography (they got that part right this time) some good acting and characterisations. People are clearly trying. Didn't anyone stop to see if the script worked even a little? No, clearly not. It's like all the bad stupid, convenient things about the Dark Knight - which we all forgave because it's the Joker - turned into the main operating procedure. It's a Cargo Cult movie. So rote are all the tropes of comics and hero stories, that if you hit enough of them, the audience will take on board or dismiss whatever it needs to to make a decent story in their heads. It doesn't actually need to work in itself anymore. That from people as obsessed with narrative structure and its subtleties as the Nolans is frankly disturbing.
Oh I also saw the Total Recall remake. Yeah.
Fafhrd on 12/1/2013 at 02:14
I've missed a lot that came out after July on account of job loss and moving back to California, and I have to do my marathon re-watch of everything from 2012 that I bought on blu-ray for my final ranking (I'm leaning towards Looper as my Number 1, though), but I'm going to weigh in on some things.
Animated Films:
Wreck-It Ralph - Really loved this one. Probably my animated film of the year. It's all the little jokes in the details (the way the people from Ralph's game move being one of my favourites), and also the massive heart that makes it great.
ParaNorman - Nobody does stop motion like Laika. I didn't bother seeing Frankenweenie because A. I am so over Tim Burton, and B. There's just no way it could've stood up to this. Full of brilliant little homages to classic horror and zombie movies, an absolutely heartbreaking twist (even though I saw it coming, I gasped a little bit at the reveal), and some surprisingly black humour.
Brave - I'm in the minority that really liked this one, and found it a welcome return to form for Pixar after the lull in quality that was Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. You can feel a little bit of strain between Brenda Chapman's original story and final version that the Pixar Brain Trust altered it to, but it's still a gorgeously animated and immaculately voice acted piece of work. And I think it handled the themes of a parent allowing their child to be their own person better than Toy Story 3 did.
I missed Rise of the Guardians, so will have to pick it up when it hits blu. From what I've heard it's a solid entry in the category of 'movies from DreamWorks Animation that don't suck' alongside the Kung Fu Pandas and How To Train Your Dragon.
Live Action:
Looper - hard for me to be objective on this one, as I'm an unabashed Rian Johnson fanboy. Everything about this worked really well for me.
Cloud Atlas - An interesting experiment that ultimately I think was a failure. Takes a book that is by all accounts kind of profound and brilliant and turns it into a film that's kind of treacly and shallow (perhaps ironic that Life of Pi is a thematically similar book that I've heard is ultimately treacly and shallow, but the film is apparently kind of profound and brilliant).
Chronicle - Really good twist on found footage as a narrative technique, strong performances all around, and probably the best superhero origin film of the year.
Amazing Spider-Man - another one that I find myself in the minority for really enjoying, if only because Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield's performances and chemistry make for a much stronger emotional anchor than Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's ever did in the Raimi trilogy.
John Carter - Liked it. Almost loved it. I think it would've been a stronger film and a better opener for a franchise if it hadn't made so many unnecessary deviations from the source material (the Therns should've been saved for the sequel. Their portrayal in this makes it practically impossible to do 'The Gods of Mars' correctly).
Prometheus - The most interesting failure of the year. It's playing with some really big ideas, but Lindelof's distaste for writing exposition makes him the completely wrong writer for the big idea sandbox. From a craft standpoint it's amazing: cinematography, effects, performances all stellar, but all in service to kind of a shithouse script. There are a lot of deleted scenes that if they'd been left in would probably raised the film's quality to 'passable.'
Stuff I've thus far missed: Argo, Les Miserable, Zero Dark Thirty (don't intend to see this one), Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Flight.
demagogue on 12/1/2013 at 05:13
I'm pretty sure the only movie I actually went to the theatre to see was with my dad, and i asked him which movie he'd like to see, and he wanted to watch Madagascar 3. So we watched Madagascar 3. The visual imagery was pretty great. I'm interested enough in computer animation to appreciate it. The story was astoundingly stupid to a textbook level. And it didn't matter because it was just about hanging out with him anyway. He loved it.
Al_B on 13/1/2013 at 00:22
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
ParaNorman - Nobody does stop motion like Laika. I didn't bother seeing Frankenweenie because A. I am so over Tim Burton, and B. There's just no way it could've stood up to this.
ParaNorman was my most unexpectedly enjoyable film of last year. I'm not a huge stop motion fan (Fantastic Mr Fox was good but constantly reminded me I was watching animated characters) but this was very well done. I knew nothing about the film before seeing it, largely choosing it on a whim. It's definitely a film that gets better as it progresses. Although it starts at a very basic level it has no problems with subverting stereotypes and it has a very healthy sense of humour.
Scots Taffer on 18/1/2013 at 00:53
Just saw Paranorman. Awesome. What is with kid's movies having twists these days? Cool stuff! Also, I loved the "my boyfriend" line at the end, even if I saw it coming way in advance. The climax was surprisingly emotional too - sure, it wore its message on its sleeve but it was heartfelt.
Muzman on 22/1/2013 at 03:36
Hey I forgot all about Chronicle.
It's like that though. It's almost a good thing. It does most things right and well and wraps itself up, and you say "Hm, that was good. Moving on"
Les Mis is doing rather well. Some surprising people wanting to see it (that I know that is). I wonder if it's a way to go see a musical and say "no no, I went to see a movie with singing ok. And now I'm going to mainline some MMA, beer and Loaded magazines. Stop looking at me like that!" (some people. Not many)
