I’ll admit – I hate doing these top ten lists. As soon as I publish this article, I’ll have already changed my mind about the placement of at least one film on this list. Films are as much a reflection of the audience as they are the filmmaker. As people grow and mature, their view of the world grows with them. While films may never change from the moment they were shot (unless they were directed by George Lucas, of course), a movie can seem like a totally different beast given the passage of time. The movies I love right now are not the movies I will love ten years from now or even in ten days’ time. This list, then, is a time capsule of my taste in films as the clock strikes midnight and 2012 is ushered in. My only conciliation in doing this list is the slim chance the Mayans were right and I don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of someday looking back at this ranking and wondering what the hell I was thinking.
10) The Debt
The specter of unavoidable pain looms over John Madden’s thriller like a thick fog. The other film by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman about badass Jews killing Nazis, The Debt snuck out of nowhere to impress the hell out of me with its tightly plotted script and tragic characters. As a team of Mossad agents attempt to extradite a Nazi scientist in secret, they become entangled in a lie that will last a lifetime. This is prime-A spy drama — the kind that embarrasses James Bond films with its maturity and a lack of need for any catchy pop song-laden opening numbers. Potent in its drama and successful in its suspense, this is the thinking man’s popcorn flick and — in a summer full of great nail-biters, it’s a film that sets itself apart — if only for a brazen unwillingness to cast actors that’ll play characters at various ages in their lives with no regard to realism. Seriously. None of the actors that play the young Mossad agents look anything like their elder counterparts – but boy can they act. I can appreciate a movie giving nitpickers the finger for the sake of quality cinema.
9) The Troll Hunter
Found footage films have become frustratingly pedestrian. While once the sub-genre provided filmmakers a way to blow the doors of convention, now it seems like the format is just a crutch to give lazy filmmakers a way to spice up their otherwise boring movie. The Troll Hunter is not one of those found footage films. André Øvredal’s Norwegian film is about a group of documentary filmmakers who follow a man whose job it is to keep Norway’s troll population in check. Amazing special effects and likable characters help elevate this film from the murky depths of the found footage sub-genre.
8 ) Bellflower
It’s impressive when a movie can make you care about characters even when they are the epitome of unlikable (see Young Adult). Evan Glodell’s Bellflower is a gritty tribute to post-adolescent stupidity where a relationship’s end can seem apocalyptic and obsessing over building a fire-breathing car can become the key to salvation. Dark, bleak and strangely beautiful, Bellflower is the angry chest beating growl of the modern-day hipster — made impotent by his need for irony and clawing out for something substantial to build a philosophy on when religion has outlived its purpose. Bellflower is angry, it’s loud and it’s important.
7) Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Few films affected me on as primal a level as Rise of the Planet of the Apes did. Maybe there’s just something about casting off the iron chains of oppression that I can get behind but the film scratched an itch I’ve spent the better part of ten years rubbing my back against summer blockbusters in the hopes of alieving. Director Rupert Wyatt showed that you can make a mass-consumer film featuring computer-generated apes and still give it soul and heart by the bushel-full. All the while, Andy Serkis showed why he really is the Lon Chaney of his generation. I even could get behind the much lambasted human side of the story — connecting deeply with the relationship between James Franco’s character and his father, played by John Lithgow. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a film made to entertain, to thrill and to marvel at. It also happens to be the only film I saw this year that made me cry.
6) Attack the Block
Joe Cornish’s film is one of the most smile-enducing experiences you’ll have with a monster movie this year. When aliens invade a South London ghetto, it’s up to a group of thugs to eradicate the extraterrestrials. As Cornish described the film during his introduction at South by Southwest, it’s Super 8 Mile. From a pulsing soundtrack to engaging performances by a young cast to killer creature effects, Attack the Block is flat out the most entertaining horror movie to be released this year.
5) Super
Someday I’d like to program a triple feature of Taxi Driver, Observe and Report and Super. All three films share one thing in common — they are a powerful portrait of a depressingly lonely man driven to vigilantism because it’s a lot more obtainable than the powerful mood-stabalizing medication they are much in need of. Rain Wilson could have gone for parody in his role as a mentally-disturbed sociopath who finds redemption in a red superhero costume and a giant wrench. Instead, under the watch of the gleefully dark-minded James Gunn, Wilson created a shockingly realistic performance that contained real pathos, real heartbreak and, yes, real laughs. Super is funny — in a dark, unsettlingly way. To borrow a quote from the similarly themed Observe and Report, “I thought this was going to be funny, but it’s actually kind of sad.”
4) Midnight in Paris
In a year full of remakes and adaptations of television shows, comic books, action figure lines and even board games, Midnight In Paris‘ exploration of nostalgia ran slightly parallel to pop culture in a way Woody Allen hasn’t felt relevant in a long, long time. Gil, the Allen proxy played by Owen Wilson, pines for a version of Paris he was born too late for — one full of late night parties, deep conversations over drink and colorful romance as passionate as it is short-lived. Happiness and contentment are always a time machine short of obtaining in Allen’s script, though, and Midnight in Paris‘ sweet and simple message is brought to life as clear and well-crafted as it was only because of Allen’s work ethic and willingness to continuously stretch outside his comfort zone. While other highly-productive filmmakers (Eastwood, Spielberg) are increasingly releasing films that are broad parodies of the directors’ previous body of work, Allen continues to plug away at his craft. While not every movie is a winner for Allen, at least his work shows continued signs of improvement. He’s growing and ever-changing as a filmmaker and as an audience member, this is always an exciting prospect.
3) Martha Marcy May Marlene
Martha Marcy May Marlene may not seem like a horror movie but during the entire film, I felt as if I had a 30 pound stone in my stomach. Writer/director Sean Durkin knows how to build tension and his movie, starring Elizabeth Olsen, explores the unavoidable fate that befalls a young woman who escapes from a cult. This movie is ten gallons of dread poured into a sippy cup. The contents leak out the side and, as a result, the audience is left covered in cold sweat as the movie crawls towards its final, discussion-prompting scene. It’s a great, scary film made even scarier by how camouflaged the terror is.
2) Take Shelter
Besides viral outbreaks and satanic possession, the one thing that scares me the most is the fear of loosing my sanity. Jeff Nichols’ exploration of the subject in Take Shelter is so thick and potent that the film, despite its slow pace, produces more gooseflesh per minute than just about any other film this year. Michael Shannon is marvelous in the film as Curtis, a good ol’ boy who begins to question his sense of reality when he starts having intense waking nightmares about a coming storm. Drawn to build a storm shelter — despite the financial and emotional burden it puts on his family, Curtis is forced to confront the fact he may be going insane. This is the closest thing we’ve gotten to a Rod Serling “Twilight Zone” script in a long time and, as a lifelong fan of “The Twilight Zone,” I fell in love with this movie something fierce.
