Top 10 – the Best Ten Films of 2012

Hurray! An end-of-the-year list with good movies! Rejoice!*

10 The Descendants

A lovely portrait of middle-age. The rough edges and the cynicism that characterized director Alexander Payne’s earlier films are smoothed over – to a very satisfying effect. George Clooney delivers a career-high performance. Extra kudos for the gorgeous images of everyday Hawaii.

 

9 The Hunger Games

The big surprise of the year. I, for one, would never have thought that anything that seems knock-off Twilight on the surface could make this good a film. Jennifer Lawrence proves herself to be a true leading lady, one like Hollywood has not seen in years.

 

8 Moonrise Kingdom

A film that much resembles The Descendants, in that it is the softest, cuddliest film in the corpus of its director. Many people are annoyed by Wes Anderson’s blend of depressed Bill Murrays and high concept stylization, but this is a film with a warm and true heart. Excellent performance all around, especially by the kids, and the best soundtrack of the year.

 

7 Cloud Atlas

Arguably the greatest filmmaking achievement of the year. A film project that seemed most likely to be made fun off, or at least provoke some raised eyebrows. But Tykwer and the Wachowski’s adapt an apparently unadaptable book and deliver a movie with a point as well as six climaxes. That it never feels too long is a credit to the excellent editing.

 

6 The Dark Knight Rises

Especially upon repeated viewing it becomes clear that Nolan’s final Batman film is not as good as the two films preceding it. There is some shoddy editing, and the lack of substantial politics disappointed me. But one cannot deny that this is still really good stuff. A mature superhero film on an unprecedented scale.

 

5 End of Watch

An incredibly tense police film with fantastic performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena. The original cinematography – a blend of found footage and first-person shooter games – is its characterizing feature, but there is much substance to all this surface. There is no space for nuance here – the bad guys are very bad indeed – but what the hell? Who cares?

 

4 Anna Karenina

Its first half hour is the best half hour of cinema I’ve seen this year. No film can look like this and still tell a good story about interesting characters, so it is good that after that half hour Anna Karenina slows down to focus on its drama. Joe Wright’s second big achievement with this film is that Tolstoy’s outdated ethics actually do seem quite sensible.

 

3 Martha Marcy May Marlene

Already in 2011 this was the darling of the Sundance festival. We had to wait for a long time to get to see it here in The Netherlands, but boy, was it worth the wait! An outstanding debut for both director Sean Durkin and leading lady Elizabeth Olsen, who has more than twice the talent of her two older siblings combined.

 

2 The Muppets

A surprise choice perhaps. Not the choice made by any esteemed critic with proper taste. But hell, The Muppets made me happier than any other film this year. I laughed, I cried, and back at home I was still singing along with the lyrics.

 

1 Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da

Aka Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Completely overwhelming drama about modern-day Turkey and the burdens it carries from its history. The tracking shot of a half-eaten apple rolling down a hill and into a little stream is an example of filmmaking machismo by one of the art’s masters; Nuri Bilge Ceylan. But more crucial is the shot of the doctor, seeing the wife and son of the murder victim walking home. It left me breathless.

 

* Circumstance prevented me from seeing Ang Lee’s The Life of Pi before the close of the year. So it will be a 2013 contender.

Results: The Jasper’s Take Awards 2012

The least coveted awards in the film business. The ones about which Matt Damon might have said “which ones?” The ones that even Kate Winslet is not interested in. They’re here. They’re now. The Jasper’s Take Awards 2012 (not Winslet and Damon, though that’d have been very cool). So, I hear you thinking, who are the ignorant winners?

The Michael Bay Award for loudest action film

In the absence of Michael Bay himself this year, and with the knowledge that I did not go and see the reportedly deafening Battleship, this award goes to – drum raffle and big bang – The Avengers. A film so loud that my review was literally unhearable in the mayhem…

The Adam Sandler Award for least funny comedy

Adam Sandler himself churned out two hugely unlikable ‘comedies’ this year (That’s My Boy and Jack & Jill), but to let him take part in this awards race would be unfair to the other contenders. So which movie was the least funny funny-film in 2012? Don’t laugh! It was The Watch. The only good thing about this film is that it reminded me of The IT-Crowd…

The Intelligent Design Award for worst case of history rewritten

There is actually some fun to be had with the idea of moon-nazis. And there is something charming about a British bloke making up an affair he had with Marilyn Monroe. Hugo sweetened the history of early cinema a bit too much, but had a good heart. But real toe-curling history-twitching this year concerned the painful subjects of slavery and racism. The award is shared between Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (this year’s worst film in general) and the painful The Help (aka White People Solve Racism).

The Iron Man 2 Award for least inspired sequel/prequel/spin-off

Next year this award can be properly awarded to Iron Man 3 of course, but for now we’ll have to make due. What was the least-inspired, most blindly-cash-grabbing sequel, threequel, spin-off, prequel or reboot of the year? Of course! It was the entirely unwanted The Amazing Spider-Man. A film that was only made so that Sony could keep the rights to the world’s most boring super hero.

The Martin McFly Award for best use of time travelling 

Quite some time-travelling going on this year. Or going to be in the history of thirty years from now. Looper had me wondering too often ‘what? And ‘how?’ Men in Black III was simply caught up in its own inconsistencies. Total Recall went back to the eighties and stole the set of Blade Runner, so that rules it out of competition. Which made me choose between Goldfinger‘s Aston Martin turning up in Skyfall and the eventual winner: The Muppets! Yes! Now that Einsteinian physics is re-established, surely the travel-by-map option constitutes bending the rules of light and time?

The Mind Heist Award for most enthusiasticating trailer

The most difficult choice. Argo‘s use of Dream On? The mysterious moodiness of Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da? Skyfall‘s breath-take-away-er? Fiveandahalf (!) minutes of Cloud Atlas? All worthy contenders, but the award for the best trailer goes to….

The Flop 10 – the Worst Ten Films of 2012

Upon me falls the sad duty to take stock and tell you, honestly, what were the worst or most disappointing ten films of 2012. So here we go.

 

10 To Rome With Love

Some films feature on this list, not because they were objectively amongst the worst films of the year, but because they were very disappointing in comparison to a precursor. After the surprisingly ironic and thoughtful Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s return to farce and stereotype – even though not without some good jokes – is one of these disappointments.

 

9 Wrath of the Titans

Wrath of the Titans is the opposite of To Rome With Love: An equally clear and unexpected improvement on the first film of the franchise. However, when that first film is the abismal Clash of the Titans, this by no means indicates that Wrath… is any good. At least it did feature an actual titan…

 

8 Man on a Ledge

Poor Sam Worthington stars in two movies on this list. Bu unlike Wrath of the Titans, Man on a Ledge actually had the balls to pretend it was a smart and sophisticated thriller. Something that was finally disproved when Genesis Rodriguez (that’s her actual name) strips down with no apparent reason in the plot. Nice to look at, but utterly stupid. Much like the film then.

 

7 Dark Shadows

Perhaps we should give Tim Burton some credit for actually trying to adapt a crap soap opera. Perhaps. But Burton has a reputation. He has talent – as he showed later in the year with the gorgeous Frankenweenie. For a film maker of Burton’s stature there is simply no excuse for making something so boring and incoherent.

 

6 The Watch

Alien invasion films are so 2011. Vince Vaughn was never funny in the first place. Stiller must be expected to deliver more. Jonah Hill was supposed to have grown up a bit after Moneyball. And the fabulous Richard Ayoade deserves a much better Hollywood debut. Extra dislikes for ruining an apparently original set-up.

 

5 On the Road

It is good that we now know for certain that Jack Kerouac’s famous beatnik novel does not translate well to film. And is genuinely outdated. Terribly unlikable characters are a stallwart of the worst fiolms of 2012, and On the Road is no example. Especially the talented female actors in this film (Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst) are particularly badly treated.

 

4 Rock of Ages

Really. These 1980 wannabe rock songs did not need sugarcoating. Nor did they need to be performed by kids who appear to have wandered straightaway from the Disney channel. Good supporting roles by Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand cannot save this trainwreck of a musical.

 

3 John Carter

Missing all your marks, looking like a drug addicts fever dream, being utterly silly and failing massively at the box office (Disney reportedly lost some 200 million dollars on this single film) are not enough to be called the worst film of the year. But it does get Andrew Stanton’s trainwreck of a blockbuster on third spot.

 

2 Alles is Familie

Another film that is here because it utterly fails to live up to the standards of a precursor. 2007′s Alles is Liefde was a delightful romantic comedy – even better than Love Actually, from which it stole its concept. But this ‘semi-sequel’ has no likable characters, nothing ot no-one to relate to, no balance or structure, and – most importantly – no good jokes.

 

1 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

A ‘film’ that looks and sounds like a computer game. Like there are so many out there – every summer. But this one (produced by Tim Burton and directed by none less than Timur Bekmambetov) had the guts to sideline the sad history of slavery as something invented by fantasy monsters. Shocking.

What kind of year has it been?

Well, any year in which The Campaign, The Help, The Watch and American Pie: Reunion don’t even make it on the ‘Flop 10′ list can’t have been a very good year, right? Or so you’d think…

2012 has been the year of the return of the hero. There was a new Spider-man (now toatz Amazing!) The dark knight rose, Bond was back and better than the last time around and the Hulk was not the lousiest Avenger on the assembly.

2012 was also the year of films about films and filmmaking. The Artist and Hugo scored big on Oscar night, while Argo – with its bonkers-but-real plot – is one of the favourites for the next big Academy ceremony. Meanwhile, Chronicle and The Cabin in the Woods were fresh efforts in the worn out genres of the superhero film and the slasher.

It was a mixed year for Charlize Theron. Young Adult – directed by Jason Reitman and penned by Diablo Cody – won over the critics, but not the audiences. Ridley Scott’s Prometheus must have earned its budget back, but was quite a disappointment – Despite the martketingf hype. Theron’s most succesful film was Snow White and the Huntsman, which she graced with a terrific menacing turn as the evil queen.

It was a year that proved that comedy is at its best when it is merciless. Despite the broad crudeness I laughed a lot during Ted, The Inbetweeners and A Few Best Men. More ‘family friendly’ comedy, like The Watch, was simply boring. And The Campaign was simply not pushing it far enough.

In the end, 2012 was the year of ‘finally…’ After all the troubles at MGM we finally had the new Bond, and finally the first part of The Hobbit. The Cabin in the Woods had been made years ago, but only saw its release this summer. And the Finnish makers of Iron Sky, finally, got the money together to finish their film.

But what I’ll remember most, is that any year in which Ted, Jagten, Skyfall, Chronicle and The Cabin in the Woods do not make it on the ‘Top 10′ list can’t have been a bad year…

Rest of the year agenda + nominations Jasper’s Take Awards 2012

Having survived Roland Emmerich’s 2012, it is now time to do some introspection. So the rest of this week of the year will be devoted to looking back on the ‘year of film’ that 2012 was. What have we got in store for you the next few days? Well, first of all – today – I will present the nominees for the Jasper’s Take Awards 2012. As introduced last year, the  Jasper’s Take Awards celebrate all those qualities films can possess that are generally overlooked by the Academy, the Hollywood Foreign Press Agency and the British Academy. The winners of the 2012 awards will be announced one week from now, on Sunday December 30th. Of course you are more than welcome to try and influence the outcome, by posting good arguments in favor or for candidates on this website, on twitter or on facebook.

Another yearly feature in the last week of the year are my Top 10 and Flop 10 of the year: lists of the ten best and worst films we’ve been presented in the last twelve months. Please do not that these lists only contain those films that I saw in the cinema and reviewed on this website in 2012. Michael Haneke’s Amour, for instance, wont be on any list, because I have not been in the mood for any Haneke film this month. The Flop 10 will be posted online on December 29th, and the Top 10 – appropriately, on the 29th.

A new last-week-of-the-year feature will be the little essay titled ‘What kind of year has it been?’ In this little post, which will be posted on December 27th, I will look back on the year, discern some trends and surprising developments, and also discuss those films which just did not make it into either the Flop or the Top 10. Inbetween all this looking back and introspecting I will try and deliver some reviews of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi and Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina.

But now: The nominations for the  Jasper’s Take Awards of 2012:

The Michael Bay Award for loudest action film: The Avengers, Dredd 3D, Wrath of the Titans, Prometheus, The Amazing Spider-Man

The Adam Sandler Award for least funny comedy: The Campaign, American Pie: Reunion, Dark Shadows, The Watch, The Inbetweeners

The Intelligent Design Award for worst case of history rewritten: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Iron Sky, The Help, Hugo, My Week With Marilyn

The Iron Man 2 Award for least inspired sequel/prequel/spin-off: Wrath of the Titans, American Pie: Reunion, Prometheus, Men in Black III, The Amazing Spider-Man

Finally then, a positive award:

The Martin McFly Award for best use of time travelling: Looper, Total Recall, Men in Black III, The Muppets (travel by map scene), Skyfall (look, it’s the car from Goldfinger! How did that get here?)

And last year’s favourite gets to make a comeback:

The Mind Heist Award for most enthusiasticating trailer: Skyfall, Cloud Atlas, Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da, Moonrise Kingdom, Argo

For inspiration, look up last year’s winners!

The Movies of This Winter…

The Big’uns:

 Jack Reacher (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) stars Tom Cruise (oversized smurf) as a former military man who is described, in Lee Child’s novels about him, as a blonde giant of a man. Little that can go wrong there then. Wreck-it-Ralph (dir. Rich Moore) is a Disney feature about the bad guy in an arcade game, who decides that he does not want to be the bad guy anymore and sets out on a journey to other games. Very promising indeed, if only for the appearance of beloved characters from games that were played by people who were kids in the 1990s. Django Unchained will see Quentin Tarantino tastelessly screwing up (movie) history once more, now with the help of Jamie Foxx, Christopher Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. Get your act together Quentin, and go make another Jackie Brown. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters could be real fun, or it could be the next Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But it is directed by Norwegian horror prodigy Tommy Wirkola, and stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, so the odds are reasonable. Finally, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey sees Peter Jackson (and everybody else involved in the LOTR madness) revisiting Middle Earth. I expect abolutely nothing from this mind-numbingly boring property, so I won’t be disappointed in any way. On the plus side: the 48 fps images look good in the trailer, and in Martin Freeman it does star a personal favourite of mine.

 

The Award Darlings

You’d think that a book about a boy and a tiger in a little boat would be unfilmable, but Ang Lee decided to give Life of Pi a chance. In 3D. Also considered unfilmable was David Mitchell’s book Cloud Atlas, but Andy and Lana Wachowski, together with Tom Tykwer, decided to give it a try. However good the film may turn out to be, it won’t win prizes. It’s too weird probably. Much more conventional is Hyde Park on Hudson (dir. Roger Michell), about president Roosevelt (Bill Murray gunning for a career Oscar) receiving the King and Queen of England as his guests. Speaking of American presidents: Steven Spielberg’s biopic Lincoln stars Daniel Day-Lewis, so Bill Murray may have to wait for his Oscar a little longer. Another biopic that may score big is Hitchcock (dir. Sacha Gervasi), starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren. Already a favourite is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, the Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman starring The Master. Argo (dir. Ben Affleck) will be a contender, as will Les Miserables. The latest one is directed by Tom Hooper, who dug up quite some gold for The King’s Speech two years ago. And if the director is anything to go by, look out for Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. A new The Hurt Locker? We’ll have to wait and see.

Let the Skyfall!

Allright, I’m ready for it. Skyfall. The new Bond film. The 23^rd “official” appearance of Ian Fleming’s 007 on the big screen. Released exactly 50 years after the first one, Dr. No. The third film with Daniel Craig as Bond. And the seventh one with Judi Dench as his boss, M. The latter is quite important this time around, as the plot of Skyfall will see big bad guy Silva (Javier Bardem with atrocious teeth and hair) launch a full scale attack on MI6 and M personally. You will read more about the film after I see it on Wednesday, but I can say this much: my expectations are very high. The first teaser trailer blew me away:

A very ‘unBondesque’ affair indeed. The second trailer was considerably more conventional, but not less exciting:

Skyfall comes with the most lauded and praised cast and crew ever, so much is for sure. Next to Craig, Dench (10 Bafta wins and six Oscar nominations) and Bardem (Oscar win for No Country for Old Men), Ralph Fiennes (1 Bafta win and 2 Oscar nominations) will appear. Director Sam Mendes won an Oscar for American Beauty, cinematographer Roger Deakins was nominated eight (!) times, and composer Thomas Newman seven times. Indeed, never where there more golden statues at a Bond set.

Finally, Skyfall has received considerable praise accross the channel, where it opened last week. Words have even been spoken about it being ‘the best Bond ever’. Who knows. Just some quotes from leading reviewers:

 

“All you could want from a 21^st century Bond.” (Empire)

“The 007 adventure we’ve been waiting for.” (TotalFilm)

“Thie 23^rd canonical Bond picture is possibly the best.” (Philip French, The Observer)

 

And there is of course Adele, belting out that theme tune as if she were Shirley Bassey. A tune that just won’t get out of my head. Indeed, bring it on, let the Sky Fall!

The (pre)history of The Dark Knight Rises

The first reviews, from professional outlets, of The Dark Knight Rises have been coming in these last couple of days. Generally positive reviews, although everyone seems to agree that The Dark Knight was the highlight in Christopher Nolan’s Bat-trilogy. I am seeing TDKR tomorrow evening, and will report back on Saturday. In the meantime, here are a few tidbits to wetten your appetite.

Batman was of course, incredibly camp, until he was reinvented, in the 1980s, by Tim Burton on-screen and by Frank Miller in the comics. The 1960s television series was Saturday morning kids fare. But alltogether quite enjoyable:

Tim Burton was not an obvious choice to direct Batman in the late 1980s. He had made a number of small, quirky but succesfull little fantasy movies, and had no experience in action films. But Warner Bros. choice worked out well. Burton built a Gothic Gotham, Danny Elfman delivered a fantastic musical score, Michael Keaton was a reliable Batman and Jack Nicholson stole the show (and a considerable part of the film’s box office take) as The Joker.

But after Burton came Joel Schumacher. And his Batman & Robin, featuring for the first time the villain Bane (seen in the clip below), is the reason why it does not matter if The Dark Knight Rises is a three or four or five star film. Christopher Nolan delivered us from evil. A small reminder of where we came from:

Christopher Nolan, much like Tim Burton, was a left-field choice for rebooting Batman. Nolan was known for small-scale puzzle films, like Memento and Insomnia. You’d think he is way too smart to direct a Batman film, which has to make two hundred million dollar world wide just to break even. But Nolan did. it. He ditched all the bagage of the Burton and Schumacher films and started over again, with Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One as an inspiration. Batman Begins came in under the radar but surprised everyone.

I was appalled when I heard that Heath Ledger would succeed Jack Nicholson as The Joker, in Nolan’s Bat-sequel The Dark Knight. But this was after I had seen Ledger in A Knight’s Tale, and before I saw Brokeback Mountain. Ledger locked himself into a hotel room, read The Killing Joke and came out of the room as the most maniacal movie-villain of the new century. The catalyser in a plot about terror and the costs of justice and freedom, Ledger turned The Dark Knight from a really good film into an unforgettable one.

In Nolan we trust. Bane and Catwoman as villains? That many new characters? A title that does not seem terribly inspired? We do not care. We’ve learned that we can trust Nolan. And if the trailers are anything close to the real deal, then The Dark Knight Rises will be one of the movie highlights of the year.

Half year report: Film in 2012

Top 5:

1 Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

2 The Muppets (James Bobin)

3 Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

4 Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)

5 The Hunger Games (Gary Ross)

Flop 5:

5 Dark Shadows (Tim Burton)

4 On the Road (Walter Salles

3 Rock of Ages (Adam Shankman)

2 War Horse (Steven Spielberg)

1 John Carter (Andrew Stanton)

Little-known-movie-advice-Monday: Melody

“He Jasper, you know films, right? What do you think is the best film? Ever?” Wow. You know, that is not what I do. Anyone who “knows his films” would be able to tell you that. There is no way to argue that Jaws is better than Fargo, or Casablanca is superior to The Return of the King (well, that’s an argument I’m willing to get into). You can’t compare them. These films were made in different times, under different circumstances, with different means and intentions and different audiences. You can’t ask me which one is better.

And yet so many people do.

But lately someone asked me a much more sensible question. “Jasper, you know your films. Is there anything you could recommend? You know, like something I wouldn’t think of myself?”

Well yes there is! I mean, there are! So many! So, from now on Monday is ‘little-known-movie-advice-Monday’. And we start with:

Melody (Waris Hussein, 1971)

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom opened Cannes last week, and will hit cinemas all around us pretty soon. It tells the story of two young kids who run away, from home and from a boy scouts camp, to get married and live together. I will see Moonrise Kingdom on Wednesday and report as soon as feasible, but in the meantime I’d like to point your attention to a film that either Wes Anderson or his co-writer Roman Coppola (or both) must have seen.

Melody (Waris Hussein, 1971) starts out as the story of the friendship between twoLondon schoolboys from different classes. Middle class Daniel (Mark Lester, famous for being Oliver in the 1968 film adaptation of Lionel Bart’s book) and working class Ornshaw (Jack Wild) strike up a common childhood friendship and live through some small adventures together. But their friendship is tested when Daniel falls in love with Melody and the time he spends with her is time he does not spend with Ornshaw.

So far there is little that connects Melody to Moonrise Kingdom, apart from the childhood romance. But that changes when Melody and Daniel decide they want to get married. Not when they’re grown-up, but now. Of course parents and teachers try everything in their might to prevent the wedding ceremony to take place, but it is exactly Ornshaw who makes sure that Melody and Daniel can get ‘officially’ together.

Melody is a gorgeous little film, that offers a romantic, by now nostalgic image of London in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A time in which two young boys could just go about exploring the city together, without constant adult supervision or perceived danger lurking around every street corner. Moreover it has an innocent yet bittersweet tone, due to the fact that the story is told from the perspective of the children themselves. If it were made today, Melody would be made by Robert Rodriguez (in Spy Kids rather than Sin City mode) or, indeed, Wes Anderson (remember the portrayal of the kids in The Royal Tenenbaums?)

Whether intentional or not, Melody is the perfect warm-up film or companion piece to Moonrise Kingdom.

Melody is available on DVD

Moonrise Kingdom will open in Dutch cinemas May 31.