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.

Review: Anna Karenina (dir. Joe Wright)

Story: Czarist Russia in the 1850s. Anna Karenina (Keira Knightley), the wife of a high government official (Jude Law), strikes up an affair with a dashing young cavalry captain (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). However, nineteenth-century Russian society – not to mention the law – does not look kindly at such frivolities.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Joe Wright is a show-off. Staging Anna Karenina in a theater and all. To actually adapt one of the great novels of the nineteenth century and setting most of its scenes – including a horse race with living, breathing horses! – in a theater. Fortunately, Wright has admitted that this was actually a necessity: using a multitude of ‘normal’ sets and real locations would have been too expensive.

Fortunately, also, Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Hanna) uses his theatrical setting very effectively. Without it being said by any character, it is very clear to what extent society life in czarist Russia was a matter of acting, of sticking to the script, of knowing very well the important differences between on stage and behind the scenes. Wright thus sticks to that most important of film truisms: show, don’t tell. If Wright is showing off, at least he is not telling us off.

Wright’s signature is the long take. The long take in which the camera follows James McAvoy strolling down a hellish Dunkirk beach in Atonement. Or the long take in which it follows Eric Bana through a Berlin train station, being assulted by thugs, in Hanna. In Anna Karenina there are again many of such long takes. The most beautiful one follows Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson while they dance for the first time. They twist and twirl while – around them – other pairs of dancers freeze and unfreeze. This scene, much like the whole first half hour, appears to be not so much directed as choreographed. And the camera dances along. A stunning feat. And if it wasn’t so effective in sharing with the audience the excitement and emotion of falling in love, one would be forgiven for saying that Joe Wright is just showing off.

After that fabulous first half-hour – probably the best half hour of cinema of this year – the narrative and the camera necessarily slow down to show the destruction of Anna Karenina’s character in painful detail. Keira Knightley – although still scarily thin – is very good. So is Taylor-Johnson. But the real stars of this film are Jude Law as the cold but loving Karenin and Domhnall Gleeson as Levin – a young aristocrat whose romantic fortunes are directly (if unintentedly) influenced by Karenina’s.

As the story moves on, meandering its way through the life of (perhaps a few too many) Russian aristocrats, one cannot help but yearning for an twist of luck or an easy way out for the characters. But Tolstoy’s novel offers no easy escapes or happy endings. We must and shall witness the unhappiness that love brings about. Director Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard succeed admirably in rendering Tolstoy very old-fashioned morale code relevant and sensible to modern audiences.

Final verdict: Anna Karenina might not be for everyone. But then, so is the novel on which it is based. It is a stunning piece of work by a director on the top of his game and a cast devoted to the material and the director’s vision. For all the shiny surfaces it can boast about, its major achievement is making the (admittedly) dusty morale of the story completely believable.

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!

Leftovers of 2011: The Change Up, Ironclad, Gnomeo & Juliet & Hanna

It is December, so let us take stock of the cinefrigerator and see what leftovers are still there in need of some microwaved reviewing. We do, after all, need to make place for Christmas dinners, schmaltzy holiday movies on television and all the nice award-claiming stuff that will be coming our way the next couple of months.

Rotten:

The Change Up: Evil filth. Never see any film with anyone from this flick involved in it ever again!

Lukewarm:

Ironclad: Brutal. Pointless. A bit boring, but Paul Giamatti is ace as King John.

Gnomeo and Juliet: Funny small jokes about the Bard’s original text cannot make up for an excruciating subplot about a plastic flamengo.

Tasty:

Hanna: Strange mix of Bourne Identity, Kick-Ass and arthouse film. Director Joe Wright (Atonement) is showing off with the one-shot Berlin chase-and-fight scene though. A film that for some inexplicable reason did not get a Dutch cinematic release. Saoirse Ronan plays a kid raised and trained as an assassin by father-figure Eric Bana, somewhere inFinland. Once released into the real world she plays hide, seek, catch and kill with Cate Blanchett’s CIA executive in Morocco, France and Berlin.

Four Little Remarks about The Ides of March

An unusually short review of George Clooney’s new film The Ides of March here. In four points. Point one: the title. The Ides of March (March 15) was the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated by his political enemies, some of whom being his friends; one of them being his adopted son. As a title for this film, it is completely uninteresting. Because although there his some metaphorical backstabbing going on, but no real assassination. It ends in a bit of a dud.

Point two: the plot. Talented press agent for a presidential candidate (Ryan Gosling) finds out a nasty detail about his candidate (Clooney). He is approached by the campaign manager of the opponent (Paul Giamatti) and subsequently sacked by his own boss (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Of course he wiggles himself back into some position of power, by doing some backstabbing along the way. It is all shockingly boring and predictable.

Point three: the stakes. I do not care about any of these people. So there must be some bigger stake, something that all this is about. Something about Clooney’s presidential candidate that still makes you want him to be president despite his faults. And what do we get? Two little tiny moments of ecotalk. That is not good enough.

Point four: the cast. Gosling. Clooney. Giamatti. Hoffman. And then there are also: Evan Rachel Wood. Marisa Tomei and Jeffrey Wright. So much talent. Wasted on a lack of character, ideas and drama. Apart perhaps from Hoffman and Wood, who do have their moments.

If there is any real assassinating going on in this film, than it is George Clooney doing it to his own directorial career.

Point five. No. No point five. If you want to go and see a Ryan Gosling film that is out now, then go and see Drive. If you want to see a good political film directed by Clooney, go and buy Good Night and Good Luck on DVD.

Enriching the Vocabulary of Cinema: the The Adventures of Tintin review

I was not jumping up and down with excitement hen the news broke, some years ago, that Peter Jackson would produce a Steven Spielberg-directed 3D motion-capture film based on Hergé’s Tintin comic books. I’ve never been much of a Jackson fan, my opinion on 3D is probably well known to regular readers here, motion-capture still suffered from the dead-eyes syndrome and Tintin. Well, I actually did not know much nor cared a lot about Tintin. The only good thing in that press announcement was Steven Spielberg. And I thought he’d better spend his time doing something else.

The first images that were released weren’t very promising either. The shoulders and arms of the animations seemed to be all over the place. But during the last year, as teasers and trailers hit the web, The Adventures of Tintin: the Secret of the Unicorn started to peak my interest. So I set aside my problems with Jackson’s style (baggy plots, lack of character), read up on my Tintin – which gave my some unexpected pleasures – donned my 3D glasses and set down in a Sunday afternoon screening.

A cinema filled with parents stuffing their loud offspring with chocolates, crisps, popcorn and that most obnoxious of multiplex snacks: Nacho’s. It should have been hell. And although my pleasure of the film was once or twice interrupted by undisciplined small fry, it wasn’t hell. I enjoyed myself. Immensely. Because the film was really entertaining.

The first good thing about the film was that it did not give me a headache, and the 3D work was – if unnecessary – reasonably done. Which reinforces my argument that it is better suited for animation in the first place.

The second good thing about the film is the writing. Stephen Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish have tackled the problem of Hergé’s episodic, meandering narratives successfully: they combined elements from three books “The Crab with the Golden Claws”, “The Secret of the Unicorn” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure” into one thrilling adventure: Tintin comes into possession of a model ship that is sought after by others as well, as it contains clues to the location of a lost pirate treasure. Teaming up with his new friend, the alcoholic sea captain Archibald Haddock, Tintin then tries to find the treasure before villain Sakharine. Haddock’s family history appears to be a vital part of the story. Very exciting indeed.

The third good thing in the film is the casting. Motion-capture has really made some big steps forward over the last few years, giving actors now the chance to not just move about the recording stage, but give actual physical expression to the characters. Jamie Bell does a fine job as Tintin, in what is probably the least interesting character in the film (Tintin is traditionally the empty character with whom readers could easily identify). Daniel Craig has a lot of fun as Sakharine, playing fully against 007 type. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost get a little too little to do as Thomson and Thompson. But it is Andy Serkis, a veteran of the trade, who has a field day as Haddock, although his accent is maddeningly eccentric.

Last and best thing about Tintin… : Steven Spielberg. The 3D may not be that interesting, but the absolute craftsman of cinema has reinvented himself with animation. Spielberg uses mirrors, reflections and odd perspectives that would never be possible in live action cinema to switch between locales and scenes. That is the most important thing about this film; it enriches the vocabulary of narrative cinema. One film like this every year, and the art remains alive.

Hurray! Trailers!

The Raven

A Se7en-like adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe poem about a bird tapping on the window? Why not if it has John Cusack starring and it is directed by theu guy who did V for Vendetta.

Dir. James McTeigue. Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve & Brendan Gleeson.

Release date: March 9 (USA)

Hugo

Martin Scorsese making a kids’ film in 3D? Either the world has gone raving mad or this is the best idea ever. Probably something in between.

Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring: Johnny Depp, Chloe Moretz, Jude Law, Christoper Lee, Emily Mortimer, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Asa Butterfield & Michael Stuhlbarg. Wow.

Release date: February 16 (NL)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The last book that made me cry, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The adaptation of his other novel – Everything is Illuminated-  was a bit of a downer. Let’s hope for more with this one.

Dir. Stephen Daldry. Starring: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, Max von Sydow, James Gandolfini, Jeffrey Wright & Thomas Horn.

Release date: February 9 (NL)

A Smart and Compelling SF Adventure – the Source Code review

Imagine. You’re an American helicopter pilot, flying missions in Afghanistan. You black out. You wake up in a train, opposite a gorgeous woman who calls you Sean. Not your name. You are confused. You are Captain Colter Stevens. But when you look in the mirror of the train bathroom, you see a different face than yours. You panic, but before you can figure out what has happened the train explodes and you die in a ball of fire. And then these same 8 minutes happen again and again.

Source Code is the incredibly smart, incredibly effective new thriller by Duncan Jones, who had his breakthrough two years ago with the cheap-but-not-cheap-looking science-fiction film Moon. That film as a huge success and brought the British director on the agendas of the big American studios.

And although no big studios are directly involved in Source Code, the budget is obviously higher, and so are the stakes. Source Code tries to be this year’s Inception (perhaps fighting over that title with the upcoming JJ Abrams film Super 8). And it succeeds. It does not have the same big blockbuster profile, but it does have the smarts, the action, the pace and the emotional pay-off.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, the army pilot charged with travelling back to the last 8 minutes of teacher Sean Elstree’s life, in order to find out who bombed the train Elstree was on. For the same bomber has announced an even bigger attack, and must be stopped as soon as possible. Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga are the army scientists with the hapless task to structure the plot and explain to Gyllenhaal with strange techno-babble why this time-travelling is possible in the first place. Yet they pull it off. As a science-fiction film, Source Code is a sort of Being John Malkovich meets Back to the Future film. A puzzling combination that nonetheless works.

Gyllenhaal meanwhile is likable, gruff and efficient. He needed this film, this chance, after the awfulness of last year’s Prince of Persia, and he does not spoil the possibility to get his career back on track (excuse the pun). Sparring with him is the gorgeous and wonderful Michelle Monaghan (whom I mostly remember from Mission: Impossible 3). Though she only gets to live the same 8 minutes over and over again Monaghan manages to actually develop her character Christina throughout the film. It is utterly believable that Colter Stevens will give up his mission or even go rogue in order to save her – even if his superiors tell him that the Source Code program is merely a recording of the past, that cannot be altered beyond the eight minutes it is long.

It is true. There were moments in Source Code where I felt I was being tricked. That there was a gap in the plot, or an illogical inconsistency undermining the believability of the film. But to the credits of Duncan Jones and his collaborators I must also admit that these moments did not really bother me until I was out of the theatre, thinking back on the film. Even more to their credit, I still can’t really tell you what was wrong. The film is too well made and too fast and fascinating to allow you these doubts. It races forward, like Tony Scott’s Unstoppable with an actual plot, and feels shorter than it actually is.

Source Code is so far the best big film of the summer. And how cool is it that they have trains inAmericawith two floors!

Low budget, good idea?

Low budget films can be good films if they are based on good ideas. But not all good ideas make good low-budget films. So much for logic. 

This sprang in my mind when I read two little bits of film news yesterday. The first concerns the film Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010): A serial killer film with as its protagonist a homicidal car tire with psycho-kinetic powers. Eehm… What?

This sounds like a really bad idea, and the trailer does not help much to change that opinion. It is self-reflexive in an eerie way, with two (2!) film buff characters. Yet there is also something fresh and tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing that might make the film acceptable video-fodder for late night film marathons.

Much less appealing is Juan of the Dead (Alejandro Brugues). A Spanish-Cuban horror-comedy about sea-spawn zombies trying to take over the little island of Cuba, while the Cuban government believes it to be a trick from American instigators. The title Juan of the Dead is a direct rip-off from Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004), which in turn was a parody of George A. Romero’s classic zombie movies. So like Scary Movie, which was a parody of already-a-parody Scream, Juan of the Dead is not going to be very appealing.

Tiresome, Annoying, Infantile… – The Scott Pilgrim vs. the World review

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is supposed to be a film for which I am the target audience. Twenty-something, geeky, film-literate male. But boy, did this film misfire on me. And I am not the only one. The film has a very present fan base online, but failed to be a box office success. Wonder why? Well: Scott Pilgrim… is for a start annoyingly loud and flashy. It inserts computer game graphics and sound effects into the cinema experience and this is not a good thing. It is more than any other thing incredibly tiresome. And it is part of the general childishness of the film.

Scott Pilgrim…’s protagonist, Scott Pilgrim, is a twenty-something no-good unemployed bass player in the garage rock band Sex Bob-omb. And, to speak with a cliché, poor Scott. He is not the best bass player in the world, hell, he is not even the best bass player in Sex Bob-omb. He dates ADHD Chinese high school girl ‘Knives’ Chao, but falls in love with pink-haired (oooh, mysterious…) Ramona Flowers. Scott ditches Chao, but then figures out he has to fight and beat Ramona’s seven evil exes if he wants to be with her. 1990s Nintendo style.

Scott Pilgrim is played by Michael Cera, and it should now be clear: Michael Cera is not funny. He is not even likable. He was in a supporting role Juno, but that appears to have been an exception. Cera sucked in Superbad and he sucks as Scott Pilgrim. His repertoire consists of three interchangeable shades of grey expressionless faces. It suffices that director Edgar Wright has to paste computer graphics over Cera’s face in order to communicate to the audience that Scott ‘gets it’. Unless that was intended as a joke. I did not think it was funny.

And there is more that is not funny about Scott Pilgrim versus The World. For instance, it is not funny to start your film with ‘A long time ago, in a country far far away’ if the movie is set in 1990s Toronto. That is silly, and not in the good-old Monty Python-esque way. It is also not funny to have Scott think that the L-word refers to ‘lesbian’. And then, when it is made clear that he is wrong, to ‘lesbianS’. And then to have him make that same mistake again at the end of the film when he should have grown up (or at least that is suggested). As it is not funny to have one of the evil exes, the goth lesbian (why does she have to be a goth?) say “Your BF is about to get F’d in the B.” That is just infantile.

The computer game references are probably funny to those who know the video games, or care about them. Well, I know the games, but I couldn’t care less. Winning a life, so that you have a  second chance to do things right is… Well, it is not as bad as the ‘cheating’ in Prince of Persia, but it comes close.

Edgar Wright made funny films with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so let’s not bash him. But he does need to get his act together and make something better and more appealing next time. Without Michael Cera.

Scott Pilgrim… is a self-referencing comic-book adaptation about video games. And that is just too much geeky-ness in one room. Tiresome.