My Best/Worst 2012 Films, Oscar Rankings

Sure, it's 55 days into 2013 but why not take a trip back in time with me? Since I've finally seen all of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, and I don't think there are any more 2012 releases that I'm going to see -- if any I haven't seen are even still in theaters -- it's time for my top ten of the sixty films (up by 6 from last year) I got to see. But first...

My Bottom 5 of 2012

5. Men in Black 3 -- An extremely tired sequel.
4. This Means War -- The worst rom-com and there's no Katherine Heigl or Gerard Butler in sight.
3. Silent House -- So bad I couldn't remember what it was about until I checked Wikipedia, and then it all came back to me.
2. Les Miserables -- I think I hated "Silent House" worse but I walked out of this one. But I did stay to the end of THE worst film of 2012...
1. Rock of Ages -- I will never understand why the film version, with the female lead's character named Sherrie, didn't bother to include the song "Oh Sherrie." Never. That song might have saved this from my only F of 2012...umm, probably not...

My Top 10 of 2012

Quick Reviews: Zero Django

I have five movies to write about but the other three are 2013 releases, so I'm getting these two out of the way first. (By the way, I have a handful more 2012 releases to see, including a couple of Oscar Best Picture nominees, so I'm going to hold off on a best-of-2012 a bit.)

After watching Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a story -- not the story, as there are some details (including names) changed for various reasons -- of the USA's long but eventually successful manhunt for Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I was struck with two things that kind of bothered me a bit. And one of those things was not whether the film glorifies the torture used to obtain evidence. It clearly doesn't. It displays it quite graphically but it doesn't really take a side. The film centers around Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA officer with a dogged determination to solve the mystery of bin Laden's whereabouts, but she's such a mysterious character -- all we really know about her is she began her CIA career after high school -- that I thought it was difficult to understand her or identify with her. And while there may be artistic merit to the style of shooting the raid on bin Laden's compound, with jittery cameras work, with scenes either dark or seen through night-vision goggles, and no real "money shot" of the actual killing of bin Laden, it also blunts the emotional payoff a bit. It's a very good film but it seems a bit drained of passion. My grade: B-plus.

As for Django Unchained, it fits right into the Quentin Tarantino formula: lots of violence, lots of in-jokes, homages, music, cameos, etc. Where "Inglorious Basterds" was a revenge-on-Nazis fantasy, this one is all about revenge on slave traders and plantation owners. It's so...out there. A German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who frees, then teams up with, Django (Jamie Foxx) to collect more bounties before rescuing Django's wife, now owned by plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio -- actually a nice change of pace for him, playing a villain instead of a hero). Of course, the plantation is called...wait for it...Candyland. It's just hard to take too seriously, which is fine, but at the same time I almost feel like Tarantino should do a romantic comedy or something, just to challenge himself. My grade: B-minus.

My 2011 Best (And Worst) Pictures

I'm not watching the Oscars live. I'm recording it and plan to zoom through it, skipping over a lot of the stuff that I know won't hold my interest. If it weren't for Billy Crystal being the host I probably wouldn't watch at all. I only saw one of the Best Picture nominees, "Moneyball," and there are like 27 movies I saw that were better. At this link you'll find all the grades for the films I saw in 2011. I saw a lot fewer movies last year -- just 54 in all. A big reason for this is my schedule, with going back to work in mid-October cutting back on my free time. That, and a natural tendency for procrastination, is why this particular post is being done at the end of February.

If I should happen to see any more 2011 movies that are still in theaters, I'll update the list as needed. Until then, here are my rankings for my own personal 10 best and 5 worst movies. (Remember, if I didn't actually see it I can't include it no matter how good or bad it might be.)

My Top 10

MixBlog 2-26-11: Such A Mess

Let's see...where to begin...

Two of the last three nights I've fallen asleep in front of my TV for at least two hours, thus affecting my sleep patterns. Happened Thursday night, and somehow when I went to bed and slept, I didn't set the alarm properly and didn't even wake up until 8:30 am, which is when I have to arrive at work. Last night, and I ended up staying up really late and then stayed in bed until a little after 5.

5 pm.

I have to be up for work tomorrow morning, so I've got the choice of trying to drug myself to sleep (with cold medicine or Tylenol PM) or stay up between now and at least 6 pm tomorrow (when I get home from work). As I have no leave time to use, skipping work is not an option (and as I already was late for work Friday I don't want to do that again).

Then there's the credit card I've been using regularly.

Where The Oscar Show Went Wrong

It's simple: if you want to be young and hip, it takes more than just hiring young stars to host. I adore James Franco and Anne Hathaway, and I think they had decent chemistry at times, but they were given just awful material to work with, as were the Oscar presenters.

A lot of people on my Twitter feed seemed to think Franco was high. I think they were confusing him with his "Pineapple Express" character. And he spent plenty of time posting videos to Twitter, which I think would be a problem if one is both trying to use a smartphone and host an awards show at the same time. Maybe he was too distracted by Twitter. I just think it was the terrible jokes and banter from the writers. (If Bruce Vilanch had a hand in this, as he often has had in past Oscar shows, perhaps it's time to consider retirement.)

One of the few jokes that worked, and I don't know if it was part of the script or an ad lib, came after Hathaway's little song-and-dance number. Because, he said, "you got to wear a tuxedo," Franco came onstage in drag. He followed that with: "The weird thing is I just got a text message from Charlie Sheen."

The whole reason for Oscar's being is for Hollywood to, metaphorically speaking, fellate itself. They're all there to congratulate each other and kiss each other's ass. There's no room for out there, edgy humor unless they're directing it at themselves (or close friends/coworkers, such as Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law). That's why the Sheen joke went over well:

Quick Review (Oscar Edition): Winter's Bone

At the end of this post I'll rank the Oscar Best Picture nominees, now that I've seen them all. The one I had missed, "Winter's Bone," wasn't rereleased to theaters after its nomination, so I had to rent the DVD. (Not only is it the first time I've ever rented a DVD, although way back in the day I did rent VHS tapes, I got it for $1 from a Redbox machine. It would've cost $4.99 for On Demand rental from Comcast.)

The tension-filled "Winter's Bone" mostly held my interest well. I got up just once, to get a drink. (Being able to pause the movie just isn't possible in theaters, dammit!) 17-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence, nominated for Best Actress) is taking care of her mother, younger brother and sister in severe poverty in a rural area. She has to set off on a desperate quest to find her missing father, out on bond after an arrest on meth-making charges; he signed over their house as part of his bail, and if he doesn't show up for court they'll lose the house. The search won't be easy; meth labs are a big business in these areas and those who may know her father's whereabouts, including his own brother (John Hawkes, also a nominee as Best Supporting Actor), keep warning her to keep her mouth shut. I kept waiting for some typical dialogue and action and overacting that we usually get from big-budget Hollywood films. It never came. This is a quiet but rather powerful story. My grade: B-plus.

So, now that I've seen all ten Best Picture nominees, here is how I'd rank them, although my hunch is that "The King's Speech" will actually win the Oscar:

1. Toy Story 3
2. The Social Network
3. Black Swan
4. Inception
5. Winter's Bone
6. The Kids Are All Right
7. 127 Hours
8. True Grit
9. The King's Speech
10. The Fighter

Quick Review: The King's Speech

"The King's Speech" stars Michael Sheen as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has to...wait, what? This is a movie about British royalty and/or politics and it doesn't have Sheen as Blair? Hmmm. Okay, let's start over. "The King's Speech" stars Colin Firth as King George VI, who had to overcome a speech impediment and deliver a radio address to his people after war was declared against Germany in 1939. Of course, the film actually starts well before this, when he's just the plain old Duke of York; after failed attempts to correct his stammer he gives up, until his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) goes behind his back and seeks out Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), whose unconventional methods (such as insisting on calling each other by their first names) infuriate the Duke until he realizes that they seem to work. It probably worked better for me because it's a story I wasn't familiar with, but even so it's sort of predictable. For a drama, though, it's got a surprising amount of humor. It doesn't make my top 10 of 2010, even though it's an Oscar Best Picture nominee, but it's still fine. My grade: B-plus.

Quick Reviews (Oscar edition): The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man

This week I finally completed my mission of seeing all ten Oscar Best Picture nominees. I had to settle for watching "A Serious Man" at home on pay-per-view because it wasn't in any theaters, but I got the full movie experience (so to speak) from "The Hurt Locker."

Breaking my usual format, let me say right up front that my grade for both films is a B-minus. What was interesting was that they got to that destination from different directions. "The Hurt Locker" follows a U.S. Army bomb squad as it defuses explosive devices in Iraq in 2004, but it doesn't really tell a focused story. We see a series of incidents in which the unit is working, and an on-screen caption of how many days remain in their current tour of duty, and some off-duty activity. The sergeant who physically works on the bombs (Jeremy Renner, Oscar Best Actor nominee) gets most of the attention because of his unorthodox ways of working that the other members of his unit feel are too risky. It was tense at times, but sort of meanders along, and it ends sort of as it begins.

There is a tale to be told in "A Serious Man," a dark comedy written, directed and produced by the Coen brothers. In 1967 in suburban Minneapolis, the life of college professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is unraveling. At work, a student complains about a failing grade and leaves behind a cash bribe, and the student's father follows it up with a threat to sue if Larry doesn't take the bribe and change his son's grade. Larry's up for tenure but someone's sent anonymous letters to the school that may be a problem. At home, his wife wants a divorce so she can be with a widowed family friend, his son's about to complete his bar mitzvah but he secretly smokes pot, his daughter seems to be stealing money from his wallet...the problems keep piling up. Larry seeks answers from three different rabbis, but for varying reasons none are able or willing to provide solace. This tale was much more engrossing than "The Hurt Locker," and the use of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love" was creative, but the end was jarring, a real "WTF?" kind of ending.

So, now that I've seen all ten nominees, this would be my Best Picture ballot (the new rules ask that voters rank the nominees from 1 to 10, and a formula using those rankings is applied if one film doesn't win a majority of first-place votes) if I had one:

1. Up In The Air
2. Precious
3. Up
4. District 9
5. An Education
6. Inglourious Basterds
7. The Blind Side
8. A Serious Man
9. The Hurt Locker
10. Avatar

Quick Reviews (Oscar Edition): An Education, Precious

Of the 10 Oscar Best Picture nominees, I've now seen eight of them. Both are very good, but only one of them cracked my personal top 10 for 2009.

In "An Education," Jenny, a mature 16-year-old British schoolgirl (Carey Mulligan, deserving of her Best Actress nomination), is diligently on a path to attend Oxford when she has a chance meeting with an older man (Peter Sarsgaard). He is charmed, she is smitten, and some subtle manipulation of her parents allows them to begin seeing more of each other. She is intrigued by his life and his friends. She begins to see this man and his swanky, adult lifestyle, as preferable to the immature schoolmate who fancies her, and to her future at Oxford. How everything plays out held my interest, but how it ends was just a little too pat, keeping it from my top 10. My grade: B-plus.

As for "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," the story of Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is harrowing. Sexually abused by her father and impregnated by him twice (one baby with Down syndrome, a second baby on the way), physically and emotionally abused by her mother Mary (Mo'Nique), with whom she lives in Harlem (the story takes place in 1987), obese and illiterate, there would seem to be no hope for this girl. She's suspended from school when her second pregnancy is discovered, but the principal manages to get her into an alternative school. Precious begins to gain a support system in her new teacher (Paula Patton), a social worker (Mariah Carey -- completely de-glammed and nearly unrecognizable) and a nurse she meets at the hospital where she's given birth to her second child (Lenny Kravitz). It amazed me that by the end of the movie, although the future of Precious and her children is far from certain, it still felt uplifting. Something that amazed me even more is that, as much as Mary is an absolute monster, I felt sorry for her a little. The movie also made me angry, thinking about the kids who are in terrible situations in real life but don't get help the way Precious does. My grade: A.

Oscar Best Picture Nominees

The nominees for this year's Academy Awards were announced this week. In recent years I've tried to see all of the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars are given out, because I don't want to say a movie did or did not deserve its nomination or victory if I haven't seen it. Usually there are one or two I haven't seen. This year, with there being 10 Best Picture nominees instead of 5, the ratio holds: there are four I haven't seen yet. Of the others, only two made my own personal top 10: "Up in the Air," which got an A from me, and "Up" (A-minus). In order of grade, the others I've seen are "District 9" (B-plus), "Inglourious Basterds," "The Blind Side" (both B) and "Avatar" (C-plus). So I need to see "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Precious" and "A Serious Man."

Just guessing here, but the increase from 5 to 10 nominees definitely allowed both "District 9" and "The Blind Side" to be nominated, and possibly helped "A Serious Man," "Up," "Inglourious Basterds" and "An Education." I think the rest were slam-dunks to be nominated. I don't understand all the "Avatar" love. Visually, technically brilliant but the story is so lackluster! And the record-setting box office is inflated by the more expensive 3D and IMAX showings. The multiplex nearest me isn't even showing the 2D version any more -- that's a ripoff! Of the movies in my top 10, I really would have liked "(500) Days of Summer" to have gotten a nomination instead of "Avatar." I think it subverted the whole romantic-comedy genre so well.