Brian's Best and Worst of 2012

This is not an end-of-the-year list.  I forfeited that right when I didn't make this at the end of 2012.  I never get the chance to see all the biggest movies of the year in time for the end of the year anyway, so I am continuing my annual tradition of posting my own "best of" just before the Oscars.  That is not because the Oscars (don't call them Academy Awards this year!) are the end-all, be-all of movie awards.  They're just the biggest, and nothing good ever comes out in January or February, so it's okay to still focus on the previous year's releases.

I'm not a Top Ten sorta guy, though.  These are just my personal and highly subjective choices for the best and worst of the year.

What was considered for this list? Obviously, the movies of 2012 that I have already reviewed up to this point.  I do cram in a lot of movies right before the Oscars, too, and am suffering a backlog of recent reviews.  Here's what I watched before coming out with this list:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Alex Cross.  The Amazing Spider-Man.  Amour.  Argo.  ATM.  The Avengers.  Battleship.  Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The Bourne Legacy.  Brave.  The Cabin in the Woods.  Coriolanus.  The Dark Knight Rises.  The Devil Inside.  Django Unchained.  Dredd.  Drew Peterson: Untouchable.  The Expendables 2.  FDR: American Badass.  Flight.  The FP.  Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.  Goon.  The Grey.  Haywire.  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  The Hunger Games.  Iron Sky.  John Carter.  Lawless.  Les Miserables.  Life of Pi.  Lincoln.  Lockout.  Looper.  Moonrise Kingdom.  Nazis at the Center of the Earth.  Prometheus.  The Raven.  Red Tails.  Resident Evil: Retribution.  Seven Psychopaths.  Silent House.  Silver Linings Playbook.  Skyfall.  Total Recall (2012).  Underworld: Awakening.  V/H/S.  The Woman in Black.  Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Bit Character
While Michael Fassbender's charming/bad-ass turn in Haywire shouldn't be ignored --- he would make a good 007 if we were in the market for a new one --- nothing amused me as much as Jason Schwartzman in Moonrise Kingdom.  A lot of actors (okay, maybe not Bill Murray) merely play "dry" when working with Wes Anderson, but Schwartzman embraces the dry humor with just enough excitement to make him stand out, even in the most star-studded cast.

This needs to be a mass-produced Halloween costume

Worst Supporting Actress
There were some pretty good possibilities in this category in 2012.  Catherine Dent was noticeably bad in the noticeably bad Drew Peterson: Untouchable.  Perhaps one of the lovely ladies from Battleship?  No, I'm going to have to go with Bingbing Li in Resident Evil: Retribution.  She was so bad that all of her dialogue was redubbed.  In a Resident Evil movie, a franchise famous for not giving a crap about acting or coherence.  Ouch.

But hey, she can do...this.  That's something.

Best Supporting Actress
Look, I know that Anne Hathaway is going to win everything for Les Miserables.  And maybe she should; she was good in a I'm-singing-at-the-camera sort of way.  That's not my style, though.  That's why my favorite this year was Judi Dench in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  It's been a while since I've seen Dench play anything but a cold-hearted bureaucrat, and it was a pleasure to watch her in a warm, relatable role.  Definitely the best part of a quality ensemble cast.

Promo for M: Lost in Delhi

Worst Supporting Actor
This was a tough one.  I seriously hated a lot of supporting actors this year.  50% of the enormous cast from V/H/S were annoying douchebags.  The Ionut Grama was annoying in the truly awful The Devil Inside.  And how about Frank Grillo as the jackass who bitches about everything and fixes nothing in The Grey?  All are compelling choices, but I have to go with someone who has been irritating me for most of the year: Rafe Spall as the world's stupidest biologist in Prometheus.

You see a creepy alien and you smile and get close?  Death is too good for you, sir.

Best Supporting Actor
There were a lot of supporting actor roles that I loved from the past year: Javier Bardem in Skyfall, Sam Rockwell in Seven Psychopaths, Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, CGI Hulk from The Avengers, Michael Fassbender in Prometheus, etc.  The runner-up is definitely Fran Kranz as the best stoner in movie history in Cabin in the Woods.  As good as all those guys were this year, I can't overlook just how much I enjoyed Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained.  Is the role similar to his character from Inglorious Basterds?  To an extent, although I would argue switching the good/bad dynamic makes it different enough.  I just can't get over Waltz speaking Tarantino's dialogue, though --- they're so damn good together!

You're welcome.  Next round's on you.

Worst Actress
I'm going to go with the tough-as-nails Gina Coreno in Haywire for this one.  What makes her worse than any of the lead actresses wearing tight leather and shooting stuff this year?  Coreno had some amazing fight scenes in Haywire, but the movie didn't work because she gave an awful performance, even with the benefit of a good director.  If she was even halfway competent, she would have been on my shortlist for Best Actress.  THAT's how bad she is.

Example: I'm pretty sure this scene was supposed to be all dialogue

Best Actress
This one was easy.  Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games Silver Linings Playbook.  She carried that movie, and she wasn't even the main character.  She was funny, had levels and development, and showed some heart?  Come on!  What's not to love?  Besides, what are the other choices this year?  Jessica Chastain?  Ugh.  Pass.  This is the second time I've given this completely nonexistent and useless award to Lawrence, and it's getting to the point where I might actually watch movies because I have faith in the starring actress.  That's a big deal.

I like the scenes where Bradley Cooper is blurred best

Worst Actor
For as many bad movies as I watched this year, there were not many lead acting roles that I absolutely hated.  Sure, Rob Lowe was hilariously bad in his SNL-sketch-gone-horribly-wrong portrayal of a Chicagoan in Drew Peterson: Untouchable, but at least Lowe outperformed the material.  Taylor Kitsch --- who isn't really a bad actor --- played a role that emphasized all of his shortcomings in Battleship.  When your character is frequently described as being smart or talented, you should probably not come off as a complete moron, even when defeating board game-obsessed aliens.

That had better be your agent on the phone

Best Actor
This was a rough year for outstanding lead actor roles.  Of the nine Best Picture Oscar nods, only three of the films had Best Actor nominations!  I think 2012 was far stronger in the Supporting Actor category than the Lead Actor one.  Yes, Denzel Washington was terrific in Flight.  But the character and actor I would choose to watch or listen to again would be Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln.  I've always liked Lincoln as a historical figure, but Day-Lewis was perfectly cunning and warm; he commanded the screen with a soft voice, stooped posture, and anecdotes where other actors would have gone in a completely different direction.  Making America's (arguably) most legendary President into a human again was rather impressive.

The President apparently disagrees.  Or smells a fart.

Best Director
This is less about who was the best and more about what directors I liked that didn't have huge flaws in their finished products. I love Quentin Tarantino, but Django Unchained needed a damn editor. Cabin in the Woods was great, but Drew Goddard managed to make a great horror movie that was missing scares.  Competence narrows down the field considerably.  While Ben Affleck did a great job with the humor and pacing of Argo, I'm going to go with Sam Mendes and Skyfall.  He made a James Bond movie that was actually a legitimate film!  I don't like it because I'm comparing it to Bond movies --- I like it because it's awesome!  This is the first time anyone has tried to make a James Bond flick with character development, good cinematography and very good acting, and he was still able to film some great action sequences.  Mendes' work is sorely underrated on Skyfall.  Any decent director can make a prestige picture look good; making a series known for corny action and one-liners into an actually good movie in far more difficult.

Worst Director
There are movies that never had a chance of being good, and then there are the blockbusters that failed, in large part due to their direction.  Peter Berg took a stupid concept and did a terrible job with it, and Battleship was the nauseating result.  Timur Bekmambetov did a decent job with his cast, but pieced together a soulless abomination that sucked harder than any Twilight movie: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  The absolute worst direction this year, though, had to be Rob Cohen's work in Alex Cross.  He made a police procedural that was less competent than a third-rate CSI knockoff AND the acting wasn't great AND the editing was occasionally incoherent.  Stick to Vin Diesel movies, Mr. Cohen.

Biggest Disappointment
There were a lot of choices this year, primarily with sequels and reboots, but the one that stuck to me was Prometheus.  It's not bad, but it is intentionally obtuse and refuses to deliver on anything that its shared universe with the Aliens franchise has to offer.  Again, it isn't awful, but I was expecting a hell of a lot more.

These guys?  Seriously --- fuck these guys.

Biggest Surprise 
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was me not noticing Joseph Gordon-Levitt's makeup while I was watching Looper, but as far as feature films go, Dredd is the winner.  It should have been bad.  It's a remake of a crappy movie, and it has a lead actor who specializes in not emoting.  And yet, Dredd managed to get its core concept just right.  I was hoping for a movie so-good-it's-bad, but ended up genuinely enjoying it.

...because this is totally sweet

Bottom 5 Movies
5. Iron Sky - How do you screw up a movie about Nazis living on the dark side of the Moon?  By assuming that the concept was funny enough to last for an entire movie.  This one had promise, but then dropped the ball when it tried to be clever, funny, or serious.  So, yeah, it sucks.

Above: my reaction

4. Battleship - I still have trouble understanding how this made it past the conceptual stage.  A board game about stealth transformed into an alien invasion action movie?  The guy who came up with that concept must have balls the size of Death Stars.  Battleship must have run an "obnoxious actors wanted" ad in Variety, too, because the supporting cast is about two peanuts shy of being 100% crap.

John Carter vs. Master Chief?

3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - I like the source material and the director, and yet this turned out to be an unholy mess.  I am okay with the chocie to not play this concept for laughs.  I am not okay with it feeling like it was 2/3 exposition, 1/3 Abraham Lincoln running on top of a herd of stampeding animals.  Be funny or be darkly awesome.  Anything else is failure.

Get it?  The bad guy's using the horse as a pommel --- you know what?  Screw this movie.

2. The Devil Inside - Possession horror movies are oftentimes terrible.  With the advent of the found-footage horror sub-genre, possession movies have gotten a little worse.  The Devil Inside has a lame concept, irrational characters, and poor direction; none of those earmark it for being hate-worthy.  What separates it from the pack is its ending.  This is the worst film ending I have seen since the director's cut of The Butterfly Effect.  I only wish The Devil Inside strangled Ashton Kutcher, too.

This for ninety minutes would have made for a better film

1. ATM - This is the single dumbest concept for a film I have seen in a long time --- and I watched FDR: American Badass and Nazis From the Center of the Earth this year.  There are no redeeming qualities with this film, and then it gave me a nosebleed by inferring that the villain --- who had the most unbelievably idiotic victims I have ever seen on film --- was some sort of criminal mastermind.  Crap...I'm bleeding out my eyes now, just thinking about it.

They're looking at the world's largest bottle of scotch, AKA what you need to get through this movie

Top 10 Movies:
10. Lincoln - I absolutely love Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones in this film.  My biggest concern was how it would handle the whole "vampire hunter" angle, but I think Spielberg addressed the issue subtly.

9. Seven Psychopaths - Not a perfect movie by any means, but I adore the dialogue and I thought the supporting cast was stellar.  There are not many scripts that give Sam Rockwell license to be as crazy as he can be, but he was so odd that Christopher Walken looked...well, not normal, but sane by comparison.

8. Looper - I was concerned when this movie was being advertised.  Not only did it have a weird time travel concept at its core, but it contended that the Future Mob had sole control over time travel.  Add that to the incomprehensible choice to cover Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face in silly putty to look absolutely nothing like a young Bruce Willis, and this looked like a movie destined for the "mock" pile.  Looper surprised me, though.  It made some interesting and tough choices with its characters and delivered a movie intriguing enough for me to stop focusing on JGL's makeup.

Clever fan poster found on the Looper tumblr

7. Beasts of the Southern Wild - When you take semi-Artsy direction and some of the rawest acting talent around, you run a chance of creating something truly special.  This was easily the Academy Award-nominated film that I connected to best on an emotional level, and I am so disassociated with these characters that I cannot believe I live in the same country where it was shot.  And the editing and post-production work needed to make 6 year-old Quvenzhané Wallis this great was beyond impressive.

6. Argo - It is difficult to make a movie about a historical event suspenseful.  It's almost as hard to pace it well.  Ben Affleck managed to do both, and he still balanced it with humor.

This guy says he was in Argo.  I don't recall, but it's an awesome pic

5. The Dark Knight Rises - A fitting end to Christopher Nolan's trilogy, this was everything needed to thematically bring Batman's story to a close.  Bane was not quite as classic as Heath Ledger's Joker, but Tom Hardy was good enough to make me forget about the Joker while I was watching --- and that is damn impressive.  If this had more Batman and less Bruce Wayne, it might have been perfect.  It will tide me over until the next reboot (I'm calling 2017 right now).

4. The Cabin in the Woods - This was such a fantastic homage to the horror genre that I can overlook the fact that it is not scary in the least bit.  A smart script that goes in directions that you would not guess from the promos and a great script make this a personal favorite.

This movie also finally gives stoners their own action hero

3. The Avengers - I'm a huge fan of the Marvel super hero movies, so the one where all the heroes team up and are directed by Joss Whedon, with a script he co-wrote?  Yeah, this was a no-brainer.  What makes it special, though, are the unexpectedly great moments, like when Hulk smashes Loki.  More of this, please.

Do you have this poster?  It was free w/purchase of the Blu-Ray.  FYI.

2. Skyfall - This is easily the best James Bond movie since Connery got bored with the role.  It has the best direction and cinematography of any Bond movie, and the best villain in decades.  This is the James Bond movie to show to people who (somehow) don't like James Bond.

Fan art poster taken from here

1. Django Unchained- Yes, it could have been better with thirty minutes less run-time, but Django scratched so many itches that this year's film crop failed to.  It was gory as hell, it had Tarantino's famously foul humor, and universally good acting.  There were a few movies about slavery in 2012, but this was the film that was fun to watch and I will come back to time and time again.  Bless your enormous chin (which houses your ego), Quentin Tarantino!

Sorry.  This was better than any Django posters I could find

The Help

*** Included in Brian's Best and Worst of 2011 ***

Right before the Oscars, I saw all nine nominations for Best Picture in the theater.  In the span of two days.  Feeling exhausted after sitting the the dark all day is definitely a first world complaint, but it got a bit difficult at times, and ever since, I've had trouble sitting down and gathering my thoughts about those movies.  The nice thing about watching all nine films was that I watched movies that I would have otherwise avoided.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was definitely not on my list of movies to watch, nor was The Help.  But I did see them, even if tearjerkers are not my favorite genre, and each film taught me a valuable lesson.

The lesson: white women are evil

In the early 1960s, Skeeter (Emma Stone) is finally home after four years earning her degree at the University of Mississippi.  Skeeter is different from all the other girls she grew up with; aside from settling for "Skeeter" as a nickname, she also went to school to prepare herself for a job, not to hunt for a husband.  When she came home, she was expecting to be congratulated by the woman who raised her.  No, not her mother (Allison Janney), silly --- Constantine (Cicely Tyson), Skeeter's family's black maid. 

Above: Young Skeeter.  Not Pictured: Constantine's striped socks

Mom tells Skeeter that Constantine quit and moved to Chicago to live with her family, but doing something that would be plausible in any other story sounds suspicious to Skeeter --- at the very least, Constantine would have written her a letter, right?  Even setting aside that unsettling development, post-graduate life isn't exactly what Skeeter had in mind.  Her friends and family expect her to get married and have kids immediately, but she wants a career.  And the only job she could find in her field (writing) is as an advice columnist specializing in cleaning around the house.  Too bad she doesn't know the first thing about housecleaning.  If only Constantine was around, she would certainly help Skeeter by essentially doing her work for her!

"Maybe you can write about having Mommy dress you as an adult?"

But wait just a minute...there are other black maids in Skeeter's town --- perhaps one or more of them could give her helpful advice for her column?  Enter Aibileen (Viola Davis), maid to one of Skeeter's friends.  Aibileen agrees (after being allowed by her employers, of course) to advise Skeeter.  Spending time with Aibileen makes Skeeter more aware of her town's casual racism, and this gives her an idea --- Aibileen should tell her side of things, so people could learn about life from the perspective of "the help."  This had never been done before, so it was novel enough to get Skeeter's foot in the door at a book publishing house --- now, all she needed was a variety of hard-hitting and dramatic stories from dozens of "helpers."  That should be easy enough.  After all, it's not like this story takes place right around 1962 Mississippi, where any African American adult could lose their livelihood or their life just for standing up for their legal rights, right?  Oh, wait...crap.  Writing a book about the dirt behind the closed doors of her hometown might not be the safest idea anyone ever had for a book.

Great.  Now they need a lookout to go shopping.  Thanks, Skeeter.

In any conversation about The Help, the first thing that should pop up is the performances.  Viola Davis was excellent as the film's main character, even if it isn't necessarily the lead character.  Davis carries this film's emotional content, whether it be grief, heartbreak, a feeling of injustice, or pride.  Octavia Spencer is also very, very good as the sassiest maid in town.  I realize that the sassy black woman is not a rarity in film, but it's still a pleasure to see the role done right.  Emma Stone's Skeeter acts as the audience's point of view character, and I thought Stone did a fine job with what she had to work with.  I have my reservations about her character, but I'll touch on that in a bit.  Bryce Dallas Howard was suitably evil as the biggest racist and snob among Skeeter's friends; this wasn't a deep role, but Howard made sure that the character had absolutely no redeeming qualities.  Jessica Chastain was significantly better, balancing a ditzy character's foibles with some solid dramatic points.  I'm a little curious as to how her character's appearance was explained to her, but I guess it underlined her as a social outsider.

"Love that Joker!"

The rest of the cast falls in somewhere between bit parts and extremely brief supporting roles.  It was nice to see Sissy Spacek having fun with  her role; her reactions definitely improved a few scenes.  Allison Janney was solid, but I would have liked to see her do more.  For theoretically being such a pivotal character for Skeeter, Cicely Tyson didn't have much screen time, although she was still pretty good when she was given the chance.  Other actors, like Ahna O'Reilly, Chris Lowell, Aunjanue Ellis, and Mike Vogel showed up and did whatever the script required of them, although some of their characters seemed to make choices that were awfully convenient to the plot.

That convenience is part of what frustrates me about The Help.  While the film goes out of its way to bring up some very serious issues --- racism, domestic abuse, civil rights, etc. --- most of those issues are glossed over.  When the other maids come forward and contribute to Skeeter's book, some of them have very sad tales, but they are only minor characters in this story, and their sole purpose is to say something tragic and then fade out of the story.  The otherwise indomitable Minny is afraid of her husband's rage, and we see her cowering from his blows, but that entire subplot is resolved off-camera.  Other moments, like Chris Lowell's abrupt departure from the film, come out of left field, indicating that their characters are merely props for the main characters to interact with.

Above: three main characters, two props, and a bridge table

I hesitate to blame director Tate Taylor for these deficiencies, though.  This is a film with an enormous cast, most of whom are limited to a few lines and a single costume.  Taylor did a great job with his primary cast, given their roles.  He was able to tell the story simply, without getting sidetracked in unnecessary subplots, and he made sure to hit every possible emotional moment on the head.  The Help is going to try to make you cry, and it will probably succeed.  At the very least, it should disgust you with its (presumably) accurate depiction of racism in the American South in the sadly not distant past.  The camera work is nothing special, but the voice-over and editing are handled nicely.  Given the source of the story, Taylor handled this film about as well as anyone I can imagine, given the limitations of the story.

Don't be confused, though.  The Help is not a very deep or thought-provoking film.  It goes for an emotional response and gets it, but the message probably won't stick with you for long.  Part of this is due to the simplicity of the characters.  This is a film with good people (not racist or sexist) and bad people (racist bullies), with very little grey area; yes, there are two characters who fire their maids because a bossy racist pressures them to, but they're more cowards than racists or evil.  There are working stiffs (the maids and Skeeter) and there are privileged housewives (every other female character).  There are cowards and there are brave folk.

"Bless you, Skeeter, for using my talent to find you a job."

Even the simplicity doesn't explain quite why I felt manipulated by The Help.  This should be an empowering film because the protagonists improved their lot in life and fought a grave injustice.  Instead, I was kind of annoyed by Skeeter.  I know I am supposed to root for her because she's spunky, educated, and wants to fight racism, but she kind of sucks.  First of all, the film depicts her situation as being risk-free; I realize that racists could harm her, but she is never implied to be in danger.  Aibileen and Missy are clearly afraid, but Skeeter never appears worse than socially awkward.  Second, Skeeter shouldn't even be the main character.  The most interesting character in the film is Aibileen --- she is brave, smart, and Skeeter is essentially just transcribing her story --- but we have to sit through Skeeter's tale?  I would much rather have the film focus on Aibileen than deal with the Skeeter's epic romance that boils down to a guy saying "You're different from the other girls."  Maybe Skeeter would have been more palatable as the main character if the fate of Constantine --- which is treated like a mystery throughout the film --- wasn't incredibly obvious from the start and the resolution seemed to be delayed only by the main character making a conscious choice not to pursue the matter until the end of the film. 

The Help left me surprisingly cold.  It has a happy ending, where everyone you care about is moving onward and upward, and yet it just feels like Skeeter used some poor black women to help her get the hell out of podunk Mississippi, while Aibileen apparently plans to put "a white woman anonymously included my stories in an anthology" on her next job application.  This movie simplifies complex matters, almost to an insulting degree.  While I certainly don't advocate racism, I'm pretty sure that it comes in varying degrees; Bryce Dallas Howard was so unsympathetic that she could have passed for a Bond villain.  Thank goodness the racists weren't complex characters, otherwise the audience might have to think about an unsettling issue instead of just being relieved that things aren't as obviously racist today.

...although there is still a risk of tampered food.  Tip your waiters!

The Help is worth seeing for the acting alone.  It's an emotional film, but it is an uplifting one as well, provided you don't put a whole lot of hard thought into it.  Large chunks are predictable, but every so often something or somebody will surprise you. Is this a movie that I liked?  Not especially, but there were enough strong performances to make this worthwhile, at least once.

The Artist

***included in Brian's Best and Worst of 2011***

Back in September, I stumbled across OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies.  I had seen the DVD cover art before and curiosity finally got the better of me, so I watched it with little to no foreknowledge.  I was treated to a likable and extremely clever (but not as funny) French spoof of 1960s spy movies.  The cleverness of the story made me extremely curious to see more of the director, Michel Hazanavicius, and the star, Jean Dujardin.  As luck would have it, the most acclaimed film of 2011 happened to be The Artist, which paired the star and director once more.

...and the director's wife, who was also in OSS 117.  Nepotism leads to Oscar nominations.

In 1927, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a huge silent film star.  Everything he touches seems to turn to gold, and his skills seem to apply equally to romances, action/adventure flicks, and comedies.

George Valentin: Eastern Orthodox Hollywood icon

One day, while posing for pictures outside his most recent film premiere, George is accidentally bumped by a young lady in the crowd, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo).  Being a suave celebrity, George opts not to punch her in the face, and instead laughs it off and poses for pictures with Peppy, to the delight of all.  Seriously, look at that crowd, they're acting like they're at a bachelorette party.

My personal favorite is the woman by his elbow

Peppy happens to be an aspiring actress that idolizes George.  She manages to get a role as an extra on one of George's movies, and the two show a lot of chemistry and sexual attraction. In fact, the two almost act upon that attraction, but the moment passed and so they went on with their lives.  Young Peppy started to work her way up in the movie business, while George took a slightly different approach.  When the head of the movie studio (John Goodman) shows George a prototype of a film with a vocal track, George scoffs at it, declaring it a toy.  From that point forward, George is fighting a losing battle against the idea of sound in film while Peppy --- being an up-and-comer --- wisely rides the "talkies" to fame and fortune.

I suppose there's a bit more to the story than the rise of one performer and the fall of another, but that's the plot in a nutshell.  If it sounds familiar to you, that's because it should; this basic premise has been used many times over.  What separates The Artist from, say, All About Eve is the choice to make this movie about a silent film actor into a silent film.  To be fair, it's not entirely silent; there are a handful of words spoken and some interesting sequences where sound was selectively added, but the movie on the whole plays like a classic silent movie (just with superior film stock).

The silent movie schtick may seem like a gimmick at first, but it loses that feel after watching Jean Dujardin on camera for a little while.  I don't know if he will ever be able to transform into a Hollywood star (his accent is pretty thick --- not a deal-breaker, but still...), but Dujardin was wonderful in The Artist.  I can't pinpoint exactly why I liked him so much without making it sound like a backhanded compliment, though.  Dujardin is able to act like the stereotype of a mediocre actor; he has expressive eyebrows and a giant smile, which he utilizes in most of his "on-camera" scenes in this film.  He also conveys some very realistic emotions quite subtly in other moments.  It was a well thought out performance that was executed nearly perfectly.

Bonus points for not being stereotypically movie drunk

Bérénice Bejo was likable as the blossoming star, Peppy, but her character wasn't all that deep.  She wanted to be a star, she achieved that goal, and she wanted to help her friend.  We don't actually have to care about her character very much at all --- we just have to understand what she represents to George Valentin.  I think that was a missed opportunity.  Still, she did have her moments; I really liked the playful scene where she pretended to be romanced by Valentin's coat.

How ugly do you have to be to require this much work?

John Goodman was, as always, a welcome addition to the cast.  His character was pretty simple, but Goodman has made a career out of making simple characters entertaining to watch.  I think James Cromwell was under-appreciated for his turn as the loyal manservant to Valentin; Cromwell often is cast as a harsh authority figure, and it was nice to see him playing such a sweet character.  I was a little surprised by how many recognizable Hollywood actors played small roles in The Artist.  Penelope Ann Miller essentially just defaced George Valentin memorabilia whenever she was on camera, Missi Pyle was suitably obnoxious as a famous actress, Malcolm McDowell just sat in a scene, Ed Lauter showed up just long enough for his face to ring a bell, and Ken Davitian managed to not be involved in a penis-related gag for a change.  Perhaps the biggest scene-stealer in the film was Uggie, the dog.  The sequences with Uggie were certainly cute, and the animal is clearly very well-trained.  That said, it's a dog; get over it, America.

***whimper***

Dujardin's excellent acting certainly goes a long way toward making the whole silent-film-thing less of a gimmick and more of an interesting choice, but it is the direction of Michel Hazanavicius that truly makes The Artist and interesting film to watch.  There are very few directors currently working who are willing to make interesting choices while making a film.  Those choices don't necessarily have to work (Malick, I'm looking at you), but their films are usually made far more enjoyable when they do.  Hazanavicius took a high concept and managed to add a solid story and some excellent acting to it.  While I like the choice he made, I still think the story is a bit weak and uses the silence to help mask that problem.  On the other hand, Hazanavicius also used the silence to convey some not especially subtle, but still easily overlooked character moments.  I really liked that Penelope Ann Miller was wearing a different piece of jewelry in each of her scenes; the audience knows she's unhappy because she keeps marking up every picture of George she can find, but I thought that was a nice additional touch.  What I truly appreciated in the film was Hazanavicius' frame composition.  It pops up periodically throughout the movie, but the symbolism on the movie studio staircase after Valentin was fired was gorgeous.  The Artist is a movie that understands film style and uses it to convey ideas with images, instead of through exposition, and that was a bit of a treat for me.

The Artist is a very clever film that deserves accolades for daring to do things differently.  Are you going to like it?  Well...that's a tough call.  On the plus side, it is a huge change of pace from anything else that came out last year.  It is also well-acted and well-directed, so if you like examining cinematography or acting subtleties, this should be a good time for you.  On the other hand, it is still a silent movie, and that might make the film drag at times for the less snobby film fan.  It's certainly a cute movie, but it doesn't have a whole lot of depth; the best trait The Artist has is just how clever it is, but that might not be a strong enough selling point for everyone.

Brian's Best and Worst of 2011

It is, once again, almost time for the Oscars!  While I am not the biggest fan of the Academy Awards, I do like having some sort of quality barometer in Hollywood, even one that is skewed, political, and often rewards career achievements instead of current ones.  Since so many high-profile films come out at the end of the year, looking to cash in on Christmas vacationers and still make year-end best-of lists, I never get a chance to watch the most critically acclaimed films before the year's end.  But...if Hollywood can wait until the end of February to rate the last year of cinema, so can I, right?  I know, I know...what a jerk I am, stealing Hollywood's thunder!

I don't like doing Top Ten lists, though.  That's too cut-and-dry, and it completely ignores all the truly awful stuff I run across every year.  I like to break the year down into several best and worst categories, and "best" and "worst" are probably more accurately defined as "most favorite" and "most hated" by me.

So exactly what films did I watch in time to consider for this list?

Abduction.  The Artist.  Battle: Los Angeles.  Black Death.  Blitz.  Captain America: The First Avenger.  The Code.  Conan the Barbarian.  Contagion.  Cowboys & Aliens.  The Descendants.  Drive.  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  Faces in the Crowd.  Fast Five.  Fright Flick.  Fright Night.  Green Lantern.  Hanna.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  The Help.  Hobo With a Shotgun.  Horrible Bosses.  Hugo.  I Saw the Devil.  The Ides of March.  Insidious.  Ironclad.  Kill the Irishman.  Killer Elite.  Limitless.  The Mechanic.  Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.  Midnight in Paris.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.  Moneyball.  Ong Bak 3.  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  Red State.  The Resident.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Season of the Witch.  Shark Night 3D.  Source Code.  Sucker Punch.  Super 8.  Take Me Home Tonight.  13 Assassins.  Thor.  Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The Tree of Life.  Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.  War Horse.  The Ward.  Warrior.  X-Men: First Class.

I wasn't able to review all of these in time for the Oscars, but I did watch them.  There are some noteworthy absences from that list, though.  Here are some of the movies I wanted to see, but failed to in time:

The Adjustment Bureau, A Dangerous Method, 50/50, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Guard, Hesher, Shame, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,  and most of the stupid comedies of the year.

Let's start of with some of the more overlooked moments in film this year, shall we?

Best Bit Character
You know those roles that are very amusing, but aren't substantial enough to actually be called "supporting"?  I love those!  They are sadly undervalued in modern cinema, but not by me.  While I was amused by the Blue F'n Lights in Super 8, I have to give credit to Adrien Brody for his Salvador Dali impression in Midnight in Paris.

And for flicking off Owen Wilson

I normally dislike Brody, but his oddly-enunciated, rhinoceros-obsessed few minutes onscreen amused the hell out of me.  As an added bonus, from what little I know about Dali at the time, the impression seemed pretty accurate.

Best Supporting Actress
This is typically a tough category for me.  I don't watch many "chick flicks," and the films I choose to watch usually don't have well-developed female characters.  This year, though, I found a handful of actresses impressive.  Elle Fanning (Super 8) and Saiorse Ronan (Hanna) were both surprisingly mature, and Octavia Spencer was the prototypical sassy black woman in The Help, which is naturally pretty awesome to watch.  However, my favorite supporting performance this year was definitely Shailene Woodley in The Descendants.

Note: embed flattering photo here

I think she did the best job with the most complex character, at least from the movies I caught.  Granted, that character was a bitchy, rebellious teenager (not exactly avant garde), but I thought she handled the role perfectly.

Worst Supporting Actress
I'm going to go with Marianne Faithfull in Faces in the Crowd.  What makes her any worse than, say, anyone in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, or Melissa Leo's horribly over-the-top performance in Red State?  Well, like the prison food mentioned in The Blues Brothers, they're all pretty bad.  Faithfull just had the least believable character --- a deaf therapist that gives no indication that she is deaf whatsoever --- out of the group.  Plus, she provides some of the worst exposition I saw on film this year.

Best Supporting Actor
There were, as always, a lot of supporting actor roles that stuck out to me this year.  Colin Farrell (Fright Night) and Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class) were pretty bad-ass in some potentially silly roles.  Tom Hardy (Warrior) and Paul Giamatti (The Ides of March) gave surprisingly powerful dramatic performances.  Andy Serkis (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) once again gave a spectacular motion-capture performance.  My favorite supporting performance by far, though, definitely belonged to Albert Brooks in Drive.  He was just so deliciously merciless --- he is definitely my favorite villain of the year.

Not the tools of the trade you might expect from Brooks

Worst Supporting Actor
As tempted as I am to crown Tom Felton for being terrible in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this is a prize that was won with teamwork.  My winner for Worst Supporting Actor is the supporting cast of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  I don't care if you want to focus on Ken Jeong's idiotic character or John Turturro's embarrassing cash-in role, John Malkovich's bewildering presence, or if you just hate Kevin Dunn's "why hasn't he been stepped on already?" turn as Mr. Witwicky --- this movie sucked, and there were simply too many awful performances to not win this award.

A well-placed Autobot foot could have made this so much better

On a related note, Patrick Dempsey is a crappy evil villain, especially when you compare him to giant killer robots.

Best Actress
There wasn't much competition for this, given the films I watched.  Even without any other real contenders, Viola Davis was excellent in The Help.

As manipulative as the film is (and I would qualify it as "very"), Davis did a great job balancing contradicting emotional extremes.  The only reason The Help is up for a Best Picture Academy Award this year is thanks to its excellent acting, and Davis was the film's anchor.

Worst Actress
This was a tight race.  As deserving as Tiffany and Debbie Gibson were in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Lily Collins was even worse in Abduction.  And as terrible as Collins and her eyebrows were, they cannot compare to the hatred I have in my heart for Emily Browning in Sucker Punch.  The whole movie was handled poorly, but Browning was on screen the most, and alternated between a pouty face and a vacant stare. 

Go to Brian's movie jail.  Do not collect go, do not collect $200

I honestly don't know if anyone could have salvaged the train wreck that was Sucker Punch, but it takes a unique talent to confuse and anger me while playing a rape victim.

Best Actor
I went through most of 2011's films without witnessing an excellent lead acting performance, but that has changed over the last month.  I thought Min-Sik Choi was positively chilling in I Saw the Devil.  I loved Ryan Gosling's extremely peculiar work in Drive.  I loved George Clooney's subtle and complex work in The Descendants.  The performance that I enjoyed the most this year, though, was Brad Pitt in Moneyball.

This is a film that could have easily been deadly dull (to non-statistical nuts like me), but Pitt carried it with consistently good timing and a whole lot of staring and looking worried.  Was it a better performance than Clooney's or Jean Dujardin in The Artist?  Maybe not.  But I responded more to his character than anyone other this year.  Besides, my beloved Cubs will be atrocious in 2012, so I need to enjoy baseball any way I can.

Worst Actor
This race boils down to who I hated more this year: Shia LaBeouf in Trannies 3 or Taylor Lautner in Abduction.  Man, this is a tough one!  Shia was insufferable as an entitled dick in T3, but Lautner was offensively bad.  I think Lautner barely squeaks this one out, but only because he can be out-acted by shadow puppets.

This is his "reading" face

Best Director
I'm going to go with the only director that truly impressed me with his style and competence this year: Nicolas Winding Refn, for Drive.  The only other director that even came close for ballsiness and frame composition was Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), but Refn embraced noir, awkwardness, and extreme violence and made it all work in a taut thriller.

Worst Director
Part of me wants to go with John Singleton for doing absolutely nothing right in Abduction.  Another part of me wants to slap David R. Ellis for not changing his style for Shark Night 3D, despite its PG-13 rating.  But those are just two very small parts of me; 98% of me hates Zack Snyder for Sucker Punch.  My dislike for his recent work is almost Biblical; I wish I could salt the proverbial earth of Snyder's career.  As gorgeous as his films look, Sucker Punch was a confused, soulless rape fantasy, poorly disguised as some sort of extended "girl power" metaphor.  How do you screw up having dragons, steam-powered soldiers, and gundams?  Watch Sucker Punch.  No, wait...don't.

Biggest Disappointment
Runner-up goes to John Carpenter's return to directing, The Ward.  Too bad it was terrible.  I was prepared for that, though, because Carpenter has had his share of misses over the last thirty or forty years.  I was most disappointed by Green Lantern.  It had a lot of promise --- and the space scenes were actually pretty cool --- but the story was horribawful.  I didn't need this to be good to have fun with it, but I would have appreciated less boredom and fewer stupid humans.

Biggest Surprise
I had a few mild surprises this year.  Marcus Nispel made a decent flick for a change (Conan the Barbarian).  Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a clearly unnecessary film, wasn't terrible.  I didn't vomit bile when watching Matthew Lillard in The Descendants.  I would be a liar, though, if I said there was any bigger surprise than the extended Discovery Channel acid trip during The Tree of Life.

Love it or hate it, you cannot honestly tell me that you expected that movie to make that choice at that time.  I'm pretty sure I spent most of this sequence with a confused look and my mouth half open.

Bottom 5 Movies
I could pick on the made-to-suck horror movies I watched this year (Fright Flick and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid), but I didn't expect them to be anything close to good.  These five are bad and have earned my ire.
5. The Ward - Have you ever wanted to watch a really bad version of Identity?  Have you ever wanted to watch a movie like that while feeling sorry for the director?  Well, do I have a movie for you!  You want to know how bad this movie is?  Here's the best scene in the entire film:

4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Here's what it takes to make an awesome Transformers movie: have giant robots fight each other.  It doesn't have to be smart.  It doesn't have to do anything except look cool and have a simple plot.  Somehow, that message never reached Michael Bay.  There were too many humans, too many "jokes," and too many interchangeable robots in this clusterfuck of a blockbuster.  And the Witwicky family still refused to die!  The only reason I can imagine anyone liking Trannies 3 is for putting Rosie Huntington-Whitely in high definition.  Well guess what, teenagers?  She's an underwear model.  You don't have to watch this movie to ogle her, there's a great big internet just waiting for you!

3. Season of the Witch - I don't know what the worst thing about this movie is.  It could be the fact that Nic Cage actually underacted, given how ridiculous the story is.

Stunning, I know

Maybe it is the hilarious parallels it invites to classic films.  Both are good reasons, but I think the biggest one is the complete lack of witches in this movie.  Not even zombie monks could save this.

2. Abduction - I've already touched upon how inept this movie is, but this is truly one of the worst movies I have seen that was widely released.  The hair clogging your shower has more talent than Taylor Lautner.

1. Sucker Punch - Despite looking like it should be made of the dreams of horny teenage boys, this was drab, dull, and rapey.  Maybe that's your cup of tea.  If it is, I assume you are already in prison for committing violent acts against humanity and good taste in general.

More like a donkey punch

Top 10 Movies
10. Hugo -I have a soft spot in my heart for characters that are struggling to find their place in the world, and I believe in the magic of cinema, so Hugo was right up my alley.  Scorsese's direction, while fun to look at (even in 3D), pandered a bit too much toward young children for my tastes, but it was still touching and adorable.

9. Hobo With a Shotgun - Rarely does a movie meet my every expectation.  Hobo... delivered on the promise of its title and added Robocop-quality acting and Troma levels of violence.  Sadly, it was snubbed by the academy this year.  I wonder why?

8. The Artist - Jean Dujardin is charming and is a gifted physical actor.  Who needs to hear him speak?  Along with that talent, director Michel Hazanavicius made an extremely clever film with superb cinematography and (not terribly subtle) symbolism.  It was cute, it was different, but it didn't strike any particular emotional chords within me.

7. Midnight In Paris - I didn't expect to enjoy this one, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Instead of wallowing in nostalgia, like so many acclaimed films this year (Super 8, The Artist, Hugo), Woody Allen made a film that realized the folly in Golden Age thinking.  I imagine that your appreciation for the film only deepens with your own knowledge of the art and literature scene in 1920s Paris, but even if you are clueless, the supporting cast is extremely enjoyable.  And every word out of Corey Stoll's mouth is pure gold.

Have you ever shot a charging lion?

6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Eight movies in ten years, and all of them were good.  I'm going to miss the Harry Potter series, but this last chapter paid off the setups of the past few films nicely.  It could have been more visually imaginative, and there were a literal ton of characters in the film to pay attention to, but this was a quality send-off to an excellent series.  Plus, it didn't have, like, six endings, like Lord of the Rings.

5. X-Men: First Class - Given the debacles that were X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I didn't have high hopes for this one.  Thankfully, Matthew Vaughn saved my favorite comic franchise from movie production hell.  The real credit goes to Michael Fassbender's awesome performance as Magneto.  We need more of that, and soon.

Michael Fassbender face IS...Magneto's Crotch

4. The Descendants - A possibly gut-wrenching concept gets a whole lot easier to handle and more interesting through Alexander Payne's treatment and George Clooney's excellent performance.  It's about as uplifting a film as you're going to see from a movie about death and infidelity.

3. Moneyball - This movie simply should not have been fun or interesting to watch at all.  On paper, it sounds as entertaining as balancing your checkbook, but I was drawn into Moneyball.  I enjoyed Brad Pitt's Robert Redford impression and actually liked Jonah Hill for once (I disagree with his nominations, though).  What I liked most about this movie was its sense of timing, which I suppose means that I liked its editing.  Whatever.  This is a sports movie that can appeal to the non-sports fan because the heroes don't play sports.  That's brilliant!

2. I Saw the Devil - It's hard to find a genuinely disturbing horror movie, so I like the acknowledge them when I find 'em.  Taking the typical premise (bad guy kills my people, I must take the law into my own hands!) to a logical but somewhat surprising end, Jee-Woon Kim crafted a brutal and unnerving film.  I like it when heroes are not heroic, and this movie delivered.

Pretty.  Disturbing.

1. Drive -By far, this was the most peculiar and enjoyable film I saw all year.  It was weird, it was painfully awkward, it was violent, and it was oddly touching.  Better than all that, it was suspenseful.  As awkward and unrecognizable as the Driver was as a human, there is a simple sweetness underneath that amazing scorpion jacket.  Of course, his character is also a psycho waiting to erupt, but that's the price you pay for being so damn cool.