Michael's Best of 2012

Before Nathaniel's Top Ten drops over the next few days he has invited TFE correspondents to share their own best of 2012 lists. I confess up front that I have not yet managed to catch Tabu, Oslo August 31 or Middle of Nowhere, but then all lists are a work in progress, aren't they?

Honorable Mentions...
Richard Linklater's Bernie featured the enduringly weird paring of Shirley MacLaine and Jack Black in addition to a unceasingly funny peanuts gallery of small town Texans arguing that murder really isn't all that bad. Lauren Greenfield's Queen of Versailles is the perfect film for the moment with subjects that make the cast of Marie Antoinette seem admirably self-aware and thrifty. Walter Salles's On the Road is a bracing jolt of life that is being seriously undersold by critics. Looper does the sci-fi genre proud with its thoroughly imagined script that piles on the surprises well beyond the big hook. And finally, Amour should rightly be near the top of this list based strictly on filmmaking skill, but there was something about its unremmiting bleakness that felt incomplete to me. I can't help asking "Is that all there is?" even as the film itself calmly repeated that "Yes. It is." over and over. 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ... after the jump

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Amir's Most Anticipated Films of 2013

Ewan McGregor and I (from TIFF). What movies do you think he's looking forward to?Amir here. For most of us moviegoers the first day of January doesn’t coincide with the start of a new film year. We wait for the release of films like Zero Dark Thirty or Amour in our corners of the world. But to wish you all a slightly belated happy new year, I thought there’s no better way to semi-start 2013 than with a top ten dozen list of possible cinematic treasures that await us.

It was a tough task to narrow down but that’s the fun in list-making. I know I’ll be first in line when Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac hits the screens, or when Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited follow-up to the masterful Birth, is unveiled. And how could I not be excited about Side Effects from the always intriguing Steven Soderbergh, or Les Salaudes, the newest film from Claire Denis, one of our greatest living directors? James Gray’s Nightingale almost made my list, as did Park Chan Wook’s Stoker and Edgar Wright’s The World’s End. Joachim Trier, whose last film Oslo, August 31st was my favorite of 2011 (2012 for many US critics) is working on an English-language debut called Louder than Bombs,  too. I’ll be there for all of them, but if I had to pick only a dozen films to watch this year? Here they are....

12. I’m So Excited
An apt title for a film on a list of this kind, but that’s definitely not the only reason I’ve included it here. Pedro Almodovar, everyone’s favorite Spanish auteur, is going back to the realm of comedy with this story of intersecting romances and dancing gay flight attendants on an airplane.

I’m So Excited stars a whole lot of Spanish stars like Javier Camara, Cecilia Roth, Lola Duenas, Paz Vega and my biggest crush of the moment, Blanca Suárez. Almodovar’s regulars Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas are apparently in for small roles. 

more after the jump...

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Beau's 2012 Bests

Nathaniel's top ten hits this weekend but he's invited TFE correspondents to share their own, so here are my personal loves of the year. [Disclaimer: I have yet to see Holy Motors, Amour, Rust and Bone, and On the Road.]

honorable mentions...  

13) Arbitrage -Nicholas Jarecki's feature debut is a whopper, a palate cleanser for the John Grisham crowd and a showcase for Richard Gere's most effortless work in this thirty-five year career. Coupled with Zemeckis' Flight, you'd be hard pressed to find two more similar and dissimilar anti heroes who crowded the multiplexes this year. Charisma carries the Devil on its cape. You've never wanted the bad guy to win more.

12) Flight -The messiest of messes, a meditation on faith, humanity and temptation that true to form, sways and stumbles and remains standing, a loud, brash bombardment of the amoral and their blinding pain. Washington is Everyman to Goodman's Satan. And who the fuck is James Badge Dale? He pulls a Beatrice Straight and basically walks away with the film.

11) Ted -There is something deeply unlikeable about Seth McFarlane, an addictive toxicity that repulses you and engages you simultaneously. With 'Ted', his watermark (read: pissmark) on network television transfers over to the big screen with a spring in its step and a grenade in its pocket. Defaming the stunted lifestyle of men all the while celebrating its appeal, Ted made me laugh harder and feel worse about myself than anything else I saw this year. It establishes Macfarlane as the newest, crudest uncle of American comedy - you hate him when he's sober, but goddamn, there's nobody else you'd rather get hammered with.

 
top ten from 'Cloud' to 'Cabin' is after the jump...

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Who Were The Most Beautiful Men Ever To Hit the Screen?

If you're tired of all the bickering and partisanship from this very young Oscar season (We've got 8 more weeks of people fighting about Les Miz and whether or not Zero Dark endorses torture. Have...uh... fun!) why not choose sides on a much different less weighty topic? 

Boy Culture has launched a very extensive opinion piece on the History's 100 Hottest Movie Actors. It might be the perfect antidote right about now if you honestly can't take one more "Argo F*** Yourself" joke, Ode to Lincoln, or "Jennifer or Jessica?" blog post.

Only half of Matthew's list is currently up but there's already an impressive range of eras (a list which stretches from Rudolph Valentino through Colin Farrell is okay by me, clock-wise), nationalities, talent levels (from none to cup overflowing) and fame curve in the 50 men selected. If Takeshi Kaneshiro and Jude Law aren't top ten'ers I will pay for Matthew's next optometrist visit.

Who would you put in a top ten list?

Les Linkábles

Auteuse Theory has co-written a book on Mamma Mia! of all things "Mamma Mia! The Movie: Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon"
Gawker Audrey Plaza has a nude painting of herself on full display in her home 
The Wrap the best and worst performances by the same actor this year. Interesting concept but SO annoying to pretend Anne Hathaway is anything less than stupendous in Les Misérables 
Badass Digest Here's something unexpected. A piece on the vineyards of France and drinking in the time of Les Miz.

My New Plaid Pants obsession with Amanda Seyfried's 'magical slutty powers' is one of my favorite things on the internet, month in and month out.  I know everyone was excited to read me interviewing my Nicole but I'd honestly pay good money to watch a sit down with JA & Amanda
ME Says is disappointed with Jessica Chastain in The Heiress. This seems to be going around! That won't hurt but can't possibly help her Best Actress bid in Zero...
Awards Daily Sasha crunches numbers on Best Director and predicts doom for Tom Hooper without the Globe nod. Which might well be the case. But the thing I don't quite get, from other pundits, is why everyone has such sudden enthusiasm for Quentin Tarantino's chances. Tarantino movies ALWAYS open with a flurry of people crying "masterpiece" but that's because critics and bloggers are big stans of Quentin (with good reason but I hope you here my point.) Is this "late surge" for Django Unchained real or just a product of Weinstein Co's goodwill with the Globes?

The Playlist The NRA is blaming the movies again for all these gun massacres. I'd LOL if it weren't so terrible. Way to hang on to your destructive agenda in the face of ever more damning proof that it's just that! They are seriously a hideous blight on America. Speaking of...
Penny Arcade has a fine comic about this

Click on the image for more of the comic...

List-Mania
Pop Matters I am embarrassed for all my film friends who love Cloud Atlas but I have to link to Matt Mazur's top ten anyway because otherwise it's interesting!
Critic Wire asks film critics to share the best pieces of film criticism they've read this year. Lots of articles name-checked worth checking out
AV Club best scenes of the year
Pajiba has a great list of enjoyable supporting performances that won't win any awards... let alone Oscars
Screen Crave on the most disappointing films of the year from Django Unchained to The Avengers
Slate ten best of 2012 from How To Survive a Plague through Zero Dark Thirty 

And here is Kevin B Lee's 12 Best of the Year Video Essay from Fandor. (I keep meaning to do more video work and never get around to it. Argh.)

Even most of my critic friends love Silver Linings Playbook. I just don't get the love! But at least it's not a hideous bloated blight on the good name of cinema like Cloud Atlas.