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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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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SAG Award for Best Cast: Predictions & Wish List

Amir here, to write about one of my favourite awards of the season: the SAG award for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture". I say "favourite" because, in principle, I love the notion of awarding actors who work together as a group to make a film tick. In my ideal world, the best cast award is more about collective achievements than multiple individual ones but over the years, SAG’s top award has sadly become synonymous with Best Picture. Genuine ensemble pieces have often been ignored in favour of Oscar’s best picture frontrunners or films with the highest number of nominees in other SAG categories. Yet, despite my disappointment, I can’t stop obsessing over this award or detach myself.

Who will follow the cast of The Help to a SAG cast win?

This year is bound to be a similar affair, with the three frontrunning Oscar films all poised to win SAG nods in this category. Nonetheless, let’s look at what will get nominated and what should. 

Les Misérables
I have yet to see Les Misérables, but the rapturous response from this week’s screenings (Nathaniel was at the first one) suggests that we will collectively forgive Hooper for stealing The Social Network’s thunder once we finally lay eyes on his newest film. (Though, I'll still begrudge The King’s Speech for winning the SAG "cast" award two years ago. Two great performances and one default “supporting wife” nominee don't merit a best cast prize, especially in the presence of The Kids Are Alright and The Fighter.)

More hopefuls after the jump...

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Gotham Awards Winners

You inspire him"
-Amy Adams to Joaquin Phoenix in The Master

Did The Gotham Awards inspire more faith in the possibly fadingg Oscar prospects of The Master? They did not. The following films competed for Best Picture in NYC's sort-of answer to The Spirit Awards: 

• Bernie
• The Loneliest Planet
• The Master
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Middle of Nowhere

(Yes, The Beasts of The Southern Wild was already famously snubbed here when the nominations were announced last month though it had other nominations and the team was in town for the ceremony and to beat their Oscar drum.) 

THE WINNERS

Jared, Benh, and Ematatzy

Audience Award ARTIFACT. Jared Leto accepted the documentary about his band and a lawsuit.

Don't hate me because I beat that other film."

Breakthrough Director BENH ZEITLIN for Beasts of the Southern Wild

It's no time to sit around crying like a bunch of pussies. Make more movies."

Breakthrough Actor EMAYATZY CORINEALDI in Middle of Nowhere

(Beasts of the Southern Wild seemed to be having as rough a night as Gotham's Live Feed which sorely disappointed. But things turned around for it. The movie, not the live feed.)

Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You
(Incidentally my favorite idea for an award category ever)
AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY by Terence Nance 

Bingham Ray Prize
BENH ZEITLIN for Beasts of the Southern Wild 

Best Ensemble
YOUR SISTERS SISTER

Best Documentary
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE 

Best Film
MOONRISE KINGDOM 

Michael made a For Your Consideration plea for Moonrise Kingdom in Best Picture a short time ago right here at The Film Experience. I've not been confident on its Oscar prospects mostly because the film skews so young in its narrative (Oscar isn't that enamored of childhood tales outside of the Foreign Film category) and because excessively stylized pictures tend to be a tough sell for many voters. But the Gotham win is heartening.

Are you happy with the outcomes this year? Do they inspire you?

Remember Moonrise

Michael C here to make sure memory one of 2012's masterpieces isn't washed away in a flood of Oscar bait. 

The more I think about the final moments of Moonrise Kingdom the more it feels like the saddest thing I’ve seen at the movies all year.

At first glance it feels like the ending couldn’t be much happier. The young lovers are reunited, the storm has passed, and even if things aren’t perfect life is left in greater balance than when the story began. Yet on repeat viewings a nagging feeling of loss rises to the surface. Sam and Suzy are together but it’s not accidental that the last thing we see them do is say goodbye to each other. We first meet Suzy as a raven and now the soundtrack sings of birds flying away in the changing seasons. In film’s closing moments we see Suzy pause to acknowledge Sam’s painting of their beachfront camp. Their stolen adventure sits there, already frozen in the past.

This For Your Consideration reminder continues after the jump...

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