Doug's Favorite Movies of 2012

The Silver Linings Playbook
Cabin in the Woods
The Hobbit
Argo
John Dies at the End
The Queen of Versailles
The Avengers

Honorable Mention:
End of Watch
Bernie
Django Unchained
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Raid: Redemption
The Master
Seven Psychopaths
Cloud Atlas

Special Category -- Movies I hated that everyone else loved:
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Holy Motors

 

Jack Reacher

Felt like it was made in 1987 and directed by Richard Donner. There’s a great, old fashioned car chase (everything Drive should have been) and plenty of bone crunching fights from the Jason Statham playbook. It’s a serviceable low-budget thriller, and it’s fun to see Werner Herzog as a creepy and clichéd European villain, BUT… Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike have about as much sexual chemistry as oil and dark matter.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I enjoyed the hell out of this. I saw it in RealD in the high-definition 48 frame projection and I thought it was gorgeous. Yes, it takes a little while to get going. For what will ultimately be nine hours of movie, I can see why it takes an hour or so to establish characters. Nevertheless, the dancing, zooming and swooping shots of the shire, of the mountains and of middle earth were amazing. The exteriors of Peter Jackson’s beloved New Zealand were beautifully rendered. It’s sincere, it’s exciting, and there are several action scenes that are as good as anything in any movie all year. It almost seems unfair that the ticket price is only three dollars more than other movies, because the value is worth so much more.

Django Unchained

Lacks the gravitas of Inglorious Basterds, but it’s still a really fun night at the movies. Jamie Fox knows he’s not in an important drama about slavery. Nobody’s fooling anyone. Fox hams it up, embracing the revenge-porn genre-fusion as it truly is. The same is true for the rest of the cast, all of whom chew as much scenery as possible. Especially Christoph Waltz, nailing his weird, hitman wordsmith with unabashed glee. The final third drags on a bit, and I wonder if they could have ended the movie sooner. Nevertheless, it’s a barn-burner.