2012 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 2012:

1. The Avengers
2. Skyfall
3. The Dark Knight Rises
4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
5. Ice Age: Continental Drift
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
7. The Amazing Spider-Man
8. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
9. The Hunger Games
10. Men in Black 3

What are your top three films for 2012? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. Tabu
2. The Master
3. To the Wonder

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

A hard year to pin down. Post Tenebras Lux, Leviathan, The Act of Killing, and Spring Breakers were all very close.

Neighboring Sounds and Barbara were both big works for directors who have become more and more relevant since then. Holy Motors was a fun movie that crossed over to people who don't normally like the arthouse, Beyond the Hills was terrifying, and Museum Hours captured a certain sleepiness of Europe that most directors actively avoid. Like Someone in Love was a farewell from a master, and Viola showed there is still something to gain from the Shakespeare vault.

21 Jump Street was a hilarious mainstream comedy and the rare one to get a decent sequel, while The Comedy was intentionally not one but was haunting enough. Pitch Perfect is actually funny, though, and it balances a line of acknowledging its absurdity while still being committed to the bit. Frances Ha was tender and represented how Baumbach was growing, while the melancholy of Not Fade Away shows us that The Many Saints of Newark did not have to be bad.

What surprised me was the amount of garbage I saw, and we are at a point where I can more viscerally remember them. The poverty and torture porn of Beasts of the Southern Wild and The Impossible, the themes being beaten over your head in Killing Them Softly, the unintentional rebuke of death of the author in Room 237, and the increasingly political (while increasingly nonsensical) The Dark Knight Rises.

 

1. Holy Motors
2. The Act of Killing
3. The Master

One of the strongest top 3s I can think of. As for others I considered, To the Wonder is the second best of Malick’s 2010s output, I think. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty left an impression at the time, glad Terence Nance has continued to make interesting stuff. Spring Breakers threatened the top 3 but there’s a small gap between it and the three I chose.

 

You forgot Magic Mike.

 

XXL is the masterpiece, wait for 2015

 

What an absolutely stacked year. 3 all time favorites plus excruciating cuts

1. The Master
2. Spring Breakers
3. Holy Motors

 

1. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
2. Amour
3. The Master

4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. Django Unchained
6. Laurence Anyways
7. Frances Ha
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
9. The Broken Circle Breakdown
10. The Avengers

Also love Excision, The Dark Knight Rises, Silver Linings Playbook, Cabin in the Woods, Lore, Spring Breakers, Skyfall, Seven Psychopaths, Beyond the Hills, Looper, 21 Jump Street, The Hunt, Paradise: Love & Faith, Rust and Bone, Ernest & Celestine, The Place Beyond the Pines, Holy Motors and Dredd.

Fantastic year, definitely one of the strongest top 3's of the decade for me. Highly recommend It’s Such a Beautiful Day if anyone on here hasn't seen it yet.

 

1. The Master
2. Stories We Tell
3. Frances Ha

 

1. Drug War
2. The Hunt
3. Magic Mike

Drug War is one of Johnnie To's most procedurally cold and unforgiving movies. Extremely rare to see a crime movie so unconcerned with characterization, just the disastrous effects on all involved. The Hunt is enraging and obviously an all time performance from Mads. Magic Mike is hilarious and a sharper commentary about the commodification and loss of individual identity of entertainment workers than people give it credit for. None of that stuff can make Alex Pettyfer a good actor unfortunately but Channing is great

 

1. Seven Psychopaths
2. Silver Linings Playbook
3. A Place Beyond the Pines

Other standouts: Mud, Argo, Flight, The Perks of being a Wallflower

 

I had totally forgot about The Campaign, but it was on HBO the other night and I forgot how funny it was. It seemed completely ridiculous back then, but the way the political landscape is now, it's not even that outrageous.

 

Great year, although The Master is my #1 by a mile. An incredible achievement that just gets better each time I watch it.

1. The Master
2. Frances Ha
3. Spring Breakers

Honorable mentions:

Holy Motors
Moonrise Kingdom
The Act of Killing
Django Unchained
Amour
Lincoln
21 Jump Street
Searching for Sugar Man
Bernie

 

1. Spring Breakers
2. Cabin in the Woods
3. The Lords of Salem

Bikini's and big booties - that's what it's all about.

 

Wow, I haven't thought about The Comedy in a long time. It was almost too effective. A sharp portrayal of how isolating it is to have irony as your key personality trait (which felt especially prominent in the late '00s), but the characters are so viscerally off-putting that I've never had any desire to watch it again.

 

The Master
Looper
Django Unchained

HM: Moonrise Kingdom, Sinister, Dredd, Spring Breakers, Skyfall

 

It ended up representing a shift from those more nihilistic "nothing matters" comedies that descended from Seinfeld and the rise of more socially conscious comedies like BoJack Horseman.

 

One of my biggest gap years, but just want to say that Wreck-It Ralph is a masterpiece.

 

I specifically recall going to see Sinister in the theaters in 2012, but honestly can't recall a thing about it. Same with Cabin in the Woods.

Django is probably the only Tarantino movie I've only watched once and didn't really have a desire to watch again.

 

1. The Master
2. Moonrise Kingdom
3. Spring Breakers

Shoutout to Holy Motors, Frances Ha, 21 Jump Street, Mud, and Django.

 

I do love Frances Ha. I think Django feels the loss of Sally Menke pretty hard compared to QT's work with her, and it took until Once Upon a Time for him to reach his previous heights (and even that film would probably be even better if she were still around)

 

1. Spring Breakers
2. The Act of Killing
3. Frances Ha

still need to see The Master

 

This marks the year I started paying attention to film more critically. I've got a lot on my list already from this year cause of this site. I think by the time this is done I'll have 1,500 in my letterboxd watch list.

 

1. The Master
2. The Act of Killing
3. Frances Ha

Spring Breakers was very close, I get caught up thinking about how hard James peaked in Freaks and Geeks. In trying so hard to be Riff Raff He lost the effortless cool he needed to pull it off.

I saw The Hunt a couple of years ago, it captured and then much further extrapolated the underlining feelings of judgement and fear of accusation I had when I worked with kids at a holiday camp. Overall it was very fun but those feeling were their

 

I don't think I can understate how much I love The Master. It might be the best American film that I've seen.

 

This is the part of the project where the years feel really off from when I saw them by U.S. release date.