My Favorite Films of 2012

It's the end of the year, and thus time for the Best Of lists. Seeing as I live in Omaha, Nebraska, I'm stuck with the unfortunate reality that no one here has seen Zero Dark Thirty and won't until mid-January, so that will not be eligible for this list. Other than that, it's pretty simple. This year, I had a very unique challenge when putting together this list. It was honestly very difficult to think of ten films from 2012 that I have passion for. As someone who sees hundreds of movies a year, it made me sad to think that we had such phenomenal filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino Whit Stillman, Woody Allen, Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, and many more all contribute to the year, only to find that most couldn't create the classics we expected. So this list is five films I liked, three films I really liked, and two that I loved. That's all I could muster. Let's hope 2013 goes better.

Top 10:

10. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Right way, I've probably lost some readers with this choice. No one seems to like this movie. I absolutely expected to hate it. Quite frankly, the previews for this looked dreadfully bland, as opposed to biting like the premise suggested. That being said, though this was not nearly as dark as I anticipated, I found myself frequently moved by its poignant emotional core. Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley gave surprisingly restrained performances, letting depth sink in in a much more realistic way than you would think.  The jokes did tend to run a little more broad and silly than they needed to, but the emotions of the film were absolutely in the right place and it's ultimately a wonderful film.

9. Hitchcock

Admittedly, there are certain films that are not really made for general audiences. The average moviegoer today may have some idea of who Alfred Hitchcock was and what kind of movies he made, but few would see this movie and be as completely swept away by it as true cinephiles. That's really who this was made for and it hits all the great notes. It is a stylized biopic that may not strike the realism chord, but it paints a very entertaining picture of one of the most important genre revolutions in cinematic history. What if someone good made a horror picture? Witness the way Alfred Hitchcock brought horror into the A-Picture club and changed movies forever.

8. Django Unchained

I really struggled with where exactly I wanted to place Django Unchained on my list. I have very mixed feelings about it, but ultimately I think it is a very creative and unique movie. Maybe if it had come out months ago, I'd have enough time to really digest where it falls on a list like this, but I've only had a few weeks so I'm sorry. Quite frankly, I find the first half of this epic blaxploitation spaghetti western to be amazingly perfect cinema and some of the most entertaining work I've seen all year. Enter the second half, which is when Quentin Tarantino really let his trademarks take over in place of his western setting and things get a little bit more murky and less successful as things take a dark turn, followed by a silly over the top epilogue. Django is more of a mixed bag when looking at the sum of its parts, but 4/5ths of its parts are pretty dang wonderful. It's not the genius level of Inglourious Basterds or any of his 90s work, but there's enough to like here that this really deserved a place on my list.

Django Unchained: Tarantino's Most Indulgent Film Yet

Only a handful of filmmakers have final cut rights in every contract they sign. What that means is that the financier or studio can make as many suggestions about what could be change or tweaked to the script, cast, or finished film, but the director has no obligation to listen to a single thing. In short, these directors have 100% control over what they're doing. As a concept, of course, this sounds like the ideal setup for making movies. After all, what do studio heads know about movies? They're businessmen, not artists, right? Quentin Tarantino began in the independent circuit and by the time his second movie (Pulp Fiction) was released to huge profits and acclaim, it was clear that this man was one of the rare artists who would forever get final say on everything he did from now on. In the beginning, he had final say over a series of low budget, low risk projects, but as the 2000s rolled around, the budgets grew increasingly higher and Tarantino became one of the even more extremely rare few who could make blockbusters and take no criticism from anyone giving him money.

Now, that is not to say there was no one giving him opinions throughout that time on how to improve his work, be it through pacing, what plots could be expanded on or taken out, or even music choices. From the very beginning with Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino got this valuable advice from a woman named Sally Menke, his editor. With Menke, Tarantino found a genius to shape his massive narratives into tightly woven, fatless products. That's not to say every project the two collaborated on was a masterpiece; I'd argue that their 90s work towers far above the post-2000 films with the exception of Inglourious Basterds. However, it was clear that Menke had the sensibilities that a studio head may not; she could take an objective look at what Tarantino made and turn it into the best product the story had the potential for. Tragically, Sally Menke died in 2010 at the early age of 56. A year later, Tarantino began work on Django Unchained, his most expensive project to date and ultimately his longest.