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.