The Films of 2012

[wigwam]

Sleepwalk with Me is on a level of greatness w/ Annie Hall, Modern Romance, High Fidelity, Sherman's March and I am a Sex Addict

[Alan Smithee]

For all the NYC area cinephiles out there, Chantal Akerman's new film Almayer's Folly begins a week long run Anthology Film Archives on Friday. I saw it at Lincoln Center a few months ago and it is superb, one of the best films I've seen this year.

Here's a review

Akerman will also introduce Michael Snow's La Region Centrale on Sunday night at Light Industry

[MichaelB]

Peter Strickland's second feature Berberian Sound Studio is one of the treats of the year - a cross between an intense and often genuinely disturbing psychological study of a man desperately out of his depth (socially, culturally, linguistically), a wickedly funny yet hugely affectionate tribute to 1970s Italian horror films, and a multi-layered demonstration of the often underestimated importance of the soundtrack in creating effective cinema.

Aside from some garishly stylised opening credits, we never see a frame of The Equestrian Vortex, the pretentious splatter-horror film that amiably nerdish British sound designer Gilderoy (Toby Jones in one of 2012's standout performances) has been hired to work on, but we hear vast chunks of it, beginning with a verbal description of the relevant scene ("Scene thirteen: the dangerously aroused goblin tries to molest Teresa") and continuing with Gilderoy balancing the actors screaming or gibbering in a soundproofed booth, foley artists hacking up cabbages and watermelons and various pre-recorded sound effects and electronic drones. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Argento, Fulci and their contemporaries will be in seventh heaven here, but my viewing companion also loved it, and she'd never seen an Italian horror film before.

Despite it technically being a British film, most of it is in subtitled Italian, although Gilderoy usually isn't privy to the translation and is helplessly reliant on a tiny handful of English-speaking colleagues, most of whom he ends up both fearing and despising. He's a gentle, gnome-like man, a bachelor who lives with his mother in Dorking, whose upbeat letters about 'chiffchaffs' and magpies are his only point of contact with the world outside the studio. Quite how he got the job in the first place is a mystery that's never explained (the look on his face when a couple of bearded foley artists start noisily hacking a load of watermelons into small dripping chunks and he realises just what sort of film he's working on is one of the comedic high points) but Italian horror films were never exactly renowned for their convincing backstories either.

Has it got a US distributor yet? The UK Blu-ray's out on 31 December.

[Lemmy Caution]

Sleepwalk with Me is on a level of greatness w/ Annie Hall, Modern Romance, High Fidelity, Sherman's March and I am a Sex Addict

and I am a Sex Addict ??

[tavernier]

Has it got a US distributor yet? The UK Blu-ray's out on 31 December.

Berberian is showing at the NYFF, but no distributor is listed.

[knives]

The Strickland film is beginning to sound like The Belly of an Architect.

[MichaelB]

The Strickland film is beginning to sound like The Belly of an Architect.

I can see what you're getting at, but it's tonally very different. Mark Kermode compared it with Videodrome, which is much more on the money.

[knives]

That's a nice one to be compared with too. Either way it sounds like something to be excited for.

[repeat]

Has anyone seen Karl Markovics' Breathing?

Missed this on the big screen recently, but glad to notice that an R2 DVD is coming from Verve Pictures next week

[colinr0380]

Battleship (Peter Berg, 2012)

From the (many) jokes in the trailer thread:

Maybe that low sound throughout the trailer isn't just leftover ADR from Transformers but is actually what A-4, A-5, A-6 sounds like in real-life

I liked the way that the annoying heavenly choirs, explosions and metallic noises were drowned out by a tinnitus sound near to the end of the trailer, or maybe that was just me.

I did also like the "From Hasbro, the company that brought you Transformers" tagline!

I don't know, Battleship looks as perfectly generic as any other big dumb box office smash. I can't see why it won't be equally huge. It's going to be drilled into everybody that they must see it the opening weekend, and after that, as long as the explosions are big enough, it will surely coast to profitability. What am I missing?

I know - what was I doing watching a blockbuster film based on a board game when I have something of the calibre of Berlin Alexanderplatz that has been waiting in my 'to watch' pile for a couple of years now? I can only say that the disc was the first one that came to hand!

The film is pretty amusing for the way that it feels indebted to Michael Bay, smooshing together Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. Armageddon is there in the 'lying on the grass together before the lovers part' scene (though not quite as syrupy as the animal cracker one), and a 'you've got to tell my grumpy dad we are getting married but then you've gone and ruined everything' scene (though not as fun as seeing Ben Affleck zipwiring off of an exploding oil rig was). Hong Kong stands in for Paris as the foreign landmark destroyed, though this performs the lucky ideological shorthand of wrecking the vibrant city just at the time when control of it has been returned to China!

The Pearl Harbor influence comes from there being an attack on Hawaii, which I hear had some kind of real, although non-alien related, historical event happen there.

Although there is an enormous debt to Independence Day here too. In a sense Battleship is performing the same ideological function as that film was, taking an event seemingly totally specific to American culture and trying to widen it out to encompass the rest of the world in celebrating it (specifically in Battleship allowing both the Japanese and Americans to work together to heal a wound from a significant location, and to hopefully not have to use a game of football as a form of sublimated combat any more!) as everyone bands together against a greater threat.

This is definitely a 'veteran's film', as we get the disabled veterans from current wars ending up working concurrently with old Pearl Harbor veterans running the battleship at the climax.

That greater threat of course is...silly space nerds stupidly trying to contact alien life and almost destroying the Earth in the process. The aliens may or may not be evil as they're just anonymous hostile beings in the film with no particular rhyme or reason to what they are doing (another way Battleship is taking its cues from Independence Day, as well as creating an 'easy' enemy to fight, in the sense of the alien's deaths not being particularly sad in any way), but the silly scientists should have known better. In fact the one semi-heroic nerd does predict the hostile aliens at the beginning, and of course gets redeemed at the end by not protecting his machines and instead battering an alien around the head with the metal briefcase holding his precious equipment instead.

Eventually everyone manages to get their priorities in order and blow up the satellite dishes to cut humanity off from the aliens once and for all (presumably, although I assume that once the alien's advance party fails to return, some more ships will be sent out to look for them?), and I can only assume that a deleted scene shows that in the aftermath everyone at NASA gets fired, with the army and navy generals being given permission to take it in turns to take the head of the various space projects into a soundproofed room and slap them around a bit so they don't try and explore the universe again! Presumably the message here is that funding should immediately be diverted from space exploration and instead put into researching ways to make World War Two veterans immortal should we ever need to call on their services in the future!

I did find the coda to the film especially amusing as we find out what happened to the spaceship that landed in Scotland, where instead of the combined might of the United States and Japanese military the alien finds itself up against three Scottish teenagers and a chap using blunt weapons (a crowbar, hammer, chainsaw, etc!) to open up their craft! It wasn't really a fair fight for the alien! Although the filmmakers really missed a trick to have the Scottish chap greet the alien with a Glaswegian kiss when it jumps out! (Something which would also have homaged Will Smith punching the alien out in Independence Day, strengthening that connection!) Instead they just cut to black with the jump scare.

[Finch]

Great review of Berberian Sound Studio @ Twitch

[wigwam]

saw Solondz's newest Dark Horse last night (it's on imdb as 2011 but I hope it's cool to talk abt in this thread since its theatrical is 2012?)

I think it's not only his best (which I've thought w/ every new movie he makes) but also a big departure for him in how genuine a place it comes from, with characters whose sympahetic properties are the primary focus and the satire aspects are only partially present, while still having alot of social commentary. It's definitely funny like his others, but also genuinely endearing (in difficult ways which match the rest of his work), and almost half of the film works in these fantasies and dream sequences and so he's almost entirely working inside a character's head this time, rather than observing(/condescending?) from the outside. There's also a central monologue which feels so naked and raw that it's easy to see it as the source of inspiration for the whole movie and the magical/fantastic structure devices make this piece one of my favorites where a director works almost completely on instinct w/o regard for how it all fits together (my reference points during the movie were Punchdrunk Love, Synecdoche NY, Stardust Memories and All That Jazz)

Would love to know others' thoughts on this one

[dustybooks]

Thanks for that -- I love Solondz and I've been curious about Dark Horse, especially since after a bit of festival attention it seemed to disappear completely, but it doesn't look like I'll have an opportunity to see it theatrically. Did want to say that your comment about the raw monologue reminded me of how, while I liked Life During Wartime a great deal, the exchange between Ciarán Hinds and the boy in his dorm room felt so agonizingly real to me I wished that more of the film had been like it.

[Finch]

Back from Dredd: better than I expected after the reports of the troubled post-production. Solid and coherently shot action though some slow-motion gore felt downright pornographic. No plot holes as such though some things will require suspension of disbelief

Spoiler

(skating grounds on the outer walls of a 200 storey building? why don't the Judges called for reinforcement call a helicopter to get to the blasted wall after they can't get in downstairs?)

. 3D as usual adds nothing. Still, pleasantly surprised overall. Noticed that Garland wasn't the only Brit on the production, Anthony Dod Mantle is the DOP. 6.5/10

[Jeff]

End of Watch is worth a look. It is a visceral, authentic-feeling police procedural that knows how to create genuine tension. Gyllenhaal has never been less annoying, and Peña is great. It's a bit hampered by the decision to go entirely hand-held, the silly gimmick of having cops and criminals carrying cameras to capture the action (we know we're watching a movie, you don't have explain it being filmed), and the slightly goofy first-person shooter perspective. The only other problem I had with it was the Hispanic gangster stereotypes in the finale. The dialogue is great though -- smart, fast, and funny. Ayers is a genuine talent. It's the best episode of COPS ever.

[tavernier]

Has it got a US distributor yet?

Update: IFC Midnight has picked up Berberian Sound Studio.

[jbeall]

End of Watch is worth a look. It is a visceral, authentic-feeling police procedural that knows how to create genuine tension. Gyllenhaal has never been less annoying, and Peña is great. It's a bit hampered by the decision to go entirely hand-held, the silly gimmick of having cops and criminals carrying cameras to capture the action (we know we're watching a movie, you don't have explain it being filmed), and the slightly goofy first-person shooter perspective. The only other problem I had with it was the Hispanic gangster stereotypes in the finale. The dialogue is great though -- smart, fast, and funny. Ayers is a genuine talent. It's the best episode of COPS ever.

I second most of this. The film does depart from the handheld gimmick periodically, but it seems a little silly that one person from every group in the film (cops, Latinos, African-Americans) has one. The episodic structure was a little baffling to me, but Gyllenhaal and Pena have a fantastic on-screen chemistry, and I think the film is worth watching for that alone.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

io9 has posted their appropriately amused review of Atlas Shrugged 2.

[warren oates]

Caught Sinister over the weekend and was impressed with its sustained atmosphere of dread, something I don't usually get from Hollywood horror films with recognizable stars. Not a great film, but a good one that does most of what it should better than you think it's going to. And I can't remember the last time I came back from seeing an American horror film in the theater full of praise for the performances (especially Ethan Hawke and James Ransone).

[domino harvey]

Hick (Derick Martini) It's as though the indie glut of the late 90s never ended-- kooky unlikable characters, liberal attitudes towards drugs and illicit sex, an episodic "narrative" that has less to say than it thinks, and a soundtrack that probably equalled the production budget to clear. I'm not sure a throwback film like this is automatically doomed, but the most important aspect shared with its Sundance brethren is what sinks the whole affair: a total lack of an intended audience. Who the hell is this film for? It's handsomely made, but shrilly written and acted. This is a film about a thirteen-year-old coquette who ventures into the big bad world armed with short shorts and naïveté, so the flick predictably soon becomes a countdown to a rape scene(s). I don't understand who wants to spend time with these caricatures, to watch trash mingle with trash for the delight of trash. I cannot think of one non-prurient reason why Chloe Moretz' protagonist had to be so young and so aggressively sexualized by the film to achieve the outward aims the film pretends to hold. It's Art, I guess, but crassly conceived and morally suspect

[Andre Jurieu]

Hick (Derick Martini) It's as though the indie glut of the late 90s never ended-- kooky unlikable characters, liberal attitudes towards drugs and illicit sex, an episodic "narrative" that has less to say than it thinks, and a soundtrack that probably equalled the production budget to clear. I'm not sure a throwback film like this is automatically doomed, but the most important aspect shared with its Sundance brethren is what sinks the whole affair: a total lack of an intended audience. Who the hell is this film for? It's handsomely made, but shrilly written and acted. This is a film about a thirteen-year-old coquette who ventures into the big bad world armed with short shorts and naïveté, so the flick predictably soon becomes a countdown to a rape scene(s). I don't understand who wants to spend time with these caricatures, to watch trash mingle with trash for the delight of trash. I cannot think of one non-prurient reason why Chloe Moretz' protagonist had to be so young and so aggressively sexualized by the film to achieve the outward aims the film pretends to hold. It's Art, I guess, but crassly conceived and morally suspect

I wouldn't be so quick with the "Art" label. It's ridiculously bad and everyone involved in this has done something much, much, much better with their time. I walked out of this thinking that every actor involved should have either fired their agent immediately after finishing the project, or perhaps they should have trusted their agent more, because I can't see too many reasonable people recommend that anyone should have become involved in this project no matter how desperate they were for indie-cred.

[tarpilot]

Ha! I actually read "Derick Martini" as Demetri Martin for some damn reason, and was quite flummoxed reading that review...

[knives]

Wreck-It Ralph has a lot of wasted potential especially considering that Moore was basically the Brad Bird of Futurama. There are really two crippling failures to the film which keeps it as just another kids movie rather something great (leaving Paranorman to fend for itself) which it could be with such a genius premise and theme mixture. The first and biggest (due to it relating directly to Ralph's character arc and hence the whole premise of the film) problem is having a human villain (especially when the bugs are right there for your obligatory action climax). That just fudges the whole idea about no real villains etc that is the entire backbone of the film. The other problem is with the end of Silverman's character's arc which not only is basically a deus ex machina, but one which undermines her whole arc in much the same way Esmeralda being French in The Hunchback of Notre Dame does for arguments of its progressiveness (though Hugo at least wasn't aiming to be progressive). It is pretty damn funny though.

[wigwam]

This Must Be the Place is too busybody w/ the camera work and other purposeless visuals and completely awful in its last 10 mins or so but it still manages to be fun and enjyably watchable and Penn's performance is so much fun (not as Robt Smith as I expected, more Ozzy-ish). The Jarmusch/Wenders/Stroszek influence of the narrative should've extended to some visual restraint. Oh well.

A Late Quartet is dynamic melodrama w/ 3 amazing performers (and 2 poor ones) with textured yet controled photography+art direction, beautiful music (especially Angelo Badalmenti's thankless task of bridging diagetic masterworks, a brutal balancing act which he does so well you might miss it), and achingly resonant themes of trust, vocation, ambition, self-esteem, loss and resentment. A new favorite!

[The Narrator Returns]

I know it's hardly the best tool for assessing reviews, and there are only 7 reviews in, but I don't want to live in a world where The Twilight Blue Meth Saga: Breaking Bad Dawn: Edward and Bella and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 3/4 has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.