SAVAGE SCORECARD 2012-PART FOUR: MY TOP TEN FAVORITE FILMS OF 2012

At last, we reach the top, the very top!

Out of all of the entries in my annual four part series, this installment is my favorite to write as I have just one more chance to give praise to the films that touched me the deepest and rattled my cages the most. The films that went higher and further than all others. The ones that flat out blew my mind and broke my heart. These films, for me in 2012, represent the BEST of THE BEST. And here they are...

10. "THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER" Directed by Stephen Chbosky
This film was the year's most gloriously fragile work as well as one of the most audacious. Based from Chbosky's own celebrated and critically acclaimed young adult novel, "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower" details a school year in the life of the deeply introverted and troubled Charlie (a wonderful Logan Lerman) as he begins his life in high school. While friendless for a spell, he eventually is taken under the wings of  Patrick (an excellent Ezra Miller) and his step-sister, Sam (Emma Watson, just terrific in her first post "Harry Potter" role), and they introduce him into their small circle of sophisticated social misfits.

I found the film to be so beautifully delicate and autumnal because Chbosky perfectly nails the adolescent experience when moments can feel interminable, meaningless and full of heartbreaking loneliness and then as if spun on a cosmic dime, your life can be filled with uplifting and an infinite sense of possibility. He fully captured not only the inner world of being a social outcast but also the extreme seriousness that provides the painful, treacherous urgency of finding friends and keeping them as well. Charlie's need for connection is nothing less than his lifeline and through that pain, Chbosky also uses his film to ask of us to try and take the time to just be kind to others because you have absolutely no idea of how much baggage someone else is carrying internally and just how precariously someone is hanging onto life. The audaciousness of the film for me is actually quite simple. Chbosky has actually created a work that proclaims that teenagers are real, three dimensional human beings with complex foibles, hopes, dreams and fears just like any adult. For an industry that completely caters to the young, that youthful audience is almost always pathetically ill served. Chbosky, like John Hughes and painfully few others before him, has the audacity to believe fiercely that teenagers are worthy and completely deserving of a film experience that honors and values their existence, that can entertain as well as being unabashedly artful. "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower" accomplishes all of those feats and more with a purity that is rare and it is indeed the very best film of its kind that I have seen since the peak of John Hughes' work.
Originally reviewed November 2012

9. "FLIGHT" Directed by Robert Zemeckis
The cinematic returns of both Director Robert Zemeckis from his self imposed 12 year CGI/motion capture exile and Denzel Washington from a string of legend coasting performances gave me a powerfully executed film of challenging moral and interpersonal ambiguity that was supremely riveting and provided no easy answers. "Flight" stars Washington as Captain William "Whip" Whittaker, a commercial airline pilot consumed with nasty addictions to cocaine, alcohol and sex. When his quick, reckless thinking saves nearly the entire plane full of passengers during a spectacular and extremely terrifying plane crash, Whip, still under the influence, is certified a hero. But the even more perilous journey is interior as the bulk of "Flight" deals with Whip's continuous struggles with his addictions, demons and failings as the crash is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, possibly bringing his private pains to the harsh light of the public surface.

Denzel Washington was correctly nominated for his searing performance, which is the very best work I have seen from him in many years, reminding us all once again that he is one of our finest acting treasures. As for Zemeckis, I loved how this film worked essentially as a companion piece to "Cast Away" (2000) as both films begin with a devastating place crash (which Zemeckis presents with nightmarish skill and terror), and then continues to detail how a man survives in a world he had never imagined for himself. Zemeckis and Washington ask of us to think of the nature of hubris, control and what a hero can actually be, especially if that person is as flawed and as dangerous as Whip. I also deeply appreciated Screenwriter John Gatins' wonderfully structured screenplay which was filled with crisp dialogue and compelling motivations that gave Washington as well as all of the actors much to chomp upon. Even though its actual final moments were a little too tidy for my tastes, "Flight" was one of the year's most dramatically gripping films.
Originally reviewed November 2012

8.  "THE AVENGERS" Directed by Joss Whedon
This was the very best film in the comic book genre since Director Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (2008) as it was just a flat out sensational thrill ride which brought the superhero characters from the Marvel Comics universe to vibrant life to an astoundingly high-flying degree. Joss Whedon magically performed the stellar task of completely honoring and remaining consistent with all of the Marvel Comics movies that have worked as stepping stones to this one while also creating a stand alone film where absolutely every single character is faithfully represented from the source material and all of whom (and the actors who portray them) are given their fullest moments to shine as bright as the sun. It would have been so easy to just make this film nothing more than mindless explosions and endless quips from Robert Downey Jr. but Whedon so smartly ensured that we had a rich story, sharp writing and characters to ground the proceedings and then send us off into the stratosphere with a war sequence that topped itself over and over and over again with flash, excitement, awe and surprising and brilliantly placed and delivered humor. I honestly do not know how filmmakers are able to keep the seemingly infinite details of a film as large scaled as this one together. But Joss Whedon performed this task with supreme magnificence.
Originally reviewed May 2012

7. "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" Directed by Christopher Nolan
When I wrote my "Time Capsule" series celebrating the my favorite films from the decade of 2000-2009, Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" ranked very highly within my Top Ten favorite films from that decade. With "The Dark Knight Rises," Nolan doesn't quite scale those heights again...and really, how could he? Even so, his final installment in his extraordinarily re-imagined Batman trilogy, truly re-defined the meaning of "grand finale" with this relentlessly grim and overwhelmingly exhausting epic experience.

I once described "Batman Begins" (2005) as an "overture" and "The Dark Knight" as an "opera." Continuing with that musical terminology, "The Dark Knight Rises" functions as a "requiem." It is a somber, mournful film and yet one that also builds to a crescendo so intense it threatened to crack the theater screen in half. Throughout all three of these films and this one in particular, I have loved how Nolan has treated these works not solely as "comic book movies" but more as literary adaptations, with a near Dickensian approach to detail and moral complexity. In fact, it could be argued that this series has not truly been about Batman as it has really been an exploration into the flawed psyche of Bruce Wayne (terrifically played by Christian Bale) and the soul of Gotham City. "The Dark Knight Rises" is a mammoth achievement for Christopher Nolan, and one of the very best lessons on how the entertainment value of the big budget blockbuster and a filmmaker's rich and uncompromising artistic vision can meet in the middle to make something stunningly gargantuan and deeply inspiring.
Originally reviewed July 2012

6. "SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK" Directed by David O. Russell
This was one of the biggest surprises of the year as it not only completely confirmed that Bradley Cooper can act, that Jennifer Lawrence is a young actress with a screen presence and dramatic force to be reckoned with, that Robert De Niro still has his mojo and that Writer/Director David O. Russell has made his best film in many years. This marvelous film miraculously combines a love story, a dance contest, the culture of sports fanaticism, the realistic, pulsating beats of a Boston neighborhood and a family drama without making any false steps. What I appreciated the very most was Russell's deft, honest, realistic and entirely humane exploration of mental illness, a topic most movies then to either sidestep, ignore or overplay and exaggerate to cloying degrees. Russell just presents everything with a matter of fact frankness that makes every moment crackle with an emotional freshness that was as vibrant and uplifting as it was wrenching. An excellent piece of work!
Originally reviewed January 2013  

5. "RUBY SPARKS" Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
This was one of the movies that absolutely nobody saw and it whisked through my city's movie theaters rapidly. Such a shame as this literary fantasy and cautionary tale also provided one of the year's most provocative and very best love stories. Paul Dano stars as a lonely, depressed and profoundly introverted literary wunderkind, who after striking gold with a hit novel at the age of 19 is now approaching the age of 30 and has been struggling with his extremely difficult second novel ever since. Inspiration arrives in the form of a young woman who visits him in a dream and upon waking, our hero begins to feverishly write and write until he begins to fall in love with his fantasy girl. And then, his creation named "Ruby Sparks" (in an outstanding performance by Zoe Kazan, who also wrote the screenplay) suddenly appears in the flesh in his apartment.

Where "Ruby Sparks" goes from this point is just not for me to even begin to explain as I firmly believe that it is something to see and feel for yourselves. Dayton and Faris have made a most challenging love story as it asks of the characters  as well as ourselves, what if our romantic partner was indeed everything we wanted for them to be. The dark side of that sense of romantic wish fulfillment fueled the film and propelled it from a whimsical fantasy and smart exploration of writer's block into a near psychological thriller. Zoe Kazan is a sight and talent to behold, the comparatively quieter yet no less intense Paul Dano is her equal and Dayton and Faris have helmed a film that deeply resonated with me and I strongly feel deserves to be celebrated greatly. For those who claim that there is no more originality in the movies, you need to seek this film out!
Originally reviewed August 2012

4. "BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD" Directed by Behn Zeitlin
Sometimes a film arrives, as if from out of nowhere, and somehow and amazingly nearly re-defines what a movie experience can actually be. Behn Zeitlin's "Beasts Of The Southern Wild" is exactly one of those types of movies. It is a superbly haunting experience that fuses the sensibilities of a fable, a fever dream, spiritual inter-connectivity, apocalyptic and post apocalyptic realities and fantasies, prehistoric monsters, the unshakable bonds to and within a community, and an unorthodox Father/daughter relationship with a powerhouse of a performance by young and ferociously commanding Quvenzhane Wallis as the fierce and adventurous Hushpuppy at the film's emotional core.

Despite the often harrowing nature of the story, which seems to be set somewhere between the coast of Louisiana and the edge of the world, "Beasts Of The Southern Wild" is an evocatively executed tone poem to the resourcefulness of love and survival in a universe where all things are connected, therefore effecting each other in simultaneously small and seismic ways. This is one of those movies when after you watch it, you feel as if you have been somewhere. This film is transportive, transcendent and one of the year's finest achievements.
Originally reviewed July 2012

3. "LIFE OF PI" Directed by Ang Lee
Simply stated, in the long, varied career of Director Ang Lee, "Life Of Pi," his majestic adaptation of the supposedly unfilmmable best selling novel, is unquestionably his masterpiece. Like the previous entry on this list, it also merges aspects of fables and fantasies with brutally harsh realities and a harrowing exploration of survival. Where the film is conceptually boldest is how Lee asks of us to seek out, question and comprehend the symbiotic nature logic and faith, of the scientific and spiritual inter-connectivity, two areas that many would love to keep as separate as possible but I feel are actually strongly intertwined. Suraj Sharma's performance as the titular Pi, a teenager who finds himself battling for survival upon a small raft against the unforgiving elements after a tragic shipwreck alongside a tiger improbably named Richard Parker, is sensational through his enormous physicality and the anguish and yearning of his inner spiritual quest. Since much of the film is set aboard the life raft, Ang Lee utilizes some of the finest special effects and CGI technology witnessed this year to take us for a ride upon the cosmic ocean unlike anything we have seen before. This is a spiritual odyssey that never at any point functions as dogma as it is an all inclusive experience to people of all thoughts, faiths, beliefs and even atheism as we are all asked to question our place and purpose within this vast universe. "Life Of Pi" is a thrilling, remarkable, monumental dream world of a movie so elegantly and empathetically told.
Originally reviewed November 2012

2. "SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD" Directed by Lorene Scafaria
For most of this year, this movie was my Number One pick for the best film of 2012 and it still hurts me to see how criminally ignored it was critically as well as at the box office. Lorene Scafaria created one of the year's boldest and bravest films with an excellent sense of tonality and a directorial sure handedness that would upend many other filmmakers. This story of the final three weeks in the life of planet Earth, as it is about to be destroyed by an oncoming asteroid, is a dark comedy of manners as Scafaria beautifully creates a deeply humane film that elicits what happens once all societal rules become meaningless in the face of extinction.

Steve Carell and Keira Knightley star as Dodge and Penny, two lonely people who live in the same apartment building but have not met until the grim realization of the end of absolutely everything arrives with crushing certainty. The twosome end up taking a road trip. Penny promises to return Dodge to a lost love, he promises to find her a plane so she can see her family back in England. The road they travel externally and internally provided me with the very best love story I have seen since Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" (2004) as the intimate and the epic congeal masterfully. This is a love story told with sparkling dialogue, tremendous understanding and empathy and the heartbreaking yet life affirming nature of at last feeling a sense of significance with another person despite the fact that the universe is just this close to rendering you completely insignificant. It is haunting, saddening, constantly surprising, hilarious, shocking and yet, Scafaria keeps the entire film firmly grounded as well as richly warm. I have not been able to shake this film ever since I saw it last summer. I urge you to try it now and I really think that you just may feel the same as this is one beautiful motion picture.
Originally reviewed July 2012  

1. "DJANGO UNCHAINED" Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Unquestionably, undeniably, and indisputably, Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" is my favorite film of 2012. This titanic powder keg of a motion picture has got it all and then some, as Tarantino creatively tops himself all over again with this orgiastic blend of revisionist history, the blending of the Spaghetti Western and the 1970s "blaxploitation" film, the deconstruction and ultimate destruction of the Hollywood slave epic while existing as a Hollywood slave epic, the ingenious re-telling of a German fable while the film also creates its own mythology, and most movingly, a mountainous African-American love story as fueled through his endlessly inventive storytelling, peerless dialogue, a wicked sense of humor, stunning cinematography, always surprising music choices (Jim Croce's "I Got A Name" has never sounded so poignant before) and bar raising performances from the entire cast.

But what makes his story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave newly emancipated by a white German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who then join forces to rescue his enslaved wife (Kerry Washington) from the insidious plantation/slave owner Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), exist as much more than yet another Tarantino revenge fantasy bloodbath (which it is) is that "Django Unchained" possess an unprecedented and newfound level of moral outrage. This is a film that does not trivialize the African-American Holocaust but completely respects the subjects of racism and slavery as Tarantino digs, digs and digs so deeply into the physical, verbal and most importantly, the psychological brutality that existed so prevalently during one of America's darkest historical chapters.

Yes, this is a violent film. Sometimes, excruciatingly so. Yes, you will hear the word "nigger" exhaustively. And as well as we should!!! Because Quentin Tarantino understands that if you are going to deal with racism and slavery then you have to be fearless and deal with it. This ain't "The Help," dear readers, a film so afraid of its subject matter that it never wanted to make the audience feel uncomfortable. News flash, folks! There is absolutely, positively, NOTHING about racism or slavery that should make you feel comfortable and  Quentin Tarantino fearlessly takes us on a a wrenching odyssey that explodes into a cathartic fury, rage filled retribution and level of emotional deliverance that I have not experienced in quite the same way before.

Of course there were never African-American bounty hunters, but Tarantino also wisely understands that the image is absolutely everything! That the sight of a strong, attractive, heroic, emancipated African-American man on horseback (and who is also the fastest gun in the South) to the characters within the film as well as the audience is a symbol that the nightmare of slavery was a soulless business of human trafficking and eradication that African-Americans were not meant to survive...but we did!!!!!! Therefore, "Django Unchained" exists as a work that doubles as pop culture adventure as well as a testament to the African-American reconstruction of the mind, body and spirit.

Quentin Tarantino is working at an entirely different level than most filmmakers, and this time, he has re-set his own creative bar that much higher.
Originally reviewed December 2012

That's my TOP TEN. My favorites of 2012 and now, I can say, that's a wrap for the Savage Scorecard series for this year. Let's see what 2013 will bring my way. I cannot wait!!!!!