2012 movies – a few of my favorite things

And for the best of the fall (and Oscar) season, a quick overview of those films from more recent memory …

Ben Affleck proved his previous two directorial achievements were not flukes with his terrific Argo. Even knowing how the real life events turned out, Affleck’s movie was thrilling, and the attention to period detail was perfect. Casting the Americans trying to get safely out of Iran with basically unknown faces helped sell the story, while Affleck gave himself a plum role, but let veterans John Goodman and Alan Arkin steal the show as the Hollywood insiders who had to scam everyone with a cockamamie scheme involving a fake movie. This was the year’s first real Oscar contender for Best Picture (and Affleck should earn a Best Director nomination as well).

Cloud Atlas is a mind-boggling, breathtaking epic journey across time, spanning a period of 500 years with a group of actors playing several difference characters (and races and genders) in each segment. It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did and it ended up being a beautiful story of love and standing up for what’s right. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving and the rest of the cast were magnificent, but the story proved to be the ultimate hard sell to the movie-going masses and the film tragically under-performed at the box office. Here’s hoping more people will give it a shot when it comes out on video. May not earn any major Oscar love, but the makeup should be a no brainer for the award (although you can bet they’ll give it to The Hobbit).

After a four year break (again, due to MGM’s bankruptcy), Daniel Craig finally returned to the big screen as James Bond in Skyfall, which easily erased the bad taste left by the previous Bond film. After 50 years, it’s hard to do anything really new with the character, and after several years of giving us a grittier, more realistic Bond, the producers cleverly let us know with the new entry that things are going to be going back to basics. The new film gave us a few of the classic Bond one-liners, reintroduced several classic characters including gadget man Q (Ben Wishaw), brought back the Aston-Martin (briefly), established that there really is only one James Bond (and he’s from Scotland, wink wink), and tore out our hearts with the death of a major character (of which there certainly isn’t only one). Add in a terrific opening title sequence and theme song by Adele, and Skyfall has left us all eagerly awaiting Bond’s next adventure. Could earn technical awards nominations, and the song is definitely award winning material — if they even have the category this year.

Daniel Day-Lewis will win Best Actor for Lincoln. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. There simply was not a more mesmerizing, engrossing, true embodiment of a person or character on screen this year by an actor, and anyone else who is nominated in the category should put away that acceptance speech this year. As for the film, it will most certainly be nominated in several categories including Best Picture, Best Director and possibly Best Supporting Actress (Sally Field, although she could qualify as a lead), but I can’t say that the entire film as a whole was a success. The scenes of Lincoln and Mary struggling with their lives at home seemed more out of a Lifetime TV movie (even though Field brought some much needed humanity to Mary Todd Lincoln), but the inner workings of passing the 13th amendment provided the film with some gripping drama. I never though passing a bill could be exciting, but Spielberg and company made it so.

Despite what some critics said about Anthony Hopkins’ performance, I thought he did a terrific job as legendary director Alfred Hitchcock. Telling the story of the making of Psycho should have been a huge draw for movie fans, but the film seems to have been regarded as more of a puff piece after HBO’s darker look at Hitch in The Girl. And if he hadn’t had such little screen time, I would peg James D’Arcy for a Supporting Actor nod for his mind-blowing performance as Anthony Perkins. He truly nailed Perkins and I really wanted to see more of him in the movie. With Hopkins and D’Arcy doing such spot-on impressions of familiar people, I have to hand it to Helen Mirren for really holding it all together as Hitchcock’s wife, Alma. She showed us that Hitch really needed her in his life, and even with what she put up with, Alma stayed by his side — quietly — and let him have the spotlight. Mirren’s performance finally put the spotlight on Alma, and could earn her an Oscar nomination.

Love it or hate it, Les Misérables is a magnificent translation of the stage musical to the big screen. Of course, it’s an entirely different beast altogether, but it should be enough to satisfy the true fans of the show. Director Tom Hooper’s mandate that the actors sing live on set gave more emotion to the performances, and his penchant for shooting in extreme (sometimes a little too extreme) close-up gave the film more intimacy than you could ever get seeing it on stage which made some of the performances, particularly Anne Hathaway’s rendition of I Dreamed a Dream, all the more powerful and emotional. She’s probably guaranteed herself a nomination, if not the Oscar, but the lackluster reviews by the mainstream critics may have hurt the film’s chances in the Best Picture and Best Director races.

So what were some of your favorite movies of 2012? Let us know in the comments section below!