So we've run down films 10-6 and now we're onto the top 5 films of the year. What will be in there? will The Dark Knight Rises be in there? The Expendables 2? Who knows?...you can find out what has entertained me the most and annoyed me the most this year by clicking the read more button. Check out 5-1 after the jump...
LOOPER
(2012) Dir: Rian Johnson
Time travel
is a difficult plot device to get right, only a few have succeeded
such as The Time Machine, Primer and Back To The Future to name but a
few, Looper can be added to that list because director/writer Rian
Johnson has crafted a well thought out and easy to follow time travel
plot that doesn't fall into paradox or indecipherable sillyness.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a young Bruce Willis and Bruce Willis
plays an old Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Levitt is a looper, an assassin
hired to kill criminals sent back from the future by the mob. He is
there to close their loop hence the title. When one Criminal is sent
back and manages to escape, Levitt goes on the hunt for the man who
turns out to be himself from the future who plans on killing an 8
year old boy who would grow up to become a successful gangster. It's
like Johnson watched Terminator and decided that the killing machine
coming back from the future to kill the leader of the resistance plot
needed an update and does this with style and a frantic pace which
keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat throughout it's 119 minute
runtime. All the performances are good with Willis probably giving
his best performance in a long while. There is a small problem I had
with film at the start and that was the way they changed Levitt's
face to make him look more like Bruce, but after about 20 minutes or
so, that problem wore off. I loved Looper for the fact that it was a
well thought out and well written, directed and acted science fiction
film that didn't have giant robots beating the shit out of each other
and an over reliance on CGI. It's one of my top films of the year for
that reason and the fact that I was entertained for the entire film.
WORST
THE DARKEST
HOUR (2012) Dir: Chris Gorak
One of the
biggest let downs of the year for me as I'd seen the trailers and
generally got quite excited about this film, an alien invasion film
set in Moscow about aliens that hide within light and the methods
people adopt to survive in the post invasion world. Great
concept....absolutely garbage film. Badly written dialogue and
characters with Emile Hirch slumming it in such dreck. Fuck, this film
pissed me off. Characters do some of the dumbest things I've ever
seen and there are so many WTF moments that you'd be scratching your head asking how on earth someone got paid to write this piece of shit.
Skyline is masterpiece compared to this.
BEST
THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012) Dir: Simon West
I've
reviewed both The Expendables and Expendables 2 on the site and I
wasn't that impressed with the first film, I bought into the hype and
was severely let down as it didn't live up to it's promotional
material. However, The Expendables 2, is about 150x better than the
first and is pretty much just full force action from start to finish.
Stallone hands over directing duties to Con Air director Simon West
who definitely knows how to shoot an action scene. Stallone
co-scripted with 16 blocks and 80s cult vampire classic VAMP writer,
Richard Wenk. This time the expendables are up against Jean Claude
Van Damme's evil Vilain, a sadist who enjoys the company of fuckin'
big knives. This time round Mickey Rourke is out, Jet Li makes only a
short cameo at the start but Arnie, Bruce and Chuck fuckin' Norris
show up with Bruce and Arnie trading one liners and firing big ass
guns. The film is total all out action done on a scale we've not seen
since Commando. Jason Statham fights Scott Adkins, Stallone goes one
on one with Van Damme and Arnie pulls the door off a smart car. This
is old school action movie film making, that reminded me of the films
of George P.Cosmatos, Ted Kotcheff, Mark L.Lester and Joseph Zito.
The Expendables 2 is probably one of the best Action films of the
year and definitely one of best action films of the last few years
too.WORST
TWENTY8K
(2012) Dir: David Kew & Neil Thompson
Here's
another film in a long list of 'yoof' films that British film
industry keeps spewing up on us. This could have been an interesting
film but it ended up being the same as every other U.K film based on
London gangs. Silly characters doing silly things all wrapped up in a
plot involving a murder, a gang, corrupt politicians and corrupt
coppers. The sad thing is this was written by the guy who wrote State
Of Play and directed by two middle aged white guys who's grasp on the
'yoof' of today is completely skewed. There's some nice shots of
London but thats about it. The film boasts a great british cast that
includes Parminda Nagra, Jonas Armstrong, Kaya Scolderlero, Michael
Socha and Stephen Dillane, who all look like they're in the wrong
film. Avoid.
BEST
THE DARK
KNIGHT RISES (2012) Dir: Christopher Nolan
As with all
the Christopher Nolan Batman films I’ve never bought into the hype
because I didn't want to be let down. The Dark Knight Rises is no
exception. After the incredible second film in Nolan's trilogy and
the out of this world performance from Heath Ledger as The Joker, how
could Nolan step it up, he could go bigger and make it one gigantic
explosion of a film or he could make a near 3 hour movie that
explores themes of friendship, betrayal, loyalty and redemption and a
film that looks deeper into the characters that we thought we knew
and also gives us some new characters along with it. Luckily he chose
the latter option and what we got was an engrossing action drama with
outstanding performances and some insane action set pieces. The Dark
Knight Rises had a budget of $250,000,000 which Nolan used
fantastically. Every penny is on screen and as usual there is very
little CGI which is only used for the scenes with the bat plane. I
don't want to go into too much detail here because I am planning a
full review soon, but the film was epic, well written and incredibly
well directed with outstanding performances from Christian Bale, Gary
Oldman, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and Morgan Freeman. Anne
Hathaway was brilliant in her role as Catwoman/Selina Kyle which gave
Michelle Pfeifer a run for her money, she was manipulative, crafty
and very sexy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt kicked ass as John Blake, a young
police officer who is recruited by Oldman to track down batman and
Tom Hardy was just mean as Bane, a villain that was under used in
Batman and Robin, which got his character totally wrong. It's a
fantastic film but, and there is a but, it just falls short of the
immensity of The Dark Knight.
WORST
STORAGE 24
(2012) Dir: Johannes Roberts
A British
monster movie written by Noel Clarke and directed by Johannes Roberts
that follows a group of people trapped inside a storage warehouse
after a plane crashes in London. Our group of badly fleshed out
characters find them selves up against an alien creature that has
escaped from one of the cargo crates that the downed plane was
carrying. Everything about this film sucked ass, the acting,
directing, the creature, the dumb decisions characters make and
monster movie cliches that they could have avoided but didn't. I've
seen better monster films on the SyFy channel. You would think that
for someone who had spent a good few years on Doctor Who, Noel Clarke
would have learnt a thing or two about making or writing a monster
flick but no, he followed the same generic pattern most films do.
There is nothing in this film that deserves any praise. It's crap.
BEST
THE RAID
(2012) Dir: Gareth Evans
WORST
TWILIGHT:
BREAKING DAWN PT1 (2011) Dir: Bill Condon
Ok, now let
me just say that as a man who grew up watching Vampire films like
Lost Boys, Near Dark and the Hammer Dracula films, I find Twilight
slightly insulting, but then again i'm not a 12 year old girl or
menopausal woman so i'm definitely not the target audience for
Twilight, but it's still a film that I watched and yes this may sound
biased because I am male and over a certain age to find this series
of films appealing, but as a film reviewer I need to be open minded.
Breaking Dawn Part 1 is nearly 2 ½ hours in length and in those two
and a half hours nothing happens, The sparkly Vampire and the morally
bankrupt Bella get married and go on their honeymoon to a sunny
tropical island where the vampire sits out and sparkles in the sun
and doesn't explode into screaming and flames, they play chess and
have awkward teen sex that ends when Eddie breaks the bed because his
vampire strength is so fucking hard core. Then they go back to falks
(that's where it's set) where Bella discovers she's pregnant and then
dies during child birth only to be turned into a vampire at the last
minute. God I fucking hated this film, it's badly written, the
direction is mediocre and Kristen Stewert continues to convince me
she has absolutely no acting ability. Fuck you Stephanie Meyer for
inflicting this dog shit up on us you hack. AVOID LIKE THE FUCKING
PLAGUE.
BEST
CABIN IN THE
WOODS (2012) Dir: Drew Goddard
Much like
The Raid, Cabin In The Woods has redefined the horror genre and what
did it take?, two geeks with a love of horror films and a shit load
of monsters. Buffy/Angel and Firefly creator and director of the big
budget Avengers film, Joss Whedon joins forces with the writer of
Cloverfield, Drew Goddard for an affectionate twist on the old cabin
in the woods scenario. Goddard directs from a script written both
Whedon and Goddard. Right that's professionalism out of the way now
onto my thoughts on this film....Fuck me this film is off the chain,
Everything about it is just so well thought out. You get the 'collage
kids' who aren't your usual collage kids, who take a trip to a cabin
in the woods owned by the cousin of one of the kids. So far so
generic, but what this sets up is a crazy assault on your geek
senses. Cabin In The woods takes the cabin genre and adds a definite
Whedon flavour too it. If you ever watched Buffy and season 4 in
particular you may recall that Riley was an agent for a secret
monster fighting squad, well Cabin in the woods takes that idea and
adds a more malevolent purpose behind it. Instead of capturing the
monsters this secret organization unleashes them onto unsuspecting
participants in a yearly ritual that is meant to protect the world
from the elder gods, these giant evil monsters who are being kept in
some sort of hellmouth (buffy) and it's up to the secret organization
to kill five people, five of the usual horror genre staples, The
Jock, The Scholar, The Whore, The Fool and The Virgin, they turn
normal everyday kids into these people with the use of pheromones,
ingredients in hair colour and spiking alcohol. While the kids come
face to face with the evil creatures unleashed by organization, the
entire ritual is watched over by two office workers who are in
control of what happens. It's such a hard film to write a plot
synopsis for because so much happens and it would genuinely spoil the
awesomeness of the film if wrote it all out. It's just such a clever
film and the final 20 minutes will blow your mind. I may not have
been a fan of Whedon's The Avengers, but I am a huge fan of this
film, which is why it sits as my favourite film of 2012.
WORST
TAKEN 2 (2012) Dir: Olivier Megaton
Oh man what
a fuck up of a movie. I am a massive fan of the first Taken film, if
I was doing the site in 2008, Taken would have been my #1 film of the
year so it's such a shame that it's highly anticipated sequel gets
the #1 worst film of the year. What happened? Why does it suck so
many balls and why would I even consider putting a Liam Neeson film
as worst film of the year?. The reason is because the film is lazy,
it's badly shot and incredibly badly directed by silly named Olivier
Megaton, the man who could have made an awesome action film out of
Colombiana but instead just made a run of the mill generic
action/revenge film, hell this guy fucked up the Transporter series
and that's not exactly an oscar contender but fuck, what was Besson
thinking with this film, there are some many glaring goofs in the
film and so many WHAT THE JESUS H FUCK WAS THAT? Moments that really
made me so angry. Liam Neeson was his usual badass self, Maggie Grace
was good as Kim but Famke Jansen was an expendable character that had
no business being in this sequel and don't even get me started on the
villain, Boris the fuckin' bullet dodger from Snatch. It seemed as
though Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen didn't really want to make a
sequel so just wrote the stupidest action film they could think of
and gave it to a director just as a joke. The violence was watered
down so kids could see it which pissed me off because the first film
contains some brutal violence. Brian Mills just didn't have the same
drive he did in the first film. It's complete shite and that is why
it's my worst film of the year. Such a disappointment.
2012 was actually a really great year for films, besides the ones i've chosen as my top 10, we had a lot of very entertaining films. Honourable mentions go to THE HUNGER GAMES, THE MUPPETS, SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES, GOD BLESS AMERICA, OUTPOST 2, BAIT, BEING ELMO, CHRONICLE, MAN ON A LEDGE, THE GREY, THE DIVIDE, HUGO, MACHINE GUN PREACHER, SAFE HOUSE, THIS MEANS WAR, THE SWEENEY, PROMETHEUS and even though i wasn't a fan, THE AVENGERS. But we've also had some major disappointments, M:I4, ASSASSINATION GAMES, CONTAGION, COSMOPOLIS, JACK AND JILL, GOON, COLD LIGHT OF DAY just to name a few.
Here's hoping we get another great year in 2013 if the world doesn't end on 21/12/2012.
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