You can have your Top 10 lists stuffed with cold and corny prestige pics and all those “respectable” “films” headed for Oscar gold, but when I think back on 2012 I remember the movies that wrapped themselves around my heart and brain like a warm blanket made of light and sound and kick-ass jammin' electric guitars and made me feel excited to be alive, dammit!
(I can also pinpoint with a wistful pang the precise moment when Tyler Perry broke my heart. Still love you, TP.)
These are the films, big and small, ambitious and soulful, heart-rending and bone-crunching, about lovers, fighters, time-travelers, masters, closet-dwellers, hermaphrodite basketball players and friends (forever) that made my year at the movies. Join me in celebrating these magical movie moments and let's hope 2013 delivers even more awesomeness.
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2012 was a ho-hum year for "serious" cinema. As proof, the Oscar race has narrowed to films like the chipper Argo and dreary Zero Dark Thirty — a chase so routine that the alternative is a Steven Spielberg period piece as wholesome and agreeable as enriched bread. But it was also a banner year for the films that we'll still want to watch in 2022: Ambitious over-reachers (Cloud Atlas, The Master, Les Miserables), loony passion projects (Killer Joe, Magic Mike, The Paperboy), and perfect popcorn flicks (Step Up 4, The Expendables 2, Premium Rush).
That last category is frequently left off top ten lists, but it deserves our applause. When studios get tired of risking $250 million on a single blockbuster (and audiences get tired of paying $14 just to keep up with water cooler conversation), mid-priced modest hits like Looper will be our collective salvation — and help build the next generation of filmmakers and stars. The films that made my Top Ten did so because they were bold, memorable and flawless (or at least two of the three). But of course, if critics can judge art, we should take our own creative risks. And so I've written my remarks in haiku.
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It's that time, folks! Kick off the end-of-year deluge of Top 10 lists with the best films of the year, as selected by Cahiers du Cinema. Because why bother waiting for the rest of 2012's Oscar hopefuls to screen when you've already had your mind blown by Leos Carax's wondrously WTF Holy Motors?
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Pop superstar Kylie Minogue may be an unlikely figure to appear as a tragic figure in French filmmaker Leos Carax's surreal Holy Motors, but given the numerous twists and turns the Australian-born singer has had, first gaining notoriety in what now seems like a former life as a soap star, the ever adventurous performer is always seeking out the new. So, Holy Motors is a perfect pit-stop. Describing this sensually unnerving and stimulating adventure is simply boarding a fast train to hopelessness, it's a day-long ride through Carax's imagination. But to give some sense of the film, which had its U.S. debut at the recent New York Film Festival and is slowly heading into theatrical release this week, Minogue is one character in a series of "appointments" for Monsieur Oscar. In her moment, she gets to do what legions of her fans love - she sings. But even for a crooning vet like Kylie, even that was a new experience.
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Pop star Kylie Minogue is in Cannes, and she's showcasing a career move: Starring in a film. Not just any film mind you, but Leos Carax's Holy Motors, which attendees here are calling the wackiest selection to hit the festival in years, a pretty amazing feat. With cyber-monsters, talking machines and a story that is a complete trip, Minogue plays two characters in Carax's tale, which centers on Monsieur Oscar — who himself is in fact many characters: a captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man and a half-dozen more.
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