Best movies of 2012 so far

What do I know about growing up black in America and making it big in a white man's world?
Zilch.
And if I did, my ego would never, ever inflate. Will's has been inflating since his first rap record.
I'd never tell Charlize Theron that a shitty fucking movie "will be good for her career", like he did on the set of the ridiculous HAND-ON-COCK.
Mr. Box-Office is giving her tips on being successful.
Yeah.
She won an Oscar, didn't she? For an UNBELIEVABLE part.
Will has how many statuettes?
That's right.
The big GOOSE EGG.

Yes, see the movie. DJANGO UNCHAINED. I recommend it, and these others. I know you'e seen MOONRISE KINGDOM. Did you see THE MASTER? I forget. How about THE DEEP BLUE SEA? Oscar and I agree in rating that very high. Then COSMOPOLIS? A Canadian director, one of the best and coolest literary adaptations I've seen -- THE DEEP BLUE SEA is one, but of a play, and much freer. LOOPER? After that if you haven't much time or cash for movie-going, switch over to the Best Foreign list, and see AMOUR, and try to see HOLY MOTORS, SISTER, OSLOW, AUG. 31, and RUST AND BONE. Those are musts.

But if you can't find most of those you might enjoy FLIGHT and also KILLING THEM SOFTLY. I guess LIFE OF PI isn't your thing, though it's a beautiful visual experience. Or if you want a scary wake-up call, see CHASING ICE.

I plan to watch a lot of 2012 releases during Winter Break. I missed so much during the year...and still there are 10 films released in 2012 I like a lot so I could realistically submit a list of favorites. What's great is that I can watch any film I want in a theater screen late at night after the theater has officially closed. I plan to watch The Master, Beasts of Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom soon, and Life of Pi before it leaves theaters. I have to say that I like very few new films as much as old films I treasure including some I am just discovering. Film is almost 120 years old. It's a deep well of magnificence and wonderment that is rarely matched by contempo films in my heart.

Good. I hope the format is okayl.

I have a DVD/BR player hooked up to the theater projector. It's quite a luxury to be able to do this; I feel it is a sort of compensation for not having $ to dine out or travel. Tonight I will screen Mario Monicelli's The Organizer (1963), with Mastroianni in the lead role. Last night my friends and I watched Kon Ichikawa's amazing An Actor's Revenge aka Revenge of a Kabuki Actor.

I'm on the same period, watching Bergman's "Faith Trilogy". It's a great period in film.

Indeed. And Bergman is so worth your time and attention.

I give my highest recommendation to THE ORGANIZER. I watched it in Criterion BD but I've seen captures from the DVD and it looks almost as great. This film is as funny and as serious as films get. Perfect balance of comedy and pathos, like Lubitsch at his best. Absolute must-see for everyone. The Ichikawa film may be more inventive, in the way that the style comments on the relationship between theater and film, and the fresh use of the widescreen frame, but it may be too "arty" or "stylized" for some viewers, and the print and transfer are just OK (not pristine like the Monicelli).

There are some nice looking restorations of B&W Italian films, and Monicelli did some very funny stuff. I've seen some at Lincoln Center. The Italians did some great comedies in the Fifties and Sixties. Where are they now?

WINTER LIGHT is remarkable. We can be glad we aren't the sons of strict Swedish ministers. Now I'm going to watch THE SILENCE. I had not watched this trilogy. I am catching up on Bergman I didn't see. I don't like FANNY AND ALEXANDER and now I know why I walked out of it originally. But I've seen it all now. in many ways it is inauthentic and weird (the glamorizing of his own past) but the basic problem is that this was a TV miniseries that was cut down to 3+ hours and it becomes an incoherent patchwork. SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE was the same thing, a TV miniseries, but it is very simple and unified, so the cutting down works fine. I liked SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, which would be very interesting to analyze. It has a kind of comic subtext. Awesome acting, as is true of all Bergman. Gunnar Björnstrand amazing in WINTER LIGHT. The last moment of THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY when the son is by himself and says "My father spoke to me!" and it's's like saying God spoke to him: brilliant, stunning. The last sequences of THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY are better than anything in WINTER LIGHT, but the latter has an austere beauty. It's like a design by Mies or Le Corbusier. I can see links with Antonioni. It is of the period but timeless.

I've also been watching all the Luis Bunuel films I avoided when they came out. I didn't like him; they sounded false to me. But now thanks to Criterion bonus material I know Bunuel was a really cool, fun guy who was true to his school in the deepest sense all his life, the only surrealist who stayed a surrealist all the way, and he had an amazing career of 50 years or so. His collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière is impressive, and humane. The "The Last Scenario" doc from 2009 by Carriere and Juan Luis Bunuel is very warm and enjoyable. Amazing how Dali' screwed Bunuel when he was struggling and in NYC working at MoMA. What is the compatibility of being a surrealist with being an anti-clerical anti-bourgeois leftist? Do Bunuel's film critiques of the bourgeoisie have any validity to leftists?

I wonder if Friday's news will affect "Django" box office. There's already been discussion over holding back release of Tom Cruise's new film, "Jack Reacher."

My views on Quentin's work have not changed and are well documented on this website. I will read your comments but refuse to see any more of his work and I won't reiterate my reasons why. However, if you wish to discuss violence in cinema on a separate thread, I will join in.

The link between violence in media (and that includes the news) and violence in society is correlated. Whether movies, games, television, or other sources of media - this glorification of gun play is a sad running commentary on what we view as most note worthy.

I try to judge films on a case by case basis rather than give a pass or fail to a director's work as a whole, but we don't have to discuss DJANGO, a film you're not going to see. My dream would be that I'd make it sound so interesting or so good that you'd break your rule and go and see it.

As for changing release of JACK REACHER and DJANGO UNCHAINED because of the school killings I hope not. That would be more American hypocracy. Coountries that watch and read about very violent stuff, like Japan, have a hundred times less gun violence than we do.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST LISTS.

Let's get back to 2012 BEST LISTS. I'd like to report the New York Times' three chief critics' 2012 llists, which were published yesterday (Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012). Click on the names to go to the whole articles with accompanying discussion, for each critic.

AMOUR and ZERO DARK THIRTY were the winners. On all three top ten lists. LINCOLN and THE MASTER on two top ten lists. Only Manohla lists HOLY MOTORS- points from me for that. MOONRISE KINGDOM doesn't do as well as I would have thought. Notably absent here: LOOPER. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK only on one list. I'm pleased that THE GRAY got one top ten listing, and regret having neglected that myself. I'm glad RUST AND BONE fared well. DJANGO only once.

Scott is doing like me, somewhat, with a separate documentaries list, though I don't think five is enough. Like Oscar who thought my referring to COMPLIANCE as a "documentary," I am jarred somehow by having THIS IS NOT A FILM persistently listed as one. It is more than and different from a documentary.

MANOHLA DARGIS.
Top ten, alphabetically:
AMOUR
THE DEEP BLUE SEA
THE GATEKEEPERS
HOLY MOTORS
THE MASTER
MOONRISE KINGDOM
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
ZERO DARK THIRTY
The rest of the best, alphabetically: AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY, ARGO, AUGUST AND AFTER, AUTO=COLLIER xv, BARBARA, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, BERNIE, BROOKLYN CASTLE, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, DEPARTURE, FOOTNOTE, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, THE KID WITH A BIKE, LIFE OF PI, MAGIC MIKE, A MAN VANISHES, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, MISS BALA, NAPOLEON OSLOW, AUGUST 31ST, THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS, RUST AND BONE, SKYFALL, STARLET, THIS IS NOT A FILM, THE TURIN HORSE, VIEW FROM THE ACROPOLIS.

A.O. SCOTT
1. AMOUR
2. LINCOLN
3. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
4. FOOTNOTE
5. THE MASTER
6. ZERO DARK THIRTY
7. DJANGO UNCHAINED
8. GOODBYE, FIRST LOVE
9. NEIGHBORING SOUNDS
10. THE GREY
HONORABLE MENTION
ARGO, BARBARA, BRAVE, CONSUMING SPIRITS, THE DEEP BLUE SEA, MOONRISE KINGDOM, PITCH PERFECT, RUST AND BONE, TAKE THIS WALTZ, THE TURIN HORSE.
TOP FIVE DOCUMENTARIES:
1. THE GATEKEEPERS
2. THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES
3. HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE
4. THIS IS NOT A FILM
5. THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE

STEPHEN HOLDEN
1. LINCOLN
2. AMOUR
3. ZERO DARK THIRTY
4. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
5. ARGO
6. ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
7. ELENA
8. HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE
9. THE INVISIBLE WAR
10. THE SESSIONS
11. RUST AND BONE

FILM COMMENT'S 50 BEST FILMS OF 2012.

This is complied from a poll of film critics and other film-related people chosen by the FSLC monthly. (FAREWELL MY QUEEN just won a major French best-of-the-year award; here, it dcomes in as #47. Due to the makeup of the polled group, a number of items score high that mainstream audiences will not even have heard of -- TABOO, for instance, and THE TURIN HORSE. I like that HOLY MOTORS is at the top.

1. Holy Motors
Leos Carax, France/Germany
2. The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson, U.S.
3. Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson, U.S.
4. This Is Not a Film
Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran
5. Amour
Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria
6. The Turin Horse
Béla Tarr, Hungary/France/Switzerland/Germany
7. The Kid With a Bike
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, France/Belgium
8. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey
9. Lincoln
Steven Spielberg, U.S.
10. Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn Bigelow, U.S.
11. Tabu
Miguel Gomes, Portugal
12. The Deep Blue Sea
Terence Davies, U.K.
13. Bernie
Richard Linklater, U.S.
14. Beasts of the Southern Wild
Benh Zeitlin, U.S.
15. Cosmopolis
David Cronenberg, Canada/France
16. Barbara
Christian Petzold, Germany
17. The Loneliest Planet
Julia Loktev, U.S./Germany
18. Silver Linings Playbook
David O. Russell, U.S.
19. Oslo, August 31st
Joachim Trier, Norway
20. Neighboring Sounds
Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil
21. Django Unchained
Quentin Tarantino, U.S.
22. Almayer’s Folly
Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium
23. Magic Mike
Steven Soderbergh, U.S.
24. Argo
Ben Affleck, U.S.
25. Attenberg
Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece
26. The Color Wheel
Alex Ross Perry, U.S.
27. Rust & Bone
Jacques Audiard, France/Belgium
28. Killer Joe
William Friedkin, U.S.
29. Looper
Rian Johnson, U.S.
30. Life of Pi
Ang Lee, U.S.
31. A Man Vanishes
Shohei Imamura, Japan
32. Skyfall
Sam Mendes, U.S.
33. The Gatekeepers
Dror Moreh, Israel
34. Elena
Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia
35. Haywire
Steven Soderbergh, U.S.
36. Damsels in Distress
Whit Stillman, U.S.
37. Abendland
Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria
38. Two Years at Sea
Ben Rivers, U.K.
39. How to Survive a Plague
David France, U.S.
40. Keep the Lights On
Ira Sachs, U.S.
41. A Burning Hot Summer
Philippe Garrel, France
42. Miss Bala
Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico
43. Footnote
Joseph Cedar, Israel
44. Compliance
Craig Zobel, U.S.
45. Alps
Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece
46. Kill List
Ben Wheatley, U.K.
47. Farewell, My Queen
Benoît Jacquot, France/Spain
48. In Another Country
Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
49. The Dark Knight Rises
Christopher Nolan, U.S.
50. The Day He Arrives
Hong Sang-soo, South Korea

FILM COMMENT'S BEST UNDISTRIBUTED FILMS OF 2012 LIST. (From the same poll of the same chosen list of film writers and others.)

50 BEST UNDISTRIBUTED FILMS OF 2012
BY ON 12.13.2012
* denotes self-distribution

1. Our Children
Joachim Lafosse, Belgium/Luxembourg/France/Switzerland
. Memories Look at Me
Song Fang, China
3. First Cousin Once Removed
Alan Berliner, U.S.
4. When Night Falls
Ying Liang, South Korea/China
5. Bwakaw
Jun Robles Lana, Philippines
6. Gebo and the Shadow
Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France
7. differently, Molussia
Nicolas Rey, France*
8. Perret in France and Algeria
Heinz Emigholz, Germany
9. The Extravagant Shadows
David Gatten, U.S.*
10. Three Sisters
Wang Bing, France/Hong Kong
11. Dormant Beauty
Marco Bellocchio, Italy/France
12. Far From Afghanistan
John Gianvito, Travis Wilkerson, Jon Jost, Minda Martin & Soon-Mi Yoo, U.S.*
13. Camille Rewinds
Noémie Lvovsky, France
14. Greatest Hits
Nicolás Pereda, Mexico/Canada/Netherlands
15. small roads
James Benning, U.S.*
16. Everybody in Our Family
Radu Jude, Romania/Netherlands
17. Shepard and Dark
Treva Wurmfeld, U.S.
18. Hannah Arendt
Margarethe von Trotta, Germany
19. Araf: Somewhere in Between
Yesim Ustaoglu, Turkey/France/Germany
20. Thursday Through Sunday
Dominga Sotomayor, Chile/Netherlands
21. Goodbye
Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran
22. After Lucia
Michel Franco, Mexico
23. Reconversão
Thom Andersen, Portugal/U.S.
24. Tiger Tail in Blue
Frank V. Ross, U.S.
25. Traveling Light
Gina Telaroli, U.S.
26. Sun Don't Shine
Amy Seimetz, U.S.
27. Postcards from the Zoo
Edwin, China/Germany/Hong Kong/Indonesia
28. 3
Pablo Stoll, Uruguay/Argentina/Germany/
Chile
29. The Invisible Ones
Sebastien Lifshitz, France
30. Everyday
Michael Winterbottom, U.K.
31. Twilight Portrait
Angelina Nikonova, Russia
32. Age Is…
Stephen Dwoskin, France/U.K.
33. The Strawberry Tree
Simone Rapisarda Casanova, Italy/Canada/Cuba
34. Here and There
Antonio Mendez Esparza, Spain/U.S./Mexico
35. Louise Wimmer
Cyril Mennegun, France
36. Outrage Beyond
Takeshi Kitano, Japan
37. Back to Stay
Milagros Mumenthaler, Argentina/Switzerland
38. The Final Member
Jonah Bekhor & Zach Math, Canada
39. Kinshasa Kids
Marc-Henri Wajnberg, Belgium/France
40. The War
James Benning, U.S.
41. Nights with Theodore
Sébastien Betbeder, France
42. The Minister
Pierre Schöller, France
43. Celluloid Man
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, India
44. Gangs of Wasseypur
Anurag Kashyap, India
45. The Dead Man and Being Happy
Javier Rebollo, Spain/Argentina/
Franc
46. The Invader
Nicolas Provost, Belgium
47. Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
Laurence Cantet, France/Canada
48. Donoma
Djinn Carrenard, France
49. Me and You
Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy
50. Miss Lovely
Ashim Ahluwalia, India

Yeah, I've been following the conversation. It is true that places like Hong Kong and Great Britain have films and games with even more violence than we do, yet have one tenth the violent crimes. We can look to our liberal gun laws and the over abundance of firearms in our society as the leading difference.

Still, I abhor violence in films. I have no taste for it and even cringed Thursday night when animated characters were beheaded (Hobbit).

Indeed. You put your finger on the causes of gun deaths in the US. The beheading in HOBBIT was not of an animated man.

My Best Movies of 2012 list, for now (Dec. 18, 2012)

Here is where my Chris Knipp Best Movies of 2012 So Far are below. Suggestions welcome. I am going over lists to see what I've forgotten. This does not include documentaries because I make a separate list of those.

1. HOLY MOTORS (Léos Carax)
2. MOONRISE KINGDOM (Wes Anderson)
3. AMOUR (Michael Haneke)
4. THE MASTER (Paul Thomas Anderson)
5. OSLO, AUG. 31ST (Joachim Trier)
6. SISTER (Ursula Meier)
7. RUST AND BONE (Jacques Audiard)
8. THE DEEP BLUE SEA (Terrence Davies)
9. DJANGO UNCHAINED (Quentin Tarantino)
10. COSMOPOLIS (David Cronenberg) + SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (David O. Russell)

This could change when I see THE IMPOSSIBLE and ZERO DARK THIRTY or something else I've missed so far

Including my English language list would add

LOOPER (Rian Johnsonj),LIFE OF PI (Ang Lee),
probably
FLIGHT (Richard Zemeckis),
maybe
THE SESSIONS (Ben Lewin) and
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Including my ten best foreign list would add
BREATHING (Karl Markovics 2011)
DAY HE ARRIVES, THE (Hong Sang-soo 2011)
ELENA (Andrei Zvigentsev)
I WISH (Hirakazu Koreeda)
MISS BALA (Geraldo Naranjo)
NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (Kleber Mendoça Filho 2011)
and
RAID, THE: REDEMPTION (Gareth Evans 2012)

JOHN WATERS' BEST MOVIES OF 2012 LIST. This is from ArtForum. Interesting personal note: I saw BELOVED with John Waters! He bought his ticket right in front of me at the Lumiere Theater in San Francisco (I didn't talk to him). This reminds me of BELOVED, which I had forgotten all about. I'm a fan of Honoré but this one was a disappointment. Not to Waters. Good list, as usual personal. I hate Compliance. I have not seen the Seidl films. Views on them seem to differ. i haven't seen the Abramovic doc. Probably should be seen.


"1 The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) The agony and passion of obsessive love and a broken heart are so well wrought here that you’ll wish you were suicidal over someone who didn’t love you back.

2 Paradise: Faith (Ulrich Seidl) Fassbinder died, so God gave us Ulrich Seidl. I laughed uproariously throughout this horrifying portrait of a religious fanatic, and if there’s something the matter with you, you will, too.

3 Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl) Middle-aged women sex tourists can be just as piggish as their male counterparts. But when the sexually exploited begin to exploit back, who’s the victim? The audience, that’s who, and we deserve it.

4 Amour (Michael Haneke) Misery is really in this year. “Hurts! Hurts! Hurts!” yells out the dying elderly wife to her longtime-caretaker husband, and ticket buyers will agree. Makes Saw seem like a romantic comedy.

5 Killer Joe (William Friedkin) The best Russ Meyer film of the year—only it’s not directed by him. Gina Gershon, you shocked me raw!

6 Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin) Directed as if the film crew snuck aboard a Weather Channel boat during Hurricane Katrina, kidnapped the skipper, hijacked the storm chasers’ equipment, swam ashore, and made a boldly original movie.

7 Compliance (Craig Zobel) A “based on real life” horror story that will make you want to regurgitate both the fast food and the blind allegiance to authority served up in this restaurant setting. Ann Dowd, who plays the ChickWich franchise’s manager, is by far the best actress of 2012.

Matthew Akers, Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 105 minutes.

8 Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (Matthew Akers) Maybe the most perfect documentary ever made about an artist. Abramović stares back at the public with a magic-trick power that will get you high and make you cry.

9 Beloved (Christophe Honoré) Another crackpot Umbrellas of Cherbourg homage by the French director who adores unrequited love, cigarettes, Catherine Deneuve, and especially Louis Garrel. Yes, it’s L-O-N-G, but I wished the characters would have kept on singing in the theater even after the projectionist had gone home for the night.

10 The Imposter (Bart Layton) A whodunit documentary that is better than any mystery novel. When Frédéric Bourdin, a twenty-three-year-old teen imposter and scam-artist supreme, dances alone on camera in his prison cell looking like an exhibitionist Sirhan Sirhan, you’ll want to hide your children and lock the doors.

John Waters recently hitchhiked alone across the USA. He is currently writing a book on his experience, titled Carsick, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux next year."


--ArtForum.

Did you speak to him? John Waters brought his film, "Pink Flamingos" to Columbus, Ohio back in the early 1970's and invited all of the students from film school (where I was attending). The theater was packed and Waters introduced the film. They even handed out "barf bags" which amounted to small paper bags stamped with a "Pink Flamingo" logo and the title of the film. I had mine for a long time but I'm certain its probably gone with the wind. No one puked in the audience but many people, me included, gagged.

Quote:

---

Interesting personal note: I saw BELOVED with John Waters! He bought his ticket right in front of me at the Lumiere Theater in San Francisco (I didn't talk to him).

---

I grew up in Baltimore though. My mother knew his mother. They both volunteered at Friends of the Towson Library. And my mother and I went to see most of Waters' later, more mainstream, barf bag-free films at The Senator, the theater on York Road where they premiered which also happened to be near our house.

John Waters' Ten Best lists are models or originality, and he's well informed too (as you must be to be original). Who else would list JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER along with HADEWIJCH? I'ts best to read his 2012 list along with his comments -- so here it is along with his 2011 and 2010 lists. It says he lives in Baltimore and New York, but he has apparently started living in San Francisco too. I'm not the only person who has sighted him there. Imagine the balls of hitchhiking across the country at his age, alone. If you don't know this, I can assure you he writes very well.

ART FORUM FILM BEST OF 2012

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2417/id37454.jpg
ABRAMOVIC FILM STILL FROM ARTFORUM

John Waters

1 The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) The agony and passion of obsessive love and a broken heart are so well wrought here that you’ll wish you were suicidal over someone who didn’t love you back.
2 Paradise: Faith (Ulrich Seidl) Fassbinder died, so God gave us Ulrich Seidl. I laughed uproariously throughout this horrifying portrait of a religious fanatic, and if there’s something the matter with you, you will, too.
3 Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl) Middle-aged women sex tourists can be just as piggish as their male counterparts. But when the sexually exploited begin to exploit back, who’s the victim? The audience, that’s who, and we deserve it.
4 Amour (Michael Haneke) Misery is really in this year. “Hurts! Hurts! Hurts!” yells out the dying elderly wife to her longtime-caretaker husband, and ticket buyers will agree. Makes Saw seem like a romantic comedy.
5 Killer Joe (William Friedkin) The best Russ Meyer film of the year—only it’s not directed by him. Gina Gershon, you shocked me raw!
6 Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin) Directed as if the film crew snuck aboard a Weather Channel boat during Hurricane Katrina, kidnapped the skipper, hijacked the storm chasers’ equipment, swam ashore, and made a boldly original movie.
7 Compliance (Craig Zobel) A “based on real life” horror story that will make you want to regurgitate both the fast food and the blind allegiance to authority served up in this restaurant setting. Ann Dowd, who plays the ChickWich franchise’s manager, is by far the best actress of 2012.
8 Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (Matthew Akers) Maybe the most perfect documentary ever made about an artist. Abramović stares back at the public with a magic-trick power that will get you high and make you cry.
9 Beloved (Christophe Honoré) Another crackpot Umbrellas of Cherbourg homage by the French director who adores unrequited love, cigarettes, Catherine Deneuve, and especially Louis Garrel. Yes, it’s L-O-N-G, but I wished the characters would have kept on singing in the theater even after the projectionist had gone home for the night.
10 The Imposter (Bart Layton) A whodunit documentary that is better than any mystery novel. When Frédéric Bourdin, a twenty-three-year-old teen imposter and scam-artist supreme, dances alone on camera in his prison cell looking like an exhibitionist Sirhan Sirhan, you’ll want to hide your children and lock the doors.

John Waters recently hitchhiked alone across the USA. He is currently writing a book on his experience, titled Carsick, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux next year.

ART FORUM FILM BEST OF 2011

John Waters

1 The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar) A dark, twisted, beautiful, and, yes, funny shocker from the greatest director in the world. God bless you, Pedro Almodóvar!
2 Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes) This elegantly shot, pitch-perfect made-for-TV melodrama makes everyone who watches secretly yearn to be a woman with issues. The best period film in decades—period.
3 Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (Jon M. Chu) I’m not kidding. A well-made doc that proves the Bieb was a child prodigy. Wait until you see Justin stick his head into the audience and shake his hair in 3-D. I screamed.
4 Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont) In this grim, fiercely uncommercial movie, a fanatical Catholic young lady from a rich family hooks up with a handsome male Muslim terrorist, and together they blow up a commuter train. Love is strange, especially when God is involved.
5 Kaboom (Gregg Araki) A sexy, well-written, end-of-the-world comedy that succeeds beyond all expectation. Doomsday never looked so hot.
6 If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman) This sad documentary debates the regrets of radicalism as a pack of lunatic-kid tree huggers get caught up in frenzied activism and are suddenly accused by the government of terrorism.
7 The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick) You’d think I’d hate this film, and I almost did—until I realized it’s the best New Age, heterosexual, Christian movie of the year.
8 I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive (Claude and Nathan Miller) This beautifully acted French film is a tragic, harrowing warning to all adoptees: Finding your real-life birth parents isn’t always such a good idea.
9 We Were Here (David Weissman) Half my friends died of AIDS, so this simple and painfully told doc on the disastrous epidemic’s effect on San Francisco is personal. If you don’t sob watching, maybe you should be dead too.
10 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) A spooky, witty, never pretentious meditation on the otherworldly lust of ghosts and wild animals. Aren’t you glad art films don’t get test-screened?

John Waters is touring in December with his spoken-word act A John Waters Christmas.


FILM FORUM - JOHN WATERS - BEST FILMS OF 2010

John Waters

John Waters is a film director, author, actor, and photographer who lives in Baltimore and New York. His most recent book, Role Models, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux earlier this year.

1 Domain (Patric Chiha) My favorite movie of the year. A forty-year-old alcoholic aunt (played by Béatrice Dalle—“Betty Blue” herself!) and her gayish teenage nephew form a perversely close relationship by taking walks together. Lots of walks! So many walks you’ll be left breathless by the sheer elegance of this astonishing little workout.
2 Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé) The best film ever about taking hallucinogenic drugs. Seizure-inducing title credits, cinematography that looks as if it were shot by a Gerhard Richter–influenced kamikaze pilot—even vagina cams. Gaspar, thank you. You’re my sweetheart.
3 Buried (Rodrigo Cortés) The most excruciatingly painful date movie imaginable comes complete with a very smart feel-bad ending. See it with someone you hate.
4 Ricky (François Ozon) A great special-effects movie, though there’s only one effect: a flying baby. If David Lynch and David Cronenberg had sex and one of them magically got pregnant, this film could be their offspring.
5 Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg) Talk about granting access! Are you crazy, Joan?! If Jews went to confession, this film would be a sacrament.
6 Jackass 3D (Jeff Tremaine) A scatological, gay, s/m, borderline snuff movie amazingly embraced by a wide, American blue-collar family audience. Isn’t Steve-O chugging down a glass of sweat collected from the ass-crack of an obese man and then vomiting at you in 3-D the purest moment of raw cinema anarchy this year?
7 Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz) Paul Reubens (without a trace of Pee-Wee) is a suicidal ghost who’s still miserable, and Charlotte Rampling plays a bitter, self-loathing hotel hornball. Both performances will break your heart.
8 Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos) If your parents raised you into your teen years without ever once letting you out of the house and taught you that “outside” means climbing in the trunk of the family car and locking yourself in, are you in mental trouble? Hilarious, original, and very discomfiting, the way movies should be.
9 Carlos (Olivier Assayas) I loved all five-plus hours of this French hymn to celebrity revolutionary–turned-mercenary Carlos the Jackal. He’s so sexy that even militant, left-wing German feminist terrorists give him head and his own hostages ask for his autograph.
10 Mesrine (Parts 1 and 2) (Jean-François Richet) Four and a half more hours about another French criminal–folk hero–stud. Who’s badder? More butch? Cuter nude? Carlos or Jacques Mesrine? Why not a subtitled ten-hour “Freddy vs. Jason” combined sequel about both? In Sensurround, s’il vous plaît.

Other 2012 movies I want to remember or I wish I'd seen

I'll draw on these and maybe some others I'm forgetting to make up my final multiple lists. I'll add to this list and update it as I rememer

AV Club list (first half) this is based on:
https://docs.google.com/a/theo... (This is in two installments, Jan-July and July-Dec. )

Their ongoing breakdown:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub...Lxh8ZVKSEG9TpQ

Seen and liked a lot:
Looper /Rian Johnson
Goodbye First Love /Hansen-Love
The Kid With a Bike/Dardennes
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Imposter
Step Up to the Plate
Barbara (Dec. 21 NYC release)
This Is Not a Film /Panahi
Photographic Memory / Ross McElwee
Ruby Sparks
Arbitrage
Damsels in Distress / Whit Stillman
Dark Horse / Solondz
Declaration of War / Valérie Donzelli, Jérémie Elkaïm
Middle of Nowhere
Smashed
Safety Not Guaranteed
The Grey /Joe Carnahan
Coriolanus /Fiennes [technically 2011]
Chronicle / Josh Trank
Bullhead
The Day He Arrives / Hong Sang-so
Farewell My Queen / Benoit Jacquot
Art of Rap
Wuthering Heights / Andrea Arnold
The Well-Digger's Daughter / Daniel Auteuil
Premium Rush (David Koepp)

Should see:
The House I Live in
Only the Young [def. must see]
West of Memphis [another exonerated film<The Central Park Five]
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Brave

Worst or most dissappointing of the year:
Cabin in the Woods

The Camopaign
The Dictator (Enough, already!)
Easy Money (should have been better)
Haywire
Hyde Park on Hudson (smarmy humor, bad history)
Rock of Ages
The Pirates! Band Of Misfits
Prometheus (promised so much)
Jeff, Who Lives At Home
Seven Psychopahts (should have been better)
Take This Waltz

Favorite blockbusters:
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Hunger Games
Skyfall
Avengers

In a class of weirdness by itself:
Cloud Atlas

People think it's trash, but it's meant to be, and it's entertaining:
Paperboy

So many good movies. Such riches!
Good idea to post John Waters' lists. Great to find out he loves the new Mildred Pierce much as I do.

I'll keep in mind Mildred Pierce. Mean to re-wach Kaboom. I've seen everything else he mentions, except Jackass3D--not sure I've got the stomach for that though.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/1...of2012docu.jpg
PETER STALEY IN HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE


Best documentaries of 2012

I love documentaries, and there are so many kinds and so many to choose from these days. The most important of 2012, I've decided - of the couple of dozen I can remember seeing - are HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE and THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, but maybe the topic of global warming examined in CHASING ICE is more important still, for the future. It's hard to pick and choose when so many documentaries deal with important subjects, are so well researched, and are made with such a combination of passion and restraint. There are other strong ones. THE GATEKEEPERS and THE LAW IN THESE PARTS are powerful, revealing studies of Israel. THE IMPOSTER is superbly done. SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN is an amazing rediscovery of a lost rock star/singer-songwriter, so suspenseful. THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES is a shocker about American stupidity and materialism. Then there are smaller, more personal, often quite elegant films like STEP UP TO THE PLATE, about a great restaurant family in France (maybe perfect for a double bill with JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI); or Alan Berliner's unrelleased documentary about his famous scholar cousin Edwin Honig's Alzheimer's, FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOMVED, or Ross McElwee's delicate exploration of his relation with his difficult son and of his own not entirely responsible youth in France, PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. The "Have Not Seen" list is of documentaries that from what I've heard are important or wonderful, in all the different categories. I'll have a Ten Best Documentaries list later. I've reviewed nearly all the ones in the first list and you can read my reviews by Googling "chris knipp" + name of film. Look for all these (if released) on DVD.

2012 DOCUMENTARIES LIST (alphabetical)
5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi)
Ai Wei Wei - Never Sorry (Alison Klayman)
The Ambassador (Mads Brugger)
Bill W. ( Dan Carracino, Kevin Hanlon)
Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975, The (Göran Hugo Olsson 2010)
The Central Park Five / Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon
Chasing Ice (Jeff Orlowski)
Crazy Horse / Frederick Wiseman
Detropia (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady)
Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey (unreleased)
First Cousin Once Removed (Alan Berliner) (unreleased)
The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh)
How to Survive a Plague / David France
The Imposter / Bari Layton
Informant / Jamie Melzer (unreleased)
The Invisible War (Kirby Dick)
The Law in These Parts (Alexandrowicz) (NYC)
Neil Young Journeys (Jonathan Demme)
Photograpic Memory / Ross McElwee
The Queen Of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)
Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Benjelloul)
Something from Nothing: the Art of Rap (Ice-T, Andy Baybutt)
Step Up to the Plate (Entre les Bras, Paul Lacoste)
This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
The Waiting Room (Peter Nicks)
Woody Allen: A Documentary (Robert B. Weide) (PBS "American Masters" series -TV)

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/2135/tt2062996.jpg
COOL POSTER FOR A VISUALLY COOL FILM

HAVE NOT SEEN
Beware of Mr Baker (Jay Bulger)
Bully (Lee Hirsch)
The House I Live in (Eugene Jarecki)
The Island President (John Shenk)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb)
Marina Abromovic: the Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, Jeff Dupre)
Only the Young (Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims)
Room 237 (Rod Ascher)
West of Memphis (Amy Berg)

http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/8927/imgresxi.jpg

A.V. Club's 20 Best Movies of 2012 list.

The little IFC rrlease animation by Don Hertzfeldt (which I didn't even notice in NYC in Oct.-reviewed very briefly in the Times by one of their stringers) and the 2011 NYFF film The Loneliest Planet are odd, more "youthful" choices. (I'm pretty sure the A.V. writers are younger as a group than the regular print "critics circles"). A recent A.V. Club piece discusses the "bitter feud" between NY and LA critics, supposedly signaled by the LA group's snubbing Zero Dark Thirty in their top awards. The A.V. Club puts Amour, the LA Best Picture choice, down at number six. Don't know if comparing the LA List with the NY Film Critics Circle one will show any clear difference, except for two documentaries NY chose: as best first film, How to Survive a Plague is about ACT-UP, which was primarily a NY group, as best documentary, The Central Park Five, which involves a NYC crime. Maybe Looper, The Cabin in the Woods and even Killer Joe are also "younger," more "fanboy" choices. Some choices are drawn along age lines, as well as along mainstream vs. more cinephile lines. I try personally to straddle these categories. And I'm even sort of bicoastal, since I live on the West Coast but do some of my key movie viewing in NYC. The A.V. Club list includes paragraphs for each choice justifying and explaining it, which you should probably read, but I think you can read a lot simply into the bare choices.

1. The Master
2. Zero Dark Thirty
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Holy Motors
5. The Deep Blue Sea
6. The Loneliest Planet
7. Amour
8. It's Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeld)
9. Beasts of the Southern Wild
10. Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold)
11. The Cabin in the Woods
12. Looper
13. Life of Pi
14. Lincoln
15. Only the Young (Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims)
16/ The Queen of Versailles
17. Killer Joe
18. Miss Bala
19. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
20 I Wish

A.V. Club, which does cover a lot of what comes out, has also provided its list of 20 "Worst Movies of 2012." I mut be doing something right, because I've only seen two of them: Hyde Park on Hudson, and The Paperboy. Both were in the New York Film Festival so you'll find my reviews of them in the Festival Coverage 2012 NYFF thread. I also disapproved of Hyde Park on Hudson's inclusion, but thought and still think the disapproval of Paperboy has been excessive. You'll find it at worst a guilty pleasure.

You left "Lincoln" off your list, Chris?

Controversy surrounding ZERO DARK THIRTY.

Unfortunately this movie is one a lot of us (including me) may have to wait till 4 Jan. 2013 to see, and it is already clouded by nothing less than a protest sent by US Senators Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin, and John McCain in a well-publicized letter to Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, calling the film "grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location" of Osama bin Laden, the NY Times article today (19 Dec. 2012) says.

This was hotly debated on Twitter and the blogosphere last week, and I was surprised myself at how quickly younger writers (like one connected with the A.V. Club) jumped to the defense of the film. They saw it. Did the senators see it? Did Glenn Greenwald see it before writing his article in the Guardian, "Zero Dark Thirty: CIA hagiography, pernicious propaganda"? A well-known movie blogger, Glenn Kenny, hotly protested this article in his blog, claiming Greenwald showd an ignorance of "film grammar" that would disprove his characterizations.

I'm against torture, and was impressed by the speakers in Alex Gibney's 2008 documentary TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE who state with authority that besides being wrong, it simply doesn't work. It looks "incriminating," so to speak, that ZERO DARK THIRTY (which coming right after THE HURT LOCKER suggests an increasingly pro-military stance by this director) begins with a lengthy torture sequence and ends with a lengthy sequence of the finding and killing of bin Laden. No connection, they say? Can "film grammar" really counteract this ordering of events?

Some (Dargis, Tobias) are saying that the virtue of ZERO DARK THIRTY is that it's morally complex, and leaves you to figure things out. We have to see the movie to decide. Richard Brody,. film editor and blogger at The New Yorker, has entered the fray with a typically complicated discussion. He seems to take a contrary stand that ZERO DARK THIRTY achieves its effects by narrowing down its vision and eliminating context.

If I were in NYC I'd have seen the movie already; or at least I could see it today; but, as mentioned, being in Northern California (not LA where it opened 19 Dec., as in NYC), and I have to wait till January.

cinemabon:

No LINCOLN, neither did Manohla Dargis include it. But I'll have more lists at the end, Best English language, Best Foreign, Shortlisted, and Best Documentaries.

Controversy surrounding ZERO DARK THIRTY - 2


Now the acting CIA chief Michael Morrell has spoken out against the impression ZERO DARK THIRTY gives about torture. His statement is reported on in the NY Times today , 22 Dec. 2012.

Quote:

---

In a message sent Friday to agency employees about the film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” Mr. Morell said it “creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding Bin Laden. That impression is false.”

---

He goes on to say there were many sources that led to bin Laden's alleged lair and even whether the detainees subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" had to be is subject to question.

Morrell also faulted the movie's implication that only a few CIA agents were key to the operation to "get" bin Laden, when in fact the search 'involved “the selfless commitment of hundreds of officers.”'

He also feared that the movie could "cloud our memory" of CIA officers killed in a terrorist bombing in Afghanistan in 2009.

All this came in a message Morell sent to agency employees.

I wonder if the fear of reprisals is fueling this surge in criticism, most from the right. The recent debacle over a "youtube" vidieo may have prompted this or the fact that Obama is portrayed in a positive light. It will be interesting to see where it develops.

If I don't get another chance, Merry Christmas to you, Chris, and Oscar, Tubano, Johann, Howard, and all of the others who contribute to this site and are enjoying the "rush to the Oscars" splurge in film releases this December. May you all have a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, cinemabon, and all filmleafers.

Hasn't it been 10 years since we started our 'lil online cinema-loving community ?! Wow!

Same here to all of you.

Mike D'Angelo has posted his year's end list. If you follow me here you know I follow him. I've copied him a bit in running a constantly updated list myself this year. He has recently added ONLY THE YOUNG and IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY and YOU ARE HERE. I haven't seen those, and would never put THE LONELIEST PLANET, HAYWIRE, or ARGO in a best list though combining them shows indepdence on his part perhaps. THIS MUST BE THE PLACE also seems an odd choice. To each his own. I like a lot of his choices and it was from his I first heard about HOLY MOTORS and LOOPER. I'm glad he has SISTER on his list. Ursula Meier is my discoery of the year.

Mike D’Angelo: 15 Best Films of 2012 (as published by The A.V. Club; it has lists by eight of their writers)

1. Holy Motors – Leos Carax
2. The Imposter – Bart Layton
3. The Loneliest Planet – Julia Loktev
4. Miss Bala – Gerardo Naranjo
5. Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson
6. Amour – Michael Haneke
7. The Deep Blue Sea – Terence Davies
8. Only The Young – Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims
9. Looper – Rian Johnson
10. This Must Be The Place – Paolo Sorrentino
11. Haywire – Stephen Soderbergh
12. You Are Here – Daniel Cockburn
13. It’s Such A Beautiful Day – Don Hertzfeldt
14. Argo – Ben Affleck
15. Sister – Ursula Meier

One more little 2012 best list from Mike D'Angelo

I missed this earlier, which went up on Las Vegas Weekly Dec. 27, 2012 is logically the same as the AV one missing the last five titles. I am glad to be free of Haywire and Argo. D'Angelo's Twitter thumbnails from Cannes and Toronto and longer AV Club bulletins from Cannes seem the highlights of his year's work as a film critic, frankly, but that is a not inconsiderable contribution. He seems to write very few reviews, only for Las Vegas Weekly. All we get from September is (out of five ratings) End of Watch 2 1/2, The Master 3 1/2, Holy Motors 4, Silver Linings Playbook 2 1/2, This Must Be the Place 4, Les Mis 2 1/2, and ZD30 3 1/2. Given the precision on his personal numerical grading system, these 1-5 ratings lack nuance, and the reviews themselves are a bit skimpy. It seems like anything he didn't like that much got a 2 1/2; and since Holy Motors was his favorite of the year, why not give it more than 4? Because he means to be a very strict grader.

1. Holy Motors
2. The Impostor
3. The Loneliest Planet
4. Miss Bala
5. Moonrise Kingdom
6. Amour
7. The Deep Blue Sea
8. Only the Young
9. Looper
10. This Must Be the Place

HOLY MOTORS. TIFF Bell Lightbox. 3:20 PM. I'll be there. Got my ticket already. can't wait. Will post, of course.

Great. If you wanted to you could post about it on the New York Film Festival 2012 thread because that's where we talked about it first on this site

http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.p...8890#post28890

I watched Sister last weekend. I was surprised that it's not in IndieWire's Top 50 but thinking about it a little more I realize that the film is a bit too slight and cryptic to make it into many Top 10s (overall, that's what the editors ask for, right?) but probably would make it into many critics' top 20 or 25 on account of its sense of place, naturalistic performances, and two revealing and emotionally-affecting moments.

I found it very special and have said Ursula Meier is my directorial discovery of the year. I go with Mike D'Angelo's Cannes Twitter comment, "Surprisingly Dardennes-y, but it's not like that's a bad thing." The action, the irresponsibility of siblings/family members, the constant running around on the hustle, the underclass existence, are indeed all very Dardennse0-y. The Dardennes in fact however would be unlikely to create this distinct and different a milieu, or go so far from Belgium for that matter, and the combination of Kacey Mottet Klein (surely one to watch) and Léa Seydoux (already well watched) is a brilliant one, she (D'Angelo's tweet again) "ideally cast." Thanks very much for your comment.

Film Comment and Indiewire don't seem to give Sister/L'enfant d'en haut a listing, but I don't think one big list is very useful and that's why I make separate lists. What you say about listings is probably true, but "slight and cryptic" don't mean anything to me. I'd say BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, which I think overrated, is "slight and cryptic" too but in less interesting ways: BEASTS doesn't delve into real people the way SISTER does. Not in my opinion, anyway.

I'm disappointed to learn now that ON THE ROAD only ran one week (the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley has a series of such runs) and ended Friday (Jan. 25) so it is probably gone for good and I'll have to wait till March-April DVD/BluRay release to see it. Minor ripoff.

P.s. There was no need for me to slur BEASTS to praise SISTER. They are both worthy, in some people's view. SISTER is on a few, if a very few, critics' 2012 ten best lists, I think, or top twenty, as with D'Angelo.

A MAJOR COMPENDIUM OF LINKS TO 2012 ONLINE BEST LISTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

THIS OTHER ONE ON FANDANGO HERE (which may or may not be in D'Angelo's compendium). I notice MOONRISE KINGDOM, HOLY MOTORS, and THE MASTER come up a lot in these more "cinephile" and less "mainstream-Oscar-oriented" critics' lists.