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JR'S TOP 10 FILMS-2012
2019,
2019-2010,
2019 MID YEAR,
2018,
2018 MID YEAR,
2017,
2016,
2015,
2014,
2013,
2012,
2011,
2010,
2009,
2009-2000,
2006
"Good Old JR" Jim Rutkowski
weighs in with his picks for the TOP 10 films of 2012 |
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TOP 10 FILMS OF 2012-1
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JR's bottom half of the list:
10) Chico & Rita, 9) Lincoln, 8) Oslo, August 31, 7) Skyfall, 6)
Holy Motors 5) Argo |
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TOP 10 FILMS OF 2012-2
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JR tick's off 4) Once Upon a Time in
Anatolia, 3) Amour, 2) Zero Dark Thirty, 1) Beasts of the Southern
Wild. |
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THE YEARS BEST...
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Movie Reviews by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
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10. Chico & Rita
9. Lincoln
8. Oslo, August 31
7. Skyfall
6. Holy Motors
5. Argo
4. Once Upon a Time in
Anatolia
3. Amour
2. Zero Dark Thirty
1. Beasts of the Southern
Wild |
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#10-CHICO AND RITA |
Director: Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Tono
Errando
The years best animated film. Cuba, 1948. Chico is a young piano player with big
dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice.They chase their
dreams and each other from Havana to New York to Paris, Hollywood and Las Vegas.
Chico & Rita captures a defining moment in the evolution of history and jazz,
and features the music of (and animated cameos by) Thelonious Monk, Charlie
Parker, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Tito Puente, and others.
"Chico & Rita" is that rare thing, a cartoon for adults, with a bittersweet take
on love and fate and a romantic's view of the night. Available on DVD/ Blu-ray,
Amazon Instant and Vudu |
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#9-LINCOLN |
Director: Steven Spielberg, Writer: Tony Kuschner
Daniel Day-Lewis characteristically delivers in this witty, dignified portrait
that immerses the audience in its world and entertains even as it informs. The
film masterfully captures the dual dilemmas facing the president in the final
months of his life: how to bring the war between the states to an end, and how
to eradicate slavery. Day-Lewis envelopes the soul of Lincoln around him like a
shawl. So immersive is the performance, that it ceases to be a performance and
becomes a channeling of essence. |
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#8-OSLO, AUGUST 31 |
Written & Directed by: Joachim Trier
Thirty-four-year-old Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) is a fortunate, but deeply
troubled man battling drug addiction. As part of his rehabilitation program, he
is allowed to go into the city for a job interview, but instead uses the
opportunity as a way to drift around and revisit old friends. The day grows
increasingly difficult as he struggles to overcome personal demons and past
ghosts for the chance at love and a new life. An upfront study of a drug addict
confronting his demons. Quiet and profound. Emotionally devastating and yet
paradoxically delicate. It broke my heart many times over. Available on DVD/Blu-ray.
Streaming on Netflix, Hulu Plus. ITunes and Vudu In theaters as of this writing. |
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#7-SKYFALL |
Director: Sam Mendes
This is how you revitalize a franchise! A 50 year old franchise at that.
Director Mendes takes the familiar elements and makes them utterly contemporary.
The film gives us some long overdue back story for 007 and an unexpectedly
layered relationship with Judi Dench as M, his usually unflappable boss, that
extends Bond’s range of emotions even further. With gorgeous cinematography by
Roger Deakins and firmly inhabiting Bond, it’s superior filmmaking that also
happens to be extraordinarily entertaining. That’s a combination we don’t see
often enough. This was my
Avengers! In theaters as of this writing. |
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#6-HOLY MOTORS |
Director: Leos Carax
Oscar rides to work in a white limousine driven by his close friend and
associate Céline; Oscar's job, it seems, involves using makeup, elaborate
costumes, and props to carry out a number of complex and unusual scenarios.
Told in an episodic format, we witness Oscar in a deathbed melodrama, a gangster
film, a musical alongside pop star Kylie Minogue, and much more. Mesmerizingly
strange and willfully perverse, Holy Motors offers an unforgettable visual feast
alongside a spellbinding -- albeit unapologetically challenging narrative. I
assure you, you have never seen anything quite like it. |
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#5-ARGO |
Director: Ben Affleck
Based on true events, Argo chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to
rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage
crisis-the truth of which was unknown by the public for decades. On November 4,
1979, militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage.
But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find
refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing it is only a matter of
time before the six are found out and likely killed, a CIA "exfiltration"
specialist named Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) comes up with a risky plan to get
them safely out of the country. A plan so absurd, it could only happen in the
movies. Tense, exciting, and often darkly comic, Argo recreates a historical
event with vivid attention to detail and finely wrought characters. After Gone
Baby Gone,
The Town and now this directorial-best, Affleck is establishing
himself as one of the best craftsman in film today. In theaters as of this
writing. |
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#4-ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA |
Written & Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
In the dead of night, a group of men - including a police commissioner, a
prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect - drive through the tenebrous
Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the
headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a
brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can't remember where he
buried the body. As the night draws on, details about the murder emerge and the
investigators' own secrets and hypocrisies come to light. In the Anatolian
steppes, nothing is what it seems; and when the body is found, the real
questions begin. Ceylan doesn't hit us with big dramatic moments, but allows us
to live along with his characters as things occur to them. Ceylan uses a matter
of life and death to look at the mundane, human nature, and the mystical effect
of women on men in his sixth feature film. 157-minute police procedural at once
sensuous and cerebral, profane and metaphysical, "empty" and abundant. A
masterpiece. Available on DVD/Blu-ray. Streaming on Netflix and ITunes |
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#3-AMOUR |
Director: Micheal Haneke
Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music
teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family.
One day, Anne begins to shows signs that her age is getting the best of her. The
couple's bond of love is severely tested. Powered by beautiful acting and an
uncharacteristically tender script from Michael Haneke, Amour is an honest and
heart wrenching depiction of love in old age. Haneke treats Georges and Anne
with absolute respect, never pandering to sentiment or cliché and most assuredly
not sugarcoating the experience of walking one's partner through suffering,
toward death. In theaters as of this writing. |
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#2-ZERO DARK THIRTY |
Director: Kathyrn Bigelow
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in
secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and
eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar winning team of
director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt
Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most
dangerous man. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal the pair behind "The Hurt
Locker" are after something truer and more lasting than getting an audience to
burst into applause when the bad guys are outfoxed. Nothing in the climax of
"Zero Dark Thirty" settles for easy triumphalism. Everything about the film is
potentially controversial, yet hardly any of it can be pigeonholed by way of
ideology or politics. It's simply one of the most honest, intense and best films
experiences of 2012. In theaters as of this writing. |
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#1-BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD |
Director: Benh Zeitlin
Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her
father, Wink (Dwight Henry), in "the Bathtub," a southern Delta community
surrounded by water. Wink's tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the
universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. Beasts of the
Southern Wild combines big scale ideas about the natural world and how humans
relate to it with a very personal and subjective portrayal of a young girl
reconciling what is happening to her father and community. grand universal
themes are juxtaposed to an intimate personal story. The resulting film is a
remarkable cinematic experience that is both profound and immensely moving.
First time director Zeitlin has coached remarkable performances from his
non-professional actors and created an extraordinary world that remains
recognizable despite being constructed and exaggerated. Even with the hardship
and tragedy that befall that community, seen through the eyes of Hushpuppy it is
a beautiful and magical place that is very hard to resist, a lot like the film
itself. Part social realism drama, part magical fairytale, part eco-themed
cautionary tale, Beasts Of The Southern Wild is exquisitely lyrical, poetic in
tone and epic in scope. Available on DVD/ Blu-ray. |
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THE RUNNERS UP... |
Deep Blue Sea
Silver Linings Playbook
The Color Wheel
The Turin Horse
Prometheus
The Dark Knight Rises
The Impossible
End Of Watch
The Grey
Looper
Flight
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Images © Copyright 2019 by their respective owners No rights given or
implied by Alternate Reality, Incorporated
Review © 2019 Alternate Reality, Inc.
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OTHER REVIEWS... |
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2012 |
FORWARD INTO THE PAST
(aka "Old Reviews")
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2012 |
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