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2012 is now behind us. The year came with it’s share of decent movies. I made a pact with some friends to catch most of the summer movies and aside from that crappy Spider-Man flick I can honestly say I had a good time at all of them. So here’s a look at my top 5 personal favourites of the year. I’m sure to miss some of your favourites so feel free to let me know why I’m wrong in the comments!
I already discussed my favourites of 2012 on this week’s Powetcast. I took a little more time to look over the year’s movies before putting together my final list. I also made sure I saw the Hobbit before I wrote this article, though you will notice that I found it undeserving of being included.
5. Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom is the latest film by the great Wes Anderson, the director of such films as Rushmore and the Royal Tenenbaums. Wes Anderson is a really weird guy and his movies are weird and kind of awkward, but ultimately also pretty funny.
Moonrise Kingdom is not a movie about Silver Millennium, the kingdom on the Moon from Sailor Moon. Instead it’s the story of… well I guess it’s hard to explain but it’s an orphan Scout who ditches his troupe to go on an adventure with a girl he’s in love with while a dysfunctional group try to track him down.
The movie’s strong point is all the interesting and hilarious characters who never fail to make you laugh. There’s also a really sweet love story between two kids in there too. If you like funny movies, well you might prefer a few other movies on my list, but you just might like this one too. Actually the easier way to decide if you want to watch this would probably be to watch it only if you liked any other Wes Anderson movies.
4. Ted
It will come as no secret to friends of mine that I am no fan of Seth McFarlane! While I have had many great times watching Family Guy I have come to hate the crap he’s saturated Animation Domination with and am simply offended by his treatment of cats and other animals in his shows. That being said, I chose to put my prejudice aside and watch his movie about a grown man with a Teddy Bear and found myself to find Ted to be quite enjoyable.
Ted was a magic bear that came to a boy that made a wish, a typical kind of kid’s movie idea, but this movie is about what happens when that boy grows up and when no one cares about Ted anymore. At first it relies on the absurdity of a talking stuffed bear doing everyday things for laughs but eventually just comes into it’s own with a lot of solid gags, frequently relying of course on completely inappropriate humour.
Everyone in this movie is great. Mark Whalberg proves he can handle comedy, Mila Kunis continues to prove she’s smoking hot and all the other bit parts from Joel McHale to Ryan Reynolds are a ton of fun. Seth McFarlane does a good job as the voice of Ted. Seth frequently voices characters in his works, as he’s 90% of the cast of any show he works on.
If you want some solid laughs and aren’t offended by a movie that pushes the envelope a bit, you really should check out Ted.
3. Total Recall
The old Total Recall movie had a girl with three boobs in it. The new Total Recall movie had a girl with three boobs in it. Her name is Katilyn Leeb and she’s lovely. The movie was pretty good, the girl with three breasts was fantastic. In fact she was 50% better than any other character in a film in 2012! For more on that, check out the video review I did for the film back in August.
2. 21 Jump Street
My favourite comedy of 2012 is 21 Jump Street! This movie is a remake of an old 80s TV series that goes by the same name. The old show wasn’t actually a comedy at all, instead it was a weird kind of high school cop drama in which young looking kids would go undercover to find drugs and all kinds of bad things. I used to watch this show while some channel or another played reruns of it one summer and thought it was pretty good.
The concept of a full on comedy remake of this show is ridiculous yet brilliant. Here we have Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum playing completely incompetent cops trying to fit in as high school students. Naturally hilarity ensues quite quickly.
Jonah Hill is funny, no question about that. I had no doubt about his ability to be funny in this movie and he delivered. Channing Tatum on the other hand I had no good impression of before seeing this film. To me he was some pretty guy from movies I don’t care about who’d never done comedy. This isn’t untrue, but surprising he was really great in this film and completely held his own as a comedic actor. Forget dancing and stripping, this guy needs to just keep making 21 Jump Street movies, which may just happen as a sequel where the team go to college is in the works.
One of the coolest parts of this movie was how it tied in to the old TV show. This is not a remake, but a true sequel to the show. Three characters make appearances in the film who were from the original TV series. If you’re even remotely interested in this old show you can pick up the whole series (5 seasons) for less than $20 on Amazon right now.
1. Prometheus
My favourite movie of 2012 was Prometheus! When this film was first announced as a pseudo prequel to Alien, everyone got excited. Then we saw the trailer and everyone got more exited! Then we got the movie and everyone turned out to be a bunch of bitches nitpicking all kinds of little bull shit things about the movie’s scientific inaccuracies and unanswered questions.
This is why we can’t have nice things. They used to make lots of sci fi movies and people used to like them. They don’t make those much anymore and the reason is just that audiences would rather watch shitty fantasy or shitty comic book movies. Prometheus gets ripped apart for very minor issues while Iron Man flies around in the vacuum of space without any kind of reaction mass to his thrusters but hey, that’s a comic movie so we don’t have to think too hard about it. HULK SMASH!!!
David presented this completely brilliant android character. He had such depth and such fascinating motivations. What did audiences take from that? His actions make no sense! Why does he comb his hair? Waaaaah.
Oh yes and of course it’s annoying because we didn’t get told the answers to the questions the characters wanted to know. Seriously? The characters wanted to know about the meaning of life. If you think this is something that Ridley Scott can tell you then maybe you should be watching movies made by his recently deceased retarded brother Tony.
Prometheus was the best movie of the year and it was disliked because people are too stupid and too stubborn to appreciate it.
Best movie no one watched: Battleship!
While not up to snuff with the rest of my top five I feel the need to mention Battleship for just being so much better than anyone gives it credit for. Battleship, starring 2012’s box office poison Taylor Kitsch, is not a brilliant film but it’s tons of fun. It’s action packed and full of comedy. The movie doesn’t take itself any more seriously than people expect that it should. Most people overlooked it because it looked like a bad Transformers rip off and I’m not saying it’s not, but it’s still a really fun movie.
All in all I’d say 2012 was a pretty solid year for movies. Let’s hope 2013 can do as well.
There are many other obvious choices that I didn’t include in my list like Looper, The Hobbit: Episode I and The Dark Knight Rises. I don’t intend to hate on these films by omitting them as I enjoyed watching them to varying degrees, I just had a better time with the top five I’ve listed. Naturally, your mileage may vary. Now bitch me out in the comments to let me know why I’m wrong.
