Hello you. Grab a cup of tea and make me some toast! It's time to find out which were my favourite films of 2012.
I've mentioned a few here and here, and I'm sure you'll all agree that those films are, for the most part, interesting in their way, but not the best of the year. Unless you are some kind of idiot - the kind of idiot who would bring a very, very cheap bottle of wine to my house in 2001 and think it was the kind of behaviour I would ever, ever forget.
I'm sorry not to have seen Seven Psychopaths, or Argo - both of which I imagine I will enjoy immensely once I drag myself away from playing Hitman: Absolution all day. And though I have seen The Hobbit, that was only yesterday, so I have as yet no developed opinion on it. I think it would go in the 'quite enjoyable' category. It just wanders along, telling its story in a visually striking manner, as you would expect. Sylvester McCoy is great in it. Martin Freeman is perfect casting. It is too long.
So, in reverse order, here are my top four films of 2012. They are very unusual, esoteric films that you probably won't have heard of, unless you go to tiny, out of the way Arthouse Cinemas.
4th. Skyfall
The title of which is utterly impossible to say, even in your mind, without it sounding like Adele's mournful wail. I thought this was a decent enough song, but it should have been sung by Goldfrapp. Why haven't they been chosen for a Bond theme? Answer: everyone but me is stupid.
This will be a mildly spoilery review, I think. A quick glance at the box office for Skyfall tells me that every single one of you saw this film, seven times, and in some cases you took your pets. So if you didn't bother going to see it, but are somehow also desperate not to know anything about the film, I'd skip ahead to the next film. Though what's going on inside your head I don't know.
I'm not a huge Bond fan. I've probably sort-of seen all the films, in the same way that I've seen all the Carry On films and heard everything by Robbie Williams - it just kind of happens to you. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy Bond, or that I think the films are mass produced dross. I've seen everything since Goldeneye at the cinema and I generally enjoy myself in Bond's slightly-ridiculous world of jumping off moving vehicles, punching guys in the teeth and being a smart-arse to super-villains. But I'm aware that there is a huge, passionate love for and involvement in Bond amongst his real fans, that I do not quite have.
Skyfall, though, appears to be the Bond film that everyone likes, and rightly so. From the start, it's a massively enjoyable adventure in which many exciting things occur. The initial chase is spectacular, with some great stunt work - like the motorbikes-over-rooftops bit - and some audacious almost-too-much stuff, like using a big digger to climb up a train.
Bond has clearly learned a lot from the success of Jason Bourne, not least the hyper kinetic realism of the action scenes. Casino Royale destroyed the invisible-car nonsense of Die Another Day the moment Bond smashed a guy's head into a sink, and brought the series back to life even as that particular guy lay on a bathroom floor bleeding to death. The trick, though, is to integrate that grittiness into the world of 007 - it's not the same world, and shouldn't be. Bond's world is slightly more outrageous and a little more playful than the bleached out, shaky realities of Blackbriar and Touchstone.
Skyfall plays masterfully within this tension. There's a palpable sense of the real world here, a world changed by the levelling influence of technology and the shattering of political ideologies. "We can't walk in the shadows any more." says Rafe Fiennes's brilliant Mallory, "There are no shadows." How do you have a secret agent, fighting for his country, in a 2012 of cyber terrorism and cable leaks? What does fighting for your country even mean any more? And what technological wizardry can you give a spy when the entire world has GPS on its phone?
This is Bond, though, and so these issues are addressed mostly through the medium of explosions and shooting. We get the best Bond villain in years, Javier Bardem's incredible Raoul Silva, who's plan is both psychologically complex (mother issues, revenge, ideological instability) and batshit crazy ("How can I be Antony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, Dennis Hopper in Speed and Matthew Broderick in Wargames all in one day?") We get destruction and death aplenty, including an awesome London set escape/battle/chase sequence. And we get the best art direction I've ever seen in an action movie.
Director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins make this film an intoxicating, immersive experience. One fight scene is staged entirely in silhouette, another shrouded in smoke. Colour pallettes shift in response to the action, painting psychological themes onto the environment as if we are seeing beyond the surface of the world, into the souls of the protagonists. Never is this more evident than in the final act, as Bond and his companions wage war in a nightmare world of fire and darkness and ice.
If I have one issue with the film it is that it seems to work hard to undo some of the progress made by Casino Royale. We end the movie seemingly back in From Russia with Love, in a very masculine world. I realise there was probably a desire to celebrate Bond's origins, what with it being the 50th year and all, but this felt a little odd to me. Overall, though, this is a minor gripe. I liked Skyfall. It was good, and I look forward to James Bond returning in Death Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry. With a soundtrack by Goldfrapp, please.
Joint 2nd. The Dark Knight Rises / Avengers Assemble
Since Summer I have struggled to work out which of these films is best. Is it Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, a magnificent, thought provoking meditiation on power, responsibility, civilisation and identity? Or is it Joss Whedon's Avengers Assemble, which features Hulk smashing Loki into the floor, and Scarlett Johanssen looking really, really lovely?
The answer is... I really don't know. They are both, nominally, superhero films, so there should be some basis for comparison, I suppose. But they don't feel similar, do they? One is a fine, complex meal - the sort where the wine complements the steak and you pause between courses to let the tasted resonate in your mouth - and the other is some awesome sausages with onion rings and wedges.
In this metaphor, Scarlett is the onion rings. Yum.
So... they both get second place, because they are both fantastic and they both demonstrate, in different ways, why the experience of cinema is important, exciting and brilliant. Allow me to elaborate.
Nolan's Batman films are, surely, the standard against which all other reboots must be measured. In a world where remakes appear to make up about 50% of cinema output, it is a joy to find a series of films that does not just rely upon a brand name to make some profit (Halloween, Total Recall, Spiderman etc), but takes an idea and really runs with it, doing something new and beautiful - something which enriches the source material, rather than sucking all the life out of it for a quick buck.
TDKR has split critical opinion, and it is easy to see why. It is massive, unwieldy and in many ways hard to love. It came after the near-perfect The Dark Knight - a film boasting astounding performances across the board, great action movie direction and a powerful, unstoppable story. Rises had a hell of a job to do, and it did not go out of its way to do that job in any kind of a hurry. TDKR feels less like someone telling a story, more like a story that is just happening regardless, rumbling under the surface of cinema, breaking out onto the screen, formless and terrifying.
This is a film I still can't quite get my head around, and for that I love it. Like all of Nolan's films, there is a lot going on that won't become apparent until we've lived through the film a number of times. I must have seen Memento twenty times or more and there's still stuff in there that surprises and excites me. The same for Insomnia, The Prestige and Inception. Generally, with Nolan, if you thought the plot didn't make sense, or that there was a bit of it that wasn't relevant, it's probably because you haven't worked it out yet.
I will need to see this film many more times. But for now it wins its place in my heart for being an awesome first-watch that affected me profoundly in both its story and its style. The last ten minutes moved me in a number of ways. Not necessarily for the characters, and the various fates that befell them, but for the power of storytelling at work in this beautifully crafted film.
The Avengers on the other hand...
I will probably watch Avengers Assemble a number of times, too. I watched it again, over Christmas, and I could happily watch it again this afternoon. But I doubt I will gain any fresh insights into the characters, or learn anything new about its themes. For while Avengers Assemble also makes for terrific cinema, it does so in a very different way to The Dark Knight Rises.
Like all art, film can move us, teach us, make us think and stir our senses. That's why I love it, and why I go on about it so very, very much. What I like best, though, is when film excites me. Yes, you can have a slow, visually sparse film in which very subtle, very meaningful things happen. But there's a part of me, when staring at a ten minute close up of someone having yet another ambiguous emotional response in a flat in Eastern Europe, that is thinking 'This is pictures! Why aren't you doing better stuff with the pictures?' If you want to express deep, subtle emotions, maybe don't throw it onto a big screen on Friday night, write a poem. And if you want to show New York being smashed to bits by extra dimensional aliens whilst in combat with brightly coloured super heroes - don't put it in a novel. Make me a big, exciting film so I can whoop and laugh.
And by Odin's beard, did I whoop, and did I laugh. So much so that some friends of mine, who had come to the cinema separately and were seated quite a long way behind me, identified my presence through the noise I was making. This is a masterfully constructed film that punches all the right buttons, and punches them hard. Snappy, intelligent dialogue. Characters broad enough to be instantly recognisable yet imbued with enough subtley and nuance to make you care. Action sequences that feel like they've burst out of the most exciting dream you ever had. Moments that catch you off guard through the power of the acting or the bravado of the film-making.
This is a film that absolutely should not work - a massive, hubristic project to bring together a super-band of film stars playing iconic characters, all apparently from different genres of storytelling. Whedon's genius is to play the team off each other with an absolute dedication to reality. So what if it's a science geek, a Norse god and a genetic soldier? They're still all guys, and they're still going to argue. There's as much joy in watching the Avengers interact in conversation as there is in watching them fight. Which is to say, a massive amount of joy.
And Scarlett... What a gift the gods of cinema have given us. I've loved her since Ghost World, with her husky voice and pouty lips. Let her be in every film ever, please. That would be good.
Which means that the number one film of 2012 is...
The Muppets
I wasn't a massive Muppets fan, though I did grow up with them as a constant televisual presence. I certainly didn't go into seeing this film with high expectations or any great sense of nostalgia. I just thought it would be funny.
Quite why 2012's The Muppets makes me so happy I cannot say. There are plenty of elements, sure. I like Jason Segel a lot - he was brilliant in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and I got the impression that this would be a similar affair. And I love Amy Adams in a very real, very physical way. She has, just, lost out to Scarlett in the battle for my heart and loins, but she remains a luminous, enjoyable screen presence and I will have her if Scarlett remains unavailable.
The songs are simply fantastic. Really smart, feel good songs that make singing along a real pleasure. Life's a Happy Song is infectious in both melody and its turn of phrase ("Life's a fillet of fish.... yes, it is!") and the Oscar winning Man or Muppet never fails to make me smile. Elsewhere, the poignant Pictures in my Head managed to make me cry, even though it was about puppets in paintings being sad, which is not something I thought I had any emotional connection with.
I was actually close to tears throughout a lot of the film, though tears of what I cannot say. A kind of sadness, yes - the idea of friends you just kind of drift away from without really noticing is a powerful one. But also tears of joy and gladness. This is a film that puts simple, beautiful emotions at its heart, and I think that's where it really touched me. There's an uncomplicated silliness to the film that rejoices in its own ludicrous nature. It is self aware without being self important, and exhalts a child like love for the world and everything in it.
At the end of the year, there is a tendency to try to make sense of what happened, as if our lives were great narratives, full of meaning and portent. What they really are, I suppose, is a collection of random. nonsensical events, within which we bounce around trying to find meaning. More and more I am realising that the meaning, for me, is appreciating those events while they are happening. The sheer joy felt by Walter, the muppet who might be a man, upon meeting his heroes, moved me beyond words, because I suppose that's what I want - to love things with that simple, stupid love I had before I learned to evaluate everything in terms of art, and narrative and worth. All that stuff is good but really... basically, life's a happy song. That'll do.
See you in 2013.
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