The Top 5 Films of 2012

Now that we’re at the end of 2012, we can afford to sigh in relief that the Mayan apocalypse hasn’t annihilated the world as we know it and perhaps the nerdier of us can reflect on a year of not just news stories, scandals and Balotellisms but also some more fresh, fine cinema. Consensus so far is that it’s been a poor twelve months of films, but they said that about last year and the year before that, and these proclamations usually ignore the really good stuff. For every Jack and Jill there was a Ted, each Battleship cancelled out by Avengers Assemble.

Anyway, said good stuff. I’ve decide to narrow the list down from the traditional top ten to a more concise top five, both in a futile attempt to avoid wasting your time and also because after picking out the best handful the margins began to merge together and create a blob of titles with no hope of organizing them in a way I’d be happy with five minutes later.

So, here are the best, and here’s to another five such flicks in 2013.

5 - Lincoln

A late addition, so late in fact that the damn thing isn’t released here until the end of January, is the long awaited and miraculously tight ‘Lincoln’, which as the title suggests follows the exploits of America’s most famed president. Rather than go for a full scale biopic, Spielberg’s talky play-like drama instead focuses on Abe’s efforts to pass the 13^th Amendment, the abolition of slavery in the United States. Considering that his nation is four years into a war he could cease by dropping the matter, it’s the harshest of moral and ethical quandaries on the titular leader, a debate internal and external ageing him by the day and has the political powers spitting blood in debate.

Unrecognizable behind immaculate make up and voice pitched to an uncanny mimic of the historical legend, Daniel Day-Lewis leads an phenomenal cast as Lincoln, one that also includes Tommy Lee Jones as abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, Sally Field as wife Mary, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as son Robert and David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward. Uniformly superb, the supporting act are the perfect foil to a truly immense portrayal by Day-Lewis, who tones it down and creates a distinctive but wholly authentic and believable characterization as the great man. 

A brilliant screenplay from Tony Kushner (condensed from a treatment covering his whole life) imbues class in the dialogue and even makes room for humor, mostly delivered by Lincoln’s fondness for storytelling and the partisan tactics employed by James Spader’s political fixer W.N. Bilbo. It’s mostly dramatic, however, and never dry while also carefully navigating potential hokey sentimentalism and schmaltz. Great ideals and notions are conveyed without preachy idealism and blind patriotism, instead relying of pragmatic realism and duplicitous means to justify righteous ends.

Taut and at times hugely exciting despite its static environment and lengthy conversations, Lincoln is also Spielberg at his most uncharacteristically modest, to the point one forgets he is behind the camera until John Williams’ perfectly placed notes strike keys of recognition in your eardrums. Giving platform to the actors to recite poetry in motion and bring their own gravitas to history, Spielberg’s respectful approach pays dividends and creates the best possible tribute to a great legacy. 

4 - The Dark Knight Rises

Such was the enormous hype storming towards the conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Saga, both from the sheer weight of fandom and anticipation created by a skilled marketing campaign, that The Dark Knight Rises was always fighting battles. Critically speaking, the film was placed as high as it could be before release and spent the viewing frenzy being pushed back down to earth. Ignore the buzz, however, and you have something quite special, perhaps the most emotionally charged blockbuster of all time.

Retired for eight years following the death of Harvey Dent, Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne is thrust back in to the deep end and forced to confront his darkness and demons when a new reign of terror assaults Gotham City, led by feared masked wearing mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy) and preaching doom with talk of revolution and uprising. Out of shape and out of his depth, the Batman is broken and dropped into hell on earth and faces the greatest battle of his life to rebuild himself, return and save his beloved city even if it means his death. Luckily, he has a few handy friends and some impressive toys to help.

Beyond it’s incredible set pieces, with the opening plane crashing prologue and first hero versus big bad clash most notable, The Dark Knight Rises takes the trilogy back to its routes and delivers on all fronts as it wraps up one man’s incredible journey and gives it the most satisfying, exhilarating and tear drawing conclusion possible. Though it is festooned with minor issues causing gripes, the slow paced first act is not one of them and the devotion to the main character’s arc, a priority ahead of Avengers Assemble style hijinks, shows not only the love held by Nolan for his saga, but also a healthy respect for the emotional intelligence of the audience.

Great work by Bale, Hardy and particularly Anne Hathaway in a memorably enigmatic incarnation of Catwoman top a fine cast handling strong material well and again treating the story as a serious one, not so much comic book thrills as modern day fairytale, and Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack is one of his finest to date. A huge scale, full throttle cinematic giant of a motion picture, The Dark Knight Rises proves to be the perfect end to a sensational trilogy and was easily the film’s best and grandest action film.

3 - Looper

2012, it turned out, was a truly good year for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Not content with strong supporting roles in each of the previous two entries, he re-teamed with Brick director Rian Johnson to highlight his leading man chops in Looper, mind-bending science thriller-drama hybrid extraordinaire, and proved himself to be one of the hottest properties in Hollywood. It is 2044, and time travel will soon be invented. Due to the high tech policing of the future, the mob send prospective victims back through time to be dealt with by assassins known as ‘Loopers’.

One of said loopers is Gordon-Levitt’s Joe, happy to execute anonymous souls until one day the 2074 version of himself (played by Bruce Willis) arrives, and Joe’s hesitation enables Old-Joe to overpower him and then escape. Facing the wrath of his bosses and the threat of earth shattering time paradoxes, Joe naturally goes on the hunt while hunted but ends up on the defensive due to Old-Joe’s dark plans. Despite sounding like a gimmick on incredibly fast and thrilling wheels, Looper draws its biggest surprises and quality from its depth.

Showing the same flair for handling extraordinary circumstances as he did in Brick, Johnson takes a show pony of a concept and births from it a strong story that also takes in mutants, loss and great levels of growth and development as Joe cooks up an ambush that leads him to single mother Emily Blunt’s rural farm and further complications. Dismissively taking care of the machinations of time travel, Looper instead focuses on the more important implications of the technology and somewhere within finds the time and space to indulge in a richly constructed, ultimately poignant character study.

Gordon-Levitt, caked up in Brucey make-up, is sensational as Joe, not only delivering an uncanny impersonation of Willis but also bringing a humanity and distinctive identity through the charade, a truly incredible accomplishment and performance. Great scripting, as one would expect from Johnson, is allied to a confident and composed director taking highly original steps while creating his Blade-Runner-esque near future, something which nearly turns the environment of 2040’s Kansas as the wild west and organized crime goons as gunslingers. A breath of fresh air and impossibly deep slice of high concept storytelling, Looper was the year’s surprise classic.

2 - The Master

You always know what you’re going to get with Paul Thomas Anderson; off-kilter, odd-ball and intimate pieces focusing on the stranger members of the human race. With The Master, the voyeur delivered this formula in a complexly brilliant outing that was his best since Magnolia, and possibly his most successful film to date. After the end of the second world war, dispirit drunken drifter Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) leaves the navy and follows a meandering path towards self-destruction and chaos before an alcohol soaked excursion on to a private yacht leads him to self-educated cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman).

Finding a semblance of balance to his existence, Freddie takes to ‘The Cause’ as it is known, adding his brusque and brash qualities to their philosophical movement. His inability to stay off the hooch or reign in his reckless impulses draws seclusion and misgivings from his fellow members, but Dodd remains intent that Freddie stay on. This unlikely double act creates a brilliantly mounted, subtly told dual-character study for two very different figures who find meaning from a bond that is less father-son and more dog-master, as Dodd’s loyalty to his fascinating friend in only matched by Freddie’s to him.

Often hilarious in a wry, dry and observational manner, The Master takes a light and doleful view on a story that could easily have fallen into the trap of dark indictment of cultism and weak minded surrender to quick witted charismatic leadership figures. While Phillip Seymour Hoffman is typically superb in his role as the complex and potentially duplicitous Dodd, it is Joaquin Phoenix who is the real revelation, giving the best performance of his career in method style as the funny but tragically pointless Freddy Quell, existing within his childlike demeanor and uncontrolled mannerisms and sexually obsessed proclivities. He is the most unfocussed incarnation of Id possible, compared to Dodd’s composed but questionable Ego.

Skirting through a long take shooting style which has a loving affection for the wonderfully portrayed characters of show, The Master is PTA at his absolute purest and most effective, handling the 40’s and 50’s set period details seamlessly and casting an eye not on the controversy of religious sects but on the type of person who falls into them, two figures on very different sides of society coming together and united by unlikely means. Fascinating, deep and insightful, it marks Phoenix’s fully-fledged Oscar certainty comeback and was 2012’s most intelligent and nourishing film.

1 - Life of Pi

It seems that any time a novel is described as ‘un-filmable’, a suitably enigmatic director arrives to prove that it is anything but, breathing further creative flavor into fiction seemingly impregnable. Like Fincher was to Fight Club, Taiwanese master Ang Lee takes Yann Martel’s Booker prize winner and finds the perfect manner in which to put it on screen as an astonishing visual experience doubling as an inspirational and insightful story while incased in the finest example of escapism that cinema has produced for years. The results, again, are absolute gold.

Working from David Magee’s wonderfully scripted adaptation, Life of Pi of course tells the incredible story of Piscine Molitor ‘Pi’ Patel, told in flashback as the older Pi (played by Irrfan Khan) recounts his journey to Rafe Spall’s budding writer. Born in his family’s zoo and obsessed with following the creeds of all religions as a hobby, young Pi leaves India with his clan after the decision is made to sell the various animals to fund a new life in Canada. En route by freighter, the ship sinks and leaves Pi marooned alone on a lifeboat with only a small collection of animals for company. Eventually whittled down to a double act of he and a tiger, named Richard Parker, Pi finds meaning to his hopeless existence by training the man eater and forming an unlikely bond which ensures the survival of both.

The sheer spectacle of Life of Pi alone means it is essential viewing, with Ang Lee’s eye for the beauty of all creatures great and small allied to astonishing set pieces such as the defining shipwreck and cameos from various aquatic and land based beasts. One is utterly immersed in the wonder of creation during the sequences charting Pi’s early life in his native India, gorgeous scenery and immaculate mixture of live and CGI animals the best cinema has seen since Babe, only to be simply overwhelmed by the film’s second act sending the titular hero to sea in a soul searching feat of survival. A spirited, vulnerable and memorable performance by Suraj Sharma as the teenage Pi gives emotional heart to an immersive setting that could easily be dominated by the Bengal Tiger sure to feature on many viewers’ fantasy wish list.

While the closing remarks, in which the legitimacy of what we have seen is thrown into question by the possibility of imagination and inspired storytelling covering over the dark and inhumane truth of unseen proceedings, may soil the voyage for some it is perhaps the film’s masterstroke in ensuring Life of Pi doesn’t fall in to the category of disposable popcorn flick. Instead it takes a philosophical edge, one that explores the potential wonders to be found in nature rather than the ugliness within that great blight on the world; humanity, us. A truly enchanting and intoxicating experience, this is a story full to the hilt with courageous faith and subtle symbolism elevating it from one of the most visually astounding films of the century to one of its most heartfelt, loving and ultimately satisfying. A masterpiece of filmmaking both technically and thematically, it soulfully takes the accolade as the 2012’s finest motion picture.