Thứ Hai, 31 tháng 12, 2012

THE 10 BEST FILMS of 2012, *PLUS* 11 ADDITIONAL TERRIFIC FILMS of 2012, INDIVIDUAL ACCOLADES of 2012 - ALL SELECTED BY GREG KLYMKIW - ALL THE BEST CINEMA HAD TO OFFER - JUST FOR YOU!

GREG KLYMKIW'S
10 BEST FILMS OF 2012
(in alphabetical order)

BABY BLUES - dir. Katarzyna Roslaniec
Nobody makes movies quite like Katarzyna Roslaniec. In Baby Blues, the spirited Polish director tackles everyday challenges young teenage girls face in the modern world. Her touch is never juvenile, clichéd, didactic, humourless, nor rife with the dour bludgeon of political correctness. Her movies rock! Big time! Baby Blues focuses on Natalia (played brilliantly by Magdalena Berus), a teenager with a baby sired by her unwitting slacker boyfriend. She is bound and determined to keep it, but on her own steam, thank you very much. Roslaniec injects the picture with a verité nuttiness, allowing her to take a whole lot of stylistic chances, yielding one indelible moment after another. One of several sublime sequences is unveiled just after Natalia experiences a harrowing encounter with judgemental health care workers. Roslaniec holds on a shot of the teen, now looking more like a little girl than a burgeoning young woman, huddled on a metro train with her sick baby clutched tightly in her arms. She holds and holds and holds on the shot and when it feels like she’s going to finally cut out, the shot holds even longer. What Roslaniec finally evokes is truthful – infused with life itself. And it is sublime.


BEYOND THE HILLS - dir. Cristian Mungiu
Beyond the Hills is a masterpiece. Cristian Mungiu (director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) has created a film of lasting value. In its own way the film tells an extremely vital tale in a manner that contributes both to cinema as an art and perhaps even more importantly, to humanity. It tells the story of two friends who took separate paths after their release from a Moldavian orphanage and charts their heartbreaking reunion some years later. Voichita joined a nearby monastery to become a nun under the strict patriarchy of an Orthodox priest referred to as "Papa". Alina has been living "alone" in Germany and working as a waitress (or so she claims). Her plan is to extricate Voichita from the monastery so they can rekindle their deep love and friendship together. God, or rather, religious hypocrisy and hysteria has other plans. What follows in this world of backwards, religious patriarchy is as nightmarish an exploitation of women as the forced sex trade - the creepily insidious manner in which women are forced into the sexist, misogynistic and subservient roles that are so prevalent in cultures rooted in the centuries-old Eastern Rite religious traditions. Even more horrendous are the deep-seeded attitudes these cultures have towards orphans (also rooted in sexism and misogyny). For a huge majority of Eastern Rite followers, orphans take on the sins of their mothers and as such, our two central characters were born into a world that believed them to be lesser human beings because of this. Mungiu charts the final weeks of their friendship in homage to Carl Dreyer - most notably in the religious-themed Day of Wrath and Ordet. Visually, Mungiu packs his frames in direct contrast to Dreyer's austerity, but where Mungiu and Dreyer share approaches are found in the tableau-styled takes and, of course, in the stories that are told. Dreyer might be one of the great film artists to have committed himself to the thematic concerns of women amidst religious and/or societal repression and their exploitation within these worlds. Clearly with the horrific tale of abortion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and now Beyond the Hills, Mungiu continues in Dreyer's bold thematic and narrative tradition of telling the stories of women and their suffering in patriarchal worlds.



CITADEL - dir. Ciaran Foy A brilliant dystopian horror film about crashing, numbing, unrelenting fear brought on when the young protagonist watches - not once, but twice - as those he loves are brutalized and/or snatched away from him. His fear intensifies so unremittingly, with such grim realism, that we're placed directly in the eye of the storm that is his constant state of terror. Contributing greatly here is lead actor Aneurin Barnard as the young father, delivering a performance so haunting, it's unlikely audiences will ever shake the full impact of what he achieves. We follow his story solely from his sphere and given that the character is almost always in a state of intense apprehension, the whole affair could have been utterly unbearable. Thankfully, he breathes such humanity into the role that we not only side with him, but I frankly defy anyone to NOT see themselves (or at least aspects of who they are and what they feel) in this character so indelibly wrought. This single father, living alone with his baby in a desolate housing project, must occasionally leave his home and enter a world of emptiness, squalor, violent crime, constantly grey skies and interiors lit under harsh fluorescents. His head is down, his eyes only occasionally looking around for potential danger and/or to literally see where he is walking (or rather, scurrying to). Just as he's constantly in a state of terror - so are we. There is, you see, an infection - a pestilence of the most abominable kind and to avoid it is ultimately futile. The vermin must be met head-on. And it's going to scare the living bejesus out of you.


DJANGO UNCHAINED - dir. Quentin Tarantino
I hated Reservoir Dogs - nasty, overwrought posturing that both bored and sickened me. I enjoyed Pulp Fiction a tiny bit more. Well, to be truthful, I loved the Bruce Willis story, but pretty much everything else bored the crap out of me. And then it happened. I was about to flush this overrated poseur down the toilet until I allowed myself to see Jackie Brown. From there, it was onwards and upwards and while I still (after repeated attempts) hate his first two films, Tarantino's become one of my favourite contemporary directors. Django Unchained follows in the footsteps of his previous work which, frankly, gets better and better. Managing to be both horrific and, I kid you not, fun, Django Unchained is one of the most raw, original and subversive films I've EVER had the pleasure to enjoy. In a nutshell, it's Richard Fleischer's Mandingo with the same manner of pure, joyous, unadulterated vengeance that coursed through the veins of Inglourious Basterds as directed by Sergio Corbucci pumped on crystal meth. Set two years before the American Civil War, Tarantino introduces us to the biggest, baddest 70s-style SuperSpade Blaxploitation Hero in Spaghetti Western duds we're ever likely to see. Jamie Foxx as Django is teamed up with bounty hunter Christoph Waltz to kill nasty-ass racist white folk throughout the deep south and rescue his wife from the clutches of Leonardo DiCaprio, the most insane plantation owner this side of James Mason and Perry King in the aforementioned Mandingo. Guns blaze, blood splashes in our faces and after close to three hours, we leave the cinema with the same buoyancy that infused us after seeing 2011's great Friedkin picture Killer Joe. The film is as all-out exploitative as it's one of the most provocative cinematic condemnations of slavery etched on celluloid. Does Tarantino get to have his cake and eat it too? Damn straight, and so do we.


END OF WATCH - dir. David Ayer
My Dad was a cop for ten years. Most cop pictures left him cold save for their occasional entertainment value, but a handful of pictures stand out as movies he loved on several levels. Richard Fleischer's adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's The New Centurions was one that Dad always felt came closest to recreating "the life" of cops while William Friedkin's The French Connection captured the dull, dirty, mundane aspects of police work and finally, Don Siegel's Dirty Harry came closest to showing the frustrations inherent in the job and how sometimes, a good cop just had to say, "Fuck the system," and do what needed to be done. I think Dad would have liked End of Watch a lot. Hanging by the slenderest of plot threads, this gorgeously, blisteringly and bravely photographed policier is a mostly episodic nosedive into every harrowing moment street cops encounter and provides us with an always jolting ride through the dangers our boys in blue face everyday. Focusing upon the close friendship of two cops (beautifully played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña), we experience their lives on and off the beat and most importantly, the thematic and dramatic importance of family in all its forms - blood, community and crime. The partners go about their day-to-day exploits until they happen upon a group of deadly local dealers who are tied to vicious drug cartels. The two cops begin investigating until they get so close to the source of criminal power that the cartel orders hits on them. It's a testament to writer-director David Ayer that he captures the camaraderie of partners by leaping beyond the by-the-numbers mismatched-partners-who-learn-to-love-and-respect-each-other cliches. From the start, we know the partners in End of Watch are made for each other. If anything, their love deepens and becomes even more demonstrative as the danger and violence in the film intensifies. So many films in recent years (including those Ayer has written and/or directed) have focused up the "dirty" cops. Reversing this trend with End of Watch is not only welcome but necessary to bolster those in the force who genuinely embrace the protection of the citizenry. To be a good cop in a world where crime is escalating and when administrative shackles are getting tighter and where cops are even forced into plying their trade in ways they know are unfair to those they're supposed to protect is as narratively and politically satisfying as it is savvy. End of Watch is the best cop picture in years!


FAT KID RULES THE WORLD - dir. Matthew Lillard
On every level, Lillard's lovely film from the fine screenplay by Michael M.B. Galvin and Peter Speakman, indelibly captures both the bittersweet and dark humour associated with what it's like to be a fat kid. Most importantly, it tells an inspiring and genuinely realistic story of how a fat kid not only gains the acceptance of peers, but to respect the inner qualities beneath the mounds of lard and flesh. That the film also touches upon themes of friendship, loyalty and the importance of family is a mega-bonus. That the film offers punk rock as a creative outlet for the main character to develop a greater sense of self-worth is several extra scoops of hot fudge marshmallow sauce on the cinematic ice cream sundae that is Fat Kid Rules The World.


GOON - dir. Michael Dowse

TIED WITH


KRIVINA - dir. Igor Drljaca

Okay, I'm cheating a bit here. Sue me, motherfucker. This, however, has been a tremendous year for Canadian Cinema and both of these films rock big time. In a sense, I want to pair these works together as they represent what English Canada is best at. There are no two films made in this country that are as different as these two and yet, they share Canada's potential to create cinema that knocks the ball out of the park in ways that truly defines what's so distinctive about our film culture - what makes it worth preserving and fighting for. In the case of Goon, we have it in us to make a commercially minded picture that is also indigenous to the Canadian experience, just as Krivina takes us into that completely other territory of cinema as poetry, but in so doing, just as brilliantly and successfully reflects Canadian Culture. English Canada is NOT the United States, Mr. Harper. We are truly a nation unto itself and it's so important that we never forget that our feature film culture reflects WHO WE ARE as a nation - and Goon and Krivina do this is spades. Not a single shot is fired in Canadian director Igor Drljaca's stunning feature debut Krivina, but the horror of war - its legacy of pain, its futility and its evil hang like a cloud over every frame of this powerful cinematic evocation of memory and loss. The film's hypnotic rhythm plunges us into the inner landscape of lives irrevocably touched by man's inhumanity to man - a diaspora of suffering that shall never escape the fog of war. Krivina is an astounding film - a personal vision that genuinely affects our sense of self to seek out our own worth, our own place in the world. Like Olexander Dovzhenko, Sergei Paradjanov and, to a certain extent, Tarkovsky, Drljaca achieves what I believe to be the fullest extent of what cinema can offer - the ability to touch the souls of its characters and, in so doing, touching the souls of those lucky enough to experience the magic that can only, I think, be fully wrought by the art of the motion picture. Goon, on the other end of the spectrum presents the Great Canadian Hockey Movie to follow in the footsteps of Canuck "Lumber-in-the-Teeth" Classics as Face Off, Paperback Hero and, of course, the most Canadian Movie Never Made By A Canadian, George Roy Hill's classic Slap Shot. Etching the tender tale of the kindly, but brick-shit-house-for-brains bouncer recruited to a cellar-dweller hockey team in Halifax as an enforcer, Dowse captures the sweaty, blood-spurting, bone-crunching and tooth-spitting circus of minor league hockey with utter perfection. The camaraderie, the endless bus trips, the squalid motels, the brain-dead fans, the piss-and-vinegar coaches, the craggy play-by-play sportscasters, the bars reeking of beer and vomit and, of course, Pogo Sticks - it's all here and then some. Goon delivers laughs, fisticuffs, mayhem and yes, even a dash of romance in a tidy package of good, old-fashioned underdog styling. Oh Canada! Art and commerce is what we're all about.


THE MASTER - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
I can’t ever recall the same electricity in any screening of any movie in the 25-or-so years I’ve been attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Hundreds of scribes packed the hugest auditorium of TIFF’s Bell Lightbox complex. The pre-screening buzz in the cinema resembled the low, but crazily intense sounds coming from a hive of happily prodigious bees. The lights went down and the house went completely and utterly silent. Then it began. Paul Thomas Anderson’s insanely provocative exploration of post-war America reels you in. You feel a bit like ‘Bruce’ the shark in Spielberg’s Jaws, chomping on a sharp hook that Robert Shaw’s mad-eyed Quint keeps hitting, taunting, tugging, twisting and pulling. You try to escape, you fight madly not to succumb, but succumb you do. Inspired by the crazy founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, Anderson weaves a hypnotic tale of a young veteran and his mentorship under a charismatic cult leader. If you are lucky enough to see the film as it’s meant to be seen in 70mm, you get the added bonus of diving into Anderson’s masterly use of the medium. It is an epic scope, but an intimate epic with Anderson’s eye examining the rich landscapes of the human face. And what faces! Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Laura Dern suck you deep into their eyes and, ultimately, their very souls. When I left the cinema, I couldn’t explain to myself what I had just seen and why it so powerfully knocked me on my ass. What I can say is that I can count on one hand the number of films that were not only hypnotic, but in fact, seemed to place me in a literal state of hypnosis. The Master is one of these films. I saw it a second time – riveted, yet wondering if I still loved it. I queried George Toles, my old friend, mentor and screenwriter of Guy Maddin’s masterworks, about his experience, explaining, of course, my recent dilemma. His response was this: ‘The movie neither asks for my love, nor wants my love, but I give it my love anyway.’ A third viewing corroborated this for me.


PARADISE: LOVE - dir. Ulrich Seidl
In a perverse way (and perverse is what the great Austrian filmmaker Seidl is all about), his new film actually makes for an excellent companion piece to Django Unchained. Seidl, the "bad-boy" of Austrian cinema is back with this searingly funny, powerful and harrowing drama against the backdrop of Kenya's sex tourism industry. He deftly plumbs the extremities of human behaviour in order to reveal humanity in all its disparate forms and with the weight and resonance of its tragic beauty. Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) a blonde blob adorned in a sun hat flip-flops onto the sunny airport tarmac of a Kenyan resort, surrounded by her equally porcine 40-50-something Austrian maidens. Seidl's camera greedily drinks in globs of fleshy pink corpulence jiggling like mounds of jello, streaked with road maps of stretch marks boring through virtual mountain ranges of cellulite and grotesque cauliflower-like skin tags gripping desperately to spongy thighs like bats in a cave. Happily ensconced in the paradise of the resort, our jolly Teresa ogles the rich, lithe, cocoa bodies of her male hosts, salivating with the same delightful desire she might express when gazing upon a platter of rich Viennese pastries, imagining the joy of stuffing them all down her expansive, greedy gullet. Teresa parades along the Kenyan beaches in outfits that accentuate her strudel and schnitzel induced corpulence, her fat face emblazoned with lustful wonder that ultimately betrays her slatternly desires. Surrounded by eager, young and almost criminally gorgeous Kenyan men who vie for her attention in the hope she'll buy a lot more than the trinkets they have on offer. With their smooth gentle voices, glisteningly ripped bodies and irrepressibly insistent promises of the love they will provide, it's not hard to believe that Teresa and her ilk might actually believe it is LOVE they are paying for, not sex. When Seidl's camera focuses upon the beautiful young men, their eyes betray desperation and terror. With Paradise: Love, Seidl unflinchingly charts a woman's descent into satisfying her most basic sexual needs by exploiting those who are so poor they will do whatever they have to do in order to survive.


STORIES WE TELL - dir. Sarah Polley
Nature, nurture and the manner in which their influence upon our lives inspires common threads in the telling of tales that are in turn relayed, processed and synthesized by what we think we see and what we want to see are the ingredients which make up Sarah Polley’s latest work as a director. It is first and foremost a story of family – not just a family, or for that matter any family, but rather a mad, warm, brilliant passionate family who expose their lives in the kind of raw no-guts-no-glory manner that only film can allow. Most importantly, the lives exposed are as individual as they are universal and ultimately it’s a film about all of us. It is a documentary with a compelling narrative arc, yet one that is as mysterious and provocative and profoundly moving, as you’re likely to see. At the heart of the film is a courageous, vibrant woman no longer with us. Polley guides us through this woman’s influence upon all those she touched. Throughout much of the film, one is reminded of Clarence Oddbody’s great line in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life: “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?” I try to imagine the lives of everyone Polley introduces us to and how if, like in the Capra film, this vibrant, almost saint-like woman had not been born. Most of those we meet in the film wouldn’t have been born either and the rest would have lived lives with a considerable loss of riches. And I also think deeply on the fact that this woman was born and how we see her effect upon all those whose lives she touched. Then, most importantly, I think about Clarence Oddbody’s line with respect to the child that might not have been born to this glorious woman – a child who might have been aborted. I think about how this child has touched all the lives of those in the documentary. The possibility that this child might have never been born is, within the context of the story relayed, so utterly palpable that I can’t imagine audiences not breaking down and weeping with both sadness and joy. It's a masterpiece.
And now, taking a cue from Mr. Roger Ebert who so simply and easily came up with a way of doing honour to films "that were as good, in one way or another" as those included in his 10 Best List, I'm going to modify my usual list of "runners-up" - a term I hate because it doesn't adequately reflect my feelings.

The 10 Best list selections are, for me (and more often than not), based on aesthetic consideration as well as gut impulse - visceral, personal, emotional responses to the work - often over repeated viewings when possible. (Plus the fact that the world demands 10 and I can only, within that context, only modestly declare a tie or two and only do so when it makes sense as I did above with Goon and Krivina.)

Mr. Ebert notes that the juries at "many film festivals . . . come up with a cockamamie category named the Grand Jury Prizes" which is essentially a way of making appropriate nods in the direction of movies that are equally worthy of accolades. Ebert chose to provide a list of such prizes for his lists this year.

What I've decided to do is include the following category where I'll provide eleven more films in alphabetical order as "11 More Terrific Pictures (2012)" which you're welcome to view as an additional category of just mush up the above list with this one and call it a "Top 21 of 2012". Seems fair. To me. So, without further ado, here they are.
10 More Terrific Pictures From 2012
(in alphabetical order)

AMERICAN MARY - dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska (Soska Twins)
Body modification. Sexually Psychotic Surgeons. Revenge.
Horrifying. Original. And oh, so très, très cool.


BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS - dir. Fredrik Gertten
70s paranoid thriller meets chilling contemporary documentary.
Filmmaker sued by multi-national. It's David meets Goliath.


BULLHEAD - dir. Michael R. Roskam
This unique and harrowing crime melodrama etches a world of double-crosses, filthy brute force and intimidation of the worst kind by transplanting the gangsters of Goodfellas into the roles of two-fisted laconic farmers, veterinarians and feed suppliers - in Belgium, no less.


CAPITAL - dir. Costa Gavras
High Finance. Corporate Chicanery. The Banking Crisis.
Hot clothes. Hot locales. Hot women. Hot cars. Hot.
Director of Z, State of Siege, Missing, The Confession
DO THE MATH!!!


CLOUDBURST - dir. Thom Fitzgerald
Love on the run, k.d. lang, pickup trucks, roadside cafes,
Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker and a Nova Scotia
that's never looked more heart-achingly beautiful.


DAMSELS IN DISTRESS - dir. Whit Stillman
Crazy, funny, literate dialogue. Hot, smart babes. Doofus guys.
Suicide prevention. Donuts. Inventing a new dance craze.
Greta Gerwig. Greta Gerwig. Greta Gerwig.


DRAGAN WENDE WEST BERLIN
dir. Lena Müller, Dragan von Petrovic, Vuk Maksimovic

In the words of Dragan Wende,
brothel doorman, pimp and dealer in the all-new, reunified Berlin:
"I said to the guy:
'Pay 99 euros and fuck all day!'
'If you have no teeth, just lick her pussy.'"


JOHN CARTER - dir. Andrew Stanton
Hunk hero. Major league babe. Great villains.
The SPIRIT of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Eye-popping special effects.
Cool aliens. Cool sets. Cool spaceships.
Monsters. Yes, monsters. Cool monsters, at that.
Slaves-in-an-arena-fighting-aforementioned-monsters.
Rip-snorting battle sequence.
Have I mentioned the babe, yet?


LAWLESS - dir. John Hillcoat
Bootleggers. Ultra-violence. Foulest Villain in Years.
Nick Cave Script. Nick Cave Music. Nick Cave.
Mega-Hunks. Mega-Babes. Mega-Bloodshed.
Cool Costumes. Manly Haircuts. Moonshine.


THE PUNK SYNDROME - dir. Jukka Kärkkäinen, J-P Passi
Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day, one of the greatest punk bands of all time.
A hard-core, kick-ass, take-no-fucking-prisoners mean-machine.
No musical punches pulled. The music slams you in the face.
Until it is pulp. Like coarsely-ground hamburger meat.
They crap on hypocrisy, corruption, mindless bureaucracy.
And pedicures. Yes, pedicures! You see, they are from Finland.


PUSHWAGNER - dir. Even Benestad, August B. Hanssen
Pushwagner rocks! It rocks hard!
Hariton Pushwagner - Artist Extraordinaire. And WHAT an artist!
Norway's ONLY septuagenarian bad boy beat-punk maniac artist.
His art is life. His life is art. All Hail Hariton Pushwagner!
All the fucking time! What an artist! WHAT a movie!


RHINO SEASON - dir. Bahman Ghobadi
A husband. A wife. An evil Totalitarian regime. Poetry leads to prison.
30 years for the man. 10 years for the woman.
Upon her release the wife learns her husband is dead. Life goes on.
20 years later, the husband is released from prison. He is not dead.
He must find her. He must. A love story as old as time itself.
Love is what drives this film and by extension, the human race.
Love must be protected and sanctified at all costs.
When that ceases, so do we.


AND NOW, INDIVIDUAL KLYMKIW ACCOLADES FOR CINEMA IN 2012

BEST ACTION FILM:
LAWLESS - dir. John Hillcoat


BEST COMEDY:
GOON - dir. Michael Dowse


BEST HORROR FILM:
AMERICAN MARY - dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska (Soska Twins)


BEST SCIENCE FICTION FILM:
BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW - dir. Panos Cosmatos


BEST DOCUMENTARY:
STORIES WE TELL - dir. Sarah Polley


BEST ENSEMBLE CAST:
THE MASTER


BEST ACTOR:
Aneurin Barnard - CITADEL


BEST ACTRESS:
Magdalena Berus - BABY BLUES


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Leonardo DiCaprio - DJANGO UNCHAINED


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Tristan Risk - AMERICAN MARY


BEST DIRECTOR:
Paul Thomas Anderson - THE MASTER


BEST SCREENWRITING:
Quentin Tarantino - DJANGO UNCHAINED


-TIED WITH-

Paul Thomas Anderson - THE MASTER


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Roman Vasyanov - END OF WATCH


BEST EDITING:
Mike Munn - STORIES WE TELL


-TIED WITH-

Reginald Harkema - GOON


BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN/ART DIRECTION:
Tony Devenyi, Courtney Stockstad - AMERICAN MARY


BEST COSTUME DESIGN:
Jayne Mabbot - AMERICAN MARY


BEST SOUND:
Brad Hillman, Maureen Murphy, Eric J. Paul, Brody Ratsoy,
Stefan Udell - BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW




BEST MUSIC:
"Pertti Kurikka's Name Day" "Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät":
Pertti Kurikka, Kari Aalto, Sami Helle, Toni Välitalo
THE PUNK SYNDROME



BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
JOHN CARTER


JUST FOR FUN, I 'VE AMALGAMATED THE TOP 10 WITH THE TERRIFIC 10
AND CREATED AN ALPHABETICAL KLYMKIW TOP 20 Films of 2012

BABY BLUES - dir. Katarzyna Roslaniec
BEYOND THE HILLS - dir. Cristian Mungiu
BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS - dir. Fredrik Gertten
CAPITAL - dir. Costa Gavras
CITADEL - dir. Ciaran Foy
CLOUDBURST - dir. Thom Fitzgerald
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS - dir. Whit Stillman
DJANGO UNCHAINED - dir. Quentin Tarantino
DRAGAN WENDE WEST BERLIN - dir. Lena Müller, Dragan von Petrovic, Vuk Maksimovic
END OF WATCH - dir. David Ayer
FAT KID RULES THE WORLD - dir. Matthew Lillard
GOON - dir. Michael Dowse (Tie w/Krivina)
JOHN CARTER - dir. Andrew Stanton
KRIVINA - dir. Igor Drljaca (Tie w/Goon)
LAWLESS - dir. John Hillcoat
THE MASTER - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
PARADISE: LOVE - dir. Ulrich Seidl
THE PUNK SYNDROME - dir. Jukka Kärkkäinen, J-P Passi
PUSHWAGNER - dir. Even Benestad, August B. Hanssen
RHINO SEASON - dir. Bahman Ghobadi
STORIES WE TELL - dir. Sarah Polley

Chủ Nhật, 30 tháng 12, 2012

Greg Klymkiw takes a good, healthy DUMP upon the very WORST that Cinema had to offer in 2012. The TEN WORST MOVIES OF 2012.


The Worst Movies of 2012
By Greg Klymkiw

2012 could well have been much worse than it was, but for the most part, the year yielded a lot of great stuff. That said, there's more than enough celluloid trash to kvetch about and believe me, you'll find plenty of my kvetching here. Contenders I mulled over for inclusion that you won't find here included Ben Affleck's overrated racist compost toilet Argo, the absolutely pointless, boring and abominable Hitchcock, Brandon Cronenberg's dull, humourless and idiotic Antiviral, Spielberg's plodding Lincoln, the bloated Les Miserables, and a whole raft of mediocre comedies, horror films and pretentious art films. Consider them all runners-up.

Here, though, for your edification are my absolute Top Ten Worst Films of 2012. Technically there are a few more than 10 on my list, but three of the films are so interchangeable that they ended up being listed as a tie. The worst trend this year was to hire directors who can't direct action and/or suspense to handle films replete with action and/or suspense. The bottom line is that the films listed below were awful enough to bring out the ornery, rascally rabbit in me.

As per usual, I present the titles in alphabetical order.

Read 'em and weep!

Klymkiw's 10 WORST movies of 2012

Didn't Sam Raimi already make this movie?

The Amazing Spider-Man dir. Marc Webb

Pitching the Turd: So, uh, let's do the origin of Spidey again, but with a new cast and let's make sure it's not as good because people will come anyway. Oh, let's get the director of Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus music videos. He'll know what to do.

Catching the Turd: The bland, tasteful hack-manship of this movie slides down one's gullet not unlike the ease with which sewage spills into water treatment tanks. With by-the-numbers direction that delivers the all-too-familiar Spidey origin story (which Sam Raimi already did with so much force and panache - not that long ago), we basically get a slight reworking; a barely competent lame-duck that's little more than a cash-grab. The movie is dull and depressing, but even more so are the boneheads who paid money to see it. Are contemporary audiences so stupid that they require these endless reboots? Are they so bereft of attention spans that they need a pallid re-telling of Spidey's origin so soon? Have they become such lambs-to-the-slaughter suckers they'll contribute readily to putting money in the pockets of the unimaginative business school graduates pretending to be studio moguls? The answer it would seem is a resounding "Yes!"

TIED WITH . . .


Gee, this movie seems awfully familiar.

The Avengers dir. Joss Whedon

Pitching the Turd: Asgard's exiled Loki, hooks up with evil aliens to steal a cube of power. He hypnotizes Hawkeye and Professor Selvig to assist him. Nick Fury pulls in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor and The Black Widow to fight the power from the outer reaches of the universe. The super heroes squabble. They kiss and make up. They fight the bad guys. They win. The Earth is free.

Catching the Turd: Television writer-director Joss Whedon accomplishes the sort of thing TV directors and other filmmakers bereft of any real cinematic voice employ. Endless closeups, more shots and cuts than Sergei Eisenstein would have ever imagined being used (and he used plenty), no sense of spatial geography, genuinely good fight choreography butchered by excessive cutting, a grating, pounding soundscape, a thunderous score and a whole lot of thunder signifying not much of anything. The whole affair is executed with a cudgel. It's depressing to realize that audiences have become so numbed by bad filmmaking they'll have no difficulty embracing these loathsome efforts. Joss Whedon is not a filmmaker. Like the woeful J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan and others of this overrated, untalented ilk, Whedon is a hack. There's nary a single shot in the film that suggests he has a filmmaker's eye and though he apparently has a good reputation as a writer in television (I don't bother to watch television), he clearly hasn't got what it takes to generate a script with the sweep and true spectacle needed for a feature. Oh, and the movie bored the shit out of me.

TIED WITH . . . 


Pardon me, I'm looking for Bridget Fonda.

The Dark Knight Rises dir. Christopher "One Idea" Nolan

Pitching the Turd: Gotham City is crime free. Harvey Dent has become Jesus Christ and Commissioner Gordon is feeling guilty about suppressing the real truth for the "good" of the city. Batman is off the radar whilst Bruce Wayne mopes about in seclusion with his loyal butler Alfred. A plucky cat burglar who looks like Anne Hathaway with body paint for clothes, takes a shine to Bruce as does a wealthy socialite who looks an awful lot like the French woman who played Edith Piaf (only without the "ugly" makeup). Out of nowhere comes an incredibly bland villain with a bunch of tubes and steel pipes in his face. It's impossible to understand half his dialogue, but no matter, he's there to do evil, not to be understood. He's a terrorist bent on giving the city back to criminals. This will never do, of course, so Batman comes to the rescue, but not before an endlessly drawn out sequence in some weird-ass pit in the middle of nowhere as Bruce needs to climb out of the hole to triumphantly beat the bad guy. Oh yeah, there's a nice young cop who believes in Batman and lends a hand. His name is - WAIT FOR IT - Robin. Alas, no homoerotic subtext here. Nolan leaves that bit o' business twixt Bruce Wayne and Alfred.

Catching the Turd: Christopher Nolan has a very distinctive style. It doesn't mean he can direct. He's dull, dour, pretentious, humourless and has absolutely no talent for directing action sequences. He does, however, usually have one idea.

I'm an auteur, don'cha know?


I can act, write & direct. Just like Orson Welles.

When acting I have one expression.

Here it is again. Enjoy!

Friends With Kids dir. Jennifer Westfeldt

Pitching the Turd: Two fuck buddies see how marriage and kids have ruined the carefree lives of all their friends until they realize that it's okay to be more than fuck buddies and ruin their own lives too.

Catching the Turd: Easily the most nauseating film of the year that forces an interminable wait to discover if the most sickening romantic movie couple in recent film history will eventually find happiness with each other. Before the inevitable no-brainer is revealed we have to put up with TV-sitcom-styled dialogue trying pathetically to be sophisticated, fired out in Howard Hawks-like rat-a-tat-tat fashion, purportedly in homage to classic romantic screwball comedy, but in reality, simply masking how shallow all the characters are, including everything that spews out of their mouths. We are therefore forced to wallow, like pigs in a trough full of horrendous upper-middle-class values in these repugnant empty vessels - either to remind us how wonderful the lifestyles of bourgeois sheep are or as a carrot of "success" to dangle before those who aspire to emulating these frightful people and their negligible existence. Especially grotesque is the bourgeois breeder mentality that infuses all the characters - particularly our two main characters. There's a selfishness and immaturity that we're all supposed to, uh, "relate" to. I'd personally find it easier to relate to Manson Family values than these petty, machine-tooled "sophisticates". And lest we forget, this painful, pus-filled boil of a movie stars the hideously unwatchable Jennifer Westfeldt, one of the most woefully inexpressive actresses I've ever had the displeasure to witness on a big screen. Not only does she have a clumping, clod-hopping gait, but her face is weirdly frozen. Westfeldt is clearly too young to have been mainlining Botox, but I'd hate to think how immobile her expressions would be if and when she does partake in this hideous, dehumanizing butchery. Of course it's Westfeldt who is responsible for this abomination as she also wrote (in a manner of speaking) and directed (as it were) what is easily one of the worst romantic comedies of the new millennium.

I'm going to find you and I'm going to… Oh, Shite! Wrong movie.

The Grey dir. Joe Carnahan

Pitching the Turd: Liam Neeson, a sharpshooting wolf killer and co-workers from an Arctic Oil Rig are on a plane that crashes in the middle of a wolf pack's happy hunting grounds. The coterie of macho wolf-bait is the usual assortment of miscreants - leading to all manner of personality conflicts amidst the very real threat of being devoured and/or freezing to death.

Catching the Turd: A new film from the director of The A-Team, Smokin' Aces and Narc is NOT, I assure you, a ringing endorsement. Joe Carnahan shoehorns fake existential male angst into a straight-up action thriller, bone-headedly assuming he'll lift the material out of its genre roots. He's a snob and an incompetent one at that. The wolf attacks are directed with all the style of an apprentice butcher raising his sledgehammer tentatively over the skull of a cow before letting it sloppily crash down upon the bovine cranium. The action is almost always in closeup and utilizes lazy herky-jerky shooting in tandem with Attention Deficit Disorder quick cutting.

As you can see, I have extremely large lips.

The Hunger Games dir. Gary Ross

Pitching the Turd: Based on the first of three bestselling books by Suzanne Collins, children are forced to murder each other on live television.

Catching the Turd: This might have made for a decent picture if it came closer to Norman Jewison's Rollerball crossed with Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale - the cool dystopian future vision of the former and the utterly insane ultra violence of the latter. However, to make a dream picture like this, even with the dreadful script based on a dreadful book would have required something resembling a director which, helmer Gary Ross clearly isn't. In fact, Ross reaches his filmmaking nadir with this. He's yet another director who has absolutely no idea how to direct suspense and action. Full of annoying shaky-cam and endless, cheap-jack quick cuts, he's all bluster and not much else. He has no idea of spatial geography, his camera placements are all a big mess and there is nary a thrilling moment in the entire movie. Add to the film's ineptitude a plodding 142-minute running time and it's a recipe for guaranteed international worldwide boxoffice success amongst audiences who are collectively not unlike Winnie The Pooh - being, as he was, a bear of very little brain..

There are no leading roles for women, but I will do quite nicely.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey dir. Peter Jackson

Pitching the Turd: Let's take a slender novel and blow the first part of it up to a 170-minute movie. It's Tolkein's precursor to The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo leaves the Shire with Gandalf and a bunch of Middle Earthlings to get something (or to do something, or to meet someone or to. . . whatever) and have them walk for a long time and punctuate the walking (and talking) with occasional fights with monsters and bad guys. Eventually, they'll get what they're looking for (sort of) and the movie will prepare us for a sequel.

Catching the Turd: The Hobbit is a lame ride. The movie is interminably boring, the action scenes are surprisingly and rather lamely directed, the special effects are predictably - uh, digital - many of the set-pieces are structured like video game roller coaster rides and worst of all, the stalwart Viggo Mortensen hero-type is unbearably awful and has absolutely no screen presence. None whatsoever. Where they dredged that loser up was beyond me until I checked out his credits after seeing the movie and saw he was a longtime TV actor. Oh, and it's just under three hours long. I assure you that one never gets that precious time back.

You'll be happy when I give myself a Cesarian. Not much else to enjoy here.

Prometheus dir. Ridley Scott

Pitching the Turd: Scientists go to another planet and discover that it was once populated by alien beings who were responsible for creating life on Earth until they were wiped out by the nasty monster aliens from Alien. Yes, Alien - which makes this a prequel, no less, and with that great film's original director. Anyone who thinks Prometheus should be viewed as a stand-alone piece and NOT a prequel to Alien (as some have suggested, including the director) is an idiot. It's a prequel all right.

Catching the Turd: Prometheus is all sizzle and no steak. There's way too much boring New-Agey stuff, no real scares (save for one that is ripped off from the original Alien) and a much larger cast to give the aliens more to eat (though it means little because we never get to know any of them as characters). The movie is rife with BIG IDEAS, but most of them are introduced, then dropped in favour of forward thrust and pyrotechnics. Even more offensive is the predictable conclusion that offers up a sequel or two. I saw it coming from very early on and prayed the story WOULDN'T go where it did. It did. So much for shocker endings; though in fairness, a gibbon might have some trouble predicting the outcome.

What's my motivation, Oliver? Schwance, baby, schwance.

Savages dir. Oliver Stone

Pitching the Turd: The idiotically named "O" is the coffee table centrepiece in a groovy menage with her dope dealing boyfriends Ben and Chon. These guys make wicked dope, live the high life in their California dream house and boink the beautiful, but vapid O. When a Mexican drug cartel run by a Latina she-bitch seeks to muscle-in on their action, their dream comes crashing to a halt when O is kidnapped by the baddies and held hostage until they do the deal.

Catching the Turd: Easily Oliver Stone's worst movie ever. With a trio of bland lead characters and a clutch of over-the-top villains, there's little to keep our interest. I have no problem with the heroes being dope dealers who are simply trying to protect their turf - my problem is that they're such dull, hippy-dippy and ultimately, empty dope dealers. And while the villains all chew the scenery, none of them feel like they're especially having any fun doing it. The movie is a misfire from beginning to end. All it has going for it is the violence which, I'll admit is staged with Stone's trademark style and efficiency, but because there's virtually nothing in the movie that's remotely engaging, even the well-staged carnage feels like a waste. The whole picture feels phoned-in.

BOND: She's all mine, Raoul. Hands off. RAOUL: Oh, Bond. She's more than enough woman for both us. M: Oh, for Jesus H. Christ's sake! Drop your goddamn drawers. I can take both of youse Nancy-Boys on, plus Mr. Kincade and his bleeding stupid hunting dog. KINCADE: Och! Welcome to Scotland.

Skyfall dir. Sam Mendes

Pitching the Turd: James Bond views M as his Mommy because he was orphaned as a child. A terrorist who used to work for M is now trying to discredit her. The terrorist once looked upon M as his Mommy too because, like Bond, he was orphanedBond goes after him. Any guesses as to the outcome? I, for one, was looking forward to s scene where Bond and The Terrorist threw their arms open to each other and invite M for a bit of Mommy-Love Daisy Chain action. It didn't happen, but as I'm a professional (don'cha know?) I did not let it affect my assessment of the film.

Catching the Turd: Problem: Sam Mendes can't direct action. Problem: Sam Mendes can't direct (even though he continues to fool critics and Oscar voters otherwise). Problem: Sam Mendes has no sense of fun, nor anything resembling a sense of humour. These are big problems. Mendes is not only an overrated director, he's a magician, though not the kind that creates screen magic, but the sort who truly bamboozles audiences, studio heads, producers, financiers (and, sadly, reviewers) into thinking he's good. It must be the accent. He's a poseur of the highest order and has never made a decent picture. That said, I put these prejudices aside because I love Daniel Craig as Bond (in Casino Royale only, though) and I love James Bond (in many of his incarnations over the decades). I enjoyed the first two minutes of Skyfall, but as soon as the big action set-piece began, my heart sank. The entire opening has little sense of spatial geography, far too many closeups, a ridiculous number of cuts and only a handful of wide shots to take in the action. Car chase, motorcycle chase, foot chase and finally, spectacular leaps on top of a moving train do little more than exhaust the audience. Mendes cudgels us into submission. This isn't suspense, nor is it especially exciting. It's cacophony, pure and simple. Once again, we have an action sequence in a contemporary film that fakes its way through - driving the action NOT with dramatic beats, but with sledgehammer cuts inspired by explosive and/or grating, screeching sound. During the car chase sequence we never get a clean exterior shot of the car that Bond and Moneypenny are in. Mendes peppers the chase with closeups of things the car smashes into from interior POVs, but we never get a sense of the real danger, destruction and urgency. It's all bluster. So is the rest of the movie - boringly bombastic and no fun at all. Oh, and to all those who thought Javier Bardem was a great Bond villain - think again.

Where's the loo? I have the runs. So too will you.

The Woman in Black dir. James Watkins

Pitching the Turd: A widowed young 19th-century London`lawyer (Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe) journeys to an isolated village to save his ailing career and settle an estate which, not surprisingly, bears a heavy curse that befalls anyone who spies the creepy title apparition within its borders. Our hero spends an inordinate amount of time in the crumbling Victorian manse, getting several up-close-and-personal ocular treats of the pseudo-J-Horror ghost and when he does, a child in the village dies. Though we can see this coming from a mile away, the movie pretends it's going to be a surprise that the lawyer's winsomely cute tyke will be visiting the countryside with his Nanny. Oops.

Catching the Turd: This lame attempt to rekindle the atmospheric glory of Hammer Horror films flops. Good intentions are not enough. Sometimes movies need something resembling a real filmmaker at the helm. Alas, this movie is rendered by a director with no discernible style who likes the idea of making a Hammer picture, but not, it seems, actually doing one. The results are dire. Instead of Christopher Lee ogling heaving bosoms, the movie serves up little more than Daniel Radcliffe porn.

I'm soooooooo serious, yes?

We Need To Talk About Kevin dir. Lynne Ramsay

Pitching the Turd: Lots of bopping around in time and space with dollops of obtuse dreams, a mire of precious imagery, confusing narrative details and oh-so earnest performances delivers a film about a psychotically dysfunctional family.

Catching the Turd: It's a cerebral, trick-pony approach to horrific events in a family's life that's not only disingenuous, but vaguely offensive - artistically and morally. Reprehensible "art" cinema for pseuds.