2012 in Film: The Year's "Worst" Films.

Almost to the end, folks.  But before we finally recap the best (or, err, my favorites) of 2012, let's take a pit stop to discuss what are arguably the worst films of 2012.  Now as always, I can't presume that I've seen every probable terrible movie out there (I generally avoid Adam Sandler comedies and didn't catch Parental Guidance in time), but I tried to highlight films that were both very bad and whose respective failures meant something more than just their artistic inadequacy.  As always, the films below are in alphabetical order.  So, without further ado, let's dive in!

Alex Cross:
To William Hurt in A History of Violence, "How to do you f*** that up?!"  You have a long-running detective series filled with larger-than-life villains and often insanely over-the-top violence.  You have Tyler Perry, if perhaps cast against type than at least hungry to prove that he can do something different.  You have Matthew Fox theoretically willing to chew up every bit of available scenery.  And you have audiences primed for a kind of old-school adult-skewing genre picture that the previous two Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross films (Kiss the Girls and Along Came A Spider) represented back in the 1990s.  How in the world do you make this film this incredibly boring?  First of all, you take an explicitly R-rated story and neuter it into a still-inappropriate PG-13.  Then you pile on generic cliche on top of generic cliche.  Then you instruct every actor other than Fox to be as lifeless as possible.  Finally, you never decide to make a down-to-Earth crime thriller or a would-be superhero/super villain story.  The end result is a painfully dull would-be thriller that can't hold a candle to the most average episode of Criminal Minds.

Amber Alert (review):
This stunningly dull would-be thriller stands in for the darker side of the HD/VOD revolution.  Just because you can make a movie doesn't mean you should.  And just because it's cheaper to tell your story in the 'found footage' format doesn't mean that's the correct artistic choice.  For all the wonderful high-quality product that premiered in pre-theatrical Video On Demand this year, there are still piles of dreck waiting for the unsuspecting moviegoer who is fooled by a creepy poster.  Worst of all, the film's found footage format squanders a corker of an idea.  The film follows three young adults who spot a car that's been tagged as an Amber Alert on the highway and give chase.  Great idea, but the film basically is the three friends arguing about who cares about kidnapped kids the most for 80 lifeless minutes.  There may have been a compelling version of this story told in a more traditional horror film format.  But found footage killed the idea in its cradle.

The Amazing Spider-Man (review)/The Bourne Legacy (review):
Both films were 'keep this franchise alive at any cost' reboots and both were far-and-away the worst films yet released in their respective properties.  The Amazing Spider-Man was the result of cold, heartless financial decision making, booting Sam Raimi off the multi-billion dollar franchise purely because Sony thought it would be cheaper to start over rather than just let Raimi make his preferred chapter four.  $230 million later, and all you had was a warmed-over and rather terrible remake of the original 2002 Spider-Man.  Adding insult to injury, the film was marketed by convincing people that everything stolen from the vastly superior prior trilogy (the emphasis on romance, the father-figure subtext, the good scientist undone by selfless experiments, etc.) was in fact completely new and wholly original while ignoring that most of the new elements were either lousy (Peter is a jerk who isn't *really* responsible for Uncle Ben's death) or left on the cutting room floor (the whole 'untold story'?  Still untold!)  The Bourne Legacy was a different kind of cynicism, with Universal crafting a 'not Bourne, but still kinda-like Bourne' spy thriller that was not only terrible and obnoxiously dumb, but basically retroactively poisoned the continuity of the prior three Matt Damon adventures in the process, an act of revenge by screenwriter-turned-director Tony Gilroy who was apparently still pissed about not getting along with Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass.  Now Jason Bourne is a force for chaos, whose actions cause nothing but carnage and moral defeat.  Take that, Greengrass! Sadly both films still made enough money globally to justify this kind of necrophilia.

Battleship (review)/John Carter (review):
Both films, in their differing ways, were exercises in chutzpah (and neither were the fault of Taylor Kitsch, by the way).  Both films were basically fashioned as 'Generic Blockbuster: The Movie' with no real reason to expect audiences to flock in large enough numbers to justify their $200 million+ budgets aside from the belief that audiences would automatically embrace something that was allegedly the next big thing.  Battleship is a far worse picture, with Peter Berg not even bothering to cast his would-be board game adaptation with real actors (we've got a Tiger Beat idol, a supermodel, and a pop star in the three main roles) and crafting a painfully boring and stupid picture notable only for a single third-act twist (a climactic bit involving elderly war vets) and the sneaking suspicion that the whole thing may be Berg commenting on America's "Sorry we drone-bombed your village while giving you freedom" foreign policy (which makes it merely an interesting terrible film).  John Carter was arguably a labor of genuine artistic intent from director Andrew Stanton, but it's sheer 'how did you not notice this?' incompetence renders it inexcusable.  How did no one notice that the film was more confusing than watching Saw VII without having seen the prior six films?  How did no one notice that all of the actors looked the same and had unpronounceable names?  How did no one notice that John Carter literally spends 80% of the film wandering around with no specific goal?  That they (and, Total Recall, which at least had decent video-game-esque action scenes) bombed is a surprising sign of good taste among mainstream moviegoers.

The Dictator:
The only thing worse than a mostly laugh-less comedy is a laugh-less comedy that pretends to be subversive while telling a conformist story. Sasha Baron Cohen may think he has something to say about genocidal dictators, but he seems fit to merely tell a generic fish-out-of-water story instead of actually commenting on his would-be subject matter.  Yes, the film has a potent climactic monologue, but by that time it's already sold the insulting/offensive idea that all a homicidal dictator needs to reform his evil ways is the love of a good woman.  Right...

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance:
It takes a special kind of talent to make a sequel to a critically-derided original five years after the first film, give a decent chunk of change to some rather unconventional filmmakers, and still come up with a film worse than the mass audience-pandering original.  Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor were certainly worthwhile choices to helm an otherwise needless sequel to Mark Steven Johnson's Ghost Rider (I liked Crank and can even *somewhat* defend Gamer), but something went very wrong along the way.  The film cost about $75 million but looks like it cost around $20 million, with muted and ugly cinematography and only a few remotely decent action beats.  The film wastes not only a game (as always) Nicholas Cage but also wastes Idris Elba and offers us perhaps the first genuinely bad performance from Ciarán Hinds.  There was no need for a second Ghost Rider film, but couldn't Sony at least given us a slightly better (and R-rated, natch) sequel for our troubles?

Hitchcock (review):
This was one of my most anticipated films of 2012, with a great idea (the making of Psycho!) and a game cast (Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Ralph Macchio, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Wincott, etc.).  But the film basically ignores the whole 'how we made Psycho' story in order to tell us a painfully childish, simplistic, and dumbed-down fable of how brave Mr. Hitchcock put everything on the line to make the movie that no one wanted to make, and how his wife was the real genius behind the scenes (but only when her husband gave his blessing).  The film ignores artistic contributors while libeling others to present ridiculous fictions in the place of the far more interesting non-fiction.  This film is told in the sensibility of a grade-school biography with some of the most painfully on-the-nose dialogue of the year.  Hitchcock may or may not be the absolute worst film of 2012, but it is surely the one that made me the angriest.

The Hunger Games (review):
I wrestled with including this one, for the simple reason that there is a good chance that the sequels may-well rectify the initial film's fatal flaws.  But nonetheless, a film must stand on its own.  As such, this film is guilty of the worst kind of audience pandering, basically ignoring the base tragedy of its own story (innocent children kidnapped from their homes and forced to murder each other for the entertainment of the masses) in order to craft a crowd-pleasing franchise.  Instead of actually focusing on the horrors at the heart of the story, the film shies away from the bloodshed and instead gives us 'good' contestants and 'bad' contestants, allowing us to cheer when those who would slay virtuous Katniss Everdeen (who manages to survive the tournament without a single real murder to her name) meet gruesome fates.  If you think I'm overreacting, pretend that this story took place in a concentration camp and tell me it wouldn't have bothered you to hear audiences cheering when one contestant slammed another one into a tree.  The Hunger Games is ambitious, well-acted, and, for its first half, a pretty entertaining motion picture.  But once the games actually begin, it descends into a kind of false comfort, crafting a fraudulent morality into a clearly immoral situation.  The sequels may make this original look better in retrospect, but this first film stands alone for the moment as a failure of morality and of courage.

Ice Age: Continental Drift (review):
If you wonder why I'm so quick to defend the Madagascar franchise, look no further than this frankly terrible fourth entry in the long-running and insanely profitable pre-extinction animated franchise.  The first Ice Age was a real movie, a somber, sad, and meditative film about death itself, and the choices "people" make when they know the end is inevitable.  The sequels descending further into farce, climaxing with this incredibly lazy and cliche-filled entry.  We get a script that was written in a Mad Libs book with bad family drama cliche in the book.  Overprotective dads?  Check!  Boy-crazy teenage daughters?  Check!  Female family members held hostage in the climax?  Of course!  That the film wasn't even that visually engaging was merely insult to injury for what is easily the worst animated film of the year.

The Raven:
This drab and dreadfully dull period thriller can't decide if it's a serious thriller or high-toned trash.  It's a rather sad misfire, arguably another whiff that should have been an easy single or double.  The film is basically 'what if a serial killer modeled himself after Edgar Allan Poe in the days proceeding Poe's mysterious death?'.  A good idea, and kudos for actually being R-rated, but the execution is all wrong.  The film is blah where it should be over-the-top, toned down when it should be going for the throat, and bland when it should be outrageous and/or goofy.  John Cusack had a strange 2012, delivering one of his best performances in The Paperboy and now one of his worst turns here.  This should have been an enjoyably trashy bit of gory pulp fiction.  Instead it basically ends up being a film, well, pardon the Hughes Brothers pun, "from hell".

Rock Of Ages:
This may be the worst film Tom Cruise has ever been associated with (it's certainly his first truly bad film since, I dunno, Cocktail?).  The adaptation of the popular 80s rock nostalgia-fest makes two fatal errors.  First it thinks that the appeal of Glee is merely watching anyone singing popular music, as opposed to angst-ridden and pruriently-appealing high schoolers (often played by near 30-year olds).  Lea Michelle and/or Darren Criss (whichever floats your boat) crooning their hearts out is engaging and/or sexy.  Alec Baldwin singing along with Russell Brand is distinctly less so.  But the film's real crime, aside from the mere fact that it's too long, too boring, and just plain silly, is the fact that it neuters the female lead (Julianne Hough) in order to make her a more proper role model for young girls (their words, not mine), which in turn turns the entire second half of the film into a melodrama based on a ridiculous misunderstanding.  In short - Hough's character doesn't sleep with Cruise's heavy metal rocker like she does in the show, it's merely a mistaken accusation from Diego Boneta involving spilled wine and an open fly.  Aside from killing its own drama, the film deserves a slap in the face for the gender double-standard, injecting the kind of 'squeaky clean morality' into the story that would mostly appeal to the kind of moral fundamentalists ironically represented by Catherine Zeta-Jones's villain.  She may go down in flames, but her puritan ideology lives on.

Taken 2 (review):
There were a hundred different directions this sequel could have gone in, so shame on all involved for basically remaking the first film but removing the vicious cruelty and violence that made the original such a guilty-pleasure kick in the first place.  This may be the worst case of R-13 on record, with the action editing to the point of incoherence in order to not get the R-rating that the film would otherwise richly deserve.  Why Fox thinks that young kids are the target audience for this I do not know, but the editing removes any sense of clarity or logic to the humdrum action sequences.  The film is ridiculous and often earthshakingly stupid (Yeah, toss some grenades in the street at random, why not?), but its biggest crimes are that it lazily rehashes the prior entry and that it defangs itself, by which the audience is cheated out of the very thing (Liam Neeson being an unrelenting bad-ass) that they came to see in the first place.      

That's it for this year, folks!  What were your picks for the the worst films of 2012?  As always, share below!

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (12/30/12): Les Miserables and Django Unchained neck and neck while The Hobbit tops again.

It's frightening sometimes how accurate the math can be.  Before this year, there were only a handful of movies that have opened on a Christmas day that happened to land on a Tuesday over the last decade (Ali and Kate and Leopold in 2001, Alien vs. Predator: Requim, The Great Debaters, and The Waterhorse).  Ali, AvP2, and the Denzel Washington drama The Great Debaters were pretty front loaded ($10m/$34m and $9.5m/$26m, and $3.5m/$13m respectively) while the smaller films (Kate and Leopold and The Waterhorse: Legend of the Deep) had smaller opening Christmas days but longer legs over the six days ($2.5m/$17m and $2.3m/$16.7m).  I use these prior examples because the three major wide releases this weekend pretty much matched up those patterns to a tee.  So when I tell you that Les Miserables opened on Christmas Day to $18 million but did "just" $28 million for the weekend and "only" $66 million for the six-day holiday (a 3.67x weekend multiplier), that doesn't mean anything other than it played like a normal high-profile film that happened to have opened on Tuesday the 25th.  Or that Django Unchained pulled in $64 million off a $15 million Christmas Tuesday opening, that means that it's actually the biggest legs of any would-be blockbuster to open on this specific Tuesday the 25th date (4.2x weekend multiplier).

Yes Django Unchained was the top new release over the Fri-Sun portion of the weekend, earning $30 million over the weekend and $64 million since opening on Tuesday.  For a 2.75 hour R-rated theoretically divisive western, this is a fantastic debut.  Heck, this is the third biggest opening for a western in modern history, behind the $36 million Fri-Sun debut of Cowboys and Aliens and the $38 million debut for the animated Rango.  Considering the third-highest grossing western is the $123 million grossing Rango, Tarantino's slavery epic is pretty much assured of becoming the third biggest such title in box office history (not adjusted for inflation of course).  Now the films that opened on Tuesday the 25th tend to have awful legs (anywhere from 1.5x to 2.5x the 6-day number) since they only get one week of holiday play instead of two. So reaching the $171 million final domestic cume of True Grit or the $183 million final of Dances With Wolves is not certain.  Although none of the prior Tuesday the 25th films were Oscar contenders (yes Will Smith was nominated for Ali, but the nomination was its own reward), something that gives Django Unchained and Les Miserables a major advantage at breaking the pattern (Parental Guidance not so much).

Speaking of Les Miserables, no slouch was she, scoring a massive $67 million over six days and earning $116 million worldwide in nine days of global release. It's $18 million Christmas day opening is not only the second-biggest Christmas day opener (behind Sherlock Holmes's $24 million) but nearly outgrossing Nine ($19 million) in one day. It earned $28 million over the Fri-Sun portion of the weekend, giving it the fourth biggest Fri-Sun musical debut of all time, behind The Muppets ($29 million), Enchanted ($34 million), and High School Musical 3 ($42 million).  It had a bigger Fri-Sun debut than Hairspray and Mama Mia! (both $27 million) and has already surpassed the domestic totals of The Phantom of the Opera ($51 million), Sweeney Todd ($52 million), Rent ($29 million) and Rock of Ages ($38 million).  If it can just get past $145 million (a 2.11x multiplier), it will surpass Mama Mia! to become the third-biggest movie musical.  Again, Oscar strength will play a part in legs and whether it can catch up to Chicago ($171 million) and Grease ($188 million, including various releases).  Since Anne Hathaway is all-but-certain to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar while Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson will merely hope for nominations for Best Supporting Actor, I'd give Les Miserables the advantage for legs, as well as the possibility of hardcore fans who liked the film more than I did engaging in repeat viewings.

Parental Guidance had the best legs of the holiday weekend, which makes sense as it wasn't a 'rush out and see it' picture.  It earned $29.5 million for the six-day opening, including $14.8 million for the Fri-Sun portion, giving it a solid 4.5x multiplier.  Legs will theoretically be non-existent, but don't count out general moviegoers who don't want lengthy Oscar bait and don't care for the heavily horror/action-centric January releases.  It's already outgrossed the mere $18 million cume of Monsters Inc. 3D.  Normally this would be an epic fail, and it's not encouraging for future 3D Disney reissues (although I still think The Little Mermaid is a bigger deal than something like Monsters Inc.).  But if Monsters University does expectedly massive business this June, the reissue could merely be treated as a marketing expense.  The main limited release was Promised Land, the Matt Damon-fronted Gus Van Sant drama about small-town fracking.  The film debuted with $190,000 on 25 screens, not a strong performance.  It's scheduled to go wide next weekend, and this platform opening was purely about Oscar consideration, although it faired poorly with so many adult options available in wide release.  Speaking of which, Lincoln will end the holiday not only with $130 million but as 2012's top-grossing straight drama.

But the top film of the weekend was once again Lord of the Rings Episode One: An Unexpected Journey.  The Hobbit part I of 3 earned a solid $32 million, down just 10% from last weekend's pre-Christmas bounty.  The film has grossed $222 million in the US and $622 million worldwide.  Since Warner Bros saw fit to open it five days earlier than the other three Lord of the Rings pictures, it's tougher to do direct comparisons.  But just doing respective 'after three weekends' totals, it's well below The Two Towers ($261 million) and Return of the King ($290 million) but still ahead of Fellowship of the Ring ($205 million).  For what it's worth, it's already out-grossed King Kong ($205m/$550m) and is tracking well-ahead of I Am Legend ($194 million by this point). Zero Dark Thirty dropped 23% in weekend two, which isn't great but means little as the film will go wide on January 11th anyway.  The would-be Oscar frontrunner (which it should be repeated, does not endorse or condone torture on a moral or practical level) has now earned $1.3 million on five screens. The Silver Linings Playbook finally expanded this weekend, playing on a whole 745 screens over a month in.  The film earned a decent $4 million for a solid if unspectacular (for now) $27 million cume.

In other holdover news, Jack Reacher held well, dropping 10% for a $14.5 million second weekend and a $44 million cume.  It should be at $60 million by the end of next weekend with a solid shot at $75 million depending on competition from The Gangster Squad and The Last Stand.  It's no home run, but the budget was kept to a reasonable $60 million and overseas may well play huge.  Rise of the Guardians is at $90 million domestic while Skyfall hit $1 billion worldwide today. The surprisingly good This Is Forty rose 14% for a second weekend of $13 million and a domestic cume of $37 million.  It's not a smash hit along the lines of Knocked Up, it will surpass the $51 million gross of Funny People while costing a lot less to produce. The Impossible now has $485,000 after increasing its second weekend take by 18%.  The film goes wide next month and *could* be a mainstream single for Summit/Lionsgate.   In the realm of little Oscar contenders that couldn't, Anna Karenina crossed $10 million and Hitchcock (one of the year's worst films, natch) earned $5 million.

That's it for this weekend and for this year.  In the meantime, catch up with my ongoing year-in-review pieces (HERE). Join us next weekend for a few expansions and the wide release of Texas Chainsaw 3D, which will attempt to recapture the "magic" of The Devil Inside, which opened to $35 million and was loathed by everyone who saw it.  Good luck...             

Scott Mendelson

2012 in Film: The Runner-Ups.

As we continue recapping the movies that arguably defined 2012, we move on to what I like to call 'The Runner-Ups'.  These films are all very good if not great.  Either they didn't quite make my 'favorite of the year' list or they aren't the kind of thing that belongs on a traditional best-of-year list (you'll see which ones I'm referring to below).  Anyway, consider this a 'great films that aren't among the very best but I darn-well wanted to highlight them' list.  As always, the films below are in alphabetical order.  Without further ado...

Argo (review):
In a year where old-school big-studio genre films for adults solidified their comeback, this Ben Affleck political period piece is the defining example of everything going right.  It cost just $45 million, so it didn't need to be a massive hit to make a profit, but a massive hit it was.  With around $105 million at the domestic till so far, it's among the year's top Oscar contenders, and I still have an inkling that Ben Affleck is going to walk away with the Best Director statue this year (the somewhat false 'comeback kid' narrative is too good to resist).  Argo, concerning a true story of the CIA's attempts to rescue six Americans trapped in Iran during the embassy hostage crisis of 1979, is a pretty terrific film through-and-through.  The only reason it doesn't rank higher is that it's really not about anything other than itself.  It's a caper film, a procedural, but with no attempts at any additional relevancy.  That's not a bad thing per-se, but it arguably prevents the film from being anything other than a terrific piece of old-school moviemaking.  That's not exactly an insult, as it's still a top-notch piece of meat-and-potatoes entertainment.

Amour (review):
Michael Haneke's newest is an emotionally draining look at the slow, sad death-by-aging of one previously energetic and active woman (Emmanuelle Riva), as well as the trials of her husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant) as he becomes a full-time caregiver in order to keep her out of a nursing home.  The film is basically what it is, unflinching, somber, yet occasionally funny and always honest and true.  Whether or not this reads like your cup of tea, I cannot say.  And I'd be lying if I told you I was looking forward to ever watching it again.  But it is among the year's best films, doing what it sets out to do with unmitigated success.

Chronicle (review):
2012 is the year where found-footage became more than just a form of low-budget horror and became an all-around tool for filmmakers in all genres.  Max Landis and Josh Trank used the found-footage format to create a stunningly powerful and often striking superhero/sci-fi fable.  Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan make up a trio of completely fleshed-out and sympathetic teenagers who stumble upon a meteorite that gives them super powers.  The film goes in some rather dark and disturbing directions, becoming less of a superhero fable and more of a classic alienated youth tragedy.  What's most impressive is how director Josh Trank use the 'found footage' format to make the cliches of the genre, the discovery of powers, the experimentation, the first flight, and the eventual super-powered smack downs all feel refreshingly intimate.  Chronicle presents a classic story but makes it feel like we're seeing this stuff for the very first time.

Detachment (review):
Consider this the Cedar Rapids of 2012.  For much of the year, this film counted as among the year's best films, but the steady flow of terrific films eventually pushed it down to this list.  That's no slight against Tony Kaye's surreal, intense, and sadly authentic look at the public school system.  Adrian Brody leads an all-star cast as a man who finds himself in a position to 'save' the people in his life, never mind how unwilling or unable he is to succeed in this noble goal.  The film ticks off cliches about the current public education system (unfunded mandates, burned out teachers, hostile or apathetic parents, etc.), while in turn asking us why such things are no longer considered shocking.  The film doesn't end on a high note, and there are one too many subplots, but the overall effect is powerful and draining.  Come what may, in a time when even seemingly progressively-minded films about public education (Waiting For Superman, Won't Back Down, etc.) are secret charter school propaganda which treats unions as the enemies, Detachment doesn't turn teachers into the enemy, but rather the victims of a seemingly failing public education system.    

The Deep Blue Sea:
Terence Davies's engaging melodrama is highlighted by a powerhouse performance from Rachel Weisz.  This  was one of the first great films of 2012, so I'm heartened to see that Weisz hasn't been forgotten in the year-end awards blitz.  This is a thoughtful examination/deconstruction of that old cliche of romantic drama, that of the young woman who sacrifices emotional and financial comfort for reckless passion in the form of Tom Hiddleston.  Out-and-out romantic dramas are pretty rare outside of the Nicholas Sparks sub-genre, but this is an awfully good one that deserves not to be forgotten as the year's worthwhile films are tallied up.  

Game Change:
One of two great HBO films, Game Change is another terrific Jay Roach-helmed HOBO political drama following Recount.  This time the spotlight is one the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign, specifically the final months when Sarah Palin was selected as his vice presidential candidate.  The film tells much of what anyone who followed the news already knows, but it tells its story with a potent empathy that doesn't refrain from judgment.  Julianne Moore gives us a three-dimensional Sarah Palin, someone who was tossed in the deep end without anyone realizing that she couldn't swim.  Yet while the film puts us in the shoes of John McCain (Ed Harris) and his upper-level staff (personified by Woody Harrelson and Sarah Paulson), it also doesn't let them off the hook for putting politics over country by putting a clearly unqualified person a heartbeat away from the presidency.  But thanks to strong performances and razor-sharp writing, this is just a great political drama regardless of one's political stripe.   

Hemingway and Gellhorn: 
Another fantastic HBO film, this one being an abashedly old-school sweeping epic the likes of which we don't see all that much of anymore.  Philip Kaufman helms this decades-spanning adventure film, detailing the tumultuous love affair between Ernest Hemingway (a terrific Clive Owen) and Martha Gellhorn (an equally good Nicole Kidman).  With a billion strong character turns (Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, David Strathairn, etc.) and a genuine sense of the times, both socially and politically, this terrific big-screen epic (which of course was shown on television screens) is the closest thing to Warren Beatty's Reds that we've seen since... well, Warren Beatty's Reds.

Lincoln (review):
It is fantastic that, forty years down the line, Steven Spielberg is still making films as good and as relevant to the national discourse as Lincoln.  Daniel Day-Lewis delivers an 'Acting with a Capitol A' performance and is relentlessly entertaining in another chameleon-esque turn.  The film is a a wonderful hybrid, blending sentimental optimism about the real good that government that accomplish with a eyes-wide-open look at the sheer trickery and bribery that often must take place to accomplish great social change.  The film doesn't turn Lincoln into a saint, not shying away from his extra-legal executive orders or his discomfort with the idea of freed slaves becoming full-fledged citizens.  Screenwriter Tony Kushner delivers a witty and literate screenplay while Spielberg once again proves that he's still among the greats of his profession.  It only falters with needless material concerning Lincoln's family and one ending too many.  But overall, Lincoln works both as an educational tool (it will be shown in schools for decades) and unabashed and intelligent entertainment.    

The Master (review):
Paul Thomas Anderson's would-be Scientology picture is actually something far more intimate and pinpoint.  The picture keeps its audience at an arms-lengths while obfuscating any clear-cut moral or message until nearly its very last scene.  This 70mm epic tells a surprisingly small story, that of a wealthy would-be cult leader (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and a mentally unstable veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) who is taken under his wing.  The film is cryptic and sometimes frustrating, but it is one of the great originals of the year, a thoughtful examination of how all people crave some kind of leadership and/or authority to answer their questions.  With some of the year's great performances and one of the most gorgeous-looking movies of the year, this is the kind of film we all say we want.  

This Is Forty:
It's about 15-20 minutes too long (mostly the material involving Mann's store, which doesn't figure into the main conflicts and wastes a game Megan Fox), but this is an unabashedly raw and thoughtful look at the challenges of maintaining a family while constantly dealing with well, family.  Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are superb while Albert Brooks and John Lithgow are pretty great too in supporting roles.  Leslie Mann deserved a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Knocked Up back in 2007 and now she darn-well deserves a Best Actress Oscar nomination for expanding and deepening that same character.  Neither struggling husband nor struggling wife are let off the hook, and Judd Apatow cleverly contrasts their marital difficulties with the sibling conflicts of their two daughters.  Married couples will see themselves in both flattering and unflattering lights throughout, even as the picture makes a point to tell a specific story about this family's specific relationships. Refreshingly, Apatow doesn't end with a magical solution to Rudd and Mann's specific problems.  This is a big, messy romantic comedy about the very real mess that is family life and all of its complications.

And that's it for the would-be runner-ups.  Next up, it's the 'worst' films of 2012, however subjective that might be.      

Scott Mendelson      

2012 in Film: The Overrated...

I wrestled with even doing an 'overrated' list this year.  First of all, the very idea of such a list is to merely tell other critics and/or the masses that they are dead-wrong for liking something, which I'd argue is very different from telling someone they're wrong for disliking something.  Second of all, the Internet has become such a vast land of film criticism that few films completely escape the wrath of critical scrutiny even if the popular consensus happens to lean in the "wrong" direction.  Nonetheless, in the end I enjoy writing about the year in film, so far be it for me to cheat myself out of some arbitrary concern for maintaining the proverbial higher ground.  So, in alphabetical order as always, let's dive right in...

Brave (review/guest essay):
Had this not been Pixar's first animated feature with a female lead, had this not been marketed within the context that Princess Merida was a kind of sword-wielding/bow-clutching warrior, the the film would have been seen for what it is: a deeply problematic character drama that ignores the icky realities at the center of its tale in order to tell an audience-reassuring mother/daughter story.  The film basically tells the same character arc as The Little Mermaid but was declared a feminist milestone because the female lead A) carried a weapon and B) didn't want to get married.  But good intentions cannot get past a story line that treats mother and daughter as equally culpable even when one party is advocating forced marriage.  Make no mistake, say what you will about 'customs of the time' or 'arranged marriage versus forced marriage', the film tells a story of a child who doesn't want to get married to (and yes, have sex with) a man she doesn't know and treats it like a minor inconvenience.  There is a clear right and wrong here, but the film absolves the father of any responsibility while basically stating that the mother (who again, wants her daughter to have sex against her will) kinda-sorta has a point and that the daughter really needs to have empathy for her dear-old mum.

The Dark Knight Rises (review/spoiler review):
Giving this film a Best Picture nomination because The Dark Knight was snubbed is like nominating Quantum of Solace to avenge Casino Royale's Oscar snub.  Make no mistake, despite some pretty terrific acting by all parties (Anne Hathaway nearly steals the movie while Michael Caine is terrific in his brief screen time), The Dark Knight Rises is truly the Godfather part III of the series.  It's needless third chapter following a rather perfect two-film rise/fall arc. It seems all-but-obvious that Chris Nolan truly didn't want to come back and was crippled by his feelings about Ledger's death and/or his own indifference toward the material (a friend commented that the film, especially the ending, is a metaphor for Nolan's need to escape the franchise to pursue his own projects).  The story is a complete mess, spending the first half of the picture setting up an arc only to send you back to square one and reset said arc.  The action is mostly uninspired and the plot feels like a cobbling of Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Rocky III.  It's not a case of nitpicking plot holes but rather that the movie lumbers for so much of its running time that you have time to pick the film apart.  The alleged political content is so arbitrary and of little consequence (it theoretically shows the underclass embracing terrorism against the upper class yet considers poverty a virtue) that it almost feels like exploitation.  I didn't expect a film as good as The Dark Knight or Batman Begins.  I merely wanted a third Batman film superior to Batman Forever.

Django Unchained (review):
There is nothing 'brave' or 'courageous' about making a film about and opposed to slavery in 2012. Take away the fact that it's a western about a slave that takes place during the height of American slavery, and this is actually a pretty generic revenge story.  The plot doesn't so much twist as unfolded in a relatively expected fashion, right up to the theoretical finale that takes place a punishing 45 minutes before the film actually ends.  It's well acted by all and it's occasionally quite entertaining, but it almost feels like Tarantino is holding back.  This the rare film that almost cries out to be more outrageous,  more confrontational, more violent, and angrier.  While still a mostly fun movie and an acting treat, Django Unchained is the rare occasion where Tarantino seems cowed by gravity of his subject matter.  There is good stuff here, especially Samuel L. Jackson's terrific third-act turn, but this is an oddly surface-level entry from someone who is capable of more.  I concede that a second viewing may bring more appreciation, but it's a telling sign of how the film doesn't quite work that I don't really feel the need to see it again anytime soon.  Tarantino is too darn talented to get a free pass purely on the strength of his actors and the shouldn't-be-shocking basic concept.

Dredd:
It's almost mean to pick on a film that bombed so brutally at the box office, but the amount of critical geek love showered on this relatively run-of-the-mill actioner is a clear example of 'so thirsty you'll drink the sand'.  But aside from the fact that it's a genuinely R-rated comic book adaptation, there is little to recommend beyond the violence.  While the 1995 Sly Stallone Judge Dredd may have deviated from the comic and/or suffered from too much story, this Karl Urban carnage-fest erred in the opposite direction.  The film shares a basic structure with The Raid: Redemption, but it substitutes human-level fear and panic with an invincible comic book superhero (one who technically is supposed to be more of an anti-hero at best in the first place).  It's not a complete loss, as it's the rare action film centered around drugs that acknowledges that many drug users are simply using narcotics to escape from the harsh realities of their economic devastation.  But it's a pretty generic action picture that was treated as a would-be classic purely due to its R rating.

 Flight (review):
The idea of a mid-budget ($30 million) character drama from a major studio grossing over $90 million in today's market is indeed cause for celebration, but Flight is simply not a very good character drama.  That the film is not the plane crash-centered thriller that was advertised isn't an issue.  But what cripples this noble failure is the fact that it's basically a painfully generic run-of-the-mill alcoholism drama, with nearly every cliche intact.  The picture is well acted by all (even though Washington isn't doing anything he couldn't do in his sleep) and Robert Zemeckis once again proves he is a master of his form.  But the story wobbles on whether it takes its theology seriously, while offering the would-be redemption of a high-functioning alcoholic while somewhat glamorizing cocaine (and those like the crowd-pleasing John Goodman who deal it) and ignoring the fact that, absent anything worth fighting for (he has few friends and his family has long since left him), Washington's protagonist really has no real reason to ditch the sauce.  While surely most people would be better off *not* being alcoholics, Flight offers no reason for us to be emotionally invested in this specific alcoholic and no reason for us to root for his recovery and/or redemption (a redemption, I might add, that stands to do more harm than good). 

Haywire:
Very simply, this is a mediocre B-level, straight-to-DVD-style action picture with a terrible performance by its lead action star.  Absent the stunt casting and the automatic prestige that Steven Soderbergh brings, this one wouldn't have registered a blip on the radar. Gina Carano is surely not an actress, and the attempts to hide her acting offer up some of the more amusing moments of the year.  But even most of the action is relatively run-of-the-mill, with only the opening and mid-film skirmishes registering a pulse.  The supporting cast (Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, etc.) keeps us entertained, but let's not pretend that this is anything other than the kind of thing that usually goes straight-to-DVD.

Les Miserables (review):
I dreamed a dream that this would be... the best film of 2012!  It is hard to tell how much of this film's failings fall in the film making (extreme close-ups, an odd sense of scale, etc.) and how much is merely from seeing the source material with new eyes and ears and realizing that Les Miserables isn't among the best modern musicals after all.  The acting is so good (especially by Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, and Eddie Redmayne), and the camera stays so close, that many of the songs become emotionally redundant.  The second and third acts fly by with barely a moment to establish time and place.  The show/film attempts to invest us in a love story that occurs in the blink of an eye, at the expense of the first act's powerful social/political critique.  Thin characterization, inappropriate comic relief, and irksome plot holes that didn't quite register on stage come to the forefront onscreen, not only hurting the film but marring the legacy of the show as well.  It may well ride box office fortune and generally positive reviews to Oscar glory, just as Chicago did ten years ago.  But then, I thought Chicago was overrated too.  Both made audiences fall for a bit of the old razzle-dazzle.

Pitch Perfect:
Well-acted by all, and with one genuinely great sequence (the mid-film riff-off is a corker), this unexpected sleeper doesn't quite gel.  The generally entertaining film suffers from massive pacing issues, the feeling that much of the film ended up on the cutting room floor, and an oddly sense of lethargy throughout.  Anna Kendrick once again shows how she can elevate sub par material and Rebel Wilson earns laughs even as too much of the humor derives from the fact that she's overweight.  But the film jumps all over the place in terms of time and continuity, acting as if nothing important has happened over multiple multi-month time-jumps, and it fails to make the major performances catch fire.  The 'team comes together to kick butt' moment, which arguably should occur around the halfway point instead arrives well into the third act, cheating us of the thrill of watching this unit as a cohesive whole and making the film feel more like a television pilot. It's no great tragedy, its box office success is a net positive, and it may well become a classic for girls' slumber parties.  But it's a missed opportunity that one last screenplay clean-up and a bit more energy could have fixed.

The Silver Linings Playbook (essay 1/essay 2):
This is a painfully contrived romantic comedy that I'd argue is getting a pass A) because it's centered around a guy and B) because it's shrouded in prestige to the point where what wouldn't pass muster as a Katherine Heigl (or even Gerald Butler) genre entry is now an Oscar contender.  Whatever good work the first act does in realistically depicting the struggles of elderly parents dealing with their mentally ill son living with them comes undone in the last two-thirds, climaxing in a ridiculous 'We have to win this dance contest or our family is doomed!' climax that feels like a rejected episode of Glee.  Robert De Niro's standard patriarchal figure is being hailed as some kind of comeback by those who only saw him in Little Fockers, Righteous Kill, and/or The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Jennifer Lawrence may just deserve the Oscar nomination that she'll most assuredly get, if only for convincing critics and pundits that her stock 'manic pixie dream girl' is some kind of worthwhile female character, as opposed to the token love interest (who has not a single scene not involving Cooper's lead) that she really is.  Taken outside its status as an Oscar picture, it's a mediocre romantic comedy that falls apart in the third act.  That's its being discussed as one of the year's better films shows the curve on which we grade films that come out at the right time of the year and/or have the right names attached to them.

Skyfall (review/spoiler review/essay/guest review):
Consider this one initially overrated by myself, as I too was razzle-dazzled by the gorgeous Roger Deakins cinematography and the relentlessly suspenseful chunks borrowed from The Dark Knight.  But it's a relatively B-level 007 entry dressed in shiny clothes.  This is basically the third Daniel Craig-starring "how James Bond became 007" film we've seen in a row, this time ending in a return to a status-quo that wasn't really 'normal' since 1987 at best.  It's regressive in its treatment of women, steals its themes from the Pierce Brosnan entries (especially GoldenEye), and it acts like it's the first film about cyber terrorism and post-9/11 security fears. Javier Bardem camps it up, but he's given little of interest to say and it's in the service of a painfully small evil scheme.  Sam Mendes borrows from the Chris Nolan school of intimate big-scale blockbusters even as the pieces don't quite fit.  Most importantly, James Bond is forced to defend his relevance by repeatedly failing at every single major task handed to him, a deluge of incompetence that somehow amounts to a spiritual cleansing and a reaffirmation of 007's worth in a post-9/11 world. The story doesn't make sense and thus the film doesn't quite work.

And that's it for be bitching about films that you liked.  Feel free to complain in the comments section.  Next up is the "Runner Ups of 2012", or the films that weren't the best but darn-well deserve notice.

Scott Mendelson

2012 in Film: The Underrated and/or Unfairly Scorned...

Now we continue our 'the films of 2012' lists with another favorite, the Underrated!  And as always, this list won't just be good films that were labeled as 'bad', but also mediocre films that got unfairly pounded, or genuinely bad films that nonetheless deserved credit for one element or another.  If I do decide to compile an overrated list (still not sure, honestly), there is a good chance that many of the films on that list will still be better than many on this list, but I hope dear readers can understand the potential contradiction.  All of the films below are either worth seeing, either because they are in fact good or because they are bad but containing elements of note or are bad in interesting and/or entertaining ways. As always, the following are in alphabetical order.

Act of Valor:
Yes the film may well be a live-action adaptation of a Call of Duty-type video game.  And yes the film may be some kind of insidious 'Enlist today!' propaganda.  But viewed away from the politics, it's a relatively entertaining and thoroughly 'different' action picture. It's unapologetically R-rated, which is a plus right there.  While the real-life Navy Seals who play 'themselves' may not be the best actors, they are surely no worse than Gina Carino who is now an official action star thanks to Steven Soderbergh's Haywire.  But when the plot merely needs them to 'do what they do' in relatively authentic detail, the film crackles with genuine excitement even as we're rolling our eyes at the cliche-filled narrative (they don't just have to rescue a covert operative from terrorists, they have to rescue an obscenely attractive female covert operative from terrorists!).  I could do without the "tearjerking" finale and on-the-nose final narration, but otherwise Act of Valor is an entertaining B-movie action picture that at least feels authentic and separates itself from the pack just enough to be worthwhile.

Gone (review):
I'm not sure if this Amanda Seyfried potboiler is some kind of meta-commentary on serial killer thrillers and their inherent cliches.   But if this film is merely unintentionally incompetent, then it is easily the most enjoyable and most entertaining bad film of the year.  We get Amanda Seyfried, hopefully giving an intentionally bad performance as an alleged former kidnapping victim, which adds credibility to the whole 'the police don't believe me!' plot thread (since we don't believe her either).  We get the usual 'hot girl threatened by serial murder' minus all the normal grotesque details or really any violence associated with the genre.  We get Wes Bentley looking like The Joker and acting hilariously creepy while functioning as (spoiler...?) the worst red herring since Roger Rees showed up looking like an aged Hugh Jackman in The Prestige.  We get a film where every male character has 'rapey eyes' and/or pruriently interested in Seyfried (not that I blame them), and we get a final revelation that is so out-of-the-ordinary for this genre that it's almost groundbreaking.  Most importantly, for better or worse, the film absolutely barrels along from the start, refusing to pause for subplots or character development, proceeding from one investigatory scene to another with an impressively relentless energy.  Gone may be terrible, but I'd never tell anyone not to see it.

Good Deeds/Madea's Witness Protection:
It was a relatively disappointing year for Tyler Perry.  On one hand, Madea's Witness Protection became his second-biggest grosser yet, even as his other two attempts to stretch (Good Deeds and the to-be discussed on a different list Alex Cross) basically tanked by Perry standards.  Good Deeds was Perry's attempt at a straight social drama and while it fell victim to his usual 'one extreme or the other' tendencies (Perry can't just be a successful businessman, but a mega-rich CEO who inherited his family's enterprise), it at least gets points for actually telling a story that is explicitly about income inequality, just *before* the 99% movement, and the relative social injustice that comes about as a result.  More importantly, the film is one of the rare economic melodramas, along with The Company Men, to not try to blame the whole current recession on evil corporate con men. Madea's Witness Protection travels over the same territory, telling a story of 'regular' people screwed over by a corporate corruption (arguably hewing closer to the above-mentioned 'evil Bernie Madoff' model).  I could do without the broader Madea material (and you can tell Perry relishes the opportunity to just act without the costume), but there is decent material here, such as a strong scene between Perry and Eugene Levy as they try to undo the financial damage that has been done, or the idea of otherwise good people being punished because they did what society tells them to do (IE - invest their savings in seemingly successful commodities).  Once again I'd argue that Perry could be a fine dramatic filmmaker if he could just trust his audiences just a little more.         

Madagascar: Europe's Most Wanted (review):
Dreamworks makes this stuff look easy.  The visual delight found in this third (and surprisingly close-ended) installment of the long-running 'zoo animals get lost in the wild' animated series deserves mention.  As does the series's atypical focus on character neuroses as opposed to external threats that usually pepper such animated adventures.  The film contains the best animated action sequence of the year (a first act chase that would make James Cameron proud) and a continuing refusal to dumb down its explicitly adult narrative for the youngest viewers.  Oh sure we get the usual celebrity voices and the periodic pop culture reference (although damn if Katy Perry's "Firework" isn't used effectively here), but beneath all of that is a story about several adult animals dealing with very relatable adult 'human' problems.  I've often referred to the series as a Jewish animated franchise, for its focus on internal psychosis instead of external peril and, periodic threats from Frances McDormand's hilariously murderous zoo keeper notwithstanding, the third film continues that worthwhile trend.  This stuff looks easy, but a quick glance at the likes of Ice Age: Continental Drift and Rise of the Guardians shows you it's not.       

Men In Black 3 (review):
By all rights this should have been a disaster.  The budget was out-of-control, the script was basically rewritten mid-production, and no one seemed to want to be there (exclusive behind-the-scenes footage).  But, miracles of miracles, Men In Black 3 isn't just good but the best film of the series, a warmhearted and clever science-fiction comedy that keeps its focus firmly rooted in character relationships.  Many critics who came prepared to hate the film blindly tore it apart anyway, with the standard 'Josh Brolin as a young Tommy Lee Jones' is the only funny part!' criticism, which just shows they weren't paying attention.  Josh Brolin as a young Agent K isn't funny at all, and that's what makes his performance and much of the movie work as well as it does.  Nobody phones it in this time (not even Jones, filling his minimal screen-time with a lifetime of pain and regret) and the time-travel shtick actually works, even if some of the plot turns don't make 100% logical sense.  Most importantly, the film doesn't let its budget determine its scale, as the film remains the rare blockbuster franchise that doesn't go for the biggest and most elaborate action set-pieces but instead puts its story and its comedy first. In a year when so many would-be blockbusters failed to deliver, Men In Black 3 was just a darn good movie.

One For the Money:
Another film that has absolutely no business being counted as 'one of the year's worst films'.  Had this starred someone less universally despised among the critical community than Katherine Heigl, it likely would have been seen for what it is: A harmless mediocrity that is (according to those who know) pretty faithful in tone and spirit to the literary series on which it is based.  If you like the books, you'll probably like the movie.  There is, I've long argued, a critical curve when it comes to discussing female-driven genre fare.  As such One For the Money couldn't just be written off as a would-be franchise starter that is too lightweight and inconsequential to matter.  Oh no, it had to be tarred and feathered as among the year's biggest travesties.  It's an agreeable time waster if you like anyone in it (among them Daniel Sunjata,  John Leguizamo,  and Sherri Shepherd) or want a very light genre entry while you fold the laundry.  Faint praise to be sure, but there are far worse movies this year that deserved your scorn.

The Paperboy (review):
Lee Daniels's follow-up to Precious is not a success, as it wanders around for much of its narrative without a clear sense of purpose.  But dear lord is the acting fantastic in this picture!  Nicole Kidman is justifiably gaining awards traction for her against-type turn as a sex/companion-starved southern belle who becomes pen-pals with a convicted murderer (a wildly against type and rarely better John Cusack) in the 1960s 'Deep South'.  It's refreshing when a great performance still gets noticed even if the movie does not, but every single performance in this trashy bit of southern gothic film noir shines, from Zack Efron to Matthew McConaughy, to Macy Gray (note - Lee Daniels can wring terrific performances out of musicians).  If I wasn't crazy about the film overall, I also took umbridge at the many critics who seemed to take 'Oh my, the vapors!' offense at the various moments of frank sexuality and gruesome violence, as if such a thing had no place in modern cinema (the outrage over a scene involving a jelly fish made the critical community look like first-graders).  The Paperboy is not a good movie, but it proves that Lee Daniels is a terrific director of actors and it's an unqualified acting treat.

Red Tails (review):
I'm pretty sure I saw a different film than most of the critics last January. The film I saw had terrific and surprisingly intense action sequences, shot and edited for clarity and crafted with a certain physical plausibility that made them all the more engaging.  I saw a film that avoided melodramatic speeches and generic feel-good moments, even allowing major dramatic beats to go without music.  I saw a film where the main racist character (Bryan Cranston) received no comeuppance.  I saw a film where the characters all had a natural and relaxed conversational chemistry.  Most importantly, I saw a relatively entertaining 1950s B-movie throwback that allowed minorities to tell their own history from their own point-of-view in a big-budget action picture while treating such a novel concept like it was no big deal.  By the way, the idea that the film should be written off because it felt like a B-movie from 1957 is funny in a year where we gave the Best Picture Oscar to a B-movie from 1927.We get it, you hated the Star Wars prequels and George Lucas is the devil.   George Lucas put his money ($57 million of it) where his mouth is and the pundit community still can't forgive him for Jar Jar Binks. It's time to let go of your hate, people.

A Thousand Words:
Here is a strange beast: A relatively laughless comedy that actually works pretty well as a straight drama.  The first and third acts, which focus on Eddie Murphy's long-held bitterness at his father and his inability to even put himself in a position to make the same mistakes, are surprisingly strong.  The characters (Murphy, Cliff Curtis, Kerry Washington) generally act like adults and the film doesn't go for the usual 'he just needs to spend less time at work and more time with family' plot that so many such films (many fronted by Murphy) have taken  over the years.  Once the film gets into its central gimmick, that Murphy will apparently die once he utters his next thousand words, the film grinds to a halt for the middle section full of laugh-free sequences where Murphy strains to be silent in scenes where communication is demanded.  But the film ends well and is anchored by surprisingly touching scenes between Murphy and Ruby Dee as his Alzheimer's-stricken mother.  Is A Thousand Words a good movie?  No, it's not, but it surely is not among the worst films of the year.  It is a frustrating film, too somber for the kids yet too juvenile for adults, that nonetheless has just enough that works to make it all the sadder that the enterprise is a failure.

The Three Stooges:
Here is an odd situation.  The Farrelly Bros' The Three Stooges is a film that received mostly terrible reviews and did only okay at the box office.  To be honest, I didn't think much of it either.  So why in the world is it on this list?  Because, come what may, it is absolutely faithful to the spirit of the original Three Stooges shorts that I remember from my younger days.  And you know what?  I didn't think much of those either, even as a wee lad.  They weren't my cup of tea and thus neither was this film, even if I found the film less painful than I expected.  But so many reviews I read treated the picture as some kind of affront to an impeachable comic legacy and/or one of the signs of the now come-and-gone Apocalypse.  This was similar to how critics were shocked and appalled by Michael Mann's Miami Vice back in 2006, completely assured in their completely false belief that the original show was something along the lines of the 1960s Batman show.  This is a Three Stooges movie through-and-through.  If you liked the original stuff, you'll probably like this.  And if you didn't like the original stuff, what in the world are you doing seeing a film called The Three Stooges?   

Wrath of the Titans (review):
Come what may, Jonathan Liebesman's sequel is vastly superior to Louis Leterrier's limp and claustrophobic and lifeless first film from 2010.  It's arguably as good as a movie called Wrath of the Titans can be expected to be, with decent acting, terrific special effects, and 3D every bit as good as Clash of the Titans was bad.  I wish the film had a bit more action, especially in the second act, but there is great stuff here, including a third act action beat for Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson (both having much more fun here than the last time), to make this an unjustly maligned piece of Saturday afternoon pulp.  Alas, it suffered a classic case of 'Tomb Raider Trap' at the box office (where a superior sequel to a lackluster original bombs because audiences feel once bitten, twice shy), but it's absolutely worth your time if you're so inclined to want to see a movie called Wrath of the Titans in the first place.

And that's a wrap for part II of the 2012 movies of the year essay.  Join us next time for part III, which is going to be the always "controversial" Overrated of 2012 list.  Which films did you feel got a bum rap this year?  As always, share below.

Scott Mendelson

Christmas Box Office: Les Miserables and Django Unchained blast off, but how frontloaded will they be?

The box office for Christmas day is huge (Les Miserables $18 million, Django Unchained $15 million, The Hobbit $11 million), but the best day may be behind them. The last time Christmas fell on a Tuesday, the major releases (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Sweeney Todd) opened the Friday before while leaving Christmas day for relative lightweights like Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem and The Great Debaters. I don't recall any recent times when a major film opened on Christmas Day which was a Tuesday (when Christmas fell on a Tuesday in 2007, nothing opened that day) since the severely front-loaded Ali back in 2001.  Looking over those two respective weekends, the pattern is clear.  Even with six days to play with, all three of the above films saw massive front-loading, doing anywhere between 38% (Alien v. Predator 2) and 28% (Ali and The Great Debaters) of their business on Christmas day.  So for the respective debuts of Les Miserables, Django Unchained, and Parental Guidance (which earned $6.5 million), the bad news is that it's probable that none of these films will make more than 3.5x their Christmas number by Sunday, to the extent that it's "bad news".  The outlier among Tuesday Christmas openings is the Meg Ryan/Hugh Jackman rom-com Kate and Leopold, which did 6.8x its $2.5 million Christmas debut by the 30th of December for a $17 million long weekend (it did 15% on Christmas day).  A relative lightweight like Parental Guidance is likely to benefit more than the far-more anticipated (read - front-loaded)  major openers.  So doing the math, Les Miserables and Django Unchained is looking at a six-day opening of $48 million-$63 million and $41 million and $53 million.  Parental Guidance is much harder to peg and could land somewhere between $20 million and $40 million, with obviously a lot of wiggle room in between.

Scott Mendelson

2012 in Film: Good Films You Probably Missed in Theaters.

And so begins my annual 'films of 2012' list round-up, where I try to do more than merely compile the '10 best and 10 worst' of the year.  It's often just as much fun to talk about films somewhere in the middle, the underrated gems, the hidden gems, and the overrated would-be critical darlings.  This time I'm starting it off with a list of ten very good or great films that you probably didn't see.  This is often among my favorite lists to compile, as it allows me to shine a spotlight on films that perhaps didn't get the attention they deserved.  These are not "underrated" per say.  Most who did see them in fact enjoyed them, but the audience was too small in number for all of the films mentioned below.  As always, the following are in alphabetical order.  So, without further ado...

Detention:
Joseph Kahn's genre-twisting and post-modern horror freak-out had the bad luck to open in limited release on the same weekend as the wide release of another somewhat more mainstream self-aware horror exercise.  Of course, opening a youth-skewing genre film in limited release is pretty much box office death anyway, since those who might see it won't know to seek out an art-house and those who frequent art-houses aren't going to see a movie like Detention.  This future cult classic is a completely whacked-out little film, basically playing the conventions of horror films against the hyper-connected constant-communication age that is today's youth.  That's somewhat of a simplistic reading of this film, which blends 90s-era nostalgia with modern-day apathy in a way that comments on both, but I don't want to give away too much.  Let's just say the film goes in completely unexpected places in its final half and it's a hell of a ride.  Does it all work?  Not entirely, but the effort and ambition deserves notice and I can't wait to see what the director of the slightly underrated Torque does next.

Frankenweenie:
Oh the irony of Tim Burton... After years of fans (guilty as charged) saying that he may have lost a step over the years and/or gotten to the point where a Tim Burton film isn't all that worthwhile, Burton went back to his roots, cashing that Alice In Wonderland Disney capitol and making a feature-length, black & white, claymation remake of the 26-minute live-action short film that got him fired from Disney (and got him noticed by Paul Reubens) nearly 30 years ago.  This is arguably his most personal film since at least Big Fish back in 2003 and no one showed up.  Basically, America's children, mine included, thought it looked scary and wanted to see Hotel Transylvania instead.  Is it on the level of Batman Returns, Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd, or even Sleepy Hollow?  Nope, but it's more-than-good enough to forgive 'paycheck Alice In Wonderland' and 'private joke Dark Shadows' and actually look forward to what Burton has up his sleeves as his career turns what is probably the final corner (he is over 50 years old, people).  It's also one of the most overtly coherent A-to-B-to-C stories he's ever told, with a powerful and timely pro-science message thrown in for good measure. Burton's not in a slump, he just still works enough to crank out a miss more often than perhaps he otherwise would if he were less prolific.

Goon (review):
This future cult favorite not only contains one of Sean William Scott's best performances, but it also is one of the best films about hockey in recent history. It is a warm and empathetic portrait of a relatively decent man who is capable of great violence, who attempts to channel said strength into good use after he lucks onto a spot on a local minor league hockey team.  This is a very R-rated comedy that slathers on vulgarity and profanity without actually becoming vulgar or mean.  Eugene Levy plays a 'straight' version of his standard doofus dad, Kim Coates actually gets to play a well-dressed good guy, and Liev Schreiber shines as a wise veteran on an opposing team who becomes a rival/mentor of sorts.  The film doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it is smart, sweet, and genuinely funny.

Killer Joe:
Doomed to a very limited release due to its mostly-deserved NC-17 rating, this William Friedkin gem is a particularly nasty bit of old-school southern gothic film noir.  Matthew McConaughey got the lion's share of the credit for his deliciously psychopathic hitman, but everyone shines here, including Thomas Haden Church, Emile Hersh, and a discomfortingly sexy Juno Temple as a young girl who is perhaps more aware of her sexuality that her IQ implies.  I think the final scene goes a bit too far in reveling in the humiliation of a certain character above the other equally guilty parties, but the first 3/4 of the film is a near flawless example of the sub-genre.  If you don't mind the finale (and I'm in the minority in terms of disapproval), you're gonna love this bit of high-quality trash.  Between this and Bug, I'm declaring that William Friedkin should only make movies adapted from Tracy Letts plays from now on.

Killing Them Softly (review):
Very few non-critics saw this one when it opened just under a month ago.  The few that did apparently didn't like it too much.  They're wrong, period. This Brad Pitt-starring gangster drama is a wonderfully literate and thoughtful look at organized criminals on all steps of the economic ladder.  Andrew Dominik isn't subtle about using George V. Higgins's novel as a political metaphor, arguing that organized crime is the purest form of capitalism.  But the actors carry the day, including a heartbreaking James Gandolfini, a darkly comic Richard Jenkins, a weirdly empathetic Scoot McNairy, and a so good he's taken for granted Pitt.  What makes this film so special is the quality of the dialogue, crafting conversations so rich and authentic that yet, I'd compare not just to Pulp Fiction but to City Slickers.

Lockout (review):
Considering most of my problems with the film reside in the compromises required to get an ill-fitting PG-13 rating, and that most readers now renting this will likely pick up the 'unrated' version, I will merely concentrate on what works in this deliciously campy ode to those straight-to-VHS Die Hard rip-offs from the late 1990s.  The special effects often look like they were created on a Gameboy, and I mean that as a compliment.  The film is obscenely violent in its treatment of innocent bystanders, and the film contains the best alternate title of the year.  Go ahead, imagine the film is actually called 'Space Jail' and see how much more fun it sounds.  Best of all, Guy Pearce decided to stop trying to be a serious actor in 2012 and embrace his inner B-movie clown, delivering a wonderful action anti-hero turn here and a cartoonish super-villain out of a Dick Tracy comic strip in the otherwise lousy Lawless.  His delicious old-school bad-ass 'Snow' (as a cop framed for murder but the only one who can rescue hostages taken aboard a space prison) may not have the pathos and layers of John McClane, but I'd argue he's actually cooler than Snake Plissken.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower:
Usually it can be a dangerous thing to let an author write the screenplay to and even direct a film version of his own novel.  But this is no Maximum Overdrive, but rather among the very best 'young man comes of age in high school' movies in recent years.  Stephen Chbosky's film doesn't break any new narrative ground, but everything just clicks and everything just works, including fantastic performances by both the kids (Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, and Ezra Miller) and the adults (Dylan McDermott and Paul Rudd).  The film constantly flirts with cliche but just-as-constantly goes in a worthwhile and/or unique direction, ennobling an occasionally embarrassing sub-genre.  Watson proves, as if there were any doubt, that she's going to be around forever.  Lerman displays the chops that made him one of the more promising child actors of his generation (The Patriot, The Butterfly Effect, The Number 23, 3:10 to Yuma,etc.) before he got lost in the woods trying to position himself as the next Spider-Man (see, or don't Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and The Three Musketeers).  The film earned rave reviews and debuted to around $57,000 per-screen back in September, but Summit Entertainment never expanded the damn thing, leaving it in limbo on under 800 screens for 13 weeks.  As such, what could have been a mainstream hit along the lines of Pitch Perfect limped to $17 million.

The Raid: Redemption (review):
Like last year's Attack of the Block, this was a film that was endlessly discussed even as pretty much no one outside the blogosphere actually saw it.  It is simply the best pure action picture of the year, but the key to its success is more than just the stunt-work and fight choreography. Gareth Evans's brutal and stripped-down action drama, concerning several SWAT officers who end up trapped in a high-rise as the targeted crime lord sends a proverbial army to hunt them down, plays more like a horror film than an action movie.  Evans captures the sheer panic and fear that any one of us would feel at being trapped in such a scenario, where each fight scene or shoot-out isn't just about showing off skill but rather sheer survival.  The heroes (and villains) aren't just fighting out of moral righteousness or to show off how good they are at ass-kicking, they are fighting because they are fully aware that the instant they stop, the instant they can't keep going, the instant they trip up, they die, end of story.  The key to The Raid is that it is a top-notch action film with the sensibilities of a top-notch zombie flick.  It's not just relentlessly exciting, it's actually terrifying too.

Safe (review):
 Another top-notch action entry that didn't find an audience, this is easily Jason Statham's best action vehicle yet (I'd argue The Bank Job is a caper picture, but just rent them both!).  This surprisingly thoughtful and character-driven crime drama spends most of its first half exploring the dynamics of its two warring crime families, as well as the young girl caught in the middle by virtue of her borderline-autistic math skills.  But when the action hits, it hits hard.  Writer/director Boaz Yakin doesn't just showcasing high-quality shoot-outs and smack downs but sets these action staples not in abandoned flame factories or empty alleyways, but in crowded hotel lobbies and the like, which adds extra tension as we see innocent bystanders clearly in harm's way.  It's a novel and authentic touch, just one that makes this a pretty terrific action drama.  I know it's a cliche to say something like this, but if you liked Jack Reacher, then you'll love Safe.      

Safety Not Guaranteed:
This was a year when most of the would-be arthouse gems eventually expanded to a wide enough level that they were able to be seen by those who wanted to see them.  Alas, this wonderful time-travel dramedy struggled to stay noticed as The Moonrise Kingdom and Beasts of the Southern Wild got most of the press that didn't go to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or Bernie.  This is an unexpectedly powerful little gem that deserves to find its audience on the various home-viewing formats.  Aubrey Plaza is superb and Jake Johnson has a wonderfully realistic romantic subplot, so good that he reused it on this season of The New Girl.  Writer Derek Connolly and director Colin Trevorrow are more concerned about the emotional implications of figurative and/or literal time-travel than the quantum mechanics, and it's the rare picture that unfolds in such a way that you have no idea how it's going to end.  How it does end I won't reveal, but I will say I admired the sheer courage on display, as much as I admired the whole darn movie overall.

And that's it for now.  Join us for the next bit of business, the 'Underated films of 2012'.