Top Ten Films and Albums of 2012

Here goes. I've seen a lot less movies this year than I have in previous years due to feelings that this site is not of a primary significance to my life or to the lives of readers. But anyways, out of tradition, here are my favorite films (and also albums, since I listened to some music this year, too) of a disappointing year. Keep in mind that I have not yet seen (for various reasons): "Argo," "Amour," "Lincoln," "Life of Pi," "The Silver Linings Playbook," "Rust and Bone," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Killer Joe," "Elena," and "Django Unchained." I just wanted to put this list out before it would be obsolete to do so.

Best Films

1. The Queen of Versailles (dir. Lauren Greenfield)

An incredibly in-depth study of the extremes of wealth, a great highlight of contemporary non-fiction cinema, and the only film this year that blew my mind completely.

2. Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson)

A customary Andersonian vacuum, which is something I've usually been into, but, for the nonbelievers, "Moonrise Kingdom" is filled crucially with sweet tenderness and inspired insanity. The year's most enjoyable.

3. Leviathan (dir. Verena Paravel and Lucien Castiang-Taylor)

I saw this at the New York Film Festival, so it's technically not a 2012 release. But it left a sizable impact on me, showing how very (even sickeningly) effective pure cinema can be. Though it may be hard for some to take, here's a movie that can be viewed on the most basic level, sound and image.

4. Alps (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

As baffling and frustrating after seeing it as before, "Alps" is a film that contains worlds and that is utterly lost in itself. Brutal and harrowing, it's cut of the same cloth as "Dogtooth" but offers different (and equally satisfying) sorts of cerebral pleasures.

5. No (dir. Pablo Larrain)

A paean to the power of persuasion, and a point in history when advertising did more good than bad. This is one historical film where I was entirely invested in the conclusive victory, most likely due to the fact that it's incredibly fair in its view of all sides involved.

6. Damsels in Distress (dir. Whit Stillman)

Funny and silly in the way of Stillman, but with a totally unexpected and arresting undertone of true wonder and emotion that holds things together beautifully.

7. Reality (dir. Matteo Garrone)

I feel that with repeated viewings this audaciously conceptual movie (a deserved winner at Cannes) could reveal its shriller moments to be less of an issue. The ending, which many will despise, may be the finest this year had to offer. If the Oscars meant anything, Ariello Arena (in likely his only performance ever) would be decorated.

8. Neil Young Journeys (dir. Jonathan Demme)

I didn't see the first two films that Demme made with Young, but this one struck me, full of brilliant decisions in filming a Toronto concert and moments where Young to me sounds better than ever. I could take or leave the weird and inconsistent interjections, though.

9. The Color Wheel (dir. Alex Ross Perry)

This movie wore me down, sometimes badly and gratingly, but mostly in the way of working its way past my defenses and making me laugh. Then the unbearably tense climactic sequence came, and it became clear Ross had entire layers (cinematically and, of course, thematically) concealed.

10. The Master (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

I found myself defending this movie much more than I originally thought I would have. But I feel like a second viewing could really boost my opinion of this deeply flawed but extraordinarily ambitious technical masterpiece. Joaquin Phoenix is my man for every award in his line, as is Hoffman. It is about something, I can say that. 

Honorable mentions: This Must Be the Place (Paolo Sorrentino) was ultimately attempting too many different things to stick its landing, but it's still uproariously funny and random. It's easy to see why Dark Horse (Todd Solondz) threw people off, with its overtly abrasive lead performance by Abe Gelber and dejected mood, but there's a lot going on there (long held sadness and longing). Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow) was one of the year's most satisfying little movies (commanded by Mark Duplass' excellent work), despite its use of a basketload of Sundance tropes. Then there was Simon Killer (Antonio Campos), which I both loved and loathed, and which requires much more study, since Campos rightfully demands it. The scene with the miscommunication is one of the saddest I've ever seen. To round out 5, Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier) seemed for a while to be heading for film-of-the-year status (with its piercing and complex human observation, and literary qualities), but it unfortunately peaked somewhere. Still worth a look, though. 

Deserving films I included last year: "Attenberg," "The Kid With a Bike," "The Turin Horse"

Best Albums of the Year (loosely ranked, I could go up and down with these albums all the time; I've only heard bits and pieces of some of these also, but I feel like their quality is deserving)

1. Centipede HZ (Animal Collective) < give this album more than one chance, people

2. The Money Store (Death Grips)

3. Lonerism (Tame Impala)

4. good kid m.A.A.d city (Kendrick Lamar)

5. Shrines (Purity Ring)

6. channel ORANGE (Frank Ocean)

7. Swing Lo Magellan (Dirty Projectors)

8. The Idler Wheel... (Fiona Apple)

9. Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP (Daniel Rossen)

All of these could be 10: Attack  on Memory (Cloud Nothings), Bloom (Beach House), Luxury Problems (Andy Stott), Pink (Four Tet), Shields (Grizzly Bear), Duality (Captain Murphy), Until the Quiet Comes (Flying Lotus), Four (Bloc Party)

Comment with your faves if you want to discuss. Maybe I'll do performances if it seems like there's the need for that. 

Best and Worst Films and Best Performances of 2010

I did up my top ten list in the style of Roger Ebert’s, with the top ten ranked and the rest in alphabetical order. Like Entertainment Weekly’s, I have also included a five worst films list, bound to be disagreed with but fun for me anyways, as well as a list of the year’s best performances. A list of best technical achievements will come later on.

I wrote about the films to varying degrees of length, as sometimes I didn’t feel as if I could pump out 3 paragraphs of new insight about each movie. Hopefully you can understand. ;)

I tried to wait to see as much as I possibly could, but I was unable to see "Another Year," "Blue Valentine," "Biutiful," "The Illusionist," "Rabbit Hole" (which I could wait just a bit for, but I've decided against it), and "Somewhere," movies I thought may have had an impact on the list.

In all of its splendor, here it is:

10. Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)

The best “fun night out” comedy of the year, with great characters, amusing writing, and appealing actors (Catherine Keener makes nearly any movie watchable).

9. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)

A truism: the ending, not the beginning, is what counts. I’m glad that Roman Polanski is well aware of this, as he turns “The Ghost Writer” around from a plodding and hardly faultless set-up (where I was sure I had all the answers). The second half of the film is incredible: a completely charged, horrifying mystery (Tom Wilkinson and all!) with an astonishing twist (read: sometimes bad writing CAN serve a purpose) and a much-discussed and superb final shot. Seeing it again proved that the film altogether may be better than I originally thought.

8. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

Abbas Kiarostami comes back to his interest in doubles (most prominently displayed in “Close-Up” twenty years ago) with a disarming, mind-blowing, formally remarkable film. Juliette Binoche and William Shimell (so unfairly maligned) give two sterling performances as either friends or lovers, one French and one English (meeting in the middle ground of Italy), one revealed to be a romantic and the other keeping his critical blinders on the whole time. The last scene is perhaps the most transcendent to be projected this year.

(This film opens in the US in 2011. I just didn’t feel like waiting until next year to include it in my top ten list.)

7. Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)

Noah Baumbach is a dauntless filmmaker who makes every film a bit more draining than the last. As a result of this, as well as the fact Ben Stiller fans not ready to be tested by their boy, “Greenberg” was thrown to the wayside, much in the same way its predecessor “Punch-Drunk Love” was, maybe even more so. Taking cues from Bellow, among others, Baumbach fashions an intricate character for Stiller to play, and Stiller runs with it. He’s superlative, as is Rhys Ifans. Altogether, it’s a film witty, harrowing, and, in the end, divine.

6. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)

Extremely well-acted (Jennifer Lawrence, phenomenal in perhaps the year’s best performance; John Hawkes up there) and masterfully shot, this is “Frozen River” with more punch.

5. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)

A very fond memory of my film-going year was being packed into the small, specially-curated screening room at a theater I used to go to a lot (where they showed more obscure films) to be completely engaged by “Fish Tank.” Robbed of a Palme d’Or at Cannes ’09 (though a Jury Prize is good consolation), this is a significant cinematic and thespian achievement.

Katie Jarvis I underestimated originally, as I now realize that she’s so good that she calls no attention to her part. Many say that her character’s dancing is poor, but she convinced me it wasn’t. Michael Fassbender is also quite fine, given a chance to exhibit an exceptional screen personality. Robbie Ryan shoots the film tremendously, and Andrea Arnold as a result becomes one of my favorite active directors. It isn’t entirely perfect, but it was pretty much all I thought about in the days afterward. And I’ve developed a pretty big soft spot for it. This proves all the more that indelibility is much more important than impeccability.

(Apparently there has been some question of what year this was released during. I’m including it this year.)

4. White Material (Claire Denis)

A difficult film that has split people into believers and shruggers. In my opinion, to dismiss it would be very foolish. It’s wistful, understated, resonant, and has Claire Denis’ (as well as cinematographer Yves Cape’s) adept artistry. Isabelle Huppert supplies some of the most touching moments of the year. And Isaach de Bankole, with a faraway look in his eye and a bullet in his side, playing the Boxer, gives us just the right amount of exposition.

3. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

The best narrative feature film of 2010. Finally a Pixar work on target both in terms of humor and emotion (the bookending scenes are grand examples of the former and latter, respectively). Most importantly to me, though, is that it hints at a world with no limits, where anything is possible. That, to me, is Pixar’s most valuable contribution. Maybe the Academy will finally get off their Pixar high and deliver their top prize to “The Social Network,” but if there is any time to be so taken with this company’s output, it’s now. Will they ever do better?

2. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg)

This is the anti-“Exit,” in that it’s about as typical a documentary as possible, but it’s just as good in its own way. After watching, the audience feels familiar enough with Rivers to be her friend. Like Toback’s “Tyson” (which it tops), it gives a dismissed subject a chance, and does so to great effect.

1. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)

A critic was quick to denounce “Exit Through the Gift Shop” for having “a limited worldview.” To say something like this is to treat “Exit” like a normal documentary, which is most definitely not. It is as incendiary a piece of street art as Banksy has ever created, and so by definition it must have a “limited worldview.” That’s what this sort of thing is: one man with a stencil, railing at the establishment, whether it be of politics, art, or something else.

This is the syringe to pump life back into the documentary, which is being used less and less as an art form and as more of a way to transmit imperatives to the audience. In its exploration of a very vital niche of underground culture, it’s a throwback to movies that inspired you into action because of a necessity driven by interest, not by environmental safety.

We get as tantalizingly close to Banksy as possible without finding out who he is, even seeing him construct art pieces. But who is to know what or how much he’s giving us? The audience is at his mercy, a delightful position to be put in.

I would await the arrival of another Banksy film with anticipation, but I doubt he could ever top the heights he reaches here. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is a debut to be treasured and a contorting classic to stand among the hallmarks of documentary cinema.

Runners-Up:

The Art of the Steal (Don Argott)

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)

How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders)

Inception (Christopher Nolan)

Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau)

Live Tape (Tetsuaki Matsue)

Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)

The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)

The Social Network (David Fincher)

The Town (Ben Affleck)

Also notable: Animal Kingdom (David Michod), Restrepo (Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington)

Worst Films:

5. Wild Grass (Les Herbes Folles) (Alain Resnais)

One of those movies that goes down a detrimental path that ends up making you laugh very hard. Beloved by many, but loathed by me for its sappy romantic ideology reeking of “The Seven Year Itch.” Saved from being utterly awful by the camera of Eric Gauthier.

4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev)

This film caught the zeitgeist at exactly the right time and catapulted to box office glory. However, to me it’s both dull and appalling, with only its main character to save it.

3. Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn)

Nicolas Winding Refn makes another unpleasant film that lacks the level of meaning it needs to make it come through. Surpasses “Bronson,” though, which is some sort of advancement.

2. Looking For Eric (Ken Loach)

Exceptionally boring, with a very small amount of humor and a very high amount of profanity. Loach seems to be entering an Eastwood period.

1. Babies (Thomas Balmes)

An exercise in why editing is so important. Potentially an interesting film, but utterly destroyed by lacking in coherence. Not fun to watch in the slightest, even at 79 minutes. Observing audience members at this film made for an interesting social experiment.

Best Performances (not really in any order):

Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, and Barbara Hershey, Black Swan

Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech

Juliette Binoche and William Shimmell, Certified Copy

Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender, Fish Tank

Ben Stiller and Rhys Ifans, Greenberg

Jeong-hee Yoon, Poetry

Sam Rockwell, Iron Man 2

Ciaran Hinds, Life During Wartime

Entire Cast (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hutcherson, Mia Wasikowska), The Kids Are All Right

Tom Hardy, Inception

Isabelle Huppert, White Material

What are your favorite films and performances of 2010? What were your least favorite?

An Interview with Anurag Kashyap, director of "That Girl in Yellow Boots"

[src] courtesy of: Mayank.hc

“That Girl in Yellow Boots” makes its world premiere out-of-competition at the Venice Film Festival before playing in the Special Presentations section at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Flick Pick Monster: What inspired you to make “That Girl in Yellow Boots”?

Anurag Kashyap: A story in a newspaper about a German girl who came to India looking for her father...she is still looking, though. And yet another story that I can't talk about or it would reveal the film, which dominated the front pages of the Mumbai Mirror for sometime. The two stories affected me and kept playing in my head and I narrated them to Kalki [Koechlin], I said “I want to do this with you, but I want a woman's POV so will you write it?” and she did.

FPM: What is the significance of the yellow boots, if there indeed is any beyond being a distinguishing characteristic?

AK: The title is such because it has a connotation of a gossip. It’s not the girl in yellow boots but "That Girl…" as in when someone talks, "You know that girl who wears yellow boots, you know what she does, blah blah blah[….]” It’s at the very core of Indian morality that we can't talk about things openly and sometimes a strong individual woman, who happens to be beautiful and white, gets scrutinized a lot. It's a story of one such girl[;] yellow boots are her only distinct identity.

FPM: I’ve read that the technique of Snorricam (something I much enjoy) is given screen time in “Dev. D” and your other films. Given that the same cinematographer, Rajeev Ravi, worked on “That Girl With Yellow Boots” as well as “Dev D.,” is there any of it to be expected in the new film?

AK: No, there are no [snorricams] used in TGIYB. We have shot 10 % of it on 7D, though.

FPM: It is always interesting when the director of a film works on the screenplay with an actor of the film. Such examples include Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater on “Before Sunset,” to an extent Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman on the "Kill Bill" films (though they really just came up with the character together), and you and Kalki Koechlin with your new film. How was this experience?

AK: Oh, it was tough. She is not just the actor, she is also my live-in partner and she has strong [points of view]. For her to be both writer and actor and me to be the director using her and her material and [to be] the boyfriend was very intense. After [the] shoot we both needed our space. We couldn't go back to bed together after the shoot each day. It was very intense but it showed on screen.

FPM: What do you have lined up for after “That Girl in Yellow Boots”?

AK: I am next doing a tribal gangster film [entitled “Gangs of Wasseypur”] set in the state of Bihar around the coal mines. It’s a revenge story set across six decades and three generations.

An Interview with George Hickenlooper, director of the Jack Abramoff biopic "Casino Jack"

Hickenlooper (right) with "Casino Jack" star Kevin Spacey

"Casino Jack” premieres at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in the Galas section.

Flick Pick Monster: You seem drawn to outcasts: Francis Ford Coppola and his cast with “Hearts of Darkness,” Monty Hellman in your documentary about him, Andy Warhol in “Factory Girl,” Rodney Bingenheimer in “Mayor of Sunset Strip,” and now Jack Abramoff in “Casino Jack.” Would you say this is, as they say, your trademark?

George Hickenlooper: [I'm] not sure if I’m into trademarks because in general I'm against the commodification of any art form, particularly when it comes to the cinema. This trend in the last 30 years has had a very corrosive and infantilizing [effect] on filmmaking. In the independent film world in the United States, it’s this type of framing device that has created a kind of "Pottery Barn Cinema," [as] I like to call it -- where filmmakers and critics both feel a need to pigeon hole work with a kind of label or sheen that makes it more palatable for the consumer. Critics and fanboys alike love it when they can salivate over certain styles or fashions or trends which ultimately feed on themselves and the filmmakers, leading to a generation of work that might look nice next to your potpourri but at [its] heart has no real or timeless qualities that [are] demanded by meaningful storytelling. Less I digress, allow me to answer your question—I am interested in characters who are outsiders or who are in some way in a deteriorating frame of mind. My other pictures 'The Low Life', 'Dogtown,' and ‘The Big Brass Ring,' also explore this idea. For 'The Big Brass Ring', F.X. Feeney and I adapted the original screenplay by Orson Welles about a political candidate who is recovering from the loss of a major election. In our adaptation we kept that same idea of loss but made it more intimate, creating the story of a politician who suffers from the loss and guilt of a brother killed in Vietnam. It’s this sadness and tragedy of life that fascinates me to no end. I believe that characters like this are true to life and in a way they are appropriate metaphors for how life decays. We are all beautiful rockets that eventually burn out, and I like to shine my attention on those last few sparks, those last few moments of glory. Finality is what gives life its beauty. Without finality we would all be trees falling in a massive forest for no one to see.

FPM: Was the film influenced by Alex Gibney’s “Casino Jack and the United States of Money”? If not, how did this project come into being?

GH: I wasn’t aware of the relevance of [the] Gibney documentary until he started accusing me of stealing his title. Considering the fact that Jack’s universal nickname in Washington was ‘Casino Jack,’ I felt it was a bit presumptuous of him to assume ownership of the name, especially when we had announced our title first. Regardless, Gibney’s film had no influence on me. It was actually Billy Moyers’ PBS documentary ‘Capitol Crimes’ which got me interested in the story. It was so gothic and operatic in its scope, I immediately though this would make a great film. And not a political film, but a film about hubris, greed and corruption on a stage that could rival the world of Mario Puzo. It was fresh and interesting and smart and so I found the writer, Norman Snider, who is a former journalist and a Canadian, and I thought together we could come up with an interesting perspective on Jack Abramoff.

FPM: It’s interesting to see Kevin Spacey play both Ron Klain and Jack Abramoff in a span of only a couple of years. Any comment on this?

GH: I actually never saw 'Recount’ nor did I take it into consideration when I was casting ‘Casino Jack.’ I felt Kevin had a certain bravado and charm that would nicely accentuate the personality of Abramoff. I met with Jack five times where he was incarcerated in Cumberland, Maryland, so I got to know Abramoff a bit and I just felt his charisma and charm was something that might be suited to Kevin Spacey.

FPM: I appreciate the fact that you took the approach of making a biopic/dramatization, not a fictionalization. A recently example of this was Doug Liman’s “Fair Game,” which was about Valerie Plame and referred to her by name versus Rod Lurie’s “Nothing But the Truth,” which was implicitly about Plame but was sort of a concealed satire. I use this comparison because your film is similarly political and similarly about a controversy. Would you say your choice to direct a dramatization comes out of your documentarian bent.

GH: Well, for me a good story is a good story whether inspired by facts or not. Does my background as a documentarian make me more inclined to tell these kinds of stories? Not really. It just worked out that way on my last two pictures. And with respect to whether you’re Lurie or Liman, I think by virtue of the fact that we’re all telling narratives that are written by writers and ultimately played by actors, we are bound to blur the lines between fiction and reality at some point. Whether you say it’s “a true story or “inspired” by a true story, it is ultimately subject to the filmmaker’s perception and discretion, so I think your question about Lurie vs. Liman may be splitting hairs a bit. Both are very good films, and both deal with the subject of betrayal and rights of privacy in very intelligent and profound ways. You don’t necessarily have to call her character “Valerie Plame” to underscore the issues and relevance that her experience brought to our collective social mores. I felt the same way when I told the Edie Sedgwick story in ‘Factory Girl.’ I felt that I didn’t have to be slavish to the minutia of her life because her overall life experience in Andy Warhol’s factory, and her insatiable desire to achieve fame, was something completely relevant to our culture today --- loss, abandonment, and that desire to fill that deficiency with love. Consequently as a narrative filmmaker, I am not opposed to sometimes taking liberty with fact for the sake of making the story as a film work as a whole. Narrative filmmaking is always narrative storytelling and it should never pretend to be documentary unless you’re Orson Welles doing ‘War of the Worlds’ for CBS Radio. Or worse case scenario Oliver Stone making ‘JFK,’ which profoundly convinced me that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as a lone gunman.

FPM: Has the film [“Casino Jack”] been seen by anyone who is portrayed in it? If so, how did they feel about it? If not, what do you anticipate their feelings will be?

GH: Well, Jack told me in prison that he hated the movie just based on his reading of the script, which we had to smuggled into him disguised as an attorney’s document. Of course, his hating the script was part of his charm and a testament to his being an [effective] lobbyist by doing his best to convince me to take on another project instead. What he may not have realized at the time was the hours he spent talking to me and telling me stories in his effort to tell me that his story really wasn’t that interesting were stories that ultimately made it into the movie. So in a way, yes, I had my documentary cap on and art was imitating life here. Things Jack told me in prison started going directly into the movie. In fact, the very end of the film is based on a favor Jack asked me to do for him. So in an odd way, like a documentarian, I found myself a participant in my own narrative film. At moments it was surreal.

FPM: You’ve now tried biopic, narrative, and documentary. Which of them you most prefer to do?

GH: I love all three. Documentaries are pure cinema in the sense that you are using raw film to create your narrative. There’s something exciting about finding your story in the chaos of that footage. At the same time I love the elegance of narrative filmmaking and working with other great talents to create a truly magnetic narrative experience.

FPM: Which filmmakers have an influence on your work?

GH: Wow, that’s a tough question. When young film students ask me who to watch I usually suggest the following: Buster Keaton, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Robert Wise, John Schlessinger, Hal Ashby, Dziga Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, Vittorio de Sica, Carol Reed, William Wyler, Peter Bogdanovich, King Vidor, Monte Hellman, Ernest Lubitsch, Roman Polanski… [just] to name a few…. I guess all these guys are a part of me.