Wow. Katy Perry beats ZDT

Somebody had to say it. (Seriously, it's comparing apples to oranges. Zero Dark Thirty has some very good scenes toward the end, and is a pretty good film, but is a bit of a letdown considering all the hype proclaiming it one of the best movies of the year. The Katy Perry movie is a well-done concert film with insight on what goes into creating a star, and is a pretty good portrait. Besides, I like Katy Perry and she seems like a nice person with a healthy attitude toward stardom, and the film gives an idea why she's so successful.)

Oops! "Looper" is #8.

Miss you man. Yeah, out of that list you quoted, probably top three for me are Jiro, Moonrise Kingdom and Django. But I just managed to watch Looper a couple days ago and that one might have topped them all.

Added Jiro.

It's pretty darn good, isn't it? I went in expecting sushi and came out getting so much more.

Something like this:

10. Bernie
9. This is Not a Film
8. Looper
7. The Deep Blue Sea
6. Holy Motors
5. The Turin Horse
4. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
3. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Amour
1. Moonrise Kingdom

Glad to see this getting love--really interesting film.

Honorable Mention: Skyfall, The Avengers, Lawless, Savages, The Grey

10. End of Watch
9. Flight
8. Silver Linings Playbook
7. Zero Dark Thirty
6. Argo
5. Cloud Atlas
4. The Hobbit
3. Looper
2. Django Unchained
1. The Dark Knight Rises

Still to see: Lincoln, Killing them Softly, Arbitrage, The Master, This is 40, The Impossible

I thought it was an awesome year in movies. There were 11 films (Skyfall being the 11th) that were terrific. Any of those 11 would normally be near the top 5 in a different year. The only thing 2012 lacks is one true masterpiece because although I do love the Dark Knight Rises it has its issues.

Alright, I feel happy enough to make this list now. I still have a handful of 2012 films on my to-watch list (most importantly Django, but it is guaranteed to find a place in one of my top two tiers), but I don't know when I'll be getting to them. Also, I love the tier strategy because it obviates the need to give films a set ranking, and I can come up with a Top 25 films where all the films are interchangeable within their tiers but where each tier, in and of itself, offered me something superior when compared to subsequent tiers. I can see myself using this strategy from here to eternity.

TOP TIER (Crème De la crème - All 4 star films.)

Argo
Zero Dark Thirty
Moonrise Kingdom
Perfect Sense
Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Avengers (Pinnacle of pop-corn entertainment and had to find a place on my list for that alone. This is definitely not one I would compare head-to-head with the other films on my list, but it made me feel giddy in a way no other 2012 film did.)

UPPER-MID TIER (From here till the tier before last, all films are rated 3.5 stars.)

The Master
Skyfall
Looper
Lincoln
Amour

MID TIER

Holy Motors
Les Miserables
Silver Linings Playbook
End of Watch
The Hunger Games

LOWER-MID TIER

Kuma (An Austrian film most of you might not have seen. I saw it at the Chennai International Film Festival and it was well worth my time.)
Flight
The Grey
The Dark Knight Rises
The Impossible

BOTTOM TIER (Mostly 3 starrers with the exception of the Burton film.)

Frankenweenie
Life of Pi
Brave
Prometheus
Wreck-It Ralph

1. Ruby Sparks **** An instant classic. By creating his dream girl, Paul Dano’s character finds things about himself that he doesn’t want to recognize. Always touching and sometimes comical, Zoe Kazan gives a one two punch of writing and acting that’s flawless from start to finish. Jonathon Dayton and partner Valerie Faris have a take on mental illness that’s fresh and true, improving on their work from Little Miss Sunshine. The reason I go to movies is for a feeling like this delivered.
2. The Master **** PTA is definitely one. Amazing thread (somewhere in this forum by Major, Pete, Shade, Bond Almond, Jack Burns etc… I’ve gone back 10 pages and can’t find it. Maybe James Packer had it removed) helped me better understand its message. Being raised by a mother who was a devout Jehovah’s Witness made religion my life until breaking free at age 16. This film pressed buttons in me that few ever have. Although it’s loosely based on Hubbard, Joaquin Phoenix’s character is like so many who joined Rutherford’s flock a century before. I love how PTA never judges his characters yet insists the viewers do so. The acting and cinematography are pretty handy too.
3. The Impossible ***.5 The most gut wrenching cinema experience I can ever recall having since Requiem for a Dream.
4. Life of Pi (3d) ***.5 A truly gorgeous film that improves on the book.
5. Skyfall ***.5 If it weren’t for the mediocre action in the last twenty minutes, where Barden tracks Bond to his birthplace, this would’ve been the best Bond movie ever made.
6. Django Unchained ***.5 A disappointment for me (I consider QT the generation X film god) but still an excellent fantasy/western. I didn’t like Waltz being cast in exactly the same role as Inglorious Basterds and found the KKK scene pathetic. It’s not the sort of humor I ever want to see in a QT film again. DiCaprio was an excellent villain and gave a spark when it started to linger a little. Loved Tarantino’s cameo for a change, taking the piss out of himself and the Australian “junk film" he adores.
7. Since You’ve Been Gone ***.5 The best Australian film since Chopper. Real life shit that genuinely can happen with an everyday man, Joel Edgerton nailing it again.
8. The Dark Knight Rises ***.5 Excellent finale to an incredible trilogy. The pacing is relentless for a film with its running time. Get’s judged harshly because The Dark Knight was a game changer.
9. Ted ***.5 The laughs dried up in the last thirty minutes but I can’t remember to many funnier comedies in the past decade.
10. Bernie ***.8 Apart from Jesus Son, this is the only film I can tolerate Jack Black in. He’s perfectly cast and Linklater hit’s gold starting from the first scene (Wonder if Alan Ball was appreciative or pissed?). The real life black comedy concept of a middle aged man being attracted to elderly women is hysterical.

Solid *** Looper, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Flight, Cloud Atlas, Killing Them Softly, Lincoln.

Overrated

–Silver Linings Playbook ** I didn’t think I lived in a galaxy where somebody gets released from a psych ward, runs down the street and has a beautiful woman chasing him. For good measure, she’s a bit fucked and obviously has a dance floor in her parents back bungalow and needs a partner to help her rehearse. Incase you forgot this wants to be a comedy, Chris Tucker will ridiculously drop in every now and then and overplay everything. There’s nothing wrong (or special) with the acting but the story line is ludicrous.
–Moonrise Kingdom **.5 Every time I’ve seen a Wes Anderson film since The Royal Tenenbaums, I walk out of the cinema convinced he’ll only ever make one classic, but what a classic it is! The kids can’t act in Moonrise Kingdom (which is a major fucking problem since they dominate the screen time) and their plight is exactly the same as his classic. It felt like watching a series of excellent photographs, maybe suited more to an art exhibition? There are so many shots that look like they’ve been taken straight from The Royal Tenenbaums it made me want to watch the real masterpiece again.

– Beasts of the Southern Wild, Safety Not Guaranteed.

Looking forward to watching ‘Perfect Sense.’ It rates really high around here.

Well, sadly Cloud Atlas didn't come out in my area. I was hoping to hold off my final top 10 list before I saw it, but I'll just get it over with.

1) Zero Dark Thirty
2) Beasts Of The Southern Wild
3) Moonrise Kingdom
4) Holy Motors
5) Looper
6) Cabin In The Woods
7) Lincoln
8) Paranorman
9) The Raid
10) The Avengers

Honourable mention to Amour, which I think it a masterpiece... But oh sweet Christ was it a difficult watch. It was absolutely harrowing, and very depressing. Sure it's all rather touching, but it was anything but a pleasant experience. It's a film that I can admire its brilliance, but I doubt I could bring myself to watching again any time soon.

...and therefore The Raid is a better film than Amour?

Or is he just saying that he preferred the Raid over Amour?

Or he's just saying that Amour is a masterpiece but he doesn't know where to put it in a Top 10 because of how ambivalent he is feeling about it. So he's doing the easiest thing of giving it an honorable mention while ranking the rest of the films in order. I've felt that way about many similar films.

Yeah but that's like saying "Man Requiem for a Dream was great, but it was disturbing so I think I'll put Gone in 60 Seconds in there instead"

Wisey -



You must be shitting me! The last 20-30 minutes are the best part of the film. I thought Silva being led to Bond's ancestral home was genius in both thought and execution. The cinematography was the best in the film (and all of it was superb). The touch of having Albert Finney as his old gamekeeper, and as for the action - how about them crashing the helicopter into the building? I love how the final battle was played out on the Scottish moors with hardly a man-made object in siight.

I thought the whole thing was incredible. But each to their own I guess.

I've watched Skyfall 4 times now. F*cking love it.

I wasn't impressed by the manor attack sequence either

Well, given the choice to watch The Raid, or Amour again, I'd hands down choose The Raid. I founds it to be one of the most purely visceral movie experiences I've ever seen. Is it pulpy action trash? Sure, but it achieves what it sets out to do perfectly. Amour achieves perfectly exactly what it sets out to do too, but it was also emotionally draining and depressing to the point that I haven't warmed to it as much as the others on my list. My list is essentially a combination of films that I regard as both the "best" movies of the year, and my "favourite" movies. Favourite being movies that I'd want to buy on blu-ray and regularly watch in the future. As much as I think the film is a masterpiece, I really don't want to watch it again any time soon, so by my qualifications I figured it deserved an honourable mention rather than a place on my list. That's not to say that it's worse than my top 10 (I don't really like comparing films with regards to worth, they're all important to me).

But you didn't rate Hot Fuzz either. So I won't lose sleep over that.