I
saw over 300 films in the span of 2012, starting with a rewatch of Jean-Pierre
Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge and as of
last night, my second viewing of Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed. Of those, less than a third were from the year of 2012. While
there were certainly plenty of great works of cinematic art that are worth your
time, I retreated from the multiplex and even the art house to the hollowed
grounds of repertory cinema instead.
No one has a perfect knowledge of
the history of cinema, and any film critic has his or her own “blind spots.” I
don’t see that as a bad thing though. Why would anyone want to have seen every
movie? I’d rather have new discoveries to be made every year that open up new
terrain to be explored. The 100 (yes—100!) films I’ve highlighted in this list
fascinated me in so many different ways. And even better, most I saw on 35mm, a practice I have argued
for again and again (though really something you can do in a handful of
cities).
While some of my choices for films
I saw the first time in 2012 are damningly obvious, there’s a reason they are
obvious, canonical works. If my 2013 year of cinematic viewing (get ready for
the Kiarostami Koker trilogy on February 10th at Film Society
everyone!) can come even half as good as the year of film 2012 ended up for me,
I’ll be a very happy camper indeed. Thus, I present the bottom 25 below, with
the top 25 to come later this week. UPDATE: Follow here for the Top 25.
50. Million Dollar
Legs, Directed by Edward F. Cline (Seen on 35mm at BAMcinematek; August 15th)
I had a number of run-ins with W.C. Fields this year,
perhaps the greatest of all early sound comedians. In many ways, Fields’s gags
are meant to overwhelm the spectacle of the narrative, but working with former
Buster Keaton director Cline here, he finds a balance between a silly but
propulsive narrative that seamlessly brings together its various impulses. Fields plays a
supporting role in this oddball comedy about a bankrupt country that has a
surprisingly athletic population, which is full of surprising gags.
49. Boudu Saved from
Drowning, Directed by Jean Renoir (Seen on 2K DCP at Film Forum; August 24th)
Call Monsieur Boudu the antithesis to Chaplin’s Tramp—a
home-wrecker, both literally and metaphorically. Renoir’s early comedy might be
one of his most cynical works on the human spirit, as Boudu becomes the pet
project of a family instead tears them apart. All of Renoir’s films have comic
moments, but Boudu Saved from Drowning
is probably his most overt, and in many ways his most human about how everyone
has their flaws, but few express them so overtly.
48. The Virgin
Spring, Directed by Ingmar Bergman (Seen on 35mm at BAMcinematek; November 28th)
Another film about a family torn apart by their
misconceptions, but as this is Bergman, those misconceptions are less personal
and more spiritual. The film gives us four characters who all have their faith
tested: that the world is naturally good, that the world will rectify those who
are ignorant, that the wicked deserve to die, and that one must put their faith
in God. These are not new themes for Bergman, but every scene is tense and
ultimately devastating as each person is tested, shot in beautiful black and
white compositions, and presenting us with one of Sydow’s most haunting
performances.
47. Mogambo, Directed
by John Ford (Seen on 35mm at BAMcinematek; July 24th)
Mogambo might not
be one of John Ford’s most interesting narratives—it’s a three way romance
between Clarke Gable, Grace Kelly, and Ava Gardner set on an African safari—but
it’s one of those films that exposes how amazing a director can be whatever his
material. As I wrote back in July, Ford is a master of compositions and color,
and it’s apparent in every frame here, as each shot speaks volumes for what the
characters aren’t saying. It was Mogambo
I was thinking of when I saw Spielberg’s Lincoln.
It might not be what the director is used to in terms of visuals, but it sure
does show off their pure cinematic talent.
46. Detour, Directed
by Edgar G. Ulmer (Seen on DVD; September 12th)
There are three types of film noir directors: extreme
expressionists like Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmack; social realists like Sam
Fuller and Jules Dassin. And then there are the surrealists. Detour is closer to something like Un Chien Andalou than anything else, and
for 70-odd minutes, Edgar G. Ulmer takes us on a bizarre adventure of a
tormented psyche, where the only elements that make sense are that Tom Neal’s
mental state has no center at all. Two more Ulmers made my Top 100, and
deservingly so; the man works in pure cinema more than actual narratives, more
interested in creating haunted dreams that corresponding to reality.
45. Seven Chances,
Directed by Buster Keaton (Seen on Netflix Instant; September 25th)
There’s a reason Mike D’Angelo thinks this is a perfect comedy, and Seven Chances is almost
subversive in how easily it lulls you into thinking Keaton has become a full on
master of the tradition of genteel comedy. And thus, as the brides fill the
screen in the exact middle half of the film, Keaton’s explodes this very
standard comedy into a brilliant reversal of both gender roles as well as the
style of comedy. The boulder gag becomes the complete apex of the
slap-stician’s career: literal object attempt to destroy him as he races toward
his goal, as if to create a chase of pure representation.
44. Artists and Models, Directed by Frank
Tashlin (Seen on 35mm at BAMcinematek; August 30th)
Ah Jerry Lewis! Who would’ve thought how funny I would find
you? It’s easy to see why non-Americans can appreciate Lewis so much: his
comedy isn’t based on dialogue as much as it is on his delivery of complete
nonsense. His body is incontrollable and the humor develops out of its extreme
lack of it. I saw a handful of Lewis comedies, but his final one with Frank
Tashlin and Dean Martin might be his best, perhaps because Shirley MacLaine
might out-Lewis Lewis in one of the funniest musical numbers put to screen.
43. Life Is Sweet,
Directed by Mike Leigh (Seen on 35mm at Film Society of Lincoln Center;
February 20th)
Mike Leigh is perhaps tone of the best preceptors of human
happiness and our capabilities to have it or not. Like almost every one of
Leigh’s films, Life is Sweet is
deceptively simple: a comedy about twin sisters—each on the opposite side of
the spectrum—and the daily trials of their family, each one a better
performance than the next (how do you single anyone out in a Leigh ensemble?). But underneath the broad humor
that populates the exterior is a ambivalent appreciation for those who can live
so easily, and sympathy for those who try so hard to find a way to relate to
the world around them. I have still yet to see a Leigh film I didn’t highly
admire. I doubt that will change.
42. The World, Directed
by Jia Zhangkie (Seen on 35mm at Film Society of Lincoln Center; September 3rd)
Another directorial discovery, Zhangkie’s sprawling epic has
perhaps one of the best premises ever: a human drama set in an amusement park
that is supposed to represent different world landmarks, even though none of
them are the actual objects. No country has so vastly changed due to cultural
and economic impact of the global world than China, and Zhangkie captures that
so wondrously through his long takes and his brutal drama, which captures both
the wonders and pains of communication in a global network. As the screen goes
to black at the end, a character tells us that this is only the beginning. It
is a sign for both the characters and the audience that our world will never be
the same.
41. The Heartbreak
Kid, Directed by Elaine May (Seen on DVD; October 20th)
I’ll have much more to say about Elaine May later in this
list (only her last film, Ishtar,
failed to place in the top 50—it’s below in the bottom 50), but The Heartbreak Kid is truly her picture
despite Neil Simon’s insistence on having only his words be spoken.
Transforming gender stereotypes into extreme caricatures, May finds sympathy
under her grotesque creations, except for the awful human being played by Charles
Grodin at its center. Almost like a response to the Philip Roth novels of young
Jewish men finding their way in American life by rejecting the past, the final
shot of this offers the ultimate question of masculinity: what are you
searching for really? Do you even know?
40. Limelight,
Directed by Charlie Chaplin (Seen on 35mm at the Museum of Modern Art; July 3rd)
In which the Tramp examines, questions, and ultimate
celebrates his own Tramp-ness. Although he is never truly the Tramp, who when
off into the sunset in Modern Times,
there’s no mistaking Chaplin here attempting to revive his character for one
more time in this highly autobiographical film. The tragedy of his past, and
the redemption of his legacy, and that final act with Keaton is simply sublime.
I wish I could say more, but the film so wondrously speaks for itself, even if
he is best known as a silent comic.
39. The Man in the
White Suit, Directed by Alexander Mackendrick (Seen on 2K DCP at Film Forum;
November 16th)
A stunningly sly satire on humanity’s relation to science
and technology, The Man in the White Suit
is hilarious in its depictions of how shallow every person is to the progress
of humanity when it means their current way of life may change. But even beyond
the satire of labor relations, Mackendrick is simply a director who knows where
to put the camera for maximum comic effect, and how to design a sound gag for
an even funnier effect. With Alec Guinness’s ever-so-charming performance (and
that dazzling white suit is a perfect visual joke too), the director turns in a
very profound comedy that almost has more to do with our moment today than it
did in 1951.
38. La Grand
Illusion, Directed by Jean Renoir (Seen on 35mm at Film Forum; May 14th)
No one needs me to tell them that Renoir’s humanist WWI
drama is a masterpiece, but what makes Grand
Illusion such a stunning work of art is how many different films it has
contained in it, while always keeping its core tenants about the possibility of
seeing the other as oneself in central focus. Part comedy, part romance (one
between a man and a woman; another between two men), and part prison escape
film, Renoir naturally flows between it all. The last moment is a lie—they can
clearly shoot into Switzerland without getting in trouble—but it is the lie
that even in the cruelest of places and situations, perhaps we can retain our
natural goodness.
37. A New Leaf,
Directed by Elaine May (Seen on 35mm at Museum of the Moving Image; June 10th)
There’s no questioning that Henry and Henrietta make the
perfect couple—it’s right there in their names. Whatever was lost in Elaine
May’s legendary three hour cut of A New
Leaf almost seems irrelevant, given how damn funny and insightful the cut
have today is. Walter Matthau and May electrify the screen with their truly
awkward performances that always mine new humor out of the most simple of
scenes. As much as Henry wants to see Henrietta as an object that can be
controlled (“Now take your arm out of the head hole”), May turns this from a
comedy of degradation to a comedy of embarrassment, in which we find the
humanity in Henrietta, as well as Henry. Black ending not necessary—May’s debut
feature is still a delight.
36. Ruggles of Red
Gap, Directed by Leo McCarey (Seen on 35mm at Film Forum; April 8th)
Leo McCarey’s truly heartwarming comedy about a British
servant who finds himself a somebody in America might be reduced to almost
propaganda, but the fact is this is a film that truly believes in the American
spirit in a way Capra never came close to (and he always undercut his films
anyways). Charles Laughton’s turn as Ruggles is littered with wondrous moments
as a Brit discovers a world he never knew, and yet this cross-cultural comedy
never reduces itself to simple broad humor. If you are in need of a new July 4th
movie, this is worth it for Laughton’s stirring rendition of Gettysburg
Address.
35. About Elly,
Directed by Asghar Farhadi (Seen on Digital Projection at Film Society of
Lincoln Center; April 6th)
A Separation came
an international art-house hit last year, as Asghar Farhadi made a stirring,
morally ambitious drama of class and religious tensions that never simplified
itself once. About Elly, his previous
film, which has never been theatrically released in the States, rivals the
power of A Seperation. It might even
be better. I’d rather not say too much about it, but it’s a human drama about
complicated legal and moral dilemmas that never offers easy solutions to
another truly impossible conundrum, and shows the dangers of the path of
so-called good intentions.
34. Irma Vep,
Directed by Olivier Assayas (Seen on Netflix Instant; April 24th)
As a French director essentially remaking Truffaut’s Day for Night in the 1990s, Oliver
Assayas understands the entirety of what it means to be a director during such
a moment. Yet instead of setting the film through his own eyes, he turns it to
his star: international superstar Maggie Cheung, playing herself in what will
become a remake of Les Vampires. As
Assayas sees it, he struggles not only with the international impact of
film—communication and miscommunication are common motifs throughout, but the
historical giants that came before him. But Assayas transcends in his inability
to “complete” the project; he gives into his sensual side, the love of the
image, and by the end, its failure to properly represent. Sometimes, a failure
of representation is all one needs to create great cinema.
33. A Man Escaped,
Directed by Robert Bresson (Seen on 35mm at Film Forum; January 22nd)
I watched 10 films by Robert Bresson this year, finally
attempting to get on his wavelength. His films are austere, his acting reduced
to pure text, and his cinematic pleasures the opposite of many of his
contemporaries. It can take a couple films to find your way into an appreciation
of him (I hope to return to Balthazar
again; it was the first I saw this year), but once you do, the pleasures are
endless. That is certainly on screen in his prison escape film, simply titled A Man Escaped. Imagine if The Shawshank Redemption was Andy
digging with a spoon the entire time. Unlike some of the more cynical works
Bresson would later make, A Man Escaped
is a testament to the human spirit. With its barren lack of contextualizing
this man’s journey, it becomes one of spiritual escape, and a masterful one at
that.
32. Dead Ringers,
Directed by David Cronenberg (Seen on 35mm at the Museum of the Moving Image;
January 21st)
Dead Ringers is a
testament that not every filmmaker who goes from making genre flicks to
“serious” films is compromising their art. I found who claimed there was never
much Cronenberg in A Dangerous Method
completely shallow in their statements—they only need to look at the strange
tale of twins Beverly and Elliot to find the relationship. Cronenberg’s love
for the truly dueling psychologies of these interconnected persons make for
intense, garish drama, full of truly bizarre horrors, both audible and visual.
It’s perhaps Cronenberg’s most Cronenbergian film, most notable for how
seriously it takes its horrors, turning what could have been schlocky melodrama
into the highest of tragedy—a testament to the director’s invetment in how the
body changes the mind, and visa versa.
31. Le Promesse,
Directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Seen on 35mm at the IFC Center;
January 14th)
Another director (or in this case, a pair) that I had
ignorantly never caught up with till this year, the Dardennes brothers stunned
me with their commitment to realism in a way that other directors can’t even
handle. Treating the camera as only a partial document (the amount of off
screen sound in their work is a future video essay I hope to do), the Dardennes
find incredibly intense and harrowing dramas in the most ignored of places. In
their debut narrative feature, it’s the vision of tough moral choices that must
be made, leading to a climatic shot that ripped my heart out. Because the
visual look and aesthetic commitment is so lived-in, none of these choices, as
melodramatic as they can be, even begins to ring false.
30. The Devil,
Probably, Directed by Robert Bresson (Seen on 35mm at Film Forum; January 13th)
If A Man Escaped
showed Bresson at his most revert and belief in the human spirit, The Devil, Probably remains at the
complete opposite of the spectrum. In many ways, the new Oliver Assayas film, Après Mai, is a companion piece, as
Bresson shows a series of failed-revolutionaries attempting to spur change, but
falling back into their primal emotions. These kids act cynical and sell a big
game, but their actions are ultimately meaningless. The final decision of the
protagonist says it all—the only change one can make is that of oneself.
29. Of Time and the
City, Directed by Terrence Davies (Seen on 35mm at BAMcinemtek; March 21st)
Yet another director who was a blind spot until this year
(and luckily I only have one left to see from his enigmatic career), Terrence
Davies might be the most British of all British directors. His documentary tone
poem Of Time and the City is a
perfect companion piece to Guy Maddin’s My
Winnipeg, or even Terrence Malick’s The
Tree of Life. It’s full of exuberant nostalgia for an earlier time,
capturing both the spirit of the city as well as a young lad. Where it is
personal, it finds the universal, while the universal finds the personal. It’s
a magical tour through time, and narrated by Davies, it’s the best type
personal filmmaking—not the last of his to make this list.
28. Climates,
Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Seen on 35mm at Film Society of Lincoln Center;
May 8th)
Once Upon a Time in
Anatolia has become a critics hit this year, but now having seen Ceylan’s
breakthrough film, I much prefer the intense, minimal, high-impact drama of
this digitally shot masterwork. While the stakes are much lower in Climates (at its most elemental, it’s a
break up film), the rewards are much greater, as Ceylan takes us through a
couple’s turmoil through the Turkish environment. Overbearing sunlight, rough
winds, chilly snow, and crass sand speak for the feelings of a couple that can
barely communicate to each other, leaving us with a narrative of human
complexity. I do love plenty of Anatolia,
but I prefer Climates more relatable
drama, as it takes us through a story we’ve all been through, but never
captured so brilliantly by external forces acting the psychology of the
characters.
27. The Great
Silence, Directed by Sergio Corbuci (Seen on 35mm at Film Forum; June 6th)
One of my favorite series at Film Forum this year was their
huge selection of Spaghetti Westerns. If you are a casual cinephile, you’ve
probably seen Leone’s Dollars trilogy with Clint Eastwood, but that doesn’t
even scratch the surface of the bold work out there. My favorite discovery was Django director Sergio Corbucci’s
cynical take on the power of capitalism The
Great Silence, starring two of my favorite actors of all time: Jean
Louis-Trigtinant and Klaus Kinski. While completely incidental, the film’s
relation to a certain Vietnam event give this film an arsenic edge by the end,
but even without it, it’s a commanding and thrilling portrait of a society on
the edge where every person of power is someone who can’t be trusted.
26. Sátántangó,
Directed by Béla Tarr (Seen on 35mm at Film Society of Lincoln Center; February
4th)
Beyond the long takes, the stunning black and white, the
elongated scenes that extended for 30+ minutes, and the cynical attitude toward
any possibility of redemption, is the absolute magisterial command of Béla Tarr
in Sátántangó. Running just over
seven and a half hours, Tarr allows you to breath in his worlds and make you a
part of them. This narrative network of a small community that is duped by a
Christ-like figure captures the ultimate search for meaning. What are those
cows up to anyway? The final image might seem like Tarr’s final nihilistic
note, but in many ways it is his truth in something beyond sight and feeling;
by closing ourselves to the world, we find truth from within.
Look for the top 25 later this week.
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