The BP Top Ten of 2012

This list was compiled from the individual top ten lists of Scott, Matt, Aaron, Patrick, Rita, Josh, Sarah, Dayne, Kyle, Tyler, and David.

Honorable Mentions: The Queen of Versailles, Life of Pi, The Avengers, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook

10. Compliance
Craig Zobel’s controversial film is astounding, in terms of production, in terms of the bravery of its cast and crew, especially the former, and most particularly as a work of art. Finally, a film that examines the uncomfortable reality of the malleability of the human psyche, all the more exacting because it’s set in the most familiar institution America has – the local fast food joint. Disregard the potential symbolism of the setting and instead focus on the very real human story told here, and the devastating honesty with which it is told. A work of incredible compassion that pulls no punches. -DL

9. Zero Dark Thirty
I don’t necessarily think that Zero Dark Thirty is a better film than Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar breakthrough The Hurt Locker, but it definitely feels more complete. She has strengthened her rapport with screenwriter Mark Boal to produce one of the most thrilling film-going experiences of the year. Though I don’t agree with those who feel the film endorses torture, I think the controversy shows the strength of the film — it’s narrative and thematic complexity is something that should be championed. Really, though, Jessica Chastain’s performance is its bright spot. Her transformation from the first scene to the last is astonishing. Zero Dark Thirty beats down the audience, but in an acceptable way — it’s important to feel the everyday drudge that these characters face without any end in sight. -AP

8. The Cabin in the Woods
The Cabin in the Woods is every bit as much a film essay as Room 237. The distinction between fictional narrative and documentary is pedantic, but the basic question remains the same: why, exactly, do humans find comfort in such seemingly anti-social material? What insight does it offer? Goddard and Whedon’s thesis seems to be that horror satisfies the same primitive bloodlust that once made dudes feed Christians to enormous felines. But they’re not didactic about it. Cabin is funny as shit. And for horror nerds, there was no giddier 20 minutes of film this year than Cabin’s nutball 3rd Act. Jerk critics may dismiss this game of “spot the horror movie reference” as the worst kind of internet film geek pandering, but my response is this: go fuck thyself. Menacing redneck zombie axe murderers aside, there was no more fun place to be this year than The Cabin in the Woods. -MW

7. Lincoln
Lincoln invites every complaint about large, epic “Oscar Bait” movies and then systematically dispatches them with scene after scene of vibrant dialogue, career best performances, breathtaking and transportive cinematography, and meticulous attention to detail. Janusz Kaminski’s long, almost theatrical unbroken takes puts the audience face to face with history not as a sterile museum but as an immediate reality. Kushner’s words in the mouth of a cast of thousands (Kevin Kline is 74th billed) gives voice to the big ideas at work while also proving astonishingly witty and funny. In Daniel Day-Lewis, both the actor and the American president he portrays are liberated from the shackles of their own sainthood, giving way to complicated, flawed and recognizable humans. In so doing, Lincoln reveals uncomfortable truths about our current political reality. As he did with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg has given generations separated by time an emotional entry point into our collective past. It will forever shape how America views this critical moment in history. It is history etched with lightning. -PF

6. Amour
Michael Haneke’s latest is a film only a master director could make, imbuing each of his characters with a searing, unassailable humanity and then quietly, carefully picking it apart. The uncomfortable reality of mental illness and the place it leaves those unafflicted, Haneke directs his film without judgment, creating compassion by giving his characters the space they need and simply allowing the audience to slowly come to a complete understanding of the fragility of happiness, mental well-being, and life itself. -DL

5. Moonrise Kingdom
I’ll admit I’m a Wes Anderson apologist, so it’s going to be hard for him to make a movie I don’t enjoy. While I don’t feel like this is his best film (as some have said), I think it’s still a great movie, packed with the filmmaker’s trademark wit, heart, and precision. Bruce Willis is a surprising addition to the cadre of Anderson’s performers, but he fits in well with a heart-warming performance. It seems to make great sense that eventually the leads of one of Anderson’s films would be children, as he consistently seems interested with childhood. His leads don’t disappoint, and carry the whole film adeptly. And every old standby who stops by is likely to give you a smile. Also, makes a strong case that every movie should be narrated by Bob Balaban. -JL

4. Bernie
My expectations for Bernie were not high. I don’t know if it was the overly light and silly trailer, or the poster that seemed to consciously aping the look of TV’s Dexter, but the whole thing just looked uninteresting to me. Luckily, the actual film is a whole lot stranger and better than its promotional materials made it look. It’s less about the actual crime Bernie commits (though that’s certainly interesting in and of itself) than it is about the phenomenon of small towns – the way insular communities rally to protect their own, sometimes in ways that challenge logic or conventional morality, and exactly what behaviors either or will or won’t earn you that kind of protection. People have called Jack Black’s performance “a revelation,” but he doesn’t reveal anything new so much as he reins in what we already knew he could do and then focuses it like a laser. Black has always played characters with boyish exuberance and an innate need to put on a show for others. Bernie is another one of these; it’s just that in this case, the audience he wants to win over is Texan church ladies. -RC

3. Django Unchained
I didn’t think it was possible for Quentin Tarantino to make a movie more like a traditional Spaghetti Western than he did with Inglourious Basterds, but I sure was wrong. He continues his newfound trend of making revisionist historical films that are as much about the myth and mystery of film itself as they are about the times and events they depict. Choosing to use slavery in the pre-Civil War South as the setting and circumstances is very much in keeping with his sensibilities and, like it or not, it’s a powerful way to tell a traditional hero narrative in a different way. As in Basterds, the cinema becomes the history we remember. Upon first viewing, I lamented the apparent lack of a one-on-one showdown, but there actually is one between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie and Christoph Waltz’s Dr. King Schultz. Their final conversation before an explosion of violence is shot exactly like one of Leone’s quiet, deadly staring contests. Tarantino, as always, uses banter to build tension and not the lack thereof. It’s a movie about myth on many levels: the myth of Siegfried, the myth of the American West (or South), the myths employed in Hollywood Westerns, and the mythic nature of cinema. All get put into the filmmaker’s Cuisinart of references and we get my favorite movie of the year. Can’t say enough good things about it. -KA

2. Cloud Atlas
I had an idea from the nearly six-minute trailer for Cloud Atlas that I was going to like it. What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with it. When the film was over I was left with a feeling of longing for more which is a feeling I almost exclusively get after reading a really good book. So when it comes from a film I know it means something. Cloud Atlas tells the stories of six main characters all in different times and parts of the world who are all connected to each other. Their stories intertwine and touch each other in unexpected ways. The film uses the same group of actors in different roles sometimes portraying a different race or gender emphasizes the interconnectedness of the characters and stories. It isn’t surprising that the film needed more then one director and the fact that Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis were able to collaborate and create such a seamless vision is a mirror to the theme of the film: that we need each other and that our choices are like ripples in a pond that spread out and touch others. I could gush on about this film and how great the performances were, how beautifully each story was shot, how wonderful the story and script were but I will just say that it is a film that has stuck with me and made me think deeper about the world and people around me. -SB

1. The Master
The Master is almost overflowing with thematic concerns of varying weight, so much so that it’s tough to know where to begin, or in what manner to condense my appreciation and affection for it. More than anything, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson wrangles the vulnerability he displayed in his earlier films into a form at once more manageable and more unwieldy. This is not the carefully-arranged, multifaceted breakdown of Magnolia, nor the perfectly-formed disintegration of There Will Be Blood – this is messy, and purposefully so. Even a scene as finely-crafted as that initial “processing” encounter between Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) leaves room for the wild, the inexplicable, and the unexpected, leaving us unable to possibly grasp its outcome even as its eventuality seems inevitable. “Pick a point,” Dodd challenges Freddie late in the film, belying the emptiness of not just the cult he’s founded, but the whole of American life in the postwar years during which this film takes place – Anderson matches his own challenge by speeding towards the wild blue yonder.

What I return to most is the final encounter between Dodd and Freddie, wherein Anderson wrings the most potent emotion he’s yet found in a discussion of dreams and balloons sent across nations and, somehow, not the first time a character sings to express something outside of his capacity for verbalization. This scene is so tender, so raw, so unblinking in its sideways depiction of longing and regret that to ascribe either emotion to any one element of either character is hopelessly reductive. It is the very essence of art, moving past that which is being depicted, past the act of depiction, and into an emotional stratosphere of its own creation. And for all its many attributes, it is for this that I love The Master. I can’t imagine the cinema will remain unchanged for it. -SN