Brad Pitt was named 2011’s Best Actor by the New York Film Critics Circle, which marks a notable shift in the thespian’s career. It’s not that he’s never been given awards love before, because he has. But Brad Pitt used to be a sex symbol — and I guess he still is, in that People magazine sort of way. But not really. That’s because he’s playing dads now.

It’s a big deal when actresses shift from playing the hottie to the mommy. Less so for men, who can still sex it up with pretty young things until they’re literally in the coffin. Still, the Brad Pitt recognized for The Tree Of Life and Moneyball is very different from the Brad Pitt nominated for his (CGI-enhanced) pretty boy leading man status in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button just a few years ago. Pitt has officially moved into George Clooney territory — good-looking, sure. But before you get it on with him, wouldn’t you first inquire whether or not he’s got a son you might hit it off with instead?

Of course, George Clooney has been dad-age for quite some time, with that salt-and-pepper hair. Yet, remarkably, he has not made a career of playing dads. The man is 50 years old! Why is he still constantly portraying the lothario bachelor? Up In The Air, Michael Clayton, The American… single dudes, all. The man just can’t commit, I guess. Almost zero of his big screen roles are with child. (Does it count when he’s playing a fox in The Fantastic Mr. Fox? ‘Cause that’s really the only part he’s taken where fatherhood factors into the storyline in a major way.) This may be the reason his turn n Alexander Payne’s The Descendants is getting awards buzz (he was the National Board Of Review pick for Best Actor).

Clooney stars as Matt King, the descendant of Hawaiian royalty, charged with deciding who a large plot of land on the islands will be sold to. Far more pressing in his life, though, is the fact that his wife was in a terrible boating accident, landing her in a coma. He learns early on in the film that she’ll never wake up. That leaves the former deadbeat dad with the task of raising his two daughters alone.But setting aside Clooney for a moment, the film’s most prominent buzz is actually directed at Shailene Woodley, who plays the oldest daughter, Alex. As well it should be. Woodley is terrific as the foul-mouthed 17-year-old who doesn’t mince words. She’s a believable teenager (kinda rare on screen these days) and manages to be the heart of the movie at the same time. She anchors the entire film; it’s better whenever she’s on-screen. This is a star-making turn, and almost certainly she’ll be rewarded with an Oscar nomination. After all, it isn’t easy to outshine and out-charisma George freakin’ Clooney, but Woodley has done — and made it look effortless to boot.

The Descendants‘ plot follows Matt, Alex, her comic-relief Keanu-in-the-making stoner friend Sid (Nick Krause), and the baby of the family, Scottie, as they endeavor to find and confront the man Mama King has been cheating on her husband with. (He’s played to smarmy perfection by Scream‘s Matthew Lillard.) Payne, who gave us Election, Sideways, and About Schmidt, stages many scenes with the perfect balance of pathos and humor. But others veer a little too far in one direction or the other.The Descendants‘ pace is a little laggy. There’s an unfortunate over-reliance on voice-over, and the subplot involving the sale of the family’s land never really becomes involving. The fact these people are descendants of Hawaiian nobility ends up being inconsequential, when it probably could have been fascinating. (Though I will say, much to my surprise, Clooney actually does manage to look part-Hawaiian in the role.) I liked individual moments more than I enjoyed what the film adds up to as a whole — Robert Forster bidding his daughter goodbye, Judy Greer’s visit to the hospital (you’ll see what I mean).

Yes, Hawaii is beautiful, and a dying wife and mother is sad. Still, there’s kind of a “been there, done that” to the proceedings. It all feels a little too neat and tidy. It’s a “nice” movie, one you could see with your parents. And George Clooney is perfectly fine as the lead, but you have to wonder if the part wasn’t meant for a slightly schlubbier Paul Giamatti-ish actor. (Who cheats on George Clooney with Matthew Lillard? Or maybe that’s the point.) It’s hard to imagine Clooney being such a bad husband or bad father (we never see any direct evidence of this). It’s hard to imagine George Clooney being bad at anything, except Batman. He’s George Clooney! And I don’t know about you, but I like my Clooney when he’s believably good at everything, like robbing casinos and fucking over Tilda Swinton. As a deadbeat dad, I’m not so ready to buy what Clooney’s selling.Ironically, it is much easier to buy Brad Pitt as a lousy father, even though in real life he has approximately 75 perfect children from all over the world.

Unlike Clooney, Brad Pitt has, every now and then, played a father — like in 2006’s Babel. It’s not unheard of, but nevertheless, he spent most of the last decade being hunky and baby-free (on screen, that is), with roles in Ocean’s Thirteen and Inglourious Basterds and Troy and Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Assissination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and all that.

He’s probably not what you’d call “hunky” in Moneyball, unless you’re turned on by high-strung, superstitious failed baseball players. I dunno, maybe you are; I mean, he’s still Brad Pitt. But as Billy Beane, Pitt does his best to come across as average, even kind of a lout, and damned if he doesn’t almost convince you that he’s not, you know. Brad Pitt.Moneyball is the true story of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane, who revolutionized the way Major League players are scouted in 2002. If you don’t have any interest in baseball, that’s okay, because the movie doesn’t have much of one, either. It’s about baseball the way The Social Network is about Facebook — an apt comparison because Aaron Sorkin wrote both (sharing credit with Steve Zaillian here), not because Moneyball is anywhere near as awesome as The Social Network. It’s a smart, engaging crowd-pleaser — not a masterpiece.

While Brad Pitt has gotten a little buzz for his portrayal of Beane, it may be Jonah Hill who has the best chance at an Oscar nomination as Peter Brand, the guy who invents the system Beane uses to achieve a record-breaking 20-game winning streak. He’s more understated than usual and quietly funny here, and if he misses out on a nomination (supporting actor is a pretty competitive category) it’ll be because Moneyball drops the ball (sorry) on the relationship between these characters in the film’s second half. Seemingly, this would have been the most interesting angle from which to explore this story; either that, or Beane’s relationship with Coach Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman, working with director Bennett Miller for the second time after their Oscar-winning success in Capote). That dynamic is also curiously underutilized. Isn’t wasting Philip Seymour Hoffman kind of a crime in Hollywood? You’d think so. Off with his head.

No, it’s actually Billy Beane’s relationship with his daughter that this movie ultimately wants you to care about, and these are the least riveting and convincing scenes in the entire movie. Instead of working her into the main plot, the story lurches to a halt whenever Miller decides there needs to be a “father/daughter” moment. (Girl, interrupting!) Though you’d think they’d be boring, the baseball and statistics-related scenes crackle with energy and wit, while Pitt’s scenes with Kerris Dorsey feel imported from a more sentimental, by-the-numbers movie. There are also awkward flashbacks to Pitt’s own failure as a baseball player that help us better understand his character, but they don’t quite work. And the Oakland A’s themselves (led by the very good Chris Pratt) also get the short shrift, leaving us to wonder what, exactly, this movie wants us to care about. Little Casey Beane? Is that all?

Since this is a true story, it doesn’t spoil much to say that Beane’s system works, and he is offered quite a lot of money to trade up and work for the Boston Red Sox. But that would mean leaving his daughter behind in California. Moneyball is sneaky — it goes for the uplifting ending, with Beane staying with his daughter, money be damned, as he listens to a recording of a song she wrote (she’s musical, you see). This song and the text on screen just before the credits roll might change your nterpretation of the movie; all this time, supposedly, we’re rooting for Billy Beane. Now, at the end, Casey repeatedly sings, “You’re such a loser, Dad,” and we have to wonder — is Moneyball trying to leave us with the impression that Billy Beane is a loser for choosing his daughter over his career?

That’s the message I got. Moneyball is an engaging film, but I didn’t take much away from it, except a better understanding of how Major League teams are assembled. No singular relationship is satisfactorily explored — characters played by Hill, Hoffman, and Robin Wright are given minimal emotional consequence in Beane’s arc. It all adds up to less than the sum of its parts.Of course, Brad Pitt is in a much better movie this year, another one with fascinating pieces that don’t much add up to a cohesive whole. Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life is — even many of its devoted fans will agree — a mess. But it’s a riveting, beautiful mess, and unlike any other film out there.

What is it about? Everything. There’s only a very loose story — a young boy named Jack, played by Hunter McCracken, exists. That’s about it. He does things many young boys did in America in the 50’s — he climbs trees, he plays with sparklers, he fights with his brothers. If anything truly noteworthy happens (and it very seldom does), it will not be followed-through on later in the story. These are just fragments of a life. A fairly generic life. It’s a movie about… life.Oh, and there are dinosaurs! There is a long sequence which is nothing but beautiful images of the Earth being formed, and such. The Big Bang, and all that. A 15-minute visual history of our planet. I don’t actually know what is happening. Cool stuff. Stuff you probably haven’t seen in a movie before. The dinosaur scene represents the birth of compassion, I believe. Before I saw the movie, I dreaded the thought of sitting through this much-hyped (and much-decried) dialogue-free sequence. I wondered, How boring is this going to be? It ended up being my favorite part of the movie. It could have been twice as long, and I’d have been happy.

It’s the rest of the film I take some issue with. The Tree Of Life is never boring, but it is repetitive at times. Many scenes hit the same beat over and over. Some of the dialogue is too obvious. Whispered voice-over gives away the movie’s intent too much for my liking. Brad Pitt plays the boys’ stern father in a convincing, effective performance; he represents the Way of Man (I know, because Malick tells us). The luminous Jessica Chastain, as the mother, represents the Way of Grace; she’s good here, but given much more to do in Take Shelter, a more essential performance.

Sean Penn appears as the grown-up Jack, and I don’t know why — but neither does Sean Penn, as he has stated in interviews. I understand that the film works best given an adult vantage point from which to look back, but these scenes give us nothing. And if this movie is supposedly about Life (with a capital L), why do we see so many of the same kind of scenes — namely, Brad Pitt being an asshole? Why aren’t Jack’s teen years, college years, and early adult years explored at all? Wouldn’t that have been more complete? I’m sure Malick has an answer as to “why not?”, even if it is only because he ran out of money. (I doubt it, but The Tree Of Life was not cheap.) Exploring man as connected to the birth of the planet is such a vast topic; it seems a shame to waste even a minute of screen time on moments that are bland or repetitive.

And then there’s that ending. Some found it glorious; I found it tedious and pretentious and over-the-top. I’m sorry. For a movie so overstuffed with other grandiose images and themes, I didn’t need an ethereal climax, no matter how essential it is to Malick’s vision for this film. I don’t doubt that The Tree Of Life is almost exactly the movie Malick intended to make, so it’s hard to nitpick. But this wouldn’t be much of a review if I didn’t.

I don’t mean to pick on The Tree Of Life, though, because it’s gorgeous and alive and astounding. It’s more of an experience than a movie. Like a ride. Something to bask in. I can see why so many are going crazy for it.

Months after I saw it, I still don’t know how it compares to other films I’ve seen, or where it will rank on my year-end list. It defies categorization. I know I preferred it to Moneyball and The Descendants — if you want a flawed father on your screen this year, look no further than Brad Pitt as “Mr. O’Brien.”

There is at least one other largely-unheralded film this year dealt with daddy angst — David Schwimmer’s Trust. (Yes, “Ross” directed it. He’ll never live that down.) Clive Owen stars as the bad dad in question — well, not so much bad as clueless. His athletic daughter Annie (Liana Libreto) meets a dashing young boy online, and well, you know how that’s going to turn out. No one in a movie ever meets online unless they’re a total creeper. Your everyday, standard Match.com hookup doesn’t count as a “meet cute,” but the internet works wonders when it comes to introducing vulnerable young girls to sex predators. (Call it a “meet creepy.”) Clive Owen’s Will doesn’t handle the situation well — he becomes obsessed with finding the man who assaulted his daughter rather than dealing with Annie’s fragile emotions, and only perpetually makes a bad situation worse.

Catherine Keener co-stars as the wife and mother and Viola Davis has a smallish role as Annie’s therapist, but this is essentially a father-daughter story that alternates between hits and misses. The details pertaining to Annie’s feelings about what happened are right on — she defends the predator. She wants to protect him. A few other story beats are a little too predictable. Owen does what he can with the role, but Will is a bit too thinly-sketched, his character arc too pat and obvious (though in his final scene, Owen does some of his best acting). Trust is best whenever the story is Annie’s; her realization, late in the story, that she truly was a victim of this pedophile is devastating. But then Schwimmer fills the running time with unnecessary cuts to the parents without giving them much to work with. Like many actors-turned-directors, Schwimmer seems best at getting good performances while still a bit weak in overall storytelling.

But I will say this in its favor: while it lacks the edge of something like Hard Candy, the film ends on a more ominous and unresolved note than you’d expect. Setting the stage for Trust 2? Hey, you never know.

The Tree Of Life: You just need to see it.

The Descendants: A direct descendant of Alexander Payne’s other movies; as in, it’s worthwhile, but not quite as good.

Trust: You could do worse with your Netflix Watch Instantly, trust me.

Moneyball: Worth the price of admission, but drops the ball in the end.

(Films discussed in this post: A Dangerous Method, 50/50, Cedar Rapids, Margin Call, The Perfect Host, The Guard, The Ides Of March, Horrible Bosses, Warrior.)

In my post on “The Chicks,” I reflected on the ups and downs for females in film last year, from the ribald shenanigans of Bridesmaids to the slightly-less-ribald racial politics of The Help.

Ladies first. Now here come the guys.

Films by men, starring men, about men are quite a bit more common than those for the ladies. I haven’t gone through any of these films with a fine-toothed comb, but in my estimation, none of the following films pass the Bechdel test — the rule that eliminates any movie in which the female characters speak to each other exclusively about men.

I’d wager that about half of the films I saw this year fall into this category, from the boyhood camaraderie of Super 8 and Attack The Block to the inside-baseball workings of Moneyball to the heroics of Captain America: The First Avenger. Even The Muppets, I’ve heard, fits the bill of a “bromance.” (To coin a phrase as cutesy-cloying as “bromance” for the films that are less friendly, let’s go with “mantagonist” — because it’s either that or “menemy.”)

These films are all about the boys.Male relationships tend to be complex in films — probably more complex than they often are in real life. But hey, if they weren’t, there’d be no story. No movie this year illustrated that better than Warrior, a sports drama that’s both a bromance and a guy-on-guy hate fest. It’s about two very different guys who end up competing against each other in a mixed martial arts championship. Tommy is a prescription drug addict and war veteran with a chip on his shoulder toward his alcoholic pop; he plans to give his winnings to a war buddy’s widow. Meanwhile, Brendan is a high school science teacher and family man who may very well lose his house; his wife nags at him about getting hit for a living as every single wife in a boxing movie must do. Sports dramas don’t get much more formulaic than this — but, wait! Yes, they do! Because these guys are estranged brothers. You can practically hear this movie being pitched in some studio exec’s office to rapturous applause.

Warrior is as enjoyable as a movie this predictable and by-the-numbers can be. It’s well-made with fight scenes that are intense, realistic, and brutal. Both lead actors sell their respective roles — Tom Hardy is appropriately broody, never pandering for sympathy or likability (though he has a tendency to mumble that doesn’t bode well for his villainous turn as the muffle-mouthed Bane in The Dark Knight Rises). Animal Kingdom‘s fantastic Joel Edgerton gets the more typical leading man role and does what he can with the character, though the script gives him a few too many “I don’t want to do this, but I have to do this!” exchanges with his pretty wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison). The trio of credited writers does their best to make damn sure you won’t forget that Brendan’s house is at stake. And Nick Nolte may find himself with an Oscar nomination as the grizzled alcoholic dad who taught them both to fight (and hate each other). It’s a rousing companion piece to last year’s Oscar contender The Fighter, and not much else. But if it’s a display of melodramatic machismo you crave, Warrior will give you your fix.A less conventional bromance is found at the heart of 50/50, marketed as a somewhat awful-looking Seth Rogen comedy when it’s actually a dramedy with less Rogen than you’d think. (I don’t mean to hate on Rogen too much — it’s just that a little of him goes a long way.) Based on writer Will Reiser’s real-life cancer diagnosis and treatment, 50/50 features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Reiser stand-in Adam, a smart and cautious guy who’s about the least likely candidate for cancer imaginable. The story primarily focuses on how Adam’s relationship with buddy Kyle is (or rather, isn’t) affected by the disease — in the trailer’s most memorable moment, Kyle invites Adam to use his illness to pick up girls. This works in the context of the story better than it did as a selling point for the movie. Fortunately — and probably thanks to Reiser’s real-life experience — 50/50 is a great deal more sensitive and honest than this.

The script wisely underplays the “I love you, man” sentiment between the two guys — a good call, since that almost never feels genuine on screen. (Male-male friendships feel notoriously forced in most movies, don’t they?) The film serves itself well by shifting focus to Adam’s relationships with three important female characters, too — Adam’s girlfriend, Rachael, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who has a hard time mustering much support for her man during his bout with the big C; his mother, Diane, fabulously played by Anjelica Houston, bringing a world of emotional complexity this movie lacks otherwise; and his awkward therapist Katherine, played by Up In The Air Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick in a role that showcases similar talents. Just about everything in 50/50 works fine, including a number of emotional moments you wouldn’t expect to find in a movie with Seth Rogen on the poster. Maybe this is too commercial a movie to push the boundaries any further than that, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an inventive actor capable of just about anything. 50/50 falls a hair short of delivering the kind of knot-in-your-stomach dread that a potentially-terminal illness should. I guess the happy ending is inevitable (he did survive to write this movie, obviously), but aside from a moment or two, Adam doesn’t seem to quite grapple with life and death the way I imagine Reiser did. But what do I know? He was there, not me.

Still, 50/50 worked its charms on me, which is a bit of a wonder — since anything that can described as a “buddy comedy” usually fails to impress. (Fun fact: at least one in every two men is a careless risk-taker or total imbecile, as evidence by buddy comedies.) Hence you will find no discussion of The Hangover Part II here. But I did deign to see a lesser-known thinking man’s version of that sort of movie — Cedar Rapids, starring The Hangover‘s Ed Helms. On the surface, it’s that same sort of frat-pack comedy about a bumbling doof who finds himself over his head in various contrived shenanigans. But there’s actually a little more going than all that.

Helms plays Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman whose most salacious life event is his ongoing sexual relationship with his cougar elementary school teacher (Sigourney Weaver). He’s never left his hometown, which is why it’s a big deal when he has to fill in for a deceased co-worker at a convention in the “big'” city — Cedar Rapids. There he meets a motley crew of assorted quirky strangers, played by John C. Reilly, Isaiah Whitlock Jr., and the rambunctious Anne Heche (who seems to be having a lot of fun here). Oh, and there’s also a druggie hooker played by Arrested Development‘s all-grown-up Alia Shawkat. To go into specific plot points is pointless; suffice to say that the script and direction make this a little smarter than your average Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell movie, and it makes a world of difference (until the rather rote final act, anyway). Cedar Rapids won’t change your life, but I appreciated that it didn’t embarrass itself or treat me like a moron.

Which is not quite as true of Horrible Bosses, a comedy starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis (the usual suspects for a movie like this) and some more formidable stars as the atrocious employers of the title — Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell — plus a cameo from a thuggy Jamie Foxx. The awkward title itself is a giveaway of how clever this movie is — Horrible Bosses? Wasn’t there a better synonym? It just doesn’t roll off the tongue. The premise itself never really makes sense, either — three buddies decide to off their vile supervisors, but the film never achieves the sort of dark comedic tone necessary to actually convince us that these otherwise decent guys are capable of and willing to commit murder. It rings false all along.

Spacey, Farrell, and Aniston each have a field day playing those horrendous head honchos, and they’re the highlight of the movie — the sole reason to see it, if you must. Farrell is a coke-snorting jackass, Aniston is a horny dentist, and Spacey is a blow-hard who forces his employee to down an entire glass of scotch just to reprimand him for being drunk on the job. They’re all a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the movie spends more time with its three mostly indistinguishable “straight men.” I won’t deny that Horrible Bosses has an uproarious moment or two — the spilling of a bunch of cocaine in a botched stakeout being a highlight — but I wish it was at least halfway plausible. Never for a moment do we suspect that this movie will end in the murder of said bosses, which undercuts some of the naughty fun we might have had otherwise.It is interesting to note that Horrible Bosses, Cedar Rapids, and also John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard all invoke race-based humor in hopes of getting laughs. Is this still funny to some people? Not to me. It’s a stale, lazy source of supposed “comedy” 9 out of 10 times, even when the joke is on the racist rather than the minority as it always this these days. (Because that’s PC.) It’s a wonder that this sort of race-related odd couple buddy pic didn’t go out of style in the 80’s, but we’re still seeing riffs on that, including The Guard. The protagonist is Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), who speaks in the very definition of an Irish brogue. He’s not an easy guy to warm up to, since he doesn’t mince words and makes racist comments upon meeting his superior of sorts — the FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), who comes to Ireland from America to stop a ring of drug smugglers. Or something.

But The Guard is a comedy — well, that brand of European crime comedy that Guy Ritchie used to make, mixing tough-guy violence with comic criminal buffoonery, a close cousin of the early films of Quentin Tarantino. It is similar to In Bruges, which also starred Brendan Gleeson and was directed by McDonagh’s brother. The heart of the film is the slowly-building friendship of the unconventional Gerry and the straight-laced Wendell, sort of like an international Lethal Weapon. The film has been critically lauded, particularly for Gleeson’s starring performance. And while I’ll admit that it’s stylish and well-made, and probably perfectly entertaining to fans of films in this genre, I can’t muster up much enthusiasm for either the characters or this story — the crime and comedy didn’t quite gel for me, and I didn’t find that it added anything new to this tired old genre. Moving on.Of course, antagonistic male relationships often end up much more satisfying than those buddy comedies, because it gives the actors more to work with. Bromances can be hard to buy, but their flip-side “bad twins” go down much easier. Thus you’ll find an over-abundance man-on-man mano y mano conflict in The Perfect Host, a little-seen thriller starring David Hyde Pierce and Clayne Crawford. It opened in two U.S. theaters for a domestic box office gross of under $49,000. Still, it’s not totally unremarkable, even if it is very obviously a first-time feature, marred by some amateurish touches in both the screenplay and filmmaking. The primary reason to see it, as you might guess, is the central performance by David Hyde Pierce, which is like Frasier‘s Niles by way of Hannibal Lecter.

The setup is pretty delicious — John, a criminal on the run, needs to find somewhere to hide. He happens upon a posh Los Angeles home owned by the fastidious Warwick. Warwick is in the midst of planning a dinner party and now is not a very good time for him to have an uninvited guest. But he relents anyway. Tension between the two men builds as Warwick learns that John may not be the best guy to welcome into your home — and you can see that this movie might go one way, with John taking Warwick and his friends as hostages or something. But it goes another direction entirely — Warwick isn’t exactly the genteel “perfect host” John thinks (in case you didn’t pick up on the title’s obvious irony) and the shindig he’s planning is no run-of-the-mill dinner party.

This all works because John is not only a criminal but also a jerk, and it’s fun to see him realize he’s been out-crazied by his intended victim. There’s also a zany musical sequence that must be seen to be believed. But then things go downhill. A backstory involving John’s girlfriend feels shoehorned in from a movie in which we actually care about the protagonist (which we do not in The Perfect Host) and there is yet another twist that is utterly ludicrous — and unravels the entire movie. What could have been a sly black comedy instead becomes a convoluted mess. The Perfect Host was based on a short film by the same filmmaker and probably should have stayed that way, though there is fun to be had along the way.Less overt about its mantagonist conflicts is Margin Call, a topical drama set on the eve of the recent financial collapse. In an unnamed investment bank, we watch as several loyal employees are mercilessly sacked — Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is one of them. Before he is swiftly ushered out of the building, he slips a warning to the still-employed Peter (Zachary Quinto) — which leads Peter to stumble upon something big. (We all know what it is, more or less.) From Peter and his buddy Seth (Penn Badgley), we climb up and up the corporate ladder all the way to the top — from hotshot Will (Paul Bettany) to the perpetually-stressed Sam (Kevin Spacey) to ruthless power players Jared and Sarah (Simon Baker and Demi Moore) all the way to eccentric CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). In case you haven’t yet noticed, Margin Call boasts quite a cast.

Some would have you believe that Margin Call is a thriller. It isn’t. It’s all talk and no action. However, that talk is riveting, and it does manage to generate a surprising amount of suspense — because we in the audience know how high the stakes are, and what’s coming next. (Imagine, for a moment, that the same movie were made about a crisis in a different sort of company, in a different era. It wouldn’t work nearly as well without the emotional baggage we bring into it.) As a first-time feature from J.C. Chandor, Margin Call is supremely impressive, enlightening and accurate in its details, allowing us an insider’s look behind what we now consider enemy lines. The characters are sympathetic (some more than others), humanized rather than demonized despite our feelings about with what they’ve done. For anyone still feeling burned by the recession, Margin Call is a must-see — even if it doesn’t exactly offer catharsis. (How could it, so soon?) At least it doesn’t skimp on the agony — this story appropriately ends with one character desperately burying a dead dog representing the current incarnation of the American dream.

A bit less timely (but no more optimistic) is the George Clooney-directed The Ides Of March, starring Ryan Gosling as a staffer for presidential candidate Mike Morris (Clooney). Released in October, it felt a bit out of season (late December might have been a better choice, with everyone currently talking about the GOP primaries). Not that the parties have anything to do with it — for a movie about politicians, The Ides Of March is refreshingly apolitical, using the campaign mainly as a backdrop for an exploration of… well, let’s see. Gosling plays Stephen, a bright and idealistic campaign manager who, we can guess, won’t stay bright and idealistic for long. Stephen is sleeping with a young intern on the campaign, Molly (Evan Rachel Wood). The interplay between them is fun and sexy, though Molly strikes us a bit of a floozy. That’s no accident. Let’s just say Molly has a secret — and Stephen is about to have to clean up more than one of her messes.

What this all leads to is a showdown between Stephen and a variety of people with more clout than he has — first, scoop-hungry New York Times reporter Ida (Marisa Tomei), then stalwart senior campaign manager Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman), then rival campaign manager Tom (Paul Giamatti) — and finally, Morris himself. (The Ides Of March is about the only 2011 movie to feature a roster of talent to rival Margin Call.) The movie features a host of well-written exchanges, mostly between two men arguing about ideals and campaign savvy. Stephen, an amateur, makes an egregious mistake relatively early in the movie by secretly conversing with his rivals, leading to what might be the downfall of his entire career. The sharpness of the dialogue should come as no surprise, since The Ides Of March is based on the play Farragut North. When I initially watched the film, I suspected that the central politician played by Clooney was never actually seen in the play, and I was right. That’s the problem with it. Including Morris as an actual character waters down any conflict Stephen has with the rest of Morris’ staff — none of these men are built up as a formidable enough antagonist. (Wouldn’t it have been brilliant to stay truer to the play and have Clooney be the face of Morris, but never actually appear on screen?) It’s much ado about not enough. We’ve seen such stories so many times that the film’s not-so-big reveal can’t possibly be surprising. There’s not much in The Ides Of March you wouldn’t also find in an average episode of The West Wing, or in actual news headlines. News flash: politicians might be corrupt! More likely, you’ll react to the news with a bemused, “That’s it?”

It’s not that the film doesn’t work on its own terms, with polished direction and accomplished acting and some strongly-written scenes. But there’s so little of interest to Mike Morris, beyond the fact that he’s George Clooney and therefore will almost certainly win any election regardless of his transgressions. The Ides Of March is a movie that might have played well during the Clinton administration, pre-Monica, back before we weren’t all used to hating our presidents and those campaigning to be one. But it’s been a good long while since we truly believed that any of these guys were as wholesome as they claimed to be on TV. The journey of Gosling’s Stephen of idealist to cynic its audience took long before stepping into the theater. The Ides Of March is handsomely made, but hollow — so even the Clooney-Gosling mantagonist showdown doesn’t thrill the way it should.Which leads us to what you might expect to be the crown jewel in 2011’s quest for bromance and mantagonism — a David Cronenberg picture called A Dangerous Method starring Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung? Yes, please! It’s hard to imagine a movie sounding more enticing than that.

But it is plenty easy to imagine a more satisfying film than the one we get, a strangely stiff affair from the filmmaker who brought us the full-frontal fight scene of Eastern Promises and the twisted black sci-fi comedy of eXistenZ. We expect our David Cronenberg movies to have a little more edge and a little more kink than the straightforward A Dangerous Method, which doesn’t feel very dangerous at all.

The story begins with Carl Jung, then a disciple of Freud’s, treating a deranged young Russian named Sabina (Keira Knightley). In a series of uncomfortable-yet-fascinating interviews, he manages to uncover the source of her insanity — she is wracked with guilt over the fact that she became sexually excited at a young age by the spankings of her father. Jung is able to treat Sabina successfully to the point that she herself decides to study psychology, but in the meantime she develops a hankering for him. At first he resists — but if he didn’t relent at some point, we wouldn’t have much of a movie, would we?

Of course, Jung keeps his affair with Sabina a secret from his mentor. The two discuss psychology first with many agreements, and then with a crucial difference in their approach — Jung wants to explore more mystical, less quantifiable aspects of the mind’s powers, while Freud rigidly draws a line between his practice and anything that might be laughed off or dismissed by the medical and scientific communities. This leads the two to part ways, professionally and personally. And that’s about it.

If you love juicy period dramas, then you should be floored by this premise, delivered by this director, starring this cast. So why is everything so uninvolving? Why does so little of the movie stay with us? Why isn’t there more sex and violence? Okay, maybe fisticuffs would be out of place in a story about the meeting of these two minds. But the sex‚ which there is some of, is curiously chaste given the subject matter. (We get a bit of light spanking, and that’s it.) The drama between the two psychological pioneers, as well as the passion between Jung and Sabine, feels curiously restrained, like it’s the PBS version of this story. You never get inside the minds of these characters — a problem, for a movie about “analysts” — and you certainly don’t get into their hearts, either. Viggo Mortensen is wonderful in the supporting role of Sigmund Freud, who comes across as a bit of a tight-ass (though still probably a genius). Michael Fassbender does all that is asked of him in playing Carl Jung — which is to say, not much. So smoldering with stifled sexual charisma in Shame, Fassbender is uncharacteristically dull here, more through fault of the writing than his acting. But the issues Jung is supposedly facing never come to light, and Jung doesn’t go through the transformations a leading man should. The script is talky, as you’d expect from such subject matter, but so little happens. The only character who seems fully alive is Sabine, ferociously brought to life by Keira Knightley, hard to look away from in her early, crazier scenes as she writhes and screeches with pent-up sexuality. If only more of that passion could have been saved for later in the movie, and spread amongst the other key players, too.

A Dangerous Method surprisingly fails to deliver much in the way of mantagonism, too, even though the two males exit the movie on bitter terms. (Earlier scenes in the bromantic stage of this relationship are more amusing, if only because these two are such intellectual nerds.) Of course part of this is due to the period’s propriety, but what we should sense is the burning heat underneath all those chaste layers of clothing, the abandon these characters find behind closed doors. A Dangerous Method feels like a competent, perhaps compelling film that the best three scenes have been cut out of. Given that both Freud and Jung delight in interpreting dreams, one longs for a more ethereal and dream-like film than the stuffy one we’ve received.

Believe it or not, the year’s best bromance and mantagonism is all wrapped into one — the fraternity-like pack of Wall Street jackals facing the end of their glory days in Margin Call, and the cliche but satisfying brotherly feud of Warrior. Beyond that, it’s been a very mixed bag this year, boys.Margin Call: Seeing it is a very good call.

Warrior: Formulaic fun.

50/50: Your chances of liking it are more like 70/30.

The Ides Of March: Well-made, but nothing you haven’t seen before.

Cedar Rapids: A cut above most studio comedies. Not that that’s a very high bar.

A Dangerous Method: Not as dangerous as you might hope.

The Guard: Fun for some, not for all.

The Perfect Host: Definitely imperfect.

Horrible Bosses: Well, it’s not horrible…

If I really had to choose just one favorite filmmaker who is prolific today, I’d have to select Paul Thomas Anderson. I’ve adored just about everything he’s done, especially Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and There Will Be Blood. A new film from PTA is my own personal idea of an Event Movie.

The Master trailer

In my mind, Paul Thomas Anderson pretty much is The Master. This movie looks something like a cross between Magnolia (with that voice over and the camera work) and There Will Be Blood (a period setting, and a battle of wills between two men).

It’s also interesting that this movie stars Joaquin Phoenix, in a hopeful comeback after that I’m Still Here debacle which easily could have (and should have?) ended his acting career just like he wanted. But I’m not about to go into that right now.

Can’t wait! (But I guess I have to.)

Okay…

Here we go.

For a cineaste like me, a new Paul Thomas Anderson film is like Christmas, except it happens much less frequently. The last PTA movie was a whopping five years ago — the rightful Best Picture winner There Will Be Blood (which lost to the good-but-not-as-great No Country For Old Men). It’s one of those Oscar upsets people were generally okay with at the time, but even just five years later, I think most would now select There Will Be Blood as the more monumental achievement. It has that spark of a true masterpiece; it has aged well in just half a decade’s time. (It wasn’t even my favorite film of that year, yet I’d list it now as one of the best of the decade, if not of all time.) Some movies just take a little time to process.

And speaking of “processing,” here is The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest. It’s the story of two men, one who leads what some refer to as a “cult,” the other who blindly follows it. The cult is loosely based on Scientology, its master on L. Ron Hubbard. Needless to say, it’s one of the most anticipated films of the year. As if that weren’t enough, it was also shot in 70mm, the first narrative film to be since 1996’s Hamlet. Oh, and it stars a slew of Academy Award-nominated and -winning actors.

How could it not be good?

Nearly everybody who saw The Master desperately wanted to like it, and many were disappointed. “It’s boring!” they decried. “Nothing happens!”

“Say it ain’t so!” I replied. Fate, travel, and The Beatles kept me from seeing The Master until recently, after everyone else had weighed in. I went into it hoping for the best despite griping and indifference from those who were underwhelmed. The film has engendered a healthy critical response (though it is not as unanimously fawning as There Will Be Blood’s), thanks to two strong lead performances, the stunning cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. (collaborating with Anderson for the first time), and some heady subject matter. Given the high hopes I had for a new film from one of my favorite living filmmakers, nothing short of a cinematic miracle could have met my expectations. So, no. The Master didn’t quite, either.

Catastrophe!

The Master is the story of a despicable character who meets another despicable character, neither of whom changes even slightly over the course of the movie. The first is Freddie Quill (Joaquin Phoenix), a World War II vet suffering the kind of PTSD usually reserved for movies about Vietnam. Freddie is violent, he’s an alcoholic, he harasses (and attempts to kill?) strangers with no solid motive. He even falls asleep on a date with a pretty co-worker (Amy Ferguson), effectively killing any chance of getting lucky (which was probably his only interest in her anyway). That’s because Freddie is a horndog extraordinaire, using sex as an escape from the misery of being himself. Phoenix’s performance is unapologetically repugnant, meaning we never have much sympathy for the character. It’s a performance reminiscent of Adam Sandler’s in Punch Drunk Love, also prone to ill-tempered outbursts. But he lacks Sandler’s innocent charm. This is not a man you’d want to spend much time with.

Lancaster Dodd, on the other hand, is pretty genial for someone dubbed “The Master.”   Freddie stows away on his cruise ship, gets blackout drunk and belligerent (off screen, unfortunately), and, when he comes to, Dodd takes a liking to him, allowing to him stay on as part of “The Cause.” (The name alone screams “cult!”) This mean going through what is known as “Processing,” (again, screaming “cult!”)  in an intense sequence in which Freddie must answer a series of invasive questions without ever blinking. (It’s an impressive scene, and Phoenix rises to the occasion admirably.) In return, Freddie shares his concoction of choice (fruit juice and paint thinner — yum!), which Dodd downs readily.

From there, the Freddie-Dodd relationship doesn’t ebb and flow as much as you might expect. The Master takes us through a rigorous brainwashing session, a few flashbacks to Freddie’s past, a motorcycle race in the desert. There are a few perverse touches — an unexpected hand job, a fantasy sequence in which all of the women at a party suddenly lose their apparel, and some surprisingly salty language. (Surprising because of the time period and old-fashioned feel of the film, though hardly shocking from the man who brought us Boogie Nights.) Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance is wonderfully assured and charismatic, but not quite so seductive as you might expect. We, the audience, are never drawn to The Cause the way Freddie is. We don’t see what is so alluring to these people, despite a few moments that almost suggest it. (One of the best — Adams tells Freddie to imagine that her eyes are black. And then they are. Chilling.)

The supporting cast is filled with fine performers doing as much as they can with small roles. There’s Amy Adams as Dodd’s devout wife Peggy, who believes in The Cause with a fierce passion unmatched by anyone, including Dodd himself. We meet Dodd’s son (Jesse Plemons), daughter (Ambyr Childers), and son-in-law (Rami Malek). There are dissenters, both within and outside of The Cause, to whom Freddie does not take kindly. There’s one terrific scene in which Laura Dern’s character, a doting fan of her Master, confronts Dodd about a possible discrepancy in his teachings; he chews her head off, and the horrified look she gives is priceless. (And potentially signals her awakening?) The film could have used more scenes like this. But ultimately, The Master is rather vague about Dodd’s beliefs — both what he’s teaching, and just how cultish it all really is. He writes books, people like them, and he attempts to teach them a certain way of thinking. There’s nothing so sinister about it, though Dodd gets awfully blustery when a party guest grills him about his cultish practices. (He screams “Pig fuck!” in one of few distinctly Andersonian moments. It’s the one touch that harkens back to vintage PTA.)

The dynamic between the two central characters, however, remains the same throughout most of the movie, even when Dodd’s followers begin to distrust Freddie. (Rightfully — he’s a loose canon.) Anderson obviously isn’t out to totally skewer Hubbard or Scientology; it’s less about The Cause and more about the effect. But its depiction of those effects is slippery, because we don’t get to know any of the characters well enough to guess what they’d be like without their Master. Freddie Quill is such an usual, off-putting character that we never identify with what he’s searching for in Dodd. Were he more of an everyman, bewitched by Dodd’s charlatan gestures, we may be more entranced with the film at large. But Freddie is just a ticking time bomb, his actions mostly random. He falls in line with Dodd, then falls out without fanfare, and we never exactly know why. The climax of the film is when he needs to make a choice whether or not to continue with The Cause, but the stakes feel low because Freddie hasn’t changed for the better or the worse in the process. He’s still drinking, fighting strangers, chasing skirts. Who cares whether or not he does that under Dodd’s tutelage or of his own volition?

With a filmmaker as deliberate and assured as Paul Thomas Anderson, it’s hard to imagine that The Master is a misstep. Evidence of lazy screenwriting. A narrative mess. Were this his debut feature, it might be dismissed that way. Instead, we must assume that everything is here (or not here) for a Reason. Anderson might be broaching any number of Big Ideas through these characters. Freddie is repeatedly shown interacting with a woman made of sand on the beach during the war — at first mock-humping her, finally just laying by her side. It’s an image that suggests his willingness to let anyone fill the void in him, whatever’s missing — and Dodd certainly does that, for Freddie and for the rest. (There’s another recurring image of the wake of a shape that similarly suggests Freddie’s willingness to go with the tide.) It’s not so much that Dodd is masterful; it’s more about the desperation of his followers, their need to believe. Yet there’s no consequence, for Dodd or Freddie or anyone else.

I’m hesitant to indulge too much in what The Master could be “about,” because with a story this elusive, who can say? Some have proposed a homosexual reading of the central relationship, though very little in the film actually supports it. The Master is a classical-feeling movie with a deliberate pace, containing few visceral flourishes (unlike Anderson’s other films). Many moments are memorable, particularly thanks to the razor-sharp, gorgeous 70mm projection (if you see it that way, as I did). It feels of another time, something like Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, though with a few added kinks. Individual scenes have more impact on their own than collectively, for the third act in particular is a dramatic letdown. A show-stopping finale like the one in There Will Be Blood might have helped this all come together — “I drink your paint thinner!”, perhaps? But Anderson seems to be willfully avoiding such a thing (perhaps in response to his critics).

Anderson also underuses several dynamo actors and underwrites a few roles — Dodd’s son seems wholly unnecessary; Dern gets far too little screen time. And Adams, though fiery and compelling in the scenes she’s in, feels like she’s missing a moment or two that really bring this character home (and earn her another Oscar nod).

There are echoes of the rest of Anderson’s oeuvre here — the daddy issues of There Will Be Blood, the self-destructive temperament of Punch Drunk Love‘s Barry, the master-protegee relationship between Jack Horner and Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, the unusually-timed bursting into song of Magnolia. But what does The Master offer that’s truly novel? The plot is half-baked, with few surprises and no momentous developments, leading us to believe that Anderson is more interested in the relationship between these men than happens as a result. A movie like this has two options available — one, introduce two characters so larger-than-life and dramatic that we can’t tear our eyes away, waiting to see what they’ll do next (as in There Will Be Blood); or, two, let us truly feel for these guys, so we’re emotionally invested in the outcome (the Magnolia approach).

The Master doesn’t quite do either. There’s one bravura scene in a jail cell with Freddie freaking out, tearing the place apart, while The Master is as placid as can be. It’s a wonderful microcosm of who these men are, a hint at what the rest of the film might have been like had Anderson sprinkled his There Will Be Blood gonzo dust over it. Anderson clearly wasn’t going for that, and yet, despite lots of guessing, no one seems to be quite clear on what he’s saying here. Is that okay? Can a movie be so ambiguous? Well, yes — but it helps if it’s also engrossing.

After a run of so many great films and zero bad ones, it’s hard not to feel betrayed by The Master, even while realizing that I’ll need to see it again and unpack it further at a later date. I enjoyed every one of Anderson’s earlier films on first viewing, whereas The Master I could only sporadically admire. So amongst his films, it’s certainly on the lesser end in my book.

Unless Anderson has intentionally made a confounding, unsatisfying film full of hot air, much ado about nothing. Think about it — amongst eager cinephiles, there is no cinematic Master greater than Paul Thomas Anderson. Sure, there are heavyweights like Scorsese and Spielberg, but none who have quite the same spotless record as Anderson does, thus far. None whose entire body of work can be regarded as a singular masterpiece. And now, like Dodd, the Master fails us… talking in circles about something we don’t understand, hoping to pull the wool over our eyes and have us bow down and praise him. Maybe The Master doesn’t add up, the same way Dodd’s teachings ultimately fail his pupils. Wouldn’t that be a feat?

Okay, no, I don’t actually think that was Anderson’s intent. I’m just making excuses. I’m still haunted by a few of the film’s more dream-like visuals, curious enough to return to it at a later date. (But maybe not until it’s on DVD.)In the meantime, I think I’ll go watch Boogie Nights and Magnolia and There Will Be Blood again. Now those are films that know how to go out with a bang.
*

It’s Oscar time!

As usual, the Academy Awards are poised to make some very wrong decisions this year. So as usual, I am prematurely correcting them by releasing my Top Ten of the year.

That year is 2012, of course — real film critics release such lists at the end of December or beginning of January, but since I have numerous other obligations, you get it in late February, once I’ve had a chance to catch up with nearly all eligible films.

It was, overall, a good year for cinema — not the best in recent memory, but better than the past couple of years, on the whole. Women facing great obstacles factored largely into my faves this year, and a surprising three of my picks are in French. (But no other languages — sorry, rest of the world.)

You can find my full-length review by clicking on the title of the movie. Bon appetit!

HardintheCity’s Top 10 Films of 2012:

10. GIRL WALK // ALL DAY

My #10 slot tends to be my “I recommend this, but…” spot, and this year I’m cheating even more than usual. Girl Walk // All Day is not actually a 2012 film, nor was it given a proper theatrical release. In fact, the entire thing can (and should) be watched online. (Legally!) You have no excuse not to watch it immediately.

Jacob Krupnick’s film is essentially a lengthy music video set to Girl Talk’s album All Day, which itself “borrows” music from huge artists like Rihanna and U2 and Lady Gaga. Rights? Who needs right to anything in the age of the internet? Well, nobody, as long as you’re not making any money. Anne Marsen, Dai Omiya, and John Doyle carry the movie on the spirit of their moves alone — not so much technically polished as compulsively watchable — and you never know just what’s going to happen next. I just couldn’t turn it off.

So what makes this different than any YouTube video of a flash mob? I’ll tell you: I don’t know. I can only go with my gut, in that it feels like a film rather than some silly clip that’s been put up online. It’s full-length, for one thing, and for another there’s a lot more thought put into the craft and the execution than most things you’ll find on the internet. And yet it has the same fun “let’s put it on a show!” / do-it-yourself / handmade quality as the best of what the internet has to offer. In the future, I reckon, more films will be like this, so I may as well start putting them on my Top 10 now.

And yet, if anyone still has a problem with this pick, then I will happily substitute my #11 film of the year, Pitch Perfect, a surprisingly sharp and hilarious film that also uses mash up culture to great effect. So there.

9. AMOUR

Fun! Laughter! Dancing! Joy! Those are things you will never find in a Michael Haneke movie. (Even when it’s called Funny Games.) Amour is no exception. It is, however, a departure from his more confrontational body of work that preceded this slow and steady meditation on growing old and dying. Did I mention it’s not a comedy?

Plenty of films are about love, but few tackle this end of it. Decades after riding off into the sunset together, or however it is they met, any couple that grows old together will face some version of this story. Neither Georges nor Anne is as quick or spry as they used to be; they’ve stopped looking forward, and are looking back. Then one of them suffers a stroke and becomes greatly disabled, both mentally and physically — but not completely, because that’d be too easy. Emmanuelle Riva’s astonishing performance makes us guess how much of Anne is present in every scene, and how much of her mind has wandered far, far away. For a character who can hardly move, her performance is quite physical — even when it’s just her face doing the heavy lifting.

In Amour, Haneke gets the chance to be something he almost never is — subtle — and is a better filmmaker for it. That isn’t to say he completely loses his relish for punishing the audience, but here it feels earned, because Amour is no crueler than life is. Unlike its title, Amour is merciless and not easy to cozy up to, but its power lingers long after it’s over. Like being haunted by a loved one.

8. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

At last! 2012 was the year Joss Whedon finally emerged as a filmmaking force to be reckoned with, and yes, The Avengers was quite good — especially compared to your average superhero movie (if still not quite on par with the very best, like The Dark Knight). It had a few Whedon signature touches of banter and humor, and yet, for a full dose of what fans love about the geek auteur, there’s an even better bet — The Cabin In The Woods, which he co-wrote with former Buffy The Vampire Slayer scribe Drew Goddard. It is, of course, no straight-up slice-and-dice affair, as anyone unfamiliar with Whedon’s genre send-ups would expect from the generic title. Instead, it’s the cleverest and most meta horror movie since Kevin Williamson’s Scream. What Scream did for slasher flicks, The Cabin In The Woods does for the rest of the horror genre.

The Cabin In The Woods doesn’t work quite as well within its genre as Scream does, at functioning both as a truly scary horror piece while also making sly commentary on over-familiar tropes. The genre conventions of The Cabin In The Woods are, well, generic, but thankfully there’s a lot more going on than just that. The third act in particular is to die for, but what cuts even deeper is what the film has to say about human nature — why do we watch horror movies? What does that say about us? Why do we want to see the same types of people die, over and over and over?

This the ultimate valentine to the horror genre, which is why many critics and horror fans fell for it, but it’s to Whedon’s credit that the film doesn’t settle for just a couple of winks and nudges, but also goes for the jugular thematically. The most callous scene has a major character about to meet a gruesome end, unnoticed, as a party rages around the image on a TV monitor — a sly response to the way we, too, often feel nothing when stereotypical horror heroines meet their maker. The last scene is a winking “fuck you” to the audience, but not a mean-spirited one; to reference a very different auteur whose work is also present in this list, The Cabin In The Woods basically makes the same point Michael Haneke has made numerous times, but actually has a little fun doing so. And so do we. Is that so wrong? Well, if so, we’re likely to be punished for it…

7. HOLY MOTORS

A fitting segue from The Cabin In The Woods, Holy Motors is as much a commentary on cinema as Whedon and Goddard’s horror film — it’s just a little less blatant about what it’s trying to say. I was tempted to include the ambitious and occasionally haunting Cloud Atlas in my list, even though the film had its share of awkward misfire moments — particularly with some distracting casting choices which have actors like Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Jim Sturgess playing characters of various races, genders, and ethnicities that they really have no business embodying. A much more successful endeavor on this front is Holy Motors, featuring Denis Levant inhabiting the skin of an assortment of quirky creations — a creepy and vaguely monstrous sewer-dweller, a scuzzy assassin, a harried father, and the actor who is assigned to play all these roles in various locations throughout Paris. Essentially, it’s a series of short films tied together by a loose narrative; then again, not really.

There’s no real way to take Holy Motors at face value — trying to figure out the “plot” is a worthless endeavor, like applying real-world rules to a David Lynch movie. Holy Motors follows a dream-like logic where there are sometimes life-and-death consequences to actions, sometimes not; no two segments are alike, either in tone or in how we perceive the world that’s been created for us. It’s all artificial, and Holy Motors is pretty direct about that — but every movie is artificial, after all. Holy Motors is a bizarre meditation on the way cinema has the power to move us, manipulate us, and make us marvel even if we don’t have the faintest idea what the hell is happening. Its protagonist, a kind of actor who seems to drag the emotional weight of every role he’s ever played around with him, might be an allegory for performers, or perhaps for storytellers — Holy Motors is broad enough that you can read almost anything into it.

The film is too bizarre (and French) for many mainstream filmgoers, but for serious cineastes, it’s a treat. Leos Carax has packed it with references that almost no one seems to get, and that’s fine. The nuttier the better, in this case. The final few minutes of Holy Motors go so absurdly off the rails that it’s almost like Carax just didn’t know how to top all the craziness that came before; in the future, I’ll probably watch it like I’d watch Paris Je T’aime, returning to my favorite bits more often than the film as a whole. This little wonder contains several of the most mesmerizing and memorable moments I saw all year — an ill-fated duet with Kylie Minogue, a fashion shoot that takes an oddball turn, an abrupt musical intermission, and especially a haunting “sex” scene involving motion capture suits. They’re more satisfying individually than the film is as a whole, and I can’t wait to rewatch them.

6. LOOPER

Science fiction tends to imagine brave new worlds that say something about the here and now — at least, they should. But most of Hollywood’s recent sci-fi offerings give us predictable story beats and zero food for thought. Looper is different — not because its premise is so much more original than, say, the hokey Justin Timberlake vehicle In Time, but because it was clearly made without any adherence to formula or genre conventions. Here is the rare movie that doesn’t feel like it’s on autopilot; rather, it unfolds in ways that are truly surprising and feel wholly organic to these characters and this world.

For a futuristic story, Looper spends an awful lot of time on a rustic Kansas farm. And for all its big ideas, what it really boils down to is surprisingly intimate and small-scale — a mother’s love. A lot of care was taken to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like a young Bruce Willis, which I’m not sure was necessary — Gordon-Levitt’s performance alone sells it. Looper has several visual moments that catch the audience off guard, but it’s more notable for the emotional undercurrent that gives it a real pulse. It’s like a Sundance movie dressed up in Hollywood clothes; that low-budget indie that just so happens to take place in a dystopian future — more specifically, a dystopian future that doesn’t feel so far removed from our not-so-utopian present.

Time travel doesn’t often make sense in movies, and if you think about it too hard, perhaps Looper doesn’t either. But what it does have is a sense of originality and innovation absent in the works of all other filmmakers — hints of Kubrick and Tarantino, amongst others. If we could time-travel to the future, I bet we’d see that writer/director Rian Johnson is a filmmaking force to be reckoned with.

5. MAGIC MIKE

Take away the stripping — I know, no one wants that, but just go with it for a sec — and Magic Mike is a sobering look at the youth of America, the ones that don’t follow the straight-and-narrow path of a higher education followed by 9-to-5 mediocrity. You don’t need to take your clothes off for a living to relate to that.

Now put the stripping back in, and you have a rollicking good time that is also smarter than any film based on Channing Tatum’s life should be. Steven Soderbergh doesn’t shy away from the sex appeal that drove women and gays in droves to see Magic Mike opening weekend; the stripping sequences are great fun to watch, thanks in large part to the surprising skill and charisma of Channing Tatum. I’ll admit, I wrote him off long ago, but in 2012 he proved himself a talented performer, so I’m delighted to be wrong. He is, in fact, actually quite good here as the stripper with a heart of gold — a role that, with weaker writing and acting, could have been truly wince-worthy. (The whole ensemble is pretty solid, especially a standout Matthew McConaughey, who neatly parodies his real-life status as Hollywood’s resident ladykiller.)

To the surprise of many, Magic Mike is a bit of a tragedy — about creative people who are victims of an economic downturn, and about what happens to people who pay the bills with their body. It doesn’t dig as deep as Black Swan or The Wrestler on that subject, and for some, perhaps, the more dramatic elements of the story felt a bit inert. They came for a rain of men, not a storm of drama. But, fittingly for a movie about stripping, Magic Mike is all about money — the side jobs these guys perform to stay afloat, the price of living it up in your twenties. “I’m not my lifestyle!” Mike says in self-defense to his love interest, but of course, we all are — and all the sexy boys of Magic Mike become victims of their lifestyle one way or another, whether it’s drugs or debt or plain ol’ narcissism. Mike’s just the only who’s starting to realize it.

Magic Mike takes place in Tampa — what better place to explore the underbelly of the American dream? Isn’t that dream as much of a striptease as a lap dance from a guy in a G-string? Stripping might be harmless, but it’s a gateway drug to browner pastures, and respectable people don’t look on it kindly. Dallas, Mike, and the rest are ultimately disposable — one-night-only fantasies for women at bachelorette party or on their birthdays. They’re dressed up as firemen, cowboys, police… all those generic fantasies. Sex is a powerful and lucrative commodity — the good girl played by Cody Horn is both tempted and repelled by Mike, speaking to the conflicting sexual interests within us. For the audience, a night with Magic Mike is just a horny splurge, and indulgence, but for them, it’s life. Magic Mike gets us hot and bothered and all worked up, then pulls back the curtain and shows us what happens when these fantasy figures go home after a hard night’s work, or age a decade or two. What happens when the singles stop coming?

4. RUST AND BONE

Attraction doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes you fall for a movie the same way you fall for a person — you just happen to find each other in the right time and place, and something unplanned happens. That’s what happened to me with Rust And Bone, a film I wasn’t expecting much of and saw primarily because Marion Cotillard was getting solid awards season buzz for her performance. I knew very little about what I was getting into, and that ended up being a good thing.

Rust And Bone is by far the sexiest movie about a woman whose legs get eaten off by an orca. The special effect of excising Cotillard’s lower limbs are shockingly convincing, as is her performance — it’s a shame the Oscars couldn’t make room for her, though it was a particularly strong year for Best Actress candidates. Matthis Schoenaerts is equally strong as the film’s protagonist, a rather obtuse security guard and underground fighter who never seems to foresee the consequences of his actions. If Rust And Bone is a romance at all — I wouldn’t call it one, exactly — then it’s a very adult one, with two characters who behave like flesh-and-blood 21st century people rather than cliches operating according to a script. The film has no singular plot, but meanders pleasantly as we get to know these two characters without a clear sense of where they’re going. The film’s climax was a true surprise, but then, the whole movie was.

There’s not one thing I can easily point to that’s brilliant in Rust And Bone; you either fall for it or you don’t, and I doubt any further analysis would change anyone’s mind about it. It’s about chemistry. On paper, the synopsis sounds pretty maudlin. But Jacques Audiard makes it all so plausible and lived-in that I found myself totally falling for it, which happens sometimes. Attraction doesn’t always make sense.

3. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Speaking of movies that don’t work so well on paper… Silver Linings Playbook constantly flirts with being ordinary, and yet somehow narrowly misses it at every turn. It’s the first film to receive acting nominations in all four categories in ages, and they’re all deserved — the marvelous Jacki Weaver may be slightly underused, but even the minor characters have their own lives happening in the margins. They don’t feel merely functional.

That’s particularly true of the standout leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Cooper unleashes a leading man charm he must’ve been saving for the right movie, while Lawrence is a live wire who feels like she could wander into any movie and be the best thing in it. They’re both compulsively watchable, and when they come together it’s like two trains constantly threatening to wreck, consistently missing each other by inches.

Silver Linings Playbook has a wonderful energy. It’s always marching forward, never stopping on one detail long enough for us to catch up and get bored waiting for the next beat. David O. Russell’s script is sharp and nimble, his direction maybe even a little moreso, but it’s the chemistry of the ensemble that feels just right. (The original plan was to make it with Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel in the lead roles — I shudder to think.) I wouldn’t call Silver Linings Playbook a monumental film or even a must-see; it’s probably a bit too slight to take Best Picture, even with all of Harvey Weinstein’s might on its side. Yet it’s also nice to see a lighter movie made as well as all those heavy ones; if only all comedies had this much skill behind and in front of the camera.

2. THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Impossible is not a film for the cynical. It wears its heart on its sleeve, and in a Spielbergian way, cares more about hope than it does about darkness and depravity. Yet, also like Spielberg, director Juan Antonio Bayona isn’t afraid to immerse us in chaos and confusion when need be, and it’s a visual spectacle on par with some of Spielberg’s most breathless sequences, like War Of The Worlds’ initial alien attack or the Omaha Beach opening of Saving Private Ryan.

Naomi Watts cements her status as one of Hollywood’s most fearless actresses as she is twisted and turned and slammed by a giant tsunami, an electrifying sequence that outdoes pretty much any disaster movie sequence that came before it (rivaled only by Titanic, perhaps). The fact that was done practically on a budget of $45 million or so is mind-blowing. That’s not Naomi against a green screen, and you can tell.

After a hard-hitting opening, the film follows two surviving members of the happy family literally ripped apart — we don’t know whether or not the rest have survived until much later — and it isn’t afraid to get sentimental. Nor is it afraid to get reasonably dark, as when an adolescent boy advises his mother that they leave behind a crying child because he might slow them down. It faces the stark realities of an unimaginably catastrophic situation, with excellent performances all around (Naomi, Tom Holland, and Ewan McGregor). What’s truly remarkable, though, is the way Bayona stages that fucking tsunami — definitely the most breathless sequence I’ve experienced in a movie in years. It’s a shame this film didn’t quite break out the way it should have — with a stronger marketing push, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it win Best Picture. Perhaps my #2 slot is a fitting consolation prize?

1. ZERO DARK THIRTY

In my original review, I predicted Zero Dark Thirty for Best Picture and Kathryn Bigelow making history as the only woman to ever win Best Director twice.

Oops. Back then, I didn’t anticipate the weird backlash the film received regarding its depiction of torture, and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with why the film hasn’t been embraced as it probably should be; especially in a year that features a film so similar in many (superficial) ways as a Best Picture front-runner. Homeland, after all, has been handed just about every conceivable television award this past year, and yet it depicts far more torture than Zero Dark Thirty even hints at. (Rumor has it both edgy female protagonists are based on the same real-life CIA agent.) Why is Zero Dark Thirty held up to such a hypocritical, impossible standard of veracity, when Argo literally invents its entire third act? (Oh, don’t answer that, I already know why.)

Apparently, the film about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden is a controversial one. Who knew? Perhaps I (and Sony) should have anticipated more unease from the general public. Great and important films aren’t always recognized right away, after all, and the topics explored by Zero Dark Thirty are still fresh. (Meanwhile, everyone’s had time to get over a hostage situation from the 70’s.) Maybe I was more prepared to confront them. For me, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the few definitive films of this century so far, in large part because it deals with the most defining event of it.

Jessica Chastain’s Maya is a fascinating portrait of obsession. She’s a perfectionist. The fact that she’s a woman makes this a little more interesting, but ultimately doesn’t matter. Some have said they didn’t understand Maya’s motivation enough, but that’s ludicrous. Her motivation is 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history — and a very recent one. We didn’t need to lose someone personally in New York that day to feel the effects, despair and fear and an overwhelming vulnerability. Neither did Maya. She would have already been working for the CIA at that point (we’re told she was recruited out of high school), so it is literally her job to answer the questions all of America is asking. Why wouldn’t she do her job to the best of her ability? What could possibly be a stronger motivation than the deaths of thousands of innocent people?

Some may have wanted Osama bin Laden dead out of vengeance; others might just feel safer knowing he’s not in the world. Mark Boal’s Zero Dark Thirty script is smart enough to to not tell us what exactly Maya wants. By keeping her backstory almost nonexistent, she becomes a stand-in for all of us, seeking answers or retribution or catharsis and some kind of closure. And does she get them? Well… did we?

Clearly I was wrong about Kathryn Bigelow’s lock on Best Director — that snub is just a shame. This is clearly her best work. It’s a near-flawless film on every level. I was also almost certainly wrong about Zero Dark Thirty winning Best Picture, but perhaps it’s just too important a film to take home such a populist prize. The fact that it’s stirred so much debate is only a testament to its quality, but controversy doesn’t win awards. At least, not Oscars.

Argo is bullshit. It’s fine if you like bullshit, just know that that’s what it is. It’s a slick thriller that, I guess, is “prestigious” enough for the Academy because it takes place in Iran? It’s really just Speed in a turban. Zero Dark Thirty, on the other hand, is actually about something — some of the most significant events of the past dozen years. It portrays these things not only tensely and entertainingly, but honestly and accurately. But to borrow a phrase from another movie: “You can’t handle the truth!” A lot of people can’t, apparently.

But I can.

*

(Originally published at JustinPlusSeven on January 10, 2013.)

You, dear reader, have the honor of reading this in the future, after the Oscar nominations have been announced.

But I am writing from this from the near past, before we know which five contenders are fighting it out in each category.

Of course, some are shoo-ins; there are only a very small handful of slots that are anybody’s guess at this point, including one in Best Supporting Actress that could really go to anybody and a bit of confusion in Best Supporting Actor as well. Best Actor and Actress, meanwhile, are mainly both six-person races that must be whittled down. Who will be sacrificed ― Bradley Cooper, John Hawkes, or Joaquin Phoenix? Emmanuelle Riva, Quvenzhane Wallis, or Marion Cotillard?

(You future readers are probably laughing at me, because instead, it was an unexpected sweep by the casts of What To Expect When You’re Expecting, Battleship, and The Odd Life of Timothy Green in all major categories.)

Either way, the performers that actually are nominated doesn’t affect the ones I believe should be. There are many years that I vehemently disagree with the nominees and even the winners. Last year snubbed a couple of the best performances at nomination time, Michael Fassbender in Shame and Albert Finney in Drive, then gave another Oscar to (the admittedly fabulous) Meryl Streep for one of the most atrocious movies she’s ever been in. But I digress. This year has been much kinder, and there are very few potential nominees I don’t think should be in the running. In fact, in some of these races my own picks look a lot like the Academy’s, which makes me feel awfully pedestrian. Can it be that the Oscars actually get it right, once in a blue moon?

Well, it’s a little early to start that kind of talk. I’m still speaking from the past.

No matter what the Academy says today, here’s what I say. And what I say is better, because I’m not 3,000 old people. I’m just me.

Here are my Not-Oscars for the Best Performances of 2012! (The winner is at the top, then they’re in descending order of how much I like them.)

BEST ACTRESS

Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Marion Cotillard, Rust And Bone
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Honorable Mentions: Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks; Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister’s Sister

Every year there’s one performance that grabs me like none of the rest, and this year it’s Naomi Watts. A large part of it is the movie itself, which does such wonders in making the audience feel every twist and turn of being swept up in a killer tsunami. There aren’t many actresses who’d be willing to go the extremes the role requires — it isn’t just CGI, she’s actually in a water tank holding on for dear life, screaming her lungs out. Yet Naomi often likes to put herself in miserable cinematic situations, for whatever reason, and still I am blown away by her commitment to this role. She really runs the gamut of emotions here.

Any other year, though, I might have picked Jessica Chastain. Divine Jessica Chastain, whose performance in Zero Dark Thirty at first seems kind of weak, until you realize that’s just the character she’s playing. Over the course of a decade, Maya goes from dedicated but naïve CIA operative to a force to be reckoned with, yet Chastain never goes broad or over the top in playing a girl who can not only hang with the boys, but outwork them. It’s that last scene, though, that cements this as one of the defining performances of the year. Since she’s still a relative newcomer, I can’t wait to see more Jessica Chastain in coming years.

Also, kudos to Katniss! Jennifer Lawrence nicely bridged the gap between teen worship and Academy cred this year, turning in solid work in The Hunger Games (take that, K-Stew) and then topping it in Silver Linings Playbook. Her Tiffany is a joy to watch, and somehow manages to steal scenes even when acting opposite a bunch of actors who all have their crazy dialed up to 10 (Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Chris Tucker). It’s also rare to find a screen female who can admit to extremely slutty acts on-screen and then defy being defined by that in the audience’s mind. In a way, it’s a more impressive feat of girl power than anything in The Hunger Games.

And I’m not even done with the female performances I’m truly wild about, because I also would love to see Marion Cotillard rewarded for her work as an amputee and so much more. Cotillard’s utterly convincing portrayal of a whale trainer who has lost her legs is matched by flawless CGI, reason enough to nominate her. But she’s also a full-blooded character who conveys vulnerability without ever having to speak it. It’s a must-see performance.

Last but not least, Emmanuelle Riva. Sometimes the stillest and quietest performances are the greatest of all, and she sells every single frame she’s in as Amour‘s dying wife. The old woman on her deathbed is a great cinematic cliché, yet Riva does things you’ve never seen with her performance.

This is the rare year when all five of my favorites could end up being the Academy nominees. I also have to give a little love to Honorable Mentions Rosemarie DeWitt, who lights up every film she’s in, and Zoe Kazan, who wrote herself a surprisingly good role in Ruby Sparks and then acted the hell out of it.

BEST ACTOR

Denis Lavant, Holy Motors
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Matthis Schoenaerts, Rust And Bone
Tom Holland, The Impossible

Honorable Mentions: John Hawkes, The Sessions; Channing Tatum, Magic Mike

The year’s Best Actor race has had a predictable outcome ever since we got our first glimpse at Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln. And yes, he’s astounding. I’m probably unfairly suffering from some Meryl Streep-esque “But he’s always amazing!” fatigue by not choosing him for my top slot, but I just can’t. It’s too predictable. (As amazing as his disappearance into an American icon is.)

Anyway, Denis Lavant has an arguably trickier role in Holy Motors ― actually, several of them. He plays a number of wildly different characters, from a barbarian sewer-dweller who occasionally bites off people’s extremities to the presumed husband and father to a clan of chimpanzees. (Don’t ask.) In between, he strings it together with a believable (if fantastical) portrayal of a weary “actor” who’d love nothing more than to stop pretending to be other people. If the reward for the year’s Best Performance in a Movie was actually for Most Performances in a Movie, it would probably go to Lavant. (Even in the same year Cloud Atlas was released.)

I also have to give some love to Bradley Cooper, whose career-changing performance in Silver Linings Playbook was endearing in a way he hasn’t been since Alias. Just watch — he’ll get all sorts of other roles offered to him now, whether the Oscar noms favor him or not.

Matthias Schoenaerts, on the other hand, has scarcely been mentioned in any conversation about the Academy Awards, with all the love on Marion Cotillard with the more physically demanding role. Yet Schoenaerts complements her perfectly in a performance I found startlingly believable. His character, Alain, is basically a self-involved prick more often than not; obtuse, but without a mean bone in his body. It’s a rare sort of character to see on screen, but an easy one to find in real life. Schoenaerts exhibits real movie star charisma in the role — a Tom Hardy-like appeal. Here’s hoping we see more of him, whether in French cinema or a crossover role.

And The Impossible‘s Tom Holland, the true protagonist of that movie, wonderfully portrays a character who goes from selfish in his survival of a tsunami to rescuer of those in need. It’s not the sort of arc screenwriters usually give a child, but Holland pulls it off quite nicely.

Honorable Mention-wise, I have to mention John Hawkes, who does what he can to make The Sessions less treacly (quite a task), and Channing Tatum, who proved he can act this year not just in Magic Mike, but also a surprisingly funny turn in 21 Jump Street. Who knew?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Sally Field, Lincoln
Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Emily Blunt, Looper

Honorable Mentions: Amy Adams, The Master; Jennifer Ehle, Zero Dark Thirty

I hate to side with the masses, but Anne Hathaway was pretty transcendent in the otherwise botched Les Mis, to the extent that the movie goes downhill once she dies — which is unfortunately less than an hour into it. She shows up most of her castmates, disappears for two hours, and then shows back up to right the ship and bring us home. She essentially saves the movie. If that isn’t a star turn I don’t know what it is.

Also, how much fun was Sally Field in Lincoln? She’s Hathaway’s only real competition in this category, and she injects some humor and surprise into Spielberg’s otherwise stately and staid presidential drama. Never underestimate the power of a hissy fit.

Jacki Weaver is the least buzzed-about of the major performers in Silver Linings Playbook, since she’s also the least crazy ― it’s bipolar vs. depressed vs. OCD vs. happiness. But since I love me some Jacki Weaver (from my favorite performance of 2010 in Animal Kingdom), I can’t not love her in it as she makes her “crabby-snakes and homemades” (whatever those are) and puts a happy face on her family’s constant manic turmoil. She’s the comparatively normal glue that holds all this crazy together.

And then there’s Helen Hunt’s T&A (and V, technically). You may never have asked to see this much Helen Hunt, but here it is. It’s a cliché to say that her emotional nakedness in the role matches her, you know, actually naked nakedness, but it’s true. She weaves a lot of complexity into a role that could’ve been brash and much simpler, to the extent that her “sessions” with John Hawkes are really the only thing that ground the movie.

And how about that Emily Blunt? Her Looper performance isn’t generating any awards season heat, but in a movie featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis trying to out-Bruce Willis each other, someone has to hold it together emotionally, and Emily does just that. She’s surprisingly convincing as a Kansas farm girl and goes above and beyond in conveying her devotion to her unusual son.

As for my Honorable Mentions — Amy Adams felt underused in The Master, but she held her own with the boys, and Jennifer Ehle made a reasonably small part in Zero Dark Thirty more memorable than it might have been, as the woman who didn’t find Osama, but was a casualty along the way.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
Eddie Redmayne, Les Miserables
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Ezra Miller, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

Honorable Mentions: Ewan McGregor, The Impossible; Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook

Alright, alright, alright! 2012 may be remembered as the year Matthew McConaughey stopped being a joke and started being a real actor. He turned in solid work in Bernie and Killer Joe, but he also brought a level of professionalism to the rowdy crew in Magic Mike, showing up lookers like Channing Tatum, Matthew Bomer, and Alex Pettyfer. It’s like he’s saying, “See, boys, this is how you do it for two decades and counting.” If taking your clothes off works for the girls, isn’t it about time it won the boys an Oscar nod, too?

Next to Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne was Les Miserables‘ other saving grace. The movie felt like amateur night at the Broadway movie-musical karaoke bar, but Redmayne was one of few who could sing and act simultaneously. If there were more justice in the world, he’d have an Oscar nod to match Hathaway’s.

A not-so-unheralded actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, towered in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, a movie I expected to enjoy more than I did. But that’s because I couldn’t get into Joaquin Phoenix’s character, while Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd was just about everything you could want from a master. I mean, he screams “Pig fuck!” at a stranger, which for me, personally, is the most quotable line of the year.

And though he’s made a career out of parodying his former glory of late, Robert De Niro does good work in a comeback to actually acting as the OCD father who can only express himself through sports. There are a number of slyly funny moments, as when he shows his son his lucky handkerchief in such a manner that you know he’s trying to avoid the inevitable discussion about how a handkerchief could possibly help a football team win.

Ezra Miller, meanwhile, is the scene-stealer in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, which is one part ordinary high school movie, one part extraordinary high school movie. The best bits of it tend to feature Miller as the jolly outcast, the sort of gay character we need to see more of. (And less of the bitchy gay friend, please.) The movie would be almost nothing without him.

In the Honorable Mention category, let’s have a shout-out for Ewan McGregor, who has less screen time than Naomi in The Impossible but acts the shit out of one scene, and yes, the lovable grump Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, the kind of role that would have won basically anyone who played him an Oscar. Better thank your agent, TLJ.

BEST DIRECTOR

Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Juan Antonio Bayona, The Impossible
Rian Johnson, Looper
Leos Carax, Holy Motors
Tom Tykwer, Andy & Lana Wachowski, Cloud Atlas

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty
Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard, The Cabin In The Woods
Rian Johnson, Looper
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
Sergio G. Sánchez, The Impossible

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Tony Kushner, Lincoln
Kay Cannon, Pitch Perfect
Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier, Oslo, August 31st
Jacques Audiard & Thomas Bidegain, Rust And Bone

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Cloud Atlas
Alexandre Desplat, Zero Dark Thirty
Nathan Johnson, Looper

ALL 2012 RANKINGS

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. The Impossible
3. Silver Linings Playbook
4. Rust And Bone
5. Magic Mike
6. Looper
7. Holy Motors
8. The Cabin In The Woods
9. Amour
10.Girl Walk // All Day
11.Pitch Perfect
12.Lincoln
13.Oslo, August 31st
14.Django Unchained
15.Cloud Atlas
16.Ruby Sparks
17.Arbitrage
18.Skyfall
19.Bernie
20.The Master
21.The Imposter
22.Your Sister’s Sister
23.The Avengers
24.Flight
25.Chronicle
26.The Grey
27.The Dark Knight Rises
28.The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
29.21 Jump Street
30.Savages
31.Compliance
32.Beasts of the Southern Wild
33.The Hunger Games
34.The Sound of My Voice
35.Klown
36.The Queen Of Versailles
37.Argo
38.Haywire
39.Les Miserables
40.The Sessions
41.Friends With Kids
42.Bachelorette
43.Safety Not Guaranteed
44.Take This Waltz
45.Sleepless Night
46.Moonrise Kingdom
47.Prometheus
48.Killer Joe
49.Life Of Pi
50.Headhunters
51.The Deep Blue Sea
52.Ted
53.American Reunion
54.The Snowtown Murders
55.Promised Land
56.Lola Versus
57.The Raid: Redemption
58.Jeff Who Lives At Home
59.The Paperboy
60.Cosmopolis
61.The Bourne Legacy
62.Mirror Mirror
63.The Loneliest Planet
64.The Amazing Spider-Man
65.Snow White And The Huntsman

(A Then & Now perspective.)

The further back I go in time, the less secure I am in my Top Ten choices. That’s largely because I haven’t seen all these movies again since, and I have no idea how, say, House Of Sand And Fog measures up to The Last Samurai.

On the other hand, there are a few of these films I know very well, which always makes me feel they belong higher on the list. On some level, isn’t the movie I’ve watched the most times probably my favorite?

That’s what makes ranking films fun in the first place. There’s no need for a list that changes as you do — it wouldn’t tell us anything. Instead, we look back on where we were, where the movies were, and think about what’s changed in both cases. Sometimes, the path a filmmaker took after a given year makes me look upon his film less favorably. Other times, I see more of a director’s work and then appreciate a film they made more than when I first saw it. It goes without saying that creating a Top Ten list is not a perfect science.

Few of these films from 2003 are ones that I’ve revisited often or count amongst my favorites. But in 2003, I thought they were damn good, apparently — or at least better than everything else I saw — and so did many others. If I were to re-rank them now, I know exactly which one would be my favorite, and it’s not my #1 or #2 choice. But as much as it may pain me, I am keeping the list intact for historic accuracy. You’re welcome, Mystic River.

*

TOP TEN FILMS OF 2003  10. KILL BILL VOL. 1

Quentin Tarantino proves he’s still the king of violent, edgy, ain’t-it-cool postmodern entertainment. Over-the-top and in your face every step of the way, the film packs a mean punch despite its showiness. The B-movie plot is given grade-A Hollywood production value, making it a fun ride from start to finish. A blood-spattered action pic is the perfect forum to showcase Tarantino’s talents (and disguise his shortcomings).

(I probably appreciate Kill Bill now more than I did after viewing just this first half. I like but do not love most of Tarantino’s films, as there’s always a cool post-modern detachment that keeps me from fully investing in the story. That’s certainly true in Kill Bill. I found this one to be the better of the volumes by far, given that it has the most epic action sequences. The “two volume” gimmick might have worked better if they’d been rearranged a bit, but both the visuals and the storytelling work better for me in this first film.)

9. IN AMERICA

A genuinely heartfelt piece of filmmaking, made all the more poignant due to its close ties to the true story of writer/director Jim Sheridan. It’s increasingly rare to see a movie that so openly and straightforwardly deals with familial love, free of the usual contrivances. In America is sometimes melodramatic, but never manipulative. Solid performances all-around (especially from the kids) support a charming, funny script. A rare entry in a dying, oft-clichéd genre: the feel-good film.

(I haven’t seen this since and remember, mostly, the warm and loving tone of the film, as well as a surprisingly tense sequence set at some fairgrounds. Plus Samantha Morton’s short haircut. I would happily watch this again sometime.)

8. MONSTER

A complex character realized on screen with astonishing results. Charlize Theron goes beyond physical transformation to play serial killer Aileen Wurnos — she channels her. Theron doesn’t hold back, but unfortunately, the script does, at times — going too far for us to sympathize with her but not far enough to take us inside her head. Some aspects of her lesbian love affair with Christina Ricci’s Selby feel underexplored. Regardless, Aileen is always compelling to watch, even when we want to look away from her ugly misdeeds.

(A dozen years later, Theron’s performance is still just as riveting as ever. These “transformative” acting stunts don’t always age well, but Theron really went for it, and it shows. Her Oscar win came relatively early in her career, but all these years later I think she’s one of the most respectable leading ladies we’ve got. That’s pretty good, especially for someone who’s been starring primarily in big budget sci-fi/fantasy endeavors lately.)

7. MYSTIC RIVER

One of the best ensemble casts of the year comes together for the involving story about two crimes — one in the past, the other in the present, but both equally pervasive in the lives of the characters. The script is solid, in spite of a few awkward moments (typical of Eastwood), keeping up the suspense with some nifty twists and turns. But the top-notch performances are what really drive the story — it’s solid work all around from Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney, Thomas Guiry, and Sean Penn. If only Clint Eastwood hadn’t done the music.

(Though it displays several of Eastwood’s recurring sins as a director, I found this held up well when I watched it again a couple years ago. Eastwood’s last seven films have not been stellar, but he had a good run with this, Million Dollar Baby, and Letters From Iwo Jima.)

6. AMERICAN SPLENDOR

It’s not a film for everyone, but it is a film about everyone — the average joe who tirelessly survives the mundanity of everyday life. It mirrors the attitude of its protagonist — content to be imperfect, irregular, and unremarkable — and in doing so, becomes something remarkable after all: a love letter to weird people. Harvey Pekar’s life is drab, in essence, but colorfully and richly portrayed by the film. American Splendor goes beyond truth by placing the real Harvey Pekar in it, defying genre and formula for a strikingly original approach.

(American Splendor is one of those movies I kind of forget about, but I feel like I would probably appreciate even more now than I did as a film student. It was pretty much the first signal of Giamatti as a serious leading man for a certain kind of movie… usually an offbeat movie about someone grumpy. Plus, it has Hope Davis, from back when Hope Davis was in a lot of things. Maybe she still is, but I don’t see her enough.)

5. FINDING NEMO

It can be hard to review Pixar movies without overusing the word “delightful.” Arguably the most purely enjoyable film of the year, there’s nothing not to like: beautiful animation, a clever script, hilarious voice work (especially from Ellen DeGeneres), and a charming story. It is certainly the best major animated film in years, but it also transcends the genre to become not only something that an entire family can enjoy together, but something that even the most sophisticated adult viewer can admit to loving without shame.

(Finding Nemo intentionally brought back happy flashbacks to Disney’s The Little Mermaid, one of their very best. Animated films can do “under the sea” like no one else, and in a lot of ways this is the quintessential Pixar movie… though it certainly has competition. It’s surprising that the sequel has been such a long time coming. I watch this when I’m in the mood for nothing but unadulterated joy, though they do make room for some brief, melancholy echoes of Bambi early on.)

4. LOST IN TRANSLATION

A delightful and distinct film with two solid leads playing superbly-written characters. Sophia Coppola proves that she has a unique, fresh point of view in both her writing and direction, and Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are not only completely convincing as foreigners in a strange land, they also look like they’re having a hell of a lot of fun. Watching the film leaves the viewer with an indefinite emotion that is neither happy nor sad, a tell-tale sign of a talented filmmaker. A pleasure to watch.

(Well, this takes us back to a time when neither Sofia Coppola nor Scarlett Johansson was a proven commodity. Coppola was known only for The Virgin Suicides, while Johansson was still a rising starlet with her biggest roles ahead of her. Coppola is a polarizing auteur — people tend to either love her or hate her, and this film achieves similar results. I tend to like what she does more often than I don’t, and I still appreciate this movie, even if it does somewhat overdo it on ScarJo staring vacantly out of windows.)

3. COLD MOUNTAIN

A wartime epic told the old-fashioned way, which is not easy to do these days. The love story between Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Inman (Jude Law) is well-crafted without inducing any eye-rolls. What makes it fresh, however, is not the romance, but the separate journey each character makes — he tries to make his way back home, she struggles to take ownership of hers. They must find themselves before they find each other, encountering violence, horror, and hardship galore along the way, as well as a robust supporting cast featuring Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Baker, Renee Zellweger, and plenty more. It’s a well-crafted, well-executed film in every way, thanks to Anthony Minghella’s superb talents as writer/director.

(I have a special fondness for this movie, since I met Minghella around its release and he died a few years later. This was, unfortunately, his last major release… if you don’t count the little-seen Breaking And Entering, an odd little romance starring Jude Law and Juliette Binoche. Cold Mountain was largely snubbed come Oscar time, which I find particularly unfortunate in a year where Seabiscuit was nominated for Best Picture. I think it has held up remarkably well and is one of my favorite romantic epics. It would probably be my #1 movie from 2003 if I was doing it over again, though I don’t know many who like it as much as I do.)

2. 21 GRAMS

Though the jumbled plot is a unique, bold choice, the film is really a showcase for some of the most talented actors of our time. A phenomenal Sean Penn (who made another big splash in Mystic River this year) gives the film its heart (no pun intended), while the fearless Naomi Watts gives it some bite. The film is wrenching and emotionally exhausting, but the performances put us right there every minute, unable to look away.

(Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu got a bad rap after this for essentially making the same movie again and again, and I have a particular grudge against him for robbing Richard Linklater and Boyhood with his Oscar wins for Birdman, which I will never not think is ridiculously overrated. This is the kind of story that feels overdone now, but was reasonably fresh at the time, and a good showcase for its actors.)

1. LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING

A fitting finish to a truly remarkable achievement in filmmaking. Peter Jackson has literally brought magic to the screen with a masterful gift for fantasy storytelling unseen since Spielberg’s heyday. A true epic, filled with heroism and honor, mercifully free of postmodern cynicism. Though it could not be made without today’s technology, the film itself is a timeless story that will be beloved for years to come.

(I basically never have the time required to rewatch these movies — that’s what I get for buying the Extended Editions on DVD. I really appreciated several of these performances and the genuinely moving story at the time. For whatever reason, my feelings about Peter Jackson are less pure these days, as I’ve had no interest in any of his Hobbit movies, which may have retroactively turned me off of Middle Earth completely. Aside for the laughably bloated ending to this installment, I will go ahead and stand behind this choice as my #1 film, even though it seems highly unlikely I’d place it here if I were evaluating these films today. I can’t really imagine finding this more powerful than Cold Mountain, but maybe that’s only because I’ve had time to get over what a massive technical achievement this trilogy was, in addition to some solid storytelling.)

BEST ACTOR

Sean Penn, 21 Grams
Paul Giamatti, American Splendor
Ben Kingsley, House Of Sand And Fog
Tim Robbins, Mystic River
Bill Murray, Lost In Translation

Honorable Mention: Johnny Depp, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl; Jude Law, Cold Mountain

BEST ACTRESS

Charlize Theron, Monster
Naomi Watts, 21 Grams
Scarlett Johansson, Lost In Translation
Hope Davis, American Splendor
Jennifer Connelly, House Of Sand And Fog

Honorable Mention: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Whale Rider; Nicole Kidman, Cold Mountain

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Dominic Monaghan, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King
Tom Guiry, Mystic River
Judah Friedlander, American Splendor
Albert Finney, Big Fish
Billy Boyd, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King

Honorable Mention: Djimon Hounsou, In America; Sean Astin, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Shohreh Aghdashloo, House Of Sand And Fog
Renee Zellweger, Cold Mountain
Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River
Samantha Morton, In America
Christina Ricci, Monster

Honorable Mention: Miranda Otto, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King; Patricia Clarkson, The Station Agent

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST

Cold Mountain
Mystic River
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
21 Grams
American Splendor

BEST SCORE

Hans Zimmer, The Last Samurai
Gabriel Yared, Cold Mountain
Howard Shore, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Danny Elfman, Big Fish

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Cold Mountain
Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King
Big Fish
American Splendor

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Lost In Translation
In America
21 Grams
Finding Nemo

BEST DIRECTION

Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Anthony Minghella, Cold Mountain
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 21 Grams
Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation
Edward Zwick, The Last Samurai

*

2004 MOVIE RANKINGS

1. Lord of the Rings: The Return Of The King
2. 21 Grams
3. Cold Mountain
4. Lost In Translation
5. Finding Nemo
6. American Splendor
7. Mystic River
8. Monster
9. In America
10. Kill Bill—Vol. 1
11. The Station Agent
12. The Last Samurai
13. Big Fish
14. School Of Rock
15. Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World
16. A Mighty Wind
17. Whale Rider
18. House of Sand and Fog
19. Calendar Girls
20. Shattered Glass
21. Down With Love
22. The Matrix Reloaded
23. Love Actually
24. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
25. Bend It Like Beckham
26. X2: X-Men United
27. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
28. Something’s Gotta Give
29. Sylvia
30. The Triplets of Belleville
31. How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days
32. The Matrix Revolutions
33. The Shape of Things
34. Elephant
35. Seabiscuit
36. The Hunted
37. Bruce Almighty
38. Hollywood Homicide
39. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde
40. The Hulk
41. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
42. Dreamcatcher
43. View From The Top

Here it is, straight from the mouth of a film student.

(Sort of.)

I made this Top 10 list relatively early in awards season, before I’d seen a number of films that factored into the race that year — including The Hours, 8 Mile, Secretary, Frida, Talk To Her, and The Pianist, some of which came away with major wins (Best Actress and Best Actor included).

Reconsidering this list in 2015, I wouldn’t change a whole lot. There are a couple films I like better now than I did back then — like Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, which didn’t quite do it for me the first time around. Others, like Talk To Her, Secretary, and 8 Mile, I know I did like quite a bit when I saw them, but now it’s been so long that I’d need to see them again to know if they’d find their way onto my list.

And, full disclosure: I did make one change to this list from back in 2002, adding a film I saw shortly after making this list that has since become one of my favorites of the year. It seemed a shame to leave it off, considering that it was one of my favorites both back then and still now.

Which film did I add, and which one got kicked off to make room for it? I’ll never tell…

10. THE TWO TOWERS

The second installment in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy suffers slightly at not being nearly as fresh and exciting as the first, and lacks the inevitable climactic pay-off of The Return Of The King, but it does bring one cinematic marvel to the screen — Gollum, performed by Andy Serkis but entirely rendered by CGI, to date probably the most impressive computer-generated creature we’ve seen. (And definitely the most preciousss.)

The Two Towers adds several new characters we didn’t meet in The Fellowship Of The Ring, and many favorites from the first movie are shoved into supporting roles far away from the main action. And sure, these guys are pretty much in the same predicament at the end of this movie as they were in the beginning, and not a whole lot closer to Mordor. The battle of Helm’s Deep is the central focus, and director Peter Jackson brings his expected flair for technical wizardly and large-scale spectacle. It’s big and awesome, even if it seems there’s less at stake than at other points in this series.

Viggo Mortensen does an excellent job of carrying the movie as this film’s hero, leaving Frodo in the backseat, and Gollum is somehow the best-developed and most captivating character in the film. The Two Towers‘ main purpose is keeping audiences invested long enough to make it to the series’ grand finale, but as big budget fantasy epics go, it certainly delivers the goods.9. PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE

It’s Paul Thomas Anderson! So, it’s excellent, right?

Well…

Punch-Drunk Love is a surprise on almost every level from the uber-acclaimed director of Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and Hard Eight. Anderson’s films up until now have mostly been sprawling epics that don’t shy away from sex, violence, and some very dark themes, so it takes some adjustment to prepare for this quirky, smaller-scoped love story about Barry Egan and his quest to buy a whole lot of pudding — with some evil Mormon sex phone operators thrown into the mix.

This movie proves Adam Sandler can be at least a halfway decent actor, aided by the always lovable Emily Watson as patient love interest Lena and a pretty crazy turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman as an ill-tempered Mormon. (We can assume he’s Mormon since he lives in Provo, although his foul mouth and sex phone operation may suggest otherwise.) As in Magnolia, Anderson doesn’t follow the typical three-act structure — he marches to the beat of his own drummer, and this one is willfully offbeat.

At a scant 95 minutes, Punch-Drunk Love seems to gloss over some story elements and instead spends its screen time on a fair amount of chaos and randomness, but you gotta give it credit for being unpredictable. It’s funny, clever, crazy, quick, and entertaining, and Emily Watson lights up the screen, though it falls well short of being a masterpiece like Magnolia and Boogie Nights. I guess they can’t all be instant classics… (but they can still be very good).

8. INSOMNIA

Insomnia is a remake of a Norwegian film I haven’t seen, so I’m sure some of the credit goes to the original — but this adaptation definitely does it some justice regardless. Al Pacino is a tough-guy cop from Los Angeles struggling with his own morals and police ethics   while trying to solve a murder in Nightmute, Alaska. (A real place, apparently — despite the noirish name.) As his conscience eats away at him, so does the titular lack of sleep he struggles with in a town where the sun never sets — a nice twist on the typical murky nighttime setting of such thrillers.

Al Pacino is awesome as always, if you like that sort of thing (and I very much do!). Hilary Swank is perfect as the eager young local cop trying to learn from Pacino, unaware that he is not quite the good detective she idolizes. The real revelation, though, is Robin Williams in icy-cold killer mode (previously shown in One Hour Photo, which somewhat undermines the surprise of the comedian’s malevolent turn here).

Christopher Nolan, best known for Memento, pulls off some brilliant editing that puts us in an insomniac state of mind, and the film’s morality plays are almost epic. Certainly one of the best American thrillers to come along in quite some time. (Even if it did come from Norway first.)7. ADAPTATION

This movie probably plays better to screenwriters than anybody else — sorry! The ultimate scribe’s wet dream has Charlie Kaufman literally writing himself into the movie he was supposed to be writing, an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. Most writers who tried this would get a swift “no, thank you,” be fired, and never work in this town again. Somehow, Kaufman got a critically beloved film made — one that could easily win some Oscars. (It would be a sweet irony if a film called Adaptation won Best Adapted Screenplay, especially considering that it is basically an original story.)

Nicolas Cage gives two very solid performances as the frustrated screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and his half-witted twin brother. In addition to basically ruining the move version of her book, Kaufman also begins stalking Susan Orlean, who is played perfectly (of course) by Meryl Streep. Chris Cooper also provides a memorable turn as the kooky subject of Orlean’s book. But none of that orchid-thieving business is what ultimately makes Adaptation such a breath of fresh, weird air — it’s the bizarre mix of fact and fiction, with the real-life Kaufman and his made-up brother battling for screenwriting supremacy, tossing in plenty of industry in-jokes along the way.

The film goes spinning off on a strange tangent in the third act that embraces everything the movie is against. I get the point of it, thematically, but I didn’t love it. Adaptation is funny, clever, and twisted, and probably quite a bit more interesting than a straightforward Orchid Thief movie would have been — though let’s hope it doesn’t spark a dangerous trend of writers inserting themselves into their screenplays ever time they get writer’s block. This will only work once, people.6. MINORITY REPORT

Steven Spielberg proves once again he’s a peerless entertainer. In 2002, he delivered two very different chases movies, this one and Catch Me If You Can. (“Everybody runs” could be the tagline of either film.) While not as diverse as the films in other years when Spielberg has delivered a one-two punch (1993’s double-offering of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List obviously takes that cake), I can’t help but be impressed that one man can craft a breathless piece of action-packed science fiction as well as a moving drama within a few months of each other, and have them both be so good. Let us never take Spielberg for granted.

Between the two, it’s Minority Report that gets my full-on Top 10 stamp of approval, with an utterly convincing (and somewhat terrifying) vision of the future despite a far-fetched premise — cops using prescient humans to predict crimes before they happen, but nevertheless arresting criminals for their murderous intent. Tom Cruise is at the top of his form as the detective who goes from hunter to hunted, grabbing an ethereally excellent Samantha Morton to prove his innocence along the way.

Spielberg once again blunders the ending to an otherwise great film — I had third-act issues with Catch Me If You Can and A.I. too — but it’s not an egregious error when so much that came before was so very good. The vision of the future presented here is the most original I’ve seen since, well, Spielberg’s last film (A.I.), and the maestro of wonder delivers several of his trademark Great Movie Moments — particularly the exhilarating mall chase scene. In a world that so often gets them wrong, this is a blockbuster done right.5. 25TH HOUR

Countless filmmakers have made movies in and about New York City, but few are as closely tied to it as Spike Lee. He’s as essential to the city as Woody Allen, depicting a very different, but equally vital slice of life in the city that never sleeps.

So it’s almost impossible to think that Lee wouldn’t somehow respond to the devastation faced on September 11 by New York (and all of America, of course) — and it’s entirely appropriate that he is, essentially, the first. Though it’s probably too soon for cinema to cover the attacks in their entirety, 25th Hour finds a perfectly subtle way to pay homage without letting that dark shadow loom over the film overall.

The story itself has nothing to do with the World Trade Center — it’s about a drug dealer named Monty (Edward Norton) who has just one last day of freedom before he heads to prison for dealing drugs. He spends that day with his best buddies Frank (Barry Pepper), a Wall Street hotshot, and Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a shy high school teacher with a crush on his student Mary (Anna Paquin). Another key figure is Monty’s girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), whom he suspects might have been the one to give him up to the cops.

25th Hour spends more time on character development than on mystery or suspense, though, and that’s a very good thing. It takes its time and isn’t afraid of some random detours to explore its supporting characters or a slice of New York City life. (One incredibly memorable sequence features Monty’s foul-mouthed disparagement of virtually every person in New York, which somehow still comes across as a love letter to the place.)

Developed before 9/11 and shot afterward, the film’s only reference to the tragedy is a mournful look down at Ground Zero — and it’s all that’s needed. September 11 would be easy to exploit for some added emotional weight, but that’s now what Lee is doing here. Sure, it can be read as a metaphor for Monty’s life in ruins, but it would feel more conspicuous for a Spike Lee joint about these New Yorkers to pretend like it never happened. Monty’s angst is front and center, but 25th Hour is also very much about the rest of the people who inhabit his world. That single shot of Ground Zero hits just the right note, and then quickly moves on.
4. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN

Hollywood loves a good coming-of-age story, but apparently it takes a Mexican to get it right. Y Tu Mama Tambien treads in waters you’ll rarely see in any American film about teenage boys, with graphic sex scenes that are both hetero- and homoerotic. (Something for everyone to enjoy!)

The film takes us on a road trip, as two teenage boys (Diego Luna and Gabriel Garcia Bernal) woo the same older woman (Maribel Verdu) who has just left her cheating husband — and is carrying an even more heartbreaking secret, too. They go in search of a beach and instead find all kinds of romantic and sexual complications that come with the territory of growing up.

Cowriter and director Alfonso Cuaron understands that sexuality is complicated, especially when we’re young. The fact that these teen boys explore their sexual curiosities with each other doesn’t mean that either is gay, necessarily, but that the lines between friendship and romance aren’t always explicitly defined. (To be fair, there is a female present when they’re making out, which makes it a little less queer.)

The film is all about the journey instead of the destination, and the journey is not so much the road trip but adolescence itself. The most remarkable thing about the film is how natural it feels — less like a movie, more like eavesdropping on these people’s lives. Part of this is due to the raw, explicit sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination.

The performances by all three are stellar, though it’s Maribel Verdu that really brings the film to life. The final scene is a real heartbreaker, because of what we learn happens to one of the characters, but moreso because of what it says about what happens when friendships grow a little too intimate. For better or worse, I’ve never seen a more honest movie about being a teenage guy.

3. CHICAGO

I had a hard time figuring out where, exactly, to put Chicago on this list. It’s the songs and the spirit that make it so great, and that’s lifted pretty much verbatim from the musical. However, Rob Marshall finds a pretty nifty way to pull off a stage-to-screen adaptation, suggesting that the musical numbers take place in Roxie Hart’s warped mind. That could easily be cheesy, except that Roxie is so obsessed with being a star, it’s easy to see how she’d be deluded enough to imagine that everyone around her is starring in a musical that’s all about her.

Based on entertainment value alone, Chicago might have be the most enjoyable entertaining movie I saw all year. Shockingly, Renee Zellweger can sing! She’s great in Chicago, playing a character anyone who hasn’t seen this on Broadway may be surprised to learn isn’t very likable at all. (It’s a nice way to subvert the actress’ usual cutesy charms.) Balancing her out is Catherine Zeta-Jones as another murderess bitch, one who plays off Zellweger very well. Zeta-Jones’ Velma Kelly is more upfront about her killer instincts, though not necessarily the more ruthless — she may look darker, but both of these women are devious vamps.

Chicago is all about fame versus infamy, and Marshall nails every musical number, giving each one its own distinct flair. (Not always the case in movie musicals.) “Cell Block Tango” in particular is a real knockout. And though much of the film is a cynical look at criminal celebrity — witness Richard Gere’s turn as a sharky defense attorney — the film also has a tiny bit of heart in John C. Reilly’s poor schlub of a husband, who sells the melancholy “Mr. Cellophane.” Chicago feels perfectly poised to sweep the Academy Awards, and for all its gloss, it’s hard to fault a film that’s so much fun for painting the Oscars red.2. ABOUT SCHMIDT

Jack Nicholson is an icon — he’s won three Oscars and been nominated for many more, turning in essential performances in classic films like Chinatown, The Shining, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. And while I haven’t seen his entire body of work, I’m prepared to say that this might be his best performance ever.

We all know Nicholson can rant and rave like a madman. It’s become a bit of a shtick, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t still work when used effectively. (Call it the Al Pacino Syndrome.) But Nicholson rarely does that here, instead delivering a subdued and understated turn as a man grappling with aging, retirement, and the death of a spouse — and that’s just the first act.

Nicholson is fearless in his touching and honest portrayal of the perils of being a senior citizen, an underexplored topic in cinema to be sure. He allows his Schmidt to be vulnerable and pathetic, weak and petty. As good as he was in As Good As It Gets, that was not as good as Nicholson gets — it’s this performance that deserves an award. It’s the rare turn from Nicholson that’s more about acting than performance.

The movie as a whole is filled with solid work from a cast including Kathy Bates, Hope Davis, and Dermot Mulroney, reveling at times in the mundane cultural squalor of Middle America. Alexander Payne’s film is alternately very funny and very sad, and just when it seems like it might get boring, the plot goes in a new direction and makes us laugh all over again. About Schmidt proves that Election was no fluke, trading some of that film’s biting comedy for genuine pathos instead.1. FAR FROM HEAVEN

This is both the best movie of 2002 and the best movie of 1955 — or at least it feels that way. Todd Haynes presents a pitch perfect pastiche of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas, though here the ideals of the “perfect” 50s family are shattered by topics that the world wasn’t ready to tackle back then. (Namely, homosexuality and interracial relationships.)

Julianne Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, a seemingly happy housewife whose cheerful suburban bubble is about to pop. When Cathy finds her husband engaging in unspeakable acts with a fellow gentleman, she discovers her marriage, her friendships, and basically her entire white hetero Connecticut world are nothing but surface — and longs to find something deeper. That causes her to fire up a flirtation with her black gardener, which is almost as taboo as her hubby’s same-sex hanky-panky in this era.

Anchored by Moore’s immaculate performance, Far From Heaven looks and sounds like it was made 50 years ago — with no sex or profanity, it’s certainly tame in comparison to today’s films, though it probably would have been the raciest, most controversial movie of 1955. The period details are simply flawless, with a Technicolor-like sheen that makes this by far 2002’s most beautiful picture to look at. The supporting cast — Dennis Quaid, Patricia Clarkson, and Dennis Haysbert — does plenty of good work too, but this is Moore’s movie, and she shines. If there’s any justice, she’ll win the Oscar this year.

Far From Heaven also contains my favorite line in a movie this year, because of its simplicity and importance to the story: “Here’s to being the only one.” Though it isn’t the only great film of the year, it is certainly one of the most strikingly original, in that it inhabits the tropes and mores of a 1950s melodrama while simultaneously critiquing them. That’s not an easy maneuver, but Haynes pulls it off in spades. And as good as Julianne Moore is in absolutely everything, this may endure as her most essential performance.

BEST DIRECTOR

Todd Haynes, Far From Heaven
Spike Lee, 25th Hour
Steven Spielberg, Minority Report
Rob Marshall, Chicago
Peter Jackson, The Two Towers

BEST ACTRESS

Julianne Moore, Far From Heaven
Renee Zellweger, Chicago
Maribel Verdu, Y Tu Mama Tambien
Diane Lane, Unfaithful
Emily Watson, Punch-Drunk Love

BEST ACTOR

Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt
Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs Of New York
Nicolas Cage, Adaptation
Edward Norton, 25th Hour
Leonardo DiCaprio, Catch Me If You Can

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago
Kathy Bates, About Schmidt
Patricia Clarkson, Far From Heaven
Susan Sarandon, Igby Goes Down
Meryl Streep, Adaptation

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Dennis Quaid, Far From Heaven
Paul Newman, Road To Perdition
Chris Cooper, Adaptation
Dennis Haysbert, Far From Heaven
Colin Farrell, Minority Report

BEST EDITING

Chicago
Insomnia
About Schmidt
The Two Towers
Punch-Drunk Love

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Far From Heaven
Minority Report
Chicago
Punch-Drunk Love
Road to Perdition

BEST SCREENPLAY

About Schmidt
Far From Heaven
Changing Lanes
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Insomnia

Hold on to something! The When We Were Young podcast’s pilot episode glances back at everyone’s favorite cow-tossing summer blockbuster, Twister, to see if the windiest divorce drama of all time holds up 20 years later.

Budget:                                                         $92 million

Domestic Total Gross:                           $241.7 million

Worldwide:                                              $494.5 million

Opening Weekend:                               $41 million

The New York Times, Elvis Mitchell: “Hurtling pace, by-the-numbers character development and exotic science. Tornado-chasing suddenly takes on a sex appeal not usually associated with horrendous storms.”

Washington Post, Rita Kempley: “Twister not only blows, it sucks, too.”

*

“I gotta go, Julia, we got cows!”

I was a hardcore Twister fan from the moment I saw it in theaters. Frankly, this is my kind of blockbuster. At one point, I had a countdown of how long I had to wait for its release on VHS in my journal. I was obsessed.

Looking back, it’s not terribly surprising — I didn’t know it at the time, but Joss Whedon wrote a lot of the dialogue that makes Twister so fun. The film takes its time to develop the characters, and yeah, okay, it’s not exactly the most nuanced of romantic dramas, but it works really well against the stormy backdrop. (It’s kind of like tornadoes are a metaphor for the romantic strife we all must survive to make a relationship work!)But one of my very favorite things about revisiting Twister was checking out the ominously cheesy voice over from the trailers:

Trailer #1: “There is a mystery. Elusive… unpredictable…. violent. It terrifies most scientists… but for a new breed, the challenge is saving lives. The research is deadly. The laboratory is nature itself.”

Trailer #2: “Even as the seasons change, nature moves within itself. Its colossal power and its delicate beauty in perfect harmony… perfectly, cosmically sane. Though, periodically, nature will… in a kind of psychotic fit… go completely, randomly mad.”

In the podcast, you can hear us debate whether this is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s worst-ever performance, sing the praises of bovine murderess Aunt Meg, call out numerous Wizard Of Oz references, and finally, come down on whether Twister belongs in “the suck zone” or if it still sends our spirits soaring like so many Pepsi-can-wearing weather sensors.