2012 Films: #27-1

I've officially ran out of time. Boo. Here's the rest, in list form (with some sentences sprinkled in):

27) Amour

Good, but not an Oscar nominee in my opinion. The two leads were both great in this slow-moving film.

26) Wreck-it-Ralph

8-bit nostalgia and Jon C. Reilly. Too much time spent in the sugarland racing game, not enough time in Ralph's world.

25) Avengers

Highest-grossing movie of all time is bloated and 20 minutes too long, but there are plenty of solid one-liners, action and star power. (Shout out to Marvel for releasing solo films and then teaming 'em up. Brilliant marketing.)

24) Arbitrage

Richard Gere is slick and sleazy as a hedge fund runner who bobs and weaves around scandal.

23) The Hunger Games

A very good book to movie translation is casted almost perfectly, and Jennifer Lawrence is every bit as good as advertised.

22) Life of Pi

I got a little tired of it after a while, to be honest with you. But it sure was pretty. Wow.

21) 21 Jumpstreet

Tatum and Hill are a surprisingly effective as cops posing as high schoolers, and the reboot never stops being funny.

20) The Five-Year Engagement

A sweet, funny, and very realistic and relatable look at the sacrifices we make to keep our relationships together. Jason Segel and Emily Blunt are both great, as are Allison Brie and Chris Platt as the inlaws.

19) The Dark Knight Rises

A drop-off from the last one, but still a Christopher Nolan Batman film. Good action sequences and good character additions.

18) Lincoln

Can't go wrong with Spielberg, Toni Kushner and Janusz Kaminski paired up with DDL and Tommy Lee Jones.

17) Les Miserables

Being unfamiliar with the music, I was impressed, especially with the fact they sung it live. Great performances all around, especially Jackman and Hathaway. 

16) Shut Up and Play the Hits

The story documenting the end of LCD Soundsystem was poignant and moving, and a hell of a lot of fun.

15) Searching For Sugar Man

An amazing true story about a recording artist touted as the next Bob Dylan who gets famous in South Africa and doesn't even know it. See it.

14) Bernie

Based on a true story about a Texas funeral worker who kills his much older companion. Jack Black and Shirley McClaine are outstanding.

13) Your Sister's Sister

Touching, moving and oftentimes hilarious, YSS puts a rather complicated love triangle together between Mark Duplass, his best friend, played by Emily Blunt, and her lesbian sister, played by Rosemary DeWitt.

12) The Hobbit

Didn't notice the high frame rate; didn't care. Thought it was a blast and Martin Freeman was a killer younger Bilbo.

10) King Curling (tie)

Funniest movie of the year is a Dodgeball style story from Norway about a curling champion recently released from a mental institution and teamed back up with his old squad to raise money for his coach's hospital bills. Hysterical throughout.

10) Looper (tie)

Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon Levitt teamed up first for Brick and are back together about an assassin tasked with killing his future self (Bruce Willis). It's a wonderful, well-executed thriller.

9) Flight

In a year crowded with terrific performances, Denzel's is as good as it gets as an alcoholic pilot under scrutiny following a crash. The crash sequence itself was just brilliant.

8) Brooklyn Castle

A documentary about a world-class chess team right out of the Brooklyn ghetto is the feel-good story of the year.

7) Zero Dark Thirty 

Kathryn Bigelow's sweeping epic is intense, long, and often stressful. Jessica Chastain is great as a guarded, emotionless woman with focus and confidence to take down the world's biggest criminal. 

6) Argo

Affleck continues to grow as a director, taking a touchy subject and making it Hollywood magic. The pacing and the action is masterful.

5) Django Unchained

An absolute bloodbath revenge piece amidst an amazing Tarantino script. It's ridiculous and at times unbearable, but so damn good and so damn satisfying.

4) Beasts of the Southern Wild

I know Quevazhane Wallis won't win tonight, but she should. For a 7-year old to carry a movie on her shoulders is remarkable. It is a strange, confusing, and beautiful story told in a strange and beautiful place.

3) Moonrise Kingdom

This fantastic coming-of-age tale proves once and for all that Mr. Anderson, with his bizarre dialogue, symmetrical shots, and elaborate set pieces, is the finest auteur in the business. 

2) Silver Linings Playbook

Formulaic? Sure. Doesn't matter--Cooper, Lawrence, DeNiro and Weaver are incredible, and the story is believable, crazy, funny, and heartfelt.

1) The Master

This, to me, was the most complete film of the year in terms of acting, story, music, and feel. As the lost degenerate Freddie Quell, Joaquin Phoenix gives the best and most complicated performance of the year, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman matches him blow for blow as the charismatic cult-leader Lancaster Dodd. Like Moonrise Kingdom, it restores our faith in film as an artform.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment, argue, rage, etc. Here's to next year!

#31-28

31) Seven Psychopaths

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh returns to the screen for the first time since In Bruges. Colin Farrell plays Marty, an Irish screenwriter with a serious case of writer's block until his pal Billy (Sam Rockwell) and Billy's boss Hans (Christopher Walken) conspire to kidnap the dog of prominent thug Charlie (Woody Harrelson). From there, things get bananas and his script idea to write about seven psychopaths unfolds in front of his eyes. The first half was excellent in it's dialogue and self-reflexiveness, but the ending was pretty disappointing.

30) Rentaneko (Rent-a-Cat)

If this movie ever was remade as an American film, it would be a perfect fit for Zooey DeSchanel's quirky self. Sayoko (Mikako Ichikako) is a young woman who lives in a house with upwards of 30 cats, each of whom she has a special bond with; she seems to believe she is destined to be their owner. To pay the bills, she starts up a cat rental business, in which she seeks out lonely people to "rent" her cats for a period of time to keep them company. She wanders down an empty street with a cart full of cats and a megaphone, shouting "rent aaaaaaaaaaaaa neko. Rent aaaaaaaaaaa neko. Neko neko," at anyone who will listen. The cats are of course hilarious, especially Master Umaturu, who rules the roost and gets to reside in a big cushy basket. A fun idea, but after the third cycle or so (leaves house with cats, shouts at people, gets a customer, hears the customer's life story) you kind of hope for more plot. There isn't any.

29) Premium Rush

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Wiley, who is a crazy-ass bike messenger in New York City who lives the fix-gear lifestyle to the fullest, weaving in and out of traffic, breaking plenty of bones, pounding beers in his off-time. One day, he's tasked with being courier on a message from Chinatown that has detective Bobby (Michael Shannon) intrigued and stopping at nothing to retrieve it. Though Shannon's character is obnoxious and cliche', it was better than expected and puts a fun twist on the chase film.

28) Jeff Who Lives at Home

Jeff (Jason Segel) spends his days stoned in a hooded sweatshirt, waiting for a sign to push him into action. A combination of an errand for his mother (Susan Sarandon), a search for a man named Kevin (because someone called his house looking for a Kevin), and a chance encounter with his sister-in-law (Judy Greer) gets him motivated and on the path to his destiny, which includes helping his asshole brother Pat (Ed Helms) catch said sister-in-law cheating. All of the characters are relatively believable, and it is a goofy, and somehow spiritual, comedy.

2012 Films: #34-32

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2012 Movies: #41-35

With a mother coming to town, a sheetrocking and mudding project, and progress reports due by 10 am on Monday, I'm realizing this might be impossible to knock out before the Oscars, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to at least try.

Lightning Round, part 1.

41) Brave

Pixar's weakest effort, thus far. It had good moments. The lead character's brogue princess only went so far for me, though her three redheaded triplet brothers were hilarious. The most memorable thing about it? The short film that precedes it, La Luna, a terrific cartoon with two big mustachioed Italians and a kid taking a ladder to the moon and sweeping the stars off it.


40) Voyage to the Moon (restored)

Moliere's classic 1903 short film, restored, set to a soundtrack by French electro pop duo Air, and accompanied by a 70-minute documentary on the restoring process. The documentary didn't fascinate quite as much as I had hoped, but it was cool to see Moliere's greatness and influence live on beyond last year's homage, Hugo.


39) Pitch Perfect

This is a shitty, yet suprisingly entertaining movie about an all-women and an all-men choir competing for acapella dominance on a college campus that would be downright formulaic if it weren't for the ridiculously cute Anna Kendrick and her heartfelt performance as a mash-up DJ turned acapella arranger, and the always hilarious Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy, the comic relief. And even though I'm not generally an acapella guy, the performances were solid.

38) Prometheus

I saw this on the giant 3D IMAX screen at the Minnesota Zoo, so there is no way I can deny its greatness visually. There is plenty of fire and ass-kicking and creatures (I won't elaborate if you haven't seen it) along the way, but both the plot and script were absolutely clunky, and even the talent involved (Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender) didn't live up to their usual potential.

37) Ruby Sparks

A pretty good film about when fantasy goes a little too far. Real-life couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, working on a script by Kazan, are a couple literally written into existence by lonely writer Calvin (Dano). Ruby Sparks is his dream girl who comes to life off the page, but then ends up sticking around and becoming less and less perfect for him. A cute, albeit hokey, concept.

36) Last Day at Lambeau

A documentary that I saw at the M/SP Intl Film Festival following the dramatic, drawn-out saga of Brett Favre leaving Lambeau Field as a Packer and returning as a Viking. It was interesting to see all of the various sportscasters perspectives and get a little bit of a better insight into the behind-the-scenes action. The only problem was that as a Packer fan, none of the information really felt new to me. I almost would have rather seen it as like, a Bengals fan.

35) Only the Young

At only 70 minutes, Only the Young is a documentary that follows 3 decidedly Christian adolescents as they experience the ennui of living in a post-foreclosure California town. They go on dry waterslides into empty pools, set up camp in abandoned houses, skateboard under bridges. Amidst this bleak landscape, they try to plan out their futures, fall in and out of love, and most importantly, rely on each other. It's a quietly cool statement about growing up post-millennium, though there's an emphasis on quiet--not a whole hell of a lot happens.

2012 Films: #46-43

#46 Wanderlust 

Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston are NYC socialites who struggle with paying the rent for their tiny condo once they simultaneously both lose work. On the way down his asshole brother/drunk sister in law’s house in Atlanta, they stumble upon a commune. There they are greeted by ringleader Seth (Aniston fiancée Justin Theroux), hippie hottie Eva (Malin Akerman) and plenty of other quirky, stoned, dirty, nude characters. There, the uptight duo find themselves living a life they never thought they would and arrive at tough conclusions about their marriage. One scene in particular is ridiculously funny and there are moments strewn throughout. Typically though, Wanderlust is super predicatable.

#45/44 Snow White and the Huntsman/Mirror Mirror

Leave it to Hollywood, right? Two Snow White spin-offs within months of each other? Both pride themselves on the “Snow White in a new angle” approach, but neither of them feel fully realized. I give the nod to Mirror Mirror, because while Huntsman is at times visually awesome, Mirror was more entertaining, and had much better Dwarves. In the grand scheme of things, isn’t that what it’s all about?

#43  seeking a friend for the end of the world

Keira Knightley and Steve Carell are Penny and Dodge, neighbors in L.A. who are both finding different ways to deal with the impending apocalypse. Dodge’s wife, once she hears, literally opens the door to the car and flees, while Penny dumps her loser boyfriend because he caused her to miss seeing her family in the U.K. Dodge, who’s set in his ways, is reluctant to start doing heroin and having guilt-free sex, while Penny (though not to that extent) is a little more adventurous. The first half of this movie is really clever, and I was enamored with the idea of all these people trying ridiculous experiences before being smoked by an asteroid. The problem here is that Carell and Knightley’s chemistry was hard to fathom and farfetched, and when that is what your movie is relying on, it’s bound to fall a little short.

2012 Films: #53-47

I'm not going to lie and say that this won't be an absolute race to the finish this year.

I just got moved into a new position at my school (7th and 8th grade English teacher) less than a month ago, and it's taking a lot more energy and time to get things together than I thought it would. So the countdown suffers a bit this time around.

I will have this done in time as per usual, but I may resort to describing movies via haiku.

Before I begin, I'd like to give a shout-out to my buddy Colin and let him know that perhaps I was a little too hard on The Bourne Legacy. The more I thought about it, there were a few movies that deserved to chart lower. So I'll re-adjust here. The Bourne Legacy, originally at 53, will move up a couple of spots. We'll begin this post with the new #53.

#53 Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

With a fistful of Middle-East oil money, a sheik begins a project to bring his favorite pastime, fly fishing (how’s that for a plot twist?) to the desert. The money and connections attract the attention of the British Prime Minister (Kristen Scott Thomas) and her faithful assistant Harriet (Emily Blunt), who track down the country’s most renowned fish expert, Dr. Fred Jones (Ewan McGregor) and task him with making it happen. Like the salmon in the movie, the plot pushes hard against the current, forcing a “will they or won’t they” dynamic onto McGregor and Blunt as he tries to fix his unraveling marriage and she waits for the return of her lover from Afghanistan. Besides the added kind-of-interesting-at-most arc involving the logistics of bringing salmon to the desert, the rest is a pedestrian snooze that fits snugly onto director Lasse Hallstrom’s (Dear John, Safe Haven) sappy resume of late.

#52 Where Do We Go Now?

I worked at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival this past year as a volunteer. For every 3.5 hours I clocked, I got a free movie pass, so I saw 7 for free over the course of the three weeks. Wicked! The closing night film was Where do we go Now. The film was an absolute smash hit in its home country of Lebanon, becoming the highest grossing film not directed by James Cameron. It takes place in a small Lebanese village, where there are constant and oftentimes violent tensions between Christians and Muslims, and Amale’ (Nadine Labaki, who also directed), with the help of other women in the village, begin staging elaborate goofs to try and ease the pain. They put weed into a huge batch of cookies at their local coffeeshop. They fake signs of visits from Christ. It doesn’t seem to work, and in a sense, neither did the movie. The problem with Where do we go Now? Is that it never seems to be able to find its tone. Is it comedy? Is it drama? Is it a political statement? It tries to be all of those things, but simply can’t juggle them effectively.

#51 Think Like a Man

A few years back, stand-up comedian Steve Harvey (he of Family Feud fame) wrote a dating advice book geared toward females, entitled Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. As I looked over reviews of the book from news outlets to Aretha Franklin to amazon.com consumers, there was a general consensus that he knew what he was talking about and dished it up in a no B.S. fashion. This is the same impression our women protagonists in Think Like a Man get, and thus all of them (Gabrielle Union, Meagan Good, Taraji P Henson, and Regina Hall) look to this dating bible to either fix their current relationships (Union with Entourage’s Jerry Ferrara, basically playing Turtle) or make them successful in their new ones (Henson and Barbershop’s Michael Ealy, Good and 40 Year Old Virgin’s Romany Malco, Hall and Terrence Jenkins, best known for work on Kourtney and Kim Take Miami). As the ninth wheel, married Kevin Hart lends comic support in loud, miniature bursts. Basically what happens is, the ladies use the book to some accomplishments, the men get mad at how they’re being mind-gamed, they discover the women have been using the book, they try to use the book against them. There are plenty of cute moments, but I just can’t get behind the idea of these four gorgeous women needing to defer to Steve Harvey to save their love lives.

#50 The Bourne Legacy (reviewed last post)

#49 The Campaign

A couple of southern businessmen (Lithgow and Akroyd) put together a plan to take down long-seated district congressman Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) by recruiting local schlub and tourism manager Marty Huggins (Zach Galifinakis) to run against him. Huggins, Galifinakis has said, is based upon a character he created called “the effeminate racist”. Here, however, he brings nothing but goodwill to contrast the conniving, brash Ferrell. It’s good fun for a while (a highlight is Dylan McDermott as Huggin’s campaign manager) until the novelty wears off maybe two-thirds through, and you get kind of tired of both characters, and you realize you’re basically watching The Ballad of Ricky Bobby again.

#48 Haywire

Steven Soderbergh has had, in general, an impressive (Traffic, Oceans Eleven, Erin Brockovich) and prolific (35 films, with 3 in the last calendar year) career as a director. Haywire marks his first foray into a full-on action movie, and it returns mixed results. The usual cooler-than-cool Soderbergh jazzy soundtrack is ever present, as well as the snappy dialogue. The plot is pretty simple—a CIA operative (professional MMA fighter Gina Carano) gets set up on a job in Dublin, has to take down Michael Fassbender (probably not too difficult a task when you are trained in Thai kickboxing) and dish out revenge to her detractors, which include Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum and Antonio Banderas, among countless other expendable gun-wielding muscle. Haywire is fun escapism, but it’s brought down by the fact that while Carano can unequivocally kick some ass, she can’t act her way out of a paper bag.

#47 That's My Boy

I have a soft spot for Adam Sandler comedies, like many folks of my generation who grew up telling golf balls to “go in their home” and singing “do you have any more gum?” to one another. Some Sandler comedies age well and others don’t, kind of like our protagonist in That’s My Boy, deadbeat dad Donny Berger. In the opening sequence, a teenage Donny sleeps with his teacher (Eva Amurri, daughter of Susan Sarandon; Sarandon herself plays the grown-up version in the present) and the credits show him becoming famous for the scandal. We flash forward to the present—jean jacket, mullet, mixtapes, completely out of money. To pay off his debts, he goes to see a trashy TV producer, who promises him 50 grand if he can reunite with his son and the teacher in a jail visit. Donny then goes to track down his hedge fund managing son Todd (Andy Samberg) and his fiancée (Leighton Meester) in the Hamptons (?) to get his life back in order. Sandler is definitely capable of more, and the movie itself was shitty and ridiculous (despite a decent script from Happy Endings’ David Caspe), but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t at times entertaining as hell. In a scene where Todd is ripping into Donny for his bad parenting:

Todd: You never gave me anything!

Donny: That’s not true. I gave you a snake.

Todd: And it died when it ate all of your Quaaludes!

Donny: That’s the first time in history anyone ever seen a King Cobra laugh, and I take pride in that. 

...46-41 later today!

2012 Films: #62-53

The countdown is on!

I've had an insane couple of months as I've switched positions within my school, so while I've been keeping up on the seeing movies end, I'm behind on the writing about movies front. The write-ups will probably be shorter, but I will do my best to crank through everything before Oscar night in 15 days.

Here are the 10 worst movies of 2012:

#62 Dark Shadows

There was a four or five day window in between when I got back from a backpacking trip through Europe and when I moved to Minneapolis. It was the end of August, and it was right around my mom’s birthday. She likes going to the movies about as much as I do, so she chose something and we went. It was Tim Burton’s reboot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it was God-awful.

Burton has had his good films. Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Big Fish, Beetlejuice, Batman. But he’s hit or miss, and Dark Shadows was a miss of epic proportions. It was the Addams family with more convolution and less charm. The story of Barnabas Collins (Depp) coming back from the dead to retrieve his treasure from his Collins heirs (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz, etc.) and avoid re-death at the hands of the evil Angelique (Eva Green) stays together for about the first half-hour before it goes completely off the rails. Avoid this dud.

#61 Savages

Oliver Stone is even streakier than Tim Burton, and hasn’t made a consensus good flick since Any Given Sunday. We start with the voice of Blake Lively’s character, O (short for Ophelia), narrating over shots of Laguna: “Just because I’m telling you this story, doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end of it.” She lives with two major players in the California weed game, ex-marine Chon (Taylor Kitsch, keeping his streak of shitty movies alive) and consummate hippie Ben (Aaron Johnson). And guess what? She’s screwing them both. One day, a couple of major players in the Mexican weed game, cartel-runner Elena (Salma Hayek) and her muscle (Benicio del Toro) roll into town and demand the boys cut them into their weed business as partners. And to drive the point home, they send them unnecessarily violent clips of people who have crossed their paths and have been chainsawed as a result, shoot some district attorneys in the kneecaps, and when the boys decline, kidnap O. They then have to work to get her back and save their weed entrepreneurship. It’s colorful and at times entertaining, but it’s an absolute mess.

#60 Mama

Originally when I offered to take my mentee to the movies for a week of good behavior, she and her friend wanted to go to the Wayan’s brothers new Paranormal Activity-spoof A Haunted House. I was game until I saw the preview, which dropped something like 30 curse words in a two-minute spot. I wanted to keep my job, so I opted to take them to the PG-13 horror film Mama instead.

Mama wasn’t terrible, but it sure wasn’t great. Jessica Chastain and Nicolai Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones) take in his two nieces after they have been left in the woods after the death of their parents. While they were out in the woods, they end up forming a relationship with a ghost who had been dead for like, 200 years. So naturally, as they are staying with their new relatives, mama gets jealous and wreaks havoc on their suburban haunt (get it? “haunt”?) in order to try and get possession of the girls. Every move from there on is hokey and predictable. It seems like our protagonists would have fared better had they taken the advice of my mentees, which was “Kick her in the face, bro!” and “I would have snapped her neck…with her nasty self.”

#59 The Dictator

The latest Sacha Baron Cohen vehicle had some decent moments, but it was mostly offensive and unfunny. His relationship with Brooklyn vegan Ana Faris doesn’t really work for me, and neither does most of the movie. He’s become kind of a one-trick pony, pushing the envelope with foreign-born characters that arm themselves with stereotypes and chicanery.

The best element of his previous films, such as Borat, are the use of the documentary style and the reactions of the “normal” members of the community that are meant to reflect the ridiculousness of our society. It doesn’t work when it’s a narrative.

#58 Project X

The party at the Donovan-Jacobson house in the Spring of 1998 was one of the highlights of 10^th grade. There was plenty of underage drinking and smoking and all things else, but what made the party memorable was the escape. When the cops showed up, many of us (including me) hopped the fence in the backyard and split into random factions, while others chose to hide out in the gazebo at Orton Park across the street and wait the situation out. It was discussed for weeks after; there were always new stories emerging.

Project X was a decent idea that was executed poorly. Coming from seeing a few of those high school ragers myself, I could relate—until it got too farfetched and increasingly ridiculous, like when someone showed up wearing a robot costume and spraying a flamethrower across the quiet suburban street. The characters were cliché’ and obnoxious, from the timid party host who wanted to make a name for himself and walked around trying to fix everything from the “total party dude from Queens” who wore a sweater vest and used a lot of poorly-timed and out of context hood language.

# 57 The Amazing Spider-Man

This one was disappointing. I guess my expectations were too high. Andrew Garfield was pretty good as the vulnerable and lonely teen webslinger, and there were a few action sequences that I liked. But otherwise, it felt like a worse version of the Spidey origin story that Tobey Maguire already did 10 years ago. Emma Stone is one-dimensional as Gwen Stacey, Rhys Ifans is over-the top as the Lizard, and the ending kinda falls flat.

#56 Safe House

Denzel is legendary contract killer Tobin Frost, who is looking to outrun the CIA and escape the “safe house” where he is being held captive in Cape Town. Tasked with keeping him in the safe house is Ryan Reynolds, a fresh-faced newbie. Now let me ask, do you think Ryan Reynolds, a passable Green Lantern, is going to be able to head off Denzel in full-on Book of Eli/Man on Fire mode?

Of course not. After Denzel is waterboarded (he actually did the scenes without a stuntman) and tortured in various other ways, he uses badassery to unleash hell on the compound. The action sequences are pretty good and Cape Town is a scenic locale. Can, however, Ryan Reynolds carry an action film? Sure can’t.

#55 Liberal Arts

Josh Radnor has made a career of being the sensitive, intelligent nice guy schlub who finishes last. In How I Met Your Mother, I find myself getting pissed off at the stupid choices that his character Ted Mosby makes and the “life lessons” he learns along the way.

Liberal Arts, Radnor’s directorial debut, is the story of Jesse (Radnor) returning to his old college for his professor’s (Richard Jenkins) retirement party and falling for a college student named Zibbie (Elizabeth Olson). Their relationship is complicated by the age difference and the long distance and they find it tough to pull off. It was okay, but I felt like not much happened and though Olsen was good as usual, Radnor was just Ted Mosby 2.0. I’m sure the kid has range, but we just haven’t seen it yet.

#54 American Reunion

I would consider myself a proponent of the American Pie franchise as a whole (probably more so than most). American Reunion finds Jim, Oz, Finch, Kevin and of course Stifler attending their high school reunion in East Great Falls. There, they commiserate on how things haven’t worked out quite in the way they’d hoped. Jim and Michelle are married and have a kid. Oz is a famous sports anchor who is married to a coldhearted model. Kevin is still whiny, Finch is still new-age-y, and Stifler is still Stifler. The usual dirty jokes and sight gags apply. This time, though, the characters feel like caricatures and the awkward teen sex tableaus can’t work because, well, they’re not teens anymore. American Reunion is wistfully formulaic, and let’s face it—no one finds Tara Reid hot anymore.

#53 The Bourne Legacy

Not as good without Matt Damon. Renner still brings the pain, and there’s a cool winter sequence where he and another operative are outrunning homing missiles and cool shit like that. The big problem I had with it was how confusing it was. There’s an expose’ being written on one of the companies that trains that the operatives and another company is somehow involved, and the operatives have to go into hiding as usual. I tried my hardest to care, but I couldn’t.

Tune in for a bunch more tomorrow!

Mulhern at the...Music? Best of 2012

Greetings readers,

For just today, the movieblog becomes a musicblog.

2012 was yet another solid year for music. The introduction of Spotify made it easier for all of us to hear whatever we want whenever we want, not to mention making parties twenty times easier to DJ. I got to go to my very first South by Southwest in Austin, which was a blast but a little overwhelming; it's literally impossible to see everything that you want. I saw great live shows around the Twin Cities from Heartbeats, Polica, NOFX, Solid Gold, Passion Pit, Father John Misty, My Morning Jacket & Band of Horses, Metric and many more.

I would of course be amiss not to mention the passing of one of my personal heroes, Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys. He had a hand in everything: hip-hop, filmmaking (he owned distribution company Oscilloscope and directed many Beastie videos and even a documentary), political activism (he founded the Tibetan Freedom concerts of the mid 1990s, which featured every band you'd ever want to see ever) and all-around good dudeness. He briefly dated Madonna in the '80s and worked to save Tibet in the '90s. The Beastie Boys in general were so influential to my style and upbringing, and he was the grounded, soulful counterpart to Mike and Adrock's wildness. It was the first celebrity death I can remember that really hit me hard. To MCA, who has hopefully found his way to enlightenment by now, may you rest in peace.

And now, people, let's get on with the countdown!

5 I heard were very good but I didn't get a chance to get into, though I want to soon:

Cloud Nothings-Attack on Memory
Chromatics-Kill for Love
Jack White-Blunderbuss
Swans-The Seer
Alt-J-An Awesome Wave

10 for Honorable Mention:

Stars-The North

Good return to form. 

Michael Kiwanuka- Home Again

-soulful and smooth.

Porcelain Raft-Strange Weekend

Fun, atmospheric electro-pop.

Hospitality-Hospitality

Jangly guitars and hooky hooks from singer Amber Papini in her NYC trio's debut.

 Killer Mike-R.A.P. Music

-political and smart with booming El-P production.

 The Men-Open Your Heart

-raucous and kind of awesome.

Sleigh Bells-Reign of Terror

-I didn't care for their first disc, Treats,  much at all.  But even though Reign of Terror starts to sound a little too same-y, there were some jams on this one--"Leader of the Pack", "End of the Line" and the single "Comeback Kid", which was on constant rotation for me this Spring.

Beach House- Bloom 

This album is kind of boring and sleepy at times (I personally think their first record, Devotion, is their best) but the Baltimore duo sure does make pretty music.I really enjoy first single "Myth", as well as singer Victoria Legrand's vocal stylings on "Lazuli".

Django Django-Django Django

-Goofy pysch-pop from the UK put out one of the best singles with "Default". 

 Delta Spirit-Delta Spirit

-It pains me to see them not make the top 20, but I just didn't get into this one like the previous two. "California" and "Yamaha" are both amazing songs, but the rest kind of feels phoned-in.

THE TOP 20 of 2012:

20) Fiona Apple-The Idler Wheel

I find Miss Apple a little bit strange and pretentious (see: 18 word album titles), but there's no denying the talent both as a songwriter and a piano player. "Every Single Night" is one of the year's best, and "Werewolf" seethes with Apple weirdness.

19) Nas-Life is Good

There is a trend in hip-hop right now, as evidenced by this past year's Rock the Bells tour, of artists doing their entire classic albums front to back. One of the highlights of South by Southwest for me this year was seeing Nas do Illmatic in it's entirety (with special guests DJ Premier and Pete Rock). Not only is Illmatic considered a classic, it's considered one of the classics. I was in awe of how easy it seemed for him 20 years later; in contrast, I saw Eminem in 2011 and while he was good, he couldn't coast through his fast-spitting half-rhyming lyrics without running out of breath from time to time. On Life is Good, Nasir Jones reflects on life as an icon and deals with divorce ("Bye Baby"), fatherhood (the excellent "Daughters") and the proliferation of violence ("Accident Murderers"). Two decades after Illmatic, he's grown up and the hunger has dissipated slightly, but not the skills.

18) The Shins-Port of Morrow

They may never return to Chutes too Narrow/Oh, Inverted World territory, but their latest album is full of pop goodness that only James Mercer and co. are capable of delivering. The opening 1-2 punch of "The Rifle's Spiral" and "Simple Song" were both constantly in my head this year.

17) Grizzly Bear-Shields

Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen are the Lennon-McCartney of the Brooklyn art rock set, and Shields expands on what they already do so well. Their harmonies are very compatible with their chamber pop aesthetic, especially on my favorites (and last tracks) "Half Gate" and "Sun in Your Eyes."

16) The xx-Coexist

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? The stripped-down trio gets even more stripped-down on their sophomore effort, and the result is more of what we have come to love about the xx--Everything But the Girl-style vocal interplay, atmospheric guitar reverb, simple bass lines and drum kicks. At times you wish they expanded their sound a little more, but for the most part it works, especially on the gorgeous opener "Angels", which is a nearly perfect song in it's length, scope and simplicity.


15) Calexico-Algiers 

Another solid disc from Tuscon duo John Convertino and Joey Burns. At times it feels like a gypsy manifesto, with its horns, accordions, cellos, bells and fiddles riding over their acoustic strumming. Single "Splitter" is a highlight, as is 3/4 ballad "The Vanishing Mind."


14) Robert Glasper-Black Radio

When I was Austin for South by Southwest, I had to scramble and literally sprint across town to make it to a Youth Lagoon set at a showcase in a record store parking lot. Afterwards, I went in the store to cool off for a little bit and listen to albums on their listening stations. One of the ones that I ended up checking out was Black Radio. Glasper, a Houston jazz pianist and hip-hop producer, has created (besides the re-issue of Disintegration Loops) the best headphone record of the year. With guests like Talib Kweli, Bilal, Erykah Badu and Lupe Fiasco, it recalls some of the best R&B of the mid to late '90s, with Hammond organ loops and cracking snares and rimshots over jazzy soundscapes. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon.

13) Metric-Synthetica

I had the pleasure of taking in the Canadian popsters in concert at the Orpheum this year, and they were very, very good. Lead singer/hipster waif Emily Haines (Who I once asked to marry me in 2004 during a Broken Social Scene concert) has come into her own as a songwriter. I really like this album, especially the soft-loud-soft over a four on the floor beat single "Breathing Underwater."


12) P.O.S.-We Don't Even Live Here

Would have probably crept into the top 10 if I had just had more time with it. We Don't Even Live Here function's as this year's Evil Empire or Pick a Bigger Weapon, our soundtrack to raging, rioting, and throwing our hands the fuck up. Stef Alexander hasn't had the easiest 2012; it became public knowledge that his kidneys were failing after he had to cancel much of his tour for the album. For someone who is on dialysis, the guy gets the job done, exacting revenge on the 1% with single "Fuck Your Stuff" and its anti-commercial protest chorus: "My whole crew's on some shit/scuffing up your Nikes, spitting on your whip." There are plenty of Minneapolis brethren to guest star as well. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver appears on the stunner "Where We Land" and my favorite, "They Can't Come" features P.O.S. trading punches with Doomtree collaborator Sims over a hard piano line.

11) Japandroids-Celebration Rock

Two dudes thrashing guitars and beating the hell of the drumsets and sweating beer? Sign me up! The Vancouver duo (Brian King on vox/guitar, David Prowse on vox/drums) build on the critical success of 2009's Post-Nothing and knock out the anthemic rock album of the year. And it's even better live. Opener "The Night of Wine and Roses" comes charging out of the gate, and "Younger Us" celebrates youth and young manhood with lyrics like "remember that night you were already in bed, said 'fuck it', got it up to drink with me instead." "The House that Heaven Built", with it's easy to mimic whoa-oa-oa chorus and it's notion to "tell 'em all to go to hell" has found it's way into the conversation for many critics' song of the year.

10) Purity Ring-Shrines

Canadian duo Megan James and Corin Roddick have not only made a great electronic record and manage to create a sound all their own. With strange subject matter ("dig holes in me with wooden trowels") and even stranger titles ("Obedear", "Crawlersout", "Lofticries"), Shrines is intriguing in its push-pull aesthetic. For each blip and bloop that skates across the sonic landscape, James cherub-like vocals match the weirdness with ease.


9) Tame Impala-Lonerism

I got into this one kind of late, but man is it a fun record. Melbourne's Tame Impala are stuck in the garage-psych-fuzz of the 70s, and we are all the better for it. "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" is one of the year's better songs, and "Apocalypse Dreams" rules.

8) Divine Fits-A Thing Called Divine Fits

Britt Daniel of Spoon and Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs live up to their potential on their first of hopefully many team-ups as Divine Fits. "Would That Not Be Nice", which name-checks Minneapolis, feels like a lost "Don't You Evah" b-side. The awesome Dan Boeckner voiced single "My Love is Real" and deep cut "For Your Heart" pulse with fuzzy synths and electro drums. At times, the album feels like a Spoon and Handsome Furs split EP; the songs they each sing on sound a lot like their respective bands. Not that this is a bad thing.


7) Twin Shadow-Confess

On Confess, George "Georgie" Lewis, Jr. took his signature '80s sound and made short work of everyone else trying to do the same thing. After writing a novel, the cocksure motorcycle enthusiast went for broke with cinematic (and borderline ridiculous) music videos. "Golden Light" is a Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins throwback, while "Five Seconds" (one of the year's best) sees Lewis turn in his best impression of the purple one, all the way down to the guitar solos. Then there's "Run My Heart", which might as well be called "I'm On Fire, part II" and the genius "Beg For the Night", with synth horn section that Scritti Politti could be proud of.


5) Frank Ocean-channelORANGE

Much has been made of the meteoric rise of Frank Ocean in 2012. You could argue, with ORANGE's inclusion on basically everybody's year-end lists, that 2012 was actually the year of  Frank Ocean. Within the span of a little more than a year, Frank went from Odd Future crew member and lackey to sought-after hip-hop hooksman (see: "No Church in The Wild", "Made in America" etc.) to full-blown star. And unfortunately for Frank (ne' Christopher Breaux), he was all set to get great reviews on his own merit before the media made him their darling after he came out of the closet via Tumblr on July 4th, shortly before he released the album.

I'm not wanting to play scrooge here. I am as supportive as the rest of you are that Frank Ocean opened up about his sexuality, and it was a very important moment. It was especially brave considering the rampant homophobia in the hip-hop community; even his frequent collaborators in Odd Future are constantly using the word "faggot" in a negative light. I just kind of feel like it became this cause for critics to root for him and thus ignore the fact that channelORANGE is, at it's heart, a good-to-really-good R & B album. I personally question its status as a "classic." In other words, it's not, in my opinion, on the same level as say, Voodoo.

That said, Ocean displays serious vocal chops from the get-go on single "Thinkin' bout You." He ostracizes the wealthy over the head-bobbing Benny and the Jets throwback "Super Rich Kids" and then turns around and calls out drug addicts on "Crack Rock". Addiction is a recurring theme here, whether it's to drugs, lifestyle ("Sweet Life") or love ("Pilot Jones", "Bad Religion"). The most clever song thematically is "Pyramids", tracing the history of black women as literal jewels of the Nile up to the present, where they instead work at strip clubs called "the pyramids." Again, the talent is there and the high ratings are deserved. I do really like his voice. But is he a little overhyped? Like the Egyptian civilization, only time will tell.

5) Father John Misty-Fear Fun

For me, the intrigue started early in the year. First, I kept hearing the name. Then, I heard FJM was J. Tillman's (drummer for the Fleet Foxes) new project. Then I heard "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings." I went nuts for that jam. My love affair for that song continues on; the only difference is now the car is colder as I wait for the song to finish and turn off the car.

While "HFCS" is the standout, the rest of the album holds it's own. The boho folk hero with the heart-on-his-sleeve persona of Father John Misty comes from a bout of severe depression, followed by several days taking various hallucinogens (mainly mushrooms) in the woods, followed by an epiphany: He was to leave the Fleet Foxes and the dreariness of Seattle for sun-soaked Brooklyn West--Laurel Canyon, California. A few months later, he emerged, having traded the long hair and flannel for a decidedly more clean-cut approach. When I finally saw him live this year (on my birthday) after trying twice previously, my friends and I had a blast watching him perform, shaking his hips and flailing his skinny body all around while cracking wise in between songs. You could tell that a major part of his reinvention project was getting out from behind the drum kit.

But back to the album. Opener "Funtimes in Babylon" reads like his first journal entry on the trip along the PCH as he hits falsetto notes wishing to " smoke everything in sight with every girl I've ever loved" and proclaims "Look out Hollywood, here I come." In the very next song, "Nancy From Now On", he wonders "How was I to know?/The milk and honey flow/just a couple states below." From there, the fun, debauchery, and occasional longing charges on as he makes his way south. In the truckin' "I'm Writing a Novel", he articulates his adventures as Misty, reading Sartre, drinking poppy tea, passing out in vans, and running for his life ("Would you please come help me/that Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me"). The tongue-and-cheek nature of Tillman's lyrics practically show you the air quotes that should be around "shaman".

One of the best tracks,"Only Son of the Ladiesman", sweetly laments the loss of the old-time player with a heart of gold: "They tied down his casket with a garter belt/each troubled heart was beating in a sequined dress/someone must console these lonesome daughters...I swear that man was womankind's first husband." You get the feeling that the witty Tillman is eulogizing himself 35 years down the road.

4) John K. Samson-Provincial 

John K. Samson, the former bassist of skate punk leftist heroes Propaghandi and former singer/songwriter of the Weakerthans, brings forth his lyrical genius and songwriting prowess on Provincial, his first solo record in 20 years. In large part a love letter to his Canadian heritage, he tackles this giant landmass in all of it's empty expansiveness (fun fact-Canada has lowest population density in the world!) and impending loneliness of being smack in the middle of it.

This is verbalized literally in "Longitudinal Centre" ("Where the Atlantic and Pacific are the very same far away") and "Highway 1 West" ("Too far to walk to anywhere from here...The city some cheap EQ with the mids turned up/in one long note of wheat"). It's verbalized figuratively in the clever "When I Write My Master's Thesis" and the crushingly beautiful "The Last And."

Provincial toggles back and forth between straightforward rockers and nordic-tinged 3/4 time acoustic ballads, the latter coming across a bit more effective than the former. But the one constant is Samson's gift as a storyteller, whether from the perspective of an entire town attempting to get it's local hero Reggie Leach inducted into the hockey hall of fame ("Petition"), the one-two punch of a lazy grad student trying to save his relationship ("When I Write My Master's Thesis") and a 100-year old archive from his research ("Letter from the Ninette San in Icelandic"), or an Edna Krabapple type pining for her Principal Skinner ("The Last And").

Take the lyrical chops of Dylan, drop the social issues, move a few hours north, obtain a nasal-y delivery similar to They Might Be Giant's John Flansburgh, and you have Provincial, the most intellectually satisfying album of the year.

3) Frankie Rose-Interstellar

I had some great weekends this last summer, but by in large my weekdays were shit. I was dead broke and working two jobs, teaching a very challenging group of 4th graders in a disorganized summer program, constantly worrying about money and receiving a consistent flow of rejection letters from jobs I had interviewed for. The fact that I got through them at all was thanks in large part to a quirky, tattooed, Brooklyn hipster sprite named Frankie Rose.

After the kids had left for the afternoon and I worked to put my classroom back in order, I would crank this album through the soundsystem. I don't exactly know why, but it always brought great calm to me. I became obsessed pretty quickly. Rose, previously a drummer for the Dum Dum Girls and the Vivian Girls, released Interstellar very early in the year to good critical acclaim. It was kind of overshadowed, however, by another indie pop/electronica solo artist coming to the forefront, a Canadian named Grimes. Someone asked me recently what I thought of Grimes, to which I replied "She's like a less good Frankie Rose."

Interstellar  is equal parts hypnotic and driving. She does a fantastic job of layering her pretty vocals and harmonies throughout the album, dancing in and out of choruses and utilizing plenty of reverb effects. Opener "The Fall" sees her echoes gliding over a simple cello and guitar line, while "Interstellar" takes us on a romp into the cosmos. "Apples for the Sun" and "Pair of Wings" both showcase her vocal chops over synthesizers; the latter is probably the album's highlight, in which she imagines herself as a wounded bird: "Show me your scars/I'll show you mine/Perched above the city on a pair of power lines." If you have seen the videos for either "Night Swim" or "Know Me", you can attest to the fact that Frankie Rose is a strange lady. No matter,   though. Her voice is easy to obsess over.

2) Perfume Genius-Put Yr Back in 2 it

From the minute the first piano chords sweep in on "Awol Marine" (apparently a song about a man and his wife making naughty home videos to raise money for her medication), you can tell what you're in for on Perfume Genius's second album. Genius is the solo project of Mike Hadreas, a young gay man from Seattle, and he's come the closest to the beauty and fragility of Elliott Smith since, well, Elliott Smith.

The sense of loss and regret is palpable on tracks such as "Hood" ("You would never call me baby/if you ever knew the truth") and "Dirge" ("All you loved of him lies here/do your weeping now"). Oddly enough, an instrumental portion of "Dark Parts" appears in a ubiquitous Honda commercial; the lyrics of the song deal with the sexual abuse of his mother by his grandfather. Ladies and gentlemen, "Walking on Sunshine" this album is not.

Nonetheless, it's almost unfair how pretty of an album it is. Piano, strings, sampled drums and most of all, Hadreas' voice, create an ether-like, staring out at the snow effect. Like Elliott Smith's XO, which I listened to for two solid months every day in the Spring of '99, proceed with caution, because the entirety of Put Yr Back in 2 it is a sluggish and emotional earworm that can be hard to shake.

1) Kendrick Lamar-good kid, m.A.A.d. City

good kid, m.A.A.d. City begins in a van. 17-year old Kendrick has borrowed his mother's vehicle and is off to see Sharene, his girlfriend. As he is about to get to her house ("I'm two blocks away, 250 feet/six steps from where she stay, she waving me 'cross the street/I pulled up, a smile on my face and then I see/two niggas, two black hoodies, I pause as my phone rings"), his mother calls asking for the van back so that she can get to the county building and away from his goofy, dominoes-obsessed father. Kendrick's parents bicker back and forth a little more, and in the background of the voicemail we hear "Fuck some damn dominoes. Nobody wanna hear that!" followed by "Nobody wanna hear yo' ass! Matter of fact, cut my oldies back on, you killin' my motherfuckin' vibe." Cue song #2, "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe", and gkmc is off and running.

Kendrick Lamar broke onto the scene last year with his excellent mixtape, Section .80, which, like gkmc, is a concept album with characters that weave in and out of the narrative. After it dropped, rumors were abound about the future of Kendrick Lamar, and more specifically, his involvement with Dr. Dre--was he going to be a collaborator? Was Dre going to take him under his wing a la Snoop Dogg twenty years ago? It turned out to be more of the former, with Dr. Dre appearing on "Compton" and first single "The Recipe", executive producing the record and helping to mix it. While Kendrick did opt to sign with Dre's Aftermath records, he kept the same production team he had worked with when he was independent. This ended up being the right call on his part because the album wouldn't have worked nearly as well thematically under Dre's souped-up and polished production.

The narrative of good kid takes place over a 24-hour period in Compton. Through young Kendrick's eyes, though, the first half of the album sees Compton as playground. He kicks posturing rhymes in the back of the van throughout "Backseat Freestyle" ("all my life I want money and power/respect my mind or die from lead shower"), plans home robberies with his friends on "The Art of Peer Pressure" ("Pull in front of the house that we've been camping out for like two months/the sun is going down as we take whatever we want/I hit the backseat in search of any Nintendos/DVDs, plasma screens in the trunk") and chases down women with Drake in "Poetic Justice." The most captivating on side A is "Money Trees", which shows Kendrick both flexing muscle ("You lookin' like an easy come-up, ya bish/a silver spoon I know you come from, ya bish") and recognizes the double-edged sword of being a hero in the ghetto ("Everybody gon' respect the shooter/but the one in front of the gun lives forever.")

Things start going downhill for Kendrick and the homies and throughout the second half of the album, and we start to see the adversity from multiple perspectives. "If Pirus and Crips all got along/They'd probably gun me down by the end of the song/seem like the whole city go against me", he laments on "m.A.A.d. City". Lead single "Swimming Pools (Drank)" takes us on the rollercoaster of being blackout drunk. Album highlight and 12-minute stunner "Sing About Me/Dying of Thirst" steps into the shoes of a gangbanger and a hooker before Kendrick and crew lose a friend in a shootout and the mood all changes. "Tired of running/Tired of hunting/my own kind/and retiring nothing" he raps on the "Dying of Thirst" half of the song. When his mother catches him holding a gun, she says to him "Why are you so angry? See, you young men are dying of thirst. Do you know what that means? It means you need water...holy water." It is spoken like a woman who, like many parents in her situation, doesn't want her child to repeat the same mistakes. Same goes for dad, who tells him later on, again on his answering machine: "Don't learn the hard way like I did. Any nigga can kill a man, that don't make you real. Real is responsibility...real is taking care of your motherfuckin' family."

When all is said and done, gkmc will go toe-to-toe with Kanye West's classic My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with the best hip-hop album of the era. But if Kanye's opus is just that--fantasy--Kendrick's masterpiece is rooted in reality. While everyone's favorite narcissist fell in love with porn stars and lamented having too much power, Kendrick tried to survive Compton as a horny, angry, scared-shitless teenager. Though musically there are shades of Aquemini and 2Pac's All Eyez on Me, it mostly feels original and fresh. gkmc is important for a number of reasons--its lyrics, its commercial success, its role as a launch pad for what is going to be a sky's-the-limit career--but it is most important as a story. It's hard to be a teenager, especially in a hostile environment, and sometimes it's our toughest moments that end up shaping who we become.