Uncle P's 6 Best Movies of 2012, So Far

I have not yet seen every movie I wanted to see this year. And as always, I haven't seen nearly as many movies as professional film critics see. But that doesn't mean I don't have a few favorites among the ones I have seen. For better or worse, these are the six movies I've enjoyed most this year (your list may vary - I don't really care).

6. The Cabin in the Woods. Taking on several Horror movie tropes while adding a dash of Lovecraftian lore, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard managed to turn the genre on its figurative ear with this insane and highly entertaining comedic film. Citing loads of classics and taking on even more stereotypes, The Cabin in the Woods is both a thrilling horror movie and an hysterical comedy, featuring some excellent performances from the likes of Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, Sigourney Weaver and genre favorite Jodelle Ferland.

5. The Avengers. Whedon makes his second appearance on my list with his take on the Marvel Superheroes. Funny, thrilling and highly entertaining, The Avengers not only took up the mantle of the Marvel superhero movies that have come before, but allowed for some terrific interaction between some of the hottest actors in Hollywood. Some of the most fun I had at the movies all year.

4. Life of Pi. Director Ang Lee has never made a boring film and Life of Pi, while hardly perfect, is certainly indicative of Lee's take on the world as he sees it. Gorgeously photographed and often brilliantly acted (thanks to Suraj Sharma's terrific performance), Lee's version of Yann Martel's novel is often fascinating and always beautiful.

3. Chronicle. Writer Max Landis and director Josh Trask take on the Superhero genre using the first-person style of film making popularized by The Blair Witch Project with this witty and often intense film about three teens who suddenly find themselves imbued with super powers. This very smart and often thrilling (though ultimately tragic) movie has tons to say about teen angst; self-loathing and parental abuse, all while smartly exploring the dark side of being Peter Parker.

2. Prometheus. Ridey Scott's 'non-prequel' to Alien explores the origin of humanity while setting up many of the events n his 1979 Horror/Sci-Fi classic. Terrific performances from Micheal Fassbender and Charlize Theron override the many complaints from nit-pickers, while the automated 'abortion' scene provided one of the most horrific sequences ever put on film.

1. Cloud Atlas. Lots of people hated this adaptation of David Mitchell's novel from Tom Twyker and the Wachowski siblings. Many complained about some of the bad makeups while others faulted the plot's Karmic aspects. Personally, I loved the filmmakers' audacious attempt to create a movie unlike any that has come before. Creating an entirely new form of narrative story-telling, the three directors took what many considered an 'unfilmable' novel and made an extraordinary movie using a cast of exceptionally talented actors. Say what you will about Cloud Atlas, but I promise you've never seen a movie like it.

There are still plenty of films that I haven't seen this year and this list may change by the end of the month. And while these may not be the 'best' movies this year, they are the ones which I found most entertaining. What movies did you love this past year? I'd love to know.

More. anon.

Prospero

2011 Oscar Snubs

Sigh...

So, last night I gave you my picks for this year's Oscar winners. Tonight I'm talking about those left out in the cold by AMPAAS; those films, actors and technicians who probably should have, but for one reason or another were not nominated for a naked gold guy.

And speaking of golden guys, there's lovely Ryan Gosling, passed over for both People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive and an Oscar nom, Tsk-tsk. So sad. So pretty. So talented. At least they didn't add insult to injury by nominating Bradley Cooper for an award. Happily, Ryan's in good company. Leo Dicaprio was similarly ignored for his turn in Clint Eastwood's fairly unliked J. Edgar. Of course, critical darling Michael Fassbender was ignored (well, Oscar-wise) for his performance in Shame, though I know plenty of folks who would give him an award just for a certain body part which gets lots of screen time in the film. Andy Sirkus was likewise ignored for his motion-capture performance in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (though many think the Academy should create a special category for this increasingly popular type of performance). And what of Patton Oswalt in Young Adult, who gives what many critics have called a "revelatory" performance? How about Albert Brooks, playing against type as a very bad man in Drive?

On the ladies' team, the always amazing Tilda Swinton was not nominated for her role as the mother of a killer in We Need to Talk About Kevin and Kirsten Dunst was likewise ignored for her role as a depressed bride in Lars van Trier's Melancholia, despite being lauded by nearly every critic on the planet. Charlize Theron in Young Adult; Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene; Sandra Bullock for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close -- all not nominated. 

Directors left out in cold include Stephen Spielberg (Warhorse; The Adventures of Tintin); David Fincher for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Tate Taylor for The Help and David Cronenberg for A Dangerous Method. 

And what about those pesky Best Animated Films? For the first time in years, Pixar is not nominated, though I must admit that Cars 2 is hardly their best effort. But no love for Tintin or Puss in Boots? 

As for Best Picture -- well that list could be very long: Shame; Melancholia; Drive; Bridesmaids; Super 8; Martha Marcy May Marlene; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 50/50 (among many other excellent films) were all ignored. To quote my favorite 70's madcap comedy (and 10 points to the first person who can identify it): "C'est la vie. C'est la guerre. C'est la drek!"

In the end, awards mean nothing, especially when a relatively bad movie like The Help (don't hate on me - it really isn't all that good) can get nominated. I mean, look at Crash. That piece of crap actually won against Ang Lee's beautiful, powerful and wrenching Brokeback Mountain (something I will probably complain about until the day I die). Maybe someday Academy nominators will actually get it right. Though I doubt it.

If you love a movie others hate, or vice-verse, so what? Art is purely subjective. Of course, one has to draw the line somewhere. Mine is drawn at The Smurfs. And Chipwrecked. And the deplorable remake of Arthur. Dame Helen, what were you thinking?

Anyway, here's the trailer for one of my favorite movies of 2011: 

More, anon.
Prospero

Post-Holiday Blahs

Here it is, January 10th, and I'm already feeling the blahs. We spend the entire last quarter of the year focused on the last week of the year, with all these expectations of how it's supposed to be and how we're going to find the 'perfect' gifts and hoping that those who love us will get us the 'perfect' gifts. We shop and cook and shop and bake and shop and hope that we can find a slice of joy to propel us into the new year. And then it's all over. We're left with torn paper and unraveled ribbons, dried-out Douglas firs, champagne hang-overs and resolutions we know we won't keep much past March 1st, if at all. 

And yes, I have much to look forward to in the coming months. I'll start rehearsing a new show at the beginning of next month. And there's that tax-refund that I hope will help pay some bills and maybe help finance a trip to somewhere warm. By the time Spring rolls around, hope will be renewed and we'll all be looking forward to the second quarter where we'll scramble to find fun in the sun for a few months. In the U.S., Memorial Day is the unofficial start of Summer and many folks will be headed to the local beaches or parks to celebrate with grilled ribs, hot-dogs, hamburgers and potato salad. There will be trips to theme parks and water parks and swimming in lakes, ponds, pools and oceans. July 4th will roll around with its fireworks and parades, accompanied by more grilling and drinking. And before we know it, Labor Day will arrive, signaling the end of summer fun. Stores will start filling up with costumes and masks and animatronic zombies and the whole cycle will start over again. No wonder Santa looks so tired and sad.

So, my New Year's wish for both you and myself is for something different. Something new and exciting. Something you, your friends and family will talk about for years to come. It could be a new job; a new baby; a new place to visit or a new friend and/or lover. It might be something as simple as a new recipe or a new outfit, or something complicated like a new job or a new relationship. Whatever it is, I hope it shakes us all out of our Winter doldrums and reminds us of how wonderful, precious and singular our lives truly are.

I didn't mean to bum you out or bring you down or ruin the Holiday High you might still be milking for all it's worth. Instead, I'm hoping both you and I will be pumped for whatever the New Year might bring - success or failure; joy or sorrow. Whatever 2012 brings, embrace it and make the most of it

because once it's gone, it's gone. In any event, here's at least one thing I'm looking forward to in the coming year:

Christopher Nolan always gives me the most wonderful birthday presents! Now that's something to look forward to!

More, anon.
Prospero

Uncle P's Last Post of 2011

Have fun and be safe tonight. If you drink, don't drive. Don't let your friends drink and drive. Don't get in a car with a drunk driver. You'd been missed too much.

I wish you all a very happy, healthy, prosperous and peaceful New Year! And I also want to thank you again, for reading my nonsense every day. I just started following my stats (I know - it's been almost four years), and I am amazed to see hits from all over the world. I hope I can keep you interested enough to keep you reading in 2012.

More, next year.

Prospero

2012 - Year of the Fairy Tale Movie

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   I've already posted the trailers for the two Snow White movies being released next year. Now comes the trailer for openly gay director Bryan Singer's upcoming take on 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' Jack the Giant Killer. Singer (best known for directing The Usual Suspects; the first two X-Men movies and the much maligned and under-appreciated Superman Returns), has cast Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy; X-Men: First Class); Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge!); Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada); Bill Nighy (Sean of the Dead; Love, Actually); Ian McShane ("Deadwood;" Snow White and the Hunstman) and Eleanor Tomlinson (Alice in Wonderland) in the story of a poor boy whose magic beans grow a giant stalk which leads to a land of giants. Singer's film has nothing to do with the terrible 1962 movie of the same name, which also has nothing to do with beans.

Here's the trailer (once again via):

But Singer is just the latest to jump on the Fairy Tale bandwagon. Both ABC and NBC beat the film studios to the punch with ABC's very silly "Once Upon a Time" and NBC's darker and far superior "Grimm." And it hardly stops there. Also scheduled for 2012 is Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, from Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola. Starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Atterton. Peter Storemare and Famke Janssen in a story about the grown-up siblings offering their services as the title suggests. And then there's the 3D re-release of Disney's Beauty and the Beast; the animated Dorothy of Oz and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.   

Of course, director Terry Gilliam (Brazil) was way ahead of the curve with 2005's also much-maligned and under-appreciated The Brothers Grimm, starring Matt Damon and the much-missed Heath Ledger:

And that movie has nothing to do with the "Star Studded" 1962 cheesefest, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm:

So glad I was too young to appreciate that craptacular, even at 'popular prices!'

More, anon.
Prospero

It's About Time

Horror fans have been drooling to see producer Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods for almost three years, now. Written and directed by Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard ("Lost;" "Angel;" "Alias") and starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor; The Avengers); Jesse Williams ("Grey's Anatomy"); Richard Jenkins (Let Me In; "Six Feet Under"); Bradley Whitford ("The West Wing") and Amy Acker ("Dollhouse"), The Cabin in the Woods supposedly takes a familiar trope and turns it on its ears.

As in Sam Raimi's seminal The Evil Dead, a group of young people head out to spend their holiday at a remote cabin in the woods, only to be confronted by creatures and forces beyond their ken. From the trailer just released, it appears that The Cabin in the Woods is a bizarre combination of The Evil Dead; Friday the 13th; Wrong Turn and Cube with a dash of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre thrown in for good measure.

Completed in 2009, The Cabin in the Woods got caught up in MGM's financial debacle, delaying it's release until Lionsgate finally picked it up for distribution. It has at last been scheduled for release on April 13th, 2012. Sadly, that's the opening night of Hairspray. I suppose that means I'll have to see it at a matinee that weekend.

I can't decide if I need to see this movie in 3D or not. Maybe if Scorcese had directed...

More, anon.
Prospero

The Innkeepers

Director Ti West made a splash with 2009's The House of the Devil, a about a baby sitter who takes the wrong job and which I have yet to see. Unfortunately, I did see Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, West's Direct-to-Video sequel to Eli Roth's hilarious horror debut. Poor acting, bad special effects, lame sex jokes and a ridiculous plot made CB2 a movie definitely worth skipping. But House of the Devil was a critical darling of sorts, and all the buzz about his latest effort have me very curious.

The Innkeepers takes place during the last weekend of business of the Yankee Peddlar Inn, a supposedly haunted New England hotel. The hotel's last two employees, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), are determined to prove that the woman who reportedly haunts the hotel actually existed, and that the place is actually haunted. Kelly McGillis (Top Gun) makes a rare film appearance as a medium who claims she can help the amateur ghost hunters communicate with the spirits in the hotel.

Just about everything I've read about The Innkeepers has been positive. Those who've seen it say that it is a character-driven and atmospheric ghost tale with a measured pace and effective scares. Paxton appeared in 2009's remake of Last House on the Left and Healy has an extensive list of credits, including Magnolia;  Ghost World and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

The trailer is spooky enough. I only hope the movie lives up to the hype. The Innkeepers is scheduled for a February 2nd, 2012 release.

More, anon.
Prospero

The End of the World (As Hollywood Knows It)

Now that Roland Emmerich's apocalyptic, "disaster porn" film 2012 is actually upon us, I thought I'd re-run and update a post from this past January. It was all about how Hollywood has envisioned the End of the World in oh so many variations.

Emmerich's movies are usually pretty terrible (though I must admit to having a soft spot for Stargate, but that probably has more to do with James Spader and Kurt Russell than anything else). And while Independence Day is certainly entertaining enough, the less said about Godzilla; The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 BC, the better (Jake and Steven, aside).

Based on ridiculous speculation by people with more time on their hands than they deserve to have, 2012 posits that because the Mayan calender has only been calculated up to t December 21, 2012, that's when the world will end. Of course, any sane person will tell you that 12-21-12 is simply when they stopped calculating and that the date holds no other significance than that, despite what some nutballs would have you believe. Of course, Emmerich has taken the nutballs' ideas and run with them in an orgy of CGI destruction that rivals any EoW (End of the World) movie to come before. John Cusak, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover lend their talents to what critics are already describing as the 'unintentionally funniest movie of the year:'

But, Hollywood being Hollywood, 2012 is hardly the first time they've depicted the End of Days. In 1951, Director Rudolph Mate and producer George Pal (War of the Worlds) gave us When Worlds Collide starring Richard Derr and Barbara Rush in a story about a gigantic asteroid headed toward Earth and the effort to evacuate as many 'important' people as possible:

In 1959, director Stanley Kramer took on the EoW via nuclear war and the fallout that follows in On the Beach, starring Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire and Ava Gardner:

in 1962, director Steve Sekely gave us his film version of the John Wyndham novel The Day of the Triffids. A spectacular meteor shower blinds most of the world's population, leaving them ripe for annihilation via an ambulatory vegetable from space. The movie is probably best known for its inclusion in the song "Late Night Science Fiction Picture Show" from the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "And I really got hot, when I saw Janette Scott/ Fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills..."

And here's a terrific student-made trailer for the remake this film deserves:

Janette Scott would make another EoW appearance in Andrew Marton's 1965 film about the apocalypse, The Crack in the World. This time, it's mankind's hubris that brings about the end. Attempting to harness the apparently unlimited geothermal energy at the Earth's core, scientists detonate a nuclear bomb inside a volcano, setting off a series of cataclysmic events. Johnny Douglas' terrific score helps make this one a favorite of yours truly:

In 1978, George A. Romero gave us the first true 'Zombie Apocalypse' movie Dawn of the Dead, in which a rag-tag group tries to survive while holed up in a suburban shopping mall. The End has never been quite so scary (or gruesome):

In 1983, the ABC network brought us The Day After, a chilling post-nuclear tale about the effects of fallout and the efforts to survive an attack by the Reds. They issued warnings that young children shouldn't watch and school districts around the country offered counseling to their students who may have been unsettled or upset by its graphic depictions of destruction and the effects of radiation poisoning:

12 years later, James Cameron brought his own vision of nuclear annihilation at the hands of a sentient computer program in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, his FX groundbreaking sequel to The Terminator:

ABC destroyed the world again in 1991 with Mick Garris' mostly excellent version of author Stephen King's The Stand. This time, it's a virus which kills off most of the population, though the Devil (in the form of actor Jamey Sheriden) has a lot to do with the horrors visited on humanity:

Personally, I would have made a few different casting choices. Laura San Giacomo in particular is all wrong for her role, but it still remains one of the better adaptations of a King novel.

In 2002, director Danny Boyle took on the Zombie Apocalypse with his movie 28 Days Later, in which a virus accidentally released by animal rights activists decimates Great Britain, much to blue-eyed beauty Cillian Murphy's consternation:

And probably most infamously, overrated director M. Night Shamalama-Ding-Dong took on the genre with his ridiculous 2008 killer trees movie, The Happening. As before, the movie is so bad, I can only bring myself to post the "South Park" parody:

Finally, in the hands of Ruben Fleischer, the EoW is a hilarious pastiche of zombie-killing and amusement park rides, punctuated by celebrity cameos and wanton destruction of all that we now hold dear. Zombieland may well be the most financially successful zombie movie ever, but it is also a telling story of survival and camaraderie among the worst of circumstances:

And while the real End of the World will probably take place with a fiery explosion when the Sun inevitably goes nova, you and I and the Internet will probably be long gone (unless of course, mankind actually manages to colonize other planets). But I'll leave that up to the Sci-Fi futurists and take solace in the fact that I will not be around to see it. Quite honestly, I've barely scratched the surface when it comes to EoW movies. There are plenty more where these came from. Mad Max; A Boy and His Dog; The Omega Man; Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes (why is Charleton Heston always around for the EoW? -- Did Hollywood expect him to live forever?). I could go on and on (unlike the human race will). So, what's your favorite Hollywood Apocalypse? You know I love your comments.

More, anon.
Prospero