Ricky D’s 50 Favourite Films of 2012 (Part One) - How many have you seen?

2012 wasn’t a bad year for movies. It was actually a great year. The problem is, the movies we were most anticipating, specifically the Hollywood blockbusters like Prometheus and The Hobbit, didn’t live up to our expectations. With that said I still managed to make a list of 50 films I loved. Maybe I just have bad taste or maybe I just love movies but the most time consuming factor when making this list was sitting down and deciding what makes the cut and what doesn’t. Even with 50 films listed below, I found it hard to not include movies like Frankenweenie, The Loneliest Planet, Compliance, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, and Searching For Sugar Man. Come to think of it, every film featured on our list of best documentaries could have easily snuck into this list. I haven’t seen everything of course. Below is a brief list of oversights – but there were a few films that received critical acclaim that I just didn’t like including Alps and Cosmopolis. As with all lists, this is personal and order isn’t too important until you get to my top 10. I could easily rearrange the ordering for any film featured on this list as I enjoy them all.

Note: I am only including movies that were theatrically released. That means I am not including many of the gems I watched at film festivals nor is Zero Dark Thirty eligible.

A few oversights:

The Hunt, Barbara, Attenberg, Almayer’s Folly, The Comedy, Girl Walk / All Day, The Day He Arrives and Neighbouring Sounds.

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Best Movie Moments of 2012 (part three)

20: The Raid: Redemption – The entire film

How does one choose their favourite scene from this high-speed, virtually nonstop adrenaline-packed martial arts pic? Could it be the sequence in which a refrigerator is used to destroy an entire floor of an apartment complex; or perhaps the final showdown between two brothers and the the chief henchmen? Or maybe it could be the sequence in which a machete pierces back n forth through a thin wall – and let us not forget the repeated wall-head-bashing leading to a semi-decapitation. The Raid: Redemption is basically a 101 minute highlight reel for actors Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian and Joe Taslim.

19: The Avengers – Hulk vs. Thor

Perhaps the most unexpected gag found in Whedon’s The Avengers, is a brief moment in after teaming up to fight the villains, Hulk takes no issue in sucker punching Thor, proving that even the big green machine has a sense of humour. It is these comedic beats that helps The Avengers stand apart from most generic superhero movies of late.

18: 21 Jump Street – Fuck Science

21 Jump Street may be the biggest surprise of 2012. This buddy-cop-action-comedy offers two memorable highlights. The first scene comes when Schmidt and Jenko are left with no choice but to swallow the HSM drug, leading to some triply-animated like sequences and culminating with Channing Tatum screaming “Fuck you, science!” He and Jonah Hill find a welcome freedom in their comedy routine, making fun of their expected personas while partnering nicely in some back-and-forth comedy. It’s all about chemistry folks, and these two have it.

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Best Movie Moments of 2012 (part one)

I don’t’ share the popular opinion that 2012 has been a terrible year in film. It hasn’t been as strong as previous years but 2012 gave us such gems as Holy Motors, The Master, Berberian Sound Studio, Tabu, Skyfall and Moonrise Kingdom, to name a few. As with every year, I thought it appropriate to highlight some of the year’s most memorable individual moments, scenes, and sequences, from movies that may or may not have made our individual year-end lists. Which is no small feat considering just how insane the release calendar has become.

We are keeping out credit sequences since we feel it is an art form in itself.

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2012: The Best Movies of March

2012 promises to be a fantastic year in cinema. Not too long ago, we posted a list of thirty of our most anticipated films of 2012, and so I decided I would keep track of my favourite films released each month. Here are my five favourite films released in January.

1- Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Screenplay by Nuri Bilge Ceylan  and Ebru Ceylan

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most interesting directors working on the international scene, and Once Upon A Time In Anatolia might just be his best movie to date. This being his sixth feature, it won the Grand Prize at Cannes last year and as since received critical acclaim around the world.

In this somewhat police procedural / metaphysical road, a group of men (including a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect) drive out in the middle of the night through the Anatolian countryside, in search of a corpse. The mystery isn’t who the killer is but instead where the body was buried since the suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he left his victim. The drama unfolds mostly offscreen but Anatolia is overflowing with deception, betrayal and violence from the start. Nothing is what it seems; but when the body is found, the real questions begin to creep up.

Anatolia is a non traditional, unique and refreshing crime investigation, that is at times darkly funny, subtle and always gorgeous to look at. Cinematographer, Gohkan Tiryaki brilliantly uses light as a storytelling tool. The bare facts of the case emerge from the shadows, and the essential mystery deepens into the long night. The performances are as impeccable as the look; Anatolia is a crime story with emotionally layered characters and the acting here is superb. But it’s Ceylan’s mastery of composition and pacing (made with such confidence) that ranks Anatolia as one of the best films in recent memory. A must see for any patient cinephile.

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2012′s Great Movie Moments: March - the best scenes of movies released last month

At the end of each month, the Sound On Sight staff will band together to write an article about their favourite scenes in films released. Here are our favourite scenes from the month of February.

Click here to see January’s releases

Click here to see February’s releases

Wanderlust – Rudd vs. the mirror

David Wain’s Wanderlust may not turn out to even be one of the 10 best comedies of 2012, but it sure goes a long way to re-establishing Paul Rudd’s comedic bona fides. In a stunningly funny scene, Rudd’s character, George, is about to break his marital vows (with his wife Jennifer Aniston’s blessing) with a beautiful, willing fellow commune resident (Malin Akerman) – but he’s awfully nervous. To work up the nerve, he gives himself a filthy, ultimately nonsensical pep talk that, in all seriousness, rivals the pivotal montage from 25th Hour as the best cinematic use of a self-addressed monologue in recent memory. The only downside: it’s not nearly long enough.

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