2012 Favorites

We now return you to 2013, already in progress

I keep hearing myself say, “I told you the best movies from 2011 were Take Shelter, Another Earth, and Jane Eyre.”  In part so that I can cite the fact that I “told you,” and mostly just because I’ve been wanting to for awhile, I will now hold the Richard Lives equivalent of the Oscars once annually (called “Favorites” because I don’t presume to be any more of an authority on the subject than I seem to be [not to say I don’t make better decisions than the Academy, but I digress]) .  The rules I set for myself are as follows:

I.  Only include movies that I’ve seen/written about here.

II.  Set early February as a deadline.  Do it during awards season.  As such, I won’t have seen every movie of the year, in large part because of my location (for example, I am doing this list before having seen Rust and Bone, as I may not get to it anytime soon.  Apologies to Marion Cotillard, who surely doesn’t need my approval).

III.  Only include movies from the year in question.  Sometimes I see films from the previous year that I never got around to and write about them if I need to, so you’ll see them mixed in with the new movies.  Look at the year of release, listed at the bottom of each review, if you’re wondering why The Lie isn’t included in this year’s list.

IV.  No more than 5 nominees for each category.  Some have fewer.  Some have only one, such as “Favorite Character,” which we’ll also call the Highlander Award, just for fun.

V.  Be honest.  As much as I may like to be seen disagreeing with the Academy, Les Mis was pretty damn good.

I’ll explain the categories as we go, if the parameters aren’t obvious.  The “Body of Work” actor and actress awards refer to actors who had the most prolific year (varied roles, great performances).  2011’s winner was, of course, Jessica Chastain, with seven major roles and no equal in performance and character assortment.

Some categories have several nominees.  Some don’t.  Categories with multiple nominees may have a star (*) next to one, indicating my personal favorite of the year’s best.  However, since the nominees aren’t actually receiving anything from me (positive encouragement notwithstanding) and considering the fact that many of these roles/films are really not comparable (for instance, how do you compare Hugh Jackman’s performance with Woody Harrelson’s and Daniel Day-Lewis’s, and then decide which is somehow “best”?  “Best” according to what characteristics shared by all three?), you may consider all nominees equal winners if I’ve chosen not to “star” anything.  Click the links (movie titles) to see my original reviews.

Without further ado:

Best Pictures

Safety Not Guaranteed             

A Late Quartet                        

Moonrise Kingdom

Les Misérables

Zero Dark Thirty

Best screenwriting

Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained 

Derek Connolly – Safety Not Guaranteed     

Martin McDonagh – Seven Psychopaths    

James Ellroy/Oren Moverman – Rampart

Brit Marling – Sound of My Voice 

Favorite character

Léa Seydoux as Sidonie Laborde – Farewell, My Queen

Best Actress (single performance)

Jessica Chastain as Maya – Zero Dark Thirty*

Lea Seydoux as Sidonie Laborde – Farewell, My Queen

Juno Temple as Lily – Little Birds  

Jennifer Lawrence as Tiffany – Silver Linings Playbook 

Sarah Hayward as Suzie – Moonrise Kingdom 

Best Actress (body of work)

Jennifer Lawrence

Best Actor (single performance)

Woody Harrelson as Dave Brown – Rampart*

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln – Lincoln

Michael Fassbender as David – Prometheus

Richard Gere as Robert Miller – Arbitrage

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Robert – A Late Quartet*

Best actor (body of work)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Best supporting actress

Brie Larson as Helen – Rampart*

Imogen Poots as Alexandra – A Late Quartet*

Brit Marling as Maggie – Sound of My Voice

Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette – Farewell, My Queen

Best supporting actor

Christoph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz – Django Unchained

Robert De Niro as Patrizio Solitano – Silver Linings Playbook

Ben Whishaw as Robert Frobisher – Cloud Atlas

Best director

Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty*

Oren Moverman – Rampart

Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained

                                                                                                                                                   Best book-to-film adaptation

Anna Karenina

Les Misérables*

Silver Linings Playbook       

Dark Horse Favorite

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Biggest letdowns

Skyfall

The Expendables 2

Ruby Sparks
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Most Popular Review

The Moth Diaries

Actors who wrote to me

Lily Cole

Lauren Ashley Carter

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Thanks for reading.  See you next year.

A Late Quartet

Unleash your passion

Allow me to share a lovely tidbit concerning movie dialogue, as suggested to me by a certain poet with whom I saw Yaron Zilberman’s A Late Quartet: “It’s good dialogue if a character says something and you’re not sure if they’re right.”  Yes.  In real life, your friends don’t speak in laconics, in absolutes, in spartan phrases that tie the meaning of everything that’s happened that day into a pretty bow.  A Late Quartet features dialogue so rich and a plot so adeptly structured that we not only appreciate and recognize the complexities of the characters’ conflicts, but we also know what else they’re thinking about as they speak.

As the story begins, an era ends: Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken), cellist in a famous string quartet – The Fugue, who have played over three thousand concerts – has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, and has decided that this will be his final season.  The rest of the quartet is comprised of Daniel (Mark Ivanir), the controlling and humorless First Violinist, Juliette (Catherine Keener), the viola player, and Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Juliette’s husband, who thinks the quartet has grown dull and predictable due to Daniel’s failure to “take risks” (including his steadfast refusal to play Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131, without the music in front of them).  After Peter’s quiet announcement that he will only play one more show, Robert reveals that he would like to begin switching chairs with Daniel.  Since Peter’s replacement will not require this change, the group suspect that Robert has desired this for some time, and we soon bear witness to his inferiority complex not only within the quartet, but at home.

The film is split into three main conflicts.  Chiefly, Peter’s departure from the quartet and the struggles of the group to not only come to terms with his illness and abrupt exeunt after twenty-five years, but also to find someone worthy of replacing him – they push for Nina Lee (played by herself), but she’s already in a trio with the stubborn Gideon (Wallace Shawn), and remains a Godot character until the end.  Secondly, Robert’s frustration with the quartet spills into his home life, and he winds up having a one-night stand with a running buddy (Liraz Charhi), which he’s unable to hide from Juliette even for a day.  However ill-intentioned Hoffman’s characters have been in the past, Robert never becomes a stock “bad husband” character, and his attempts at Juliette’s forgiveness are heartfelt and sincere.  Lastly, Robert and Juliette have a daughter in her early twenties, Alexandra (Imogen Poots), who is taking private violin lessons with Daniel.  Their antagonistic student-teacher relationship veils not only mutual admiration, but a secret love/lust, and they begin an affair, which the headstrong Alexandra is less than hesitant to reveal to her mother, whom she believes has not been there for her due to the quartet’s seven-month-a-year touring schedule.  These issues, while organically developed and expertly paced, come to a head during a final practice at Peter’s house, and the fate of the quartet and their relationships hang in the air during the only possible climax for this story: the first concert of the Fugue’s final season.

Finally, we have a film not based upon contrivance, not a half-hearted remake, not a blasphemous adaptation of a beloved novel, and not cash-raking action fare.  It also doesn’t get caught up in its own “science” – the film explores the inner workings of a string quartet, and in such detail that any musician would likely be convinced that Zilberman knows his material, but nothing is included that does not push the story forward or deepen the characters.  This is the kind of film that should be taking home little golden men in February, and not just because of its structure and depth.  The performers, who have lately fallen into unchallenging roles (with the exception of Hoffman, whose role in The Master was a gem at the center of an otherwise disastrous film) shine as the members of the Fugue, and clearly spent time learning at least the basics of their characters’ instruments and how to make themselves look like professionals doing their life’s work.  Keener plays Juliette as a realistically conflicted and humble mother, wife, and friend.  Walken ceases his predictable comedy and self-parody to remind us that he’s an Academy Award winner and can radiate dramatic multitudes (not just caricature) with his mannerisms.  Ivanir plays Daniel as a sympathetic loner, and despite how inappropriate his relationship with Alexandra might be, we want him to have something good for a change.  Imogen Poots is Alexandra, and her rather angsty acting style sticks out due to her being the only young character in the film, but she holds her own with the older, more experienced actors, and the careful writing prevents Alex from ever coming off as a bratty kid.

I know a few people who will likely tell me that they haven’t seen Walken in a film this year, and wonder what he’s doing.  Those are the same people who would find a film like this “boring” – no fighting?  No superheroes?  No galactic threat?  I say screw the galaxy.  Try caring about human nature.  As the above-mentioned poet concluded about this film, “There’s nothing stupid in it.”

A Late Quartet (2012); written and directed by Yaron Zilberman; starring Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Mark Ivanir, and Imogen Poots.