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

———

Thanks for reading.  See you next year.

Silver Linings Playbook

Excelsior!

Silver Linings Playbook is the greatest rom-com of its generation.  Why?  Because it’s never played for laughs, and its cozy ending is never guaranteed or taken for granted.  Jennifer Lawrence has already scooped up several awards for her performance, including her second nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars.  Do the majority of the film’s proponents feel that David O. Russell (and to a separate extent, writer Matthew Quick) does an honest job of portraying the mentally ill in a sympathetic light, or do the film’s characters simply fall into line with popular perceptions of folks struggling with these illnesses (i.e. the way we want to think about the “less fortunate”)?  I hope it’s not the latter, but I’d like to explore it a little.

The movie begins with Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a married man with bipolar disorder, returning home after eight months of treatment at a mental health care facility.  His wife, who previously cheated on him, has gone away due to Pat’s violent behavior, and Pat moves back in with his parents, Patrizio, aka Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) and Dolores (Jacki Weaver).  He has always shared a strained relationship with his father, who apparently favored Pat’s brother, Jake (Shea Whigham), and who, as a result of being out of work, has taken up bookmaking (in particular, gambling on Philadelphia Eagles games) to make ends meet.  Pat Sr. associates all sorts of superstitions with the Eagles, displaying mild symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder when games are on – he must hold onto a certain handkerchief for the duration of each game, the remote controls must point in a certain direction while resting on the TV stand, certain family members must sit on certain sections of the couch, and so on.  These are mostly played as the Movie version of OCD (i.e. quirky and ultimately harmless), but thankfully, Pat Sr.’s problems don’t exist as a joke in and of themselves: he desperately wants to reconnect with his son; however, he must do it on his own terms, and we can sympathize with him as a well-meaning (albeit poor) father attempting to rectify mistakes and be a good dad, even though his child is now an adult.

The fun begins when Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) at a dinner with his two married friends, Ronnie (John Ortiz) and Veronica (Julia Stiles).  Tiffany’s husband, a police officer, has recently been killed – not doing cop work, but hit by a car while helping a stranger change a tire.  Tiffany admits to not being thrilled with her relationship in the time leading up to her husband’s death, however, and was fired from her job for, as she puts it, “having sex with everyone in the office.”  Pat asks, “Were there any women?”  “Yes,” she says.  “What was that like?”  “Hot.”  Is O. Russell ogling the then-21-year-old Lawrence here?  Yep, absolutely.  Is he making a joke out of sex addiction?  Maybe; I hope not.  But this scene turns out to be something wonderful, and not throwaway sexualization.  Pat’s reaction (one of titillation and great interest) comes back to haunt him – he accuses Tiffany of being “crazier” than he is, she points out, yet he loved hearing about her sexual escapades.  This brings things right back to the audience.  It’s a scene designed for a certain reaction (particularly from male viewers), but it also invites us to examine why we have the reactions we have, and serves to remind us that no one is immune to hypocrisy.

Tiffany eventually recruits Pat to be her dance partner in exchange for delivering letters from Pat to his estranged wife, who has obtained a restraining order against him.  As an audience, of course, we think, “No!  You two are supposed to end up together!” but they cannot yet see it (also, given their personalities, we’re not too sure a relationship is a good idea).  Pat accepts this dance partnership at the same time as Pat Sr. and Jake attempt to rekindle their familial bonds with him, and this leads to layers and layers of personal conflict that bring every character together on many different levels.  Yes, the characters work as slaves to romantic comedy convention – Meet Cute, Lull Section, Spiteful Sleaze, etc. – but the characters are deepened and developed to the point that the story’s conventional backdrop feels like a cushion.  We know Pat must eventually chase down Tiffany in the end, but the film is only a comedy insofar as Shakespeare’s comedies were: not meant as one big joke throughout, but comforting enough in its conclusion that there’s little to no unease during the walk up the aisle.

Silver Linings Playbook respects its characters and places them, not the concept, beneath the spotlight, however many bits of formula may be visible beneath the gloss.  The various mental/medical struggles of the characters, while oversimplified and polished for the screen, are never played off as lovable quirks, and that’s rare.  Here we see Bradley Cooper’s best performance yet (proving he can do something other than the slick Fonzie type character), and another juggernaut from Jennifer Lawrence, in her third and most special performance of the year.  The scroll of awards she’s collected since 2010 is enough to humble anyone in her age bracket and trade.  Robert De Niro, as the struggling old father, has the Christopher Plummer effect in this movie (maybe because his relationship with Cooper’s Pat is close to home) – when he gets teary, so do I.  Jacki Weaver’s and Shea Whigham’s characters are used well, and there’s even an appearance from Chris Tucker, who pops up now and again as Danny, Pat’s hospital-mate and the film’s resident comic relief.

Roger Ebert said of this movie, “[it’s] so good, it could almost be a terrific old classic.”  When the AFI does its “200 Years” list, I have every confidence that it will be considered one.  Let’s just remember to thank John Milton for the title.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012); written and directed by David O. Russell; adapted from the novel by Matthew Quick; starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Jacki Weaver.