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Best Actor - Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln
I fucking love Daniel Day-Lewis. Other than Nine, I can’t think of a single movie that he’s been in that I didn’t absolutely love his performance. I dare you, try to name one. Gangs of New York? Give that man an Oscar (not fucking Adrian Brody!) In the Name of the Father? Fucking awesome! There Will Be Blood? He can drink my milkshake whenever the fuck he wants. This man is an acting genius. Just give him the fucking Oscar. Now.
Best Actress - Jessica Chastain as Maya in Zero Dark Thirty/Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables
I cheated here and named two actresses. But, to be fair, I picked one leading and one supporting. Also, this is my blog, so fuck you, I’ll do what I want. Jessica Chastain has been gradually delivering more moving performances ever since she gained everyone’s attention with The Debt. Now she is a bona fide leading lady!
Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, has already been living the good life as a leading lady for years now. And, recently, it has been a lot of shit. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at her IMDB page. Rio, Bride Wars, Alice in Wonderland, Valentine’s Day. Really? She’s going on a bender with shitty (but somehow profitable) movies. Then, this year she decided “hey, maybe I should be good again.” And BAM! Dark Knight Rises happened and people remembered that she didn’t just do shitty rom-coms and just overall terrible films. Of course, TDKR didn’t showcase her phenomenal acting ability, but Les Miserables sure did. As someone who NEVER cared about Fantine’s character the three times I saw the show or any time I’ve watched the 10th or 25th anniversary performances, I can tell you that Hathaway finally elicited a response from her. Her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” was just fucking spot on. She was barely in the movie, but stole the show with that one number. I hope she sticks with this trend and stops doing the massproduced shit she’s been doing for the last four years.
Biggest Disappointment - Frankenweenie
Frankenweenie wasn’t a BAD movie, per se. It just wasn’t good. I don’t know why I expected it to be in the first place. I mean, Tim Burton hasn’t made a good movie since 2003. Yea, I said it, he fucking sucks. He came close to good with Sweeney Todd, but it just didn’t work for me. I thought maybe that Frankenweenie would at least be good enough to make me respect Burton a little more, but no. There was very little to like about this movie. I mean, the best part was towards the end of the film (not going to spoil it or anything) when she gets real. But then the ending goes back to complete shit. The only redeeming qualities of this film are the Weird Girl and the Cat-Bat. Seriously, there is a Cat-Bat. Almost as cool as Man-Bat.
Biggest Surprise - 21 Jump Street
I already talked about how awesome this movie was in my “Top 20 of 2012” post. But let me just say it again: I can’t believe how good this movie was. In a world where everything is either a remake or an adaptation, I try not to get too excited for a remake like this. I mean, Jonah Hill is still great (especially in Moneyball and hilarious in Django Unchained) but I just didn’t think that his pairing with Channing Tatum would work. Needless to say, I went into the film with very low expectations. Man was I surprise when I walked out. That movie was full of hilarious scenarios and just ridiculous shit that worked. Rob Riggle was so fucking funny as the gym teacher. And Ice Cube as their Captain was priceless. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Brie Larson is fucking hot.
Breakout Performance - Tom Holland as Lucas in The Impossible
All I heard about this movie before I saw it was how good Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor were. And yes, they were fantastic, but I was shocked at how little buzz I heard about Tom Holland, who plays their eldest son. This is (to me) his film debut (if you don’t count his voice work for The Secret World of Arietty) and I just couldn’t believe how moving his performance was. In a movie that is driven by some really heavy themes, this kid stepped up and rocked it. When you are working with such amazing talent, like McGregor and Watts, you almost have to get your shit together and just do it. And that is exactly what he did.
Actor of the Year - Matthew McConaughey
I was torn between McConaughey and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who also had a great year) but I had to go with McConaughey because he is way past his prime and even at his prime, he wasn’t all that amazing. This year alone, he had roles in Magic Mike, Killer Joe, Bernie and The Paperboy. While The Paperboy wasn’t anything special, his performance definitely stood out in a sea of crap. I guess the reason I picked him is because he is usually so one note and unimpressive, and in all of these movies he stood out to me, especially in Killer Joe. I think he really shines in these smaller indie movies (though Magic Mike was a little bigger than that.) It’s almost like you tell him “Hey, a majority of the public won’t see this” and that’s his trigger to do something out of the norm for him. Now, let me just go on record as saying: he doesn’t deserve any awards or anything for what he’s done, but I think he deserves recognition for what he accomplished this year. I equate this a lot to what Sandra Bullock did in 2009 with The Blind Side. She gave a better than normal performance, and, deservedly, got a lot of attention for it. But in no way did she deserve an Oscar for just being ridiculously better than her usual crap. So, yea...go see those movies if you haven’t and bask in the glory that is Matthew McConaughey.
Actress of the Year - Jennifer Lawrence
I know this seems like an odd choice, seeing as she was in what was quite possibly the worst movie of the year (House at the End of the Street) but stick with me here. Jennifer Lawrence entered everyone's radar after giving an incredibly moving performance in the less-than-alright film Winter's Bone in 2010. Since then, she has done one movie that people really saw, that movie being X-Men: First Class. Sadly, her role of Mystique in the film didn't allow her to showcase her acting ability. Then we come to 2012, where she gets the chance to prove why everyone loves her. She first got to show how she could carry a franchise on her shoulders by playing the annoying main character in The Hunger Games. Somehow, she made the character that, in the books, I wanted to die on every page, in a way that made me love her. She took all of those quirky aspects of Katniss and made them amazing. Then she really wowed people in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook. This time she showed how she can play off of other amazing actors to really magnify the excellence of all of the performances. Every scene with her and Bradley Cooper was so well acted that I almost didn't feel like I was watching a movie. Both of them sucked me into the film and made it seem so real and fluid. It isn't often that movies can pull me in to that extent, and when one does, I can't forget it. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that she is a fucking bombshell. Seriously, anyone who claims that she is too "big" is just retarded.
Worst Movie of the Year - Gone/Stolen/The Watch
There were some atrocious films this year that I actually sat through. I had so much trouble sifting through the shit that I cheated and picked three worst films. All of them are terrible on different levels and for different reasons, but they are ALL very terrible.
Gone stars Amanda Seyfried as a batshit crazy girl who thinks her sister was kidnapped by the man who kidnapped her. I won't deny that this movie had a novel idea and could have been great...but went in the complete wrong direction. The writing was horrid and the direction was just as bad. If not for the fact that I find Seyfried to be an incredible actress (and gorgeous, to boot), I would have shut this crap off. Too bad I didn't because I had to see one of the worst endings in film history.
I think I can sum up the terribleness of Stolen in just one sentence. It is Taken, but with Nic Cage.
The Watch was a movie that I was genuinely excited about. How could they go wrong with the cast that they had. Just make it about some guys doing a neighborhood watch and seeing ridiculous she and reacting to it very poorly. But NO! they had to make it some stupid fucking faux sci-fi flick. Whose bright idea was that? Why couldn't they have more situations like the neighbor with the orgy in his basement? That would have been far more entertaining.
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I could probably go on and have like 100 superlatives for the year, but I think I'll leave it at that. Hope you gained a few nuggets of knowledge from what I put down here. If not, well...then I guess I'm a fucking failure. Or you're an idiot. I'm gonna go with the latter.
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