It's that time of the year to gear up for Sunday's big Oscar show. Luckily I was able to get back to writing just in time to do my week of movie themed Top 5's leading up to the big show. It's my favorite week of writing this blog. I'll start things off with Top 5 Action Films. This year I stretched the definition of action to include horror films because I didn't see enough horror films this year for them to have their own list. And really, horror is kind of a sub-genre of action anyway. The whole point of the Top 5's leading up to Friday's big Oscar post is to recognize movies that aren't acknowledged by the Academy, so I didn't include anything that may have fit into the genre but was given a nomination. And as always, the lists obviously only include movies I saw, I'm not going to write about something I haven't seen. Here's my Top 5 Favorite Action Movies of 2012...
5) The Grey
This one is popping up on a lot of movie lists this year and rightfully so. It was released in the early part of the year, so it was easy for the awards people to forget it, not to mention the fact that action movies aren't considered award worthy, but this was an intense survival thriller that was intellectual as well and deserved recognition. A lot of people refer to it as the wolf movie, but it was so much more then that. It was an exciting exploration into the human condition of survival. How long and to what extent will we fight to stay alive? At one point does one give in to the inevitability of death? And the action was intense and well shot as well. It was a movie that worked on two levels and that seems to be rarer and rared these days.
4) Cabin In The Woods
There are two very strong views of this movie, either you loved it or you hated it, and I absolutely loved it. Everything that happened after the "Purge" button was pushed was pure bliss. I struggled a bit on how to classify it, is it a horror movie, is it a comedy, is it a drama. I went with horror (so for this list's purposes, action) since that's the genre it is most trying to comment on. I know that the whole "story inside a story" aspect of the movie bothered many, I thought it was genius and feel any true horror fan should love this film. They found a way to mock the genre's tropes without turning the whole movie into a farce. It felt like a true horror film even though it was more about making a horror film or at least the people who make all things horror.
3) Skyfall
As I've written before, I think, when all is said and done, that this will rank as one of the top 5 Bond movies of all time, if not the best. It certainly had some flaws and I totally acknowledge the Home Alone ending, but there was so much that was great about this film that it was easy to ignore the small problems. I seriously didn't mind that the ending felt a little like Home Alone, because it worked with the story being told and the themes that the makers were trying to deal with. This movie had great performances, great villains, great themes, solid story and tons of James Bond style fun. The writers were able to pay homage to the film series and make those homages a huge part of the central themes of the movie, a totally original and clever task in my eyes. The best part of the movie, though, and the thing that makes it one of my favorite Bond films is the breathtaking cinematography. If this movie doesn't get the Oscar for best cinematography I'm going to riot! I was in awe of the beauty of this films pictures and the amazing clear action scenes. This wasn't the Bourne films where you have no idea who's punching who or what the hell is actually happening, this was action filming at it's absolute best.
2) Looper
This movie surprised me. And that's saying a lot because it was talked about a ton. Somehow elements of the story were never mentioned in the discussions I heard that made it so much more interesting a movie then what I was expecting. I won't ruin it for those who haven't seen it, but this movie goes beyond the time travel genre it centers itself around. That's not to say it isn't mostly a time travel movie with all the tropes and themes one has come to expect from them because that's exactly what it is, but there's story elements that move it beyond your typical time travel movie. The acting was fantastic. Joseph Gordan-Levitt does a great Bruce Willis and Bruce himself does a great aging Bruce Willis. This isn't a deep movie and as time travel movies go, isn't overly complex, but it was a ton of fun and certainly should be included in the best time travel movie discussion.
1) The Dark Knight Rises
I know a lot of people didn't think this was the greatest of movies, but I loved it. I still feel it could have been in the Best Picture running, I mean, it's ten times the movie Life Of Pi is and way more interesting then Amour. The consensus is that The Dark Knight is the best of the Nolan films, but I feel the last half-hour of that movie was unnecessary and dragged things on longer then needed. That wasn't the case with The Dark Knight Rises, it had me captivated right up to the very end. Was it a perfect movie? No, but at the same time I felt people were overly critical about it. Many of the problems others had, I felt were not actually problems or worked in the world that Nolan had created. This was a great movie filled with interesting commentary, wonderful performances and fantastic action. I think that Anne Hathaway should have got the Supporting Actress nod for this movie rather then Les Miserables, it was a much more nuanced and dynamic performance, but she didn't have to sing so I guess that means it's inferior. I saw this one twice in the theater, something I haven't done in a long time, so that should say something about how much I enjoyed this film.
Honorable Mentions: The Hunger Games; The Avengers; Prometheus
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