Which Films Are My Picks for 2012?

Why do I have to stick to just 10 good pictures of 2012? Keeping in mind there are still some contenders out there, here's my current list in alphabetical order:

1. Argo - As a suspense thriller, the film had all my friends talking for days. Intense drama, well acted.
2. Cloud Atlas - Several stories told as mirrors of various time periods with actors doing several roles.
3. Hope Springs - Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones show what acting means.
4. Hyde Park on Hudson - It got panned but has some scenes that are acting gems. Randy FDR meets those people from "The King's Speech."
5. Liberal Arts - Quiet film by Josh Radner about a college graduate returning to his alma mater in hopes of finding why life has lost meaning. Radner and Emily Olsen play off well with each other.
6. Lincoln - A history lesson with compassion, superb acting and loving production values.
7. Looper - Time travel with Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt playing the same character. Fascinating premises. Also stars Emily Blunt.
8. Moonrise Kingdom - A quirky growing up picture with great cast and top notch writing.
9. Safety Not Guaranteed - My sleeper Indie picture of the year, but I loved every moment. A man advertises for a companion to time travel with him--"safety not guaranteed." When a reporter meets him, she falls in love... and so do we.
10. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor play out a love story in the deserts surrounding the Yemen and get us rooting for the impossible.
11. Silver Linings Playbook - Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence show that Streep and Jones aren't the only couple who know how to act.
12. Skyfall - James Bond dies and is resurrected as he should be.
13. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - A charming tale of elderly travelers trying to find themselves at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in India.
14. The Life of Pi - A boy and a tiger learn about acceptance and love in a boat in the Pacific Ocean. Ang Lee shows what great filmmaking looks like.
15. The Woman in Black - Daniel Radcliff stars in a scary Gothic thriller with real chills and style.

My top pick vascillates daily between Lincoln and The Life of Pi. Both are magnificent.

112 - Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)

Rarely have I been to a film where I thought to myself, what a brilliant scene...well written...well played. Hyde Park on Hudson had scenes like that. While the film may have many flaws, those scene are ultimately etched in my mind.

The trailer for the movie is misleading. It appears to show a romantic comedy centering on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's entertaining the King and Queen of England who have come to the United States pre-war to get America's support if war comes. Wit and warmth are strongly conveyed in the trailer.

The story becomes much darker than the trailer suggests. One of the focuses of the film is Roosevelt's philandering. Played with understatement and charm, Bill Murray allows the viewer an understanding of why people chose to see what they wanted to with Roosevelt in charge. 

The President has an affair with his fifth cousin Daisy (Laura Linney) who realizes only too late in a devastating scene that she is only one of three current mistresses to the President. (The film suggests that polio may have rendered Roosevelt's legs unusable but not other parts.) Roosevelt is seen as charming, selfish, temperamental, a Momma's boy, and the ultimate manipulator. He knows exactly what to say to the young king of England and his wife.

The scene that I reacted so strongly to was the King Bertie and his Queen Elizabeth reacting to Bertie's being put in a room at Roosevelt's mother's home filled with colored vintage cartoons lampooning the 1812 British military. Bertie tells his wife that Roosevelt's mother had apologized but he had mollified her by saying he found them funny. In fact, he is highly embarrassed by them. Elizabeth assumes the Americans are trying to mock them. She is even more incensed when she learns that they will be entertained at a picnic by Native Americans and served hot dogs. She asks Bertie whether this is a way of making fun of them. Olivia Colman' Elizabeth is charming, wary, and devastating when she inadvertently compares Bertie with his brother who abdicated. Samuel West is outstanding as the stuttering king, charming, ill at ease, unsure how to bridge the gap he feels between himself and his wife and the people he visiting. When he tells his wife to never compare him to his brother again, one can feel all the hurt of his situation welling up in him. His ultimate film triumph, merely eating and enjoying a hot dog while all the Americans are judging him, becomes one of the joys of the film. West and Colman are wonderful.

Another of the scenes that plays particularly well is a scene between Roosevelt and Bertie where the elder man charms him by telling him he will be an admirable king. Knowing that Bertie has been at odds with his father, Roosevelt says that "if you were my son, I would be very proud." The two actors are at their best as they compare their handicaps.

Having been to the Hudson Valley many times, I know how beautiful the countryside is. Some of the views are magnificent. Daisy and Franklin have scene in a field of purple clover which is visually stunning. Film viewers only knowing Springwood (Mrs. Roosevelt's estate) from the movie, will be surprised if they see the real mansion.

Although the complete film doesn't quite live up to the brilliance of the couple of scenes described, the film is worth seeing. The main characters performances are memorable and enhanced by Olivia Williams' Eleanor (homely but in control), Elizabeth Marvel (Missy, Daisy's competition), and Elizabeth Wilson (Mrs. Roosevelt).

Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) ****

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111 - Hitchcock (2012)

HBO's The Girl trashed Alfred Hitchcock and reduced him to a one-dimensional sex addict/voyeur who couldn't control his impulses around Tippi Hedren. The film Hitchcock heads into the same psychological landscape, but adds the unique view of Hitch seen through the lens of Wisconsin's Ed Gein, the mass murderer and subject of Robert Bloch's 1959 Psycho. As a character Gein several times has conversations with Hitch.

At the beginning of the film Hitch has just finished Vertigo, which he viewed as a failure. The irony for us, of course, is that many consider it his greatest film. A reporter asks whether he shouldn't just retire and let younger directors do more modern stories. Hitch searches for his next project and finds himself drawn to the salacious sensationalism of Bloch's book. The material in the book is different than anything Hitch normally did. Gein, as a serial murderer, cut off the heads of the women he murdered and kept them as trophies. He also kept his mother's body, which he stole from her grave, and eventually assumed her personality. One wonders if the shocking nature of the book was how Hitch intended to show he was current.

The film maintains a sense of humor throughout. There are several subtle and not too subtle homages to Hitch's other films. Several bird references give a nod to Hitch's film after Psycho. As Hitch struggles with the film, he awakens one night visually referencing Jimmy Stewart's nightmare from Vertigo. There are a couple of scenes reminiscent of his television show monologues to the audience. At the studio a blonde in a grey suit (Vertigo) keeps drawing his attention.

Hitch was known for his witticisms, and Alma (underplayed by Helen Merrin), Hitch's wife of 30 years, proves his match. She is the person he relies the most on, but also the person he most wishes to escape from. Hitch hates his corpulent figure but spends much of the movie drinking or eating, with his wife and secretary acting as mother figures. Alma has to cope with his growing obsessions toward his leading ladies.

Alma helps Hitch with creative decisions--it is her idea to hire Janet Leigh as the star and then kill her off 20 minutes into the film. Later Alma takes over the directing of Psycho when Hitch becomes ill. In an attempt to assert her individualism, she begins writing a script with a male scriptwriter who enjoys flirting with her and subsequently makes Hitch jealous, a feeling she seems to enjoy.

With his new film, Hitch is in transition moving to Paramount Studios who don't want to risk Psycho. Hitch and Alma find they must finance the movie themselves. When Hitch announces they need to sell their home, she asks if they need to sell just the pool or the whole estate.

Anthony Hopkins struggles at times between doing a impersonation of a person the audience knows all too well and finding the real person trapped behind the public mask. He definitely fares better than Toby Jones, who played the nasty Hitchcock of The Girl. Helen Merrin has a much better job with her character because no one knows much about Alma. Scarlett Johansson makes for an amiable and competent Janet Leigh, but isn't required to give much depth except for her filming of the infamous shower scene.

In all, the film was an enjoyable study of the making of one of Hitchcock's most famous films, but isn't one of this year's best.

Hitchcock (2012) ****

 

For another view of the film, read an article on the wife of Psycho's screenwriter here.

110 - Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

The trailer for Silver Linings Playbook is misleading. It makes the film look like a fairly light romantic comedy between two charismatic leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. The film is much darker than the trailer suggests, but the performances of the two main characters make it worth seeing.

Substitute teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) begins the film in a mental institution. His life is in shambles. He has lost his home and his wife, and when his mother springs him from the mental institution, ends up back living in the attic of his parents’ home. Pat is bright, but bipolar with violent tendencies. We learn from his backstory that Nikki his wife had an affair with a fellow teacher and he came home early, found them in the shower together and beat the lover up. He ends up with a restraining order and incarceration in a psyche ward. [His response to his wife's infidelity seemed like pretty logical response.]

To win his wife back, Pat vows to read all the books his wife teaches. In a charming scene, he reads Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and becomes incensed that after the main character struggles to win the lady he loves all through the book, she dies at the end. "What kind of view of the world is that to teach kids?" he asks his parents as he compulsively awakens them in the middle of the night to express his outrage. His father says to have Hemingway apologize to them.

Pat lives in a crazy household. His father, played by Robert De Niro, has compulsive OCD. Out of a job, he bets on the Eagles football team, trying to make enough money to start a restaurant. He determines that his son's having returned home should bring him luck with his bets.

Cooper is charming and a compelling figure on the screen. The camera loves him (and so apparently does the director who devotes a lot of film time to closeup on his expressive face). He meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a widow whose response to her husband's death had been to turn to promiscuity. The two of them begin an awkward courtship, which Pat refuses to acknowledge because he is focused on winning his wife back. As the two develop a relationship, they have a charming scene where they compare their medications and the effects.

Pat eventually agrees to help Tiffany, who wants to enter a dance contest, if she will give Nikki a letter he has written to get her back. Reluctantly, he becomes her partner and the two of them focus on working together. As they learn to dance together and care about each other's needs, we feel they belong together. Pat just does not see it.

Eventually, his father loses money on an Eagles game and blames Pat. In order to help win back his loses, his father and his betting buddy parlay a bet that includes the points for a significant Eagles game against Dallas and the number of points Pat and Tiffany can garner in their dance competition.

Watching the couple perform at the dance contest may not be “Dancing with the Stars,” but it is one of the fun film dances of the last couple of years.

Cooper and Lawrence make this a highly enjoyable two hours.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) *****