Dear Readers,
What a year! I started out 2012 as a man who taught filmmaking, film history and film aesthetics, who therefore might be expected to watch slightly more films than the average person. But then, in July, I was asked to join the Midday with Dan Rodricks show on WYPR, 88.1FM, Baltimore’s NPR News Station, as a film critic, and since that time I have been watching at least twice as many films as I used to. What this means is that I have actually seen – for once – almost all of the movies that we can expect to see nominated for Oscars. Where I am weakest is in the documentary lineup, since I stupidly neglected to attend Silverdocs (a mistake I do not intend to replicate), and they get less theatrical distribution, generally, than even foreign films do.
So here are my lists. I have grouped them as follows:
- Best Films of the Year (a lucky 13)
- Worst Films of the Year (an unlucky 7)
- Most Under-Appreciated Films of the Year
- Most Over-Rated Films of the Year
There would be no point to a film list if it weren’t subjective, so if you have issues with my choices, so be it. Instead of hyper-linking to each film’s imdb page, this time I have linked to my initial review, if one exists. I was surprised to see that some films about which I held strong opinions did not have a review. Hmmmm . . . In any case, if the link takes you to imdb, you’ll know that no review exists. For some films, if I wish to remain in the local press-screening group, I must await those films’ Baltimore openings before I can post my thoughts. Within each list, I avoid rankings, but just put them in alphabetical order. Enjoy!
13 BEST FILMS OF 2012:
- Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman)
- Amazing Spider-Man, The (Marc Webb)
- Amour (Michael Haneke)
- Argo (Ben Affleck)
- Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin) – note – with time, my opinion of this film has been steadily rising
- Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
- Invisible War, The (Kirby Dick)
- Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
- Looper (Rian Johnson)
- Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh)
- Queen of Versailles, The (Lauren Greenfield)
- Sessions, The (Ben Lewin)
- Side by Side (Chris Kenneally)
7 WORST FILMS OF 2012:
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Timur Bekmambetov)
- Alex Cross (Rob Cohen)
- Hunger Games, The (Gary Ross)
- Misérables, Les (Tom Hooper)
- Ted (Seth MacFarlane)
- Twilight Saga 5 – Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (Bill Condon)
- Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection (Tyler Perry)
4 MOST UNDER-APPRECIATED FILMS OF 2012:
- Dark Horse (Todd Solondz)
- Frankenweenie (Tim Burton)
- John Carter (Andrew Stanton)
- Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley)
7 MOST OVER-RATED FILMS OF 2012:
- Anna Karenina (Joe Wright)
- Flight (Robert Zemeckis)
- Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
- Master, The (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
- Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
- Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
Happy New Year, everyone!
chrisreedfilm 
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