Month in Review: December 2012

As the end of the year approaches, one always tries to cram as many movies into the schedule in anticipation of tallying his or her "best-of" list. This December was no different as I tried to make up for a light November with several either highly-acclaimed or highly anticipated movies.

Some of those titles follow. But first, a few oldies:

December is Christmastime after all and we caught up with no less than four adaptations of A Christmas Carol, the best being the classic 1951 version starring Alastair Sim. We also were lucky enough to see the original Miracle on 34th Street in a theater. Having never seen it, part of me expected it to be somewhat cheesy and dated. And it is, but it's also entertaining and quite charming.

Support Your Local Sheriff! and it's kind-of sequel Support Your Local Gunfighter are smart and funny takeoffs of the western, a genre that was more rife for spoofs and revisionist takes by the time of the late 60s/early 70s when these films were released. They're both more than slight, but made more than watchable by the affable James Garner as the title character as well as memorable supporting performances by the likes of Jack Elam and Harry Morgan.

Life of Pi, adapted from the popular young adult novel by Yann Martel about a young Indian boy who gets stranded in the middle of the ocean after a terrible shipwreck, is if nothing a masterful technical achievement by director Ang Lee and his crew--a use of 3D and CGI that makes most other shlocky Hollywood summer blockbusters look like amateur productions at best. But it's also a deeply felt treatise on things such as faith, nature, and even family.

Flight is Robert Zemeckis's first live-action movie in over a decade and features one of the best performances of the year by Denzel Washington, who plays an alcoholic pilot that performs a miraculous feat of heroism during a crash landing. It's exactly the kind of satisfying adult melodrama Hollywood excels at, but rarely makes anymore.

Les Misérables is Tom Hooper's follow-up to his Oscar-winning The King's Speech and, like that earlier movie, his direction is an impediment to both a legitimately moving story and mostly terrific performances. Hooper seems obsessed with cramming his frame into the face of his actors and tilting and moving it in weird directions. His weird combination of almost rococo and surreal is mere distraction, when a subtler visual style would allow the grandness inherent in the story to flourish.

I caught up with three acclaimed documentaries in December as well. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry follows the famous artist/agitator and his battles with the Chinese authorities, particularly over a piece he creates listing the names of students killed during a 2008 earthquake. Steve James's Head Games looks into the world of head trauma in sports. Though people who are familiar with the NFL often hear stories about concussions, this delves even deeper, exposing the dangers that affect athletes in high school and college and even pee wee football and girls soccer. Even more sobering is Kirby Dick's The Invisible War, about the overwhelming accounts of sexual assault in the U.S. military. It's a difficult, but necessary film. I highly recommend each doc and all are currently available on Netflix Instant.

John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was the surprise indie hit of the early summer and it's easy to see why with it's near-regal cast of British legends, led by the always great Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

Away With Her, the debut film from Canadian actress Sarah Polley, announced her as a bright new voice behind the camera, striking because of it's poise and maturity. Her follow-up, Take This Waltz, has Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen as a young couple in a content, if not overly happy marriage. When a handsome neighbor pops up, the obvious complications ensue. It's an honest look at love and infidelity and doesn't shy away from being tough on its own characters.

Josh Trank's Chronicle was a surprisingly smart and fresh take on the superhero movie, filled with novel ideas such as characters and plot instead of mindlessly noisy special effects.

Speaking of mindless, I also saw Chernobyl Diaries.

Before my girlfriend and I rang in the new year watching VH1's 40 Greatest Hip Hop Songs of the 90s, we watched Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris sequel, 2 Days in New York. This one, co-starring Chris Rock, may be slighter--especially about having anything to say about relationships--but it's hilariously funny, with a standout performance by Delpy's real-life and now onscreen father, Albert.

I'll be continuing my frantic screening of the rest of 2012's best movies through the beginning of January and hopefully my annual list will appear shortly thereafter.