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2012 was a great year for Craft Beer, but just an okay year for movies…And given a year that’s not been the best, it’s tough to come up with ten movies strong enough to make our Top-10 list…So we won’t. This year’s list highlights five films we liked and that you might want to check out…
So here are, in no particular order, Our Favorite Movies of 2012.
Argo – When exactly did Ben Affleck morph into such a talented director? With the release of Argo, the dude is three for three (including “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Town”) and now stands with the best of America’s “next generation” directors. And it’s a joke that he’s been ignored in this year’s academy awards nominations. “Argo” is a smart little thriller about a little-known chapter of the Iranian hostage crisis. It’s a dramatization of the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran orchestrated by an operative posing as a film maker trying to make a “Star Wars-like” movie in Iran. With “Argo,” Affleck has crafted an amazing movie that you probably wouldn’t believe – if it wasn’t true!
Looper – Rian Johnson’s “Looper” is the most entertaining and thought-provoking science-fiction movie of last year. This futuristic action piece mixes time travel and paid assassins called “loopers” and stars Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt. In the future, time travel has been invented – but it’s illegal and only used by criminals on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they send their target 30 years into the past, where a “looper” like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – is waiting to kill and dispose of the victim. Things get complicated when the mob decides to “close the loop” by sending back Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination. Looper is a mind-boggling thriller – it’s also a whole lot of fun!
The Master – Art flicks don’t get any weirder or any more compelling than “The Master” that’s for sure. Written, directed, and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, “The Master” stars Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. “The Master” is a post-World War II story of a Scientology-like movement called “The Cause” – it’s L. Ron Hubbard-like founder (Hoffman) and a damaged war vet (Phoenix) struggling to fit into society after the war.
The Dark Knight Rises – We know…we know, it’s not as good as the last one, but Christopher Nolan’s final installment to his Batman trilogy still remains among the best superhero films ever made. Christian Bale reprises his role as the caped crusader, Tom Hardy stars Batman’s nemesis, Bane, and Anne Hathaway appears as Selina Kyle – the best Catwoman ever!
Zero Dark Thirty– Kathryn Bigelow is a director to be reckoned with. She proved that with “The Hurt Locker” and again with this year’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” which has only been released in select markets but will see a nationwide rollout this month. It chronicles the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden and his eventual death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L. Team 6 in May 2011. Filmed in docu-drama style, Zero Dark Thirty stars Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, and Chris Pratt and it’s destined to become a classic.
Honorable Mentions: (and all Weekend Picks) include, Django Unchained, The Grey, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hunger Games, Skyfall, and Ted.
