Movie Freak
Back at the tail end of June I wasn’t too sure 2012 was going to be all that great a year for cinema. Sure there were some terrific and ballsy flicks that I liked one heck of a lot (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Kill List, Moonrise Kingdom, Safety Not Guaranteed, a handful of others) but there wasn’t a ton I was completely over the moon about. I loved The Hunger Games. I enjoyed John Carter more than most. But other than some intriguing foreign titles, and the emergence of Channing Tatum, of all people, as a bona fide superstar with legitimate talent to burn, I wasn’t crowing about much, and I was starting to think coming up with ten titles to list as the year’s best was going to be an impossibility.
Channing Tatum in Magic Mike © Warner Bros
Fast forward through the next six months and how things have changed. By my count there are 52 films worthy of discussion and debate in regards to being amongst the year’s top efforts. More than that, at any given moment there are 15 or so titles that could easily enter in my own best-of countdown. For my money, that doesn’t make 2012 a great year it makes it a borderline spectacular one, and I’m more or less positive that we’re going to be talking about a number of these releases for many years to come.
With that in mind, here are my picks as the best movies to hit theaters in 2012. I’m more or less happy with the list, if not with actual placements, and at any given moment films just outside of the upper echelon could easily sneak in displacing some of those currently in residence within. Like all art, one’s feelings and interpretations are fluid and in a constant state of flux, and while I’m content at the moment who’s to say five, ten years from now when I look back on all of this I’ll have rearranged things considerably. With that out of the way, onto the list!
