10. Pitch Perfect
Movies get bonus points for coming out of nowhere and surprising me, which is exactly what
Pitch Perfect did. I like Anna Kendrick and
a capella singing just fine, but neither would typically be enough to get me to the theater by themselves. What I do love are movies about contests that We've Just Gotta Win and this one is hilarious (especially - but not only - thanks to Rebel Wilson).
9. The Dark Knight Rises
Not as great as
The Dark Knight, but it's a good finale to Christopher Nolan's trilogy. It proved once and for all that Nolan's Batman is
not the comic-book Batman, but I'm okay with that. I not only like the way Nolan finishes the series, I wish the comics would wrap up the same way.
The thing I was most excited about for this film though was seeing Catwoman and it didn't disappoint me on that level. Anne Hathaway narrowly edges out Julie Newmar as my favorite Catwoman (only because Newmar's version had a touch of crazy that I don't think the character needs).
8. The Cabin in the Woods
Embraces most of what I love about horror movies while making fun of everything I hate. The ending isn't perfect, but the rest of it sure is.
7. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
I'm a sucker for elderly British people and stories about second chances. This was right in my wheelhouse on so many levels.
6. Skyfall
I haven't actually talked to anyone who's called
Skyfall the best Bond movie ever, but I've heard that such people exist. If I
were to meet someone with that point of view, my response would be, "Really?" Because I don't think they're thinking that through very well.
Skyfall is a lot of fun, it's gorgeous, and it works both as the 50th anniversary of the Bond series and as the finale of the trilogy started in
Casino Royale. I especially love it from that last perspective. Say what you want about
Quantum of Solace's dumb story and boring villain, but one thing that film did right was continue the story of Bond's relationship with his country as personified by M.
Skyfall pays that story off in a beautiful way while also reintroducing elements from the pre-
Casino Royale films that I didn't realize how much I'd missed. It's also got a great villain and covers its themes in interesting ways. It's a great Bond film.
But the best ever? No way. It owes too much to the early Connery films to seriously consider letting it surpass them. I'm not even sure I like it as much as
The Living Daylights or
Casino Royale.
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
My including
The Hobbit this high on the list is all the evidence anyone needs to verify that this Top 10 is my personal one and not an attempt at the 10 Objectively Greatest Movies of the year. If I were being objective about it, I'd agree with the critics who point out that Peter Jackson is indulging his every whim at the expense of telling a tight story. There's a reason that he released a Theatrical Cut of the
Lord of the Rings films and then an Extended Edition for DVD. A lot of people simply don't have the patience to sit through scenes that legitimately could have been deleted to improve the pacing.
That said, I'm solidly in the camp of people who will only ever watch the Extended Editions of
Lord of the Rings. I love all that extra stuff. I love seeing Middle Earth that fleshed out. I absolutely don't mind seeing Jackson do the same thing with
The Hobbit. But I also can't be too harsh on those who do mind it. Jackson risked alienating those folks when he chose not to release a shorter, theatrical version, so it's fair for them to say it didn't work for them.
Even for me, it's not perfect. With
Lord of the Rings, I love pretty much every change Jackson made to Tolkien's novels, but I miss the Bilbo that was blustered out his front door and into adventure by Gandalf in the book. Jackson's Bilbo begins his journey too eagerly for my taste. He's too heroic too early. It felt right as I watching it, so maybe I'll re-evaluate after I've seen all three films, but it feels like Jackson needed to speed up Bilbo's character development in order to make him more likable in this installment of the trilogy.
That - and the fact that it
is the first installment in a trilogy instead of a complete story - keeps
The Hobbit from being higher on my list.
4. Mirror Mirror
I've already
written about Mirror Mirror a couple of times, so I'll spare us all another review. I really, really love this movie though.
3. Les Misérables
I knew I was going to have problems with this movie from the first time I saw the trailer and teared up listening to "I Dreamed a Dream." And I was right. Through the whole film, if I wasn't crying over the human misery, I was crying from the joy of hearing those songs again.
I've seen
Les Misérables on stage a few times. It's my favorite musical and the reason I think
Phantom of the Opera is over-rated. So I'm very familiar with the songs, but I don't own a cast recording and can't listen to them any time I want. I've never cared about hearing the songs outside of the context of the story as presented by actors.
But because I love those songs - and the story - so much, I've longed for a version with actors that I could own and watch whenever I want. In other words, I've been wanting this movie for about twenty years. And it was
everything I hoped it would be. (Even Russell Crowe, who isn't an especially strong Javert, but has a perfectly lovely singing voice outside of that.)
The only reason
Les Misérables isn't higher on my list is because I can't separate it from my feelings about the stage production. I don't know how I would've felt about it if I wasn't already in love with it from the moment it was announced.
2. The Avengers
Oh, wait... I mean the
other Avengers movie about a red-headed spy in a black catsuit.
I seriously reconfigured my Top 3 movies I don't know how many times right up to the point of writing this post. There was a long time this year that I couldn't imagine any movie bumping
The Avengers from first place.
A lot of my love for the movie is because it never should have worked. If I've learned anything from a lifetime of movie watching, it's that movies are never as awesome as we hope they'll be. From the moment Samuel L. Jackson appeared at the end of
Iron Man, we were all thrilled by the notion of an integrated universe of Marvel superhero films all leading to an all-star
Avengers movie. But admit it, you didn't think it would deliver, did you? I certainly didn't. It couldn't
possibly live up to the awesomeness of its premise.
Except it did. It totally did.
And, in the process, it gave us the Hulk movie we'd all been waiting for.
1. Looper
Outside of its being really stinking good, the reason
Looper is number one on my list is because it's not based on something I already loved. I had to give it bonus points for being a completely original story about characters I'd never heard of before. And what a story.
I dig a good, tightly plotted time-travel story as much as the next person, but what I really love are stories that make me think and re-evaluate my opinions about people. I can't talk about how
Looper does that without going into spoilers, but it's so much more than just a fun, scifi movie and deserves to be Number One.
