10 Honorable Mention Films from 2012

20. The Five-Year Engagement



I lost patience toward the middle when it took some really stupid decision-making to prolong the engagement to five years, but even when it stretched credibility, the movie never stopped being funny or having Jason Segel in it. It wins points for both of those things.

19. John Carter



Nowhere near the mess that lots of people claim it was; just not as spectacular as it should have been for the talent involved. It's a fun, scifi escape with a couple of legitimately great moments; we just all hoped for so much more.

18. The Amazing Spider-Man



"Expectations" are a recurring theme on my honorable mentions list this year. I didn't have high ones for The Amazing Spider-Man and like most people, I questioned the fundamental existence of the project. It was made for purely cynical, We Have to Do This or Lose the License reasons.

But though it contains some highly unnecessary rehashing of the Sam Raimi material, it also found some new things to do with its tone and the central relationships. It's worthwhile for Peter and Gwen alone.

17. ParaNorman



I love the theme in ParaNorman about being your own person and not letting other people define you. Also: the animation is amazing. I wasn't totally in love with the character designs though, and since that's what I was looking at for most of the film, that's what keeps it out of my Top 10.

16. The Hunger Games



I'm disappointed that this isn't in my Top 10 for the year, either. I totally thought it would be, but during the second viewing I found myself getting bored. I kept myself entertained by focusing on Jennifer Lawrence's wonderful performance, which communicated very well the horror of Katniss' situation. Without her internal monologue though, it was hard to get what I wanted from her moral struggle over how to act in the arena.

Still looking forward to Catching Fire, but I'm more detachedly curious about it than wildly enthusiastic like I was for this one.

15. Underworld: Awakening



In a year that brought a disappointing entry in the Resident Evil movies, I'm thrilled that we got a worthy film in my other favorite horror/scifi adventure series starring a woman. Awakening pretty much punts and launches a Bold New Direction for Underworld, but it's a good direction with some likable, new characters and I enjoyed it very much.

14. 21 Jump Street



I want to say that this is so much better than a movie based on an all-but-forgotten TV show has the right to be, but even though that's true, it's not really fair to suggest that that's all 21 Jump Street has going for it. It's just a very funny movie, period. That it gets a small part of that humor from pointing out and making fun of its sordid roots is just frosting for the cake. I'd probably rate it higher if not for the skeevy romance between Jonah Hill's character and a high school student.

13. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted



Listen: After the horrible piece of derivative crap that Madagascar 2 was, I'm as surprised as anyone to find Madagascar 3 on this list. In fact, I didn't want to see it at all when it was announced. It wasn't until it got a 79% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes that I had to see what the heck was going on with this thing. To my surprise, it was hilarious and - more importantly - original. It also pretty much wrapped up the saga with a nice bow on top, so I don't expect to be interested in a Madagascar 4, but never say never.

12. Haywire



No, Gina Carano is not a great actress. And the plot of Haywire is nothing new. But the movie makes up for both of those things with heart and authenticity. I wrote a full review of it, so I'll point you there for more thoughts, but it really was one of my favorite movie experiences of the year.

11. Moonrise Kingdom



This was my first Wes Anderson film since Rushmore, which I never quite forgave for stealing Bill Murray away from movies like Groundhog Day and The Man Who Knew Too Little. Seeing Moonrise Kingdom makes me want to find out what I've been missing. It's a small movie, but a lovely one, and makes great use of its setting and awesome cast.

LXB | Avengers, but with spies, but without Steed and Peel

For nerds of a certain age, there can be some confusion around the name Avengers. Most people are going to think of the Marvel superheroes, but there's still a dedicated group of fans for whom the name automatically brings to mind Patrick Macnee in a bowler and Diana Rigg in a catsuit. I neither blame nor pity them. Those are excellent things to spring to mind under any circumstances. But when I say "spy Avengers," that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about my response to this week's assignment from the League of Extraordinary Bloggers. Inspired by the Joss Whedon movie, Brian asks:

What pop culture heroes or stories would make for the ultimate crossover?

My mind immediately went to that March Madness bracket we did with all the action heroes. How cool would it be to do The Expendables the way we all want to see it done? Not with new characters, but with Stallone actually playing John Rambo and with Bruce Willis playing John McClane. Clint Eastwood could still play a threatening Dirty Harry. Maybe Schwarzenegger could bring back Dutch from Predator. That would be something to see.

But as I kept adding in characters from that bracket, I grew less pleased with the result. Snake Plissken and Indiana Jones wouldn't work without a time travel angle that would take over the whole movie. It also makes my head hurt to figure out a plot in which cops, spies, and soldiers all have something to do and can interact with each other for an entire film. So I decided to pick one genre and expand on it.

I picked spies partly because Bond and Bourne did so well in the bracket, but mostly because a) it's my favorite of those three genres, b) it's easy to add women to the cast, and c) there have been a ton of spy movies lately. That last one is important because it means that it's much easier to believe that these characters are all active and available to team up. With Rambo and Dutch, we'd have to spend the entire first act explaining why they're still (or back) in the game.

I already revealed them in the header image, but my ultimate spy team would be a 50-50 male/female mix: James Bond, Natasha Romanoff, Evelyn Salt, Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, and Hanna. I stopped it at six to keep it manageable (and limited myself to movie characters), but there's plenty of room for additional characters in cameos or whatnot: Mallory Kane, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, or any of the surviving cast of Red. Maybe not Maxwell Smart, but Anne Hathaway as Agent 99? Heck yeah. You could even throw in some TV spies for fun: Michael Westen, Jack Bauer, Annie Walker, or Carrie Mathison, for example.

What do you think? Would you pay good money to see that? What would your ultimate movie crossover be?

Haywire (2012)

I don't need to talk about spoilers to recommend Haywire. Its awesomeness isn't in its plot twists. In fact, the plot is one of the weaknesses of the film – that and Gina Carano’s acting – but neither of those things hurt the movie in a significant way. If you’re a fan of ‘60s and ‘70s action movies, you’re going to be just fine with Haywire. Likewise if you enjoyed Hanna or Drive or other artful takes on the action genre. Carano’s a new actor with some learning to do, but she’s better than most of the army of other action stars I’ve been giving passes to my whole life. And while the plot may not be anything new or unique, the way it unfolds in the movie – and especially the way Steven Soderbergh shoots it – is. The film is simultaneously familiar and fascinatingly different from anything I’ve seen before.

You find out the plot in the first few minutes of the movie. Mallory Kane (Carano) is a contract soldier on the run after a mission went wrong. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the scene in the diner where she talks to a colleague named Aaron (Channing Tatum) about coming in. She’s not sure if she can trust him, so she only mentions a few details: Barcelona, Dublin, and someone named Paul. If you’ve seen the trailer, you also know how that conversation ends. The film then flashes back to the mission to connect those details with each other, but doesn’t yet reveal what went wrong because Kane’s not sure of that herself. The rest of the movie is her figuring it out, which I loved watching her do.

The revelations aren’t stunning; they’re actually pretty easy to figure out. Everything makes perfect sense at the end, but there’s no moment where I went, “Oh! I didn’t see that coming!” And though I liked Kane, I never felt like the stakes were all that high for her. That may be because Carano couldn’t give me a reason or maybe it was problem with the script, but while I loved watching her work and wanted her to succeed, I never felt emotionally invested. That’s a criticism I can give to most action movies; it’s just that as great as the rest of Haywire is, I wanted that part to be great too.

What’s great about the film starts with Mallory Kane. Gina Carano has a perfect look. I don’t mean that she’s attractive (though she is); I mean that she looks like a real person and not a movie star. I love Angelina Jolie action movies, but I can’t lose myself in them. I’m always aware that I’m watching Angelina Jolie. In Haywire, I was just watching Mallory Kane. I’m sure that has a lot to do with this being Carano’s first film, but it also has to do with her body type and just the way she carries herself. She feels authentic.

In fact, “authentic” is a word I thought of a lot as I watched this movie. As cliché as the plot can be, Soderbergh brings it to life and makes it genuine. The fight scenes are brutal and awesomely choreographed, but more important than that, they play out with no music and minimal sound effects. When Carano punches someone (or just as often, someone punches her), it sounds like someone’s really getting hit. I didn’t feel like I was watching a fight scene in a movie; I felt like I was in a diner or hotel room watching two people try to kill each other.

Soderbergh does other things like that too. When Carano hijacks a car and its owner, Soderbergh puts the camera in the back seat for a continuous shot of Carano’s driving. Looking over the actors’ shoulders at the dashboard and the road ahead, I could practically smell the newness of the car. There’s also a great foot chase where the camera stays in front of Carano, focused on her as she runs and breathes. I’ve never noticed an action star’s breathing before, but I’ve done enough running to know that breathing is an important part of it. That detail adds so much to making that scene sincere. As do Carano’s actions in another scene in which she’s being chased. Most action heroes always know what they’re going to do next, but Carano occasionally has to stop and look around her to figure out her next move. She had me looking around too, wondering what she was going to do next.

And of course it’s especially nice to see Haywire star a woman and to treat her so well. Mallory Kane is a sexual character, but she’s never sexualized. And she’s not just a man recast as a woman. I’m thinking especially of her relationship with her dad (Bill Paxton) and how that feels like a real father-daughter relationship, but there are other points in the movie where she’s particularly feminine. But then she’ll command a mission or there’ll be a fight and she’s as tough as any man.

I admit to some discomfort watching her get beat up, especially when her male opponents hit first. The old playground rule, “Boys don’t hit girls” kept popping into my head, but I’m not the only one. In the film, a male assassin looks uneasy as he accepts a contract on Kane. “I’ve never done a woman before.”

The person hiring him delivers my favorite line from the movie. “You shouldn’t think of her as a woman,” he says. “No, that would be a mistake.” It's not that she's at all masculine; it's that if you think of women as people with an inherent need for protection and gentle handling, you've got the wrong idea about Mallory Kane.