Palooza's Top 125 Films of 2012

[dell71]

Two more I never even heard of: Butter, The Comedy. From the looks of it, glad that's the case.

Of the stuff I've seen (since about #94 on the list):

A couple I sorta like but not completely thrilled by: Project X (I know its dumb, but went in expecting stupidity & it delivers), Flight.

A couple ridiculously generic flicks: Safe House, The Amazing Spider-Man (so unnecessary).

One I like, but it's not the best movie ever like everyone else thinks: Ted. Not tired of the Family Guy type jokes because I only see the show maybe once every other month or so. Haven't watched South Park in forever and the last time I saw The Simpsons (which FG shamelessly ripped off) was the movie they made a couple years ago. Forgive me for being behind the times.

One I liked when I first saw it, but like even more now: Haywire. Yes, it's an artsy-fartsy action flick with a terrible lead performance (Carano's performance is reminiscent very early Schwarzenegger, all brawn, no brain). Yes, the plot is flimsy. Still, I love the way Soderbergh told what little story he had and as you say the hand-to-hand combat is top-notch. BTW, Channing Tatum sucks in most things, but I wouldn't call him inexperienced. Dude's actually been around damn near a decade and has made roughly 30 movies.

[Palooza]

One I liked when I first saw it, but like even more now: Haywire. Yes, it's an artsy-fartsy action flick with a terrible lead performance (Carano's performance is reminiscent very early Schwarzenegger, all brawn, no brain). Yes, the plot is flimsy. Still, I love the way Soderbergh told what little story he had and as you say the hand-to-hand combat is top-notch. BTW, Channing Tatum sucks in most things, but I wouldn't call him inexperienced. Dude's actually been around damn near a decade and has made roughly 30 movies.

Maybe inexperienced isn't the right word but his two best movies are from 2012 and of his 30 movies, I would be proud of maybe one or two outside of his 2012 efforts coming up (10 Years, Magic Mike, and 21 Jump Street) on the list. He's only finally coming out of his shell and Soderbergh is the first real director he has ever worked with. I used to avoid C-Tates movies like the plague, but now I don't mind them at all.

edit - looks like he worked with Michael Mann on Public Enemies, Mann's worst movie. I liked Miami Vice

[Buzzman]

I have to admit I like Shes the Mann, Step Up, Stop Loss and A Guide o Recognizing Your Saints. He secretly worked his way into an enjoyable actor I never realized I enjoyed until this year. I liked him in every single thing he was in last year, including Haywire. Hell even next year hes in one of my most anticipated movies of the year with Foxcatcher.

Edit: Also enjoyed him in Side Effects.

[Goober]

I have to admit I like Shes the Mann, Step Up, Stop Loss and A Guide o Recognizing Your Saints. He secretly worked his way into an enjoyable actor I never realized I enjoyed until this year. I liked him in every single thing he was in last year, including Haywire. Hell even next year hes in one of my most anticipated movies of the year with Foxcatcher.

Edit: Also enjoyed him in Side Effects.

No way!

[Sharkweather]

Jason Lyle and Rowdy Sparks were some good performances!

Also I agree with She's the Man, such a guilty pleasure one.

[dell71]

Maybe inexperienced isn't the right word but his two best movies are from 2012 and of his 30 movies, I would be proud of maybe one or two outside of his 2012 efforts coming up (10 Years, Magic Mike, and 21 Jump Street) on the list. He's only finally coming out of his shell and Soderbergh is the first real director he has ever worked with. I used to avoid C-Tates movies like the plague, but now I don't mind them at all.

edit - looks like he worked with Michael Mann on Public Enemies, Mann's worst movie. I liked Miami Vice

I like Miami Vice, too.

[Cornelius]

I hate Miami Vice only because they used that shitty Phil Collins cover. You can't cover Phil Collins!

[Palooza]

75 . The Hunger Games

Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Wes Bentley, Donald Sutherland, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, Amandla Stenberg, Alexander Ludwig, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jack Quaid, Leven Rambin, Toby Jones, Dayo Okeniyi, Jacqueline Emerson, Paula Malcomson, Willow Shields

Director(s) - Gary Ross
Writer(s) - Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins, Billy Ray
Source Material/Connections - based on the first novel in the "The Hunger Games" young adult series by Suzanne Collins
MPAA Rating - PG-13
Release Date - March 23
Runtime - 2 hours, 23 minutes
RT Score - 85%
Metacritic - 67/100
Views - 1
Viewed - in theaters
Quote - "Okay, well I'm not gonna kill anyone with a sack of flour."
Review -
While this movie has more wrong with it than it doesn't, it still hasn't wasted its potential. Going forward, the series can only get better and they did the right thing by axing the director and hiring someone new. Also, they'll be bringing on two of my favorites in Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeffrey Wright. I've never read these books before because I'm not Buzzman, so i don't know how they come into play. I can't talk about being disappointed or satisfied in terms of adaptation, either. I'm not going to jump into the exhausting plot description because if you haven't heard of The Hunger Games than you shouldn't even be reading this review and if you've heard of the movie you already know what it's about and have chosen to see it or don't care and haven't. Moving along...
The Good - -
Ah, so the goods of the movie. Well, Jennifer Lawrence. Mmmmmm. She was looking young and good and kicking ass while doing it. She does a really good job of carrying the movie on both the teeny bopper shit and once shit gets real with her bow and arrow. In addition to her, the cast is pretty solid. Donald Sutherland playing a mean jerk, Wes Bentley as a weirdo, Lenny Kravitz as the guy with style, Stanley Tucci chomps on screen as the interviewer guy, Woody Harrelson gets his "I don't give a fuck on" as their mentor. All really solid jobs for what they were. Small roles and they all let Jennifer Lawrence take the stage. Jennifer Lawrence and the corny fun that is had through the movie keeps this one from being a failing movie. It's more of a D than a C, but who gives a fuck.
The Bad -
I had three major problems with the film - The character of Rue, Peeta's "skills" and the directing. I won't add my gripes with the script because Jesus it's based on a bunch of YA novels, of course it's gunna be cheesy and forcefully romantic at times. I've gotten past those problems. Howevaaaa, on to the real problems, starting with Gary Ross. Once we finally got to what was supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the film, the action! The Hunger Games are set to begin and children will be killing children! Battle Royale ripoff time! Wrong. Absolutely fucking wrong. The actual Hunger Games are treated so fucking poorly. Instead of giving girlfriends their portion of the movie with all the lameness, you couldn't satisfy the boyfriends with some decent fucking action? Gary "I dropped the Glens in my name" Ross absolutely butchers this shit There is no action. Well, people die and get killed but the camera is so shaky and so zoomed in you can't see anything. There are so many quick cuts, I wanted to strangle Paul Greengrass for making shitty directors think that's how you do fight scenes. Ugh, absolutely pathetic.

Now, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is obviously a bitch. He has no skills that translate to the Hunger Games. Except! His parents own a bakery so he can lug and toss giant sacks of flour around, which will most certainly come into play at an opportune moment! Well, you can't just have one skill, that will make you one dimensional, duh. What's his second skill? He is a fucking cake boss! If this weren't young adult dystopia, he would certainly have his own reality show. Whatever, either way. How does this skill come into play? Well this mixes with the "I'm a bitch" portion and he uses writing "Happy Birthday Faggot" on a cake to completely cover his face in makeup that looks exactly like grass and moss so he can blend in and use it as camouflage. Genius work, bitch boy.

And lastly, we have the character of Rue, the little black girl from District 11 or someshit who Katniss takes a liking to. They barely bond and they're all of a sudden like best friends with no real development, they're just besties, practically sisters at this point. So they definitely set this up so they could kill her later and get Katniss all charged up. That's pretty fucked up, I don't approve.
Rating - C

[Pitty]

Thought the mediocre films would get F+'s.

[Palooza]

C's are beat anyhow. Nothing to be proud of, it just means you did like 2 things right instead of nothing.

These are the generic movies that weren't terrible, but also weren't good.

[Leftwich]

Still haven't seen the hunger games and don't plan on it.

[Palooza]

74 . Men in Black III

Will Smith, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stahlberg, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve, Bill Hader, Mike Colter, Nicole Scherzinger

Director(s) - Barry Sonenfeld
Writer(s) - Etan Cohen
Source Material/Connections - The third film in the Men in Black series, obviously, which was originally based off of "The Men in Black" comic by Lowell Cunningham
MPAA Rating - PG-13
Release Date - May 25
Runtime - 1 hour, 45 minutes
RT Score - 70%
Metacritic - 58/100
Views - 2
Viewed - torrent, dvd
Quote - "I promised the secrets of the universe, nothing more."
Review -
The first Men in Black is pretty fucking awesome. It's got blockbuster Will Smith in his prime, grumpy Tommy Lee Jones being too old for this shit and Vincent D'Onforio being an alien who wants more sugar and whose face doesn't fit on his alien body. It's funny, heartfelt, fun and cool. The 2nd one sucks and is none of those things. This one is a mix of the two, with Josh Brolin being the true hero of it all and a sweet end battle that reminded me of the first one. What sucks is how they try to tie everything up in the trilogy with a nice little bow, barely making most of the first movie make sense. Really poorly done, but it was all for an emotional reaction from the audience. Definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. Without any reason to make a 4th, please don't.

The Good -
Like I said, this movie is completely saved once Josh Brolin comes on screen. He is EXACTLY Tommy Lee Jones but as a younger version. He nails the role perfectly and transforms the movie from being exactly what the second one was to a fun, engaging movie like it was supposed to be. Josh Brolin and Will Smith have some of the same great chemistry that TLJ and Big Willy Style had in the original.

Will Smith is pretty good at mail-in jobs and it's pretty obvious his heart just isn't in it anymore but he still seems right at home in a black suit. It didn't take away from the movie at all and the removal of Agent Z (Rip Torn) isn't even noticed, since we get Emma Thompson's bitchy, female Agent K-esque "O". She's also mimicked pretty well in the time travel scenes by Alice Eve, who is fiiiiiiiiiiiine, understandable why K would go after that fine ass.

Even though the villain is the worst part of the movie, the whole time travel and all the sci-fi futuristic gizmos are cool and were always done well by this series, except the vehicles, which we will get to later. In addition to this, the last fight scene between Young Boris/Old Boris and Agent J/Agent K is really neat and suspenseful. You know the good guys are gunna win, but up that high, fighting on the Apollo 11 before it takes off was really cool. It wasn't as clever or well done as the invading history of X-Men: First Class last year, but that movie is almost perfect.

I almost forgot to mention their little Andy Warhol (Bill Hader) joke. Very well done and well executed by my mans Bill Hader.

The Bad -
Ugh. Jemaine Clement as "Boris the Animal" who is so fucking ugly and disgusting of an alien you cringe whenever he is on screen. His face is all scarred and beat up, he has little aliens that pop out of his hands and kill people and his tongue is perhaps the most repulsive thing in this series, beyond the regrowing Tony Shaloub head, D'Onofrio's bugs or David Cross's bug goo dripping on TLJ's match from the original. Even though all of this filth and disgust he is touted as so menacing and dangerous, but he's just ugly. Besides that he tries too hard, or the writers at least, try too hard to make him evil. Jemaine Clement is shitty make up is not evil or scary or intimidating. So let's bring on two versions of him for the extra menace. Beat.

So those futuristic cars I was talking about that were awful? I'm sure you've seen them in the trailers. They look like this -

 

Did somebody not notice they are IDENTICAL to this -

 

And that's all I'm gunna say about that one.

Ahhhh, now here we are at the horrible, horrible ending that puts the entire trilogy into a forced circle. So the film takes place in the 70's IIRC because Agent J (Will Smith) has followed Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), a supervillain, back in time in an effort to save his mentor and partner, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). There he runs into the Agent K of the past (Josh Brolin) and together, though reluctantly they band together to stop Boris from following through with his original plans that K foiled in the past. Those plans included something with the Apollo 11 space shuttle in Cape Canaveral, FL. In an effort to get past military security, they somehow convince a black military officer to let them through. They save the day, badda bing badda boom. HOWEVA, the only way to save the day leads the black dude to get killed while his son is not far off. THAT SON WAS WILL SMITH! Sooo yeah, J's dad sacrificed himself in front of his son to save K. Yet there is no mention of his guilt in the first movie while he is recruiting him. Don't add shit like that just to try and create a sympathetic loop that makes no sense. Whatever.
Rating - C

[strahanfan92]

Watched The Hunger Games last night, phew that was long and awful. Got Perks of Being a Wellflower and The Master up next, hype.

[Youk]

C's are beat anyhow. Nothing to be proud of

C's get degrees.

[Palooza]

C's get degrees.

maybe at that turd SUNY school you went to