Palooza's Top 125 Films of 2012

[Palooza]

FIXED

You fix nothing, Roger Klotz.

 

[Palooza]

94 . The Awakening

Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, Issac Hempstead-Wright, Lucy Cohu, Jon Shrapnel​

Director(s) - Nick Murphy
Writer(s) - Stephen Volk, Nick Murphy
Source Material/Connections - n/a
MPAA Rating - R
Release Date - August 17 (limited)
Runtime - 1 hour, 47 minutes
RT Score - 61%
Metacritic - 53/100
Views - 1
Viewed - torrent
Quote - "These boys aren't worried about bumps in the night. They are frighted... to death."
Review - There's not too much that needs to be said about this movie. It's a sloppy, convoluted mess of a ghost story that feels like a cheap knock off of The Others once it's all said and done.

One of the only satisfying scenes of the movie is the opening one where famous ghost-debunker, Florence (Rebecca Hall) embarrasses a bunch of amateurs who are trying to falsify a haunting. After that is where the wheels start to fall off. Florence is soon invited to a school for young boys by a WWI vet/teacher (Dominic West) to test the validity of claims by young boys that there is a ghost of a former student lurking the halls. Sounds pretty generic right? It is, and in trying too hard to think outside of the box, they wind up with a mess of a plot. From here, all the students leave for break, leaving only McNutty, Hall, Maude the housekeeper (, the creepy groundskeeper and one young boy whose parents live in India named Tom (Bran Stark). From here we deal with the ghost and slowly Hall's Florence begins questioning everything she's ever known, becomes paranoid and suspicious of everyone, develops a mutual attraction to McNutty, realizes she has a personal connection to the house itself and unravels the "mystery" of the young ghost boy, which if you care I will spoil right now so be warned - It turns out that Bran Stark was Florence's little brother and he died when they were kids because their dad was abusive or a drunk or their mom was, I really forget, but having a character wind up being a ghost is a really cheap twist and really left a horrible taste in my mouth. A twist like that can either make up for the mess of the plot or make it even worse, this film it turned out to be the latter.

Spoiler Alert - Shyamalan Twist
Rating - F

 

[MvP]

Why do you even subject yourself to this filth.

 

[Palooza]

Why do you even subject yourself to this filth.

Can't know what's good unless you know what's bad. Watching awful movies has become a bit of a guilty pleasure to me, I secretly love how bad they are; I love to hate-watch and I love to come on here and criticize the awful shit.

 

[Palooza]

93 . Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristen Scott Thomas, Amr Waked, Rachael Sterling, Catherine Steadman, Tom Mison​

Director(s) - Lasse Hallestrom
Writer(s) - Simon Beaufoy
Source Material/Connections - based on the novel of the same name by Paul Torday
MPAA Rating - PG-13
Release Date - March 9 (limited)
Runtime - 1 hour, 52 minutes
RT Score - 67%
Metacritic - 58%
Views - 1
Viewed - torrent
Quote - "I don't know anyone who goes to church anymore. On Sundays, we got to Target."
Review - This movie has a lot of things wrong with it, it's just disguised as something good because it's a shitty romantic comedy with a ridiculous story and competent actors playing the lead roles. Don't let any of this fool you, there is nothing new here. This is a generic rom-com that gets stuck in all the lame rom com tropes that we've seen. This movie tries to be smart, but the irony of the book it is based off of has been completely lost. Instead we find ourselves in a world on Nicholas Sparks, convenient since the director of this has also made Dear John and the just-released-yesterday, Safe Haven (not to mention a documentary on ABBA). The plot is pretty self explanatory when looking at the title - In an effort to create peace or a spark in the middle east, press wise, a government official (played extremely over the top and bitchy by Kristen Scott Thomas) hires some young professional (Emily Blunt) to figure out how to get salmon fishing to the Yemen. Ewan MacGregor has a gross looking wife and is also the #1 expert of fish or something. He thinks it's a horrible idea but he comes around and they fall in love and even though things get bumpy it all works out. Oh and side-story - Emily Blunt's dating this military dude and he goes to Afghanistan and is reported missing and is never seen from again until after we get salmon fishing in the Yemen and he comes back as a shell shocked hero, but Emily Blunt dumps him anyway for Ewan MacGregor's fish nerd, oh British-Hollywood. You slay me.

In short this movie is - well acted, poorly written, unfunny, ridiculous, corny, stupid, over the top and cliche. Stupid rom-com is stupid.
Spoiler Alert - We have salmon fished... IN THE YEMEN.
Rating - F

 

[Maynard]

i have not seen any of the movies on this list

 

[MvP]

Can't know what's good unless you know what's bad. Watching awful movies has become a bit of a guilty pleasure to me, I secretly love how bad they are; I love to hate-watch and I love to come on here and criticize the awful shit.

Makes sense. It's a time thing for me, I guess. I don't watch movies too often so when I do I'd prefer it to be a critically acclaimed film. I definitely have my guilty pleasures though.

 

[Palooza]

Makes sense. It's a time thing for me, I guess. I don't watch movies too often so when I do I'd prefer it to be a critically acclaimed film. I definitely have my guilty pleasures though.

125 movies in one year might seem ridiculous, but it's only like 2 and a fraction movies a week, which is very plausible. What we don't factor in here is the number of television episodes and movies from
before 2012 I watched all last year. THAT would be a ridiculous amount of time "wasted".

 

[Palooza]

I at work but I wanna say there are about 20 more Fs to go which I am
hopeful to getthem all up by today.

 

[mgoblue2290]

The Savages review is my favorite so far. I haven't seen it and never will but I watched the trailer once and your review is basically how I figured it would go down. The dream ending shit was something Oliver Stone probably considered a modern day Good Bad and Ugly ending but wait not really.

 

[Palooza]

I at work but I wanna say there are about 20 more Fs to go which I am
hopeful to getthem all up by today.

This looks like it was typed up by red33. There are 14 Fs to go. I have 8 days to post 93 reviews, awards, etc. Let the games begin.

 

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

You may have answered this before. But do you keep these things on paper ?
I have a buddy who has kept a journal of every movie hes seen since the mid 90s. He grades them and writes a little note on it. Seems like a nice addition to a hobby but a pain to keep up with.

 

[Palooza]

You may have answered this before. But do you keep these things on paper ?
I have a buddy who has kept a journal of every movie hes seen since the mid 90s. He grades them and writes a little note on it. Seems like a nice addition to a hobby but a pain to keep up with.

Not exactly that, but close enough. I have a Word document that I use as a journal, keeping track of everything I need to watch and have watched. No immediate grades outside of a quick phrase or two, but I rank them as I go.

 

[Palooza]

92 . For a Good Time, Call...

Ari Graynor, Lauren Miller, Justin Long, Mark Webber, Seth Rogen, Mimi Rogers, Nia Vardalos, James Wolk, Sugar Lyn Beard, Kevin Smith​

Director(s) - Jamie Travis
Writer(s) - Lauren Miller, Katie Anne Naylon
Source Material/Connections - n/a
MPAA Rating - R
Release Date - August 31 (limited)
Runtime - 1 hour, 25 minutes
RT Score - 56%
Metacritic - 55/100
Views - 1
Viewed - torrent
Quote - "You ladies are living some fucked up version of the American Dream."
Review - Let me start off by saying I would do some naughty things to Ari Graynor. She seems like an absolute psychotic freak, the type of chick W2B would fuck and then come on here and tell us how fucking crazy she is, but he can't stop fucking her. Lauren Miller is pretty cute, I would love to fuck that Julia Roberts mouth of hers, mostly just to shut her annoying self up. Okay, so now that that is out of the way, let's get to this movie - Not only is the entire premise of a phone sex line booming in 2012 absolutely ridiculous, the humor comes off as trying too hard to be raunchy. The funniest part of the entire movie involves Seth Rogen as a pilot calling up looking for a threesome.. This film was written by his wife and star of the film, Lauren Miller, the stuck up of the two leads. She cannot jump out of her husband's shadow or the shadow cast by successful female-driven raunchy comedies like Bridesmaids (which was probably the most overrated comedy this side of The Hangover.) Like I said the movie follows two girls who start a phone sex line. One is a sex-driven virgin (Ari Graynor) [oh spoiler alert my bad] who takes a liking to the sweet and innocent guy she phone fucks every Tuesday(Mark Webber). The other is the stuck up former professional who can't seem to make it in today's hectic, corporate world. She gets laid off from her job and needs a place to stay so mutual over the top gay friend (Justin Long) introduces one another.. again. The first time was in college and they didn't like each other very much! Uh oh... drama! BUT WAIT. Once they take a liking to one another they're like omg besties. But stuck up girl has stuck up parents who won't approve of her new lifestyle and when they come for a visit and stuck up girl drops a bombshell of "haaaaay, I got a job I gotta quit the sexline", virgin whore tells stuck up parents all about their phone sex endeavors and shows them a commercial they made where they are in a bubble bath together. That's 95% of the movie. The other 5% is the classic "we'll never recover from this!" bullshit until they make up and become besties again and take over the phone sex world.

Not much else to say. The jokes are raunchy which is cool, but they're raunchy just for raunchy's sake. 2012 is becoming a bastardization of raunchy comedy. Also, no tits.
Spoiler Alert - Everyone loves phone sex, especially in 2012.
Rating - F

 

[Youk]

Not exactly that, but close enough. I have a Word document that I use as a journal, keeping track of everything I need to watch and have watched. No immediate grades outside of a quick phrase or two, but I rank them as I go.

Is that something you do with all movies or just ones for that year?

 

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

Not exactly that, but close enough. I have a Word document that I use as a journal, keeping track of everything I need to watch and have watched. No immediate grades outside of a quick phrase or two, but I rank them as I go.

Theres an IMDB that lets you check off from the top 500 movies ever (according to IMDB ratings). I used that for awhile. I may backlog one day if I find an easy way to mass print ones Ive already watched. I like the premise because I know just how differently I feel about a movie years after my first viewing. I tend to remember movies fondly if the crowd or person Im with was memorable. Years later Ill watch again and think wow wtf that movie sucked.

 

[Palooza]

Is that something you do with all movies or just ones for that year?

Everything.

 

[Palooza]

Theres an IMDB that lets you check off from the top 500 movies ever (according to IMDB ratings). I used that for awhile. I may backlog one day if I find an easy way to mass print ones Ive already watched. I like the premise because I know just how differently I feel about a movie years after my first viewing. I tend to remember movies fondly if the crowd or person Im with was memorable. Years later Ill watch again and think wow wtf that movie sucked.

Ain't this the god damn truth. You'll notice once we start getting into the top movies, that I made sure to watch those movies more than once to make sure they stand up. I have a tendency to overrate movies after first seeing them.

 

[Palooza]

91. Butter

Jennifer Garner, Yara Shahidi, Ty Burrell, Rob Corddry, Alicia Silverstone, Olivia Wilde, Hugh Jackman, Ashley Greene, Kristen Schall, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Phyllis Smith​

Director(s) - Jim Field Smith
Writer(s) - Jason A. Micallef
Source Material/Connections - n/a
MPAA Rating - R
Release Date - October 5 (limited)
Runtime - 1 hour, 31 minutes
RT Score - 35%
Metacritic - 40/100
Views - 1
Viewed - torrent
Quote - "Are these crackers serious?"
Review - Butter is a pretty ridiculous movie. It's a political satirical comedy that was shelved for a while (obviously due to its quality) starring Jennifer Garner as a stuck up control freak of a wife to a Butter carving master (Ty Burrell). This year, he has decided to not participate in the competition (I think this is due to political reasons - the people who run it are sick of him winning and winning and winning), so considering this is all his wife has, she decides to join in anyhow. The thing here, though, is that we're not rooting for Garner's character, if you are anything close to a normal person you are repulsed by her pathetic nature and disgusted by how she goes about trying to win. And now, we bring in her competition - little adopted black girl (Yara Shahidi), one of the few people you can actually root for. She is adopted by Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone's characters, a couple who can't have kids. They have a hard time connecting with the girl, until all three become passionate about beating Garner's character in this butter competition. Oh and, the black girl is pretty fucking good at this. A side story has Ty Burrell fall in love with a stripper played by Olivia Wilde who keeps extorting him for money. So we start competing and the always intolerable Kristen Schall is also a contestant and Olivia Wilde joins just to piss off Garner's character which was a nice, if not predictable touch, but they lose. We have a tie after some serious controversy where Garner sabotages the black girl's shit by saying her ex-boyfriend (Hugh Jackman) helped her with her sculpture. An absolutely horrible thing to do by any human being, especially one who can't let a poor adopted black girl rightfully win something. So they decide to do some outdoor competition that stretches over a long period of time with the two pieces being revealed a bit after. Olivia Wilde uses money she manipulated from Burrell/Garner's daughter after they had sex to buy the little black girl the freshest knives in all the land, which is a really nice touch in a movie severely lacking in nice touches. Jackman helps Garner sabotage the black girl's sculpture again, but it turns out his sabotage actually made the piece better to the judges and the black girl wins all fair and square.

The problem with the movie is pretty much embodied by Garner's character. She is condescending, unlikeable and has an unjustified sense of importance. The film focuses too much on her character, especially considering you are rooting for all factors to come into play to help her lose. Garner's character is unbelievably pathetic with how she controls her husband and daughter (Ashley Greene) and cheats her way through a competition over a kid. Jackman is pretty useless and could have been replaced by any other human being on Earth with a cowboy hat. The only redeeming factors in this silly little movie are the little black girl's triumph, Rob Corddry's jokes and Olivia Wilde/Ashley Greene's good looks. Besides that, this is a complete waste of time. Remember when I said this is supposed to be a satirical comedy? It's lacking the smarts to be satirical and the humor to be a comedy, which can be a big problem as far as I'm concerned. The satire in this film isn't funny or smart it's blatant and mean, which I'd be okay with if it was actually smart and funny, but it's not. Jennfer Garner is an obvious Sarah Palin dumb villain and while it would work if the script was written with any competence instead of just making her be dumb and ruthless at the same time. You want to root for the black girl, but she's such a horrible, horrible I'm-smart-orphaned-black-girl-who-can-be-sadssy-even-though-I-just-want-to-be-loved stereotype. Overall, the movie is sloppy, condescending toward middle America and tries to make you think you are much stupider than those involved, but the audience only comes away as stupid because of the filth they had just seen on the screen. Four thumbs down.
Spoiler Alert - My butter champion is black, my lambo is blue.
Rating - F

 

[Palooza]

90. The Campaign

Will Ferrell, Zach Galifinakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, Katherine LaNasa, Sarah Baker, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd, Brian Cox, Jack McBrayer, John Goodman​

Director(s) - Jay Roach
Writer(s) - Chris Henchy, Shawn Harwell
Source Material/Connections - n/a
MPAA Rating - R
Release Date - August 10
Runtime - 1 hour, 26 minutes
RT Score - 65%
Metacritic - 50/100
Views - 1
Viewed - DVD
Quote - "I'm here to make you not suck."
Review - This movie poses a very important question for Hollywood - Are the worst jokes from the funniest people in the biz still funnier than the shitty comedians best jokes? Jay Roach seems to be the go-to guy for answering this question. That and HBO political movies. Here, he combines the two, drops HBO for the theaters and creates one of the laziest films in recent memory. In the same vein as his previous attempt at this "genre" with Dinner for Schmucks, we swap Paul Rudd and Steve Carell for Will Ferrell (Zach Galifinakis sticks around) and transplant these two characters into a Senate race in one of the Carolinas. There's no reason to dissect such a plot because it's just a really lame attempt at one-upping each other in terms of stupidity with really shallow and obnoxious mockery of the American media and election process. That's all I've got to say about that.
Spoiler Alert - Who cares how it ends
Rating - F