2012 best picture nominee reviews

It’s almost Oscar season so here are my grades for the 2012 best picture nominees. (I think 2012’s crop was worse than 2011, and 2011 was worse than 2010.) Out of these nine, I’d only strongly recommend my top two. And as usual, I prefer knowing as little as possible about a film when I start watching it, so I’ll try to avoid revealing too much in the reviews. Here they are from worst to first:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close –I didn’t get into this. It had its moments and showed glimpses of good writing from the book, but for the most part I found myself bored and ready for the movie to end. And it got a little cheesy with all the music. And what is John Goodman doing playing a doorman? C

Moneyball – Michael Lewis makes a great point that can be applied to any situation, and the 2002 Oakland A’s help him further it, but I think it’s impact on their success is slightly overstated in the book and grossly overstated in the movie. I’d rank this higher if I didn't follow baseball. If I was an MLB general manager, I'd give other GM's a copy of Moneyball and a few weeks later I'd start offering them mediocre players with above average on-base-percentages. (The way they documented Billy Beane’s own playing career and the impact it had on him as a GM might have been my favorite part --- but now I can't remember how much of that was in the movie and what I'm remembering from the book.) C+

Hugo – The first thing that put me off was that this takes place in Paris, yet everyone is speaking with British accents. I enjoyed enough of this, but I’m not especially interested in the history of film and Hugo didn’t do whatever needed to be done to pique my interest. Maybe I should have watched it in 3D? Not a bad movie, but I wouldn’t rush to watch it. B

The Help – A tried and true formula, but it was entertaining and moving. B

The Tree of Life – This was the most difficult to rank. On one hand I can argue this was the most intentionally boring and pretentious film I’ve ever seen. But on the other hand, some of the scenes were very poignant—they were just so few and far between. Malick is essentially trying to challenge the way we think of a film by not having a plot, and I respect that, but on top of not having a plot, nearly half the film was made up of long shots from space and nature on earth. And maybe he’s trying to say our lives don’t have a plot and we’re unfathomably tiny specks in the universe with our little struggles and male vs female instincts, and I respect all that; but knowing that doesn’t make this any easier to watch. Someone could film me getting out of bed in the morning and brushing my teeth and taking a dump and getting dressed and drinking a glass of milk and walking to the bus stop and getting on the bus and ignoring everyone on the bus and reading a book and getting off the bus and walking to the office and sitting at my desk, and then zoom out to a shot of the entire galaxy for five minutes. And that’s real, and it tells us something, it’s just not the most entertaining thing to sit and watch. I’d like to watch this again and fast forward through all of the videos from space and waves crashing. (Cindy googled it and read that the space scenes were shot for a different film that was scrapped, so he forced them into this—which if true, makes their inclusion exponentially maddening.) B

War Horse – It says a lot about what I thought of these films that War Horse is ranked #4. I expected this to be terrible—I didn’t even want to watch it—so maybe it’s ranked so highly because it exceeded those extremely low expectations. The story follows a horse, but it’s a human story. That said, don’t you dare go out of your way to watch it on my recommendation. (If anything, suffer through Tree of Life before this.) B

Tree of Life (reprise) – I think “suffering” is the proper adjective for what people do when watching Tree of Life, and I suppose there’s something to be said about that. Ok, I’ll say this, it’ll get you talking, and it’s worth suffering through because it is unique, but if all movies were like this, I might not watch movies as often. B

The Artist – Most of this was fun and creative, but I found the ending to be completely backwards and pathetic. (for it’s implication that we’re a fame-obsessed culture. Maybe we are. Maybe you are.) B+

The Descendants – A simple, well-organized story, great acting, striking cinematography, and some truly memorable moments. (And a Rule Against Perpetuities issue.) The scene with Clooney trying to hold back while getting belittled by his father-in-law in the hospital was my favorite scene of the year. A

Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen being funny and creative. Or in other words: Woody Allen being Woody Allen at his best. Just the thought of this movie makes me smile. A+