2012 Oscar Nominees

The nominees for the 2012 Academy Awards were announced today, and while they did a few things right, there are numerous snubs that need to be addressed. I understand that the past year was a great year in film and making these decisions is very tough, but it's might right to undermine the Academy's choices. But first, the nominees: 

Best Picture
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Full list of nominees, snubs, and analysis after the jump.

2012 Razzie Nominees

Here is the full list of nominees for the 2012 Golden Raspberry Awards, celebrating the worst in film of the past year. Adam Sandler makes his usual appearance, but Twilight: Brealing Dawn Part 2 has been nominated in every single category this year, and I expect the film to win all of them. The Razzies used to be a carefully thought out anti-Oscars, but lately they seem to be more interested in pulling stunts that get them media coverage, like last year when Adam Sandler won Worst Actor and Worst Actress for his dual performances in Jack and Jill. Twilight winning every award is just too historic of a thing to not have happen.

List of nominees after the jump.

Cinemonk's Film Rankings of 2012

Here is the complete list of movies I reviewed over the past year in order from best to worst. Coincidentally I saw an even 100 movies this year this is not something I was trying to do, it just ended up that way (If you're being technical, I saw 101 if you count Star Wars and Star Wars Uncut as two different movies, but I listed here together). This is a VERY loosely organized list. Most of the films I saw this year were good to great, this coupled with the fact that the differing genres and types of films make them very difficult to organize into such a list. So don't write to me saying that X movie is better than Y movie, because A) this is a subjective list, and B) this list is far from perfect. I did my best, and that's all you can ask of me. Each entry on this list is linked to my review of that movie so you can use my own words against me in the creation of these rankings. List after the jump.

Review: Looper

       Time travel movies are notoriously hard to write. Sure, it's possible to just write the story so that you can go back in time to make everything right, like in Superman. However, this technique is considered cheap and is generally derided by fans and critics. The other problem with time travel stories is dealing with the issues and paradoxes backwards time travel causes. There's the issue of deciding whether what happened in the past happened and cannot be changed, or if it's possible to change the past. If the past can't be changed, then what's the point of time travel, and if it can be changed, the writers have to be careful in preventing paradoxes. Looper cleverly writes it's way out of all of these problems. It doesn't get into the details of how time travel works, and while it appears that the past can be changed, because the mechanism of time travel is unclear paradoxes don't occur. In the end, writer and director Rian Johnson breaks the rules of time travel movies whenever he wants and follows them whenever the story needs them. It makes for a very clever time travel movie that puts the story before anything else.

Review: Django Unchained

       Quentin Tarantino has never been one to play it safe. His movies are loud, big, violent, dirty, and smart (pay attention to that last part, Michael Bay). In his latest film, Django Unchained he's at it again. It's the rare film where you can actually hear and see studio notes being ignored. It's the first film in a long time that actually made me say “Holy Shit!” out loud. It's a love story to the old spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood, with a modern, ultraviolent twist. The film is overlong, but only because it is so stuffed full of ideas. There is a point when the film could've ended quite nicely, but then it continues for another forty minutes. But the way this movie is too long fits it just right, every moment that goes by is just as entertaining as the last. Tarantino has done it again.

Review: A Christmas Story

       I've watched A Christmas Story every year on christmas for almost as long as I can remember. It is by far the movie that I have seen the most. I know this movie inside and out. The name of the girl who raises her hand to point out to Ms. Shields that Flick is still stuck to the flagpole is Esther Jane. Actors are credited for playing Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless in the closing credits, because of a dream sequence that in the original edit, but was cut from the final version of the film. My family quotes this movie year round. When my dad won a bag at Niketown in Chicago for shooting free throws, he called it a “major award.” Almost all of my aunts and uncles own dogs, and when they all come to visit my mom calls them “The Bumpuses.” This movie is ingrained into my like unlike any other film, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Review: Cool Hand Luke

       Paul Newman started out as many actors start out in Hollywood. He was a handsome face, and he could shout “Follow me, boys!” as he went over the top in war movies. It's the kind of role that, if one can do well, can become the whole of one's career, take John Wayne for example. Then as he gained critical acclaim for his work he could have taken the Charlton Heston route, getting nobler and nobler with each role that he could eventually drive chariots, part the red sea, and take dictation from God. Instead, Newman took the opposite approach to his career. He played the role of just the regular guy that we would feel comfortable having a beer with. Often times Newman's characters had a bit of a dark side, and as such he was a pioneer of the anti-hero character. Newman had a tendency to play scam artists, in films like The Hustler, The Sting, and Cool Hand Luke.