Ranking 2012 fall-winter movies!

(My cat got reaped in the hunger games this year so yeah I’m a little upset.)

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As I suppose is tradition before I begin a new semester of college, today I will rank the movies I’ve seen from late summer up until now, worst to best. I tried to remain at least a little objective with this, but then I thought, mmm, better not. The amount of Golden Globes or Oscar nominations a movie has earned doesn’t really hold much weight here, sorry babes.

Overall I’d say fall and winter 2012 was much better than the summer Hollywood-wise. There were some duds, but overall I enjoyed the heck out of a lot of these movies. Ranking them was pretty hard. Here they all are again, in the order I saw and reviewed them:

• Lawless
• House at the End of the Street lol
• Dredd 3D
• Looper
• Sinister
• Wreck-It Ralph
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2
• Skyfall
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• Pitch Perfect
• Django Unchained
• Les Misérables
• Gangster Squad

It begins. Make sure to click the title to read the full review!

13. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2

I could make jokes. I could laugh and gloat, and be happy. Twilight is over and it didn’t make close to as much money as Harry Potter did, which was secretly one of my greatest fears for a very long time. Okay so I guess I just did gloat right there. Whatever, point is this movie is the worst I’ve seen in the past five months, and hopefully now I can lay the K-Stew jokes down to everlasting slumber. (Who am I kidding, we all know she’ll be back. One way or another, she’ll be back.)

12. House at the End of the Street

The only solid evidence I have of actually seeing this movie (besides the fact I somehow wrote a review of it) is my memory of the annoying 13 year olds who were there. I don’t even remember what day, what month, what location, because this movie was so generically slopped together and released into theaters that it gave me amnesia.

It’s vaguely coming back to me. This one starred Jennifer Lawrence, who probably looks back at it as a cute but slightly unfortunate side project while she practiced archery in preparation for her massive blockbuster role and focused on earning a Golden Globe with another. I vaguely remember the distant smell of baked ziti, a bed that doesn’t squeak, jacket covered in annoying cat fur. I must have been home that weekend.

11. Sinister

 

Was there a single good horror movie in 2012? (Other than Prometheus, which barely even counts as a horror in the first place?) Sinister looked so good in the trailers, but the real thing should have been so much scarier. I’d be lying if I said the movie hadn’t scared me at all, but I wanted to be, like, Bughuul (the demon) appear on my own lap top-scared. Bughuul is a great, down to earth guy, and I just wish this movie had allowed him to show off the full extent of his acting talents. Make sure to check out his new family sitcom It’s All Cool with Bughuul airing 2014!

10. Gangster Squad

Far and away the biggest disappointment of 2013 so far. It was the only movie I’ve seen this year that doesn’t care if audiences like it or not, as long as it earns big money. That being said, I will admit that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone gave perhaps the best acting performances of the year so far. Out of all the movies I’ve seen, they easily outshine all other actors this year. Far and away the best movie of 2013 I’ve seen so far.

9. Lame Misérables

 

Here’s where the controversy begins! Judging by the response in the comments on my review, you guys don’t like that I didn’t like this movie. That’s okay. Remember, judgment free zone! We don’t all have to like the same things! And that’s convenient, because in this case, I really didn’t like the movie. Falsely advertised as a musical, this was an opera. Y’all tricked me. It can take its Golden Globes and be merry somewhere else but I’m banning it from this site.

8. Lawless

This is where I start to actually like the movies. In retrospect, I’m not really sure if the movie had a point. Everything about it was pretty solid, but for some odd reason I feel absolutely no desire to ever see it again. I apparently have nothing else to say about it, because I’ve been sitting here for about 15 minutes trying to think of what else to write about it. Nothing.

I guess we’ll consider Lawless neutral territory. Everything before it, I disliked, and every movie after it, I really liked. It was hard to rank the remaining seven, buuuuut….

7. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

 

Oh no. I’m not sure if I can ever forgive Peter Jackson for stretching out The Hobbit into what will be an 8-hour long trilogy. That’s absolutely gigantic for a movie about a hobbit.

Sometimes, I think I’m too hard on the movie. Obviously it was unnecessarily long, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. I was cranky when I went to see it and crankier when I wrote the review, and that may have influenced my ultimate opinion of the film. But then I remember, I don’t care. I hold grudges pretty well. And somehow a movie that was actually good managed to piss me off.

6. Dredd 3D

 

I would consider most films in the top six of my rankings extraordinarily underrated, and Dredd is probably the most underrated of them all. I will use this space to plead one final time: go see this movie! If nothing else, it is cool. Oh, and bloody. They really like blood. (Don’t worry; my ‘judge-free zone’ rule doesn’t apply to actual judges!)

5. Skyfall

Allow me to preface this by saying I was never a huge James Bond fan, so it’s impressive that Skyfall finished so high on my list. This film first blipped on my radar when the queen of England parachuted out of a helicopter during the Olympics opening ceremony, in what was quite possibly the best promotion a movie has ever received in history. And I’m quite glad Queen Elizabeth II implored me to go see it. It was one of the best action movies of 2012, and I was cheering for it to win a Best Picture nomination. This movie was pretty much about Bond complaining about how old he was, but I’m sure this series will be around for a long, long time.

4. Django Unchained

 

There’s something I’ve been wondering about. Where exactly did the blood on Leonardo DiCaprio’s hand come from? Was it inside the skull he was madly severing in front of his immobilized guests? I’m not so sure if blood is inside bones. At first I thought, maybe he cut himself with the saw, and in his blind rage perhaps he didn’t notice? Then I figured it might be some weird artsy depiction of his blood-curdling fury. I mean whatever, it was an awesome touch. Just wondering.

I was kind of nervous to see Django, because I was expecting to not like it, but be forced to give it a glowing review anyway because it’s a good film technically (hashtagLesMis). Thankfully Tarantino created a movie that can be appreciated by intelligent moviegoers and, well, the less intelligent. Like me! I’m both. And Django Unchained is excellent.

3. Wreck-It Ralph

“I’M GONNA WRECK IT!” Ralph cries, throwing the half-eaten skull of Django into a distant bush composed of pixels and coding. Only three movies remain; ten lay dead behind him, their mangled carcasses strewn across the bright, saturated colors of his friend’s arcade game, Sugar Rush. In the sky Jolly Rogers glow like embers.

Ralph knows victory is near. He’s known since the beginning his film was superior to most, if not all. What other movie could be adored by children and adults alike, contained a record-setting amount of clever references, looked like delicious dessert coated in a glossy syrup? Hope fizzes in his stomach like Pepsi.

Ralph hears something from the bank of the chocolate river; he turns. Before his brain can load more information, a stinging shreds his enormous side: a Blunderbuss. The off pitch singing of a female-only a capella group bores through his ears like a dentist drill.

A burrito splatters his face. “I’VE JUST BEEN SHOT!” No one will help him now. As he fades, he thinks of his job back home, smashing windows; puddles of mud. Not quite as far as he wanted, he acknowledges with a grunt. But far enough to earn him the achievement medal.

Alrighty that’s done and here we are at our top two, Looper and Pitch Perfect (in case you didn’t pick up on the, er, references.) Both rock, but there can only be one winner…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2. Pitch Perfect

 

I’d deem 2012 a success for comedy, and Pitch Perfect may be the best of them. If you were confused by any earlier “jokes” in the post, it was probably a reference to Pitch Perfect. It’s not because I’m crazy. It’s actually your fault for not seeing Pitch Perfect, so go. Now. Shoo. Skedaddle. Hard pass buddy, hard pass. (Go see it.)

Pitch Perfect is definitely the next Mean Girls, I’m almost certain of it. If you want to be cool like me, I’d advise learning all the references. Fat Amy is probably my favorite character from any of the thirteen movies on this list. Rebel Wilson, I KNOW you’re reading this. Come visit me.

1. Looper

 

The sad thing is when we look back at 2012 Looper wasn’t even a hit. It’s my favorite movie I’ve reviewed on my blog, and as such it deserves more respect. So tenderly crafted the storyline, so hauntingly brilliant the open-endedness of it all. Are we all stuck in our own loops, losing these rings more often than Bilbo? This and more, you will ponder.

My absolute favorite part of a movie is the story, and I think at the end of the day, Looper had the best. It’s truly inspiring.

Well that’s that. I’m returning to my kingdom. I guess I really didn’t post over winter break as often as I said I would, oop. I think I’m finally seeing Silver Linings Playbook, so that’ll be up next. I don’t want to do a normal review of it, though. We all know it’s good by now. Any ideas on what other angle I could take? Comment!

What was your favorite movie that I reviewed? Oh, and what do you guys think about Ben Affleck? LEAVE A COMMENT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!