Taking into consideration that I haven’t seen Zero Dark Thirty yet, here are my ten favorite films of 2012.
1. Argo
2. Bernie
3. Silver Linings Playbook
4. Brave
5. Lincoln
6. For Greater Glory
7. Looper
8. Moonrise Kingdom
9. The Avengers
10. October Baby
Finally! It’s 2013 and it’s time for another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers!
1) The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies (1966)
With a title that long, how couldn’t this be a good movie?
2) Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster (1965)
3) Frankenstein Conquers The World (1965)
1965 was obviously a busy year for Frankenstein.
4) Charlie and the Hooker (1977)
With a name like Charlie and the Hooker, you know it’s going to be a fun film for the whole family. And no, this is not a Charlie Sheen biopic.
5) A Taste of Blood (1967)
From the director Herschell Gordon Lewis…
6) Lisa and the Devil
And finally, in honor of the new year, here is the trailer for one of my favorite films of all time — Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil.
What do you think, trailer kitties?
I must admit that in 2012 I didn’t get to listen in full many new albums outside of soundtracks. My Fave five of 2012 Songs will reflect this fact, but still with the lack of variety in my past year’s listening habit I thought the songs I came up with for the list I still would’ve put on a much bigger favorite 2012 list if I had need to come up with one. Without further ado he are the Fave Five (though it’s more Fave Six but I decided to combine the first entry’s two as a tie).
One of the great things about writing about films is that occasionally you both get to watch a film that, despite all of your expectations, turns out to be pretty good and then you get to tell other people about it! Case in point: 2012’s Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day opens with two memorable scenes. In the first scene, we watch as a mysterious woman sneaks into a hospital and kidnaps a baby out of the maternity ward. When a guard attempts to stop her, he ends up with a knife driven into his throat. While we’ve seen similar scenes in other horror movies, it’s rare that we’ve ever seen this scene handled as well as it is in Mother’s Day.
The second scene opens with an almost intrusive close-up of a woman (played by Jaime King) sobbing as she stares at herself in a mirror. Again, it’s not that we haven’t seen this scene in other horror films. Instead, it’s the fact that Jaime King so totally throw herself into those sobs. We believe her tears and immediately, we want to know why she’s crying and we want to know how she’s connected to that baby being kidnapped from the hospital. In just two scenes, Mother’s Day captures our attention and, once it grabs a hold of us, it doesn’t let go for the next two hours.
It turns out that King and her husband have just bought a new house and, on one stormy night, they’re throwing a party with a few of their closest friends. It quickly becomes obvious that, regardless of how happy everyone’s pretending to be, there’s a lot of tension between King and her husband. Something has happened in the past that no one wants to talk about…
Suddenly, three heavily armed men barge into the house and take everyone hostage. The three of them are brothers and they’ve just robbed the bank. The youngest has been shot and is bleeding to death on the couch. The oldest brother explains that they’re looking for their mother. She used to live in the house before King and her husband bought it. The brothers didn’t know that their mother had been kicked out of the house and they’ve been mailing money to the address for the past few months. When King and her husband claim that none of the money ever showed up at the house, the brothers call their mother and soon, mom shows up to take control of the situation.
Mom is named Natalie and she’s played by Rebecca De Mornay. From the minute she shows up, it’s obvious that Natalie is both obsessed with her children and that she’s totally and completely insane. Continually switching between being sweet and psychotic, Natalie is a thoroughly frightening and disturbingly believable monster. De Mornay wisely underplays Natalie’s more showy moments and prevents the character from becoming just another stereotypical movie psycho. Instead, she’s the type of villain that we can easily imagine meeting in the real world. Needless to say, that makes her a hundred time more frightening than any faceless killer with a machete.
Mother’s Day, which was made in 2010 but not released in the U.S. until earlier this year, is a remake of low-budget, 1980 horror film. This is a rare case where the remake is about a thousand times better than the original. Director Darren Lynn Bousman keeps the action moving at a perfect pace and the film’s cast (which includes True Blood‘s Deborah Ann Woll in a showy role) creates a disturbingly credible gallery of rogues and victims.
Mother’s Day is a rarity — a horror remake that not only deserves to be seen but which is so good that the original might as well just be an afterthought.
( An earlier version of this review appeared on HorrorCritic.com.)
Without further ado, here are my picks for the 26 best films of 2012!
Sometimes, you just had to be there.
That was my reaction as I watched the 1967 Best Picture nominee Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. While this film may have been topical and even controversial when it was first released, when watched today it seems to be rather mild and tame.
In Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Spencer Tracy plays Matt Drayton. Matt’s a San Francisco newspaper publisher, a respected member of the upper class establishment. His wife, Christina (Katharine Hepburn), owns a trendy art gallery and Matt spends his spare time playing golf with Monsignor Ryan (Cecil Kellaway). He’s the father of the free-spirited Joey (Katharine Houghton, who was Hepburn’s niece in real life). He’s also, as we’re told repeatedly by every other character in the film, a liberal who supports the civil rights movement.
As the film begins, Joey is returning from a vacation in Hawaii and she has big news. While in Hawaii, she met and fell in love with the widowed John Prentice, a highly succesful doctor who is literally on the verge of winning a Nobel Peace Prize. Though he’s 16 years older than her and they’ve only known each other for 10 days, Joey and Prentice are planning on getting married. While Joey thinks that she’s bringing Prentice to San Francisco just so her parents can meet their future son-in-law, Prentice has specifically come to ask Matt’s permission to marry Joey. As Prentice explains to Matt, he’ll call the marriage off if Matt doesn’t approve.
John Prentice, by the way, is played by Sidney Poitier and that is the source of the film’s conflict. Will Matt give his daughter permission to marry a polite, considerate, wealthy, saintly, world-renowned doctor despite the fact that he happens to be black?
Watching Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner was a bit of a culture shock to me, both because I’m the result of an interracial marriage myself (my mom was Spanish and my dad’s white) and because several of my friends are either in or have been a part of an interracial relationship or marriage. For people my age, it’s not a big deal. We take it for granted that if you find someone to be attractive, you can have a relationship with him regardless of whatever race he may happen to be.
While I was doing research on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, I was reminded that this wasn’t always the case. When Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner was first released in 1967, interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states. In that same year, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk offered to resign when his daughter married a black man. When Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner was first released, interracial marriage still a controversial subject and when Spencer Tracy struggled with his feelings about it, he stood in for countless Americans who, though they may have taken pride in how tolerant they were, still weren’t sure what they would do if a black man tried to join their family.
As you can probably guess, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner is far more interested in teaching a lesson than telling a story. It’s perhaps not surprising that the film was directed and produced by Stanley Kramer. Kramer was one of the most prominent filmmakers of the 1960s. He specialized in making big films that dealt with big issues, the type of films that were regularly nominated for an academy award but rarely honored with an actual win. In many ways, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner is a prototypical Kramer picture — its heart is in the right place but the film itself is so conventional and free of ambiguity that it never manages to truly challenge the status quo that it claims to be criticizing.*
In his excellent look at the 1967 nominees for best picture, Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth of The New Hollywood, Mark Harris provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the filming of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Harris quotes Kramer as explaining that the character of John Prentice had to be perfect because, if the character had any flaws, then bigots in the audience would have seized on those flaws as the reason why Prentice and Joey should not be allowed to marry. As Kramer explains it, the entire film was set up to make it clear that the only possible reason that Matt could have to object to Prentice would be the color of his skin.
To an extent, I can see Kramer’s point (and again, it’s hard to judge what was necessary to make a point in 1967 from the perspective of 2013) but, as I watched Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, it was hard not to feel that the main problem with the film was that Prentice was just too perfect. Certainly, he was too perfect to be in love with Joey who, as played by Houghton, simply seemed to be too naive and foolish to be a good match for a man who is on the verge of winning a Nobel Prize. Even more importantly, it’s hard to escape the fact that this accomplished, confident black man still needs to get the permission of a well-meaning white liberal before he can marry the woman he claims to love.
Ultimately, despite the film’s noble intentions, it feels more than a bit condescending. At no point is Prentice allowed to show any anger or frustration at having to prove himself. There’s even a scene where Prentice criticizes his own father for being too hung up on racism. “Not until you and you’re whole lousy generation lay down and die will the weight of you be off our backs … You think of yourself as a colored man … I think of myself as a man!” Prentice tells him, as if his success was due to ignoring racism as opposed to defying it.
If Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner has dated badly as a look at race relations in the United States, it remains watchable because of the performances of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. This was their 9th and final film together and the love that these two accomplished actors felt for each other shines through every scene. Tracy was seriously ill while making the film (and died before it was released) but he gave one of his best and most heartfelt performances here. He was nominated for a posthumous Oscar but lost to Rod Steiger, who co-starred with Poitier in the film that beat Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner for best picture, In The Heat of the Night.
In the Heat of the Night is best-remembered for the scene in which Poitier angrily declares, “They call me …. MISTER TIBBS!” This line epitomized the righteous anger that he was not allowed to display in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. If only Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner had its own “MISTER TIBBS” moment, it might be remembered as something other than a film that seems curiously out-of-place as a nominee for best picture.
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* That said, Kramer’s post-Guess films were actually pretty interesting and a bit more daring. Some day, I’ll have to get around to reviewing his 1970 campus unrest film, R.P.M.
I like to use 2010’s Nightmare on Elm Street as the basis for horror remakes I’m not fond of. So when Texas Chainsaw 3D was announced, I automatically wrote it off as being something you could put on the shelf right next to this one. I have to admit I was actually surprised. Yeah, it’s a bad movie, but I didn’t find myself scoffing nearly as much as I did Nightmare, which really didn’t work for me at all. I just don’t see myself running back to see this one. I believe part of this has to do with the way the film opens.
Having gone into the film blind, I expected a remake of the remake. Essentially the same story we had with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. The shock was that the film starts with the events of the original Tobe Hooper film, rendered in 3D (which was very cool, I might add). It then moves to the afternoon after the last victim ran away. This gives anyone who may be unfamiliar with the original a bit of a bridge, and personally having never liked any of the original sequels, I liked the aftermath that takes place.
Essentially, Texas Chainsaw 3d is the story of Heather Miller (played by Percy Jackson’s Alexandra Daddario), who receives word from her lawyer that she’s inherited a home in Dallas, Texas. What she doesn’t realize is that this inheritance comes with a few problems. She decides to hop in a van and head down there, accompanied by her friend Nikki (Tania Raymonde), Nikki’s date Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sanchez), and her boyfriend (Tremaine “Trey Songz” Neverson, who the girls in my audience gave the same whoops and catcalls normally reserved for Pattinson/Lautner in a Twilight Showing).
Basically, the movie becomes the cliché “draw this person into isolation and Bam!” that every horror film has, but I’ll admit that I watched a lot of those scenes with my eyes averted, so in that aspect, it got the job done. The visual makeup effects were done by Robert Kurtzman, the “K” in the KNB Effects group (The Walking Dead’s Gregory Nictotero and Howard Berger are the others), and there’s no shortage of blood in this film. While it’s not quite on the level on what the upcoming Evil Dead looks like – that appears to be on the epic Dead Alive levels – Chainsaw does have limbs lost, blood spurting and Leatherface’s signature weapon used to fullest extent. Those moments of isolation come of as very intense, and the direction isn’t bad.
The 3D in the film was nice, though used sparingly. To be honest, the best use of the effects was in what it added to the pieces of the original film that were used. I really enjoyed the outcome there and there are a few key “weapon in the camera” shots that may make you flinch.
Horror films have their eye candy. Sex sells, let’s face it. In Chainsaw, both Raymonde and Daddario had the guys captivated, and Scott Eastwood (Clint’s Son) works for the ladies. While there’s no nudity in the film, good considering how many kids were at my showing, there’s enough skin to appreciate.
What I didn’t like about the film was that in this day and age where you have smart heroes in horror stories – one need only look at Cabin in the Woods here – Chainsaw resorts to the classic “two step, drop” method, meaning that characters meaning to escape will only make it a few steps before stumbling over their feet. I don’t know if that works anymore for audiences. The times that it happened at my showing brought about more laughter than it did horror. Granted, I can’t say I’d be the best of runners with someone wielding a noisy chainsaw behind me, but you’d be damn sure I’d be up or kicking from the floor if I had to. Additionally, the heroes make a few stupid mistakes, which they have to I suppose. Still, I would have liked a few more smart moves. One other thing is that Leatherface himself, while menacing, doesn’t have the same effect that the Brynarski one in Marcus Nispel’s film with Jessica Biel. The Leatherface in that film was a hulking behemoth of a dude that ran with football player like speeds. Chainsaw 3D’s Leatherface is more like your grandpa that caught you stomping around his rose garden and chased after you with garden shears. It’s the equivalent of seeing Dawn of the Dead running zombies and going back to shuffling walkers.
Overall, Texas Chainsaw 3D isn’t anything fantastic and new. You can wait for it on 3D Blu-Ray. If you are an absolute fan of the series, it’s worth a look for both the connections to the original and a cool Gunnar Hansen cameo. Or you can watch it just for Daddario. Just make sure someone else buys you the ticket.
My pick for Hottie of the Day for January 5, 2013 is Alexandra Daddario.
While Texas Chainsaw 3D will probably a blip in the January 2013 movie set, I doubt anyone seeing the film will forget it’s heroine, Heather Miller, played by Alexandra Daddario. Audiences may know her from Parenthood or Blue Collar, but she’s perhaps best known as Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena in Chris Columbus’ Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. With a pair of brilliant blue eyes, this Italian / Czechoslovakian beauty will also grace audiences with Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters later this year and hopefully, more in the future.
PAST HOTTIES
This is embarrassing. Here it is 2013, and my 2012 collection consists of only 38 albums, the majority of which I’ve listened to twice at best. I never heard the new Neurosis. I never heard the new High On Fire. Hell, forget metal, I didn’t even listen to the new Shins and Godspeed albums. I can’t offer an experienced, informed opinion now the way I could at the end of 2011. But I’ve been posting up some sort of album of the year list somewhere for over a decade now, and I’ll be damned if I let the fact that I didn’t really listen to any albums in 2012 stand in my way.
Or something like that. Here we go.
10. Dawnbringer – Into the Lair of the Sun God (track: IV)
It’s not often I get into a standard heavy metal album, but Dawnbringer did everything right in 2012. The songs rock along with a bit of an Iron Maiden drive to them, the power and black metal tendencies are tastefully incorporated to enhance the drive without altering the vibe, and the vocals know their limit. If it sounds a bit generic, don’t let that fool you. Not too many bands can pull this off without giving into the temptation to be more “epic” or “extreme” than they really are. Dawnbringer pull it off without the flare–without ever going over the top–and their accessibility places Into the Lair of the Sun God among the best of the year.
9. Korpiklaani – Manala
I wouldn’t say Hittavainen was the heart and soul of Korpiklaani, but he was an essential component. The band would be at a total loss without Jonne Järvelä, and their consistent line-up over the years has contributed enormously to their success, but Juho Kauppinen’s accordion aside, the folk instrumentation was almost all a product of Hittavainen. When he left due to health issues after Ukon Wacka in 2011, I feared it was the end of an era. Korpiklaani never missed a beat recovering from the loss in 2012. In addition to picking up the highly qualified Tuomas Rounakari as their new violinist, Jonne Järvelä stepped up to fill in the void by recording the mandolin, flute, and whistle tracks. I think I can hear some nuance differences between his and Hittavainen’s playing style, but it might just as well be in my head; Manala sounds like a Korpiklaani album through and through. I don’t like it as much as Karkelo and Ukon Wacka–it’s a bit heavier, too much so for my taste in folk metal–but in the greater sphere of Korpiklaani’s discography it is certainly composed and performed to par.
8. Ensiferum – Unsung Heroes
Ensiferum took a lot of slack for this album. I think a lot of people wanted to hear the over-the-top bombast that worked so effectively on Victory Songs, but in my opinion that was already growing stale on From Afar. Unsung Heroes is down to earth in a way they haven’t been since the 2001 self-titled debut, and I love it. They’re heading in exactly the direction I’d hoped for, and with the exception of the ugly mistake that is the album’s 17 minute closing track, Power Proof Passion, Unsung Heroes does not sound at all like a band past their prime. If they continue to push in the direction of tracks like Pohjola, they’re in position to trump Victory Songs and follow up Unsung Heroes with their best album to date.
7. Wodensthrone – Curse
I wish I’d taken the time to review this album earlier in the year, because I haven’t listened to it since the summer, and their flavor of epic black metal isn’t the sort of thing you can fully absorb in a quick last-minute listen. This is an album that can move nowhere but up in my charts over the months to follow, but for the time being I am content to place it somewhere in the middle. While busting out black metal that’s just as grim and unforgiving as the 1990s greats, Wodensthrone manage to infuse a tremendous amount of emotion that speaks of something beautiful hidden beneath the chaos. It’s buried a bit deeper than say, Femundsmarka by Waldgeflüster last year, but the feeling is similar.
6. Vattnet Viskar – Vattnet Viskar EP (song: Weakness)
If someone were to ask me what black metal sounded like in 2012, I might hand them this EP. It’s kind of cool getting to say that, because one of their members is a regular at the music forum where I get most of my recommendations. I wouldn’t have guessed back in March that they would be signed to Century Media by the end of the year, but I’m stoked to hear it. The whole notion of post-black metal has taken on a number of different flavors in these formative years, and Vattnet Viskar expand the genre by incorporating a lot of the all-encompassing guitar tones I associate with post-rock acts like Mono and This Will Destroy You. Top-notch stuff that’s really at the forefront of an emergent genre I’ve been anticipating for years.
5. Enslaved – RIITIIR
How Enslaved have aged so well is beyond me, but their last three albums have been their best three albums, and 22 years after the formation of this band they remain at the forefront of metal. Their viking-infused progressive black sound of late has done as much to shape the future of the genre as any new-found participant in the current popular trend towards black metal that has been taking shape over the past four years. RIITIIR is another outstanding output by the one classic early 90s black metal band that has managed to weather the ages unscathed.
4. Blut aus Nord – 777: Cosmosophy
The review I wrote of 777: Cosmosophy last month was one of the most thorough I’ve done all year, and there is nothing I care to say about the album that I haven’t said already. It is outstanding in its own right, but it does not feel like an entirely complete finale to their already classic 777 series. The first and third tracks, breathtaking though they may be, don’t seem to sufficiently progress from where the second album in the trilogy, The Desanctification, left off. The second track moreover, Epitome XV, is the weakest link on all three albums. The last two tracks compensate greatly by concluding in proper form, and I certainly think Cosmosophy is excellent. It can only be said to have “shortcomings” in so far as I expected it to be the best album of 2012. Fourth place isn’t too bad.
3. Torche – Harmonicraft (song: Reverse Inverted)
Calling Torche metal at this point is really pushing the limits of the definition. Since their early days writing crushing stoner anthems, they have evolved into a bizarre amalgamation equal parts metal and pop. But it’s not just the uniqueness of the happy, smiley-face hammers Harmonicraft beats you down with that makes it so appealing. Torche have become by all rights the heirs of the 1990s. These guys have more in common with the Smashing Pumpkins than they do with any of their stoner metal contemporaries. This is the sort of thing that 15 years ago we could have just labeled “alternative rock” and gone on enjoying without any need for classifications. While forging an entirely unique, original sound of their own, Torche have managed to capture a song-writing ethos that has been dead for a generation, and Harmonicraft is the cleanest breath of fresh air I’ve inhaled in years.
2. Krallice – Years Past Matter (song: Track 2)
Krallice is my favorite band making music today, and I dare say last year’s Diotoma might be my favorite album by any band ever. Seldom if ever has a band followed up such a masterpiece with something of equal worth, and I was shocked that Krallice had the energy left to release anything at all this year. Years Past Matter is an outstanding post-black metal outing in the vein of Dimensional Bleedthrough. The tracks took longer than usual to grow on me, and usual for Krallice entails dozens of listens, but the payout is always worth the time, and the slow process of appreciation is enjoyable in its own right. Mick Barr and Colin Marston’s dual tremolo is the grand ultimate ear-candy, and so long as they never compromise their commitment to that they will probably remain my favorite band. (Track 3 is my favorite song on Years Past Matter so far, but it was not available on youtube. Track 2 is a worthy substitute.)
1. Panopticon – Kentucky (song: Killing the Giants as They Sleep)
The fact that I didn’t review this album is almost embarrassing, because much like Aesthethica by Liturgy last year, it is an album that absolutely demands a thorough investigation to properly appreciate. I can’t easily tell you why I placed it this high, because frankly I don’t know yet myself. When I first read that a Louisville, Kentucky-based band called Panopticon had released a bluegrass black metal album, all sorts of thoughts ran through my head. Kentucky sounds like none of them. Do ignore the cliche “blackgrass” labels; while Austin Lunn listened to plenty of bluegrass in the process of recording this, he does not actually incorporate the genre as we might think of it. Instead he interweaves traditional Appalachian folk–not bluegrass particularly–as distinct tracks separated from the black metal. What folk does emerge in the bm is more akin to Waylander, and certainly far from “bluegrass”. That’s not a bad thing, just an–I think–important distinction to be made, because otherwise we might be left searching for genre stereotypes which simply aren’t present here. What Kentucky really accomplishes is a merging of a musical themes which perfectly juxtapose a beautiful landscape and a totally destitute human condition. The first half of “Killing the Giants as They Sleep” for instance generates landscape imagery with a degree of effectiveness similar to Femundsmarka by Waldgeflüster. (Have I referenced that album twice now? I think it’s time I paid it another visit.). You take a look around, take a deep breath, and really appreciate the natural beauty that surrounds you. About half way through the dialogue begins, and the explosion around 9:15 serves to draw you fully into the atrocities taking place here, both in the exploitation of workers and the desecration of the environment.
I don’t think Austin Lunn intended to make any sort of political statement here, but in succeeding so comprehensively to depict elements of Appalachia and its outskirts, he effectively did so. At a time when the working class of America is inexplicably becoming staunch supporters of big capital, this album hits a bulls-eye on all of the thoughts that have been forefront on my mind of late. His bleak renditions of union anthems like “Which Side Are You On?”, recently covered with such optimism by the likes of Dropkick Murphys, strike me as a painfully realistic reminder that the entire notion of equality as an American ideal is becoming antiquated.
But that might be seen as secondary. Wherever our ideas may lead us, Kentucky is the sort of album that inclines us to form them. It’s an album that makes me think. Like Aesthethica by Liturgy and Diotima by Krallice last year, it forces me to set aside my mundane daily routines and really engage the human experience. That alone, all other considerations aside, suffices to render it my favorite album of 2012.
Charles DeFeo was born in New Castle, Delaware and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. He moved to New York in 1912 and worked at ad agency while taking night classes at the Art Students League. DeFeo’s first freelance assignments were providing interior illustrations for magazines and he eventually branched out to doing freelance pulp cover art. He also taught at the Grand Central School of Art in the 1930s. After retiring in 1960, DeFeo devoted himself to making ornate hand-tied flies for fishermen. DeFeo’s flies were widely praised for their artistry and are now highly prized by collectors.
Through the Shattered Lens 