The MacGuffin

If screenings of clips from Star Trek Into Darkness and Fast & Furious 6 weren’t cool enough, we still had two days worth of studio presentations (Disney, Sony, 20th Century Fox, and Lionsgate) at CinemaCon 2013. Generally the presentations went two ways: either the presenters would briefly mention a bunch of projects but not show anything from them and then show more extensive clips from a few select projects, OR they would show brief clips (or trailers) for many different projects.

It’s hard to be serious when writing a review for a film titled Big Ass Spider. I must admit, I’m not an expert on the kind of films that generally come out of the SyFy channel these days, but every now and then I’ve been known to watch a Sharktopus, so I was at least curious. I do love the cheese factor of those sorts of films, and this one had two other very strong elements that spoke to me when reading the SXSW film guide: I hated spiders as a kid and I’m a huge fan of Greg Grunberg.

Mental illness is a challenging topic to address in film. A lot of times it comes off feeling corny and over the top. Rather than being a part of what a character has to deal with, it becomes who they are, or ends up being treated as punchline for jokes or feeling much more like a cliché than an actual ailment. So it is particularly engaging when you see it done well. Snap is an extreme example, but it does a good job of showing that experiences in life can have effects that continue to ripple on long after they seem to be over.

2012 was a terrific year at the movies. 2010 and 2011 both felt a little underwhelming at the time. There was some good work, to be sure, but the amount of work that felt new or exciting was less and less. However, this last year felt like an embarrassment of riches at times. Good stuff was coming out every week, and a lot of it had real merit. Below is my list of top 10 films for 2012.

It’s been one heck of a good year for movies. From mainstream blockbusters to low-budget indies, there was a little bit for everyone in 2012. Even with a less than stellar summer season, I would argue that this been the strongest film year since 2007. When I sat down to write my end of the year list, I kept scratching out certain entries and starting over, because there were so many films that I wanted to mention. Even with the list you’re about to go through, I’m already questioning whether I should do it again just one more time. That’s the silliness of making these things in the first place. There were so many good movies this year that attempting to rank them one over the other is an exercise in absurdity. But that’s the kind of absurdity we movie fans love to put ourselves through.

I’ve made no secret of my admiration for the work of Ben Affleck. Frequently I think he is the best part of the movies he is involved in—I’ve used the case of Good Will Hunting as an example numerous times. Despite winning an Academy Award for co-writing that film, I was curious to see how he would transition into directing, and I’m thrilled to see that after only three films he has already cemented himself amongst the best working today. This will become more clear as we head towards award season, where his latest project, Argo, is sure to garner a lot of attention.

The opening credits sequence of Scott Derrickson’s Sinister is so haunting and disquieting you may find yourself questioning whether or not the film can maintain that level of tension. The images on display set the bar for what is to come, and I’m both excited and terrified to report that, minus a couple of missteps in its closing moments, the film remains effectively creepy throughout.

I have always been the type of person who requires many conditions to enjoy my media. For example, when discovering that a certain kind of music sounds a lot better when heartbroken, I will specifically wait to break out certain CDs until the day I am left in shambles. I can’t only watch one part of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings without watching the whole trilogy, and I WILL NOT watch a Christmas movie unless it’s within the months of November or December—and, yes, that includes Die Hard (1986) and Batman Returns (1992).

When you’ve run the gamut on monsters like vampires and zombies, it seems logical that the next best place to go would be werewolves. The cool thing about werewolves is that they’re a more primal, unchained, and psychologically imbalanced kind of monster than the brooding pseudo-sexual vampire, or the decaying, decrepit metaphor for humanity that is the zombie. Werewolves are a Jekyll-and-Hyde archetype, and, as such, can play the range of terror from tragic to downright rampaging emotion. Like any good monster, though, werewolves are not just great because they exist—it’s their application to the story that makes all the difference.

It is a strange place to find yourself, on the opposite side from the majority with your feelings toward a film. That place where you either see something that nobody else does, or are bewildered by what people do see. We’ve done top 5s on overrated and underrated movies that discuss this very feeling. That was my experience at SXSW with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s latest film, Intruders. Upon discussing it with others afterward, it almost felt like I saw a different film than everyone else did.