#9
Prisoners
After first seeing Prisoners I wouldn’t have thought it would make my top ten. However, it’s a film in which so many of the elements that make it what is have stuck with me ever since that first viewing at the Toronto Film Festival. Watching it again, it began to seem obvious it would find a spot on this list.
Part of my appreciation is for the film’s performances, Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman are outstanding. Gyllenhaal keeps so much of what’s inside hidden while Jackman finds himself forced to do the unthinkable. What moved me most, however, was the combination of Roger Deakins‘ cinematography and Johann Johannsson‘s score, both of which embody the film’s menacing narrative in ways that never allow you to breathe comfortably.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
Prepare for dark territory with Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, a film where one father offers his response to the question above as an increasingly mysterious case surrounding his daughter’s disappearance unfolds. In terms of tone, Prisoners is operating on the same dark level as David Fincher’s Zodiac and Roger Deakins delivers some of the best cinematography of his career, turning something as trivial as a car coming to a curbside stop into a foreboding dolly shot. Even tree bark offers up riddles of its own.
Read my full review here.
#8
Side Effects
Released all the way back in February and supposedly will be director Steven Soderbergh‘s final theatrical film, Side Effects remains one of the year’s best films and remains one of only two films I saw in theaters twice this year.
Within this Hitchcockian thriller, Rooney Mara continues to impress, Jude Law is wonderful and it seems Soderbergh means to torture his fans on the heels of Magic Mike last year as well as Behind the Candelabra this year as he seems to have saved some of his very best for very last. We can only hope once he’s done writing novelettes on Twitter and whatever else his “retirement” from theatrical films may be, that he’ll once again return to the silver screen.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
Side Effects is a film that’s only going to benefit from repeat viewings. Once it ended I could very easily have sat through it again. This is an old school kind of noir feature and one it seems only right Soderbergh direct and hopefully it will find some kind of traction with audiences and be a break out hit, though I fear the lack of ambiguity and hit-em-over-the-head plot turns may hurt its chances.
Read my full review here.
#7
The Hunt
This is the first of two films that premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival that will be featured on this year end top ten. The Hunt, however, was the one of those two films that I didn’t actually see at the festival. It wouldn’t be until more than a year later I would finally see the film that won Mads Mikkelsen the Best Actor award at Cannes and seemed to divide critics as the ending seems to have been some cause for debate.
I won’t get into spoiler territory here as I’d rather those of you that haven’t yet seen this film for yourself experienced with little to zero knowledge of what it’s about, but suffice to say, director Thomas Vinterberg knew what he was doing when he cast Mikkelsen as a kindergarten teacher in a small Danish town accused of inappropriate sexual conduct with a young girl. The supporting cast is just as impressive, none more so than young Annika Wedderkopp (pictured above) whose childlike innocence makes the story all the more convincing.
I did have a few issues with the narrative and a couple of decisions Vinterberg made with his script, but overall this film was a knockout and one that certainly stands out as one of the year’s best.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
For a film that is essentially an emotional drama, Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt is every bit a thriller that will have you pounding your fists in rage, both at the situation as depicted on the screen as well as in some of Vinterberg’s more frustrating storytelling decisions. I didn’t love everything about The Hunt, but even the parts I felt were over-the-top and a bit too much were followed up by such excellence in everything from performance, screenwriting and direction I couldn’t fault the film for long. Vinterberg plays with your emotions in sometimes blunt, yet frequently eloquent ways, turning this into one of the very best films of the year… blemishes and all.
Read my full review here.
