2012 in Movies

Sorry for the hiatus in posting, my internet connection has been terrible all this past week.  I have had some good news though - my boyfriend Tetley has been offered a job in BT's graduate scheme, which as well as the obvious benefits of being employed means that we get top-quality free internet, woo!

Tetley recently started a film blog where he writes about the movies he's seen, with reviews ranging from brutally scathing to ridiculously fangirly (boy-ly?).  As it's halfway through the year, I thought it would be a good idea for me to do a quick round-up of the movies that I've seen so far in 2012...

The first film I saw this year was The Artist, at Dundee's 'arty' cinema, the DCA.  Every other film I'd seen at the DCA had been pretty depressing and as I knew nothing about The Artist before going to see it, I assumed it would be the same.  Luckily, I couldn't have been more wrong - it's one of the funniest and most heartwarming films I've seen so far this year!  My favourite characters were definitely Peppy (Berenice Bejo) and Jack the dog, it's hard to decide who was the most adorable!

Continuing with the heartwarming theme, the next movie we saw was The Muppets, which annoyingly didn't come out in Britain until months after its American release.  It was definitely worth the wait though, it was a brilliant comeback movie for the Muppets and it had some pretty awesome songs!  Laura and I were almost crying with laughter at Chris Cooper's song, as well as a perfect cameo moment in the 'Man or Muppet' song - I don't want to spoil it for anyone but if you've seen the movie you'll know what I mean... ;)

Things took a bit of a turn for the worse when we went to see Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in 3D - a small part of me likes this movie as I was young enough when it came out to remember it with childhood nostalgia, but as a Star Wars fan I'm still of the general opinion that the prequels were A Bad Idea.  I hadn't watched Episode 1 in so long that I'd forgotten about the immaculate conception plotline, and I feel like that makes the film just a bit too ridiculous for me to handle.  The podracing scenes did look good in 3D though, plus there was the added entertainment of watching the film while sitting next to my friend Sam who at the age of 21 is still a bit of an Anakin lookalike...

Tetley and I won free tickets to the DCA so we decided to use them to go and see Shame.  This movie was classic depressing DCA fare - I only wanted to go and see it so I could look at Michael Fassbender but I got a lot more than I'd bargained for...  I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again, but it was a completely gripping and harrowing story, plus the scene where Carey Mulligan sings was pretty fantastic.

The next film we saw was The Hunger Games, I enjoyed reading the books and I think that the movie was a surprisingly faithful adaptation.  Josh Hutcherson was an adorable Peeta and Jennifer Lawrence was the perfect Katniss, I may be a little bit in love!  While they're very enjoyable, however, I can't help but feel that both the books and movie are way too overdramatic - there were quite a few moments where we couldn't take the film seriously, especially the scene where Peeta is disguised as a rock.  I couldn't help but think of this comic by Gingerhaze...

I'm not the biggest fan of seeing scary films at the cinema as I'm always afraid I'll scream and embarass myself, but I survived surprisingly well when I watched The Cabin in the Woods.  I found it a lot more intelligent than the average horror film, it's defintely the sort of film you should know nothing about before watching it because the reveal is amazing!

The next movie I saw was The Avengers (actually called Marvel Avengers Assemble here in the UK but that's stupid so I'm choosing to ignore it).  As those of you who've been following me for a while might have picked up on, I got pretty obsessed with this film - I love superhero movies as well as Joss Whedon's style and humour, and the two together were the perfect combination!  Everyone's characterisation was pretty spot on, and on a more honest and shallow note, the cast is made up almost entirely of attractive men in tight costumes....  There were too many enjoyable moments for me to pick a favourite scene, but I was a fan of the lovely Tom Hiddleston as Loki in his dapper suit, so I'll leave you with a picture of that!

 One of my favourite Disney movies is Beauty and the Beast, so I was pretty excited to have the chance to see it at the cinema since I was only a baby when it was originally released.  I think it was definitely worth going to see as Disney films are designed for the big screen - watching it really made me appreciate just how much effort goes in to making animated movies as I was able to notice tiny details in crowd scenes and the painted background that are lost when watching the movie on TV.  I admit that there were a few parts where I got a bit emotional, it really is such a beautiful and classic movie!

The second scary film of my year was Prometheus, although as Prometheus is part of the Alien film franchise, the horror was less things jumping out at you and more disgusting things happening to people's bodies.  While the film looked very pretty, it was very silly and had a LOT of plotholes - if you've seen it, I'd recommend checking out this review by Cleolinda which points out everything that was wrong with the movie in a hilarious manner.  I'm still holding out for a sequel/cartoon adaptation where Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender's head have adventures in spaaaace...

The next film I saw was Moonrise Kingdom, which like all Wes Anderson's films had not much in terms of plot but a huge amount of style.  All of the shots and colours were so beautiful, I especially loved the scout camp and all of Suzy's 60s outfits.  The family home was also pretty amazing - can I live in a house designed by Wes Anderson, please?

Finally, the most recent movie I saw was The Amazing Spiderman.  I thought this was a fantastic reboot for the Spiderman franchise and that Andrew Garfield made a perfect Spiderman, although admittedly, Laura and I did spend most of the movie screaming over shots of his beautiful face/fluffy hair/dorky smile...  I also liked that he had a lighthearted and jokey character like in the comics.  Personally, I thought that the design for The Lizard was a bit silly-looking, but I guess that nothing can be as silly as Tobey Maguire's 'seductive dancing' in Spiderman 3...

In the second half of 2012, I'm especially looking forward to watching The Dark Knight Rises because it's already looking pretty fantastic; Brave because it's set in Scotland and stars the first Disney princess who doesn't want to get married off (so exciting!); and The Hobbit because Martin Freeman is already an adorable hobbit so he's pretty much guaranteed to make a fantastic Bilbo Baggins.

What films have you enjoyed watching so far this year?  Do you love or hate any of my choices? 

Faye 

xxx

(p.s. all photos were found on Google Images)