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Benh Zeitlin’s stunning debut centers on Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), a philosophical 6-year-old girl who lives with her tough-love father, Wink (Dwight Henry), in “The Bathtub”—the Katrina-ravaged southernmost community in the Louisiana Bayou. When a terrible storm comes, it melts the polar ice caps, unleashing a group of prehistoric creatures called Aurochs. Amid the chaos, and her father’s dwindling health, lil Hushpuppy goes off on an epic journey in search of her long-lost mother. This drama-fantasy, made for under $2 million via a string of nonprofit organizations and shot on grainy 16mm, offered the most stunningly original, captivating movie-going experience of the year. It’s a beautiful paean to post-Katrina Louisiana, with one of the greatest child performances in film history, courtesy of the plucky Wallis.
As with most years at the cinema, things got off to a pretty dreadful start with forgettable films like "One for the Money", "John Carter", and "That’s My Boy", and yet, following an awards-season onslaught of impressive fare, 2012 has morphed into one of the best years at the movies in quite some time. From the magical realism of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the CIA’s exhaustive hunt for Osama bin Laden, "Zero Dark Thirty", here are The Daily Beast’s best movies of the year.
Quentin Tarantino has become a master of historical wish-fulfillment fantasies, and this time, it’s not the Nazis getting their comeuppance, but brutal, racist slave-owners in the antebellum South. A German bounty hunter by the name of Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) recruits Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, to help him find the Brittle Brothers and collect the large bounty on them. In return, Schultz agrees to assist Django in freeing his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from the clutches of a vicious slavemaster, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who gets his jollies hosting Mandingo fights. While it runs about 20 minutes too long, this spaghetti-western/black comedy is a splendidly acted, effortlessly cool barrel of laughs that warrants repeat viewings.
What first seems like a routine inner-city cop drama soon morphs into a fascinating study of male camaraderie under the most trying of circumstances, as two LAPD cops (Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena)—and best friends—find themselves squaring off against Mexican drug cartels that have spilled into southern California.
David Gelb’s mouthwatering, operatic documentary centers on Jiro, an 85-year-old man regarded as the world’s greatest sushi chef who operates Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Tokyo with 18 seats that’s situated off a subway platform. The film chronicles Jiro’s quest to make the perfect piece of sushi, along with his two sons, both sushi chefs struggling to escape from behind their father’s considerable shadow. After seeing this film, you will immediately run out and grab some sushi.
Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s last effort, 2008’s "Reprise", was one of the best films of that year and his sophomore effort doesn't disappoint. Anders, 34, is granted day leave from an Oslo drug rehab clinic to attend a job interview, but after he torpedoes it, he spends the rest of the night exploring the streets of Oslo, encountering many people from his past along the way. It’s a fascinating portrait of a lost generation that bears more than a few similarities to Joyce’s "Ulysses".
Shot in eye-catching 65mm by arguably the most technically proficient director around, Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights"), "The Master" follows a charismatic mystic, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and based on the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, who indoctrinates a troubled WWII Navy vet into his budding cult. Anderson’s latest is a hallucinatory treatise on greed, corruption, and manipulation—and the second film, following "There Will Be Blood", in his "American Dream" series.
Auteur Michael Haneke’s ("The White Ribbon") exquisitely shot, intimate French- language drama about an elderly man forced to nurse his wife following her debilitating stroke is one of the most heartbreaking, staggeringly realistic depictions of love—and old age—ever put to film. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and has a great shot at being the first foreign-language film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar since 2006.
Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal’s follow-up to their Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker" chronicles the CIA’s decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. It’s an impressive piece of cine-journalism that conveys—in painstaking detail—the paranoia, tragic missteps, and morally questionable practices carried out by the U.S. in the wake of 9/11 in what is arguably the best film yet dealing with the War on Terror.
No filmmaker handles familial dysfunction better than David O. Russell ("The Fighter") and here, he gets career-best performances out of Bradley Cooper as a bipolar goon acclimating to life outside of a mental hospital and Jennifer Lawrence as the no-nonsense firecracker who gives him the kick in the ass he needs. Robert De Niro also turns in his best effort in years as Cooper’s loving, Philadelphia Eagles-obsessed father. The film as a whole is a fascinating exploration of the relationships between a sports team and a city, a father and son, and two lost souls searching for meaning in this crazy, mixed-up world.
This outstanding movie-musical is the first cinematic work to do justice to Victor Hugo’s masterpiece. Director Tom Hooper’s follow-up to "The King’s Speech" boasts soaring renditions of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Herbert Kretzmer’s beloved ballads. While Hugh Jackman (Valjean), Eddie Redmayne (Marius), and Samantha Barks (Eponine) impress, it’s Anne Hathaway as the fallen woman Fantine who steals the show. Her version of “I Dreamed a Dream” will even give Susan Boyle the chills.
Benh Zeitlin’s stunning debut centers on Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), a philosophical 6-year-old girl who lives with her tough-love father, Wink (Dwight Henry), in “The Bathtub”—the Katrina-ravaged southernmost community in the Louisiana Bayou. When a terrible storm comes, it melts the polar ice caps, unleashing a group of prehistoric creatures called Aurochs. Amid the chaos, and her father’s dwindling health, lil Hushpuppy goes off on an epic journey in search of her long-lost mother. This drama-fantasy, made for under $2 million via a string of nonprofit organizations and shot on grainy 16mm, offered the most stunningly original, captivating movie-going experience of the year. It’s a beautiful paean to post-Katrina Louisiana, with one of the greatest child performances in film history, courtesy of the plucky Wallis.
