been seeing less new movies and more old movies, cause old movies rule, but new movies are still good, cause there are so many bad ones that the good ones rise to the top of the toilet.  out of what I saw, I giveth to you, for 2012, the bestest of the bestestesttest…

The Nifteen Fifteen

1) Zero Dark Thirty

This century has just been awful awful awful, and Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal’s second stab at being social studies teachers feels like the perfect closing chapter to all the awfulness.  Awfulness, go away or else I’ll throw a seal team at you and you will be all minus one even darker thirty billion!!!

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2) Searching For Sugar Man

THEY FOUND HIM!!!!  If this story doesn’t warm your heart, then it’s time to donate it.  Seriously, my life AND ears were changed for the better after seeing this doc, cause now I have the music of Rodriguez in ’em.  PLEASE let it do the same for you.  PLEASE,  I BEG OF YOU

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3) Silver Linings Playbook

Never thought much of Bradley Cooper or Katniss Everdeen as actors before, or even the Philadelphia Eagles as anything other than a team that sucks.  It’s OK to be wrong.  WAY WRONG!!!

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4) Beasts of The Southern Wild

MOVIE MAGIC LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  HUSHPUPPY FOR BEST ACTRESS/PRESIDENT/SUPER BOWL CHAMPION!!!!

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5) the Sonmi~451 storyline of Cloud Atlas

If only Tykwer & the Wachowski Brothers/Sisters cut out the rest of the Cloud Atlas storylines and made a singular movie out of the ‘Orison of Sonmi~451’ tale, cause it might MIGHT MIGHHHT juss have been the best movie that any of thems had ever made.  I have seen the future and it is smoking hot bobbed Korean clone slaves!!!!!

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6) Prometheus

My only complaint with this movie was having to listen to everyone else’s complaints about this movie.  So what if the guy put in his hand in the goo?  That guy sucked and got what was coming to him.  That should happen to all the haters of this movie.  As for the lovers?  They get to love the movie, and that’s more than enuff, cause this movie is RAD!!!

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7) Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

China is fcuked up. Ai Weiwei is fcuking awesome

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8) Beware of Mr Baker

More like – be aware of Ginger Baker.  DO IT!!!  Sunshine of his Love AND Hate!!

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9) The Impossible

you see Naomi Watts’ breasts AND it’s not hot AT all.  NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL CINEMA!!!

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10) Robot & Frank

Finally, someone made a movie about Frank Langella becoming friends with an Omnibot 2000!!!!

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11) The Perks of Being a Wallflower

John Hughes is smiling/crying beyond the grave

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12) 21 Jump Street

TV to big screen done right.  Please make 21 more of these peas

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13) Chronicle

The best super hero flick of the year had ZERO to do with Lord Messiah Joss Whedon

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14) Frankenweenie

sometimes Tim Burton is capable of making things that don’t suck

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15) Project X

a different kind of monkeying around movie.  PARTY ON COSTA!!

 

 

and now for the…

Honor Blackmanable Mentions

(in the reverse order that I saw them…)

This Is 40 (Apatow’s first REALLY funny movie!) / West of Memphis (north of incredible) / Amour (there was no better French old lady slowly decaying movie in 2012!!!) / Wreck-It Ralph (Pixar who?) / The Sessions (sexy unsexy sex!) / Wuthering Heights (haunting, cause we’re still haunted by still not knowing what ‘Wuthering’ means) / Looper (LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER!) / Compliance (dude, Dreama Walker in an apron, and nothing else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) / Step Up Revolution (Peter Gallagher is watching you) / The Queen of Versailles (stinky rich) / Chernobyl Diaries (it was so refarted, and yet here we is, still thinking about it half a year later) / Men In Black 3 (seriously, this movie is so much fun, and sweet, and kinda funny!) / The Dictator (SBC proves he can work with a script) / Trishna (d’Urbervillicous!) / Marley (& me AND you AND everyone we and he knows) / The Three Stooges (OMG, this didn’t suck!!!!!!!!) / Bully (that poor kid with the fish lips) / Michael (hide your kids)

 

our anal-ual movie awards, THE THIGHSMANS, will hit the air-wavvvves right around Oscar time.  so stay pooned!

 until then, here’s the bestest films of yesterhere

2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
& 2002

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Don’t Smash His Camera
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 91 min

Who is Ai Weiwei?  What is really going on in China?  Why is Twitter important?  Big questions!  And big answers are in store in Alison Klayman‘s all over the place, all awesome in all those over the place places, incredible doc Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

So, really, who’s this Ai [eye] Weiwei [wayway] character?  He’s like the Chinese Damien Hirst (or Andy Warhol for those who don’t know who Damien Hirst is).  And why is he ‘never sorry’?  It’s actually a play on words, on the title of his Munich exhibition ‘So Sorry’, and he’s actually never sorry cause he does things that cause big brew-ha-has, in a good way.  He’s not just an artist, but an activist and champion of human rights, in his motherland that doesn’t let anyone be champions, humans, or right. He’s constantly asking for trouble, and he often gets it, cause Big Brother watches him, but he watches Big Brother, but someone needs to do this, cause if not him, then who?

Before seeing this, we knew next to nothing about Ai Weiwei.  After seeing this, we want to kiss the man, and stroke his beard, and see his art, and love it, and smile, cause he does, LOTS, in the face of misery and bureaucratic crap, and cause his smile is the best jolly fat Asian-man smile since Oddjob’s in Goldfinger.  it’s true, even if it sounds racist, but enjoying Asian smiles isn’t racist, is it?

Let Weiwei show you the wei.  The doc does the showing, and the telling.  It will show you a lot, and tell you even more, and has something for everyone (a cat that can open doors!), and everything for somebodies (call your mother, she worries!!).  It will make you glad you don’t live in China, but sad that China is the way that it is.  It will make you feel better about using Twitter, but make you feel bad that yer wasting your tweets on recaps of what yer eating and blabbing bout how amazing the Nationals are (#NatsBatsStats).  Weiwei is wei awesome, as a person, and a doc, so make your wei wei to a theater and learn, then help, and tweet, and smile, in the face of frowns

Finger Pointing Good:

Study of Perspective 1995-2003

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

go all the way with Weiwei in NY/SF/DC tomorrow, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed