#62 The Queen of Versailles (2012)

Directed by Lauren Greenfield.

An absolutely great documentary about one of the richest couples in America. It starts out focusing on the process of them building and getting ready for a new family home in central Florida—what will be the largest single-family home in the country, costing $100 million. The movie takes a turn for the better with the financial collapse of 2008, which leads to a huge loss in value of the enormous time-share company owned and run by the patriarch of the family, David Siegel. From that point on, the movie shows the process of a family gradually imploding on itself as they try to adjust to life on a budget. The main character, Jackie Siegel, is David Siegel's 25 year younger former beauty pageant winner trophy wife. The couple have 8 children under the age of 16. Jackie's pure ignorance about anything to do with the financial situation of her family, and the way in which the family's excesses is so clearly demonstrated for the cameras without even the least bit of awareness of how callous and out of touch with reality they are is fascinating. I won't go into any detail, but only highly recommend that anyone reading this should make a point of watching this film. I am a huge fan of documentaries, and this one is a really good one at that.

#55 Arcadia (2012)

By Olivia Silver.

The debut feature-length film of UCLA Film School graduate Olivia Silver starring John Hawkes. Congratulations to this young filmmaker for turning out a better than average coming-of-age story in her first feature-length film. Ryan Simpkins plays twelve year-old Greta who along with her brother and sister is being uprooted by their dad (Hawkes) in order to move the family across the country to California. Greta's disillusionment with her father and the fact that they are moving steadily grows as their journey progresses, however the fact that she is unable to find out any answers about the status of her mom (who is supposedly going to join them in California) makes her situation appear more and more desperate. There are some very nicely developed themes in this film. Greta's evolving relationship with her parents, and in particular her dad, is the main issue at hand, however the deeper story really revolves around Greta's personal growth and maturation as she struggles to find her identity as a pre-adolescent. Interwoven into the story, Silver has created some wonderful scenes of sibling bonding, which for me formed some of the best storylines that this movie contains. Greta and her younger brother Nat (played by Ryan Simpkins's real-life brother, Ty) possess a tight bond, the kind that seems most often to exist when there is a strong lack of parental involvement or emotional connection as is the case with this family, albeit primarily because of circumstances. I enjoyed this movie and also enjoyed meeting and speaking with the filmmaker following its screening at the Northwest Film Forum. Perhaps as a consolation for only receiving 3 stars from me, Silver should at least be proud that her movie appears in almost365films sandwiched between two movies that could easily be considered among the top ten of all time (8½ and Sunset Boulevard). So she's in good company!

#53 A Story for the Modlins (2012)

By Sergio Oksman.

A documentary short about an artistic family pieced together from a discovered box of old photos, letters, journals, a VHS tape and knick-knacks of various sorts. This awkward family appears to have attempted to escape from modern society by secluding themselves in their apartment in Madrid, Spain. The father was an unknown actor who never succeeded at getting his break in Hollywood. The mother was a talented artist who experimented with painting, sculpture and photography, although the themes of most of her works were quite bizarre. The end to this short film is as mystifying as the entire family story of these three characters. It makes you wonder if there really are so many out-of-the-ordinary people in the world or if recovered random artifacts of any normal family could be interpreted in such a way as to highlight only the bizarre characteristics and tell a story that veers quite far away from reality.

#46 — #47 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Documentary (Part 2) (2012)

#46 Redemption — Jon Alpert & Matthew O'Neill

#47 Open Heart — Kief Davidson & Cori Shepherd Stern

This post gets a label of 5 stars primarily for this last film: Open Heart. I believe it will be the winner of the Oscar, and it deserves to be. It was a very touching story worth viewing for anybody. Even though it is only a short-length film and therefore harder to come-by, I recommend it over about 90% of the feature-length films I have on here.

#45 Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Written by Mark Boal.

SPOILER ALERT!!! We get Osama. (Or "UBL" as they like to refer to him in the movie.) I know I for one was sitting on the edge of my chair wondering. But yes, we do get him.

This movie was intense and forced you to pay attention almost to an extent that was tiring. However, it wasn't as smart of a movie as I had hoped. I very much dislike when "intelligence"-themed movies try to seem like they are smart by primarily making all the interactions slightly confusing. This movie was filled with a lot of jargon and incomplete conversations. I don't know if that sort of storyline makes other viewers think that they are using their brain a lot to follow the movie. For me, I really enjoy an "intelligence" movie when there is some actual intelligence involved in making the connections to either figure out whodunnit or find the bad guys. You know, where there's an actual point in the movie like a revelation, like, "wow, that took some smart thinking to figure that one out." Or, I don't know, at least used some sort of cool technology to outsmart the bad guys. There wasn't any moment like that in this movie. In fact, in many scenes I came away thinking how stupid the CIA was and how in reality they wouldn't have fucked it up like that at all. Namely, the upper al-Queda member who has been turned by Jessica, a CIA agent and best friend of Maya the main character, who the guards hesitatingly let through the checkpoints into the CIA black site simply because Jessica tells them to because now he's on their side. I think you can predict fairly well what happens at the end of this scene. Talk about a tense moment. Except for the fact that you could foresee it happening long before it does, and there are about a million "they would never have done that" moments involved. Anyway, as I was touching on before, there isn't really a very good connect-the-dots storyline of how they eventually get to UBL. They kinda just decide to try to find someone that no one wants to talk about regardless of how much they torture them and because he's acting kinda funny, like doing everything possible to not be tracked (a sure sign he's an important bad guy), and then the first moment they do find him, he just leads them right up to the compound by..... driving to it.

A lot of reviewers have commented about the use of torture in this movie and the movie-makers' stance on whether it was allowable or some say made even to look justifiable because it lead to finding Osama. I didn't much care for that aspect of the movie. Torture was bad. Osama was bad. I don't feel really strongly one way or the other about the fact that we got him. I'm really not a big "Yeah us!" proponent, so I didn't do any summersaults or anything when I heard that they killed him. I believe much more strongly that the anti-American sentiment throughout much of the rest of the world doesn't stem from terrorists and their inherent evilness as much as from our own foreign policy and the fact that corporate profits far and above anything else dictate national policy when it comes to oil-producing regions and the impoverished people that live there. But, the best review I came across of this movie was from an old classic movie reviewer, Roger Ebert (and he really went against the grain of what most other reviewers have been saying):

"The film's opening scenes are not great filmmaking. They're heavy on jargon and impenetrable calculation, murky and heavy on theory." He went on, "My guess is that much of the fascination with this film is inspired by the unveiling of facts, unclearly seen. There isn't a whole lot of plot – basically, just that Maya thinks she is right, and she is."

He gives it three stars out of four. And I give it 4 stars out of five.

#41 Tabu (2012)

#36 — #38 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Documentary (Part I) (2012)

#36 Kings Point — Sari Gilman and Jedd Winer

#37 Mondays at Racine — Cynthia Wade and Robin Honan

#38 Inocente — Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine

#28 — #35 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animated (2012)

#28 Maggie Simpson in "The Longest Daycare" (2012) — David Silverman

#29 Adam and Dog (2011) — Minkyu Lee

#30 Fresh Guacamole (2012) — PES

#31 Head over Heels (2012) — Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly

#32 Paperman (2012) — John Kahrs

Highly Commended:

#33 Abiogenesis (2011) — Richard Mans

#34 Dripped (2011) — Léo Verrier

#35 The Gruffalo's Child (2011) — Uwe Heidschötter and Johannes Weiland

#27 Ruby Sparks (2012)

#26 Consuming Spirits (2012)

#18 The Sessions (2012)

Not a bad movie. John Hawkes is definitely the best reason to see this movie. I went into it not knowing a thing about it and am glad that I didn't because if I had read anything about the story, I probably wouldn't have been interested. So, I'm not going to reveal much more.

Helen Hunt is OK, too. I think she got nominated for the Academy Awards. And as we thought back over her performance, she cries, she's got a pretty decent "looking like I'm gonna cry but not gonna cry" thing, and she gets naked, which as M correctly pointed out are 3 pretty good acting moves that are all highly regarded by the Academy. (In contrast to the fave of this years golden globes, Ben Affleck, who "is the worst actor ever! He's only got like two acting moves!")

#14 Django Unchained (2012)

Quentin Tarantino.

Definitely the best Tarantino movie I've seen in just about 18 years. Yes, I rank this one above Inglorious Basterds. Jaime Foxx plays Django Freeman the best bad-ass since Jules Winnfield. The return of Samuel Jackson to a Tarantino movie was another great highlight. DiCaprio is very good. Christoph Waltz is excellent. The story is well-written and the soundtrack is awesome. At numerous points in the movie, Tarantino's control over the tension between slave-owner and former slave, overseer and free man, slave and black slaver highlighted with the right music at just the right time made me feel shivers down my back. A feeling I hadn't had in a movie for a long time. There are too many good things about this movie to write about. 5 stars. 

#12 Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Directed by David O. Russell.

When some friends suggested we make an effort to see all the oscar-nominated films for this year's oscars, I thought it was an interesting idea and kind of opportune since I'm doing this almost365films thing (although I just realized it means I have to see Life of Pi). Since my parents were in town and we all wanted to go to a movie, we chose one that would be appealing to all the members of the family and went to the theater to see Silver Linings Playbook.

I didn't hate it.

I kind of enjoyed it at times. So I guess its gimmick is that it's not your typical rom-com because it also deals with deeper issues like mental health, recovery, etc. What it's gimmick really seemed to be was everyone yelling at each other a lot. My wife (who is not American) was fairly confused by this movie. The recurring adjective she kept using for it was "bizarre." I guess that we Americans understand and even enjoy people yelling at each other all the time. Especially if it's about football, bets or some competition of some sort. Or as a way of flirting. I guess America is addicted to dance competitions also, so that got worked into it. Charming. When we spoke about it with the friends with whom we are going to do this "see all the oscar-nominated films" project, we brought up that since it was nominated for best picture we were thinking it might have been something other than a typical romantic American, happy-ending, the team wins, our savings didn't get lost in the bet by a tenth of a point, the guy chases after the girl to tell her he loves her climactic-type movie. But as Bob put it, "Man, what the hell were you expecting when you have Robert De Niro acting like an idiot and the guy from the Hangover part 3?"

#11 Holy Motors (2012)

By Leos Carax.

This is a difficult movie to write about. It really needs to be seen. I tried to choose several different photos to try and convey the variety of bizarre sequences in this movie, but the few I've selected only represent a small fraction of the total. It is a french movie that essentially deals with acting. The main character, Monsieur Oscar, played by the versatile Denis Lavant (I think "versatile" is an understatement), is an actor who is ferried around in his limousine/dressing room to the various "jobs" he has to do during a typical work day. From a street-begging old maid to a trained assassin, to a sewer-dwelling elf, to an elderly man on his death bed, to an action-movie star in which his job entails performing fight scenes and love-making scenes all in a motion-capture suit. The movie definitely could be interpreted to delve into the question "what is acting?" or "what does creating cinema really mean?" However, these arguments only barely entered into my perception of this movie, as there doesn't appear to be an opinion or point of view that is being forced on the viewer. The viewing experience, for me, involved a lot more appreciation for the varying scenes and images, the strange interactions between the characters, and the great amount of creativity that went into the making of this movie. The result is a great feeling of "I wonder what is going to happen next!!!" I guess whether or not that makes it enjoyable or "entertaining" is up to each individual viewer.

4 stars.