The Boehme Brothers' Best/Worst Movies of 2012

Gary's Top 10 Best Films of 2012

10.  Silent House
9.  Pitch Perfect
8.  The Watch
7.  Wanderlust
6.  Looper
5.  Rock of Ages
4.  Lockout
3.  Ted
2.  Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter
1.  The Avengers

Tim's Top 10 Best Films of 2012

10.  Looper - Smart, cool sci-fi.  Bruce Willis goes Die Hard on some dudes!  Bruce Willis kills a kid! (Huh? The kid wasn't even a German terrorist!). Joseph Gordon-Levitt wears a Bruce Willis nose!  Because of this movie, Bruce Willis is given a Presidential pardon for his role in The Expendables 2.  

9.  The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey - Fuck you, Peter Jackson.  I bitched about a second--seemingly unnecessary--trilogy set in Tolkien's Middle-earth, but then Jackson went ahead and made another overly long but awesome fantasy epic, and suddenly I'm on the hook for two more films.  Son of a bitch.

8.  Silver Linings Playbook - The TV ads make it sound like looking for silver linings is a good thing, but the word "playbook" is an important addition to the title.  Sometimes looking for a silver lining is a smart play.  Sometimes it's fucking nuts.  A fun, tense, compelling romance with a bit of wisdom and not much romance.  

7.  Django Unchained - More revisionist history from Quentin Tarantino (after the magnificent Inglourious Basterds).  As the ad sez, Django is off the chain, becoming a freed slave at the beginning of the film and evolving into a mythic black avenger by the end.  Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, and Leonardo DiCaprio all deserve Oscar nominations.

6.  Lincoln - There's no way in hell that the same man who directed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should have been able to make a film this good, so I'm gonna assume that the title of IJ 5 alludes to the fact that Spielberg wuz on crystal meth at the time. The ridiculously large and ridiculously awesome group of actors on display in Lincoln--headed by the once again ridiculously brilliant Daniel Day Lewis--was cast by Avy Kaufman.

5.  The Watch - I've watched The Watch twice now, and it cracked my shit up both times.  As Vince Vaughn's character would say, it's like the Chinese symbol for shut the fuck up and dance.  Wait, can a movie be a symbol?  Ah, fuck it...

4.  Detachment - An elegy for education in America.  Brutal, sad, funny...never detached. Also, I guess I'll have to stop making fun of Adrien Brody's ginormous schnoz, cuz it may be the secret source of his acting talent. 

3.  Argo - After directing Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo, Ben Affleck has proven to me that he's the shit.  He very well could be regarded by most as a Clint Eastwood-caliber actor/director some day.  And if you're still an Affleck-hater, allow me to quote a reoccurring line in this film:  "Argo fuck yourself!"

2.  A Cabin in the Woods - Not since Scream have the humor and the horror been melded so perfectly (and no--I'm not including any of the Scream sequels in that praise).  Joss Whedon took a break from directing the best film of the year (see below) to co-write the best screenplay of the year with director and Buffy/Angel alum Drew Goddard.  

1.  The Avengers - As Stan the Man Lee would say, The Avengers has it all:  Pathos! Humor! Drama! An epic battle for the planet!  Well framed shots of Scarlett Johansson in spandex! Finally, it has The Line of the Year in cinema, spoken by Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) to the god Loki:  "If we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it."  Fuckin' A!

Gary's Top 10 Worst Films of 2012

10.  Savages
9.  Dark Tide
8.  The Woman in Black
7.  John Carter
6.  Chernobyl Diaries 
5.  Dredd
4.  Underworld:  Awakening 
3.  The Expendables 2
2.  Resident Evil:  Retribution 
1.  Prometheus

Tim's Top 10 Worst Films of 2012

10.  Red Lights - It takes balls to waste this much acting talent--Cillian Murphy, Bob De Niro, Sigourney Weaver, and comer Elizabeth Olson--on such claptrap. The movie jerks you around the whole time as you wonder whether it's a supernatural drama or a drama about people who debunk the supernatrual. The whole mess ends, of course, with a Shyamalanian fuck you twist.

9.  The Expendables 2 - Apparently none of the regulars in The Expendables are actually expendable.  In two films, I think only one young Expendable-in-training has died amidst the hail of bullets and bombs.  In this sequel, though, the acting and the script were certainly casualties.  At one point, Schwarzenegger's Church sez to Bruce Willis's Trench "I'll be back," and Trench sez, "You've been back enough. I'll be back."  And Arnie, exasperated, sez, "Yippee-kay-yay."  How the fuck does that even make sense?!

8.  Dark Shadows - Is Tim Burton ever going to tire of making movies starring Johnny Depp as a pasty-faced weirdo/outsider who triumphs in the end?  No?  Okay, just checking.

7.  The Woman in Black - This not-scary-in-the-slightest horror flick, starring Daniel Radcliffe, wuz too boring for me to remember something to make fun of.  You really fucked us on this one, Harry Potter.  

6.  Underworld:  Awakening - First there wuz the pretty good Underworld and kickass Underworld: Evolution.  Then came the ho hum prequel, Rise of the Lycans.  Now apparently we're just fucking around and cashing checks. Jesus...Dark Shadows, Twilight, Underworld... since when did all vampire flicks start sucking balls instead of blood?  

5.  Wrong Turn 5:  Bloodlines - It used to be that murderous mutant fucking hillbillies got what wuz coming to them in the end.  That's what happened in the first three Wrong Turn flicks, but the fourth and fifth films have both been prequels, so we're assured that none of the murderous mutant fucking hillbillies will be killed in retaliation as they slaughter hot teenagers and eat them.  That's bullshit. Also, this film introduced a new, non-mutant murderous hillbilly who's apparently related to the three regular freaks.  And even he didn't get killed!  Not a good message to send. 

4.  Total Recall - Totally boring.  Not a good year for Kate Beckinsale and director-husband Len Wiseman, both of whom contributed to this lifeless bullshit and the aforementioned Underworld sequel.  There wuz a better looking three-breasted alien woman in TR than in the original, sure, but I can't let that sway me.

3.  John Carter - Taylor Kitsch did good work on the TV show Friday Night Lights, and I could think of worse hot young actors around which to build a film franchise.  Unfortunately for TK, John Carter ain't gonna be that franchise. Neither is Battleship.  Or Savages.  Geez, can this dude catch a break?!

2.  Piranha 3DD - I'll leave this one to Felix Vasquez Jr., of the website Cinema Crazed:  "This film takes the fun out of ravenous piranhas chomping down on naked women."

1.  Zombies Vs. Strippers - Like Piranha 3DD, the only effort here went into coming up with a good title.  On every other level, it's barely even a movie.  It's a Redbox piece of shit that offers a guaranteed fuck you to all for a mere $1.29 and 75 minutes (!) of your time.  Hey, don't be angry!  It's got tits!