#1
The Dark Knight Rises
Dir. Christopher Nolan
You had to have seen this coming, right? By my biases alone, The Dark Knight Rises was penciled into the number one spot from the day it was announced it would get a 2012 release date. I know a lot of people were extremely disappointed by Christopher's Nolan's capper to The Dark Knight Trilogy, but for someone like myself who credits Tim Burton's Batman films with really getting me into movies and who watched Batman:The Animated Series and read all the comic books growing up, this was a monumental moment.
Maybe placing TDKR at number one is more of a tribute to the entire trilogy, which may be the greatest cinematic trilogy of all-time. The Dark Knight Trilogy transcended labels. Over the course of seven years and three films, Nolan has brought respect to a genre that was seen as nothing more than popcorn, mindless fare. Without his films, movies from this list, like The Avengers and Skyfall, would not have ever gotten the respect they get today. Nolan straddled the line between blockbuster and art and changed the entire landscape of the film industry.
But, back to TDKR. I understand that some people were less than pleased with the offering and I respect they're opinions, but I think many of the "problems" they had with the film were mere nitpicks. Christopher Nolan has worked to make sure his Batman was rooted in reality. With TDKR, he seems to have strayed away from that a little, but it was enough to make people forget they were just watching a movie and get upset. To those people I say that maybe you need to clear your head and just get lost in the Gotham City that has been created for you on the screen.
As for the movie itself, the most important player, Christian Bale, is on point in this one. While many complained he wasn't in the Batsuit nearly long enough for a Batman movie, I say this isn't a Batman movie at all and was never intended to be. This was a movie to finish the story of Bruce Wayne not his alter ego. If you look at it that way, the movie (and even Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) begin to take on a whole new light. The rest of the cast is outstanding, from Michael Caine to Anne Hathaway to Tom Hardy to JGL to Gary Oldman, everyone seems to be on top of their game here to say goodbye to the trilogy.
Aside from the actors or the action taking place on screen, the movie looks beautiful. Wally Pfister has been the cinematographer on all of Nolan's Batman films, but not once did he get any recognition for any of them. I find that to be a bit of bullshit, but it is what it is. You don't need to get awards to know just how Pfister and Nolan were able to craft such a grungy universe, yet still make it aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It makes it all the more incredible when you consider the fact that the movie was almost entirely made classically, i.e. without CGI. The movie was shot on such a large scale with numerous stunts and extras, it truly is a feat of film making.
Finally, it should be said that when a film makes you feel emotion, it means it is something special. If you walk out of the movie feeling something other than "that was a good way of killing a couple of hours" than you know that what you had seen meant something to you. That said, no movie that I have seen this year or any year brought such a wide range of emotion to me. I felt everything a human being could possible feel in a mere three hour span and that right there made me know that what I had witnessed was indeed the best film of 2012.
So what do you think? What were your favorite movies of 2012? Go to the comments section below and let me know.
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