2012 in Film

I am going to try something that I haven't ever really done on this blog before: regularly scheduled updates. Every day for the next sixteen days I hope to post a review of one of the films I saw in theaters this year. Some of them will be very, very short; others will probably be of about medium length. I doubt any will be particularly long. What follows is a list of all the films I saw & will review, in order of their release date according to Wikipedia.

• Norwegian Wood
• Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
• The Secret World of Arrietty
• John Carter
• Silent House
• 21 Jump Street
• The Hunger Games
• The Cabin in the Woods
• Safe
• Men in Black 3
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
• The Amazing Spider-Man
• Looper
• Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
• Wreck-It Ralph
• Rise of the Guardians

I will begin tomorrow with Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, and hop around the list from there. Some of these movies were absolutely wonderful, others wretched. As someone who has impeccably shitty taste & a total inability to recommend things well, these reviews will almost certainly tend more toward the analytic/critical than the normal recommendation-based model. There really is no particular reason for me to do this, no grand critique to be made through themes or whatever. I just kind of want to.

Quickly, I would like to mention that I will not be reviewing those stupid movies that everyone seems to have wanted to have a go at; The Dark Knight Rises and Cloud Atlas and The Avengers. I didn't see them, first of all; and second, who cares. I think the fact that I avoided these films contributed as much to my enjoying my year of theater-going as much as anything else. So if you want to read about how Batman's a plutocrat or zombies are proles are whatever, feel free to look elsewhere.