2013-12-30

Top Films of 2012



My Top 10 Films of 2012


With a year of delay and so many films still to catch up, here’s my first gist at my Top 10 films of 2012.

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. Argo

3. Django Unchained

4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

5. Magic Mike

6. Silver Linings Playbook

7. Bones Brigade : An Autobiography

8. 21 Jump Street

9.
Cabin in the Woods
10.
Beasts of the Southern Wild

Blind spots:  The Avengers, Skyfall, The Hibbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Amazing Spider-Man, Life of Pi, Ted, Les Misérables, Prometheus, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, The Master, Amour, Haywire, Dark Shadows, To Rome With Love, Killer Joe, Anna Karenina, Looper, Frankenweenie, Holy Motors, Hitchcock, Tabu, Promised Land.

2013-12-29

Top Films of 2011


1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
2. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
3. Shame (Steve McQueen)
4. The Muppets (James Bobin)
5. The Ides of March (George Clooney)

6. Super 8 (J.J. Abrams)
7. The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
8. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Steven Spielberg)
9. Crazy, Stupid, Love. (Glen Ficarra & John Requa)
10. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
11. Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz)
12. The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
13. Friends With Benefits (Will Gluck)
14. Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon)
15. The Hangover Part II (Todd Phillips) 

Films I need to see to complete this list:
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami) Contagion (Steven Soderbergh) Cowboys & Aliens (Jon Favreau) A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)  Drive (Nicholas Windin Refn) Le gamin au vélo (Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne) George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher) Hanna (Joe Wright) Hugo (Martin Scorsese) J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood) Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkins) Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichart) Melancholia (Lars Von Trier) Moneyball (Benneth Miller) My Week With Marilyn () Of Gods and Men () Rango (Gore Verbinski) Road to Nowhere (Monte Hellman) The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar) Sleeping Beauty (Janet Leigh) Source Code () Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson) Troll Hunter () War Horse (Steven Spielberg) We Bought A Zoo (Cameron Crowe) Young Adults (Jason Reitman) and more...

2013-12-27

River of No Return (1954)



River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954)

After doing time in jail for murdering a man in defence of another one, Matt Carkner (Robert Mitchum) takes his son Mark (Tommy Rettig) and wants to live with him in the country of hunting, fishing , and cultivating. The woman, Kay Weston (Marilyn Monroe), who was taking care of Mark is a singer/dancer that just married with Harry (Rory Calhoun), a one of a kind man embarks her on a trip that will unfortunately involve Matt and Mark.

2013-12-25

A Christmas Story

A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983)

Ralphie has to convince his parents, his teacher, and Santa that a Red Ryder B.B. gun really is the perfect gift for the 1940s.

2013-12-24

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation



National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Jeremiah Chechik, 1989)

Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) is an upper middle class father of two teenagers Audrey (Juliette Lewis) and Russ (John Galecki) and he wants to throw a classic Holiday just like when he was 10 years old  back in 1959 with his entire extended family including his uncle Lewis (William Hickey) his aunt Bethany (Mae Questel) and his wife’s (Beverly D’Angelo) cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid). Add in Sam McMurray, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, John Randolph, Diane Ladd, E. G. Marshall, Nicholas Guest, Brian Doyle-Murray, and the beautiful Nicolette Scorsese and you have my family’s Holiday favorite.

2013-12-22

Home Alone

Home Alone (Chris Columbus, 1990)

Kevin McCallister (Macauley Culkin) is an eight-year-old boy that was left alone in his house when his family flies to Paris for their Christmas vacation. In the meantime, the wet bandits, Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), have planned to rob Kevin’s house during the night before Christmas. But they don’t know that he is an ingenious little brat that will be a pain in their ass.

2013-12-21

The Shop Around the Corner



The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)

Two employees of a Budapest shop can’t stand each other but they are secretly falling in love as anonymous correspondents.

Elf



Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003)

The story is about one of Santa's elves who learns of his true identity as a human and goes to New York City to meet his biological father, spreading Christmas cheer in a world of cynics as he goes.

2013-12-20

Gremlins

Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984)

A boy (Zack Galligan) inadvertently breaks 3 important rules concerning his new pet and unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous monsters on a small town.

2013-12-19

LMdC’s 10 Best Albums of 2013



 Compared to 2012, 2013 has been a year where music was still omnipresent in my life but I mostly revisited albums that I cherished and loved more than being much on the discovery side. Still digging extreme Metal, indie Rock, and Punk I somewhat managed to have a decent playlist of 2013 albums that will endure for a while in my ears.
 
As side note, I must add this list of albums I have yet to listen and that will eventually change the rank of the so-called Top 10 below :

2013-12-18

Bad Santa

Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff, 2003)

A miserable conman (Billy Bob Thornton) and his partner (Tony Cox) pose as Santa and his Little Helper to rob department stores on Christmas Eve. But they run into problems when the conman befriends a troubled kid (Brett Kelly), and the security boss (Bernie Mac) discovers the plot.

2013-12-17

Financing: Life Itself - A feature documentary based on Roger Ebert's memoir

http://igg.me/at/EbertMovie

 Feel free to donate to help raise the needed amount to finance the rest of the production about the most popular and recognized film critic of all time. Click here.

Un chant d’amour aka A Song of Love



Un chant d’amour aka A Song of Love (Jean Genet, 1950)

For a long time banned and even disowned by its director Jean Genet later in his life because of its explicit content of homosexual eroticism. Un chant d’amour might be one of the most unexpected films to be on the They Shoot Pictures Don’t They’s 1000 greatest films of all time.

2013-12-16

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)



The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)

A group of criminals are taking hostage for ransom the passengers of a busy New York City subway car.

Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and Hector Elizondo The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is an iconic film of the 1970’s. A good suspense and an influential movie for Quentin Tarantino with the naming of the criminals by colors (see Reservoir Dogs) and a huge influence on action films to come along with John Carpenter’s The Assault of Precinct 13. Not the actual film canon that is praised a lot habitually by this critic, but it is deserves its mention here.

2013-12-13

Ben-Hur (1959)



Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)

Still holding the record for the most wins at the Academy Awards with 11, tied with Titanic and The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King, Ben-Hur directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston as its title role, defines the genre of biblical epic film. 

2013-12-11

A Charlie Brown Christmas



A Charlie Brown Christmas (Bill Melendez, 1965)

This short film has always been a favorite of mine while preparing for Christmas since my childhood. Not having cable TV until I was 25 years old forced me to watch shows on standard television. The Charlie Brown specials were some of my favorites. Fond memories of those little shorts of minimalism filled with Charles M. Schulz’s great characters will follow me all my life. 

2013-12-09

American Graffiti



American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)

It is 1962 and teenagers are cruising in their real cars around the city of Modesto in California. A myriad of characters portrayed by Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Harrison Ford, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Wolfman Jack, and Suzanne Somers. Cruising was a way to get diner at Mels’ Drive in, get girls, and race around the city. 

2013-12-06

Seconds



Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966)
What would you do if you were given a second chance to do things right in your life? This is what banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is given when he becomes the painter Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson). Having the opportunity to go back to his thirties with a different appearance since his first life was wasted. His wife (Frances Reid) and him were not close anymore and his daughter was living far away with her husband. An old friend calls him and convinces him to go to the Company and use their business. This is where his transformation takes place. Once he is Wilson, he realizes that he didn’t really is what he really wanted.

2013-12-04

The Nightmare Before Christmas



The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)
 After they throw another great Halloween, the people of Halloween town are convinced by Jack Skellington to take the task of doing Christmas this year. After he visits the world of Christmas and discovers many elements of the classic holiday. But you can’t ask monsters and ghouls to celebrate Christmas without being frightening and scary. On top of that, Jack falls in love with Sally the creation of the mad scientist of the village.

2013-12-02

Du rififi chez les hommes



Du rififi chez les hommes (Jules Dassin, 1955)

A band of French gangsters plan a heist to rob for 240 millions of francs worth of jewelries. This pretty film is regarded as widely influential on the French New Wave with its two jump cuts. It also was a clear influence on Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The scene at the middle of the film setting in details the robbery was made without any dialogues and the omnipresent music of composer Georges Auric. It is rumored that the techniques pictured in Rififi was used many times by robbers from all around the world. 
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