THE LAST STAND Infuses Old-School Action With New-School Excitement

THE LAST STAND Review:

- Those who are predisposed not to like Arnold Schwarzenegger's particular brand of pumped-up action movies, well ... they may still get a kick out of THE LAST STAND. The movie is, after all, the American debut of acclaimed Korean director Kim Jee-Woon (I Saw The Devil). And Jee-Woon makes this much more than just a nostalgia trip. This is fresh, funny, slick, exciting, over-the-top filmmaking. This is a potent mix of Asian extreme cinema with good old-fashioned American badassery. On that note, if you did grow up with Arnold, if you do regard him as an action icon, and if you are eagerly awaiting that icon's return to a starring role - well, The Last Stand is a fantastic return to film for the former governor of California. The Last Stand plays perfectly to Arnold's strengths - giving him some great one-liners, some great hard-hitting action, and a story that plays up the actor's iconic, larger-than-life status. The film fully acknowledges Arnold's advancing age - in fact, it has a lot of fun with the concept. But it also shows you why Arnold still kicks ass - it positions him as a throwback and a hardass. Sure, he's older and a bit worse for wear - but come on ... when a sadistic crime lord is heading to your town to lay waste to it, en route to the border - is there anyone else you'd want as your last line of defense? Old-school action movie fans know the answer - and if you have doubts, then The Last Stand will put them to rest.

In The Last Stand, Arnold plays Ray Owens, an ex-LAPD cop who, after some stuff went down in LA, decides to ditch the big city for the quiet life of a small-town sheriff. And so, in a sleepy Arizona border town, Owens serves as the way-overqualified long arm of the law, heading up a barely-qualified staff of deputes. However, Owens and his staff have to step it up when Gabriel Cortez - a dangerous Mexican drug lord - escapes federal custody, steals a souped-up experimental car, and makes a dash for the border - eluding the FBI and local cops at every turn. Cortez appears to be home free and on his way to freedom. Except, of course, for the fact that Owens, his team, and a town full of gun-toting, half-crazy sons-of-bitches still stand in his way - a challenge that Cortez, surely, did not anticipate.

At first glance, the movie's obvious affection for this town full of gun-nuts might come off as a little disquieting, especially in the wake of recent tragedies. But I think there is a clear element of satire here - a streak of absurdist humor that calls attention to the fact that, hey, this is the kind of thing that could *only* happen in the hyper-reality of the movies. On that note, The Last Stand is an incredibly funny movie - this is a film that is winking at the audience the entire way through. It's incredibly self-aware, and in the way it does its best to play to the audience. It's the kind of film that goes for the crazy moments, the applause-worthy one-liners, and that completely understands that, yes, it is an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie - no apologies - and it has a lot of fun reminding us what that means. And yet, it also tweaks the formula - modernizing it for today's more savvy audiences.

And so even though in some ways this is a throwback (my god, an action movie where you can actually follow the action!), it also is super-slick and even a bit dangerous. Kim Jee-Woon infuses the film with the kineticism and style of post-modernist extreme cinema - the kind that's been popularized in Korea thanks to guys like Jee-Woon and Oldboy's Chan Wook-Park, and here in the US thanks to Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and their ilk. Jee-Woon totally gets what we love about old-school action flicks, and gives those qualities a shiny polish of sly self-awareness. But this isn't just a purely silly movie. It's often laugh-out-loud funny, with great gags, and a game cast with plenty of comic chops (Johnny Knoxville, Louis Guzman). But this is also a movie that hits the "awesome" mark over and over again. Everything here is just, well ... satisfying. The story expertly builds and builds until we're chomping at the bit for the climactic showdown. The action hits hard and with impact - visceral gun battles, breakneck car chases, and even a classic fist fight. Point being: even though there's plenty of humor, the movie also brings the pain when need be - and does so in classic, audience-pleasing style. Suffice it to say, it's been a long time since I was so purely and unabashedly rooting for an action film's hero to kick ass and save the day.

 And of course, our heroes are nothing without good villains. And The Last Stand has a very good villain in douchey slimebucket Cortez, played with aplomb by Eduardo Noriega. But even better is the great Peter Stormare as Cortez's advance man, the guy who's made it his personal mission to make Schwarzenegger's town Cortez's gateway to the border. I'm not quite sure what Stormare is going for here (his accent is all over the map), but there's no doubt that he cranks it up to eleven and goes full-on crazy in this film. So yeah, Stormare vs. Arnold feels like an epic battle of iconic hero vs. iconic villain. All that's missing is a wood-chipper. On the side of the angels, there's Knoxville - whose role is nowhere near as substantial as the marketing would have you believe. And that's cool. He's great as a funny supporting character - a local one-man militia who's seemingly been preparing for this criminal invasion his whole life. Guzman - come on, he rules it. As a pudgy, lazy lawman confronted with his first real test of mettle ... he nails it. And then there's Forest Whitaker - another dude who is perfect for the movie's over-the-top aesthetic. As the lead FBI agent tracking Cortez, Whitaker's trademark brand of crazy adds to the movie's pulpy, grindhouse vibe. Hell, there's even a pretty good love story in the mix, as a by-the-book deputy finds herself having to team with her sad-sack ex-boyfriend - a regular in the drunk tank - who's got to rediscover his long-lost mojo in the fight to save the town. Oh, and Harry Dean Stanton has an awesome cameo as an off-his-rocker farmer.

And as for Arnold - sure, maybe he's a bit rough around the edges after a long acting hiatus, but overall he is in fine form here. Nobody else delivers those one-liners with quite the same snap. And hey, he's having fun here. This isn't him coming back and trying to be the Arnold of old. This is him returning as the grizzled, old-school vet who might be a step slow but can still deliver a knockout right hand. This is vintage Arnold, but it's also an encouraging sign that the man's comeback won't just be about him acting like he's still a young man.

On Kim Jee-Woon ... this is most definitely a talent to watch. The guy has a talent for crafting striking, vivid imagery and visual motifs, but also has a knack for crazy-ass action in which you feel every smash, hit, and cut. It's exciting to see him go to work here, bringing together a variety of influences to create an action film that pays homage to what's come beforem but that also feels new and different.

I came out of The Last Stand feeling, well, pumped-up. Here was an exciting blend of old-school action with new-school cinema, that was both a vintage entry in the Ah-nold cannon and something new and different and exciting. The movie crackled with gorgeous visuals and eye-popping action, and the narrative was refreshingly simple-yet-effective. Fans of classic action should run to check this out, as should fans of cutting-edge filmmaking. Arnold is back, yes - but he's brought some exciting new blood with him for his return.

My Grade: B+

A Final Farewell to FRINGE: Thoughts From The Other Side

 A Fond Farewell to FRINGE.

- Back in 2002, The X-Files came to an end, and it felt like the end of an era. I had watched the show since it started in 1993 (I was 10 years old), and I was in college when it ended (I was 20). I could point to a variety of influences that had instilled in me a love for the fantastic, for the mind-expanding, for the weird - but The X-Files would be first and foremost. By the time it was over, I was a bonafide sci-fi geek - and just about everything else on TV at the time seemed tame, boring, and small-minded in comparison. Of course, little did I realize, at the time, that we were on the verge of a new TV renaissance. Thanks to the influence of the grittier, more mature shows on cable TV, and the risks being taken by networks to adapt to a changing, more fragmented audience, we suddenly found ourselves in a new Golden Age of daring, rich, compelling TV. In 2004, Lost premiered, and there it was - the next X-Files - the next sci-fi cult TV phenomenon. Lost put JJ Abrams on the map. It brought a new sense of scale and scope to sci-fi TV. It bombarded the viewer not just with intriguing mysteries, but also with a cast of incredibly interesting characters. Over the years, Lost lost its way a bit, and the time was ripe in 2008 for a new sci-fi series to swoop in and steal some of Lost's buzz. Of course, this new show would also come from producer JJ Abrams, and it would debut with the same sort of excitement and buzz that Lost did years earlier. This was to be the next big thing, the next X-Files, the next must-watch show. This was FRINGE.

FRINGE was one of the first big new shows that I followed after moving to LA in 2005. True, it didn't premiere until 2008, but long before that, I had my eyes on it. I remember getting a hold of the pilot script when it first surfaced. I printed it at work and had a giddy smile on my face - I walked past one of the few co-workers who I thought might share my excitement over it, and proclaimed: "I've got it. The new JJ Abrams pilot. Fringe!" I eagerly paged through the pilot, discovering a tense, ambitious story about a mad scientist freed from a mental ward - reunited with his con-man son in order to help save the world. Joined by a stony FBI Agent, the trio investigated super-science phenomena while uncovering a deeper mystery at the heart of it all. This was great stuff. But one thought kept rolling through my mind: "man, whoever they get to play this mad-scientist guy ... he had better be *good.*"

As it turned out, John Noble was more than good as Dr. Walter Bishop - he was awesome. From Episode 1 of Fringe, I loved Noble's portrayal of a broken man, a science genius with a fractured psyche who had risked his sanity - and the world's safety - to save his son long ago. Even when I had my doubts about Fringe in its early episodes - when I questioned Anna Torv as FBI agent Olivia Dunham, when I wondered if the show was just a sleek would-be X-Files, when I bemoaned the fact that the "monsters-of-the-week" often felt half-heartedly conceived - the thing that always kept me coming back, the reason why I never for a moment considered dropping the show, was John Noble as Walter Bishop.

After five years and countless memorable moments, I think it's time to officially place Dr. Bishop in the category of all-time great, iconic sci-fi characters. Move over Mulder, Scully, Sawyer, and Spock - and make room for the good doctor in all his whacked-out glory. John Noble may have consistently, inexplicably gotten overlooked by the Emmys year after year, but what he did as Walter was nothing short of award-worthy. He crafted a character who was at times side-splittingly funny, but who could also be absolutely terrifying. Walter Bishop could make you laugh, make you shudder, and break your heart in the span of minutes. In middle-age, Walter could come across as a goofy grandfather - an eccentric, good-natured man who loved strawberry milkshakes, Red Vines, fart jokes, and the occasional drug-fueled trip. But his goofiness is also what made him a hero both lovable and tragic. In his youth, Bishop was a hard man - a man of science, a man of hubris, a man who never let morality get in the way of his quest for knowledge. Along with his partner, William Bell (played by Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy), Walter started a program in which he experimented on young children with mind and body-altering chemical compounds - the Cortexifan trials. He developed all sorts of weaponizable things for the government - interested more so with the science behind them than the dangerous implications of their existence. But Walter's ultimate test came when his young son Peter died. Desperate for a way to get his son back, Walter devised a plan to cross-over to another, parallel universe. He found his own doppelganger, and that of his son. He stole the other Peter and brought him back to our world - in doing so, forever damaging the structural integrity of both worlds. Devastated by what he'd done, Walter ended up experimenting on his own brain. He fractured his own mind - robbing himself of his own steely intelligence and becoming mad in the process. And so Fringe, in which we join Walter - not just on his journey to repair his relationship with his son, but to repair the very world he helped to damage - became the epic story of Walter Bishop's redemption.

And that ... that is what made FRINGE such a great show. Through all of the strange twists and turns that its narrative took, it was always held together by a common thematic underpinning. So many of the great shows lost their way over time because they strayed from their central themes, deciding suddenly that the show was *actually* about something entirely different than what was originally intended. But Fringe never went off the rails in that way, because Noble as Bishop was so sturdy an anchor.

John Noble did some of the best acting I've ever seen on Fringe. His "Walterisms," were classic - nonsensical rants of righteous anger ("Potassium Bromate! Do you know what you're putting into our bodies? Death! Delicious, STRAWWWBERRY-flavored death!"), and absurdist asides that would have me rolling with laughter. But Noble's face was also just a well of emotion - sadness, determination, fear, love - the man could do it all. When he played his more with-it alternate from Earth 2, we saw a glimpse of the more tyrannical "Walter That Was." But "our" Walter was a thunderstorm of humor, heart, and emotion - and Noble never failed to nail it.

Of course, this was also Anna Torv's show. Torv was justifiably singled out as a weak link when the show began. As damaged, determined agent Olivian Dunham, Torv often came off as stilted and bland in those early episodes. But she got better. Way better. And over time, Agent Dunham became one of the best and most badass characters on TV - a kickass woman who was smart, fearless, and a crack shot. Over the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about the portrayal of women in TV and film, and the need for strong female characters who aren't just window dressing. Olivia became Exhibit A for how to do a great, strong, legitimately badass female character on television. And Anna Torv, man, she just kept surprising me. When she was asked to play her own alternate (dubbed "Fauxlivia" by fans), she stepped up to the challenge with aplomb. The Earth 2 Olivia shared some of the same traits as her Earth 1 counterpart, but was less restrained - cockier, less empathetic, operating with swagger and a smile. The show kept throwing crazy plot points at Torv, and each time she rose to the occasion. Against all odds, she pulled off a storyline in which Olivia was possessed by the spirit of Nimoy's William Bell, and made it work. In Season 5, she shifted her character to become more subdued, more maternal. Through it all, she made Agent Dunham into one of the absolute best characters on TV. Anna Torv made me a believer.

Joshua Jackson, also. Few took him seriously as an actor before Fringe - but now, you've got to. As Peter Bishop, Jackson began his time on Fringe as a shifty smart-ass, but evolved into a brave, quick-thinking hero who both honored his father and learned from his sins. And you've also got to mention Lance Reddick as Broyles - the no-nonsense, uber-badass leader of Fringe Division, the elite group that Walter, Peter, and Olivia would come to work for. Reddick is so full of gravitas that it hurts. No one else could have given the show the kind of regal, resolute dosage of awesome that he did, week in and week out. There's also Jasika Nicole as Astrid, Walter's loyal lab assistant. Astrid could have been a one-note character, but Jasika made her an integral part of the show, and gave Fringe some of its most heart-filled and touching moments. Her relationship with Walter was so good, so real-seeming, that there may have been no more moving scene in the series finale than their final exchange. Throughout the show, a running gag was that brain-addled Walter could never quite get her name right - calling her everything from Astro to Ashcan. But in the finale, when Walter, in a moment of clarity, looks up at his steadfast partner and remarks "Astrid ... it's a beautiful name" ... my god - amazing.

There are so many other fantastic actors that made an impact on Fringe. Blair Brown made Nina Sharp's ambiguous agenda endlessly fascinating. Nina's company - Massive Dynamic - was surely one of the most intriguing and downright coolest parts of Fringe's sci-fi mythology. Seth Gabel joined the show late as Lincoln Lee, but he immediately became a fan-favorite. On Earth 1, he was shy and geeky, harboring a hopeless crush on Olivia. But on Earth 2, he was a charismatic hotshot - a leader of that world's militaristic version of Fringe Division. Leonard Nimoy, of course, was always a welcome sight as William Bell. But it was the great Jared Harris who became the show's breakout villain - the scarred, hate-filled, universe-hopping David Robert Jones. Kirk Acevedo was also a big part of the show's run, as Olivia's FBI mentor Charlie Francis. For most of Fringe's lifetime, Michael Cervaris was otherworldly as The Observer - even when we found out his name, September, he still was alien-like and mysterious. But in Season 5, humanized and transformed, September became an unexpectedly integral figure in the finale - made all the more great by Cervaris' nuanced performance. As Etta, the grown-up future daughter of Peter and Olivia, Georgina Haig was the fresh-faced hero of Season 5 - the vision of goodness in a world gone mad. Conversely, Michael Kopsa's menacing Captain Windmark was the expressionless face of a dystopian future robbed of light and joy.

You've also got to give a well-deserved shoutout to showrunners J.H. Wyman and Jeff Pinkner. Often overlooked, these two have done what many have not been able to - steer an ambitious sci-fi series through five seasons and let it grow and change while never spiraling out of control. Wyman and Pinkner and the rest of the Fringe team deserve a lot of credit - for a show that told a cohesive big-picture story, but that also delivered some of the finest individual hour-long episodes we've seen on TV over the last decade, period.

Fringe evolved a ton over the years. Looking back, it's hard to believe that the show began life with Torv's Agent Dunham paired with Mark Valley's ill-fated Agent Scott. Or that Ari Graynor was once a series regular as Olivia's sister. Or that Kevin Corrigan's enigmatic Sam Weiss was once thought to be the key to the series' then-numerous mysteries. I never expected that the show's final season would take place in a dystopian future where the once harmless-seeming beings called The Observers ruled the earth with an iron fist. But through it all, FRINGE stayed true to it core themes and characters. Somehow, it took us to other dimensions and other times - from monster-of-the-week procedural to sci-fi serialization - and yet held together as a cohesive narrative that could still be boiled down to its basic thematic tenets.

Fringe adopted many of the best aesthetic qualities of shows like The X-Files and Lost. It had a great atmosphere of foreboding, tinged with an offbeat sense of humor and a surprising amount of heart. The show almost always looked amazing - and featured some truly inspired design for its creatures, characters, and worlds. The music was always a highlight. Especially in the dystopian setting of Season 5, I've loved the John Carpenter-esque score used to maximum dramatic effect. What was so remarkable though was the detail put into these worlds to distinguish, say, our world from the colder, more futuristic Earth 2. Earth 2 felt different, distinct, and of course the details big and small drove that home - from its flying zeppelin ships to its bronze Statue of Liberty to little, fanboy-friendly details like the "alternate" versions of classic comic book covers, glimpsed on the walls of Peter's Earth 2 bedroom. And I'll say it again - the way that the actors on the show portrayed multiple versions of their characters was nothing short of amazing. John Noble as the grimly ruthless "Walternate," Jasika Nicole as autistic savant Earth 2 Astrid, and of course Anna Torv and the multiple versions of Olivia - all amazing. They were so good that when an episode was partially set in Earth 2, you half expected to see other actors' names pop up as special guest stars in the credits.

One thing that I also always loved about Fringe is that Fringe loved science. Lost went off the rails in large part when it abandoned science fiction for all-you-need-is-love spirituality, but FRINGE took joy in science and pseudo-science right up until the very end. Yes, the show did at times infuse its science-y core with a mild dose of hokey "love is the answer" sentimentality, but that never stopped Fringe from being a show that reveled in science in a way that few other shows, ever (okay, maybe Star Trek: The Next Generation), have done. Some of the most joyous moments on Fringe were those in which Walter or Peter giddily explained some neat-o bit of science, often with few visual aids but a chalk or dry-erase board. Fringe was often about the dangers of unchecked science, but it was also very much about the joy of scientific knowledge and discovery. Often, the show would seem to say that there was no problem that couldn't be solved, no jam that these characters couldn't get out of, by using the power of their brains to think outside the box. Fringe celebrated science, intelligence, and creativity. Not to get too political, but in a world in which science, facts, knowledge, and smarts often seem to be viewed with a skeptical eye by the masses, it was awesome to see a show that reminded us of the wonder and awe to be found through brainpower, through innovation, through boundary-pushing ideas.

It's amazing - I've been blogging now for almost 10 years, and Fringe was one of the big shows that I used to write about consistently, back when I was doing weekly TV reviews. Looking back at my initial thoughts on the show, there was indeed a lot of skepticism there at the outset. But Fringe kept evolving - making bold leaps and never failing to take narrative chances. Just as Lost was losing momentum, Fringe was quietly becoming the best show on TV. It barely cracked my Top 10 in 2008, but moved up in 2009. In 2010, I named it the Best TV Show of the Year. The show's second season saw an incredible string of episodes - as we learned about Peter's otherdimensional origins, met a time-travelling Peter Weller in the instant-classic "White Tulip" episode, and got our first glimpse of "the other side," Fringe quickly cemented itself as not just a wannabe, but as a new classic in its own right. Seasons 2 and 3 of Fringe are just off-the-chain good. And Season 5 was a nice epilogue of sorts - a self-contained, highly-serialized sci-fi story that brought things full circle for the characters.

And that finale ... while it felt rushed in parts, I will say that I enjoyed it greatly, especially in terms of how it worked as send-off for these characters, and as a tribute of sorts to the history of the show. The final raid on the Observer HQ was a gloriously insane, Cabin in the Woods-esque climax, as all manner of monsters-of-the-week were unleashed on the Observers, who never knew what hit them. "That is cool!" exclaims Walter, as one of his repossessed super-science weapons causes a hapless Observer to defy gravity and float, immobilized, into the air. And yes, it was friggin' cool. FRINGE never lost sight of the cool-factor over all these years. At the same time, that anchor that was always there - Walter and his journey - again formed the backbone of the finale. Walter, walking off into the great unknown - sad because he must leave his son, but satisfied in that he has, seemingly - and finally! - found his ultimate redemption and done his part to save the same world - the same people - that he once almost destroyed.

What's funny about this finale though is something that's true when most great stories come to an end - the sense of finality mixed with an overpowering feeling that these characters still exist, that they live on. Just as I sometimes wonder what Mulder and Scully are up to these days, I too will wonder about Walter Bishop, and Peter and Olivia, and Broyles, and Astrid. Sure, the finale ended with Walter separated from his family by centuries, and with Olivia and Peter finally at peace with their daughter Etta. But come on, this is FRINGE ... who's to say that some world-conquering threat won't prompt Walter to jump back to the present to enlist the help of his old friends? Who's to say that Peter and Olivia won't get caught up in some transdimensional hijinks that requires getting the old gang back together? Who's to day that Etta won't one day grow up to be the same sort of resourceful badass we saw in Season 5, and go off on her own universe-spanning quest? This is the power of great fiction. These character now exist. Our universe is but one in the multiverse, and only the lack of Walter's Window prevents us from peering over. But for five seasons, our screens have been our Windows. And who's to say that these characters won't continue to evolve, to grow, to persist even when we're not looking in on their lives?

FRINGE's journey undoubtedly became a highly emotional one for its fans and for its cast and crew. This summer, I sat at the Fringe panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, and watched as actors like Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, Jasika Nicole - even Lance Reddick! - broke down in tears talking about the show's final season and what the show had meant to them. Donned in mass-distributed old-timey Observer hats, the audience clapped and cheered in appreciation. Fringe had become one of the Great shows, and more - a beloved fictional universe in its own right. Just as Walter Bishop had done, Fringe itself had "crossed over," through the looking glass, and here it was on the other side.

We've all been part of it - "a great adventure," as Walter might smile and say, "like The Guns of Navarone!" We all travel to different worlds and other universes every day, in our own way. But for five years, I am glad that I got to be a part of this one. Whatever comes next - whatever the next potentially great sci-fi show might be ... it will have a hell of a lot to live up to. Fringe will be missed, but it will also still be there, somewhere, in the multiverse. For us, the adventure continues.

MAMA Is Grim Fairy-Tale Fun

MAMA Review:

- Mama is easily a cut above your average horror film. While it does have some of the standard-issue jump scares and common-sense deprived characters of your typical run-of-the-mill horror flick, it's got a lot that separates it from the pack, and that elevates it above so many of the other generic horror movies to have come out recently. For one thing, under the guidance of producer and creative genius Guillermo Del Toro, Mama has a rich, compelling mythology and an even richer visual palette. The movie looks amazing - blending gothic horror with creepy-fairy-tale fantasy to weave some truly spellbinding sequences. Director Andres Muschietti really knocks it out of the park. The movie also has heart - I can't remember the last time I saw a horror movie where I actually felt fully invested in the characters, and felt not just fright, but sadness and joy. Finally, MAMA has got one of the best actresses in the biz today - Jessica Chastain. Proving that there isn't anything she can't do, Chastain plays against type as a gothed-out riot girl who is an interesting and complex character. MAMA is good stuff - creepy, cool, and a lot of fun.

The movie starts out on a harrowing note, as we're immediately thrust into an intense scene of domestic hell. A mentally unstable father - played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones) - drives his two young daughters through a snow-covered mountain road. We find out that the father has just murdered his wife, and might now have similar intentions for his daughters. But the car crashes, and the trio end up deep in the snow-covered woods. They stumble through the trees and twigs until they come across an old, abandoned cabin. They take shelter, as the father contemplates doing harm to his innocent children. But suddenly, the father is thwarted and disposed of by a vengeful spirit - "Mama." This spirit watches over the children, and for five years, raises them as her own - as feral, animalistic creatures - deep within the woods. Eventually, the children are found by a search party - their uncle Jeffrey (also played by Coster-Waldau) has kept looking for them all this time. He and his girlfriend Annabel (Chastain) take in the girls, who are now very much damaged by their experiences in the woods. The older daughter, Victoria, can still speak - and adjusts a little easier to being in civilization again. But the younger daughter, Lilly, is far gone - she doesn't talk, she walks on all fours, and she still has an unholy connection to the spirit she calls Mama. And Mama still has a connection to the girls. Jealous and rage-filled, Mama haunts Jeffrey and Annabel's home in hopes of reclaiming the girls she believes are hers and hers alone to love.

The two young girls in the film are fantastic. Megan Charpientier, who plays the older Victoria, is the more conflicted of the two - struggling to become a normal girl again and escape the influence of Mama. Lilly, the younger daughter, played by Isabelle Nelisse - is just delightfully deranged - weird and eerie and wholly convincing as a person who has known virtually nothing except for life in the wild. Together, they really help make the movie as good as it is. Even as you're semi-terrified of the girls, you also can't help but come to feel invested in their well-being.

And that same evolution is what makes Jessica Chastain's Annabel such a compelling character. She's a punk rocker who doesn't want kids. She's not a bad person, just a little rough around the edges - and definitely not enthused about taking in two feral kids who talk to a possibly vengeful spirit. But Annabel does slowly come to care for these kids, and it's a character arc that happens slowly, but in a way that really makes Annabel feel fully-fleshed-out. And man, it's sort of amazing watching Chastain in this so soon after Zero Dark Thirty - it's a completely different character, but Chastain just sort of disappears into the role. If you didn't know it was her, you might think it was a completely different actress. She, also, really elevates this film with her performance.

Visually, the movie has a dark fairy-tale vibe and also shows a lot of J-horror influence. Some may complain that some of the movie's visual motifs - like the smoky black holes that appear in the walls, signalling the presence of Mama - are too derivative of other Japan-influenced horror flicks. But I thought there was a real visual inventiveness to the movie that helped it to feel like more than just a pastiche of genre influences. And in the third act, when things get really crazy and sort of epic, there are some gorgeous scenes of ethereal mayhem. There's even a really cool, ultra-stylized dream-sequence that tells Mama's backstory, shot in a disorienting first-person perspective, that I thought worked well.

And again, I found myself surprised at how the movie turned out to be much more than just scares. There's heart in MAMA - as in, there were some moments that I had chills, and some moments where I felt sad and/or moved for these characters. And there is some strong narrative complexity here as well, in that there are some nicely-drawn parallels between Mama and Annabel, and some poetic symmetry in how their relationships with Victoria and Lilly evolve.

Before I get too caught up in praising the film though, I will point out that its high points are nearly matched by some moments of lameness and cheese. Two key side characters, for example - a psychiatrist working with the girls, and a steely aunt in a custody battle with Jeffrey and Annabel - are often eye-rollingly one-note. As such, they often act according to horror movie cliche, and make the sort of lame-brained decisions that will have you screaming at the movie screen. The movie can also feel a little jumpy. While I appreciate that it doesn't spend too much time having everyone doubt Mama's existence, or dwell too much on the "mystery" of her backstory, some sequences do feel slightly rushed. Namely, characters have to make a lot of big, Mulder-esque leaps towards the end of the film. Something that happens in a lot of movies, sure - but in Mama, there are enough instances of characters acting with nuance and intelligence that the moments when they don't are particularly jarring. Finally, given that most of the movie has a great, creeptastic atmosphere, I also felt like there were way too many jump-scare attempts. It felt unnecessary - especially in the instances where the scares were just fake-outs.

Overall though, MAMA really impressed me - and I'd count it as one of the most interesting and rewarding horror movies I've seen in a while. I really enjoyed the twisted fairy-tale-esque vibe of the film - the Del Toro touch really gave the movie that extra visual pop. It also felt like there was more thematic depth, more epicness, and more genuine emotion on display than in most horror flicks. And if that's not enough, there's also Jessica Chastain in fine form, rocking goth gear and a bad attitude and making even more of a case for her status as one of the best actresses in Hollywood. Whoah mama indeed.

My Grade: B+

It's 2013 and It's Time To Stop The Madness! A New Year's RANT OF DOOM.

- Well, here we are, and it's 2013 ... guess that whole Mayan apocalypse thing didn't quite pan out.

After a string of exhaustive 2012 Year-In-Review posts, I was a bit blogged-out. At the same time, I wanted to kick off 2013 with some good material, and was trying to figure out what to write. As often happens though, the subject matter found me (as opposed to the other way around), and here I am with a lot to say as we find ourselves midway through January.

Basically, my question of the moment is: HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY?!

Now, this is largely a pop-culture blog, so I ask that question through a pop-culture-tinged lense. But still, the question remains, and it invariably ties to a larger socio-political context. It's no wonder that post-apocalyptic fiction is so popular right now ... sometimes it really does feel like the end is nigh. Not even the end of things on a material level, but the end of reason, sanity, and level-headedness.

I will start with the macro-view of things and talk about something that's obvious: America has a problem with violence. This past year, there were scores of horrific shootings that made one wonder what the hell was wrong with people. There was an added dimension of horror to these incidents because they largely took place in places that we regard as safe havens: movie theaters, malls, and most of all, schools. Incident after incident occurred, with the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back being the Sandy Hook school shooting in my home state of Connecticut. The fact that innocent children were gunned down - kids under 10 years old - it was almost too much to bear. Still, even thinking about it is almost impossibly sad, and hard to wrap one's brain around.

As I (and most rational people, I think) see it, there are two main addressable issues here. One is gun control. Many of these incidents were perpetrated by assault rifles and other weapons far too powerful to be available for civilian use. Few are advocating the ban of guns altogether, but many want to see sensible regulations on what kinds of guns can be sold, and to whom. For years, I've found it frustrating that this issue has been tossed aside as a political minefield not worth addressing or spotlighting in national debate and discourse. It's a shame that it took such horrific incidents to finally get the conversation going again. The second issue is mental health. There seems to be a real issue with the identification and treatment of mental illness here in America. It's too hard and too costly for many families to have mentally ill sons or daughters properly treated or cared for. And as relates to gun control, the fact that people with mental illness had such easy and free access to guns is maddening.

The fact is - certain people and factions in America just have ridiculously backwards and asinine views of guns and their rights as relates to them. The gun culture in America is harmful, problematic, disruptive, and just plain misguided. Too many people fancy themselves to be soldiers, vigilantes, and cowboys - and are living in a fantasy world in which one must stockpile bullets in the event that the US government turns on its people.

In any case, there was a moment after the Sandy Hook shooting in which the one silver lining seemed to be that we were, finally, going to turn a corner. But now, I worry that, as often happens, we are letting the moment pass us and get buried under an avalanche of distractions, politics, and sound-bytes designed not for reasonable discussion, but to feed the beast of a 24-hour news cycle.

And that brings me to the micro view. As I look around, I see intelligent discussion about violence in America being swallowed up by brainlessness. I see the hard conversations - the ones about gun control and treatment of mental illness - being undermined by the same old easy conversations, where pundits and politicians blame things like movies and videogames for all of our problems.

The sudden resurgence in attacks against the videogame industry really bothers me for how misguided it is. For one thing, last time I looked, none of the attackers in the major shooting incidents in 2012 were children. All were adults. So why then is there the constant need to talk about the effect of media on them? Lord knows - any work of fiction or nonfiction, be it the Bible, Shakespeare, Die Hard, or Call of Duty - has the same ability to warp a mentally unstable person's mind. There's nothing new here, and there's no reason why we should condemn STORIES for real-life actions. What I am seeing now is a movement towards the worst possible thing in a free society: censorship. In Connecticut, residents of the town of Southington are getting together to BURN violent videogames. Are you kidding me? How is this any different than burning books, movies, or music? This is Farenheit 451 come to horrific life. There always has been and always will be media that is inappropriate for children, and it's the responsibility of parents to ensure that their kids are exposed to age-appropriate material. But to limit what stories adults are exposed to because of fear of the story's content? That, my friends, is crazy. So how about if instead of burning / destroying games, the parents of Southington actually do their jobs and parent, rather than act like savages in their own right?

This same madness extends to the world of television, where the recent TCA event - in which networks show off their new series for critics and journalists - was riddled with accusations of too-violent content. Again, why should series aimed at an adult audience concern themselves with such things? Furthermore, to reduce media to base-level labels like violent and nonviolent severely undermines questions of context and quality. In the world of TV, this is especially true. Over the last decade and a half, we've seen a renaissance in quality on television. We've seen dark and mature shows - from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad - that are more intelligent, more nuanced, more complex - than most of what used to be churned out. TV has become challenging and adult - no longer just a pacifier, no longer just an idiot-box. So of course, people are now coming out of the woodwork to criticize it.

The truth is that there will always be art that revels in violence for the sake of violence. We have a primal part of us that is excited by violence as the ultimate life-or-death challenge. Drama is best when the stakes are high - and no stakes are higher than life and death. This is literal and metaphorical - after all, what is the fascination with professional sports if not as a microcosm of life and death. Isn't the warlike strategy of football basically warfare in miniature, the tackles a stand-in for killing blows? Don't we all enjoy the drama of all-or-nothing, winner takes all? That is always going to be reflected in our culture. At the same time, there is also always going to be art that celebrates life, goodness, friendship, love, and the human spirit. We all have a need for those kinds of stories, and they will always be there. Sometimes, an outwardly violent tale can actually turn out to be uplifting and good - take Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Sometimes, an outwardly sweet story can actually end up being soul-crushing - look at the stories of Charlie Brown: a cute cartoon character for kids whose adventures are actually almost nihilistic in their negative outlook on life. Point being: you can't just label something as violent-bad or peaceful-good. In fact, I think there's a strong argument to be made that people who live lives in which they repress their minds to violence and sex and anything that challenges their worldview ... those are the people who often end up with the most problems. How many politicians, Catholic priests, and other would-be role models have turned out to be hypocritical people who act out on the very things they preach most loudly against? It's why the people calling for censorship - either self-censorship or imposed-on-others censorship, often strike me as the craziest of all.

At the movies, you've not got journalists ganging up on guys like Quentin Tarantino and his latest film, Django Unchained. The criticisms are not new for Tarantino, but they seem to be heightened due to the recent anti-violence, anti-everything-that's-not-100%-politically-correct hysteria. Now, Django is unquestionably a complicated film from a tonal perspective. It's got a pulpy, over-the-top, often comedic style that references Spaghetti Westerns, grindhouse cinema, and blaxploitation flicks. But it also has some real social commentary beneath the surface, and its portrayal of slavery in the pre-Civil War south is starkly brutal and disturbing. And yet, people are fixated on the movie's use of the n-word. People are reducing the movie to over-the-top pulp - even though there's much more to it - and therefore taking issue with a supposedly silly movie's use of a very serious word. Again, it's an issue of reductivism - people are too lazy to really examine the film's themes, its contrasting tones, its genre influences, and what it's saying about slavery and race - and are instead framing criticisms in sound-bytes ready-made for FOX News. The exact same reductivism is happening with regards to the movie's violence. Obviously, Tarantino is a guy who enjoys the visceral, subversive thrill of a great action scene. He is a great storyteller, and a master of building up narrative tension that culminates in violent climax. But rather than have intelligent discussions about the movie's narrative beats, people seem to want to simply label it as violent, and that's that. How many Oscar-winning movies could have just been labeled as violent - and therefore not worthwhile - and that's that? How many great books could be labeled as violent - and therefore not worth further analysis or cultural merit - and that's that?

This same logic applies to videogames. After all these years, too many mainstream critics and "journalists" fail to engage with the medium on any level except with regards to violence vs. non-violence. There is a whole world of aesthetics and craft that don't get discussed outside of enthusiasts. Gameplay, graphic artistry, control, precision, immersiveness, challenge, and yes - story and theme. I think about The Walking Dead videogame that I named as game of the year for 2012. There is violence and horror in it, yes. But it also put you in the role of protective father-figure, group leader, and redemption-seeker. And yet, in the spewed-out non-discussion of games, in which "violent" games are being burned in Southington, a game brimming with artistic merit might be thrown into the flames.

But back to movies, the most prominent example of small-minded reductivism has to be the recent "controversy" around Zero Dark Thirty, which I find sort of shocking. Here is one of the most intelligent, well-crafted films of 2012 - a movie that never talks down to its audience - that is being attacked from all sides for no reason except, again, to stir the pot. At the least, it was reassuring to know that the movie still did solid box-office this week despite all of the crazy complaints. It makes me wonder if we live in such a sound-byte oriented society that we no longer know how to process nuance or complexity. It's the same way in which everyone yelled about the "fiscal cliff" without knowing a damn thing about it, except that it was coming and it was bad. With Zero Dark Thirty, there is now a controversy about the depiction of torture in the movie. How is this possible? What's true is that the movie opens the floodgates for discussion and debate about America's use of torture in the war on terror. What isn't true is that it endorses torture. In fact, the most prominent theme of the entire movie is the psychological toll that torture takes - on those directly involved in administering it, and on the country as a whole. The depiction of torture in the movie is never cathartic or exploitative - instead, it's hard-to-watch and almost makes you sympathetic for the prisoners. But what's brilliant about the film is that it doesn't really lean one way or the other - it presents torture in a way that forces you as a viewer to think about its benefits vs. its consequences. Key words being: "forces you to think."

Somehow, complaints about the film's exact accuracy morphed into a meme stating that it was controversial because it endorsed torture. First of all, these criticisms are not the same at all. Second, I don't see how it's fair to criticize a movie that represents still-classified events as being not wholly accurate. The movie is journalistic and real-feeling in its broad strokes, but I don't think most expected it to capture the entire hunt for Bin Laden in minute detail. It disappoints me that politicians would so forcefully condemn the movie for this reason. But this all goes back to what I was talking about earlier: not paying attention to a story's broader themes, instead focusing only on details that might prove offensive if taken out of context. Let's look at Zero Dark Thirty as a whole - the entire movie is clearly a fictionalized amalgam of real people and events, put together in order to tell a story about a specific moment in American history, and the slow and scar-tissue laced road to healing post-9/11. Jessica Chastain's character is based on some real people in the CIA, but isn't a direct representation of any one person. The same goes for most of the film's other characters. So already, from Moment One in the movie, we as viewers know that this isn't a documentary, but an approximation of real events, assembled in dramatic fashion in order to make a broader thematic point. Argo used the same sort of artistic license. As did Lincoln. AS DID EVERY FICTIONAL MOVIE ABOUT REAL EVENTS EVER MADE.

And so, in the discussion about what - exactly - is truth vs. fiction in Zero Dark Thirty, the real discussion that the movie *should* be prompting conveniently gets totally lost. The movie should be inspiring meaningful conversation about to what lengths America should go to preserve its safety and its freedom, about what lines we should draw to distinguish us from our enemies, about the symbolic importance of finding Osama Bin Laden and the work that still needs to be done even after his death.

But America seems to be having a moment where intelligent conversation is being totally washed out by reactionary outrage. We are better than this. And I know that because we count among us intelligent and gifted storytellers like Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Spielberg who have been telling the story of America in interesting, thought-provoking (and - gasp! - sometimes violent) ways. My sincere hope for 2013 is that we stop the madness and stop the calls for censorship. That we stop confusing the real issues with the imagined ones. That we tackle what is practical and pragmatic instead of what is baseless. Let's embrace those ideas and those voices that challenge us, make us think, and make us smarter, and tune out those that reduce everything to sound bytes and dogmatic us vs. them fear-mongering. Let's remember that there's nothing wrong with being different, or thinking different, or being an individual - in fact, that's what makes America great in the first place. When everything becomes Blue vs. Red, side vs. side, we lower ourselves to the reductivism I've been rallying against. Let's start using our brains again, and remember that the world is a weird and complicated place - but that that's what makes it great.

THE BEST OF 2012 - The Best MOVIES Of The Year

THE YEAR IN MOVIES - 2012

- 2012 was a really, really good year for movies. A lot of readers of the blog have commented to me that my reviews of late have been overwhelmingly positive - and that's true. Part of that is, as always, that I actively try to avoid watching movies that I anticipate will be crap. But a big part of it is also that, remarkably, this year, movie after movie turned out to be good. Movie quality was remarkably high this year.

A lot of films I was personally looking forward to in 2012 matched or exceeded expectations. I think the biggest big movie of the year, the one that became a sort of standard-setter, was THE AVENGERS. At the end of the day, The Avengers didn't make it into my Top 10 list, but it remains one of the most important and precedent-setting films of 2012. It was blockbuster filmmaking that finally broke away from the origin-story template we've seen ad nauseum in the last decade. It was a fun, joyous, over-the-top movie that embraced the wackiness of its comic-book universe wholeheartedly - a great counterpoint to Christopher Nolan's increasingly wearisome real-world take on Batman. Suddenly, I wanted every new big blockbuster superhero movie to be like The Avengers (and/or written and directed by Joss Whedon, who also helped write this year's great CABIN IN THE WOODS), and ultimately, many of them may go in that direction. But more than that, the success of The Avengers - creatively and financially - gave 2012 an anything-can-happen feel. Marvel had pulled off the impossible - so maybe others could as well.

There were a wide-range of satisfying surprises this year. Wes Anderson rebounded from a minor slump to do MOONRISE KINGDOM, one of his best films ever. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED, and ROBOT & FRANK came out of nowhere and delivered indie awesomeness. Kathryn Bigelow continued her incredible second act career resurgence with ZERO DARK THIRTY. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was actually really good. DREDD 3D was badass as hell. Ben Affleck continued to make great movies with ARGO. An Indonesian action movie with a British director blew people away, quickly climbing up the list of best action movies of all time. Yep, THE RAID is that damn good.

What wasn't good? Two untouchable bastions of quality faltered a bit, in my opinion. BRAVE was a fine film by most measures - most, except Pixar's. This was one of the first times that an original Pixar movie didn't wow me, and it was a little disappointing. In terms of animated films, I much preferred the return-to-form for Tim Burton via FRANKENWEENIE - a movie that reminded me why I became such a fan of Burton in the first place. The other franchise that showed some chinks in the armor was Christopher Nolan's Batman. I know, I know - this is a divisive one. Some still maintain that THE DARK KNIGHT RISES was a masterpiece. For me, it just didn't work in the same way as The Dark Knight or even Batman Begins. I'm not taking anything away from what Nolan did with the franchise as a whole. But my mixed reactions to TDKR made me ready for new takes on the character and the superhero film in general. To that end, I'll again mention the uber-satisfying comic book adaptation DREDD 3D, which perfectly captured the over-the-top, darkly satirical, dystopian feel of the Judge Dredd comics.

I also had mixed emotions this year about several movies that were very thematically ambitious, but that lacked the ability to properly follow-through on the sorts of thematic and philosophical questions that they posed. This is why, as much as I admired the stellar performances and film-craft of THE MASTER, I just couldn't fully get behind it, and don't count it as one of the best movies of the year. As much as I thought about the central relationships, elements of socio-political commentary, or personal philosophy in the film, I just wasn't able to extrapolate anything meaningful from it. Sometimes, I think critics are so eager for movies that seem to tackle these sorts of grand themes that they stop short of actual critical analysis. The Master is a movie that clearly has a lot on its mind. But what is it actually saying? I was left with a similar feeling of emptiness after seeing PROMETHEUS. That movie was so visually stunning that I sort of loved it on that level alone. But it had an emptiness to it, that left it feeling like the start of a conversation that goes nowhere. I felt similarly about the commendably ambitious KILLING THEM SOFTLY. It might have worked smashingly as straight-up crime noir. But Andrew Dominik's desire to make the film a political allegory derailed it a bit. Point being: the storyteller's job isn't simply to pose questions, but to tell a story. I'm all for ambiguity and stories that are open to interpretation (and I really loved the sorts of tantalizing questions posed by the narratively ambiguous LIFE OF PI, for example). But those questions have to have a point, and you should feel like the filmmaker is guiding you towards answers. Even if answers aren't simple, or aren't there altogether, the filmmaker should be guiding you. The splatter-paint approach doesn't make for great movies.

And that is why I loved CLOUD ATLAS so much. It was a huge, messy, complex film - ambitious as hell. But some very simple thematic threads tied it all together beautifully. Cloud Atlas wasn't a question, it was a thesis statement. And it made the Wachowski's time-spanning epic feel both cosmic and personal. On the other end of the spectrum is ZERO DARK THIRTY. The movie tells the story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden with pulse-pounding intensity and white-knuckle drama. It presents all sides of what happened in a relatively dispassionate, almost journalistic manner. And yet, there is an undercurrent of emotion between the lines of the movie that occasionally boils to the surface. The film doesn't tell us what to think of torture, or religious fundamentalism, or the war on terror, or patriotism. But it gives us all the tools we need to think about these big, relevant themes intelligently and make our own judgments. It's part of what makes the film so electrifying - it shows us a stark view of the world we live in, and forces us to confront the harsh realities we often allow ourselves to ignore (but that those in the film cannot).

LINCOLN, on the other hand, told its story with classic Spielbergian flair. While Spielberg's tendencies towards feel-good drama have at times limited him, his collaborations with writer Tony Kushner seem to bring out his best. And hey, sometimes there's nothing wrong with a movie that expertly sends an audience home happy. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK was one such film - mixing dark comedy with such well-earned emotional payoffs that it made you want to stand and cheer. Meanwhile, KILLER JOE made me want to cheer for altogether different reasons. Rarely have I seen a movie so gleefully twisted and depraved. Killer Joe is one of those movies that will be passed down in college dorms for years to come. By the same token, I suspect THE GREY will be one of those great movies that sort of develops its own legend and following over time. It's one of the most badass, gravitas-infused dramas I've seen - the kind that gives you chills, makes you cheer, makes your jaw drop, and that puts some hair on your chest. Like I said ... badass. Certainly, between The Grey, The Raid, and Quentin Tarantino's brutally awesome DJANGO UNCHAINED, there was no shortage of badassery in 2012. There was also no shortage of funny. Silver Linings Playbook, Killer Joe, Safety Not Guaranteed, Richard Linklater's BERNIE, and others were darkly funny. But for straight-up laughs, 2012 delivered as well, with comedies like THE DICTATOR, 21 JUMP STREET, WANDERLUST, and Danish import KLOWN all proving to be fairly hilarious.

I saw dozens of excellent movies in 2012, and very few bad ones. Movies from all-time favorite directors that hit the mark (Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, Tarantino, Peter Jackson), and new voices that really sort of blew me away (Rian Johnson, director of the incredible sci-fi film LOOPER, is a guy I suspect film fans will be keeping an eye on).

So here's my list of the best movies of the year. As always, I can't see everything (only almost everything), so I'm sure there are some notable omissions. Feel free to comment and let me know what's missing.


DANNY'S BEST MOVIES OF 2012:


1.) Zero Dark Thirty

- Ultra-intense, eye-opening, and directed with thunderous momentum by Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty is my pick for movie of the year. The movie hit me in the same way that The Hurt Locker did - it felt like a state of the union of America over the last decade. And not just America - but the American Dream. It made me think about the things we have to do to defend our country, and about the emotional and spiritual toll that takes on those on the frontlines, and on all of us as Americans. No other movie this year felt more relevant, more necessary, more must-see. Kathryn Bigelow has done it again.


2.) Cloud Atlas

- Cloud Atlas was the most emotionally-gripping movie of the year for me. It tackled the Big Questions - "What does it all mean?" "Where are we going?" "Where have we been?" - in epic fashion. It showed what it means to be human, taking us across time and space to show the commonality of the human experience, to demonstrate our capacity for good and evil throughout time. The Wachowskis outdid themselves - blending genres and conventions so that the movie was sci-fi, fantasy, crime drama, comedy, romance, and historical epic all rolled into one. This was a movie about movies, a movie about life, a movie about human potential. Haters be damned - I loved it.


3.) The Grey

- "Once more into the fray / Into the last good fight I'll ever know / Live and die on this day / Live and die on this day." That poem at the heart of The Grey says a lot about the completely epic nature of this film. It's not so much man vs. nature as it is man vs. himself - the movie is about pushing oneself to fight, to live for something, to die for something. It's Liam Neeson in one of the best performances he's ever done - a role that he clearly put his heart and soul into. Few other movies this year left me as floored.


4.) Moonrise Kingdom

- Wes Anderson's movies used to wow me. Rushmore, The Royal Tannebaums, The Life Aquatic. Of late, the wow-factor hadn't been there ... until Moonrise Kingdom brought it back. This was Anderson in top-form - the knack for visual stylization never left him, but Moonrise had heart and characters and smarts to match. While the weakest of Anderson's work can feel almost alien, Moonrise uses the quirkiness to speak to the outsider in all of us, telling a tale of two crazy kids who find each other and are willing to do whatever it takes to stay together. This is one of Anderson's best-ever films.


5.) Django Unchained

- Tarantino's Django Unchained is, of course, badass as hell. But there's also a lot of thought put into its tale of a slave-turned-bounty hunter in the pre-Civil War American South. The movie artfully plays with genre conventions and with history. It is a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, blaxploitation, and many of Tarantino's personal movie heroes. But beneath the violence and over-the-top humor, the movie also has a lot to say about the evils of slavery, the price of that evil on the American psyche, and the way that that atrocity paved the way for the world we live in today. It's easy to dismiss Tarantino as a mere purveyor of pulp fiction, but there's always more to QT's films than meets the eye.


6.) Beasts of the Southern Wild

- I was fairly blown away by Beasts of the Southern Wild. Visually striking, powerfully acted by a cast consisting largely of non-professional actors, and thematically rich - a haunting tale of isolationism vs. encroaching civilization ... this was a cinematic shocker. The tale of Hushpuppy has stuck with me in the months since I first saw the film, and I'd encourage those who have not yet seen this one to give it a look.


7.) Lincoln

- A landmark performance from Daniel Day-Lewis. A masterful supporting turn from Tommy Lee Jones. A stacked cast of some of the finest actors working today. Wonderfully staged by Steven Spielberg, sharply written by Tony Kushner. A great portrait of one of our greatest Presidents. A classic bit of history that is also incredibly relevant to the times we live in. One of the best movies of the year.


8.) The Raid: Redemption

- The Raid is just so kickass that it hurts. I have seen many action movies, many martial arts movies, but few have left my jaw on the floor as did The Raid. The movie is quite elegant in its simplicity. The story is simple but effective. The characters are archetypal, but get the job done. That leaves plenty of room for the movie to focus on the most insane action set-pieces I've ever seen - heart-pumping gun battles, hand-to-hand combat that will leave you breathless, and mano e mano fights to the death that must be seen to be believed.


9.) Safety Not Guaranteed

- A charming, uproariously funny film, Safety Not Guaranteed totally won me over. This tale of a possibly-crazy man who purports to own a functioning time-machine is funny, quirky, and poignant. It features fantastic turns from faves like Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, and New Girl's Jake Johnson. The script is one of the year's best - weaving absurdist humor with emotionally-involving characters and genuinely interesting mystery at the movie's core. This is the perfect example of a cool indie flick that very much should be Oscar-nominated left and right, but probably won't be because it's not Oscar-y enough. That's lame - this is an awesome and hilarious movie.


10.) Silver Linings Playbook

- David O'Russell's latest is getting a bad rap as a cheesy rom-com, but I found it to be anything but. The movie impressed me by being strange, dark, and occasionally disturbing. And to me, the dark depths that it reached in its exploration of two mentally ill characters made the late-movie payoffs that much more rewarding and applause-worthy. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are both phenomenal in this one. It's great filmmaking, and for me one of the best surprises of 2012.


THE NEXT BEST:


11.)  Looper

- A twisty time-travel yarn with great performances, standout scenes, and "whoah, where did this guy come from?" writing and direction from Rian Johnson ... Looper was one of the best sci-fi films in a long while.


12.) Robot and Frank

- This underrated and underseen gem features an incredible central performance from Frank Langella that's both hilarious and heartbreaking. The movie has some cool sci-fi elements, but at its core it's just a great character piece about an aging thief looking for one last big score.


13.) The Avengers

- The Avengers was a triumph for those of us who love superheroes in all of their tripped-out, cosmic, brightly-colored glory. Joss Whedon captured the spirit of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and infused the mighty Marvel heroes with just enough modern edge to make them feel fresh. This is the new template for all superhero movies to come.


14.) Argo

- A riveting thriller from Ben Affleck, Argo is so cool because its real-life story is so fascinating. Affleck deftly brings this slice of recent history to life by mixing political intrigue, wry humor, and action-movie thrills. The result is Affleck's best film to date, and a serious sign that this guy is the real deal.


15.) Life of Pi

- Visually, Life of Pi was one of the richest, most eye-popping movies I've ever seen - with some of the best and most you-are-there use of 3D I've experienced in a live-action flick. Ang Lee creates a film that is stunning to look at but also alternately scary, harrowing, uplifting, and serene. The film also surprised me with some of its twists - I came away from the film turning it over in my head and thinking a lot about its central mysteries.


16.) The Hobbit

- The distraction of 48 fps presentation aside, The Hobbit proved that the magic was still present in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth. With stunning set-pieces, wonderful performances from returning favorites and newcomers alike, and themes that resonate and stir the soul, The Hobbit is a welcome return to the world of Tolkien from Jackson and co.


17.) The Cabin in the Woods

- One of the most purely fun movies of the year, The Cabin in the Woods is a geek-out worthy deconstruction of the horror genre that was so cool I had to see it twice. The movie starts out as a jokey riff on classic teen horror flicks, but there are hints that something else is up. When the pandora's box is eventually open, the resulting carnage is pure awesomeness, and a huge treat for fans of horror flicks.


18.) End of Watch

- One of the best cop movies I've seen, End of Watch is gritty, funny, and utterly immersive in the way it uses handheld cameras and a you-are-there visual style to put you in the shoes of its central characters. Jarring at first, the film soon becomes totally engrossing. You feel like you're hanging with your buddies during the quieter moments, which makes the intense action and carnage that comes later that much more involving.


19.) Frankenweenie

- My pick for Animated Film of the Year, Frankenweenie is Tim Burton at the top of his game (very welcome after the disappointing Dark Shadows). The film uses stop-motion animation to create a grimly gothic black-and-white world that pays homage to the great horror films of old. But what starts out as a small-scale story about a boy and his dog soon becomes a big and gleefully chaotic tribute to monster movies that recaptures the sort of heartwarming horror that Burton built his rep on.


20.) Killer Joe

- A pitch-black, morbidly funny neo-noir, Killer Joe also happens to be one of the most shocking, weird, disturbing, and just-plain-wrong movies I've ever seen. A cult classic in the making, Killer Joe features an iconic central performance from Matthew McConaughey as the titular killer, who is surrounded by a great cast. An awesomely depraved film.


21.) The Perks of Being a Wallflower

- A moving, funny, wistful ode to teenage wasteland, this is a film that captures the drama and all-or-nothing feeling of being in high school to a T. Emotions run high in this one, but it fits - the highs are high and the lows are lows. Just like high school. Superbly acted and artfully directed, this is teen-angst at its most entertaining.


22.) Cosmopolis

- Director David Cronenberg isn't known for making accessible films, but Cosmopolis might be one of the most difficult and challenging movies he's ever made. A hyper-stylized, surreal jaunt into the heart of darkness, this apocalyptic film felt like a truth-in-madness meditation on the 99% vs. the 1% politics of the past year. If you stick with it and go with it, there's a lot to like here.


23.) The Dictator

- Some were put-off by Sacha Baron Cohen's foray into scripted comedy, but man, I loved it. Incredibly funny, The Dictator also contained some absolutely biting social commentary of the same sort that made Ali G, Borat, and Bruno so great.


24.) Klown

- Who knew? I had no idea that a Danish riff on Curb Your Enthusiasm-style improvisational comedy would end up being one of the year's funniest films. Based on a Danish TV show, Klown follows two man-children as they drag their ten-year-old companion on a trip of oh-so-wrong debauchery and mayhem. There were things in this movie that positively shocked me, and that also made me laugh harder than almost anything else this year.


25.) Dredd 3D

- An ultra-badass action flick, Dredd 3D erased all lingering memory of the 90's-era Stallone flick and delivered a streamlined adaptation that captured all that is awesome about Judge Dredd and his post-apocalyptic world. Karl Urban was perfect as Judge Dredd, and the film had just the right mix of satire, action, and sci-fi to become an instant fanboy favorite.


HONORABLE MENTIONS - MOVIES THAT JUST MISSED THE CUT:

Wreck-It Ralph
21 Jump Street
The Master
Killing Them Softly
Wanderlust
Hitchcock
Chronicle
Bernie
The Amazing Spider-Man
Skyfall
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter


HONORABLE MENTIONS - OTHER RECOMMENDED MOVIES FROM THIS YEAR:

Rise of the Guardians
Paranorman
Prometheus
The Dark Knight Rises
Taken 2
Ted
Sound of My Voice
Safe House
The Five Year Engagement
Les Miserables


INDIVIDUAL AWARDS:


BEST LEAD ACTOR:

1.) Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln
2.) Frank Langella - Robot & Frank
3.) Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
4.) Joaquin Phoenix - The Master
5.) Liam Neeson - The Grey

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

1.) Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln
2.) Dwight Henry - Beasts of the Southern Wild
3.) Jason Clarke - Zero Dark Thirty
4.) Jim Broadbent - Cloud Atlas
5.) Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

BEST LEADING ACTRESS:

1.) Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty
2.) Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook
3.) Quvenzhané Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild
4.) Halle Barry - Cloud Atlas
5.) Kara Hayward - Moonrise Kingdom

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

1.) Sally Field - Lincoln
2.) Doona Bae - Cloud Atlas
3.) Emma Watson - The Perks of Being a Wallflower
4.) Anne Hathaway - Les Miserables
5.) Juno Temple - Killer Joe

BEST DIRECTOR:

1.) Tom Tywer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski - Cloud Atlas
2.) Kathryn Bigelow - Zero Dark Thirty
3.) Ang Lee - Life of Pi
4.) David O'Russell - Silver Linings Playbook
5.) Tie: Rian Johnson - Looper, and Gareth Evans - The Raid: Redemption

BEST SCREENPLAY:

1.) Zero Dark Thirty
2.) Silver Linings Playbook
3.) Django Unchained
4.) Safety Not Guaranteed
5.) Lincoln
6.) Looper
7.) Cloud Atlas
8.) Moonrise Kingdom
9.) The Avengers
10.) Argo


- And that's all she wrote - my picks for the best films of 2012. An overwhelming amount of great movies this year ... it's been a lot of fun writing about and reviewing them all. Hope you've enjoyed reading.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

THE BEST OF 2012 - The Best GAMES Of The Year

THE BEST IN GAMING 2012:

- You could make the argument that it's sort of a scary time to be a gamer. Sales are down, publishers are going under, and there's a sense of uncertainty about when the next generation of consoles will hit, and what they'll mean for the industry.

People like me are now, more and more, part of a "lost" or semi-lost generation of gamers. We grew up with gaming, we still play when we can, but as we get older and busier, we just can't commit to too many of the 100+ hour blockbuster games that now make up the core of the gaming market. This has led to the rise of minigames and gaming apps. The iPhone and iPad are killing the portable games market ... though Sony and Nintendo also didn't do themselves any favors by releasing new portable consoles that were pricey and lacking in killer apps. In many ways though, iGaming is eating into the console market as well. Shorter attention spans and reluctance to buy a $60 game - when apps are usually $5 and under - are hurting the games market in general. Nintendo, with the launch of its WiiU, now faces a vastly changed landscape than when it launched the Wii several years ago. The same casual, family-friendly market that Nintendo laser-targeted with the Wii has now moved on to Apple's devices. Nintendo has compounded its problems by taking away its two big hypothetical advantages. Where it should be trumping Apple is in the graphics department - but the WiiU is not particularly strong in the graphics department, offering no significant improvements over the PS3 or XBOX 360. Secondly - and these will come eventually - but Nintendo launched the WiiU without a killer-app, first-party, Nintendo franchise game. A must-have Mario, Zelda, or new original game could turn the tide ... but man, Nintendo is going to have an uphill battle over the next several months.

The other thing that made 2012 feel weird and/or lacking was just the seeming absence of many big, must-have blockbuster games - beyond the usual updated iterations to the various shooter franchises like Halo and Far Cry. Since I've never been into shooters, I found myself without many big games I was really looking forward to. Resident Evil 6 was an exception, but decidedly mixed reviews dampened by enthusiasm a bit.  A lot of big games were delayed, or scheduled for 2013. It's why the barren wasteland that was 2012 might have been - hopefully - an anomaly. 2013 will see Bioshock Infinite, Devil May Cry, The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Revengeance, Grand Theft Auto V, Star Trek, Watch Dogs, and many more big, long-awaited, triple-A titles. 2013 is set to be an amazing year for console gamers.

But here's the thing: the absence of big blockbusters in 2012 has led to an indie-gaming renaissance. The originality, creativity, and coolness that's come from indie and downloadable games over the last year is incredible. The downloadable scene now includes HD remakes of arcade classics, experimental arthouse games, episodic serialized interactive adventures, and new entries in genres long thought dead (point-and-click adventures, anyone?).

There are now more cool downloadable games than I can keep track of. But incredibly, three of my absolute favorite games of the year in 2012 originated as downloadable games. JOURNEY was one such game - an abstract adventure that was more about discovery and creating a mood and ambiance than anything else. It's sort of a remarkable game. THE WALKING DEAD was another game that took a lot of people by surprise. Sure, a game based on The Walking Dead is a no-brainer, but not necessarily a story-based graphic adventure released as serialized downloadable "episodes."  Playing the game brought me back to the fun I had as a kid playing the old Lucasarts and Sierra adventures on the PC. Another cool thing about the downloadable games world is the prevalence of new games that are 100% old-school in nature. Take DUST: AN ELYSIAN TALE - a gorgeous, hand-drawn 2D platformer that is what 10-year-old me probably imagined games of the future might look like. And get this - it was made by one guy. The fact that gaming has now come full circle, where it again allows for auteurs to put out personal and original games, is a great thing. Gaming has always had its James Camerons and Peter Jacksons and Michael Bays. Now it can have its Wes Andersons and Richard Linklaters.

In terms of big console games, I'll admit that most of the ones I spent significant time with in 2012 were holdovers from 2011. These games are so big and drawn-out now, they take me forever to play through. I spent months making dents in Batman: Arkham City, God of War III, Uncharted 3, and the Mass Effect series. To that end, I barely had a chance to sample some of the new games I purchased at the end of 2012 - Resident Evil 6, Darksiders 2, and one or two others. I did get a big kick out of LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW, which was just a totally off-the-wall zombie action game where you play a Buffy-esque cheerleader wielding a giant chainsaw. Insane? Yes. But hey, this is why I love videogames.

Looking ahead, 2013 is going to be a very, very interesting year. From a games perspective, I mentioned all the big titles on the way. But from an industry perspective, it's going to be a transition. We'll likely get our first glimpses of Sony and Microsoft's new home consoles - and you have to wonder, what innovations will they have? Just better graphics and more horsepower? Or will we see true cloud-based gaming, seamless integration with tablets/apps, new motion-control devices, or something else we haven't even really considered? I don't know if this is make-or-break for Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo quite yet, but the stakes certainly feel high. Sony and Nintendo have both made crucial miscalculations this year - and I don't think it's a coincidence that they are both Japanese companies. The divide between the Japanese and American markets is becoming more vast than ever, and we're seeing Japanese publishers survive only by integrating with American developers and properties. From a creative standpoint though, it's a huge loss when all the cool, quirky Japanese games begin disappearing from the market. And it's also a shame when Sony and Nintendo - two companies who have taken risks and supported out-of-the-box ideas, don't succeed. On the flipside, Apple again finds itself in a position where it is, almost by accident, a leading games platform. Will Apple embrace that, or continue to operate as a total outsider to the industry? I know for me, as long as iGames are limited to touch-controls only, I won't consider the iPhone or iPad to be true gaming platforms. The biggest fear of all is: will gaming simply wither and die as a real entertainment medium? Will mainstream gaming devolve into iPhone time-wasters and nothing more? Will we stop seeing huge, epic games that push the medium to its limits? Let's hope not. Gaming shouldn't aspire to be Hollywood, necessarilly - but I also think it should aspire to more, much more, than Angry Birds and Temple Run.

DANNY'S GAME OF THE YEAR 2012:

1.) The Walking Dead - multiplatform

- With some of the best writing and voice-acting I've ever experienced in a videogame, this spin-off of Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard's comic book is an incredible piece of interactive entertainment. The game takes place in the universe of the comic - and you'll run into some recognizable characters like Glenn and Herschel. But the story and main cast is all new - taking place in parallel to the events of the comic and TV show. But the amazing characters and story are more than worthy of The Walking Dead name. Lee Everett is a convicted murderer who was in the back of a police car, headed to jail, when the zombie apocalypse first hit. In the ensuing chaos, he encounters a young girl named Clementine, who's been separated from her family. Lee takes in Clementine, and watches over her as he meets with others and forms a ragtag group of survivors. The game is filled with fantastic character moments, shocking twists, and a central relationship that is emotional and developed with subtlety and skill. Now, the simple gameplay might seem rudimentary at first, but developer Telltale games brilliantly enhances the story with interactivity. Sometimes, that interactivity means intense action sequences involving zombies. Sometimes, it means making difficult choices - who to save, who to kill, who to support, who to challenge, who to protect. The game slowly but surely completely sucks you in - an engrossing interactive narrative that both took me back to the classic graphic adventures of old but also felt totally new and fresh.

RUNNER-UP:

Journey - PS3

- Navigating through Journey's ethereal landscapes, you can't help but get caught up in the almost spiritual ambiance of the game. The world of journey is very mysterious. You encounter structures, ruins, deserts, vistas, mountains, machines - but what does it all mean? In most games, you wouldn't really question such things, but Journey feels like the videogame equivalent of a semi-abstract painting that invites individual interpretation. The game looks amazing, it's soundtrack is incredible, and the controls are perfectly-tuned. In some ways, playing it reminded me of the feeling you might get when you first played Super Mario Bros. - in that game, the mechanics and the world slowly, organically, reveal themselves through discovery and through trial and error - and the joy is in how expertly the mechanics fit together with that world. Journey has a similarly simple pleasure of exploration and discovery. Without enemies attacking or time limits counting down, the game is less a game in the traditional sense, and more of an experience. I think that's huge - we've always known that interactive entertainment can be more than just a "game" in the strict sense of the word. The same is true for The Walking Dead. Both it and Journey are less about accomplishment and more about experience. And Journey is one of 2012's must-have entertainment and pop-art experiences - in gaming or otherwise.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

- Dust: An Elysian Tale - XBOX 360
- Lollipop Chainsaw (perhaps my "guilty pleasure" of the year) - multiplatform
- Darksiders II - multiplatform

And there you have it - my Year in Gaming for 2012. Feel free to leave your thoughts or comments, and happy gaming.

THE BEST OF 2012 - The Best COMICS Of The Year

THE BEST COMICS OF 2012:

- There are certain things I'm going to miss as we enter the new digital age of comics. Trying to hold on to the way things were, I still make regular trips to the local comic shop, purchasing traditional physical copies of favorite books as well as the occasional trade paperback collection. But 2012 was the year that I fairly definitively went digital. It was a tough transition, but also freeing. There's still a lot I don't love about reading comics on my iPad, but there are also a ton of benefits. An obvious one is the lack of clutter that comes with no longer buying a weekly stack of new books. But a less obvious upside is the evolving way in which I'm finding and discovering new material to read. In the past, comics were limited in terms of discoverability. The choices were either keep up with a book month-to-month, or else catch up months - or years - later by reading trade paperback collections. But in that crucial in-between window, when a book was a couple issues in and starting to gain steam, finding back-issues and catching up was a hunt and a chore. But now, suddenly, you've got a whole library of new and recent issues at your fingertips. Diving into a highly-recommended comic series is now as easy as a few points and clicks. The same applies for many older issues and series as well. Digital comics store Comixology keeps expanding and adding to its library of classic series, and it's nirvana for fanboys and fangirls who want to seek out more old-school material. In particular, I'm loving the additions of content that are not available in trade paperback in full or at all. It's almost overwhelming - the complete run of Mark Waid on The Flash, the complete Suicide Squad, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, American Flagg -  all these classics, with more added every week, all available with the touch of a button. But what's more, Comixology is sort of comics' version of Hulu and DVR combined. Miss an issue? It's there. Want the latest issue on day-of-release? It's there? Heard good things about Saga, and want to quickly spead-read through the first 9 issues? A snap. What this has led to, I think, is a potential new golden age for out-of-the-box comics and new franchises. Before, a lot of comics purchasing was driven by habit. Trying out a new series was a risk, so why bother? Now, there's more opportunity than ever to grab new readers and get people caught up. I think it's only a matter of time, too, before we start seeing first issues available as free for a limited time, and other incentives to encourage sampling. Already, Comixology is doing a lot of 99 cent sales that encourage bulk purchases. Although digital sadly closes some doors, it opens, I think, many new ones.

This goes hand in hand with my overall feeling this year that, while I still loved comics, I was really ready for something new. DC's New 52 initiative was a good break-away point for me. I'm still reading quite a few DC titles, but I just don't have the same investment in the universe I once did. Maybe that will change, but for now, too few of the rebooted titles sustained the level of quality to keep me interested. And the titles I used to read because I had an attachment to the characters I'd grown up with - well, they no longer felt the same. With that said, 2012 was the perfect time to branch out and dive into new material that was standalone and not part of a shared narrative universe. More and more, Image Comics was the place I turned to. Image is now officially the best publisher in the biz, the place where the smartest creators are going to tell their own original stories. Stalwarts like Robert Kirkman's THE WALKING DEAD and INVINCIBLE have now been joined by exciting new titles like Brian K. Vaughan's SAGA, Ed Brubaker's FATALE, and Jonathan Hickman's THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS. Image is just killing it these days. They are doing innovative, edgy stories in all different genres - noir, sci-fi, humor, horror. It's the perfect antidote for Marvel and DC's everything-old-is-new-again approach to many of their stories.

Of course, Image's success has come, a bit, at the expense of DC's fabled (pun sort of intended) Vertigo imprint. Books like Saga that might once have lived there are now at image, and titles like the fantastic SWEET TOOTH, and the long-running Hellblazer, are coming to an end.  Many of Vertigo's characters - Constantine, Swamp Thing, etc. - have been brought back into the fold of DC Comics proper. And Karen Berger, the longtime leader of the imprint, is now set to depart for other opportunities. Many of my all-time favorite comics have come from Vertigo, so it's a little sad to see the line diminished. But again, Vertigo's loss is other's gain, and now you've got Image, IDW (publisher of the seminal LOCKE & KEY), and others all competing for similar types of titles. All that said, Vertigo still published a couple of my favorite comics of 2012. THE NEW DEADWARDIANS was one, the other, my pick for comic of the year - the instant-classic, insanely great miniseries PUNK ROCK JESUS.

I also don't mean to imply that there aren't some great superhero books at the moment. DC has done two very smart things, and that's putting its current MVP writers Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire on multiple titles. Snyder's BATMAN run has been phenomenal - his last major arc, which introduced the criminal conspiracy known as The Court of Owls, was a modern classic. And he's topping it right now, unbelievably, with his ultra-creepy Joker story, "Death of the Family." Snyder has also done great work on SWAMP THING, working with Lemire and his ANIMAL MAN title on the excellent crossover story, "Rotworld." Lemire has also done great work since taking over JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK, providing a great home for DC's stable of supernatural characters. DC also put out the controversial BEFORE WATCHMEN this year. Lo and behold, it's actually been quite good, for the most part. Creators like Darwyn Cooke have done great things with the prequel series, and while its mere existence might make Alan Moore grumpy (or grumpier), it turns out that Before Watchmen has been one of the most consistently good reads week in and week out in the comics world.

Sadly, some true icons and legends of the medium were lost this year. Chief among them, the great JOE KUBERT - one of the great artists of all time. Kubert had a naturalistic, expressive style that made him the definitive artist of characters like Hawkman. He also created the legendary wartime hero Sgt. Rock, and drew him and his comrades-in-arms in Easy Company with unmatched emotion and fluidity. Kubert also founded the Kubert School, an art academy that produced hundreds of great comics artists over the years (not to mention his sons, Andy and Adam, great artists in their own right). One of the bittersweet things about 2012 was losing Kubert, but also getting some last, great work from him in various stories, including the JOE KUBERT PRESENTS miniseries. In it, his art is as sharp as ever.

I'll also take a moment to mention the passing of a legend whose work influenced comics, films, TV, books, and countless imaginations. RAY BRADBURY, one of my biggest heroes, passed away this year, and the world is an emptier and duller place without Bradbury's unparalleled presence in it. The author of Farenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man - among many others - Bradbury was a founding father of modern sci-fi. But more than that, he was an incredible storyteller, commenting on what was and speculating about what might be. A few years ago, at Comic-Con in San Diego, I saw a then-elderly Bradbury speak, and it was an experience that will always stick with me. The sense of wonder and the passion for stories that Bradbury, at 90, still had - I'll never forget it. I bring this up here because comics are, ultimately, for me, about infinite possibilities and mind-expanding ideas. And that too, was what Ray Bradbury's work embodied.

Overall, this was a really interesting, really transitional year for comics. There was some really great work being done, but a lot of it outside the ultra-mainstream. But then again - thanks to digital, thanks to the internet, thanks to a changing comics culture - the comics mainstream is becoming an increasingly malleable and ever-expanding thing.

DANNY'S BEST COMICS OF 2012:


THE BEST MINISERIES AND SPECIALS:

1.) Punk Rock Jesus

- My pick for overall best comic of the year, Punk Rock Jesus reminded me instantly of 80's-era, auteur-driven comics like Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. Written and drawn by Sean Murphy, Punk Rock Jesus takes place in a near-future America where Jesus Christ has been cloned for the purpose of a reality TV show. Gradually, the clone rebels against his corporate creators and religious-zealot supporters and forges his own identity. It's a story that might sound hokey on paper, but Sean Murphy brilliantly uses the premise as a means to explore religion, politics, business, and the American dream. This feels like the kind of risky, rebellious stuff that they just don't make anymore - it's got the same gritty, relevant, nihilistic feel of something like Watchmen. And the art - wow. I was a fan of Sean Murphy before this for his work on books like Joe the Barbarian, but this is a whole new level. Punk Rock Jesus is THE must-read comic of 2012.


2.) The New Deadwardians

- Written by fan-favorite Dan Abnett, this engrossing eight-parter told the story of an Edwardian England overrun by zombies. The added twist is that, in order to survive the zombie apocalypse, large swaths of Brits have given themselves "the cure," aka, turned themselves into vampires! It's a totally over-the-top premise, but The New Deadwardians is actually a very smart mystery dealing with a murder in this land now filled with the undead. Lots of twists, turns, and great character moments made this book a fantastic read.


3.) Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre

- A number of the Before Watchmen books have been good - Minutemen, Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, The Comedian, and Moloch were all really well done. But Silk Spectre - the book I had the least excitement for, actually turned out to be the ambitious project's crown jewel. Written by Darwyn Cooke and drawn with cartoonish abandon by Amanda Connor, Silk Spectre was a a trippy meditation on legacy, adulthood, and finding one's own path - all set amidst a psychedelic 60's backdrop.


4.) The Secret Service

- Written by Mark Millar (Kickass) and drawn by Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), The Secret Service has been a really fun miniseries thus far. It involves a British street thug whose life takes a sharp right turn, when he finds out that his enigmatic uncle is actually a certified super-spy - who's come to take his nephew under his wing and train him to be an elite agent. It's one of the best stories Millar has crafted in some time, and I'm curious to see where it goes as it continues into the new year.


5.) Joe Kubert Presents

- A showpiece for the legendary artist, only two of six issues of this anthology have yet been released, but I'm giving it a spot on the list because it's been so enjoyable thus far. Each issue is a mix of original stories written and drawn by Kubert, as well as others from writer/artists he hand-picked for inclusion. There's some great stories in these, but also an added layer of weight and bittersweetness knowing that Kubert died just prior to the first issue's release. This, however, is a fitting departing gift from a true master.


THE BEST ONGOING SERIES:


1.) Saga

- One of the great joys of 2012 was seeing one of my favorite writers, Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man) return to comics after a long absence. Man, did I miss the guy. No one else has BKV's knack for dialogue, for crafting all-too-human characters (even in a story like this one, where they're not actually human), or for telling an epic story filled with twists, turns, and jaw-dropping cliffhangers. Simply put, BKV is the best in the biz, and he's showing why, again, with Saga - a universe spanning space-opera that's like Star Wars meets Y meets Romeo and Juliet. Fiona Staples' digital art is similarly jaw-dropping, giving Saga a look and feel like nothing else out there. Get on board now, people - this is a future classic in the making, and the Best New Comic Book of 2012, by a landslide.


2.)  Batman

- Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo have made DC's relaunched Batman title THE must-read superhero book of 2012 and beyond. While I've been largely sour on DC's rebooted franchise titles, Batman has been a roller-coaster ride, with top-notch storytelling and one modern-classic tale after another. The Court of Owls storyline was great, the current Joker-centric storyline, "Death of the Family," is even better - creepy, disturbing, and intense as all hell. If you ever wanted to dive in to some good Batman comics, now is the time. Start with last year's Batman #1 and work your way through - each and every issue of Snyder's run has been a keeper.


3.) Sweet Tooth

- Jeff Lemire's post-apocalyptic saga has been racing towards its impending conclusion, and even though I'll be sad that the story is over ... man, I can't wait to see how it ends. Sweet Tooth has been probably my favorite comic of the last couple of years. It's a great story with great characters and a sense of mystery and adventure unlike anything else. Lemire's writing is full of humanity and emotion, but his weird, stylized art creates an unsettling, atmospheric mood. In 2012, we finally learned the origins of the plague that wiped out much of humanity and birthed Sweet Tooth, and we also saw the story build to a climactic showdown in Alaska, where badass antihero Jeppard is prepping for his final stand - trying to protect the boy he's come to love as a son from those who would harm him. Lemire is to be commended for his amazing run on this book.


4.) The Walking Dead

- Everyone now knows The Walking Dead from the TV series, but the comic where it all started continues to be a great read - going to dark and disturbing places that even the TV show wouldn't dare tread. I've been catching up via trade paperback, so I'm still a little behind the monthly books. But after a bit of a lull, I felt Kirkman got back on track with the buildup to and aftermath of the landmark issue #100. The events of that issue, thanks to new villain Negan, are horrifying, shocking, and exactly the sort of balls-to-the-wall stuff that made The Walking Dead a phenomenon in the first place. Read it if you dare.


5.) Animal Man

- Here's that Jeff Lemire guy again (and it won't be the last time he's on this list, either). Lemire continues to hit it out of the park on Animal Man, telling the kinds of nightmarish stories that made the title pop back in the day under Grant Morrison's pen, but adding a new, humanistic twist. Buddy Baker's relationship with his wife and children has never felt so real or relatable, for example. And that makes all the crazy, messed-up horror that Baker gets mixed up in that much more disturbing and engrossing.


6.) The Manhattan Projects

- Jonathan Hickman has quite the wild imagination. His new book The Manhattan Projects is, easily, one of the most wonderfully weird things I've ever read. It explores the concept of The Manhattan Project in the 30's as being much more than just a group trying to build an atomic bomb, but a top-secret super-science lab that creates portals to other worlds, artificial life, clones, androids, and anything else that you, I, or Hickman can think of. Hickman has populated the book with real-life figures like Einstein and Oppenheimer, but his versions are like nothing you've seen before. A twisted, insane, and trippy look at the fringes of modern science.


7.) Fatale

- Ed Brubaker knows how to do hard-boiled crime-fiction well, but he's outdoing himself with Fatale. The book follows an immortal femme fatale across the decades as she tries to escape her past, all the while luring any number of helpless paramours into her bed and into her service. This is pitch-black noir with a supernatural twist, and the moody art from Sean Phillips plunges you into a world of shadows and hidden dangers.


8.) Swamp Thing

- Scott Snyder's other DC book that I'm digging is Swamp Thing, a worthy heir to the character's storied legacy. Swamp Thing has been telling a pretty epic story, as Alec Holland wages all out war with the demonic Arcane. Snyder brings a real knack for psychological horror to the book, but he's also able to make it into a grand adventure. As Swamp Thing's been enmeshed in the "Rotworld" storyline, it's taken on a big-event, anything-can-happen feel.


9.) Invincible

- Everyone knows Robert Kirkman from The Walking Dead, but I'm also a huge fan of his other major ongoing book, Invincible. This is another one I've been reading in trade format - so I'm a little behind - but that I can't get enough of when I get my hands on each new volume. Invincible is the most fun superhero book published today - it's got its own epic mythology that at times satirizes classic comic book conventions to great effect. But it also is epic, dark, and intense when it wants to be. Kirkman knows how to crank up the volume and tell a big, shocking storyline. Invincible is superhero comics crack.


10.) Justice League Dark

- One more from Jeff Lemire. Since taking over this book several months back, Lemire has made it an instant standout. In fact, his first big storyline, pitting a group of magical heroes, led by John Constantine, against an occult enemy in a war for the Books of Magic (a story which also saw the return of Tim Hunter, aka the original Harry Potter), was downright epic. Lemire brought his knack for tight plotting, great twists, and fun characterization to the table, and the results are striking. Also striking: the painted art of Mikel Janin, which is absolutely amazing to look at.

SPECIAL MENTION:

- One of the best comics I read this year was LOCKE & KEY. I'm still catching up, so I haven't read the latest volumes yet. But man, it's been an incredible, harrowing, engrossing, mind-blowing journey so far. Joe Hill (son of Stephen King), clearly shares his dad's knack for epic horror - Locke & Key is a book that mixes humor and heart and whimsy with moments that are downright scary and disturbing. The plotting is second to none - as I plowed through each volume, I couldn't stop reading. The art by Gabriel Rodriguez is awesome as well - stylized and unique, but ultra-fluid, expressive, and evocative. I can't wait to read the rest of the story as Joe Hill's saga unfolds into 2013.

WRITERS OF THE YEAR:

1.) Scott Snyder (Batman, Swamp Thing)
2.) Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Animal Man, Justice League Dark)
3.) Brian K. Vaughan (Saga)
4.) Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead, Invincible)
5.) Darwyn Cooke (Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre, Before Watchmen: Minutemen)
6.) Sean Murphy (Punk Rock Jesus)
7.) Dan Abnett (The New Deadwardians)
8.) Jonathan Hickman (The Manhattan Projects, Fantastic Four)
9.) Mark Millar (Hit-Girl, The Secret Service)
10.) Ed Brubaker (Fatale)

ARTISTS OF THE YEAR:

1.) Fiona Staples (Saga)
2.) Sean Murphy (Punk Rock Jesus)
3.) Greg Capullo (Batman)
4.) Mikel Janin (Justice League Dark)
5.) J.H. Williams III (Batwoman)
6.) Amanda Connor (Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre)
7.) Jason Fabook (Detective Comics)
8.) Ivan Reiss (Aquaman, Justice League)
9.) Fernando Pasarin (Green Lantern Corps)
10.) Darwyn Cooke (Before Watchmen: Minutemen)