The Best and Worst Movies of 2012

As the title says. Which, of the movies that came out in 2012, did you think were the best? Which did you hate the most?

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Well, this year, I saw One for the Money, The Vow, This Means War, The Lorax, The Hunger Games, Mirror Mirror, The Avengers, Snow White and the Huntsman, People Like Us, The Amazing Spiderman, Paranorman, Hotel Transylvania, Here Comes the Boom, Wreck-It Ralph, Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part II, Rise of the Guardians, and The Hobbit.

Of those, I think my favorite is a tie between The Avengers, The Hunger Games, and The Hobbit. All three of these have a lot of sentimentality attached. The superhero genre is one my nephew and I have bonded over, and I loved all of the lead-up films, and aside from some issues with parts of the screen being too dark (which is absolutely not a problem when watching it on Blu Ray), I thought the Avengers was a perfect combination, and worth the wait. I didn't feel like they favored any characters over any of the others, and they managed to make them all feel relevant. The action scenes were cool, and well, I don't know that I could find any movie bad with Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, and Samuel L. Jackson all on the screen at the same time. The Hunger Games is a book series that I've really enjoyed, and I thought the movie did an excellent job of showing it off. I wish there'd been less shaky cam in the action scenes, but that's a small gripe. And lastly, The Hobbit was a perfect return to Middle-Earth.

As for worst movie, oh boy. Mirror Mirror and This Means War were both dogshit. Like, truly terrible movies. I'm not sure how to pick between them. I expected Mirror Mirror to be awful, so it simply fulfilled my expectations, but the premise of This Means War, while terribly cliche, I thought could still make a halfway entertaining movie, but I was so wrong. So wrong.

 

I don't think I was really disappointed in any movie this year, except maybe This Means War, because while I never thought it would be really good, I thought it would be entertaining, and it wasn't. The movies that I thought would be amazing were, and most of the others I ended up seeing because they were the second feature of two at our local drive-in, so I hadn't had an opinion on them beforehand.

I think I'm missing some more from that list, too. I also saw Ice Age 4, which was mediocre, and Madagascar 3, which was better than Ice Age but still not one of those kids films that wow adults, too.

 

I didn't love this quite as much as the three I listed as best, but Rise of the Guardians was still pretty awesome. I thought the interpretations of the characters was great, and while I may not have actually cried, it did have some tearjerking moments for sure. I took my nephew to see it and he loved it too.

Kristen Stewart is sort of a mouth breather, which gets annoying, but I actually kind of liked her here. She's certainly no Oscar-winning actress by any means, but I dunno, I thought she suited the role well enough. Charlize Theron totally stole the show, though, as did Chris Hemsworth whenever he was on the screen. There were things about this movie that I thought could be improved, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Especially when you go to see it not long after seeing Mirror Mirror totally destroy the Snow White story.