Emory's Department of Film and Media Studies pick 10 best...

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Emory's Department of Film and Media Studies pick 10 best films of 2012

Emory's Department of Film and Media Studies pick 10 best films of 2012

The cinephiles in Emory's Department of Film and Media Studies have singled out their picks for the best movies of 2012, including blockbusters and overlooked gems: "The Avengers": Disney may have stepped on a $160-million rake with "John Carter," but they knew what they were doing when they acquired Marvel Productions. The comic-book giant turned film franchise factory hit pay dirt with their long-anticipated ensemble adventure.

"The Turin Horse (cast members pictured at film festival):" Everything else released this year looks puny in comparison to Bela Tarr's "The Turin Horse": It is the end of the world. A Hungarian farmer with a paralyzed arm, his daughter and his one horse struggle against the constant wind. The film's vision of human existence, stripped down to the barest essentials, brings to mind Samuel Beckett.

"Prometheus": With the highly anticipated "Prometheus," director Ridley Scott returns to the Alien franchise he began in 1979. Earlier, a slew of sequels (and the unfortunate Alien vs. Predator films) all but exhausted the xenomorph-on-the-loose formula. Here, Scott dramatically expands the Alien universe, re-injecting the franchise with a sense of wonder, awe, and dread worthy (if not equal) to the original film.

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower": This movie has appeal for anyone who is, or was once, a teenager. Directed with impressive skill by first-timer Stephen Chbosky, who also adapted the screenplay from his own novel, Perks travels on familiar teen film terrain in its endearing portrait of the solace that odd-ball and misunderstood teenagers find in each other.

"Zero Dark Thirty": This hard hitting docudrama about the effort to locate and assassinate Osama Bin Laden in the wake of 9/11 shows screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow—who brought us "The Hurt Locker" in 2008 – at the top of their form.

"Lincoln": The other amendments must all be jealous of "Lincoln," an epic constitutional bio-pic, that tells the story of the 16th president’s push for the 13th-amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, in early 1865.

"Argo": Ben Affleck's directorial career began to eclipse his acting with his critically acclaimed film "The Town" (2010). With "Argo," however, Affleck steps into the big leagues with a smart, tense film based on real, so-crazy-it-must-be-true events from the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.

"The Master": "The Master" is a saturated movie, in many senses of the word. Hollywood's first feature to be shot in the 65-millimeter format since 1996, it offers a saturation of color and visual detail that may never again be seen from photographic cinema. It is also saturated by a dramatic potency we've come to expect from director Paul Thomas Anderson.

"Margaret": Kenneth Lonergan's almost-unreleased, rarely-seen follow-up to "You Can Count On Me" has a plot structure similar to Gus van Sant’s "Paranoid Park" (2007): a teenager (here, Anna Paquin) must come to terms with a horrific event in which she’s morally implicated. Lonergan’s film is also about so much more – 9/11, encountering and acknowledging difference, our uneasy interaction with art.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild": With its oddly optimistic tone, (the film) both complicates and re-affirms Tolstoy's famous observation that all happy families resemble each other and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Hushpuppy is a Shirley Temple in hell who lives with a barely functioning father on the wrong side of a Louisiana levee. First-time director Benh Zeitlin shows us this life of joy and hurt through the eyes of a six-year-old.

1/10

The cinephiles in Emory's Department of Film and Media Studies have singled out their picks for the best movies of 2012, including blockbusters and overlooked gems: "The Avengers": Disney may have stepped on a $160-million rake with "John Carter," but they knew what they were doing when they acquired Marvel Productions. The comic-book giant turned film franchise factory hit pay dirt with their long-anticipated ensemble adventure.

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