So, I guess what I'm getting at is: I'm gonna make me some lists!
Note: I haven't been arsed writing something about every single one because it's SUPER BORING to do.
10. America - Dan Deacon
9. Bloom - Beach House
8. Budget Cuts - #Tags
It was about June this year buy it that I realised I no longer listened to #Tags because my mate writes and sings the songs, but because I just really, really like the music they make. Budget Cuts is an EP rather than a full album, and it isn't professional produced, but the songs buy it are all brilliant. They're fun and lighthearted but not lightweight, and their cheerful, colourful aesthetic is supported by serious musicianship. Sick of Heels and buy it My Father's House are excellent, but best of all is album closer Helena, which is a Paranoid Android-style mash of genres that almost falls apart but doesn't, and it's epic, and glorious, and catchy, and buy it.
7. Sweet Heart Sweet Light - Spritualized
It's possible you haven't heard of Spiritualized, but they're actually responsible for one of the best albums of the past 20 years, 1997s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (trivia: it was released on the same day as OK Computer, making 15 June 1997 the best day in music history). Since then, main guy J Spaceman (lol) may not have matched that effort but has come close several times, most notably with Songs in A&E, conceived while on the brink of death from double-pneumonia. I'm not going to be gentle: the lyrics in this album are cringe-worthy. He blabs generically while pretending to be a religious American about freedom, Jesus, pain and he drops bad metaphors all over the place. He is, at least, sincere in his sentiments though.
Musically, however, this is boss. It balances energy and the slower moments superbly, and is joyful and hopeful, and mournful and melancholy in equal measure.
6. Hot Cakes - The Darkness
After a few years of fannying around, in early 2011 Justin Hawkins decided it was time to get the band back together. I saw them in London that year and they smashed it. An album was announced. Hopes were high. Then they released Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now. It was a bit PG. Okay, fine, but that's just one track, I thought. Then Every Inch of You was put out, and...it was also a bit tame. Not abysmal, just too slow-paced and lacking an edge. I bought the album all the same, but it struggled make any kind of statement.
What's it doing at number six, then? There are two great tracks here, Concrete and a brilliant cover of Radiohead's Street Spirit. Concrete is what the Darkness should be: energetic. Hawkins wails fervently about 'searching for a sweet lady woman/ to share a little body heat'. He sounds impassioned, and consequently it's the best Darkness song since their 2003 heyday.
5. Lonerism - Tame Impala
It's like the Magical Mystery Tour.
4. Django Django - Django Django
I look forwards to the award ceremony where the announcer has to say, 'And the winner for best album goes to DjangoDjangoDjangoDjango! And then Jango Fett turns up or something.
Django supported Hot Chip when I saw them at the Guildhall, and they were ace. I knew of them bit, but not intimately. So I bought the album, AND IT WAS GOOD. Lead single Default remains my favourite track: the skittering, glitchy, fragmented vocal over off-beat guitars never fails to get the head-bob going.
3. Matthew Dear - Beams
2. Hot Chip - In Our Heads
Hit Chip's 2010 knockout One Life Stand was intimate often mellow. In Our Heads goes off in the other direction by cranking up the bombast and scope (by Hot Chip standards). Motion Sickness, Day and Night, Flutes and Let Me Be Him have a certain exultance about them and feel intended for the huge crowds of Glastonbury (though they worked fantasically when I saw them at Southampton Guildhall). In Our Heads also contains my favourite song of 2012, which is possibly the lowest-key track on it, Look At Where We Are. It's sad and mournful and I love it.
1. Alt-J - An Awesome Wave.
Those five words above are actually my least favourite things about this band and album. The shortcut for the delta symbol on a Mac? Fuck off. That's some hipster bull right there. And I resent the word 'Awesome'. Yank fucks.
BUT. This is a marvellous album. My rage at Laura Snapes of Pitchfork giving it a 4.8/10 was such that I sent her a mildly annoyed tweet. (Snapes is English btw; I was hoping she could represent the UK a bit more Stateside.) The Mercury-watching corner had this down as a typically Mercuryish indie record. It's not. Alt-J have a staggering degree of control over their compositions, directed by a rare musical intelligence. It's sometimes somber, sometimes giddy; sometimes sparse and cold, sometimes fuzzy and crunchy. The vocals yammer and lilt and sweep and whisper, textures meld and fragment, but it always feels cohesive. It's the best album of the year.
10. Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
I've already done a massive review of this so go find that instead.
9. Seven Psychopaths - Martin McDonagh
I don't often mention this film but Martin McDonagh's debut feature In Bruges just so happens to be
McDonagh loves the complicated script, but this gets silly. It terms of its structure it reminds me of this. Billy (Sam Rockwell), who plays Colin Farrell's best mate, starts trying to write the film that Farrell is trying to write, which is called Seven Psychopaths, and it becomes unclear whether the characters are living out the script, or if the script follows the characters, or whether we are watching the film that Farrell writes. It's ultimately self-defeating and is more trouble than it's worth, and makes excuses for having weak women characters, heaps of dead bodies and a climactic "shootout".
There are some great moments, especially the backstories of a few of the Psychopaths such as the Amish Psychopath and the Vietnamese (again with the Vietnamese, McDonagh!) Psychopath. Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken are great. Billy's enactment of his planned shootout is hilarious. But ultimately this is a film with great moments, but no real core; it's sugary but lacks nourishment.
8. The Dark Knight Rises - Christopher Nolan
This is one of those movies where I loved watching it but afterwards some of the sheen fell away a bit. Judging it on how gripped and enthralled I was in the cinema, this would be top five: I really thought Batman was going to nuke himself at the end. It was riveting. The famous spine breakage was similarly nerve shredding.
But looking back, it was a bit wobbly. Bane had a death ill-fitting of such a central character, and the Talia bit felt tacked on, like a fourth act in a three act film. The middle bit with the resistance movement was bloated, the plan didn't make that much sense, and it I'm not a fan of it's right-wing politics.
7. Skyfall - Sam Mendes
You know what Skyfall felt like? James Bond: Modern Warfare. The climactic shootout at the Scottish manor house is pure videogame, with waves of enemies, strategically placed traps and a sodding helicopter. For me, the whole film felt like a sequence of 'levels'. This episodic structure was supported by M's storyline, which was the real core, but it wasn't a match for Casino Royale, which remains the series high-point.
Javier Bardem's Silva is an entrancing bad guy, and the long take that was his introduction was mesmerising. Craig is still good as Bond, even if he's getting just a leeeedle bit old now. Skyfall is also a beautiful film, and the silhouette fight in Shanghai was supremely cool.
6. Ted - Seth MacFarlane
Comedies always get overlooked when it comes to end of year lists and award season. Maybe it's because humour is so subjective, or maybe it's because they're seen as diversions rather than films. But I don't buy that. Ted made me laugh. A lot. The plot is pretty by the numbers, but there are a lot of great jokes, and a few touching moments. There is also the best stroke gag ever. Plus it's got Mila Kunis in it, which is enough for me.
5. Looper - Rian Johnson
I've already done a massive review for this so go find that instead.
4. Cabin in the Woods - Drew Goddard
Cabin in the Woods is a horror film about horror films with a smaller horror film within it that eventually merges with the overall horror film. It's complicated, and breaks apart horror conventions while demonstrating that even though you may know the mechanics of it, you'll still be scared. Well, it would do if it was scarier, if that makes sense.
Depending on who you talk to Cabin in the Woods is either incredibly clever or not as clever as it thinks it is, but no matter how you look at it it's a thoroughly unique horror film, and is not to be missed.
3. The Raid - Gareth Evans
It suspect it's hypocritical of me to criticise Skyfall of being videogamey while complementing The Raid for the same thing, but I think it works with The Raid because it's completely unapologetic about the whole thing. The Raid is one protracted fight scene, and some of the fights are of an intensity rarely seen before. There were times when a fight would finish and I would only then realise that I had stopped breathing some time ago. The fights are inventive, tense and brutal, and the only real misstep is in the final "boss battle" where everyone takes a level of punishment that isn't in keeping with the more realistic levels of human physical resilience found in the rest of the film.
2. 21 Jump Street - Phil Lord & Chris Miller
Another comedy! I just really loved this film. It's adorable. The two leads, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, are charming: Tatum willingly sends up his lunk-head persona and Hill does his usual thing, but does it well. The set-up is good: the pair's discovery that the old highschool order of jocks at the top and nerds at the bottom has been flipped is a neat way of throwing the two out of their comfort zones. The drug sequences are brilliant, and the chase sequence has just the right level of self-awareness.
1. Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson
Anderson's certainly got his haters, but I ain't one of 'em. His 1960s aesthetic, his comic-book framing, the stilted but charming dialogue and all the other Anderson-isms all just work for me. There's substance to support the style though, and Sam's courtship of Suzy is heartfelt, genuine, and becomes a small-scale epic of love against the odds. The support cast is uniformly excellent, particularly Bruce Willis who plays a lonely policeman. It's the best film of the year.
Your film list is far different from mine (I thought the likes of The Raid and Cabin were a tad overrated), but your list is refreshingly honest and above all, fun.
ReplyDeleteDon't ask me about the music, I know NOTHING.
Cheers man. I realised as I was putting this together that I've only seen about 14 films this year so it's basically ranking the ones I've seen.
DeleteI'm not even sure I've remembered all the ones I've seen! The Muppets is one I had forgotten about. Probably others, too.