Glenn has written 240 reviews for films during 2012.
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Bestiary 2012
My Mom once told me that as a kid she used to sit for hours watching animals and insects in their natural habitats; ants crawling in and out of their holes, a flock of deer grazing in a meadow. Denis Cote's experimental documentary relies on this same observational poetry to examine what can only be described as the antithetical experience of viewing animals in their pure state: the modern zoo. Despite the fact that this is a film about barriers…
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The Amazing Spider-Man 2012
Misguided, miscast, and amazingly anti-climactic. Why in the name of JOHN CARTER is this movie not more reviled by critics. It's astonishingly inept, poorly conceived, and horrifically acted. Andrew Garfield gives the worst performance of the year this side of Aaron Johnson in ANNA KARENINA. What a complete and utter disaster. Makes Raimi's first two SPIDEY'S seem like long lost masterpieces.
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Friends with Kids 2011
Might be the only film ever to have this as its climactic line: "Fuck the shit of out me." Pandering Woody Allen stuff at times, but still manages to covey a specific malaise at having and raising children in a modern age where life moves at 48 fps. That it manages to both highlight and waste the talents of Jon Hamm, Kristin Wiig, Chris O'Dowd, and Maya Rudolph is pretty incredible.
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Jack Reacher 2012
For an hour this is superb, McQuarrie's greatest qualities on full display: duration, longer takes, economic intercutting, unflinching violence. The prologue is downright vicious and horrific, the methodical movement of a sniper's scope from one target to the next, devoid of music or much in the way of ambient sound. Brutal. But this directorial patience eventually gives way to typical action tropes (car chase, shootouts, etc.), which aren't nearly as interesting as the methodical construction of individual scenes early on. The ending almost feels like it was directed by an entirely different filmmaker as the opening.
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Hit & Run 2012
Surprisingly swift and sleek action/screwball comedy, a genre cocktail that almost never works but really should since they both rely on rapid momentum. Nicely assaults and satirizes multiple facades favored by aggressive males posturing and posing: fast cars, guns, and high speed chases. Yet still relishes the potent aesthetic moments most muscle car movies fetishize. THIS is the comedic Bradley Cooper performance we should be talking about.
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The Sweeney 2012
Wants so badly to be Michael Mann with a cockney accent (the lengthy shootout through Trafalgar Square feels like a well constructed carbon copy of HEAT's epic gunfight). Has the brawn and smooth style, but none of the precision that distinguishes Mann's films as lasting studies of professionals in motion.
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West of Memphis 2012
This is what bloated, sloppy, well-intentioned, and passionate documentary filmmaking looks like. Gains a feisty investigative edge when the narrative shifts away from the West Memphis 3 and toward the man who most likely murdered the young victims nearly two decades ago. Still, on the whole Amy Berg's film is being tugged in about 10 different directions and she doesn't know which way to run first.
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The Gatekeepers 2012
Sharp and precise, kind of like ZERO DARK THIRTY's streamlined documentary cousin. Tackles much of Israel's recent history post-1967, including the sort of embarrassing debacles, high cost victories, moral conundrums politicians don't like to discuss. The incredibly singular reenactments (equal parts modeling/after effects/photography) stand alone as thrilling bits of historiography.
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