2012 Films I enjoyed:
- The Grey.
- Chronicle.
- 21 Jump Street - A pleasant surprise and a source of new-found fondness for Tatum.
- The Cabin in the Woods.
- The Raid: Redemption.
- Dredd - Well done, . And other people, I suppose.
Films that were merely 'okay':
- Haywire.
- Underworld: Awakening (eh, it's dumb fun and remains largely inoffensive)
- Project X - Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
- The Hunger Games - Is an all-round 'solid' film weakened by some poorly shot action sequences. But, hey, have to stay within the boundaries of the rating.
- Lawless.
- Looper - In all honesty, the film is hindered by a seemingly bizarre change of pace and direction, an uninspired milieu, and more paradoxes than... something with many paradoxes.
- The Innkeepers - Wait, what? A half-hearted crescendo superbly suits the anticlimactic finish. My main grievance lies with the pacing. It quite simply isn't comparable to the oddly polarizing The House of the Devil.
- The Awakening - Rebecca Hall is real pretty. Dominic West is also awful pretty.
Films that I did not enjoy:
- Coriolanus - I admittedly had high expectations, but this this film ended up more desiccated than the Great Sandy Desert. A really uncomfortable and generally stilted film.
- The Woman in Black - The acme of tepid horror commonality.
- Wanderlust - Insipid and crammed full with sentimentality.
- Jeff, Who Lives at Home - I really wanted to enjoy the film, but it turned out to be a rather flagrantly factory-like, generic performance.
- American Reunion - A rote and unimaginative experience.
- Battleship - An experience akin to being continuously struck in the face while in a raucous dance club.
- Men in Black 3 - Dull. Dull. Dull. Dull.
- Ted - Seth McFarlane is still Seth McFarlane.
- The Watch - A display of pleasant chemistry reminiscent of the initial Russian Roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.
- Total Recall - Totally devoid of all the elements that made the original likeable: Charming characters, a tongue-in-cheek approach, and action sequences striving to personalise themselves (in the standard Schwarzenegger fashion). Yo, DON'T BE SO SERIOUS, FILM!
- The Bourne Legacy - It just doesn't justify its own existence.
- The Campaign - What a waste of a commercially successful, comedically experienced cast. Poor writing is an effective way to kill a film.
- The Expendable 2 - This film is indeed more expendable.
Films that I acknowledge as having respectable merit but personally found wanting:
Again, I recognise that these films are of a high quality, but I personally felt were incomplete or misguided in some way.
- The Avengers - Tonally displeasing.
- Prometheus - A film diluted by too many threads and not enough questions, and swamped by a morass of characters that aren't worth a damn. Charlize Theron is real purdy, though.
- The Dark Knight Rises - An unrewarding ending is hardly recompense for such a lengthy--and at times tedious--build-up. Also, Catwoman is simply non-essential and Bane is short-changed. Michael Caine is great, though.
