Best Movies of the Decade, 2012

2012 was a much better year in terms of movies than the one that came before.

My favorites as follows, in no particular order:

• The Secret World of Arrietty: An excellent Studio Ghibli animated film based on the book The Borrowers. A good watch if you, like me, are someone who likes imagining what you would do if you were very very tiny. I blame a childhood spent watching George Shrinks.
• 21 Jump Street: I don’t usually enjoy modern comedies, but this is one of the few exceptions.  Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are great together, the premise is good, and performances are good all around.
• Moonrise Kingdom: Moonrise Kingdom was my first Wes Anderson movie and one of the first movies where I really realized how amazing the theater experience can be.  It’s an aesthetically beautiful movie, a musically beautiful movie, and my enjoyment of it was certainly aided by the freshness of never before having seen Anderson’s particular style of quirk.  That all said, it’s one of his best and is probably one of the more important films in my movie-viewing history.
• Rise of the Guardians: This is an underseen, under-rated animated Christmas film that takes place around Easter.  Long story short, a group of magical mythical heroes (The Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny, Sandman, and Jack Frost) must team up to protect the children and the hopes and the dreams from Pitch Black/The Bogeyman.  The Easter Bunny is Hugh Jackman.  Santa/North looks like a very Daddy version of Auguste Rodin. Jack Frost is also hot. Wholesome content.
• Skyfall: I very much like Daniel Craig James Bond and this is one of his better ones (Second to Casino Royale).
• Django Unchained: I used to think I couldn’t stand Quentin Tarantino but have come to a change of opinion, largely through Inglourious Bastards and Django Unchained.  I was thinking recently about how some of Tarantino’s movies seem to show a desire to retcon history, to take injustices and rewrite them.  I like him best when he plays in this sandbox.

I didn’t see: Monsieur Lazhar, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Magic Mike, Samsara, The Master, Looper, A Late Quartet, or Amour.

My Favorite Stupid-Funny Movies (Comedies?)

In honor of watching The Hitman’s Bodyguard yesterday and not hating it anywhere near how much I expected to (Okay, I actually liked it), I decided to put together a list of my favorite stupid-funny/funny-stupid movies (I think people call them comedies? I need to pretend I don’t know and am unfamiliar with the genre so I can keep my high brow sophisticate cred.)

The problem is that I was going through my movie ratings list and came up with TOO MANY comedies that I like (27).
So here are the criteria: The movies herein listed must be intended as comedies, and the comedic aspect must be the primary one. The main audience can’t be children.
That rules out The Princess Bride, Pirates of the Caribbean, Labyrinth, and Suicide Squad. No matter how funny I find these movies, and regardless of the fact that I could watch all of them (except Suicide Squad) infinite times and be completely at peace. (There goes my sophisticate cred.)