From Sam Mendes’ stunning reinvention of James Bond in Skyfall to Wes Anderson’s quirky look at young love in Moonrise Kingdom, 2012 has been a great year at the cinema. Here’s a rundown of some of the best films of the year
Browsing: Lance Harris
Director Rian Johnson is keenly aware that the mechanics of time travel in movies don’t make much sense – and that they make less sense the more you think about them. In Looper, he cheekily dismisses the physics with a wave of his hand and tells you to think about the metaphysics instead
Skyfall takes James Bond to darker, more personal places than any other film in the series ever has. Before the film rebuilds him, its Bond is a wreck, pill-popping and borderline alcoholic, his nerves as shattered as his body is dilapidated. He’s an anachronism, a symbol of the withering
Agent 47, the antihero with the bald, barcoded head, is back after a six-year absence, every bit the self-possessed and cold-blooded predator he was when we last saw him in Hitman: Blood Money. Though the new Hitman game makes some concessions to the latest gaming trends, Hitman: Absolution
End of Watch, the latest film from Training Day scribe and Street Kings director David Ayer, opens with Los Angeles beat cop Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) describing himself and his comrades in the police force as “the thin blue line protecting the prey from the
Bringing with it a new lead character and a change of setting, Assassin’s Creed 3 promised a rebirth for a franchise that has become bloated and directionless over the past two years. But rather than seizing the opportunity to trim the fat
Tim Burton has always been a bit of a hit-and-miss director, but he has missed the mark far more often than he has hit it in recent years. Thankfully, Frankenweenie has Burton more or less on target again with its mixture of retro-Gothic style and childlike fancy. Frankenweenie, Burton’s second
Director Wes Anderson fusses over his films like a mother preparing a tousle-haired child for a photo. His movies are colour-coordinated, neatly buttoned-up, every small hair licked down into place, every quirky little detail – however inconsequential – arranged just so. That’s all
Reservoir Dogs, released 20 years ago in the US this month, blindsided almost everyone who saw it when it first came out with its fragmented storytelling, its juxtaposition of jaunty pop music and bracing violence, and its rat-tat-tat dialogue. That it feels almost conventional today is just a reflection of how influential
Rejoice, 2000AD fans! Dredd is just as tough and uncompromising as the character upon which it is based. It is a lean action movie with a mordant wit and an obvious love for its British comic-book inspiration. Alex Garland’s superb screenplay captures the spirit of the 2000AD comic in a film that plays like