for Tribune: 2012 Top Ten (plus online-only extras)
According to general critical consensus – see this month’s Sight and Sound – there have been four outstanding new films released in the UK since January 1st: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, Michael Haneke’s Amour and Léos Carax’s Holy Motors. But while this quartet finished clear of the field in the magazine’s annual poll, none figure in the Tribune 2012 Top Ten, an entirely subjective list compiled solely by your correspondent (Tabu is, for the record, my number eleven):
1. Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia)
2. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey)
3. Project X (Nima Nourizadeh, USA)
4. Sightseers (Ben Wheatley, UK)
5. Ted (Seth MacFarlane, USA)
6. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, France/Finland)
7. Damsels In Distress (Whit Stillman, USA)
8. Barbara (Christian Petzold, Germany)
9. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, Canada/France)
10. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, USA)
Of this ten, eight were generally received with enthusiastic favour by my colleagues – the exceptions being Project X and Ted, which also happen to be the only two of the top eight which I haven’t already reviewed in full in these pages. Both are out now on DVD, and as these emphatically multiplex-oriented, gleefully raunchy, energetically foul-mouthed American comedies may not be the most obvious stocking-fillers for the Tarkovsky-loving cinephile in your life, I should explain why they’re ranked ahead of the latest outstanding efforts by such superb film-makers as Kaurismäki, Stillman, Petzold, Cronenberg and W.Anderson (to say nothing of messrs. Haneke, Carax, P.T.Anderson, etc.)
Because although Ben Wheatley’s giddy pastoral horror-comedy Sightseers – still on release – is justifiably a popular choice as the finest British film of the year, for my money it’s not 2012’s most notable film by a British director. That said, most reviewers didn’t seem to realise that Project X, in which a middle-class Pasadena neighbourhood is engulfed by chaos when a teenage house-party spirals out of control, was directed by a born-and-bred Londoner. Indeed, many may of its detractors probably questioned if it was directed by anyone at all, such was the vitriol-cascade the picture attracted on both sides of the Atlantic back in March.
In fact, Nima Nourizadeh – a 35-year-old of Iranian ancestry – is a graduate of St Martin’s College, no less. He came to Hollywood’s attention after a highly successful career directing pop videos for the likes of Hot Chip (2005’s eyecatching Over and Over), though it was his 2009 advert for Adidas, featuring a host of celebrities wandering around an exuberant house-party, that convinced producer Todd Phillips (Road Trip, The Hangover, etc) that Nourizadeh was the man for Project X.
Written by Matt Drake and Michael Bacall (no coincidence the latter also co-wrote one of the smartest recent studio comedies, 21 Jump Street), shot by Ken Seng and edited by Jeff Groth, the resulting picture starts off yet another potty-mouthed, teen-oriented affair somewhat in the vein of the UK’s homegrown The Inbetweeners. It’s also, discouragingly, yet another example of the clapped-out ‘found-footage’ sub-genre (see also 2012’s Chronicle, End of Watch, etc).
But we soon notice that these particular teens are horribly, obnoxiously convincing in their hopelessly immature craving to get high and get laid – as the party gets into full swing, Nourizadeh and company gradually evoke a genuinely euphoric, sometimes disturbing mood of anything-can-happen chaos through their pulsatingly frenzied editing and hand-held camerawork.
The extended Cloverfield-esque climax, which includes a visit from a vengeful, flamethrower-toting psychopath and an equally destructive response from the local fire department, tips over into a jawdroppingly destructive bacchanal that recalls both Bosch and Ballard. Because while, in time-honoured Risky Business fashion, the youthful miscreants are more rewarded rather than punished for their crimes, the film manages to skewer the aggressive banality of western, celebrity-warped culture while ostensibly celebrating its wild hedonistic excess (Harmony Korine’s upcoming, similarly-themed Spring Breakers seems quaintly genteel in comparison.)
And the fact that Project X received such spectacularly vituperative condemnation from so many quarters – including ludicrous accusations of homophobic, misogyny, racism and even anti-semitism – shows just how squarely Nourizadeh has hit the target. Not that I’m a lone voice in favour by any means – Project X, which took over $100m at the world’s box-offices on a budget of just $12m – attracted glowing raves from, among others, Variety magazine (“instant classic”) and The New York Times. Nourizadeh’s next film will hopefully show that Project X wasn’t some flukey flash-in-the-pan, as well as earning him some overdue “honour in his own country.”
In terms of fame and prominence in popular culture, however, Nourizadeh will surely never emulate another thirtysomething who made his debut as a feature-film director this year: Ted‘s Seth MacFarlane. The creator of the massively successful TV animation Family Guy, this occasional Rat Pack-style crooner, and all-round media phenomenon – he’s been confirmed as the next host of the Oscars ceremony – has enjoyed a global box-office smash with Ted, starring Mark Wahlberg alongside a walking, talking teddy-bear.
Despite its apparently kiddie-friendly premise – Wahlberg’s character, as a child, wished life and sentience into his stuffed-toy companion – Ted is very much adults-only fare, as the eponymous ursine enthusiastically shares the sexual and narcotic impulses of many urban grown-ups. But what could easily have been a horrendous what-were-they-thinking misfire becomes, in MacFarlane’s skilful hands, perhaps the most consistently hilarious picture of the year. Wahlberg, long Hollywood’s most underappreciated leading man (despite so convincingly playing The Fighter in The Fighter, he was the sole principal cast member who wasn’t Oscar-nominated), turns in a performance of unparalleled gameness here, enduring all manner of humiliating scenarios as scene after scene is stolen by his entirely CGI anthropomorphic co-star (who, amazingly, was brought to the screen without any involvement from Andy Serkis.)
But what elevates Ted so far above the general comedy pack is that it’s not just a slick mechanism for eliciting laughter. There’s a genuine, if unlikely, poignancy in the central relationship between man and bear, and with Mila Kunis on hand as Wahlberg’s long-suffering girlfriend the picture manages to says more about contemporary relationships than the vast majority of conventional rom-coms.
A full-bore crowdpleaser sniffily dismissed by the majority of critics (nearly all of whom will have seen it in the sterile, laughter-inhibiting surroundings of a press screening), the deceptively clever Ted is one of those rare but welcome surprises which remind us that any popcorn-
phobic cinemagoer who religiously restricts him or her self to the arthouse simply isn’t seeing the whole picture.
Neil Young
14th December 2012
written for the Christmas double issue of Tribune magazine
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Online extra :
For U.S readers:
top ten films released in the States since January 1st
1. Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev, USA)
2. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey)
3. Project X (Nima Nourizadeh, USA)
4. Ted (Seth MacFarlane, USA)
5. Damsels In Distress (Whit Stillman, USA)
6. Barbara (Christian Petzold, Germany)
7. Fightville (Epperlein & Tucker, USA) documentary
8. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, Canada/France)
9. Kill List (Ben Wheatley, UK)
10. Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, UK)
then Argo, The Avengers, The Bay, Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus, Looper, Sinister, Tabu, 21 Jump Street
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“First XI” 2012 world-premieres undistributed in UK
1. Me Too (Alexei Balabanov, Russia)
2. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel, USA) doc
3. Once Upon a Time Was I, Veronica (Marcelo Gomes, Brazil)
4. A Dream’s Merchant (Bogdan Ilie-Micu, Romania) doc
5. Little World (Marcel Barrena, Spain) doc
6. One Way Boogie Woogie (James Benning, USA) doc
7. Nor’easter (Andrew Brotzman, USA)
8. Augustine (Alice Winocour, France)
9. A Hijacking (Tobias Lindholm, Denmark)
10. Wrong (Quentin Dupieux, USA/France)
11. An Anthropological Television Myth (Maria Helene Bertino et Dario Castelli & Alessandro Gagliardo, Italy) doc
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