Brenty Awards 2012 Write-Up

I wrote this about a month ago, right about the time that I was working on the Brenty Awards for Episode 52 of the podcast as a potential column for something I'm unsure of the time frame for or if it will even transpire, as it's kind of a pipe dream in the first place.  Due to the timing of this it doesn't make sense in the means it was originally intended anymore and I figured I would throw it up on here for you wonderful people to read.  This is my written picks for the Brenty Awards 2012, but I can't recommend enough to listen to Episode 52 of the podcast to get the movie nominated in each of these categories, most of which are just as good as the ones that actually won.

Top ten lists for movies are not an uncommon thing however, I like to put my own spin on things. Starting in 2001, I made my own favorite movies of the year awards called the Brenty Awards, which are for the best movie of that category for the year.  Even though we’re in April, it’s never too late to look back at the best movies of 2012, which was an all around solid year for film.

Best Animated Movie - In my opinion, the best animated movie of the movie was hands down Wreck-It Ralph.  This movie does for video games what Toy Story did for toys, it brought an interesting take on what happens to video game characters when those games aren’t being played. Wreck-It Ralph tells the story of Ralph, who is the bad guy in his video game having a change of heart and wanting to be a good guy.  The voice acting is fantastic especially John C. Reilly as Ralph and Sarah Silverman as Venellope as both handle these complex characters very well and add a lot of humor along the way.  

Best Family Movie - Life of Pi is a captivating story about a 16-year-old boy whose family is moving their zoo halfway around the world on a boat. When a major storm sinks the boat, Pi is lost at sea on a lifeboat with a ferocious bengal tiger as his only companion. There’s a lot of things to like about this movie as it not only deals with the willpower to survive an impossible scenario but it’s full of adventure along the way. This film is also the most interesting visual movie of the year as the scenery and visual effects are extraordinary. It’s astonishing that the tiger they used in the movie was completely CG. 

Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie - While not typically what you think of for a Science Fiction movie, the winner of this is Safety Not Guaranteed.  Typically when you think of sci-fi or fantasy you think of a movie happening in space or in a distant land in the distant future/past, however this one takes place in our world, current day.  This charming and funny film, which stars Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza, revolves around time travel.  When three magazine writers notice an article in the paper that says, “Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me.  This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed.  I have only done this once before,” they investigate the man behind the article.  This movie has the perfect combination of comedy and mystery as there’s no way one man could build a time machine, right?

 

Best Horror Movie - You know those horror movies that take place in a house in the middle of the woods and some evil force starts picking off the lives of those individuals one-by-one. It’s a formula we’ve seen numerous times before, but none better than Cabin in the Woods. This movie turns this formula on it’s head and is told mostly from a control room that is designed to set up these scenarios and sacrifice these teenagers lives to a higher power.  This movie is a pure tongue-in-cheek look at the horror genre that honors it instead of parodies. Cabin in the Woods has a lot of funny moments in addition to some great scary moments.  This movie needs to be seen by all horror fans.

Best Action/Adventure Movie - Quentin Tarantino is a master of cinema and one of my favorite filmmakers.  His films are just so unique and have a great balance of humor, action, and storytelling.  Tarantino’s latest work, Django Unchained, was no exception as his Academy Award winning script is an homage to classic westerns, like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, while still feeling modern.  This movie was carried by strong performances from Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jamie Foxx, with Waltz also winning an Academy Award for his work.  Waltz plays a German bounty hunter who teams up with Django (Foxx), a slave that he frees, to rescue Django’s wife from Candie Land, a plantation run by Calvin Candie (DiCaprio).  

Best Comic Book Move - Comic book movies have been extremely prevalent in today’s movie going society and make up a huge percentage of the summer blockbuster box office, plus for a geek like me, it’s so much fun to watch your favorite super heroes come to life on the big screen.  This year’s best comic book movie was The Dark Knight Rises.  Set after the events of the amazing The Dark Knight, it was clear that this movie was probably going to be a step-down from that as The Dark Knight raised the bar extremely high, especially with Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker.  This movie was more tonally similar to mythos centric Batman Begins then the action-packed The Dark Knight, which also may have been offputting to some as it wasn’t quite the thrill-ride of it’s predecessor.   The Dark Knight Rises starts off 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight as Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) goes into hiding until he needs to don the suit one more time to stop his biggest opponent yet, Bane (Tom Hardy), who will do anything to destroy what Gotham stands for.  

 

Best Thriller Movie - Not making a bold decision here as Argo was easily in a class by itself this year.  I was just blown away while watching this journey of a CIA agent (Ben Affleck) who comes up with a plan to extract 6 fugitive Americans from hiding in Iran.  This plan involves staging a fake production of a sci-fi movie named Argo, as an excuse to venture into Iran to help these people escape from the Canadian embassy.  This movie works on so many levels, that the fact that this is based on real events, makes it even more astounding.  Ben Affleck, who directed and stars in this, gives probably his greatest performance both in front of and behind the camera. The last 30 minutes of this movie are near perfection and will keep you on the edge of your seat.  It’s easy to see how this would win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

 

Best Romantic Movie - Moonrise Kingdom is a quirky and fun romp about two 12-year-old kids who fall in love and run away, while the townspeople, like Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Bill Murray, hunt for the vanished kids.  The relationship between these two kids, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward (both making their screen debuts) was the perfect combination of sweet, innocent, and awkward.  The director, Wes Anderson, has such an interesting visual style that makes it almost appear like you are watching a painting happen in front of you.  All of the shots in this movie are beautifully crafted and Anderson’s screenplay is full of unique characters that make his movies at the very least, unique and at their very best, exceptional, and this movie was exceptional.  

 

Best Drama Movie - Very rarely do I say that I’m blown away by a movie, but End of Watch absolutely blew me away.  Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as two police officers in Los Angeles who are just as much friends as they are partners, however while just doing their job they end up way over their heads.  End of Watch is made to look like a homemade documentary project as many of the cameras that are used in the movie are handheld or attached to the police officers themselves, which gives it an interesting visual look that works for this type of gritty on the street type movie.  However, it’s the characters that Gyllenhaal and Pena play that just draw you in and makes you feel like you are part of their lives, including some legitimate laugh out loud moments. Their heroism during the final conflict was one of the most emotional endings to a movie this year.  

 

Best Comedy Movie - While I have a fairly legendary story on how I first got to see this movie, that had no effect on my thinking that Pitch Perfect was the comedy movie of the year.  This competitive college acapella movie features a group called the Barton Bellas trying to capture the regional acapella championship.  While not doing anything out of the box by combining a bunch of oddities into a group that works really well together, the characters are just so much fun that you really don’t care, especially Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy.  Pitch Perfect panders to a more female crowd has enough charm and laughs that it can please a wide degree of audiences and is in a lot of ways the spiritual successor to movies like Mean Girls, Bring it On, and Clueless.

Best Movie of the Year - While the best movie of the year would always win for the best sub-genre as well, I instituted a rule in the Brenty Awards that the winner for Best Movie can’t also win it’s category.  With that being said, the best movie of the year for 2012 was Marvel’s The Avengers.  I’m a geek and in a way this is kind of a “homer” pick, but I was thoroughly impressed with The Avengers in so many ways.  Not only does it do the impossible and bring together 6 comic book heroes on the big screen in the same movie but, from the very beginning until the heroes dine on shawarma during the end credits, The Avengers tells the most complete and entertaining comic book movie to date.  Filled with laughs, fun, adventure, excitement, and action this movie packs a punch that not many movies can and pleases audiences of all types.