(All movies are playing in area theaters.)
Festival favorites
Screen savers: 2012 movies to watch
Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner, Amour, the story of a longtime couple confronted by the heart-wrenching realities of old age, doesn’t come out locally until January, but there are still plenty of films to see that were road-tested on the festival circuit (including the aforementioned “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Silver Linings Playbook”). The two 2011 Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winners were released locally this year. Both garnered the anomalous four stars from Washington Post critics, and one is available now for home rental. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a deliberately paced Turkish puzzler about the search for a dead body. Another four-star movie, The Queen of Versailles , took home a documentary directing award at Sundance for the portrait of a flush family in the process of building an ostentatiously massive mansion when they lose everything in the economic collapse. Sundance’s Best of NEXT, awarded to big films on small budgets, went to Sleepwalk With Me , a charming semi-autobiographical story of supremely likable stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia.
(All movies are available for home viewing.)
Critical raves
One man’s Casablanca is another’s Casa de mi Padre , which is to say that critics rarely agree on a movie. But review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes proves there are some movies we can almost all agree on. Ninety-nine percent of the 72 critics that saw Jiro Dreams of Sushi , for example, gave it high marks. The documentary follows elderly sushi chef Jiro Ono, who runs a tiny, bare-bones Michelin-rated restaurant beneath the streets of Tokyo. Oslo, August 31st was similarly hailed, with 53 out of 54 critics reporting positive feedback for the bleak Norwegian film about a drug addict who realizes the difficulties of staying clean outside of rehab. The documentary The Island President , meanwhile, spotlights the first democratically elected leader of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, a man whose agenda includes finding a solution for rising tides that could submerge the island nation. Forty-four of 45 critics gave the film a thumbs-up, and Hornaday gave it three stars.
(All movies are available for home viewing.)
People’s choice
The Washington Post movie reviews that receive the most views online from readers are generally a pretty predictable line-up. The three biggest blockbusters of the year were among the top five most-viewed reviews on the site. And yet, sometimes readers offer surprises. The most visited movie review in 2012 was not a superhero action movie, but 2016: Obama’s America , Dinesh D’Souza’s pre-election cautionary tale about what would happen if President Obama were reelected. We can now see how his prophecies will play out. Other movies that received attention from Web readers of The Post include The Devil Inside , a horror movie about exorcists going about their demon-battling business, and Hope Springs , starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as a husband and wife trying to rekindle their longtime marriage. Hornaday agreed with readers on Hope Springs, giving it three stars.
(All movies are available for home viewing.)
Kid-friendly crowd-pleasers
On a rainy day, parents might be so desperate to entertain their little ones that they’ll go to any family-geared movie, regardless of quality. That could explain why Journey 2: The Mysterious Island raked in more than $100 million domestically while receiving only one star from our critic. But a trio of films dazzled both critics and audiences alike. Unsurprisingly, Pixar — the dependable purveyor of generation-spanning laughs — is the studio behind Brave . The animated fable follows a flame-haired heroine who must rely on her ingenuity and archery skills to undo a potentially calamitous witch’s curse. Other family-friendly flicks include Wreck-It Ralph , an adorable animated feature about a good-natured video-game villain who longs to be one of the good guys, and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted , an amusingly absurd tale of a group of zoo animals on the run.
(“Wreck-It Ralph” is playing in area theaters. “Brave” and “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” are available for home viewing.)
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