Best of 2012: Top 5 Movies

Monsters, aliens, time travel and more!

What a year it has been for movies, especially so for us geeks and nerds. We liked a great many films that came out in 2012 (though we hated the film 2012) in a number of different categories that we arbitrarily chose, such as horror, sci-fi and animated film. In the end, though, there could be only one. Well, one per category. And there’s five categories. Look, we liked five movies, okay? Calm down.

Best Horror Movie – This year, the best horror movie was one that dissects and comments upon the recognizable hallmarks of the horror movie itself. Naturally, it’s Paranormal Activity 4. Just kidding, it’s actually Cabin in the Woods. With its clever references to The Evil Dead, Hellraiser, The Shining and pretty much every other famous horror film as well as its wry sense of humor and nihilistic, apocalyptic ending, it solidified itself as one of the year’s nerdiest films and a hell of a lot of fun to boot. Also, the amount of spoiler-quashing that went on upon its release made us laugh for hours.

Best Animated Movie – This was a very tough category, with films like ParaNorman and Brave certainly in the running. In the end, though, there was no way we weren’t going to pick Wreck-It Ralph. It was a Toy Story for our generation! The voice cast was second to none and the blending of real video games and fictional ones was done so smoothly, we could have sworn we’d played them before. Tell us you didn’t shed a tear when Ralph had to do that particular bit of wrecking; we’re not ashamed to admit, it may have been raining on our faces.

Best Sci-fi Movie – While we really liked Prometheus, despite what the detractors said, we’ve decided that our science fiction movie of the year is Looper, the story of a man trying to find himself. Now, there are huge logical fallacies at work here with regards to time travel, but for even tackling the idea in as smart and cool a way as they did, we can completely overlook them. We’re not sure why the world in the movie is the way it is, but we absolutely loved spending time there. And Joseph Gordon-Willis is pretty much the coolest.

Best Documentary – Documentaries are already the nerdiest variety of films (learning is nerdy!) but we particularly enjoy the docs that showcase the intellectually obsessive among us. For us, the best example of people spending way too much time on something is the film Room 237, a documentary about different people’s theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Our favorite nutty notion is that Kubrick was hired to stage the 1969 moon landing footage and that he deliberately put clues to this in the film. It’s laughable, but at the same time, Danny is wearing an Apollo program shirt in the movie… So, maybe…

Best Superhero Movie – Our final category might well be the hardest one of them all. It came down to two: The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Both were awesome, but in completely different ways. In the end, however, the Hulk defeated Bane in three rounds and we award The Avengers with superhero movie of the year. Joss Whedon did an absolutely phenomenal job of giving each of the film’s characters a purpose and a fair amount of heroing to do. We seriously cannot wait to see what happens to this time bomb-turned-team in the next shawarma-fed installment.  

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