Top Ten Movies of 2012, Part 2

No time to waste. It's part 2 of the best 10 movies from last year.

8. Skyfall

I have been critical of Sam Mendes in the past, particularly of his vapid and self-indulgent (yet Oscar award-winning) family drama American Beauty. Mostly because that movie is fucking terrible. But the fears I had of his helming the most recent project involving the worlds most beloved spy were assuaged when I saw Skyfall.

Again starring the blonde Bond Daniel Craig, Skyfall immediately has the vibe of a departure from the Bond oeuvre as we witness 007 get shot and apparently fall to his death. Mendes succeeds here in mixing great action with acting and character development, elements often overlooked in similar successful blockbusters. And while the Asian/French female of the two Bond girls in the film is wasted and essentially meaningless, we are introduced to Eve, a sexy rookie spy played by Naomie Harris of 28 Days Later fame. Craig again shines as the smooth yet tortured Bond, and is successfully joined by Academy Award winners Judi Dench and the intensely creepy Javier Bardem.

In addition to wondrous action scenes, the film also includes sly references to other films. When we're introduced to the primary villain, he slowly and methodically walks down a forest of computer machinery, akin to the final scene of Welles' The Third Man.

And earlier, when Bond gets an impromptu visit from a lovely young lady, they share a sexy asexual moment reminiscent of Angie Dickinson and John Wayne in Rio Bravo.

But most importantly, the way Mendes excels here is in creating a fun action film which finds a way to be emotionally compelling and artistically stunning.

7. Django Unchained

In 2003, Quentin Tarantino released Kill Bill Part I, in which an unnamed female assassin played by Uma Thurman begins her revenge on her former colleagues who had previously attempted to murder her. Later, in 2009, Tarantino took his revenge fantasy one step further with Inglourious Basterds, a retelling of World War II in which young soldiers are on the hunt for Nazi scalps. In 2012's Django Unchained, Tarantino's latest feature film, he again delves into revisionist history and revenge thrills, this time on behalf of the black slaves in America.

Django Unchained re-teams Tarantino with the  Oscar-winning star of Inglourious Basterds Christoph Waltz (in another film that netted him an Academy Award) and introduces Tarantino to two successful young actors in Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. While it lacks the rhetorical panache which opened the film Inglourious Basterds, Django combines majestic cinematography, quick-paced and witty dialogue (primarily by Waltz) and two of the year's most vile characters in Calvin Candie and Stephen. In the particularly brutal Mandingo-fighting related scenes we see the depths of the depravity, and Tarantino shows us the extent of what is truly at stake in this movie.

Stay tuned to the Beast Duels Blog for numbers 1-6 from 2012 soon...