Best of 2012 So Far

The Woman In Black

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The year started with anticipation of the promising Woman In Black starring Daniel Radcliffe in his first post-Harry Potter effort as a widowed real estate lawyer who has to settle the estate of the family of a tormented and vengeful spirit who is terrorizing the local people of a village on the bleak and foreboding Moorland countryside.

This was the first really exceptional film of 2012, a Gothic horror film in the truest sense of the word, with creaking staircases, unexplained noises, frightful apparitions, and a pervasive feeling of dread throughout. There is one sequence about halfway through the film in which Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe)is trapped inside the family mansion overnight as the house literally comes to horrific life, apparitions abound, and the vengeful woman keeps appearing and reappearing.

Writing, direction, and production design are top knotch here as is Radcliffe,who skillfully manages to shed his Harry Potter persona and create a character that is maddeningly persistent and deeply sympathetic. The Woman In Black may prove to avoid the relalative anonymity that many films of this genre slip into over the long term. It's horror imagery is so memorable, indelible, even inventive that it may enjoy a coveted spot on many a DVD collector's shelf.

Boy

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆


From the writer-director of Eagle vs Shark, Taika Waititi, comes Boy a New Zealand film that took a long and circuitous route to US release beginning it's rounds in 2010 at Sundance. Set in 1984, 11 year old Boy played by an excellent James Rolleston, gets the chance to meet his father again for the first time when he comes home to retrieve money he buried on the family property after a years long absence. Boy did not really remember him and in the intervening years lived under the watchful eye of his paternal grandmother.

Boy's father turns out to be an irresponsible romantic whose quick flirtation with playing daddy and role model is eventually supplanted by the behavior of an opportunist who solicits his mother for financial help and puts the boy and his younger brother to work helping him dig for money he buried in some lost part of the sprawling family property. It's one of those coming of age stories in which one learns that people that are romanticized and put on a pedestal are often not in the end what you thought they were. It is about a son, who through painful experience, comes to accept the limitations of his father and comes out psychologically and emotionally intact. Matured by the experience, he is not a boy anymore but a young adult, even a better hewn individual.

Waititi's directorial and storytelling style is playful and the aboriginal setting is both beautiful and edifying. This is a gorgeous film to look at and every detail in the production design is absorbing. In an age where international films tend to vascillate between the overly cerebral or ridiculously trite, this movie is a real treat.

Las Acacias

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Rubén, a lonely truck driver, has been trucking wood for years on the motorway from Asunción to Buenos Aires. One morning, Jacinta shows up with her infant son Anahi to travel with him to the big city. It is not the best beginning, but as the kilometres go by,the relationship between Rubén and Jacinta grows.



What is truly remarkable about this film is how well Pablo Giorgelli constructs a story of great emotional depth with little dialogue or character exposition. The main characters are like "two ships passing in the night" who slowly and believably become connected to one another. This mimimalist approach to filmmaking is rare even among independent features, making this Cannes 2011 award winner a must see.

The Kid With A Bike

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes last year, this modern day fairytale has the simplest of plots. Cyril (Thomas Doret),abandoned by his father and living in a boys home, runs away to search for him. He literally collides with Samantha(Cecile de France),a hairdresser, as he is pursued by officials who are trying to return him to care. She agrees to foster him on the weekends, no easy task given Cyril's complex emotional and hyperactive constitution. With her help he finds his father who has fallen on financial hard times and wants nothing to do with him. Now Cyril must grow to accept his father's limitations and accept the love that Samantha has for him.