Reconsidering Our Top Films From 2009 - 2012

I realized something important when perusing through all the films of 2013 while making my obligatory "Best Of" list this year - looking back on some of my selections filled me full of rage and shame. It's the tricky thing about lacking the benefit of hindsight - some films even from just a few years ago haven't held up, and others that I thought were trash have grown on me. So I decided to do some revisionist history here. I went back the past four years and looked at my Top 10 Lists from 2009 - 2012. Now, it may just be the fact that it hasn't really grown on me yet, but 2012 still looks pretty good. I may not be changing that too much. But you had better believe I'm scrapping the rest.

Here, with the benefit of digesting and discussing each film for a little while longer, are the new rankings:

Original 2009 List:

#10: AVABAR
#9: Observe and Report
#8: I Love You, Man
#7: The Great Buck Howard
#6: Up in the Air
#5: Funny People 
#4: Zombieland 
#3: A Serious Man
#2: Inglourious Basterds 
#1: District 9

This isn't altogether awful, and one reason I'm pumped for looking back at these things is remembering films such as The Great Buck Howard. That certainly isn't a flick though that I've really seen or thought about in four years. I can't even understand why AVABAR is here at all, I suppose that, even though I only placed it at #10, I was somewhat swept up in the sheer spectacle of its release, like literally, billions of other people worldwide. Four years on, though, I can judge it for how hollow it really is. So, here's my revised list:

Updated 2009 List:

#10: Where the Wild Things Are
#9: UP
#8: Observe and Report
#7: The Road
#6: Funny People
#5: The Hangover
#4: Adventureland
#3: The Hurt Locker
#2: A Serious Man
#1: Inglourious Basterds 

The good ninja wears white, of course

I was tempted to include other flicks like G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which is actually turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and re-watchable Sunday afternoon movies of the past five years. I just still couldn't really add it, though. I did add the most depressing film of all time, The Road, which I still think about, and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, which really frustrated me by not meeting my expectations the first time I saw it, but also made me think a lot to figure it out. There were also some films whose greatness I didn't buy into in December, 2009 like The Hurt Locker and UP. Finally, the original installment of The Hangover deserves its place as one of the more tightly written comedies of the past decade, as well as one of the most debaucherous and influential.

Even though I think I Love You, Man did have some staying power, it's been overshadowed a bit by superior Paul Rudd buddy movies like Role Models (2008) and Dinner for Schmucks (2010). Even though I still love Zombieland, I do think that continued permutations of the zombie genre have lessened the tremendously fresh impact it had on me. Finally I scrapped my #1 pick, District 9 just because, ultimately four and a half years on, I don't really care about it other than the fact that at the time it was an astoundingly new movie. Maybe Elysium (2013) drained the appreciation of its unique aesthetics out of me.

Original 2010 List:

#10: Exit Through the Gift Shop
#9: Toy Story 3
#8: Cyrus
#7: True Grit
#6: Hot Tub Time Machine
#5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
#4: Black Swan
#3: MacGruber 
#2: Inception
#1: The Social Network

Updated 2010 List:

#10: Exit Through the Gift Shop
#9: Black Swan
#8: Get Low
#7: Jackass 3D
#6: The Other Guys
#5: Get Him to the Greek
#4: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
#3: Hot Tub Time Machine
#2: Inception
#1: The Social Network

Featuring Grammy Award-winning robots

My horrible blockbuster that I actually think is pretty decent now is going to be Tron: Legacy. I can also watch that just about any time of the year. Looking back on it now, I'm surprised how many great comedies came out of 2010. Even though I did really dig MacGruber, it definitely didn't stay with me as much as Get Him to the Greek or The Other Guys did. I was tempted to also throw in Dinner for Schmucks, but I think that has some years to go before it overtakes anyone. I also don't think anyone cares about Cyrus, and even though it was pretty epic, I've found I haven't really cared about Toy Story 3 since that summer three years ago, which isn't really true for other Pixar films like UP or Brave (2012).

I had this really odd debate within myself whether to include Get Low or Easy A. They really couldn't be farther apart. Ultimately thought I think it may be a pretty good movie, Easy A just went down too easy for me. Eh. So I threw in Jackass 3D, because it's still one of the best 3D experiences I've ever had at the multiplex (how many blogs use that terminology), and one of the finest uses of slow motion technology ever. You'll note that my #1 and #2 selections haven't changed. I still think those are the tits.

Original 2011 List:

#11: A Dangerous Method
#10: Hugo
#9: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes
#8: The Descendants
#7: The Artist
#6: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 
#5: Bridesmaids
#4: Attack the Block
#3: Rango
#2: Drive
#1: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Updated 2011 List:

#11: X-Men: First Class
#10: Bridesmaids
#9: Fast Five
#8: The Tree of Life
#7: The Descendants
#6: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes
#5: Moneyball
#4: Attack the Block
#3: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
#2: The Muppets
#1: Rango

Mostly because I can't get over
the name, Imogen Poots.

There were a lot of great films in 2011 as I'm looking back on it, now. My rainy day film is the vastly underrated Fright Night, while we wait for underappreciated comedies like Hall Pass, The Sitter, and Our Idiot Brother to mature. I also remember really digging Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary at the time, but I can't say I've really thought about it since. Let me also hit you quick with Cedar Rapids, Midnight in Paris, and Contagion that all really tied for the #11 spot, but haven't really been relevant since. So, I've thrown out a lot of the overhyped Oscar-bait muck here and added some of the finest blockbusters that have emerged in the past couple years, including Fast Five and X-Men: First Class.

I'm not so sure about The Tree of Life, but I still think it's worth noting, even if some of its fire may have dissipated. I still love everything on here, and as Jonah Hill's brand gets stronger, so does Moneyball. And yes, I ranked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo right next to The Muppets. There's no accounting for my taste in film.

Original 2012 List:

#10: Haywire
#9: Silver Linings Playbook
#8: The Grey
#7: Argo
#6: Looper
#5: Lincoln
#4: 21 Jump Street
#3: The Cabin in the Woods
#2: Django Unchained
#1: The Master

Updated 2012 List:

#10: The Grey
#9: Ruby Sparks
#8: The Dark Knight Rises
#7: Dredd
#6: Zero Dark Thirty
#5: Seven Psychopaths
#4: 21 Jump Street
#3: Goon
#2: Django Unchained 
#1: The Master

Escape from Space!

My total underrated good time romp is clearly Guy Pearce having the time of his life in Lockout, which is as 80s throwback as you're going to get. This year wasn't as strong for immortal comedies, although I might contend that The Campaign does its part. So I swapped out a bunch of those Oscar Winners that I don't care about any more for some that seemed more prescient - Zero Dark Thirty and Dredd, of course. And even though The Cabin in the Woods was a game-changer and remains one of my favorite films of the year, I couldn't see myself watching it again after knowing the twist. That being said, I have replayed the twist's dire aftereffects countless times on YouTube. To be honest, the same goes for Looper. It was an incredible movie, but do we care in 2014?

Goon ended up being my favorite movie of the year, and it's a delight to watch every hockey season. Alongside fare like The Grey, I added the intricate, surprising romantic comedy Ruby Sparks. I was tempted to add Moonrise Kingdom, but it's a bit too much like The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders. Finally, with all this other nonsense, I thought The Dark Knight Rises proved itself to be at the top of the superhero game and deserves that recognition here. Bane was a bigger threat than the Joker in a better movie. Deal with that.

2012: The Last Year in Review: Movies!

Alright folks, we've come to the last day of the Year of Our Lord 2012. What is there left to talk about? Well, we made it for one thing - those Mayans were full of shit, though there's certainly been plenty of terrible crap happening all over the world lately. This is what the movies are there for, though - to give us a break from the horrible onslaught of awful things that happen to everyone every day, or at least give us some insight into the human condition so that we may try to become better people. So, like every movie review site ever out there, here is our list of the best, brightest, and greatest moments in film during 2012. Let's start with our own Top Ten list.

I guarantee you're not going to find another list like this around the Internet. Moreso than any other year I think this really reflects what I was looking for in a movie this year - I can apparently sum up my taste in small, classy, concentrated action films, subversive comedies, and other movies that really change the game. I'm interested in cultural reverb more than anything - which films are the center of diffusing new innovations and which ones am I not going to be able to turn off when they appear on TNT in two years? That's the basis of my list more than anything else.

#10: Haywire

You remember this one from all the way back in January? Gina Carano has a bit more to come along as an actor, but Soderbergh directs the hell out of this in a distinctive narrative style he developed during the Ocean's films and Contagion (2011). Gina also kicks the ass of Magneto, Obi-Wan Kenobi, G.I. Joe, and Zorro throughout the course of the film. I'll take it.

#9: Silver Linings Playbook

It's always nice to see Bradley Cooper actually acting, because he's not all that shabby at it. David O. Russell throws De Niro the best role he's had in ten years and Chris Tucker of all people into the mix along with material to properly show off Jennifer Lawrence as her generation's best actress in this romantic comedy refresher.

#8: The Grey

Liam Neeson spends two hours fighting wolves, deals with his own mortality, and of course he survives to go on to train Batman. In the process he's become an icon of badass masculinity in the vein of Arnold or Sly of yesteryear. How is that possible? I'm not sure, but he ought to be recruited for The Expendables 3: Wolf Wars (2014), naturally.


#7: Argo

The Best Bad Idea Ben Affleck had has put him on the map of go-to directors in a way his acting career never has. Really, he hasn't had stock this high since "writing" Good Will Hunting (1997). When he started acting outside of his Boston comfort zone he really failed (not necessarily). It's good to see that he is able to stretch outside of his Southie wheelhouse for this great flick, in both acting and directing.

#6: Looper

Clearly the best original sci-fi film of the year, even if it mershed elements of many tropes together, this still took an investible high concept, big-name actors and ran with it in new and exciting ways that ought to really launch a few careers (JGL for sure) and make a significant mark on the cultural landscape. I'm only looking for Rian Johnson to be a bit busier than our last sci-fi directing new genius, Neill Blomkamp, who hasn't done a thing before next year's release of Elysium (2013).

#5: Lincoln

Probably the most prestigious film on this list, Lincoln is everyone at their best, and that's a lot of people who have done pretty damn good things. Spielberg immerses us in a few overlooked days in the life of our 16th President, and Daniel Day-Lewis takes us into his flesh and mind like we've never seen before. The only real shame is that this thing won't give a soul any other chance in the acting fields in what was really a very solid year for many other men.

#4: 21 Jump Street

Absolutely the funniest film of the year, so of course I have this ranked extremely high. It's the kind of balls-out film that absolutely kills every line and every moment, made all the better by appearing out of no where with little hype at all. Who knew Channing Tatum could be so hilarious? "FUCK YOU SCIENCE."

#3: The Cabin in the Woods

It's rare that you see a film that subverts an entire genre like this one. It makes watching any other horror film seem even more cookie-cutter than they already are, while this uses a Thor-led team of pothead, slut, jock, and virgin against vengeful gods, a shady corporation, and every monster in the book. It's something that really needs to be experienced with a bunch of friends, copious amounts of alcohol, and a dark room - at least that was how I first saw it - it's a trip in itself, and that's the whole point of the medium.

#2: Django Unchained

It may just be due to recent memory, but I was very close to naming this sucker #1. A Southern Slavery Epic that we desperately needed, this film does more for race relations than Spike Lee will ever care to realize, and it pushes its themes and narratives hard enough to give Black People the Epic Hero they've always deserved. All praise to QT for even getting this thing made in the first place.

#1: The Master

Joaquin proves that yes, he is one of the greatest actors of all time, and if not for the difficult subject matter and immense love of Lincoln this year, ought to have locked up momentum for Best Actor a long time ago. The Master is the kind of film ripe to be ignored, but really deserves to be considered one of the best of all time, though possibly not for a casual night on AMC (yeah, going against my own criteria here, but this was too good to pass up). It's full of compelling scenes, but the driving question of who the Master is and what that means is what causes this film to linger in my mind months after watching it.

Honourable mentions: Bond returns to form in Skyfall, West Anderson returns to form in Moonrise Kingdom, Will Ferrell's feature-length meta-joke in Casa de mi Padre, Soderbergh's male stripper opus Magic Mike, Rob and Dave's ethereal Cosmopolis, the immense crazy fun of Seven Psychopaths, the Rabbits of Rhosgobel leading wackiness in The Hobbit, and we got him in Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Scenes of the Year:

#10: Say what you will about Battleship, but one of the more surprisingly moments was how organic they worked the grid battle into the film, as well as how that ended up being its coolest scene. Oh Taylor Kitsch, what an awful year you had.
#9: I've never seen a film that spirals into awfulness so quickly, but the opening crash scene in Flight was mind-blowing.
#8: I wish I had a higher quality clip, but Mark Wahlberg, his Teddy Bear, and Flash Gordon hanging out, doing coke, punching through walls, and fighting ducks really encapsulated how fun TED really was.
prometheus self-abortion
#7: Django Unchained really has too many good scenes to count, but to pick one I'd take his final ride as John Legend plays in the background - nothing has gotten me more pumped for the entire year.
#6: The Campaign was an underrated comedy this year, buried under attention to the Summer Olympics and well, our own actual Presidential Campaign. The baby-punching scene is nevertheless legendary, though, especially because it's awfully Romney-like.
#5: In another film that's tough to pick one scene, Batman's return in the Bat is really one of the few uplifting moments in the whole movie, made more significant from the two hours of depressing oppression and darkness before it. This is where Batman rises, and even though we don't even see the actual man, he's done what he set out to do in Batman Begins (2005) - he's a symbol of righteousness that here not only strikes fear into his enemies, but courage in his friends.
#4: This scene magnificently took up an entire early trailer, but as Princess Merida shoots for her own hand in Brave the entire film's central conflict and characters are established in an incredible two minutes of writing and beautiful animation before the film gets real weird.
#3: It's almost as if everything in The Avengers led up to and was encapsulated by a simple command voiced by Captain America: "Hulk - Smash." A big green smile sums up the funnest movie of the year.
#2: SPOILER if you haven't seen it, and I'd recommend slogging through the entire film beforehand, but the sheer hell unleashed at the end of The Cabin in the Woods is a riotous moment, one of the more memorable bits put on film in the past decade.
#1: And now for the most intense, grotesque scene ever, the self-Cesarian from Prometheus was disturbing and crazy. That clip is the best I could find, but it's even better with the Noomi's screams and desperate actions getting that machine to work before her widdle iddle squid son bursts through her tummy. It's certainly one of the more distinctive scenes in the past year, and one that sticks with you (whether you want it to or not) for some time to come.

Actors of the Year:

For the men, though Taylor Kitsch had a fantastic year of flops with John Carter, Battleship, and Savages, certifiably dooming his career, we ought to go a bit more positive, and looking upwards, no one's doing better than Joseph Gordon-Levitt. JGL featured significantly in the second-biggest blockbuster of the year, The Dark Knight Rises (c'mon, that role should have gone to Shia...), and a little less so in the most prestigious film of the year, Spielberg's Lincoln. On his own, he also popped two headlining films, one pretty shitty bikour film (Premium Rush) and one excellent time travel film (Looper). JGL can do just about anything he wants right now, with indie cred, blockbuster cred, and Oscar cred. He's really the 2012 version of Fassbender, but with a relatively thin upcoming schedule we'll see where he can go from here.

As the ladies go, this year was all about Jennifer Lawrence. She had two tiny shitty horror films (Devil You Know and House at the End of the Street), but we care less about that and are instead looking to The Hunger Games, which Jen has totally made her own on its way to becoming the next big teen book-to-movie franchise adaptation to make a buttload of cheddar at the box office. Like JGL, she both established butt-kicking cred and cred towards actual acting talent. She was really the best part of a very good Silver Linings Playbook and we'll see if Oscar also takes notice. It was an incredible year for her, and with plenty more franchise films from both the X-Men: First Class series and the rest of the Hunger Games, she's not going away anytime soon. I just hope she can also keep pulling off those smaller, high quality films as well.

Well, that's it, folks. We've got a little less than 9 hours to go now before the end of the year. What will 2013 turn out? Stay tuned as we look forward to next year's awesome line-up of crap. What were your favourite movies, scenes, and actors of 2012?

More First Impressions: Looper, Part II: Politics, Philosophy, Time Travel, and Big Guns!

Welcome back to another Looper (2012) post, we'll see if we can get every bit of politics, philosophy, and physics in on this one. Essentially we're looking to cram in all the marginalia of this great Modern Sci Fi feast. In addition to the strong narrative, Looper offers interesting views on all this shib, and really works itself as the first Science Action film of the Recession Generation. Spoilers to come, obvi:

"Go to China."

Looper is a terrifying movie because it's one of the first Sci Fi Future Epics that you can easily picture happening. Maybe not the time travel, but certainly the dystopian American Society. They might as well have had Romney 2012 banners floating in the wind - it's the kind of economic freefall that scares the shit out of everyone all the time. It paints a picture of the United States suffering mass unemployment (to the point of Vagrant Armies roaming the countryside) and little dirty kids playing in the streets with beat up soccer balls. Violence and trash pile up everywhere and crime lords rule cities and run the police out of run down strip joints. Everyone has huge guns and horribly fragile egos.

Note the Lumberjackian Overtones

Yes, the whole film seems to be driven by Vagrants. A few more recessions and a few more political movements that favour more people like Joe and less like Emily Blunt and we're there. The flick is an interesting look at the 1% of the future - young people, fast cars, trendy drugs, nice clothes, all fueled through crime. Fairly lazy crime, at that, you just need a watch for cripes sake. Meet the modern hitman: Stand in a field with a shitty gun. Dude appears. BLAM! When's the party, bro?

As Jeff Daniels says, "Go to China." It's not hard to imagine China as a First World paradise in thirty years. The suburban serenity contrasts with the heavy urban decay stateside. It's an interesting look at the future of our country - all the development and all the technology but none of the power. Apparently the only thing to advance in the next thirty years is cell phones. This is certainly possible.

It's a universe as jaded as we have become having reached 2012 and not experienced anything we thought we were going to have. There's no flying cars, there's no instant dehydrated pizza, and no Martian colonies to vacation to. The cars people drive around are from our day, or hell, even older. There's a patchwork of solar panels and gas pipes to keep these clunkers running. It's a depressing vision, but something that's easily projected from our current trends.

We may also note that Emily Blunt is concerned with her Sugar Cane crops. Yes, in Kansas. What was once a Cuban crop has crept up to the breadbasket as Global Warming screws us over. Also somehow in the next thirty years, some city in Kansas will become one of the five most populated in the United States. In thirty years Kansas will have temperatures like Houston - not that shocking after all, especially as the Deep South becomes inhospitable. It's this kind of subtle implication throughout Looper that really elevates it as a great Sci Fi trip.

Staying in the Loop

So there's all that in the film's subtext, but there's a lot more going on at the philosophical level. This is ultimately a film about free choice or predestiny - why not, this is time travel, after all. Looper does a nice job of ignoring a lot of the nitty gritty messy stuff and instead just presents a ton of interesting shib.

Just like The Expendables...

Joe is not only caught up in his own "loop" - that is, facing the fact that he killed a future version of himself (and the implication that he only has thirty years left on earth [look on the brightside, Joey - you're guaranteed thirty years!]), but also a Loop of Violence. All Joe knows is violence. His mother was killed by Vagrants caught in a self-defeating economic cycle. The only skill he has is violence. Naturally, in the future, the Rainmaker was created through a similar situation. He's a powerful psychic kid hellbent on taking as much pain out on the world as the world did on him.

For the whole movie this is how things are supposed to be. Any change the characters can do has already taken place. Every scar, the aftereffects of torture, even the destiny that some kid WILL become the Rainmaker has already happened. Joe tries to make some free choices, but he's still controlled by the future. The forces of tomorrow force his hand to attempt to kill Old Joe, else he suffer a pretty rough fate. In his arrogance he believes that he can still end this life and go to France, although Old Joe knows he can't escape and ends up working as an assassin until he finds a way to break the cycle - true love in China.

Old Joe then tries to also break his destiny by killing the Rainmaker. Still, even though his life was saved by a loving wife, he can't escape a violent solution. He's Bruce Willis, after all. With where this is going, we should specify that it's specifically a selfish violent solution. Old Joe is only thinking of protecting his own future (or is it his past?). This selfishness and limited cognition traps Joe more than his violence.

It's only at the finale does Young Joe realise that he must be selfless to escape his loop and the loop of pain and tragedy that has befallen the world. In the loop everything plays out for the worst. Emily Blunt dies and her kid grows up pissed and powerful as hell. Only when Joe takes himself out of the world entirely is there a point where the future is unknown - thus showing that even with all the determined paths and predestination there is still free choice, even if that choice is the ultimate sacrifice.

Marty McFly walks into a bar...

So, let's talk about time travel. Even though Bruce tells us not too. Everything seems fair and simple (although how did the Rainmaker get away with all the mass vagrant genocide [not to mention snubbing Bruce's beau] - I suppose it wouldn't take that much to just zap a body back to the past) until the Loopers start coming back and living.

The torture scene may be one of the more disturbing to hit cinemas in years, even though you really don't see anything terrible. It's just the heavy implication of body horror. Which is neat. The way I figure it, though, it simultaneously works as justification for both predestination and a variety of choices. When the mobsters lop off one of Young Seth's fingers that's a permanent action, so Old Seth loses a pointer. There is still, however, room in the future for alternate choices. There leaves room for the possibility of Old Seth walking through the door and ending the pain of Young Seth. There is kind of a rolling timeline at work here that is resistant to change. It supposes that the permanent body damage will happen but everything else will work out. Who knows how Old Seth's memories or the rest of his life changed, but the ultimate fact remained that he was still captured in the future and sent back in time.

The urgency to kill Old Seth is just that - it minimizes damage done to the timeline (or more practically, a highly trained assassin who knows the future seeking revenge on his killers, which would muck up the timeline even more). Like I said, though, the timeline is resilient. Mucking it up is more like the mobsters lose their power.

Timelines are also flexible. I think I figured out the Rainmaker thing - because there were actually in fact THREE timelines, yes, stay with me here (maybe):

Timeline 1) Joe lives to be an old dude in a peaceful future and is captured and sent back in time. He knows this was coming though and doesn't resist, his wife isn't shot to he accepts his fate

Timeline 2) That Old Joe is sent back and Young Joe nails him. Joe then lives his life knowing he kills himself in the past. He resists arrest and his wife is killed. He vows to change his fate.

Timeline 3) That Old Joe escapes, knocks Young Joe on his ass and then goes on a kiddie killing spree. In order to end the Loop, Young Joe kills himself, thus also killing Old Joe.

Anyone else think JGL looks like
Abby Wambach in this Mondo Poster?

Questions remain - like, it seems as if Old Joe was the source of the Rainmaker rather than his killer. By killing Emily Blunt he would have enraged the sprat enough that he would have blown Old Joe apart and became the hard killer he was that inspired Old Joe to come back to the past in the first place. It's possible that the timeline Old Joe is from IS actually the timeline we see in the movie - just one where Young Joe failed to stop his Older Counterpart. It's likely in this scenario that Young Joe would have escaped fine, or even that the Rainmaker wouldn't remember that he was the stranger he made a connection to on the farm thirty years ago (especially since Joe now looks like his mother's murderer).

Since Old Joe's memory gets fuzzy, it's also possible that he doesn't know exactly what's going on or remember that he's done this before. We only know that the film originates for sure at Timeline 1 and ends for sure at Timeline 3. In between there is a lot of pain that could have happened, even an endless loop, if you will. The only thing that ended it was some sudden realization by Young Joe that he needed to be selfless. Maybe some little thing happened - something that Emily said, something he saw in Cid, or something he noticed in the older version of himself. Some little revelation or change or Froggy Phone Booty Call pushed the Young Joe of Timeline 3 over the edge.

This is why you're not supposed to think about time travel in this film, just the themes it allows the story to play with. I'm not sure all of this adds up that nicely. It doesn't, really.

That's the Loop, though. It's this unbroken timeline that happens over and over again. Old Joe kills Cid's mommy, creating the Rainmaker, then the Rainmaker kills Old Joe's wife, making him go back in time for revenge. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's a cycle that repeats with Abe and Blue, too. I have another out-there theory that they are the same character, or maybe at least related. It's the kind of violence, anger, and justified revenge that only begets more of the same. Young Joe is just the dude here, breaking both himself and everyone else out of their loops.

Obama '12.

First Impressions: Looper, Part I: Characters and Morality

It's time now to chat about one of the best films of the year, the enigmatic original (sort of) Sci Fi Opus from Writer and Director Rian Johnson, Looper (2012). Looper tells the classic story of a transtemporal assassin who is faced with the challenge of killing a future version of himself. Hijinx ensue, as do Spoilers from here on out.

There are a lot of great parts to this thing. It simultaneously rides on its Bruce Willis get and cements the action chops of Joseph Gordon-Levitt a bit better than Premium Rush (2012). Bruce is classic Willis here, gruffly battling through anything that gets in his way, including small children. It's not like he's without a sentimental side, though, but as he's forced to compromise more and more he slowly becomes the film's villain. The shifting morality of this flick could be the source of an entire post in itself. Hrmm -- why not do that now?

We start with JGL (are people using that abbreviation yet?) giving us a bit of narrative explaining the whole deal in a decidedly noir kind-of-way. His face is covered in make-up to make him look more like a Young Bruce, which would be seamless if not for how used to JGL's normal face we are by this point in 2012. The voice and attitude, though, are all JGL and the kid again deserves credit for carrying a film like this. Imagine having this conversation in 1996 about the wiener kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun playing a younger version of Die Hard. Everywhere, minds are blown.

The film is reverent more to Bruce than anyone else. He knocks out his younger self with a single punch, and not even a very hard one at that, which is part of the some of the sly humour sprinkled throughout this picture. He's virtually invincible throughout the whole film, and the only way he's stopped at the end is from Young Joe killing himself, therefore killing All Joes. That's really the only way Bruce Willis should ever die in movies, he's just far too much of a badass any other way.

So we're in 2044 Kansas. Yep, apparently in the next thirty years some city in Kansas (Is it Topeka? Lawrence? Kansas City, which is much more likely? Go Royals) becomes one of the five largest and most powerful cities in the country. More on that later. JGL plays a young version of Joe very reasonably. Despite the drug use and um...killing people, he's got just enough of a good heart to really rally with him. As he gives up his best friend for a stack of silver (It'd be Judas-like if only Seth [Paul Dano] was anything close to resembling a Christ figure. He's not) we realize how much of a piece of shit he is. The thing is, though, so does Joe. This is also when he's at his most delusional with the prostitute he has convinced himself is his girlfriend.

Really, Joe, when you offer the hooker half your stash of silver and she turns you down because she likes the life she has now better, what does that say about you? He's basically a piece of shit assassin at this point. Enter Old Joe, played by Bruce, who through a lifetime of addiction and redemption has finally found some peace in the world, only to have it destroyed by the mob bosses of the future (I will get to the time travel aspects later, for now, the characters are more important). Thus, at this point Old Joe is the righteous force for good, traveling back to kill an evil Telepathic Future Hitler and Young Joe is the selfish prick.

This eventually flips as Old Joe becomes more desperate to protect his own future (past) life and starts blasting little kids in the face who he believes to be this Hitler-figure. Still, The Rainmaker, as he's called, may not really be a bad dude. For all we know he's just running the crime and getting rid of all the old hitmen and vagrants. Either way, he's pissed off Bruce Willis, and that's no good. Old Joe loses sight of anything beyond his mission while Young Joe actually begins to form actually meaningful connections beyond his own bubble.

By the film's end, Young Joe is willing to risk another path - changing Hitler's history to make him a good dude instead of simply killing him. It's an insightful way of thinking he acquired by actually talking with the boy and understanding his situation rather than just showing up and painting the cane field with his brains. Which Joe is the hero and which is the villain shift constantly in this film which elevates the product beyond any kind of simplistic narrative. And we haven't even begun talking about time travel yet.

There are many other characters who fill this thing out. Emily Blunt is awesome as Young Joe's squeeze, although her horny Froggy Booty Call is kind of bizarre, if not appreciated. Her love and dedication to a Child Hitler is the core of the emotional turns of this film and her simultaneous relationship with versions of Joe that either want to kill her or save her is the most important aspect of everyone's relationship dynamic. The aforementioned Paul Dano is an even dumber, more outlandish version of Joe, and his story largely sets up the high stakes Joe has if he fails to close his loop. There's also that dude from Raising Hope.

We've also got Jeff Daniels as an excellent laid back yet ruthless Mob Boss, Abe, sent back in time from the Future, along with Noah Segan as his dopey lead muscle, Kid Blue. I have personal theories that Blue is either Jeff's son or a past version of himself based on their close emotional relationship. Blue is constantly obsessed with pleasing Abe while Abe tends to ignore him for Joe, inciting tremendous jealousy in him. He also gets extremely emotional at Abe's eventual death. Abe acted like a father to all of the Loopers, including Joe, but Blue's focus around Abe and fear of disappointing him lends me to think there's something else going on between those two.

Lastly we have one of the all-time Creepy Psychic kids from young man Pierce Gagnon. The little dude does great here, playing a genius, stubborn kid who is quick to anger as well as penitence. He acts exactly as he should - a little boy who can't control the great powers he was born with. It's tough to learn how to handle that kind of responsibility (especially if no new Spider-Man movies are released in the 2040s) and he plays the classic version of a kid spilling milk during a temper tantrum and then crying to his mama because he knows he was bad. Except you know, in this version, the house explodes.

There is certainly more to come from this flick, I'll be talking about the politics and general coolness coming soon!