As your very good friend, 2012, don't do that again.

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PREAMBLE - This week we have a change-up in format. We are ostensibly talking about movies we love this year, but it ends up just being a podcast about the past year, what we loved and what we hated, and there's a lot of talk about what we hated. So to lead us off, here's a list of movies we (collectively) were big fans of this year, some of which we didn't get to do anything more than mention on this podcast (or none at all) are:

The Grey, Looper, The Raid: Redemption, Moonrise Kingdom, 21 Jump Street, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Amour, The Comedy, Young Adult, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Haywire, Safe, and Goon.

00:00 - 5:58 - INTROS. Starting off right away we start getting derailed, by talking about Maritime Disaster Movies. This episode, we're focusing on the past year and kind of allowing ourselves to talk about stuff we liked, stuff we hated, and really never staying on any topic for too long. In this chunk, we discuss James Cameron's Titanic, Donny Yen's Flashpoint, and Jet Li in Kiss of The Dragon.

05:59 - 20:13 - TRAILERS. As a lead-in to our year-end talk we talk about some upcoming trailers for -

Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, mostly about much we love Kevin Costner, and how we feel about the original Donner/Lester Superman movies (KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!), Mark Waid/Lenil Yu's Superman: Birthright, Christopher Reeve and Morgan Freeman in Street Smart, and Snyder's Dawn of the Dead.

JJ Abrams' Stark Trek: Into Darkness, and how we kind of don't care about Star Trek. Tucker mention Charlie Brooker's article on Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall, and Sean talks about how Wrath of Khan is a pretty damn solid movie for non-Star Trek fans.

M. Night Shamylan's After Earth with Will Smith and Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion with Tom Cruise. Also mentioned in this section - Key and Peele's Jaden Smith sketch, the upcoming All You Need Is Kill where Tom Cruise and Bill Paxton play TOM CRUISE and BILL PAXTON. Sean talks about Neil Bomkamp's upcoming Elysium with Matt Damon, that he can't remember the name of. This is the start of the two of us getting punchier for the episode. Also we touch on Cameron's Avatar and Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle.

Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim. Tucker mentions how much we love Charles S Dutton, Sean mentions how much we love Guy Davis. Tucker brings up the Transformers shot in the trailer, and Sean kind of talks too affectionately about Michael Bay's The Island to ever be taken seriously as a person who likes good movies again.

20:14 - 26:17 - We start off kind of briefly touching on The Raid, The Grey, and 21 Jump Street. And we start on stuff that didn't click even though we like elements of - Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus, and Bourne Legacy. Sean makes that comparison between Ridley Scott and Akira Kurosawa that was flimsy the first time he used it again. We talk about what dissapoints us about Dark Knight Rises and then how Christopher Nolan post-The Dark Knight has been disappointing. We really like Chris Nolan, in fact this podcast started off as a series of back and forths about Chris Nolan and we decided that, while we love The Prestige, we'd rather not write about Dark Knight Rises and Inception one more time. Instead we'd rather just keep talking about movies and shit.

 

26:18 - 34:22 - Here we discuss Rian Johnson's Looper, which Sean loves more than pretty much everything. Tucker brings up David Foster Wallace's piece about Terminator 2, and what it is for a movie to live within it's budget rather than push the limits of it. And then we change gears into discussing Tony Gilroy's Bourne Legacy, which Tucker really doesn't like. We talk about the original Bourne films, Mission Impossible 2, Michael Clayton, Zeljko Ivanek, and Liev Schreiber in the Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet.

34:23 - 42:30 - Edward Norton transitions us into Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which we both love. Here we talk about what makes that movie great and so sweet without being cloying, what makes Wes Anderson great, Tucker talks about the community aspect of these films. Sean mentions the THR Director's Roundtable where Quentin Tarantino talks about body of work, and that leads into a comparison between Wes Anderson and Christopher Nolan. And we talk about directors who become producers, like Luc Besson, Steven Spielberg, and Guillermo Del Toro.

42:31 - 47:21 - Tucker has a lot of great things to say about Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly. We talk about Ramsay's other films Morvern Callar and Ratcatcher, as well as why John C. Reilly is so valuable and rewarding as a performer. Also a brief aside on Michael Haneke's Amour.

47:22 - 52:59 - Talking about performances, Sean really loves Charlize Theron's performance in Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody's Young Adult. When Sean starts talking about what he loves about that character - he really probably reveals too much about himself as a person (always watching E! Channel is only the tip of the iceberg of that shit). And we talk about how every character in movies like this have to have big explanatory events in their past, but Theron's character of Mavis Gary had none of that, and that was what made her compelling.

52:59 - 56:31 - We mention Tim Heidecker's performance in The Comedy, and because we've talked about it so much before, we transition into Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie. Which we both like, and we talk about it's similarities to East Bound and Down and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Movie Film For Theaters, and more John C Reilly love.

56:32 - 1:07:19 - Tucker watched Marvel's The Avengers. It was sort of directed by that guy who wrote Cabin in the Woods. This turns into a larger discussion about superhero movies, which was bound to happen on this podcast eventually. And we talk about how a director with a truly individual voice is really a hindrance not a benefit to those movies being successful. And we talk about how that Iron Man 3 trailer might make Sean give up on life if he sees it again. And we talk about how television affects movies these days, and Breaking Bad/The Wire, what the hell Scarlett Johansson is doing in that movie, and how terrible the roles for women are in this type of shit.

1:07:20 - 1:14:28 - Tucker tries to talk about his favorite movie of the year, and Sean completely messes that up and brings up The Hobbit. And then we both, completely punchy and uninterested in our original idea, decide to make fun of the Lord of the Rings for way, way too long. Also mentioned in this section - eatin jellyfish, Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson's King Kong and The Frighteners, and the possibility of Mad Max tourism. Instinct took over, we had the opportunity, and we took it, JRR Tolkein. Go make up some more fake languages, you dead highly respected author.

1:14:29 - 1:22:40 - We ride out talking about how we're excited for year enders Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty, Tucker talks about not liking Christoph Waltz, and movies we don't really want to touch on because we're fucking tired - Goon, Elena, The Master, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Hunger Games, Haywire, and we end with Tucker describing the G.I.Joe Retaliation trailer and how damn funny it is. Also Dennis Quaid. We love him. He's awesome.

We'll see you after xmas, if John Hodgman is wrong and the planet doesn't kill us all.

 

Download As Your Very Good Friend...

 

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Comments

[Bob Temuka]

Man, there is no way one-eighth of New Zealand's money comes from Lord of The Rings. They're big fucking movies, and it's a small fucking country, but they ain't that big, and the country ain't that small.

I really liked the Hobbity films and The Avengers, but also rate The Grey and Looper as my favourite films of the year (after Ben Wheatley's stuff). Is this wrong?

Also, I am very glad Channing Potato isn't killed right at the start of the new GI Joe film, only because I fucking hate it when the main characters from the first movie are unceremoniously killed off right at the start of the sequel. I hated it in Alien 3, I hated it in Friday The 13th Part Two and I fucking hated it in Ewoks: The Battle For Endor.

[Jeppe]

Fun episode. I can't really get behind the high praise for Looper, even though I did see it twice in the theater. I guess I was let down by expecting it to be a high-concept sci-fi movie, and it "merely" being a very well-made action flick.

I hope you both get the chance to catch Holy Motors sometime in the new year. That film was definitely one of my favorites of 2012, hugely enjoyable.

[Gabby@bluepromocode]

I have heard more than one person say they are disappointed by the new Bourne film. I haven't seen it yet so I don't know whether to agree with them or not. I'll have to wait until I watch it and form my own opinion.

I think Jeremy Renner is a good action star. I always enjoy seeing him in movies that involve a lot of sparring. He usually looks really authentic in the role.

I don't know if people didn't like the latest Bourne because it's just that- the latest Bourne. Maybe the whole premise of this latest installment was just too hard to believe and that turned people off.

[Zebtron A. Rama]

Dig the podcast. I gotta hand it to you fellas, I don't agree with you all the time, but I certainly respect you.
The Avengers commentary was of particular interest to me. I'm really curious how much those movies are actually "directed." The idea never occured to me, but the logic is sound when one thinks about it, that these giant budget corporate films are steered by higher powers, if you will.