from my countdown on my website...
BEST
CABIN IN THE WOODS (2012)dir: Drew Goddard
Much like The Raid, Cabin In The Woods has redefined the horror genre and what did it take?, two geeks with a love of horror films and a shit load of monsters. Buffy/Angel and Firefly creator and director of the big budget Avengers film, Joss Whedon joins forces with the writer of Cloverfield, Drew Goddard for an affectionate twist on the old cabin in the woods scenario. Goddard directs from a script written both Whedon and Goddard. Right that's professionalism out of the way now onto my thoughts on this film....**** me this film is off the chain, Everything about it is just so well thought out. You get the 'collage kids' who aren't your usual collage kids, who take a trip to a cabin in the woods owned by the cousin of one of the kids. So far so generic, but what this sets up is a crazy assault on your geek senses. Cabin In The woods takes the cabin genre and adds a definite Whedon flavour too it. If you ever watched Buffy and season 4 in particular you may recall that Riley was an agent for a secret monster fighting squad, well Cabin in the woods takes that idea and adds a more malevolent purpose behind it. Instead of capturing the monsters this secret organization unleashes them onto unsuspecting participants in a yearly ritual that is meant to protect the world from the elder gods, these giant evil monsters who are being kept in some sort of hellmouth (buffy) and it's up to the secret organization to kill five people, five of the usual horror genre staples, The Jock, The Scholar, The Whore, The Fool and The Virgin, they turn normal everyday kids into these people with the use of pheromones, ingredients in hair colour and spiking alcohol. While the kids come face to face with the evil creatures unleashed by organization, the entire ritual is watched over by two office workers who are in control of what happens. It's such a hard film to write a plot synopsis for because so much happens and it would genuinely spoil the awesomeness of the film if wrote it all out. It's just such a clever film and the final 20 minutes will blow your mind. I may not have been a fan of Whedon's The Avengers, but I am a huge fan of this film, which is why it sits as my favourite film of 2012.
WORST
TAKEN 2 (2012) Dir: Olivier Megaton
Oh man what a **** up of a movie. I am a massive fan of the first Taken film, if I was doing the site in 2008, Taken would have been my #1 film of the year so it's such a shame that it's highly anticipated sequel gets the #1 worst film of the year. What happened? Why does it suck so many balls and why would I even consider putting a Liam Neeson film as worst film of the year?. The reason is because the film is lazy, it's badly shot and incredibly badly directed by silly named Olivier Megaton, the man who could have made an awesome action film out of Colombiana but instead just made a run of the mill generic action/revenge film, hell this guy ****ed up the Transporter series and that's not exactly an oscar contender but ****, what was Besson thinking with this film, there are some many glaring goofs in the film and so many WHAT THE JESUS H **** WAS THAT? Moments that really made me so angry. Liam Neeson was his usual badass self, Maggie Grace was good as Kim but Famke Jansen was an expendable character that had no business being in this sequel and don't even get me started on the villain, Boris the ****in' bullet dodger from Snatch. It seemed as though Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen didn't really want to make a sequel so just wrote the stupidest action film they could think of and gave it to a director just as a joke. The violence was watered down so kids could see it which pissed me off because the first film contains some brutal violence. Brian Mills just didn't have the same drive he did in the first film. It's complete shite and that is why it's my worst film of the year. Such a disappointment.
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