It is arguably one of the more memorable moments in any film last year, a moment that juxtaposes seeming failure and unbelievable success. In the final act of writer-director David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, two characters, Pat and Tiffany – two friends helping each other out while at the same time serving as vessels to help Pat’s father – finish their eccentric, offbeat dance as part of a local pairs dance competition.

Pat and Tiffany, by all counts, are not pros. “Pat’s a beginner, I’m okay, we’re happy just to be going there.” They have fun with the dance, but falter at the end in a cringe-inducing yet riotous misstep.

If you’ve seen Dirty Dancing, you know what Pat and Tiffany were attempting: that romantic and oft-copied lift, where the girl trots across the stage and leaps into the air, her body planked as the guy holds her up by her hips. The successful lift was featured most recently in 2011’s Crazy, Stupid, Love, with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as the dancers. Suffice to say, it was pulled off far more gracefully in that film than in Silver Linings Playbook.

The pair botch the big move, Pat stumbling around the dance floor with Tiffany’s crotch shoved in his face, legs draped over his shoulders, face fraught with embarrassment.

When Pat puts Tiffany down, the two know they’ve erred. But they finish the dance and take their spot aside the judges’ table, awaiting their scores, nervous yet hopelessly optimistic. The announcer relays the scores as revealed by each judge.

“We have a four-point-nine, four-eight, a four-nine, and a five-point-four. For an average score of…”

Silence.

“Five-point-zero.”

Two fellow competitors offer sympathetic condolences. Pat and Tiffany’s mouths go agape, in disbelief. The room remains mostly silent, apart from a few claps, until Pat raises a fist and Tiffany throws her arms into the air, realizing they have just successfully accomplished their goal.

What ensue are several loud screams and cheering and hugs all around, with the exception of Pat Sr.’s friend Randy, who stands nearby in anguish, shocked at how the evening’s events unfolded.

And then, the announcer, confused, interjects. “Why are they so excited about a five?”

There is one short, simple answer to his inquiry. Earlier in the film, after Pat and his brother Jake return home from an Eagles game, their father is irate. Not only did Pat Sr.’s Eagles lose to the rival Giants, he has just lost a lot of money to Randy, money he intended to use to start a cheesesteak restaurant. Now that dream appears gone.

That is, until Tiffany steps in.

After a rousing scene wherein she indicts Pat Sr. for sending Pat to the Eagles game instead of letting him practice with her, Tiffany persuades Randy to give Pat Sr. one more chance. The two agree to a double-or-nothing bet, but with a catch – or in betting terms, a parlay: in order for Pat Sr. to win, not only must the Eagles defeat the Cowboys, Pat and Tiffany must receive a score of five from the four judges in a local dance contest.

A score of five means that Pat Sr., with the aid of his beloved Eagles and the zany dancing of Tiffany and Pat, has won the bet, earning back the vast sum of money he lost weeks earlier and effectively allowing him to open the restaurant he dreams of running.

But the overall excitement of Pat and Tiffany and those close to them – Pat’s father, his mother Dolores, brother Jake, pals Danny and Ronnie, and therapist Dr. Patel, as well as Tiffany’s own parents and her sister (and Ronnie’s wife), Veronica – runs far deeper than winning a bet.

At the beginning of the film, we are welcomed into Pat’s life. He has just been released from a Baltimore mental health facility, miles from his hometown, Philadelphia. When he returns home after 8 months of confinement, life is different than when he left.

His recently estranged wife, Nikki, has a restraining order against him. He has lost his job, and his phone – “they won’t let me make any calls,” he tells his friend Ronnie. “They think I’m going to call Nikki.”

The picture of him that once hung in the entranceway of his parents’ home now rests on the table below, perhaps an indication of his parents’ disappointment in the downward route his life has ventured. He prefers exercise and reading to a regimen of daily drugs that make him both foggy and bloated. He thinks he can manage his emotions alone.

Pat has a new outlook on life. “You have to do everything you can, you have to work your hardest, and if you do, if you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining.” But even so, Pat remains unable, at first, to cope with his changed circumstances.

His trigger – “My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder, the song that was playing when he walked in on his wife cheating on him, leading Pat to a violent incident and his subsequent stay at the Baltimore facility – still troubles and haunts him. And though he reads many books, and works out each day, he does so not to better himself as a man, but instead to make himself a better fit for Nikki, molding himself to the ideal he believes Nikki desires and deserves.

Pat’s life is quickly thrown for a loop when he meets the equally troubled Tiffany, a recently widowed woman struggling with her own demons and mental health issues. Though their chemistry is apparent from the outset, Pat is set on winning back his wife.

“I’m not flirting with you,” he tells Tiffany, after letting her know she looks nice. “I just see that you made an effort and I’m going to be better with my wife, I’m working on that. I want to acknowledge her beauty.”

Much like Pat, Tiffany’s life, too, has recently been turned upside down.

Tiffany’s husband Tommy, a local police officer, was killed in an accident while helping a stranded motorist, just a short while after leaving the mall with a bag of lingerie in hopes of rekindling their faint romantic flame. This leaves Tiffany to pick up the pieces, with the help of therapy, meds, and a multitude of men looking to take advantage of a pretty, young, inconsolable woman.

We can see she is still learning to cope with her recent loss when Pat walks her home from a dinner they both had with his friend Ronnie and Ronnie’s wife, Veronica, Tiffany’s older sister.

As Pat and Tiffany arrive outside her house, Tiffany makes an advance on Pat. “I hate the fact that you wore a football jersey to dinner because I hate football, but you can fuck me if you turn the lights off, okay?” Tiffany is lonely, a bird with a fractured wing yearning to find some semblance of companionship wherever she can get it.

Despite Pat’s hesitance to make nice with Tiffany – “she’s a loyal married-to-a-dead-guy slut” – the pair soon become friends, thanks to a nugget of advice from Pat’s therapist, Dr. Patel: perhaps Pat can use his new acquaintance to prove to Nikki that he is large-hearted and compassionate. The ultimate goal, of course, is Pat’s ability to show Nikki that he is better so they may reconnect.

Throughout the course of the film, though, both Pat and Tiffany suffer setbacks.

After dinner at Ronnie’s, Pat has a breakdown, causing his entire neighborhood to wake up in his quest to find his wedding video. Pat’s parents try to calm him down, but he won’t have it, and he accidentally elbows his mother Dolores in the nose, causing Pat Sr. to launch into a fist-fueled tirade. A local police officer assigned to Pat’s case is called over, and must write a report to add to Pat’s file, which Nikki will inevitably see.

And later, when Pat upsets Tiffany at a local diner by explaining that he hopes he isn’t compared to her, he chases her down the street. Tiffany releases her anger on him outside a movie theater. Caught in the moment, the walls of people closing in, Pat hears “My Cherie Amour,” and his case officer arrives to ensure there’s no public danger.

Tiffany, as we see early on, takes more ownership of her problems than does Pat – “There’s always going to be a part of me that’s sloppy, and dirty, but I like that” – but continues on occasion to seek men to fill the void in her life. Pat thwarts one of these men in his attempt when he shows up at Tiffany’s to hand off a letter for Nikki.

Despite these setbacks, Pat and Tiffany grow and recover with the help of one another. The two establish a working relationship, wherein Tiffany helps Pat deliver the letter to Nikki, and Pat helps Tiffany by serving as her dance partner so she may compete in an upcoming competition.

But what Pat soon realizes is that in helping Tiffany, he helps himself.

Dancing makes Pat disciplined and focused, and provides him with a sense of purpose and direction, a distinct goal for which he can strive. And even more so, though he doesn’t understand it at the time, it allows him to move past the events leading to his confinement, his failed marriage, and lets him become a new man, freed from the trappings of his mind and his disorder.

In competing at the dance and scoring a five, Pat and Tiffany have overcome the obstacles that once stood before them. Pat’s severe mental instability, his mood swings and breakdowns. Tiffany’s damaging depression, her manic thoughts and insecurities.

And each of those involved in the lives of Pat and Tiffany – Pat Sr. and Dolores, Jake, Danny, Tiffany’s parents, Ronnie and Veronica, Dr. Patel – have a vested interest in their well being. They are the fans who root for them in both good times and bad, yearning to see them find joy and purpose in life. So it’s no wonder the excitement strewn about the lot of them when Pat and Tiffany’s scores are announced.

Dancing together in the pairs competition allows Pat and Tiffany to fully realize their new selves, to make discoveries and grow as people.

Pat has found a light at the end of the tunnel, a ray of sun that peaks through the clouds that once cast a heavy shadow over his life. Tiffany no longer seeks solace in the arms of men but rather finds comfort in being herself.

Pat and Tiffany are in love, but more importantly, they are happy.

A true silver lining.

Best Picture

• Winner: Argo

Director

• Winner: Ang Lee, Life of Pi

Actor in a Leading Role

• Winner: Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln

Actress in a Leading Role

• Winner: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Actor in a Supporting Role

• Winner: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Actress in a Supporting Role

• Winner: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables

Animated Feature Film

• Winner: Brave

Cinematography

• Winner: Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi

Costume Design

• Winner: Anna Karenina

Documentary Feature

• Winner: Searching for a Sugar Man

Documentary Short

• Winner: Inocente

Film Editing

• Winner: Argo

Foreign Language Film

• Winner: Austria, Amour

Makeup and Hairstyling

• Winner: Les Misérables

Original Score

• Winner: Life of Pi

Original Song

• Winner: “Skyfall” by Adele, Skyfall

Production Design

• Winner: Lincoln

Short Film, Animated

• Winner: Paperman

Short Film, Live Action

• Winner: Curfew

Sound Editing

• Winner: Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall

Sound Mixing

• Winner: Les Misérables

Visual Effects

• Winner: Life of Pi

Adapted Screenplay

• Winner: Argo

Original Screenplay

• Winner: Django Unchained

What was your favorite part? What was the biggest surprise? What was the worst part? Tell us in the comments section below! Congratulations to the winners!

2012 was the year of the blockbuster, most of which served as the first installment of a new franchise or a continuation of an existing one. Audiences were treated to the first installment of The Hunger Games franchise, a reboot of a beloved comic book character in The Amazing Spider-Man, a new installment in The Avengers saga, and final installments (or so we think) in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and the Stephanie Meyer-novel-based Twilight franchise.

We also saw continuations of the Bourne series and a remake of the beloved sci-fi flick Total Recall, a sort-of prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien and a new Men in Black movie. But the list doesn’t end there.

2012 also brought about a third Madagascar movie, a new Middle Earth-based film from Peter Jackson in The Hobbit, and a long-awaited installment in the beloved James Bond franchise. And we even got a new Pixar film, the princess story Brave.

Yes, on the surface 2012 was all about big budget films looking to bring in even bigger revenues. And to some extent, that was the case. With 1.36 billion tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada, Hollywood brought in $10.83 billion in revenue this year, a staggering number that is a new record for the industry.

But the intriguing thing about all of this is that, of all the big-budget films already mentioned, only one of them earned a spot on my year-end Top Ten list. And that’s not to sound elitist — I love a good blockbuster. But this speaks, I think, to the strength of the other releases, ones whose budgets and grosses may not necessarily be as large but whose impact I felt greatly.

On the surface, 2012 was the year of the blockbuster. But beauty, as they say, is only skin deep, and you need to dive past the surface to find the biggest gems of 2012.

There are films I still haven’t seen – Killing Them Softly, Rust and Bone, The Sessions, Cloud Atlas, and Amour chief among them — but with my spring semester of school starting already, I feel that now is as good a time as any to compile and publish my year-end list. Plus, I was already having trouble keeping this list to ten films anyway.

With that said, below are my “Honorable Mentions” for 2012, followed afterward on page 2 by the selections for my year-end Top Ten list.

MY 2012 HONORABLE MENTIONS (in alphabetical order)

• The Avengers: While I still believe that Iron Man is the gold-standard when it comes to Marvel’s Avengers franchise, The Avengers is a vastly entertaining and ultimately great film, and an excellent kickstart to the summer movie season.

• Beasts of the Southern Wild: A film that is emotional, impactful, and ultimately good. It proves that you don’t need $200 million to make a movie worth watching.

• The Cabin in the Woods: For those who love slasher flicks and the gore that they possess, you are in for a treat with this one. There is plenty of mayhem to be found here, with chainsaws and axes and knives and guns and teeth and bear traps and beasts and zombies and every single horror trope, trick, and gambit under the sun. But wit, self-awareness, originality, and laughs define The Cabin in the Woods just as much as its scares do.

• The Dark Knight Rises: The most anticipated film of the year wasn’t the rousing success I hoped it would be, but Christopher Nolan certainly makes the case that huge epics can still be made in today’s Hollywood. A big-budget spectacle, if nothing else, and quite a bit of fun — especially on that huge IMAX screen!

• End of Watch: All that seems to come of found footage films are largely un-scary horror movies like The Blair Witch Project or the Paranormal Activity franchise. But David Ayer’s buddy cop flick End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as two partners who stumble onto a dangerous drug cartel, breathes new life into this tired brand of filmmaking.

• Jeff, Who Lives at Home: Jason Segel is probably one of my favorite working actors today. If I was a woman, I would marry him. He may not be the hunkiest of Hollywood actors, but he is charming, funny, and above all, lovable. Which is funny, because that is exactly how I would describe Jeff, Who Lives at Home.

• Looper: 2012 was a banner year for thoughtful sci-fi, and director Rian Johnson’s rousing Looper is part of the reason why. Obviously time travel doesn’t (yet) exist, and any form of it that shows up in the film is purely speculative in nature. And so Johnson chooses not to focus on it as the driver of the story and the action, instead turning the focus on his characters and their own stories, and the film is much better off as a result.

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Much like any teenager in the high school world it portrays, Perks of Being a Wallflower displays a vast array of emotions. It’s a film driven by its characters, and your ability to like the movie really depends on whether or not you can — or perhaps want to — relate to them. Something I remember from high school is that no matter who you are, you still have real, human emotions that don’t care about your “label.” And Perks of a Being a Wallflower drives that lesson home.

• Prometheus: Very few summer blockbusters can be at once visually arresting, packed with entertainment, and spark an intellectual dialogue. Prometheus is all three, and aside from a few missteps, it works to a great degree.

• Safety Not Guaranteed: A cute, quirky, and altogether fun indie film about a man who seeks a partner to travel with him to the past and the girl who agrees to go with him. Featuring the acting talents of Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake M. Johnson, and the relatively unknown Karan Soni, this movie is an adventure worth embarking on.

Well, there you have it for the Honorable Mentions. Hit the next page to see what I think are the 10 best films of 2012!

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The ten-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist leader is a story we all followed and one whose ending will likely go down in history as one of the twenty-first century’s most triumphant moments, both for America and for many others across the globe. With Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriting partner Mark Boal have taken those ten years and condensed them into 157 very deliberate, riveting, and powerful minutes. Much like the manhunt itself, Zero Dark Thirty is a powerhouse, a thrilling and winding tale that requires patience but arrives with an ending worth waiting for.

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. Zero Dark Thirty begins with a bone-chilling opening sequence that brings us back to that dark day. Bigelow shows us nothing but black, and layers tens or perhaps hundreds of audio recordings of phone calls from hijacked-airplane passengers and those trapped in burning towers to their respective loved ones and to emergency operators. It is a stark, stripped sequence that is ultimately extremely affecting.

But so, too, is the next extended sequence, one that takes place in 2003 and shows a terrorist at an unnamed detention facility relentlessly tortured by a member of the CIA, Dan (Jason Clarke), and his colleagues. Wanted is information that will hopefully lead to the capture of Osama bin Laden, but given is nothing. And so the torture continues.

Many have condemned Bigelow and Boal for these extended torture sequences, with some critics and viewers claiming that it glorifies torture and intelligence officials stating that it incorrectly implies that these “enhanced interrogation techniques,”, such as water-boarding and sleep deprivation, garnered key information that led to bin Laden’s capture.

I will briefly take an aside and add my two cents with this: 1) I don’t agree that the film takes the stance that torture is “good” or permissible, and 2) I don’t agree that the film implies that the torture of CIA detainees directly led to the capture of Osama bin Laden. But I digress.

The rest of the film follows newcomer CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) and her colleagues as they sift through years of intelligence data, with more coming in than they can handle and most of it a paper trail leading to dead ends. That is, until Maya follows a lead that, with her undying confidence and ruthless conviction, garners a name to follow and eventually a location to scope out: the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound that housed Osama bin Laden and his all-important courier.

Zero Dark Thirty closes with a thrilling raid that will surely keep you on the edge of your seat, or bobbing your knee up and down, or biting your nails, or whatever your nervous tick may be. Bigelow creates tension that is palpable, even though we already know the outcome.

Much like David Fincher’s 2007 crime-thriller Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty is a cold, calculated procedural of whose beginning and ending we are fully aware but whose events in-between we might not be. Zero Dark Thirty sheds light on these in-between events via first-hand accounts of the manhunt for bin Laden, dramatized to ensure full effect on-screen. Though obviously condensed, the film is certainly compelling, and unfolds swiftly and with ease.

The success of Zero Dark Thirty as a motion picture rests on the shoulders of two very capable women: Academy Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow and Academy Award nominated star Jessica Chastain.

Bigelow’s execution here is nothing short of masterful. The film is 157 minutes long but plays like a 100-minute thriller due to Bigelow’s ability to pack as much punch in each moment as humanly possible. And yet, with all this information to present, she never forgets that there is a very real human element behind all that intelligence.

Enter Chastain as Maya, a tough-as-nails woman who takes on the ball-breaking task of finding bin Laden with fierce tenacity and exciting verve. Chastain, in a word, is exceptional. She plays the role close to the chest, wearing Maya’s emotions on her sleeve and crafting a performance that never feels forced. It simply feels real, as though Chastain is her true-life CIA counterpart. And there is no better acting than acting that feels real.

Zero Dark Thirty is perhaps 2012′s most vital film, not because of the politics people try to pull from it but because of the story it tells, or rather, the story Bigelow and Boal allow to tell itself. This is a satisfying procedural at its finest, a gripping, compelling, dramatic thriller that begs to be seen and discussed. It’s a story our nation remembers, and one we will never forget.

Grade: A

Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is the un-hailed king of Rushmore Academy. Rushmore is his life. He is a scholarship student, made such because of a stellar one-act play he wrote about the Watergate scandal in the second grade.

Per the film’s opening, he is involved in 18 different clubs and extracurriculars, and is always on the lookout for another activity to add to his jam-packed routine. But that doesn’t make him an exemplary student. In fact, he is swiftly put on academic probation because of poor grades; if he fails one more class, he will be kicked out of prep school.

Max develops a fat crush on elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and with the help of Herman Blume (Bill Murray), an industrialist with a soft spot for Max, Max seeks to win over the heart of Miss Cross by building a magnificent marine observatory for her. But when Headmaster Guggenheim (Brian Cox) catches wind of Max’s plans, Max is expelled and must make a transition to Grover Cleveland High, a local public school where his love of extracurriculars isn’t shared by many.

“My top schools where I want to apply to are Oxford and the Sorbonne. But my safety’s Harvard.”

Herman, too, has developed an infatuation for Miss Cross, and the two begin seeing each other. This spawns a war, both for Rosemary’s affections and against each other, when Max discovers what’s going on. Rosemary eventually gets rid of Herman and stops talking to Max, because they’re both “little children,” something she learns after Max tries to woo her for the last time by faking being hit by a car. On top of that, Max has lost the loyalty of his friend Dirk by spreading a rumor about he and Dirk’s mother and spurned the friendship of Grover Cleveland classmate Margaret.

Knowing he can’t win Rosemary for himself, Max instead tries to repair his academic standing and his relationship with his friends, right his wrongs, and win back Rosemary for Herman, with the aid of some unlikely helpers and a scheme so crazy it just might work.

“Couldn’t we just let me float by, for old times sake?”

Director Wes Anderson is known for the light-hearted whimsy he brings to the screen, a sense of almost unreality that viewers either love or hate. Count me as the former, because I loved Rushmore. It is creative and funny, sometimes sad but always charming.

And while it does at times approach that surreal whimsy that is typical of Anderson, Rushmore is still able to come back to reality and play with emotions in a way that really makes you care about and feel for this slacker of a student.

With Rushmore, Anderson attempts to show that we all deserve a happy ending: whether we’ve been hurt or have done the hurting, whether we are in the right or in the wrong, we all deserve a silver lining.

“I saved Latin. What did you do?”

Though not as noteworthy as the A-list cast he brought together in 2012′s Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has spooled together a fantastic group of actors here, both young and old. Schwartzman makes for a perfect Max Fischer, and is very believable as an eccentric teenager trying to get what he wants.

Good, too, is Bill Murray as Herman Blume. He plays the role in a rather understated manner at times, but is enjoyable nonetheless. His comic timing has always been good, but seeing him in a role that requires a little dramatic acting is fantastic.

Olivia Williams makes for an excellent Miss Rosemary Cross. She is pretty in the way I always hoped my elementary school teachers would be, and exudes a sophistication we often expect in academics. The roster is rounded out with great child acting from Mason Gamble and Sara Tanaka as Dirk and Margaret, respectively, nice turns from Seymour Cassel as Max’s father Bert and Brian Cox as Dr. Guggenheim, and a very funny yet small role from Luke Wilson as Rosemary’s Harvard friend.

“Take dictation, please. Possible candidates for the Kite Flying Society…”

Rushmore begins with a devilishly funny and handsomely charming opening sequence and closes with a very touching ending. Fortunately, everything that happens during those in-between 80 minutes is equally as funny, charming, and touching. It would have been a shame if that wasn’t the case, but I’m glad it is. In the few films of his that I’ve seen, Wes Anderson has yet to disappoint, and that short list now includes Rushmore.

Going in, I hadn’t anticipated writing a full review of Rushmore. I generally save full-length reviews for new releases, and generate smaller “capsule” reviews for older fare. But as I began writing my capsule review, I got swept away, much as I did during the opening minutes of Rushmore. It’s a new favorite of mine.

Grade: A

Oh Judd. Judd, Judd, Judd. What happened, man? In 2005, you gave us The 40-Year-Old Virgin, easily one of the funniest and most charming films of the last decade. Then you followed that up two years later with Knocked Up, yet another funny and charming piece of filmmaking with quite a bit of character development and depth. And something truly original.

I still haven’t seen Funny People, so I will withhold judgment on that one until I get the chance to watch it. But This is 40 was, simply stated, a bit of a disappointment. Though marketed as a comedy, This is 40 just isn’t very funny. It’s quite sad, really. Sure, there are moments that caused me to laugh and others that made me smile, smirk, or chuckle, but if this is truly what 40 years old is going to be like, then count me out.

This is 40 is centered around the lives of Knocked Up‘s Pete and Debbie. The couple have two kids — one daughter who just hit puberty and another of elementary school age — and are turning 40 years old, that age where you are no longer young and everything seems to be changing as you begin to pass the hill’s peak. Pete (Paul Rudd) runs a struggling vintage record company, and Debbie (Leslie Mann) owns a chic retail boutique with employee issues. Unfortunately, their issues don’t end there.

Pete has been taking Viagra for 2 years to have sex with his wife. He spends loads of time on the toilet (no pun intended) pretending to pinch one off while playing Scrabble and Bejeweled. Pete’s father Larry (Albert Brooks) guilts him into providing him with large sums of money to take care of his new wife and a set of triplets. Pete wants nothing more than to eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants without his wife bitching at him for it. Oh, and he gets a hemorrhoid.

Debbie dislikes that her body is beginning to sag in places that it used to be tight. Her fashion store has been cheated of $12,000 by one of its employees. She spends time making lists of things to do to make herself and her husband and family happy, but never seems able to put forth the effort to do so. She has lunch with her biological father Oliver (John Lithgow), a spinal surgeon, once every year but he never remembers to call her on her birthday.

The pair are looking at selling their fine home to pay off their debts and secure money for their family. And to top it off, they have a devil of a newly pubescent daughter Sadie (Maude Apatow) and a younger daughter Charlotte (Iris Apatow) who can be sweet but can also be quite annoying, as all young children can be.

Though charming at times, This is 40 contains too few laughs, too much unnecessary content, and frankly, it is too depressing to even be considered a true comedy. As with all Apatow productions, This is 40 has its fair share of ridiculous situations, events that would likely never happen outside of the cinematic universe. But while films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin andKnocked Up hone those in and craft a solid story and even better laughs around them, This is 40 throws them on a canvas, one after another, hoping something sticks to keep the audience interested. But nothing sticks. It all slides off, leaving us with nothing more than a blank slate on which to watch the next unbearable situation occur.

Oy, I have certainly bashed this film quite a bit thus far. I should mention, though, that This is 40 isn’t a total loss. Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, and Albert Brooks are all great in their roles, Mann and Brooks in particular, and the funniest moments in the film seem to occur when Rudd and Brooks share the screen as father and son. And This is 40 develops its most compassionate moments around matriarch Deb, meaning Mann is given the opportunity to show off her chops as well, both dramatically and comedically. Better yet, Jason Segel reprises his role as, er, Jason from Knocked Up. He serves as Deb’s personal trainer in the film, and provides some true charm to a film that really needed more. And at least Megan Fox’s role, as one of Deb’s employees, wasn’t a complete throwaway.

One thing I should ask here, on the topic of characters and actors: Can we please stop putting Melissa McCarthy in movies and pretending she is a riot? It was funny in Bridesmaids for the most part, but it just isn’t here. She has a small role in the film, as the mother of a boy who goes to school with Pete and Deb’s daughter Sadie and is mean to her via text messages and internet chats. Pete and Deb, in attempt to defend their daughter, are quite mean to the boy. So what does McCarthy’s character do in return? Hurl a bunch of improvised insults at them, and the principal too, using her typical shtick of aggressively yelling obscenities mixed with other ludicrous verbiage. It’s gotten very old, very fast.

The biggest downside of the acting though, really comes from Apatow’s own children, Maude and Iris. At times, Maude plays the bratty Sadie very well, showcasing the highs and lows of early puberty. But most of the time, she is downright unlikable. She isn’t just a brat; she is, as her character would say, a “B.” Most of her time on screen is spent yelling at and whining to her parents and throwing tantrums. And though Iris’s character, Charlotte, is far more subdued, there are times where you can tell she is trying to act or reading off a cue card or working to remember a line. None of it seems genuine.

Overall, the characters Apatow presents are just hard to relate to. Both Pete and Deb are entrepreneurs. They both drive very nice cars. Their daughters have various iDevices and complain about losing the WiFi or not getting to watch “Lost.” They own a sprawling backyard and a pool. And a very nice house with a very nice master bedroom. How many people in middle class America can relate to any of these characters? Sure, some of it is true at times, but most of it is overdone for dramatic effect.

At the end of the day, This is 40 just doesn’t really work for me. There are scenes I very much enjoyed, and some that made me laugh, but there is just too much here. Too much to dislike. Too many unnecessary story points. Most of all, there are too many minutes to sit through. I read that a few reviewers said the biggest problem with This is 40 is that it is 40 minutes too long.

They were right.

Grade: C-

It’s been 3 years since Quentin Tarantino left us with the historical re-do Inglourious Basterds, a tale of revenge so adventurous, riveting, and wildly entertaining that it could very well be the most re-watchable feature in his oeuvre, and is right up there with Pulp Fiction as his finest. Perhaps this was his intention: leave his audience with a lighter (though still quite dark) trip down cinema lane before heaping upon us the very dark, often grim, and sometimes downright unbearable Django Unchained, the story of newly freed slave who sets out to rescue his enslaved wife with the help of a Southern dentist-turned-bounty hunter.

That’s not to say Django Unchained isn’t good; in fact, quite the opposite, Tarantino’s latest is a damn fine piece of filmmaking that is very fun at times — much like many of the director’s other works. But the film’s subject matter and the way in which it is executed sometimes left me squirming in my seat, though that’s likely the point. You can’t make a film about slavery without diving into the hard truths of it all, no matter how much we don’t want to face those truths.

Django Unchained tells the story of recently-freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx), who is entertainingly purchased by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), an out-of-practice dentist who more recently has taken to bounty hunting, serving as an officer of the law who scours the South for wanted criminals, kills them, brings them to their place of warrant, and gets paid for his work. He abhors slavery, but buys Django to aid in tracking down and killing the Brittle brothers, three fugitives with bounties on their heads for murders they’ve committed, a gang of killers Django knows all too well. Per their agreement, once the brothers are killed, Dr. Schultz will make Django a free man.

Along the duo’s journey, Django tells Dr. Schultz about his still-enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a beautiful African-American belle whose previous masters were German, much like Dr. Schultz. Intrigued by Django’s story of loss and love — and the fact that Broomhilda is named after a classic German folktale — Dr. Schultz promises that, if Django acts as his associate in bounty hunting, he will help Django rescue Broomhilda once the winter passes. The two agree, and while Django is hesitant at first, he proves to be a natural and even enjoys his new line of work (“Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?”).

Their subsequent mission to rescue Broomhilda leads Django and Dr. Schultz to a meeting with Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), owner of the Candyland plantation. Dr. Schultz and Django devise a plan to rescue Broomhilda through the purchase of one of Candie’s prized Mandingo fighters (slaves who brawl each other to the death), but once their plan is foiled by Candie’s loyal servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), the duo must hatch a new scheme to bring Broomhilda home to safety.

Throughout the film there are loads of classic Tarantino touches, including massive blood spatters, stylish violence and killings, quick camera zooms and pans, tongue-in-cheek humor, cool moments of conversation, a killer soundtrack, and loads of pop culture quips and cameos. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is Quentin at his most Tarantino-esque, so you have to either love it or leave it. He certainly isn’t backing down from his trademark style.

It goes without saying that slavery is a poor mark on America’s scorecard, and Tarantino doesn’t shy away from that either. In Django Unchained, we see two slaves, Mandingo fighters to be exact, brawl to the death — one finishes off the other with a hammer — and yet another fed alive to a pack of dogs. If ever I’ve seen a film that disturbingly portrays our country’s previous stance of slaves as property, it is Django Unchained.

But while it is at times extremely difficult to watch, Django Unchained is also a magnificent film with fantastic acting from leads Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson. While he certainly isn’t as flamboyant as his partner in criminal killing, Foxx’s straight man Django is the perfect complement to Waltz’s eccentric Schultz. And Jackson’s likable Stephen, too, is an excellent complement to his master, DiCaprio’s completely unlikable Candie. These four men are all allowed to run wild in Tarantino’s Southern world, but also know when to tug on the reins and lend some reality to their roles.

I would be remiss, too, if I didn’t mention Tarantino’s soundtrack choices here. With a blend of songs from various influential spaghetti westerns as well as a few original songs from the likes of John Legend and Rick Ross, the soundtrack for Django Unchained is as cool and eccentric as we’ve come to expect from Tarantino, and is very much worth whatever the asking price on iTunes or Amazon.

Though it can be hard to watch at times, Django Unchained is yet another excellent and wholly original entry into Quentin Tarantino’s filmography, and serves well as a companion piece to his other historical revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds. Best believe, Django Unchained is as bold, bloody, and violent as any of Tarantino’s films before it, and while it may not always go down smooth, it is every bit as entertaining as any other 2012 film you will see.

Grade: A

Wait what?

Yes, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a disappointment. Now before I go any further into this review I want to clarify a few things:

1) I loved this movie.

2) Most people will like this movie.

3) It will never be as good nor will it gross as much money as any of its trilogy predecessors: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers or The Return of the King.

Those who are expecting it to be exactly like the book will be disappointed. Those who are expecting the same epic proportions of The Lord of the Rings will be disappointed. Whereas the original trilogy was epic and dramatic, The Hobbit is lighthearted and fun. The Hobbit is a build-up, a prequel, a set up, what-have-you. It’s the story of an dwarven king on a quest for revenge and shows viewers Sauron before he “became the all-seeing eye.” It’s the brewing of the pot that starts a great war that we already know about. The beginning of the end, literally.

That being said, I am a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and Jackson; and I thought this movie was awesome in its own right. So, without further ado, I will delve into what happens and what was so great about it.

An Unexpected Journey Starts with Unexpected Guests

The film starts off with our reluctant hero, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), in his tidy and comfortable hobbit-hole minding his own business. The quirky Gandalf the Grey (Sir Ian McKellan) changes everything by leaving a strange mark on Bilbo’s door. That night, a strange visitor appears at the shaken hobbit’s door and asks if “the others” are already there. Well, 13 companions and a few short hours later, Bilbo’s pantry is empty and his home is full…Of dwarves.

They plan to leave the next morning, to take back the dwarven kingdom under The Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. This leaves the supposed burglar (Bilbo) with a life-altering decision of staying safe or going on an adventure of a lifetime. Needless to say, our hero chooses the latter and has the worst luck throughout most of this gorgeous film. The crew of dwarves, led by the Dwarf King Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), is constantly thrown into worst possible situations yet continues joking, fighting and laughing its way through Middle Earth. The ragged band of adventurers must pass through orc-ridden fields, a haunted forest and a goblin kingdom before they can even get close to their ultimate destination.

The visuals carry this film. Even the camera pauses at times to just take in the awe and beauty of the backdrops for the massive New Zealand/Middle Earth project. From the Shire to Rivendell and from Green Wood to Erebor, everything is incredibly bright and captivating in its immensity and detail. The opening scenes with The King Under the Mountain Thror (Thorin’s grandpa) and his son (Thorin’s dad) and all of The Lonely Mountain’s piles of gold, caverns and passages.

This movie was made for 3D. See it in 3D. Seriously.*

On the acting side, Sir Ian McKellan is stupendous as always and his opening dialogue with Bilbo is hysterical. Freeman gave a solid performance in his portrayal of Bilbo Baggins of Bag End. Likewise, Armitage (a familiar British face) is near perfect as the solemn, brooding and badass Thorin Oakenshield. My favorite actor was surprisingly Sylvester McCoy though, who played the “odd” wizard, Radagast the Brown. Covered in what can only be animal droppings of some sort, Saruman the White states that his mind is weakened because of the mushrooms he consumes in his magical forest… If he is crazy or not, you decide.

As usual, the music is fluid and right on in setting the tone for the scenes. When we were in the midst of a battle or the goblin kingdom, there was horns and war drums. When we were in the Shire it was like coming home after a long vacation, comforting and relaxing. Hats off to Howard Shore for continuing his incredible work on the sounds and songs of Middle Earth. (He also composed the soundtrack for the LOTR trilogy. You may have heard of him, he won like 3 Oscars for FOTR and ROTK, no big deal.)

I would highly recommend that everyone who sees this film, watch it in 3D and with 48 fps.*

Grade: B+

*If you are pregnant or suffer from epilepsy, don’t watch it in 48 fps. Just in case.

I’ll get this out of the way: Lincoln is a film sure to be handed trophies left and right come awards season. And it is very easily the frontrunner for some major awards at the Oscars — Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor chief among them. I can’t deny that this is a movie that the Academy and many, many critics will and have eaten up. But that doesn’t automatically make it great. I think it’s good, at best, and yet I found it quite boring at times.

The setup is this: President Lincoln’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) first term as commander-in-chief has ended, and upon re-election, he is still faced with numerous issues, primarily the ongoing Civil War and the controversial issue of abolition. This is the story of the passage of the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, a piece of legislation “passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.” And that man is Lincoln, of course.

Slavery was, no doubt, a controversial issue, and the issue came to a head at the beginning of Lincoln’s second term as President of the United States. Another thing we know is that the 13th Amendment was, in fact, passed, and slavery was abolished. A long time later, African-Americans were finally granted their share of other freedoms, with the help of Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. But the movement began with the 13th Amendment, the passage of which is the sole focus of Steven Spielberg’s film.

Writer Tony Kushner has done a fair enough job bringing this story to the screen, and it is quite interesting at times, but there are times during it that I felt bored. After the opening 15 minutes of the film, the next hour or so seemed to pass very slowly. Here we learn about Honest Abe’s marriage to Mary Todd (Sally Field) and his relationship with his sons, and perhaps that’s what made it so dull for me — Spielberg is known for over-dramatizing family issues, particular between father and son, and it really seemed to bog the film down a bit.

The latter half of the film further explores the president’s relationship with his son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) while also trying to maintain a focus on the events leading up to the House of Representatives’ vote on the amendment, and frankly, those parts with Robert should have been excised in favor of the main story, that of the aforementioned amendment.

That’s not to say this is a terrible film, though. In fact, I found the bits dealing with the rallying up of votes to be great, and Kushner has done in excellent job in dramatizing various meetings both between Lincoln and his staff as well as within the U.S. Congress. A great deal of care was taken to ensure the weight of these moments, and the last 30 minutes or so are really very good.

The acting, as well, is quite great. Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Honest Abe, one of the most heralded Americans of all-time and a true patriot, is tremendous. He is very much deserving of all the praise he has received and will continue to receive. And Tommy Lee Jones, as Thaddeus Stevens, is as good as he’s been in, well, a very, very long time. He and Day-Lewis are asked to portray a wide range of emotions, and their talents are on full display. They even mix in their fair share of wit, which was much appreciated, given the weight of the issues presented in the film.

Good too was James Spader in the role of lobbyist W.N. Bilbo, a man who helps Lincoln acquire votes for the passage of the 13th Amendment. Spader’s acting here reminds me of his days on the much-moved-around ABC show “Boston Legal,” a TV series that I miss, namely for the acting of Spader. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him in something worth watching, and while I didn’t love Lincoln, I very much liked seeing Spader on top of his game yet again.

But alas, I didn’t find this film as enjoyable as I had hoped. It’s not really for a lack of execution so much as I think Spielberg just spends too much time focusing on other things that aren’t at the forefront of the story. But to each his or her own. Like it or not, people, this is your current Best Picture frontrunner.

In all, Lincoln is a fair portrait of a great American, played strongly by Daniel Day-Lewis and directed well enough by Steven Spielberg. It gets the job done, I suppose, though I do think it suffers from its own share of issues.

Grade: C+

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you what should easily be lauded as the best animated film of the year. Wreck-It Ralph is insanely fun and an astonishing work of imaginative animation. And I stress imaginative here, as it presents a world that most certainly doesn’t exist outside of one’s mind.

Wreck-It Ralph puts on display the world of video games and video game characters. There is an arcade filled with games both old and new, one of which is called “Fix-It Felix Jr.”, a game in which one character, Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly), wrecks a building while the person playing the game — as Fix-It Felix Jr. (voiced by Jack McBrayer) — swoops in to save the day and fix the building.

Ralph is the bad guy, and after 30 years, he’s sick of it. He doesn’t receive any recognition, isn’t liked by those within the game’s world, and is never given the chance to win a medal, like Felix.

Outside of arcade hours, the characters in each and every arcade game are free to leave their respective games and head over to Game Central, a Grand Central Station-esque hub that is actually a surge protector bringing all of their worlds together. It’s quite clever, really, and this is the set-up for the plot of the film. Sick and tired of being the bad guy, and egged on by a bet between himself and a penthouse patron in his own game, Ralph seeks to become a hero by throwing himself into another game.

The catch: if you die in another game, you die for good, and Ralph, unfortunately chose a bad game in which to make his foray into heroism — “Hero’s Duty”, a deadly first person shooter akin to “Halo” that lands him directly in the line of fire.

Needless to say, his first attempt at heroism doesn’t go so well, and Ralph makes a second stop in a much friendlier world, that of “Sugar Rush”, a candy-coated kart racing game much like “Mario Kart.” Here, Ralph meets Vanellope Von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman), a glitch in her own game who also has a lofty goal: winning a time trial so she can be among the next day’s set of racers. It just so happens that the winner gets a medal, so Ralph begrudgingly befriends Vanellope and works to help her win the time trial. But King Candy (voiced by Alan Tudyk) and the other racers aren’t so keen on letting a glitch join their roster, and will stop at nothing to keep her from crossing the finish line.

Meanwhile, Fix-It Felix Jr. and Calhoun — a tough-as-nails soldier from “Hero’s Duty”, voiced by Jane Lynch– are on the hunt to find Ralph and bring him back to his game console and save the arcade from a deadly bug that Ralph has accidentally unleashed.

There are a host of other fun characters and worlds in Wreck-It Ralph, as well as many nods to the world of video games, including the use of the Konami code (up-up, down-down, left-right, left-right, B, A, start) that anyone with even a sliver of video game knowledge is likely to enjoy to the nth degree. But, and I stress this, you don’t need to be a gamer of any sort to like this film. It is a flat-out fun movie, a highly original animated tale that is more akin to something you would find from the minds over at Pixar than at parent company Disney. But after this and 2010′s Tangled it seems as though Disney is on a bit of a hot streak.

The voice-acting in Wreck-It Ralph is tremendous, but throughout the film I found my self in awe of the worlds of each of these games. I can’t imagine all the work that went into creating each and every one of them, and bringing their respective characters to life can’t have been an easy task. I actually saw a book at Barnes & Noble last night, after the film, on the art of Wreck-It Ralph, and after a brief gander considered buying it, before looking at the $35 price tag and nearly spitting out my water. Still, I’m stunned by the imagination and artistry that went into this film, high-priced book and all.

I don’t know how much more there really is to say, other than that if you haven’t yet seen Wreck-It Ralph, you are truly missing out. It is original, imaginative, and most importantly, one heck of a fun ride.

Grade: A