The Golden Globes are airing while I type this (though on no TV of mine), and the Academy Awards are coming up in a few short weeks. Given that, I thought I would take some time to highlight a few films you may have overlooked in 2012. These are, for the most part, not big Hollywood films.
However, many are just as enjoyable and worthy of your attention as those big Hollywood award nomination magnets. So while I loved The Avengers and was blown away by Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln like everyone else, hopefully you’ll give these films a shot as well. One of my great personal joys over the last few years has been running a film series of overlooked films at the university where I teach. Turning people onto great films is a real pleasure, so I hope you enjoy these picks.
Arbitrage
Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Roth star in what is to me the best thriller of the past year. Gere plays a finance bigwig who is carrying on fraud both with his company and his wife. When these issues begin to untangle, we also discover they intertwine.
A couple of years ago Gere shined in a similarly underrated film, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale. In that film he plays such a relentlessly good man that it was hard to understand how his wife could ever be cross with him. In this film he plays such an unbelievable jerk that you may similarly wonder why his wife ever married him. The fact that he is compellingly watchable in both roles is a tribute to his abilities as an actor. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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