Best of 2012: Makeup and Visual Effects

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

• Goon - Because those fights are so effectively disgusting, and the aftermath never forgets to accentuate how much of a teddy bear Scott is as he displays those nasty injuries.

• Holy Motors - For ingenious singular creations and for evoking such alive, loose-screwed moods that are indelible in its ode to the craft.

• Lawless - For nailing and primly enveloping the ensemble in the film's authentic period-specific style.

• Looper - Because JGL as Bruce is just uncannily executed. Gordon-Levitt's prosthetics are never rendered acting-proof.

• This Must be the Place - For delivering wonderfully eccentric detail to the aging rocker and for allowing Sean to breathe livability and melancholy into the design. The novelty, surprisingly, never grows dormant.

Honorable Mentions: Despite how much I admire the films' individual achievements above (especially Holy Motors and Looper), I'd be lying if I said this category was laden with strong contenders to begin with. Anna Karenina, Bullhead and The Grey all beautifully utilize their makeup design to wonderful effect, and came very close to cracking the top five, but other than that, I struggled with coming up with a top 10. Had I decided to highlight five in the honorable mentions, the two films to round out the top 10 would've been Django Unchained and The Paperboy, both of which are mainly for two pairs of actors' makeup/hair work in each of their respective films (Waltz/DiCaprio and Kidman/Gray), though they tend to overdo it and underdo it at the same time in other areas. 

And no, I didn't forget The Hobbit, Lincoln or Les Miserables. I liked The Hobbit: The Pointlessly Meandering Journey okay, and still find Gandalf lovably designed, but the dwarves were kind of an eyesore. Lincoln, I will say, does tremendously nuanced work in turning Day-Lewis into the 16th president, but for every delicate detail of Lincoln's visage there are five as garishly designed as James Spader or Tommy Lee Jones' wigs. As for Les Miserables, I will always appreciate Hugh Jackman's malnourished, soul-deprived Jean Valjean at the film's opening, but the rest of the film is just riddled with statically dour and just plain befuddling choices. Zombie whores? Really?!

Best Visual Effects

• The Avengers - For diligent detail in its elaborate, atmospherically-aware setpieces. And for the best and least self-serious use of The Hulk out of all three film incarnations.

• Life of Pi - For utter loveliness in its epic, luminescent beauty. Refreshingly earnest in its sweeping use of scale.

• Looper - For minimalistic resourcefulness in its futuristic detail and the ingenuity of the film's time travel logic (the deteriorating Old Seth and Joe's self-inflicted secret messages).

• Skyfall - For both strainlessly serving its action sequences and playing into the film's stylized elegance with brilliant pizazz.

• Ted - For making Ted's facial expressions, beer-chugging and bong rips feel so palpable, and for perfectly incorporating him into his live-action environment.

Honorable Mentions: I actually didn't see that many VFX-driven films in 2012, which isn't usually a problem for me, despite how much of a film snob I'm perceived to be. So it should be noted that, despite seeing 129 films from 2012, I never got around to The Impossible, Prometheus or Snow White & The Huntsman.

Nevertheless, Chronicle, The Dark Knight Rises and Flight were the only other films I really considered before compiling the list.