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.

Best of 2012: Cinematography & Film Editing

Welcome back to my belated celebration of the best of 2012! Sorry it's been a while, but sickness and last week of classes before Spring Break kept me busy. Nevertheless, I'm back with two of my favorite categories!

Best Cinematography

• Alps - For enveloping us in its world of nervy unsustainability with bizarre, absurdist textures; and for crafting an appropriately alien surface in which to project them.

• The Master - Because while at times they feel impenetrable, each image (beautifully shot in 65mm) bursts with dream-like beauty and captivating surfaces.

• Skyfall - For crackling use of light in its setpieces (and an apt sense of pure sensuality). Deakins might be showing off, but it's a wonder of gobsmackingly beautiful lensing.

• Tabu - Speaking of gobsmackingly beautiful, Tabu, a film that swells with unapologetic romanticism in its images, uses gorgeous B&W to capture fragmented memories of the past and foggy loneliness of the present. Deserves much more than one sentence can give it.

• The Turin Horse - For apocalyptic sorrow in its wonderfully dreadful atmosphere and engaging mundanity in its compositions. Unrelenting work.

Honorable Mentions: In a year as strong as this one for cinematography, it killed me to leave off Wuthering Heights' brutal elemental awareness, The Snowtown Murders' well-earned sordid imagery, Beasts of the Southern Wild's magical naturalistic detail, Moonrise Kingdom's warm storybook aesthetics and human detail, and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia's hemispherical richness and ingenious natural lighting.

Best Film Editing

• How to Survive a Plague - For masterful arrangement of archival footage and emotionally-stirring confessionals that vividly insert us in this important place in history and tells a wholly rousing story while doing so.

• Moonrise Kingdom - For what some might call fussy preciosity I find to be quaintly immersive and  pleasantly paced storytelling. The letter montage is an utter delight.

• The Snowtown Murders - For an impeccable vice-grip on its complex narrative structure, slow-burn tension and eerie economy in claustrophobic dread that slowly slithers its way under your skin. 

• Tabu - For the profound dead air of "Paradise Lost" and the nostalgic liveliness of "Paradise." "Paradise" especially evokes an exciting free-flow of sensations.

• Zero Dark Thirty - For juggling a vast conduit of details while remaining light on its feet and assembling such a tight, muscular final act.

Honorable Mentions: Magic Mike for an eclectic array of surprises in its genre-weaving (from Mike's final dance to Adam's awry night of drug experimentation); Alps for a constant unspooling of new perspectives and wavy formal flow; Amour for surgical precision in its long takes and clinical cuts; and Oslo, August 31st for a mesmerizing and hypnotic tracking of a day in the life of Anders.