items tagged with Elaine Stritch

It’s incomplete, with such 2012 releases as Zero Dark Thirty, Amour, Rust & Bone, Arbitrage, The Intouchables, Not Fade Away, and Here Comes the Boom (ha ha!) still requiring my viewing. And it’s certainly eclectic, as even I can’t fathom a double feature of titles number one and two below. But in an all-around outstanding year for movies, the following ranking of 10 selections – with a bonus inclusion – is, as of January 6, my list of the absolute best times I had as a film fanatic this past year.

THE EXPENDABLES 2

If home viewings of The Expendables 2 are one day turned into a drinking game, and I pray that they are, one of the rules has to be that you chug every time the film employs a thudding cliché from the ’80s, either directly or indirectly. A plot involving stolen weapons-grade plutonium? Drink! A team of he-men astonished that a new female recruit can actually do something? Drink! Dolph Lundgren wrestling with a Rubik’s Cube? Drink twice!

SMALL TIME CROOKS

Woody Allen's latest offering is such a light and enjoyable work that it's bound to be underrated, to be seen as a throwback to the “early, funny” movies that Woody fans hold such a fondness for. And yes, it has some of the go-for-broke spirit that energized movies like Sleeper and Bananas, and some of the same slapstick silliness, too.