TOP TEN 2012

[This post was originally composed for my personal blog, The Name Is Rebel. I am replicating it here for posterity's sake. As you might guess, the list would look a little different if I had written it today--but no alterations were made!]

In my time, some have called me a Movie Buff.  Some have called me a No You're Not A Movie Buff.  Regardless, I love movies.  They're one of my three favorite forms of media (novels and video games probably fill the other slots).  I live on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.  As such, I'm pleased to have viewed twenty-one films so far that were released in the good year 2012.  Of these, I present to you my top ten.  Unlike my Top 10 Books of the Year list, these are not culled from all the movies I have seen this year, but all the movies I've seen that were released in 2012.  I have no idea what all the movies I watched this year are.

So, without further ado... some preliminaries.

SCREAM: When is Deconstruction Not Constructive?

Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Kevin Williamson
Cast: Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Drew Barrymore
Runtime: 111 mins.
1996

For being someone who claims to be a fan of horror, I feel poorly-versed in the history of the medium.  Horror fans, even more than other subcultures, tend to display an encyclopedic knowledge of genre history and conventions.  Maybe this impulse towards comprehensive understanding was in some ways birthed by Wes Craven's Scream.

The film simultaneously parodies horror tropes and enacts them, following characters who are constantly spouting horror film trivia and debating ways their lives are or aren't like movies.  The first scene shows young, blonde, vivacious Casey (Drew Barrymore) having fun with a mysterious caller who asks about her favorite horror movies.  It turns out the caller is a killer, and Casey is slaughtered, just the sort of thing that happens in the films they were discussing!  Later on, a character is watching Halloween and imploring Jamie Lee Curtis Just look behind you! while Scream's masked murderer creeps up behind him--moreover, because of hidden camera shenanigans, a pair of other characters are watching him and shouting at their screen, Look behind you!