20 Great Movie Moments From 2012

Bane Breaks the Bat

from The Dark Knight Rises

For those familiar with Batman lore, there is a certain perverse joy in watching this scene unfold, gradually realizing that Christopher Nolan and company aren’t just paying homage to a classic scene from Knightfall, but actually going for it, all of it, full throttle. This fight is brutal, both physically and emotionally; the entire first act builds beautifully to this one critical brawl, where the savage beating Bruce Wayne receives is as much a product of his own ego as it is Bane’s ruthlessness. This is one of Tom Hardy’s best scenes in the entire movie, as his hauntingly perceptive taunting just makes the violence that much more intense. Viewed in IMAX, it is also one of 2012’s greatest pieces of cinematography, especially in Nolan’s full-frame recreation of one of the most iconic – and unsettling – comic panels of all time. 

General Aladeen Explains the Benefits of Dictatorship

from The Dictator

I very much enjoyed The Dictator from start to finish, but the best part about Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest comedy is the way the entire film essentially builds to one spectacularly audacious, disturbingly honest joke about American hypocrisy, one that, when I first saw the film, made the audience in my theatre visibly and audibly uncomfortable. It comes near the end, when General Aladeen, after reclaiming his identity and preventing the signing of a democratic constitution for his country, tries to convince the Americans assembled that Dictatorship is vastly superior to democracy. He begins rattling off a list of reasons, like the ability to fill prisons primarily with people of one ethnicity, or the power to create massive economic inequality, or to suppress the rights of certain groups for religious reasons. Each of his disgusting statements is horrifyingly familiar, because each occurs, in spades, in the democratic United States of America. It is a wonderfully subversive, absolutely fearless bit of satire, a firm and powerful punch that hits its target dead on and had me nearly falling out of my chair with laughter. This may be the funniest movie scene of 2012 and, I wager, one of the most insightful.

Django Goes Wild

from Django Unchained

As the film has still not arrived in theatres, I will avoid spoilers in discussing this amazing action sequence. Suffice it to say that the second act of Django Unchained ends in bloody good style as, after a period of dialogue-driven drama, protagonist Django finally takes up arms and starts delivering vengeance, one redneck slaver at a time. You will know the moment when you see it, or even hear it, for the delightfully over-the-top James Brown/2Pac mash-up makes the action so much sweeter. Tarantino has always been a great director of action – the House of Blue Leaves sequence in Kill Bill is my personal favorite action scene of all time – and his skills unsurprisingly translate quite well to spaghetti-western-style violence and mayhem. More important is the way the story builds so eloquently to this moment, to the point where the violence itself has meaning. It isn’t just viscerally satisfying, but emotionally and intellectually impactful as well, and though Django Unchained features several such sequences, this one is the best of the bunch.

Continue reading on the next page…