The Fifties for 2012: Best Arguments for Second Helpings

A new category with two goals: to honor movies distinctive and compelling enough that I'm curious to re-explore them, and to confess where my memories have gotten least reliable in one way or another, meaning these movies may be cropping up in fewer categories than they deserve to.



Best Arguments for Second Helpings
Attenberg, because I saw it almost 18 months ago, and since its oddness is so total and its landscape of feeling so mysterious that I wonder what I saw;

Corpo Celeste, because this barely-released Catholic coming-of-age tale from Italy really got me at last year's Chicago Festival but I recall few specifics;

The Master, because as sure as I feel that the reception has been overweening, the construction is so elliptical that I know it would shift shapes on me;

Moonrise Kingdom, because I had the most pleasant time watching it I've ever had at a Wes Anderson movie, yet I remember few of the scenes my friends mention; and

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, because I watched it in flagrantly sub-par conditions (on an Amtrak!) and it clearly deserves better, no matter my usual qualms about Ceylan.

Honorable mentions pretty much limit themselves to The Deep Blue Sea, because it makes me nervous how much thinner the production and the acting seemed to me than they did to almost every film critic I follow, and 21 Jump Street, because I was so disarmed by how funny and charming it was that I wonder if it's also even better than I thought it was.