Looper

Looper.
I was not planning to see this movie. I watched the trailer and said “Blah, time travel movies usually suck.” Then Sherief said it was one of the best movies he’s seen this year, and I reconsidered.
This is a good movie. This is a very good movie. This is not quite the movie that the trailer makes it out to be. It’s about the title character struggling with the presence of his future self, yes, but there’s a whole other plotline that isn’t directly referenced in the trailer, and about which I can say very little without spoilers.
So instead of going there, I’ll say that this is a movie with excellent emotional grounding. You can watch a tentpole action movie for the bangs and crashes without caring overly much about the characters or the ramifications of their actions. A movie like this will still deliver the gun fights and the chases, but it will also make you cringe, and make you ache. The Hunger Games movie chickened out (to an extent) on displaying the brutality of the book. This movie never chickens out, never pulls punches. I admire the filmmakers for taking the story and really going for it.
That said, this movie come in at number 5 on the year for me, just under Cabin in the Woods. Why? Integrity. It’s hard to do time travel in a way that makes sense. That is, after all, why I was planning on skipping this movie. And while it is absolutely worth seeing, I can’t help being annoyed that they didn’t quite get the logic all the way right. They provided a framework for how the rules of time travel work, but the frame doesn’t hold together under close examination.
This would ruin the movie except that the filmmakers and actors have done such a good job with the characters, and have otherwise executed so well.
So: if you can suspend disbelief and resist nitpicking too hard, and are in the mood for a very R-rated action sci-fi thriller, you could do a whole heck of a lot worse than Looper.

1. The Avengers
2. The Amazing Spiderman
3. Brave
4. The Cabin in the Woods

5. Looper
6. The Secret World of Arrietty
7. The Dark Knight Rises
8. Men in Black 3
9. Prometheus
10. Hunger Games
11. The Lorax
12. Snow White and the Huntsman
13. Total Recall
14. Bourne Legacy
15. Mirror, Mirror
16. John Carter