Colin Trevorrow’s SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED epitomizes what I looked for at theaters this year: the unexpected.

Don’t get me wrong: I also go to the movies for a kind of comfort, as a way to relax.  Movie-makers like Whedon, Jackson, Abrams, and Nolan have shown themselves reliable in their work.  Franchises also allow for a certain amount of safety. Having read the novels or comics that so many movies were based on added to that safey net.  So while  The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit and Cloud Atlas (a la the Wachowskis) had their potential pitfalls, I also felt like the finished products would be as their creators intended.  And I’ve learned to trust creators.

And this made a good place for me to enjoy movies of uncertainty, either from new creators or based on quirky premises.  Like in Safety Not Guaranteed, I found myself wondering of new movies without a franchise safety net could bring more than just enjoyment: that they could take me to a new place just as surely as Aubrey Plaza’s Safety character could travel through time.  The movies in 2012 took me to some amazingly wonderful, unexpected places.

Consider Chronicle:  I had no idea of its existence until maybe two weeks before release.  A found-footage super-hero movie?  I was there.  And it was great.  Then there was the Whedon-produced Cabin in the Woods, which had been “on the shelf” for years.  Reviews were mixed, but I knew that the creators involved had something up their sleeves.  The twist beginning was great, the cynical twist ending was a place I didn’t think they would go (but did).  The innocent quest of Jeff, Who Lives at Home.  The quantum evolution relationship of Celeste and Jesse Forever.  The gut-wrenching confrontation between author and his creation in Ruby Sparks.  Those were the gems I found myself hoping for just as much as I hoped to see Bilbo meeting Gollum or Peter Parker getting bit by a radioactice spider (again).  The ultimate example of a movie that took me someplace unexpected? Rian Johnson’s Looper.  Is it about time travel?  Sure.  But then it becomes about so much more (most of which was not even hinted at in the trailer, which is a big but worthy risk).  These movies all started at one point and almost never circled back around (timeline-wise or not).  Such are the moves where movie-going safety cannot be guaranteed.¹

The general outline of the next year in movies is already well-planned: Warm Bodies, Oz, Iron Man, Gatsby, Star Trek, Man of Steel, and Monsters University for the first half of the year alone.  But it’s the movies that will fall into and rise up from the cracks that will give flesh to the skeleton, which makes 2013 that much more exciting and unpredictable.

My Most Seen in 2012: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Best Surprise: Looper (and Madascasgar 3, dang it)²

Best “Too-Soon” Reboot: The Amazing Spider-Man³

Interrupted by a Tsunami Warning: Cloud Atlas

Better Than the Reviews Let On: Brave, Rise of the Guardians, John Carter

Inspired Me To Watch Other Movies: Prometheus

Was In A Lot of Good Movies: Joseph Gordin-Levitt

Viewing Repeats Itself: Lincoln

Most Unnecessary Reveal: Middle name is Robin?  Really? Totally unnecessary.

Still Not Seen: Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, The Impossible

For a great look-back at the state of cinema in 2012, check out this article by Zach Baron.

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¹ Were there “misses” in this kind of movie experience this year?  Most definitely.  Seeking a Friend for the End of the World left me feeling unexpectedly cold.  Branded, save for one scene, was an utter disaster.  So just because you were slightly out of site from the big name movies was no guarantee of what I hoped for.

²  I still don’t quite understand what made Madagascar 3 so laugh-out-loud enjoyable.  I think, unlike most animated sequels, it fully embraced its absurdity.  Or maybe it’s just that the third movie in a series just works really well for me (the same thing happend with Ice Age 3).  I refuse to believe it all boils down to “afro-circus,” thought that was quite funny.

³  Another mystery.  Perhaps this should have been called “Spider-Man for those who didn’t like Tobey McGuire as Peter Parker.”  The whole cast of this movie did things just write.  Plus, there was enough of a shift in origin-and-history narrative that the story has taken on its own (quite intriguing) trajectory.  I hope more people see the sequel.