2012 People's Choice - Favorites of the First Half

A recent poll posted on this blog's Facebook page was used to determined the most popular movies from the first six months of 2012 have been. The results are ranked top to bottom by number of votes received with some obvious choices and a few that may surprise you.

One simple question was asked without any specific determining factors: "What are your favorite movies from the first half of 2012?".

1. The Avengers
2. The Hunger Games
3. Prometheus
4. The Cabin in the Woods
5. Underworld: Awakening
6. Moonrise Kingdom
7. Ted
8. Safe House
9. Red Tails
10. Brave

(Titles with hyperlinks take you to my review of the movie)

At First Glance:

The top two are pretty obvious choices as they are also far and away the biggest box office successes of the year so far. After that its a pretty interesting mix of movies that were released with very high expectations and a few that, while popular, still managed to fly under the radar.

Biggest Surprises:

The biggest surprise is how The Cabin in the Woods came in at number four. I know I've been singing the praises of this movie since before it came out, but honestly I had nothing to do with its fourth place finish other than submitting my own vote. The fact of the matter is that every person that saw this movie really enjoyed it. I just wish more people would have taken a chance on it.

Seeing Moonrise Kingdom make the list was also a bit of a surprise although anything by Wes Anderson is going to have a built in following. As I am typing this, I have not gone out to see this little gem, but I definitely plan to. Ted is also surprising because I was prepared to not like it if I ever got around to see it. Apparently its actually very funny and I may just be talked in to going to see it. Any takers?!

Biggest disappointments:

Top of the list here is John Carter and Snow White and the Huntsman but for very different reasons. John Carter was supposed to be a major block buster and, based on how good of a movie it turned out to be, really should have been a major success.Just like I was saying about Cabin, this was a movie that people loved when they saw it, but not nearly enough people went out to watch it. Snow White was supposed to be really good, at least based on the idea and the awesome trailer that has been playing for months, but when it finally came out it landed with a resounding thud and was quickly forgotten.

In Conclusion:
So far this has been a banner year for movies with still more to come in the second half including heavy hitters like The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, and Django Unchained. Thank you very much to everyone that participated in the survey and we look forward to finishing out another year of watching movies at our local theaters.