This year has been a bit of a slog to get through at times, and I was worried that this list would be pretty underwhelming to put together, but luckily over the past few months, I've seen enough movies that at least a decent amount finally started to stand out, enough to make this top ten and a decent list of honorable mentions.
I saw 142
movies that were released in 2013, if you're curious the list of all of them is located here:
http://www.imdb.com/list/HZoBdROJHkA/
And without further ado, my top ten list of 2013:
1. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
Joel and Ethan Coen, my favorite living filmmakers, have done it again. What at first might seem like strange subject material, the early 1960's New York folk music scene before Bob Dylan showed up, serves as a perfect metaphor for the artistic process, and what happens when, no matter how hard you try and how much talent you have, you just can't find your audience. Oscar Isaac, who made a strong impression in limited screen time a few years ago in DRIVE, plants his flag firmly here, and I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of him in the years to come. It's no secret to my friends that I'm 100% behind the recent re-emergence of folk music in the mainstream (hell, the lead singer of my favorite band, Scott Avett, auditioned for the role of Llewyn Davis), but you don't need to be in order to enjoy the music in the film or the film itself.
2. BEFORE MIDNIGHT
This series of films will almost certainly go down in film history as one of the greatest romances ever put to celluloid, and I can only hope that every 9 years we're treated to another glimpse in at the lives of Jesse and Celine to see what they've been up to in the meantime. BEFORE MIDNIGHT keeps the series intact, this time focusing on the stresses that marriage, children, and careers can put on a relationship, and while the first two films for the most part maintain a romantic, almost fairy-tale-like point of view, MIDNIGHT isn't afraid to show the uglier moments either.
3. HER
Spike Jonze made an early career out of adapting the screenplays of the brilliant screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but we are clearly better off that he decided to strike out on his own. HER is an expertly crafted film, and Jonze makes the believable creation of a plausible near future in which the events of this film can take place look easy. The balance of beautiful imagery, a funny yet poignant script, and stellar performances makes HER one of my favorite movies of the year. Scarlett Johansson is a revelation here, showing just what is possible in a voice-only performance, but the real kudos belong to Joaquin Phoenix, who sells this world and Theodore Twombly so well that we completely forget that he is the only man in the room for a good portion of the film's running time. The level of difficulty on his performance couldn't be higher, and Phoenix pulls it off, making it look effortless.
4. PRISONERS
Few films can so expertly balance harrowing family drama with Hitchcockian thriller the way that PRISONERS does. This film is most certainly not for the faint of heart, but if you can stomach it, what you'll get is an almost Shakespearean morality play combined with a riveting twisty-turny police procedural, shouldered by two near-career-best performances from Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Denis Villeneuve was smart to bring Roger Deakins aboard as director of photography (as would anyone making any movie), and the film finds a certain level of beauty in its cloudy, rain-drenched darkness. The final cut to black will drive you crazy with its brilliant ambiguity.
5. AMERICAN HUSTLE
After THE FIGHTER and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK which created interesting characters but had little regard for the greater thematic (and moral) implications of its characters' actions, it's refreshing to see David O. Russell balance those interesting characters with a story that better serves them. AMERICAN HUSTLE may bear a few resemblances to con movies you've seen before, but it's clear pretty early on that this is more a movie about relationships, whether it's romantic or just friendship. You may forget to look for deeper meaning while watching though, because the script, sold perfectly by the biggest and certainly most famous cast of the year, is so damn funny. Louis CK's ice fishing story is not just a great structural story device, it's also the funniest thing I saw in a movie this year.
6. OUT OF THE FURNACE
I seem to find myself in the minority on this movie. While I won't disagree that OUT OF THE FURNACE treads similar narrative territory to any number of revenge thrillers made in the past, for me it is more about how the story is told than the exact beat-for-beat narrative. In most films like this, the inciting incident would happen about 15 minutes in, and violent revenge would play out in the subsequent 105 minutes, but by taking the time to let us get to know these characters before some sort of manufactured plot can kick in (including a length prison detour that, if not accounting for theme/character development, could've been cut altogether, much to the detriment of the finished film), Scott Cooper elevates this standard crime drama to one of the best films of the year.
7. SHORT TERM 12
Brie Larson heads one of the best casts of the year in this drama about young social workers and the children they look after. The brilliance of the film is its ability to walk a fine line between compelling drama and issue film. SHORT TERM 12 succeeds and not being too preachy, but at the same time you'd have to have a hard heart not to walk away feeling something for the kids who are put through this every day.
8. DRINKING BUDDIES
2013 was the year of my introduction to Joe Swanberg. DRINKING BUDDIES (as well as another film, ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY, which barely missed my honorable mentions list) is a slight but satisfying tale of two friends who might want to be something more if not for their current spouses. By letting the film play out in a highly improvisational style, we get a film that sidesteps the traditional landmines of a film like this (guy gets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl back, etc.) and instead plays out in a way that much more closely resembles real life. Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde have made a name for themselves so far in more traditional/populist TV (
The New Girl and
House, M.D.), but Swanberg pulls out their best, and Ron Livingston and Anna Kendrick do an excellent job as well.
9. 12 YEARS A SLAVE
Steve McQueen brings his art house sensibilities to this Hollywood issue film to satisfying results. Most of McQueen's success is due to his spot-on casting of Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northrup. Ejiofor effortlessly exudes the intelligence and compassion that the role demands, allowing the viewer to be satisfied with this portrait of one man's struggles rather than a blanket statement about slavery itself. The excellent script by Mequon-native John Ridley aims to not only highlight Northrup, but also to show his captors as slaves of a different sort to time and circumstance.
10. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Paul Greengrass has made a career out of successfully balancing political themes with engaging action/drama, and CAPTAIN PHILLIPS may be his most successful film to date on those terms. Greengrass finds some incredible non-actors (most notably Barkhad Abdi, the most unlikely of Oscar candidates this year) to provide real humanity to the piracy problem off the African coast, but the real star of the show is (no big surprise) Tom Hanks, who gives what may be the best performance of his career, and this is truly saying something. Phillips is certainly a capable captain and a true hero, but Hanks still manages to find the underlying humanity in the character, most especially in a final scene that is too amazing to even attempt to describe here.
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