Top Ten Films 2013 — The Gourmand Film Writer

Aug 14

Aug 14 Top Ten Films 2013

In a time and age when movie theaters seem to be a dying relic and Netflix streaming grows exponentially, television, whether AMC’s masterpieces Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, and Mad Men, or HBO’s continued dominance with shows like Game of Thrones or even the bold Network programing of Hannibal, seems to be taking the place of cinema. It appears even truer when you look at the slate of films that Hollywood continually puts out each year: a never ending line of sequels, remakes, and adaptations. And then a year like this comes along and reminds us that cinema has the power to innovate, to capture, to surprise, and there is still reason to see a movie like Gravity in theaters. A great year in cinema yields an impossible task for a top ten, but here are my favorite movies I’ve seen this year.

1. 12 Years a Slave ****

How does an artist attempt to tackle a subject as large and horrific as slavery or the holocaust? That question haunted Stanley Kubrick as he attempted to put together a film on the holocaust, The Aryan Papers, ultimately abandoning it after Steven Spielberg successfully made Schindler’s List. Amidst the enormity of the issue, there comes a need to make the journey personal rather than historical, emotional rather than intellectual. Steven McQueen has achieved a horrific but necessary spectacle in Solomon Northup’s painful journey from a free man sold into slavery. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s incredible moving performance as Solomon Northup humanizes what for many of us is an unimaginable experience, removing any romanticism or growth from such a journey.

2. Mud ****

What a year it has been for Matthew McConaughey! Here is an actor that a couple of years ago I would dismiss as nothing but a romantic comedy specialist. Now, he has reinvented himself on his own terms, digging out gritty performances in Dallas Buyer’s Club, Magic Mike, Wolf of Wall Street, The Paperboy, Killer Joe, and now Mud. No film transported me to a place and a time better than Mud, an American independent bildungsroman about a two friends who discover a boat in a tree on an island in the Mississippi river. Like most children coming into age, they want to keep it a secret, something that is special to them. However, they soon discover someone else is living in their new secret. His name is Mud and he holds a mystery and excitement to him that both boys want to learn more about. He too has his secrets involving a young woman he’s in love with and sins he’s trying to pay for. Mud works not only as an excellent thriller but also a piece of Americana about the lure of the mighty Mississippi and the secrets it holds. One day, I hope it will be taught alongside Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

3. Her ****

Spike Jonze claims that his film Her is not science fiction. My great fear is that he’s right. Since the idea of artificial intelligence began to blur the concept of human identity, Science Fiction writers have long asked, “Can humans fall in love with machines?” Spike Jonze takes the question even further, removing the physical body of the android or replicant and plunging us into Joaquin Phoenix’s developing relationship with the voice and personality of his phone’s O.S. Playing off modern isolation and the continuing growing reliance on technology, Spike Jonze claims that this is simply a romance and not a Science Fiction film. He certainly plays it that way and the result is a film as haunting as Hitchcock’s Vertigo where a woman only exists in a man’s fantasy. Here the fantasy has a voice and because Scarlett Johansson’s sultry but monotone voice, what a voice it is.

4. Fruitvale Station ****

The weight of playing an actual person whose family will watch the film you’re making must have been on the conscious of first time writer/director Ryan Coogler and his leading actor Michael B. Jordan. The film begins with the actual footage of Oscar Grant being shot. I admit to being disturbed at the opening and wondering if the images were simple manipulation. I promise you they are not. What happens on the last day of the life of Oscar Grant is perhaps fictional but the results create a story of a man who on New Year’s finally makes the resolution to change his life. For too long, Oscar has been adrift, floating from rage and anger, to drugs and lying, to jail and unemployment, and now he has a desire to actual raise his daughter, to be there for his girlfriend and family. Two heart breaking scenes ground the film in the beginning. The first in a grocery store where he meets the young woman who would eventually record the footage we see at the beginning of the film. She too treats him at an arms distance but a friendly call to Oscar’s grandmother for advice on a fish fry warms their brief friendship. The other is Oscar’s decision to throw away his drugs. Sitting at the ocean, he reminds me of Antoine Daniel from 400 Blows who has reached the end and doesn’t know what to do. This film in a debut of its writer director elevates one man’s life to a story of redemption and hope.

5. All is Lost ****

There is something primal about the fear of being lost and abandoned. The main character of All is Lost is named “Our Man” and played by Robert Redford in his best performance because Redford like Tom Hanks or Jimmy Stewart has the ability to represent all of us and as the realization of the danger of isolation and abandonment set in for Our Man, we realize that the film is speaking directly to each of us. Redford’s nearly silent performance is one of true existential fear… is this all there is in life, to merely survive, leading to one of the best uses of the f-bomb in cinema. J.C. Chandor, following up on his debut script, the wordy Margin Call, shows us the true talent of a screenwriter lies not in writing dialogue but in structuring a story full of conflict. Nothing held me by the edge of my seat more this year.

6. The Hunt ****

Similar to Matthew McConaughey, what a year it has been for Mads Mikkelsen, scoring the lead in the television show Hannibal and delivering this special performance. The Hunt officially came out last year, but I saw it this year. This is the story that I had hoped Doubt would have been. A student mistakenly connects an image of porn seen on her brother’s computer with her teacher. Even though the story is retracted, the town has heard enough and declared a beloved kindergarten teacher a pedophile. Mads Mikkelsen’s Lucas tries to defend himself but as rumor and horror spread through the community he finds himself in danger even though he is innocent. The Hunt exposes the dangerous reality of how rumor becomes truth and people come together in mobs to persecute those we fear.

7. The Act of Killing ****

No film could be more audacious than Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary in which he asked members of the Indonesian military to reenact some of the most horrific crimes of the latter half of the twentieth century in any film style they wish and they agreed. Previously acts that were denied by the government, have now become publically aired through this film and humanity’s worst portrayed on screen. And yet, there is one member of the military who surprisingly expresses remorse, showing a truly human face to that of evil. The film also serves as a reminder that history will not forget these acts.

8. Blue Jasmine ****

Woody Allen’s most depressing work since Crime and Misdemeanors features two performances of true bravado: Cate Blanchett as Jasmine, a wealthy, self-obsessed socialite who married a Bernie Madoff type, and Sally Hawkins as her working class adopted sister. The film’s true tragedy lies not in the horrific choices Jasmine makes or in her deluded attempt to find love through yet another lie, but in Ginger’s (Sally Hawkins) choice of husbands/boyfriends (played brilliantly by Andrew Dice Clay and Bobby Canavese). At first, the comparison between Jasmine’s and Ginger’s relationships seems to demonstrate that the hardworking Ginger at least has support; however, Jasmine is right about one thing: Ginger dates losers because she feels she doesn’t deserve someone better. In the end, the tragedy of the film is Gingers, being stuck with a man who will continue to bring her down and prove that Jasmine, although crazy, is right.

9. TIE: The Wolf of Wall Street ****, Gravity ****

I know a TIE is technically cheating but there you have it. Two great directors at the top of their game, both making grandiose, visual extravaganza.

The Wolf of Wall Street has been said to glorify the lead character Jordan Belfort and his extravagant life-style. Am I watching the same movie as everyone else? The effect of the length and editing style, of the insane over use of cinematic devices which mirror the escalation of drugs and debauchery are not meant to glorify but to sicken and sicken I was. At the end of this epic, we see not a Great Gatsby (flawed but charismatic character) but a Caligula, someone consumed and destroyed by the excesses of their own pride, greed, and ego. The movie serves as warning to those in the future that such behavior has far reaching effects outside of the lives of the people who succumb to the worse angels of our nature.

Gravity on the other hand rather than prowling the depths of humanity transcends human existence to larger questions of life. Those questions are hidden in a brilliant survival story set in the vastness of space. An adventure film so suspenseful and visually extravagant that it must be seen in 3-D. But even in this action packed romp in space, it is the quiet moments of Sandra Bullock’s brilliant acting that give true emotional weight to this film. She faces a true existential questions. It is Gravity’s bad luck that it came out during the same year as All is Lost which in my mind is a superior film even though it lacks the visual virtuosity of the year’s best shot film.

10. Room 237 ****

Room 237 will not likely make any other top ten lists during a year such as this, but, Stanley Kubrick is how I fell in love with film. Stanley’s movies are meant to be dissected and pulled apart to understand how a director without relying on devices previously established by other great directors could achieve such masterpieces. Room 237 is an obsessed love letter to Kubrick’s horror film, The Shining. The documentary explores different interpretations and explanations for some of the films large questions and mysteries, including that image of a man in a bear costume inexplicably placed into the strangest of sequences. The film, although absurd at times, demonstrates the joy and obsession that can come out of analyzing cinema in the minutest detail. It’s sort of what I teach on a daily basis.

Runners Up: The Spectacular Now ****, Inside Llewyn Davis ****, Blue is the Warmest Color ****, The Gatekeepers ****, Francis Ha ****, Touch of Sin ****, Much Ado about Nothing ****, American Hustle ****, Prisoners *** ½, Philomena *** ½, Before Midnight *** ½, Dallas Buyers Club *** ½, Star Trek: Into Darkness *** ½, Frozen *** ½