My Top Ten Films of 2013

Like just about every blogger out there, I felt the need to write up a Top Ten List of last year's films.  I haven't seen all of the major Oscar contenders, but as of now I feel like I've seen enough of them that my Top 10 is pretty stable.  Among those I haven't seen yet: Mud, Frozen, Nebraska, All is Lost and, most regrettably, Short Term 12.

The links will take you to my original reviews of each film.

1. 12 Years a Slave - Honestly, my top three films are pretty much a dead heat, but I feel inclined to give 12 Years a Slave the edge because it takes subject matter that could have felt like pandering Oscar bait and finds a way to make it a horrific personal film about one man trapped in a living nightmare.  It knows when to be subtle and when to beat us over the head with the brutality of slavery.  Of all the films I saw this year, this might have been the one that left me with the most to think about afterwards.  There's little doubt in my mind that Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves the Oscar for his performance here and Steve McQueen is equally deserving of a Best Director nomination.

2. Gravity - I don't know how you begin to write a film like Gravity, much less direct it.  Alfonso Cuaron's film is a marvel of directing, visual effects and acting.  Some say there's no character arc in this, which to me is just indicative that they're not looking closely enough.  Many films this year offered spectacle, but for my money, no film delivered on that promise better than Gravity.

3. Her - Her could flippantly be described as a story about man who falls in love with his Siri.  That's not totally accurate.  The computer "operating system" Samantha is a few evolutionary steps above Siri, but not to a ridiculous degree.  Our lead character, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), is a lonely introvert who's still not made piece with his separation and impending divorce from his wife. Every part of Theodore's world has a veneer of phoniness to it, so it's not terribly surprising that he'd bond with his newly purchased O.S. "Samantha." In exploring the relationship, the film first seems to deconstruct the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope and in going beyond that, writer/director Spike Jonze begins to explore more universal truths about relationships.

4. The Wolf of Wall Street - A portrait of excess that's unfortunately been misunderstood by many. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese do some of their best work ever in this three-hour film about one of the greediest, slimiest stockbrokers to ever make a penny off his clients' greed and have them come back begging for more.  In its own way, it forces us to confront that part of ourselves that wants the life Jordan Belfort represents.

5. Captain Phillips - aka "the film that reminds us why Tom Hanks is so revered." The final scene of the film is incredible, as Hanks vividly shows us that the trauma of the hostage situation didn't end immediately with Phillips's liberation.  Equally impressive is how Barkhad Abdi holds his own with Hanks every moment they are on screen together - a feat that's even more remarkable once you realize this is Abdi's first feature film.

6. The Spectacular Now - There are a lot of virtues to be found in The Spectacular Now, but perhaps one of the most satisfying elements is the honest writing of the characters.  This is one of those movies where the viewer can't help but marvel at how authentic everything feels, even when it would be so easy for the script to veer into more common explorations of first love and high school cliques.  Director James Ponsoldt does a wonderful job of conveying the subtlety and nuance in Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's script. This is the sort of film that is so natural that the writing appears deceptively easy, even though the truth is precisely the opposite. If you overlooked this one last summer, check it out on DVD when it's released later this month.

7. American Hustle - I didn't get to do a full review of this one back when I first saw it and now I wish I had because the capsule review here won't do justice to all my thoughts on it.  My big takeaway from this film was how rich and fleshed-out the characters were.  You want to know how to get a movie made? Get strong talent attached. And how do you do that? Write characters with as much range and complexity as the principle cast here.  Everyone scores here.  I've seen complaints that the structure was too loose, that the plot was too slight.  I don't agree with that and even if I did, guys like Christian Bale's Irving and Bradley Cooper's Richie were so fascinating, I'd have watched a whole movie of those guys just interacting.

8. Man of Steel - I rewatched this one a second time just a few weeks ago and found that my strong first impressions of the film weren't just "midnight screening" excitement. If anything, I enjoyed the film even more a second time.  David Goyer's script isn't quite as strong as some of his Dark Knight entries, but he still does a teriffic job of making an old story feel new. Some condemned this because this didn't feel like the Superman they knew.

As someone who's lived with multiple interpretations of the mythos including two or three comic book reboots, the Donner films, Lois & Clark, Smallville and more, I've gotten used to accepting sometimes wildly distinct takes on the continuity.  Judging this film on its own terms rather than what came before is not only fairer to the film, but a better way to enjoy it.  Henry Cavill is perfect casting as Superman and for my money one of the most exhilarating visual sequences of the year is Clark exiting the spaceship in full costume and gradually learning to take flight.  If the joy on Superman's face when he finally soars doesn't make you smile, you probably have no soul.


9. The Conjuring - The was the one unqualified success in horror this year.  Several reviewers have focused on the "clapping game" scare, but for my money the opening sequence was one of the first genuinely unsettling things I've seen in a horror film in a while.  More amazingly, it involves zero violence.  There's an amazing sense of dread achieved just with a dark hallway, a shaft of light bisecting the darkness, a prone doll and creepy writing on the wall.  As the director of Saw, James Wan bears some responsibility for the decade of torture porn scripts that I suffered through in its wake. Thus, I feel his role in reviving a more restrained approach to horror might be the biggest redemption story of the year.

10. Dallas Buyers Club - I've never really understood the hate for Matthew McConaughey. Like Ben Affleck, the guy's gotten a lot of hate and derision that seems undeserved.  There might have been a period where he was trapped in rom-com hell, but I've always liked the guy, maybe just out of affection for his work in A Time to Kill.  That's why it's so great to see him remind everyone just how good he can be in this 1980s-set story about a man with HIV who's given 30 days to live and prolongs his life through illegal medications which he also provides to other patients in his situation.  This is one I definitely feel I'll need to revisit outside of the awards glut, just to fully absorb it.  Jared Leto does great work as a transgender HIV-positive patient.  It's not really a feel-good movie and is probably my most-debated entry here, but man, is this a great second act for McConaughey.

Overall, 2013 was a great year for film.  This was the first year in a long time where I was often seeing more than one movie a week and still felt like I was falling behind in the awards season crush.  I could probably craft a full top ten list out of my runner-ups and still be leaving some great movies off.  Among the other films I really enjoyed that almost made the cut were Saving Mr. Banks, Don Jon, Rush, Side Effects, Lone Survivor and This is the End.  Also, V/H/S 2 was about 75% awesome, particularly the cult segment "Safe Haven" written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans.

Even the summer tentpoles were generally pretty good, with Iron Man 3 being the best movie of the trilogy (though nothing beats the first hour of the original film), Star Trek Into Darkness managing some great work with Kirk's character, even if the film wasn't quite as good as Abrams's previous effort, and World War Z proving that you CAN save a film late in production and that Damon Lindelof is capable of being your script's trauma surgeon.  There might have been some duds this year, but it definitely felt like the quantity of good material was a lot higher than in recent years.

No matter what your tastes were, there should have been something that came out this year that restored your faith in the movies.  If you came out of 2013 cynical about the state of film, I'm quite confidant in saying that nothing would satisfy you.

12 YEARS A SLAVE is not just an important film, but a necessary one

I don't know if I've ever seen a film deal with slavery in the way that 12 YEARS A SLAVE does, and that's a good thing.  The film is based on the 1853 autobiography of the same name by Solomon Northrup, a free black man from New York who in 1841 is abducted and sold into slavery.  Here Solomon is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose expressive eyes are this film's secret weapon.  Ejiofor establishes an immediate connection with the audience.  We feel his pain in every scene - even when he doesn't speak.  Ejiofor is probably a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination and after seeing this, he might have even displaced my previous front-runner, Tom Hanks for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS.

12 YEARS is an unsettling film because of how it's the rare film about slavery that feels first-person from the perspective of the oppressed.  Usually, films set in the Civil War manage to center on a white protagonist who is of course, on the side of the righteous.  Even when evil white slavers abound, those films manage at least one prominent progressive thinker.  There's always a white man there fighting for what's right, metaphorically nodding his head at the antagonists and going, "These hillbilly assholes, amiright?"

We get no such relief in this film. The character we identify with is not some crusader who maintains a safe distance from the ugliness. Slavery is an evil, to be sure, but we're usually kept from the worst of it. John Ridley's screenplay and Steve McQueen's direction unfortunately don't afford us that separation.  The film is told exclusively from Northrup's perspective.  When he's given his first beating - the raw, brutal introduction to the fact that his life as a free man is over - we experience it almost as much as he does.

It's the sort of moment that makes one realize just how easy it is to have your own liberties taken from you.  It's impossible to watch that scene and not put yourself in Northrup's shoes.  The man beating him won't stop until Northrup ceases protesting that he's a free man.  All he has to do to make it stop is admit he's a slave.  In an action movie, our tough-guy hero would refuse to break, preferring death to debasing himself before his foe.  But here, where every lash makes us wince in empathy, we understand why Northrup realizes it's futile to fight, even as we understand we'd have given in ourselves.

The film chillingly captures how quickly a life in bondage meant keeping one's head down, looking out for oneself, and not rocking the boat, even if it means turning a blind eye to the suffering of a fellow slave.  Early on, Northrup is put on a boat bound for the south with several other slaves who have been wrongly kidnapped.  At first, it appears three of these men might work together, realizing their mutual plight.  However one of those slaves doesn't even make it to port alive.  The other is reclaimed by his legal master almost as soon as they dock.  Northrup calls after him as he rushes away, desperately hoping that the slave will tell his master that one of the other shackled men is a freeman.  But it's futile, the slave's know they have no rights and so they have no inclination to stick out their necks for each other.

This scene is echoed throughout the film, first when a female slave - hysterical after being separated from her children - is led away into the woods by two of the slave overseers. By then, we know that a best case scenario for her fate there is pretty unpleasant.  Northrup watches.. and does nothing. He continues going about his work. This is life on the plantation.  If a slave wants to survive, he doesn't cause trouble for himself.  It's an unconventional move for a film like this. It's the rare movie with the guts to show its hero standing by idly while a woman is dragged off to be beaten, raped and murdered.

This underlines another conceit of the film. Because we remain wedded to Northrup's experience throughout the film, we're not grated the respite of visiting life outside the plantation. There are no scenes of honorable men working to outlaw slavery. There are no scenes of Northrup's family trying to find it.  In short - there is nothing that allows the audience hope that we will see a conclusion to this living nightmare.

In a movie like TAKEN, though we might understand it's a horrible fate for the teenage daughter to be sold into sexual slavery.  As much as that might be the catalyst for the plot there, I don't know if the audience ever feels for the character.  Indeed, the threat of sexual slavery is played like an abstract concept in TAKEN. It doesn't feel as unflinchingly visceral as Northrup's enslavement here does.

There is no escapism here.  This is no fantasy.  Last Oscar season I praised DJANGO UNCHAINED for providing a cathartic revenge fantasy against slavers and those who collaborated with them.  This season I'm left to praise 12 YEARS A SLAVE for the opposite reason.  We don't get to see the slave owners beaten and humiliated.  There is no retribution against those who have gleefully dehumanized those they see as their "property." We feel every ounce of futility in the situation.  In the rare moments when Northrup shows some defiance, our first impulse isn't to cheer, but to be concerned that he's putting himself at risk.

Indeed, the time comes when he does cross some of the slave overseers and they promptly lynch him. Though his attackers are chased off before he's fully strung up, the noose is pulled tight enough that Northrup must stand on his toes to get any slack.  In an agonizing unbroken shot, we see him struggle to maintain his footing while the many other slaves continue to go about their business nearby.  They willfully ignore his plight, for making trouble would only land them in the same predicament.

The film starts off being a study in how slave masters dehumanize their "property" and in this scene, it's fully demonstrated how effective that is. The slaves come to even see each other as unworthy of help or human decency. There is no empathy for him, and as we watch in horror, we remember how earlier, Northrup himself turned a blind eye to similar suffering.

I couldn't help but think that the hypothetical "studio version" of this concept would have Northrup as a man of great resolve who never breaks, always does the right thing, and who spends the movie actively planning how to escape.  After all, cinematic narrative demands an active protagonist, doesn't it? There needs to be change in the character, a goal he's actively working for. Isn't that what we are lead to believe.  Think of this version as "The Shawshank Redemption of slavery."

But that's not what we get at all. Northrup breaks.  He surrenders to his circumstances because to do otherwise would provoke his death.  It's a critical storytelling decision that that really drives home the enormity of the living hell of being a slave.  McQueen wields that facet of the film with great care. If you don't walk out of this film moved by Northrup's experience, you might not have soul.

It would be simplistic to say this makes the film an extended exercise in the message "slavery is bad."  I imagined some hardened cynics might claim the script isn't more profound than that, and it is here where I would counter that a film is "about" more than it is about.  Years ago, I was quite critical of Crash, which for me, did amount to little more than a pretentious expression of the idea "Racism is everywhere and it's bad."  The film was about as unsubtle as a jackhammer wielded by Ace Ventura.  Every character seemed on the verge of breaking out into "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from Avenue Q.

What keeps 12 YEARS A SLAVE from feeling equally heavy-handed is how personal it is. Crash proceeded from the extremely misguided notion that the only way to explore its theme was to show bigotry from all sides.  The main cast included over a dozen characters in interlocking stories, all united by the theme of race.  When that many characters share screentime, no one gets explored in depth, and thus everyone got reduced to an archetype (or stereotype if you're feeling ungenerous.)  There was less viewer empathy because the narrative kept switching gears like a web-surfer falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

12 YEARS A SLAVE is as deeply personal as any film I've seen this year.  GRAVITY had the IMAX presentation and the 3D cinematography to draw the audience into the experience emotionally.  This film accomplishes the same feat largely on the back of Chiwetel Ejiofor's performance.  In a world where school textbooks are white-washing the history of slavery, 12 YEARS A SLAVE is not just an important film, but a necessary one.