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.

My review of 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.  I saw it last week in IMAX 3D and it might very well have been the first time that I didn't feel like the victim of some sort of ticket up-selling scheme.  As a rule, I don't enjoy 3D and I rarely feel it adds anything of value to a film.  Too often, 3D releases are post-converted cash-grab, with the extra depth being little more than an afterthought on a film that may not have even been conceived with it in mind.

The film stars Sandra Bullock as a first-time astronaut who is one of two survivors of a shuttle mission that fails when debris from a Russian satellite assaults their vessel.  George Clooney stars as the other astronaut, the easygoing old flirt who nonetheless becomes the cool head in a crisis once things go bad.  With communication with the ground knocked out and the shuttle no longer livable, Clooney and Bullock set out for the International Space Station, intent on using the escape pods there to return to the surface.  But there's a ticking clock - in 90 minutes, the ISS will also be pelted by debris.

Thus begins a tale of survival, and even now, after two weekends of release and spoiler warnings, I'm disinclined to discuss too much of the plot.  Suffice to say that one of the great joys of Cuaron screenplay (co-written with his son Jonas) is how the story is always in motion, allowing the script to move from one crisis to the next with shocking speed.  Before the film is over, Bullock's character will have dealt with drifting out of control in space, desperately trying to grab onto a space station, failing escape pods, fire within an oxygen heavy atmosphere and several dangerous spacewalks. There are moments where Bullock's character is barely able to draw breath - a feat likely being duplicated simultaneously by many in the audience. 

And this is where the IMAX 3D truly enhances the story.  It draws us emotionally into the plight that Bullock's character faces.  It's not just about providing stunning visuals and eye candy.  There is actual emotional purpose in the sequences.  We're made to experience what the astronauts do, making this fantastic scenario somehow feel more real and tangible.  It's an assault on all the senses, aided tremendously by Cuaron's use of longer takes.

After I saw Avatar, I remarked that James Cameron did a solid job of using 3D to add depth to the scenes, but that in 10 years, when the mo-cap and 3D technology was commonplace, there'd be little left to make Avatar remarkable.  It has decent performances and a familiar concept all wrapped up in a script that's okay.  There are plenty of little things I liked about the movie, but it's not a film I've been compelled to revisit beyond that first viewing.

Avatar uses its 3D to add some depth to a world that's utterly fantastic, but it's not done in a way that makes me feel for that world.  Brilliant visual effects alone can't make an audience feel.  It's why when I watch Revenge of the Sith, I don't really get emotionally involved in the technically complex space battle that opens the film, but I'm very riveted by the final lightsaber duel between Anakin and Kenobi.  The latter is the emotional payoff for three films - Obi-Wan is confronted with his greatest failure and must avenge his fallen comrades while simultaneously killing the protege he failed to properly mentor.  The former is just a bunch of CGI pixels.  For me, at least, most of Avatar falls into this category.

GRAVITY, however, achieves that emotional connection with its protagonist and proceeds to use that to wallop the audience throughout the rest of the film.

Is GRAVITY in 2D still GRAVITY?  It might be possible to make the case that the answer is "no."  Cuaron is savvy in how the 3D draws our attention.  I read an article last week that confirmed it was no accident that in one scene, a floating Marvin the Martian doll is set forth very close in the audience's field of vision so that they would focus on that first.  This way, when a floating body enters the frame, it blindsides the audience just as it would startle Bullock.  The intent of the 3D is to make viewing the film a completely immersive experience.  On a massive IMAX screen with 3D vision, our perspective is often the same as Bullock's.  

Those who derided the film for its lack of character arcs are looking for the wrong things in this movie.  The focus of this movie is on a survival story in a setting that's about as inhospitable as it gets.  Not every story is going to be 50% character and 50% plot.  Which is not to say that there isn't character work in this film.  Bullock's character definitely has an arc.  True, the nature of the story necessitates that her backstory be revealed in an expository conversation, but I don't find the motivation for that conversation to be unreasonable.

GRAVITY is such a triumph in so many ways that to browbeat it for not having a conventionally-revealed character arc is to sound like a rigid intellectual preaching the "virtues" of a "well-made play."  Avatar's thin characters drag it down because the story itself is so conventional - but especially because it's hard to maintain emotional investment in the film.  When a film truly achieves the kind of emotional investment that GRAVITY demands, it doesn't matter if it misses a few items on the mythical "screenwriting checklist."

That's not to admit that the script is weak - because it isn't.  Every aspiring screenwriter could learn from the tight pace, the rising tension and the straightforward way that one crisis begets another.  And within all of that, it still manages a rather decent character arc for Sandra Bullock's character, if one is attentive enough to notice it.

See GRAVITY in theatres, because I can almost guarantee that the film everyone's raving about will not be the same experience you get on blu-ray in the comfort of your own home.  I fear that venture will be akin to watching The Wizard of Oz on an all-black-and-white television.