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 THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

"The villain is the hero of his own story," is a fairly common adage that writers and critics toss around when it discussing the creation of three-dimensional villains.  The worst sort of villains are the randomly-evil, blatantly psychopathic characters with no redeeming qualities.  These kinds of black-hat-wearing antagonists often struggle to be interesting because there's no complexity to their personality.  As much as they may populate the movies, they're far less common in real life.

In real life, there are plenty of people who commit outrageously illegal and even evil acts for what they believe are good reasons.  More often than not, those reasons derive largely from self-interest.  "The bad guy never thinks he's the bad guy" is another cliche that underlines this.

Jordan Belfort, the protagonist of The Wolf of Wall Street, is such a bad guy.

Owing to the fact that the film is derived from Belfort's memoir of the same name, the movie is told from his point of view.  We follow his ascent as a New York stockbroker, right there with him as he nets millions of dollars in deals that are designed to take advantage of investors who are both too ignorant and too greedy to use common sense to see through the snake oil deals Belfort and his sales team trick them into taking.

It's made abundantly clear to us early on that most of Belfort's early marks are working class people for whom this investment money may be a significant part of their savings.  In one early scene, we watch mesmerized as Belfort cold-calls a gentleman and through a combination of silver-tongued salesmanship mixed with misrepresentation, goads him into buying penny stocks in a mostly-worthless start-up for which Belfort will pocket half the money thanks to the markup on the deal.

On one hand, it's kind of thrilling to see Belfort in his element, knowing just how to play his mark.  On the other hand, it's pretty much the epitome of everything people despise about Wall Street scumbags.  The film revels in that dicotomy, making sure we have ample opportunity to immerse ourselves in the debauchery in which Belfort and his cohorts partake.  It's like an ongoing frat party for these guys - drugs, hookers, yachts, wild parties, dehumanizing stunts like paying a secretary $10,000 to shave her head, or a wild office party that includes dwarf-tossing.

It's a perfect portrait of greed and indulgence.  And I don't question the appeal of that lifestyle.  Who wouldn't like to have more money than sense?  We all dream of not being able to worry about money - and Belfort's only money problem seems to be that he can't spend it fast enough.  Guys like Belfort thrive because that lifestyle is so seductive.  His victims were so eager to give him their money because he represented the dream that they were buying into - the chance to be as rich as he was.

And yet, so much of what Belfort does in this film is so lacking in any moral compass that eventually his indulgences should repulse us.  Belfort is so over-the-top that I'm mystified that any viewer could reach the end of the film thinking that director Martin Scorsese and writer Terence Winter were condoning the excess depicted in the story.  This open letter printed in LA Weekly is representative of some of the misunderstandings I've seen about this film.

"You people are dangerous. Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers' fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees.

"And yet you're glorifying it -- you who call yourselves liberals. You were honored for career excellence and for your cultural influence by the Kennedy Center, Marty. You drive a Honda hybrid, Leo. Did you think about the cultural message you'd be sending when you decided to make this film? You have successfully aligned yourself with an accomplished criminal, a guy who still hasn't made full restitution to his victims, exacerbating our national obsession with wealth and status and glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior. And don't even get me started on the incomprehensible way in which your film degrades women, the misogynistic, ass-backwards message you endorse to younger generations of men."

I like to think the filmmakers respected the intelligence of their audience, that they trusted the viewers would "get" that Belfort's horrible actions were, well, horrible without having some overt moralizing to the audience.  It's a poor film that has to tell an audience how to feel.  And it's a poor viewer who needs the film to directly state its moral message to the audience.

Despite the film lasting three hours, Scorsese keeps things moving so fast that you barely notice.  Some of the best scenes are ones where Belfort is left to preach before his broker disciples like he's leading a revival meeting.  One such scene is built around him getting them fired up to sell stock in Steve Madden's company as it goes public.  It's both glorious and revolting to watch him lap up the adoration as he plays his audience like a fiddle.

(It reminded me of an utterly embarrassing display I witnessed at a recent Comic-Con as one personality pumped up the crowd to support his new venture and the mindless sycophants were heard to yell "Preach!" during the speech and then came up to the speaker afterwards to say, "You touched me, man. Kick some ass!" It was pandering of the worst kind.)

Watching DiCaprio "hold court" in those scenes is a fantastic thing to behold.  Belfort has to be charming - how else could he so easily part the fools with their money?  Evil rich guys aren't all like Ebenezer Scrooge and Mr. Burns and DiCaprio is very effective at drawing the audience into his web.  And this isn't even getting into the physicality of the quaalude sequence, or a great encounter with two FBI agents where he turns up the charm all while trying to hit their egos with his wealth.

I left the film utterly puzzled that anyone could sit through the film and think it lionizes its subject. Upon reflection I realized there was one subset of viewers who could possibly see the film as an endorsement of Belfort - people who want to BE Belfort.  Every now and then you'll run across these guys in Hollywood and they're among some of the worst people you'll have to deal with in the industry.  But still, people likely to take that message are already pro-Belfort.  I can't imagine someone with a negative view of the guy watching the film and feeling it glorifies him.

This is a guy who basically forces himself on his wife, hits her mid-argument, then attempts to steal off into the night with their daughter only to be stopped when he rams his car in an accident. If this was some kind of white-washing of the man, I don't think we'd have seen those scenes in the final cut.

Audiences leave the film pissed off that Belfort got off with a lot less punishment than he deserved and that he still thrives today.  I suspect part of the point is that we should be angry about this.  In general, white collar criminals suffer a lot less for their atrocities than they probably should.  The film reflects that and if anything, it's less an endorsement of Belfort and more an indictment of our justice system.

Like American Hustle, Wolf  has a pretty deep bench of well-drawn characters, though this is less of an ensemble piece than the former film.  I rather enjoyed both films, but admired Wolf a little more for its willingness to make Belfort such a scumbag without even a glimmer of redemption.  The final scene of the film really underlines this, reinforcing that the man hasn't changed a whit for everything he's been through - and that there'll always be an audience ready to buy the magic beans he peddles.