1. Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée)
2. The Oxbow Cure (Calvin Thomas, Yonah and Lev Lewis)
3. Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J.Abrams)
4. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
5. L’Inconnu du Lac (Alain Guiraudi)
6. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh)
7. River (Ross brothers)
8. La última película (Mark Peranson and Raya Martin)
9. La Vie d'Adèle (Abdellatif Kechiche)
10. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Honourable Mention: Everyday is Like Sunday (Pavan Moondi), Hotel Congress (Nadia Litz), The Dirties (Matt Johnson), Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine).
***
Natasha Blair
1. The Immoral (Lars Daniel Krutzkoff Jacobsen)
2. Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Aleksey Fedorchenko)
3. La vie d'Adèle (Abdellatif Kechiche)
4. The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg)
5. Burning Bush (Agnieszka Holland)
6. Concrete Night (Pirjo Honkasalo)
7. Tom à la ferme (Xavier Dolan)
8. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
9. I'm So Excited! (Pedro Almodóvar)
10. At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
***
Nicholas Little- Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
- Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée)
- Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
- Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
- The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance)
- Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
- Stoker (Park Chan-wook)
- To The Wonder (Terrence Malick)
- 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
- The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki)
***
Blake Williams1. The Three Disasters (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
3. The Woolworths Choir of 1979 (Elizabeth Price)
4. Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project (Jodie Mack)
5. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
6. The Realist (Scott Stark)
7. MANAKAMANA (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez.)
8. Auto-Collider XVIII (Ernie Gehr)
9. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudi)
10. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang)
***
Sam AdelaarTo paraphrase a comment of Craig Keller's that was instantly etched in my memory, these films make other filmmakers look like dumb assholes.
- Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang)
- Story of my Death (Albert Serra)
- Neighbouring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
- A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers, Ben Russell)
- Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
- Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
- La última película (Mark Peranson and Raya Martin)
- Norte, The End of History (Lav Diaz)
- Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudi)
- The Canyons (Paul Schrader)
***
Matthew Stein1. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
2. At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
3. Passion (Brian de Palma)
4. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
5. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers)
7. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
8. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh)
9. Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
10. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
***
Alan Jones1. Bound 2 (Nick Knight)
2. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
3. American Horror Story: Coven (Ryan Murphy, Brad Felchuk)
4. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
5. Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn)
6. Enemy (Denis Villeneuve)
7. Tower (Kazik Radwanski)
8. Pain and Gain (Michael Bay)
- The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
9. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
10. Asphalt Watches (Shane Ehman and Seth Scriver)
Honourable Mention: A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
***
Ryan Krahn1. The Policeofficer’s Wife (Philip Gröning)
2. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
3. Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
4. Southcliffe (Sean Durkin)
5. Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat)
6. Omar (Hany Abu-Assad)
7. Child’s Pose (Calin Peter Netzer)
8. Story of my Death (Albert Serra)
9. The Sacrament (Ti West)
10. Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-Soo)
***
Marc Saint-Cyr1. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
2. Ship of Theseus (Anand Gandhi)
3. Halley (Sebastián Hofmann)
4. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
5. Die Welt (Alex Pitstra)
6. Reality (Matteo Garrone)
7. It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman)
8. Melaza (Carlos Lechuga)
9. Centro Histórico (Aki Kaurismäki, Pedro Costa, Víctor Erice, Manoel de Oliveira)
10. Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)
***
Jason Tyrone1. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2. Rush (Ron Howard)
3. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
4. Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve)
5. Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J.Abrams)
6. Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass)
7. Half of a Yellow Sun (Biyi Bandele)
8. Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence)
9. Thor: The Dark World (Alan Taylor)
10. Fast & Furious 6 (Justin Lin)
***
Peter Merriman1. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
2. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
3. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
4. Bastards (Claire Denis)
5. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
7. Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J.Abrams)
Favorite Acting: Amy Adams (Her), Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Color), everyone in Spring Breakers.
Favorite Cinematography: Gravity, Leviathan, Pain and Gain, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Worst Shot: Sandra Bullock as the 2001 fetus (Gravity).
Favourite OSTs: Bastards, Room 237.
Films I really wanted to see but was unable to in time for this list: A Touch of Sin, At Berkeley, The Wolf of Wall Street.
***
Adam NaymanMy Most Memorable Theatrical Viewing Experiences of 2013
- The Black Stallion (Carol Ballard, 1979): I was asked to introduce a screening of Carol Ballard’s sublime adventure movie at the Revue Cinema, and even though it was projected on Bluray rather than an actual print, it held the audience of parents and children in thrall from beginning to end. It just so happened that the show took place a few weeks after I’d seen Life of Pi, and while the practice of using one movie to beat up on another is sort of bad film criticism, Ballard’s analog experiments with scale remain considerably more enchanting than Ang Lee’s digital gamesmanship.
- Concussion (Stacie Passon, 2013): I think this movie is a mixed bag of good performances and mediocre writing, but seeing it at the Carlton with one other person on a freezing night in early December was hilariously memorable. My fellow patron was a woman in her early fifties swaddled in woolen winter clothing, which she did not remove after entering the theatre; after about thirty minutes had passed, she exited, leaving her shopping bags behind. I didn’t go after here, but there was no need because twenty minutes later, she returned, and, perhaps put off by the winter chill and/or exhausted from her mad dash back to the cinema, plunked down and watched the last half of the movie. I was going to ask her what she thought of it when the lights came up but I stopped because any answer would have ultimately been disappointing.
- The Fall (Peter Whitehead, 1969): I had a great time at True/False in Columbia, Missouri, and one of the many pleasures was getting to attend screenings curated and hosted by Eric Hynes – a longtime colleague whose writing for, The Village Voice, Moving Image Source, The New York Times and especially Reverse Shot has distinguished him as one of the best critics of his generation. Eric was at True/False to oversee a sidebar called Neither/Nor, which featured “chimeric” films that straddled the boundaries between documentary, narrative, and experimental cinema, and one of his picks was Peter Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic The Fall – a polyphonic symphony of a great (and crazy) city circa 1968. Shooting in a variety of New York locations, Whitehead didn’t so much distill his location’s essence as enshrine its extreme atomization: if The Fall feels like a thousand movies in one, that quite literally comes with the territory.
- Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksi Guerman, 1998): I was wary of finally catching up with the late Russian master Aleksi Guerman’s notorious memory film – a borscht-flavored madeleine -- mostly because I’d heard it was unbearable – in a good way, but nevertheless. Huddled in the TIFF Bell Lightbox on a frigid evening, I submitted – helplessly, if not gratefully – to the punishingly slow yet insanely chaotic mise-en-scene of a movie that gives and asks no quarter: and who could expect half-measures in a story that culminates with a flatulent, mortally ill Josef Stalin offered up on a slab? Darker than pitch – and also darker than Tarr, while we’re at it – Khrustalyov, My Car! may have been the single most immersive viewing experience I had in 2013, and it took about 24 hours to get out of that muddy, mucky, fucked-up headspace.
- La última película (Mark Peranson and Raya Martin, 2013): Some writers employed (if that’s the word) by Cinema Scope chose not to write about editor and publisher Mark Peranson’s sophomore (if not occasionally sophomoric) feature; others wrote encomiums to its greatness (one of which was actually published in the magazine’s pages). Me, I didn’t go out of my way to write on the film – and a “film” is what it is, even if the formats keep changing – because I figured that no good could come of it regardless of what I thought. But I can say that watching La última película at Jackman Hall, with a crowd of people I mostly knew very well, bookended by onstage exchanges between a programmer I admire greatly and a colleague I’ve known and written for exactly ten years now, elicited a rare sensation in the context of a film festival: pride. Not that I did anything, of course – I was just proud of the fact that somebody I knew very well had 1) put his time and money where his mouth was and made a movie and 2) made that movie in a way that was exactly as haphazard and uncompromised as it had to be to justify its rhetoric (if not its existence). I’ll also put my credibility on the line and say that the long final sequence, with its color-coded cinematography and gorgeous cover version of “Me and Bobby McGee,” is genuinely beautiful cinema.
- The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zurcher, 2013): Cool? Really? Ja.
- Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese): I was tempted to include the near-deserted screening of The Canyons at TIFF Bell Lightbox where one of the young women sitting near me exclaimed that “this is the worst movie ever” but I had a better time overall at the Seventh Art’s Paul Schrader event at the Royal. Mr Mishima presided over a very nice projection of Taxi Driver and held forth with a combination of anecdotes (like the one about the time that Robert De Niro pitched him and Marty on a Travis Bickle Part Deux) and agitated predictions about the state of the film industry. Kudos to Chris Heron for keeping Schrader more or less on track. I’d like to see more of these events in the future; the question is which down-on-their-luck New Hollywood icons can be lured to Toronto for a couple of bucks and the promise of a mostly full house? (Brian De Palma? John Carpenter? Monte Hellman? Anyone have Elaine May’s number?).
- Vendredi Soir (2002, Claire Denis): Usually, I rewatch Claire Denis’ films over and over again; in the case of Vendredi Soir, I’d only ever seen it once, at a TIFF press screening in 2002. Brad Deane’s Claire Denis retrospective at the Lightbox was of course wonderful, and the highlight for me was getting reacquainted with the master’s sweetest and lightest – and yet for all that still powerfully intense and memorable – movie, in the company of my wife and many very good friends. On a second viewing, I was able to better appreciate the sheer degree of difficulty in Agnes Godard’s camerawork: the startling proximity of the lens during the lovemaking scenes, observing without invading, drawing us closer to the characters while still insisting on the glorious privacy of their situation.
***
Christopher Heron1. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
2. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
3. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel)
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
5. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
6. At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
7. Bastards (Claire Denis)
8. Mille soleils (Mati Diop)
9. Norte, The End of History (Lav Diaz)
10. A Field in England (Ben Wheatley)
***
Kazik Radwanski- At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
- The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
- What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
- Emperor Visits the Hell (Luo Li)
- Story of my Death (Albert Serra)
- L'inconnu du lac (Alain Guiraudie)
- La última película (Mark Peranson and Raya Martin)
- Listening to the Space in my Room (Robert Beavers)
- Ma Belle Gosse (Shalimar Preuss)
- Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez)
- Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns, Mati Diop)
- Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-soo)
- Stop the Pounding Heart (Roberto Minervini)
- Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
- The War (James Benning)
- Vic + Flo ont vu un ours (Denis Côté)
***
Igor Drljaca - Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudi)
- Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
- Norte, End of History (Lav Diaz)
- Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
- Like Father, Like Son (Hirokazu Koreeda)
- Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers)
- Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
- 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
- Vic + Flo ont vu un ours (Denis Côté)
***
Lev Lewis1. At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
2. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
3. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
4. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
5. Ma Belle Gosse (Shalimar Preuss)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers)
7. Viola (Matías Piñeiro)
8. Safe Haven (Lasse Hallström)
9. Passion (Brian de Palma)
10. Neighbouring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Runners up: Drug War (Johnnie To), Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami), The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie), No (Pablo Larraín), Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas).
***
Pavan Moondi1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)
3. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan)
4. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
5. Cutie and the Boxer (Zachary Heinzerling)
6. The Dirties (Matt Johnson)
7. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
8. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
9. Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
10. The Crash Reel (Lucy Walker)
Honourable Mentions: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery), Mud (Jeff Nichols), Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine), Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski), Crystal Fairy (Sebastián Silva), The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance).
***
Brian Robertson- Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
- Her (Spike Jonze)
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
- Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
- The Wolf Of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
- Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl)
- Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov)
- No (Pablo Larraín)
- Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
- Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
Honorable mention: Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine), Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski),
At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman).
***
Kiva Reardon1. Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Côté)
2. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
3. Bastards (Claire Denis)
4. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
5. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
6. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
7. In a World… (Lake Bell)
8. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
9. Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
10. The Oxbow Cure (Calvin Thomas, Yonah Lewis)
***
Julian Carrington1. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
2. Neighboring Sounds
3. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
4. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
5. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
7. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudi)
8. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
9. Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder)
10. Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
***
Calum Marsh 1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
3. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
4. The World's End (Edgar Wright)
5. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
6. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
7. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
8. Drug War (Johnnie To)
9. At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
10. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
***
Tina Hassannia1. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
3. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
5. Her (Spike Jonze)
6. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
7. The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt)
8. At Berkeley (Fredrick Wiseman)
9. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
10. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
***
Diana BarbozaTop Ten Films with Canadian distribution
1. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
- The Grandmaster (Wong Kar Wai)
- Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
- Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
- The Oxbow Cure (Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas)
- Drug Wars (Jhonny To)
- A Touch of Sin (Jia Zangke)
- Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Côté)
- Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
- Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
Top Ten Including Undistributed Films
1. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
- The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
- Manakamana (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)
- Eega (S.S. Rajamouli)
- Ship of Theseus (Anand Gandhi)
- The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-Wai) *Chinese cut
- Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
- The Oxbow Cure (Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas)
- Viola (Matías Piñeiro)
- Why Don’t You Play In Hell (Sion Sono)
***
Angelo Muredda- Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
- Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
- Bastards (Claire Denis)
- Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
- Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
- Drug War (Johnnie To)
- Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
- Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
- The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-Wai)
***
Chris Kennedy 1. Pat O’Neill retrospective at the Ann Arbor Film Festival
Pat O’Neill’s meticulously optically printed films--composited together out of shards of imagery--are stunning to watch, both in the scale of the technique as well as his commitment to a glorious surrealistic representational abstraction. Seeing these films projected is always a treat and finally seeing his 35mm masterpiece Water and Power in the 1000 seat Michigan Theatre was a revelation.
2. Eric Fleischauer and Jason Lazarus, “twohundredfiftysixcolors”
A silent feature film edited together using over 3000 GIFs harvested from the Internet, using this outdated yet resurgent format invented in the 1980s to draw a line from proto-cinema to the contemporary moment. Silly, sublime and smarter than it looks, twohundredfiftysixcolors was a film I wasn’t able to shake all year. Gustav Deutsch meets Nyan Cat.
3. Paul Sietsema
Catching his survey show at the MCA Chicago, and the local exhibition at Mercer Union was a great way to submerge into Sietsema’s work this year—exploring both his 16mm film installations and large trompe l’oeuil drawings. His work solidified for me the idea that using 16mm film is to use history itself as a medium, as film is now synonymous with the troubled 20th century.
4. CCMC, “Vol. 3”
A highlight of this year’s Media City Film Festival was the re-release of this lost album by the almost half-century-old improv group, featuring (in this case) Michael Snow on trumpet. The original pressing vanished when the New York distributor went under in the 70s, but this jazz inflected LP is well worth the resurrection. The album is fabulously lithe and free.
5. Robert Beavers, “Listening to the Space of My Room”
Beavers’ films have long been an inspiration and an ideal for their uncanny mastery of color, light and editing language. Of key interest to me was a sequence centered on the editing of an earlier film—a series of quick cuts that brought the mind’s eye close at hand.
6. Kenneth Zoran Curwood, “Poor Jim”
“Poor Jim” was made on Curwood’s handmade optical printer—a fact that only made the film’s liquid imagery that much more impressive—as the titular Jim’s visage dissolved into Whitneyesque mandalas.
7. Eugeni Bonet, “Photomatons”
Curator Elena Duque brought this 1976 dual projector super 8 film to the Images Festival from Spain and it was wonderfully bracing—a rapid-fire montage, a loud proto-Merzbow soundtrack and a feat of projection (a single reel of super 8 is threaded through two projectors) made this screening electric.
8. Ben Russell and Ben Rivers, “A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness”
A nice blend of the sensibilities of the two Bens, this film highlighted the pair’s talents as shooters, with both rich tableaux and nimble handheld camerawork. My five-month old son watched it with me—he was transfixed by the burning house.
9. Studio Ghibli, “Grave of the Fireflies”
Wasn’t expecting the end of the year to be capped off by the viewing of an animated film this rich and moving, but Grave of the Fireflies is a uniquely serious and beautiful film—punctuated by a rich sense of silence and pause that gives the story of two Japanese children caught in the final days of World War II such serious weight.
10. Barbara Hammer and Narcisa Hirsch as part of The Free Screen
My gig at TIFF Lightbox enabled me to bring both Barbara Hammer and Argentina’s Narcisa Hirsch to Toronto to present short surveys of their films (the latter with the aide of curator Federico Windhausen). The two filmmakers were gracious and inspiring. Their presence in Toronto made 2013 a year to remember.
***
Sean RogersTop Ten Theatrical Releases
1. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
2. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel)
- Tristan und Isolde (Bill Viola)
Two very different but equally immersive experiences.
3. The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai) *Hong Kong blu-ray edit
4. Bastards (Claire Denis)
5. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
6. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
7. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
8. Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
9. Drug War (Johnnie To)
10. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
I have not yet seen the new Coens, as well as a handful of other possible oversights.
Top Five Straight-To-Video Films
1. Night across the Street (Raúl Ruiz)
2. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Alain Resnais)
Two idiosyncratic examples of Old Man’s Cinema, in the gonzo/melancholic tradition of Red Line 7000 and Cheyenne Autumn.
3. One Minute to the Next (Werner Herzog) 4. A Field in England (Ben Wheatley)
5. This is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi)
A few others that straggled in via YouTube, VOD, and DVD.
Top Five Festival Films
1. At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman)
2. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
3. Redemption (Miguel Gomes)
4. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. Spring (Nathaniel Dorsky)
I did not get to see Manakamana, as well as a handful of other probable oversights.
Finally, the best new thing I saw that only partially played in Toronto was a programme of short films that toured under the name Let Your Light Shine: Handmade Films by Jodie Mack. And of that bunch, the only film that appeared here, I believe—Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project, at Images—was the one that dazzled me the least!
***
Thomas Loree 1. The Grandmaster (Wong) *U.S. cut
2. Real (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
3. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudi))
4. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
5. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang)
6. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh)
7. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
8. Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi, Kambuzia Partovii)
9. All is Lost (J.C. Chandor)
10. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (Sophie Fiennes)
Hon. Mention: Ida (Paweł Pawlikowski), The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola), The Counselor (Ridley Scott), Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-Soo), Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen), Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro), Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche).
***
John Semley1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
2. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
3. Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
4. A Touch Of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
5. The Wolf Of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
6. Her (Spike Jonze)
7. The World's End (Edgar Wright)
8. Something In The Air (Oliver Assayas)
9. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
10. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
ALSO, marking the new cinema of surface, an emergent aesthetic of disjunction and emptiness qua emptiness, along with The Wolf Of Wall Street: Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine), The Canyons (Paul Schrader), The Counsellor (Ridley Scott), Passion (Brian de Palma).
***
Will Sloan Of particular interest to me this year were: the three Chinese masters (Jia, Wong, To) who struggled to make films about China's past and present within the Chinese system; and two very American films by Scorsese and Korine about the joys of mindless, amoral consumption. I guess the oddball pick on my list is To the Wonder, but I was surprised to see so many of the same people who loved Tree of Life turn on Malick's follow-up. IMHO, his earnest films about love and faith are even more powerful the further they get from conventional storytelling.
In alphabetic order (which is lame, but I honestly have no idea how to rank Spring Breakers against A Touch of Sin, y'know?)...
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
- All is Lost (J.C. Chandor)
- Drug War (Johnnie To)
- The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai) *Chinese cut
- Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
- Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
- To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)
- A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
- 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
- The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
The year was strong enough that I'm surprised Leviathan, Her, Behind the Candelabra, Before Midnight, Blancanieves, and The World's End didn't make the cut. Or maybe they did. Ask me again in a week.
***
Peter Kuplowsky - Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh)
- Eega (S.S. Rajamouli)
- Why Don't You Play in Hell (Sion Sono)
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
- Magic Magic (Steven Soderbergh)
- Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
- Riddick (David Twohy)
- Drug War (Johnnie To)
- A Field in England (Ben Wheatley)
- Fateful Findings (Neil Breen)
***
Eastern Yoo - Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh)
- Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
- Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
- The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai) *Chinese cut
- The We and The I (Michel Gondry)
- To The Wonder (Terrence Malick)
- Mud (Jeff Nichols)
- Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
- Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
- A Field In England (Ben Wheatley)
***
Andrew Parker1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
3. This is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan)
4. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
5. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers)
6. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
7. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
8. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
9. All the Light in the Sky (Joe Swanberg)
10. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
***
Dave Voight (Criticize This!)1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers)
3. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
4. Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
5. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
6. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
7. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
8. In A World... (Lake Bell)
9. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
10. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
***
Kirk Haviland 1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
3. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
4. The Battery (Jeremy Gardner)
5. The Way Way Back (Nat Faxon, Jim Rash)
6. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
7. Stoker (Park Chan-wook)
8. The World's End (Edgar Wright)
9. Why Don't You Play in Hell (Sion Sono)
10. Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
***
Adriana Floridia 1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
3. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers)
4. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
5. Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee)
6. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
7. Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
8. Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
9. The Dirties (Matt Johnson)
10. Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence)
***
Leora Heilbronn 1. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2. Her (Spike Jonze)
3. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
4. Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee)
5. Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass)
6. Stoker (Park Chan-wook)
7. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
8. Mud (Jeff Nichols)
9. Basterds (Claire Denis)
10. Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
***
Bob Turnbull
1. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
2. Her (Spike Jonze)
3. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
4. The Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix Van Groeningen)
5. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
6. Starred Up (David Mackenzie)
7. Like Father Like Son (Hirokazu Koreeda)
8. Mud (Jeff Nichols)
9. Twenty Feet From Stardom (Morgan Neville)
10. Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
1. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
2. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
3. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
4. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
5. Her (Spike Jonze)
6. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
7. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
8. Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)
9. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
10. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
***
Joe Ciaravino1. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
2. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
3. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
4. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
5. Her (Spike Jonze)
6. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
7. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
8. Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)
9. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
10. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
***
Mitch Ariel1. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
2. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Terence Nance)
3. Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)
4. Her (Spike Jonze)
5. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
7. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
8. The Congress (Ari Folman)
9. Real (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
10. Tom at the Farm (Xavier Dolan)
***
Sean Kelly1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. The Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix Van Groeningen)
3. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki)
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers)
5. Stoker (Park Chan-wook)
6. Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
7. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
8. The Dirties (Matt Johnson)
9. Big Bad Wolves (Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado)
10. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
***
James McNally- Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
- The Square (Jehane Noujaim)
- Club Sandwich (Fernando Eimbcke)
- Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
- Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
- Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
- Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
- The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
- These Birds Walk (Omar Mullick, Bassam Tariq)
***
Alex Huls1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
3. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers)
4. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
5. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
7. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
8. Drug War (Johnnie To)
9. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
10. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
***
Corey Pierce1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. The F Word (Michael Dowse)
3. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
4. Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
5. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
6. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
7. Philomena (Stephen Frears)
8. The World's End (Edgar Wright)
9. Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (Declan Lowney)
10. American Hustle (David O. Russell)
***
Greg Ashman
1. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)2. Her (Spike Jonze)
3. Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler)
4. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
5. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
6. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
7. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
8. Graceland (Ron Morales)
9. Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener)
10. Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
***
Courtney Small1. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2. Her (Spike Jonze)
3. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
4. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous)
5. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
6. Mud (Jeff Nichols)
7. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
8. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
9. The Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix Van Groeningen)
10. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
***
Mark Barber1. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
3. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
4. Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
5. Amour (Michael Haneke)
6. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
7. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
8. Leviathan (Verena Paravel/Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
9. Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
10. Pieta (Kim Ki-duk)
***
1. Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi)
Shahbaz Khayambashi
2. The World’s End (Edgar Wright)
3. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
4. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (Declan Lowney)
5. How Strange to be Called Federico (Ettore Scola)
6. Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
7. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
8. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)
9. Borgman (Alex van Warmerdam)
10. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
***
Rob Trench 1. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki)
2. 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen)
3. Her (Spike Jonze)
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
5. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
6. Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve)
7. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
8. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
9. Mud (Jeff Nichols)
10. Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)
***
Marc Cira1. The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard)
2. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous)
3. Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
4. Visitors (Godfrey Reggio)
5. Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée)
6. Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
7. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
8. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
9. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
10. Upstream Colour (Shane Carruth)
***
Jeff Wright I’ve been a bad film fan this year. There are so many amazing looking films that I still haven’t seen before writing this list. For example, I still haven’t seen Ain't Them Bodies Saints, The Wolf of Wall Street, Inside Llewyn Davis, Gravity, Blue Jasmine, Blackfish, Cutie and the Boxer, Mud, or Grown Ups 2. I’m pretty sure that I had The Act of Killing and Spring Breakers on my best of 2012 list due to not paying attention to the whole “got a release” rule (I'm a bit of a rebel, I know). I still love those films and was tempted to include them again on this list. So with all of that out of the way, here’s my deeply flawed but 100% stood-behind favorite films of 2013 list.
- The Battery (Jeremy Gardner)
- Cheap Thrills (E.L. Katz)
- Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg)
- The History of Future Folk (John Mitchell, Jeremy Kipp Walker)
- Let The Fire Burn (Jason Osder)
- R100 (Hitoshi Matsumoto)
- See You Next Tuesday (Drew Tobia)
- Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
- This is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan)
- Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
***
Christine Sirois The Ten Movies I paid For To See in Theatre
As a not yet fully-formed and “on-the–invite-list” film writer, I still pay out of pocket to see movies. This means a careful balance between seeing what I’m super excited about, what’s popular, going to the theatre with pals and what I need to see for a project I’m working on. These are the 10 movies I went to see in the theatre this year. It’s a pretty fascinating and odd-ball combination of Hollywood blockbusters, international films and small(ish) budget films.
- Gangster Squad: I saw this for episode two of my shortly lived
podcast Reel Talk; listen here for what I really thought of this picture.
- Pieta: I went with pals who have impeccable taste even
though I’d never heard of it; was not disappointed. It was aesthetically
stunning, undeniably sad and very minimal. I don’t typically enjoy films that
have a lot of visceral gorey scenes, but this one balanced it with fantastic
interpersonal scenes.
- Anna Karenina: A friend asked me if I wanted to go. I’m not
particularly interested in Tolstoy to begin with and I think I almost fell
asleep at one point. Although it was snooze-inducingly long, I did enjoy the
offbeat staging and choreography as well as the costumes.
- The Great Gatsby: My sister desperately wanted to see this
incarnation of the classic novel. I wasn’t sold on it from the trailer and
should have listened to myself. This overindulgent film isn’t wonderfully
gluttonous like Gatsby. It’s self-serving and poorly paced.
- Frances Ha: This film was the catalyst for launching the
Lady Movie Club in Toronto, a monthly gathering of like-minded ladies who are
interested in watching movies and talking about them afterwards. This film has
all of my favourite things: meandering, self-doubting 20-somethings trying to
get their respective acts together, a great soundtrack and charming
performances all wrapped in the beautiful aesthetic of the French New Wave. My
favourite film of the year.
- Iron Man 3: Looking for an action flick? This’ll do ya.
It’s missing the same zing and humour of the first one, but is head and
shoulders about Iron Man 2.
- The Bling Ring: I really wanted to like this movie, but Sofia Coppola made it pretty hard.
The forced, over-acted performance from Emma Watson made my skin crawl and
Coppola seems to want to make a social critique about consumerism or celebrity
culture but it never quite gets beyond writing a love letter to “those crazy
kids these days”.
- Don Jon: This was quick, smart and entertaining film. I had
fairly low hopes going in, but was pleasantly surprised at how the slick
editing, booming soundtrack and sleaze-bag protagonists all worked together to
create an entertaining piece of contemporary filmmaking.
- The Act of Killing: I had no idea what to expect but was very
moved by this Danish-British-Norwegian co-production. Following a failed coup
in 1965, gangsters Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry in Medan (North Sumatra) were
promoted from selling black market movie theatre tickets to leading the most
notorious death squad in North Sumatra. There is a lot of experimental
filmmaking as they explore the history of this time period through the eyes of
the gangsters, who are attempting to film a dramatization of the events.
- Eega: I saw this as part of the Toronto After Dark film
Festival. This Indian Telugu romantic fantasy-fictional film is probably one of
the wackiest most delightful movie theatre experiences I’ve had in a long time.
Although this cut was allegedly shorter (the original runs closer to 3 hours
from my understanding), this David & Goliath tale has the best use of
drawn-out, slow, deliberate writing sequences ever.
***
Ben Harrison
Kurt Halfyard
1.
Under The Skin: Capital “C” cinema, Jonathan Glazer takes a page out
of the Stanley Kubrick playbook, and offers a look at the human
condition through a buxom venus fly-trap (Scarlett Johansson again -
what a year for this actress!) Often obtuse, formal, and shot like a
motherfucker, Under The Skin is challenging and immersive, visceral and
intellectual, playful and vicious. I came out of the screening of this
film more elated than any other film this year, knowing I’d seen
something that breaks down cinematic boundaries whilst standing on the
shoulders of giants.
2.
Her: Spike Jonze has a gift for rigorously constructing his cinema as a
complex but intuitive mix of special effects filmmaking and structure,
all the while making the whole concoction feel intimate and spontaneous,
like the romantic couple at the films centre, a charmingly against type
Joaquin Phoenix as the lonely man in a shell of immersive technology,
and Samantha the sentient OS (voiced by a charming Scarlett Johansson),
Jonze is talking directly to you while in reality he is talking to
hundreds of collaborators simultaneously. Her is one of the great films
of 2013, a bellwether to our own evolving near-future, the clean lines
and messiness apiece, designed with a necessary pragmatic optimism. I
have a little more faith in the world.
3.
Upstream Colour: Shane Carruth creates a disturbing, significative bit
of science fiction drama that trusts its audience to assemble the story
and the themes, but offers the largest one with Thoreau’s book which
lies at the films centre. The communication in the film is with pictures
not words and there are some mighty pretty pictures.
4.
Magic Magic: Easily the best horror movie of 2013, the tragedy is that
it went straight to DVD in Canada and the US. Juno Temple plays a young
American girl visiting her friend (Emily Browning) in Chile who gets
stuck with her friend’s friends (Catalina Sandino Moreno and Agustín
Silva) at an island cottage. Her hosts (including a creepy Michael Cera)
fail to see her mental state deteriorate until it is far too late.
Magic Magic is an empathy endurance tests, but a richly directed one.
5.
The Counselor: I saw this film theatrically more times than any other
film in 2013, I simply cannot get enough of Ridley Scott’s cynical adult
noir, nor do I ever get tired of Cormac MacCarthy’s peculiar world-view
or rich dialogue. The screenplay and the direction of The Counselor,
are abstract and blunt simultaneously, a feat unto itself.
6.
The Broken Circle Breakdown: This film raked up emotions that spanned
the gamut of sadness to joy. Earthy bluegrass numbers, uninhibited sex,
child killing cancer and embracing everything that life has to offer. It
seems the ideal American experience resides in the Netherlands these
days. After this and the 2009s The Misfortunates, I will watch anything
from Felix Van Groeningen.
7.
Manakamana: This years most affecting documentary is little more than
fly-on-the-wall observation of 11 cable-car rides by various souls
coming to (or going from) Nepal’s Manakamana Temple. An exercise in
people watching par excellence, it allowed for fairly introspective
thought on my own choices for what I make of a life. I love it when the
movies allow for this kind of reverie.
8.
Stoker: Cinema for cinema’s sake, the piano solo, and a different kind
of finger-solo, remind us that we do so enjoy a bit of lurid voyeurism
at the movies. Beautiful, showered in symbols and immaculately designed.
Korean director Park Chan-Wook’s english debut is shaded with
Hitchcock, but looks like a star crossed love affair between Wes
Anderson and David Lynch.
9.
Museum Hours: A rich, pleasantly didactic, visualization of how art and
the perception of art evolves right along with society, and is never
very far away. I feel closer to Pieter Bruegel the Elder than I ever
though I would from the musings on his pairings in the Vienna gallery as
the central location in the film. The human relationship at the core is
also pleasingly adult and warm.
10. Mud: A coming of age tale of about the confusion of a couple boys on the cusp of manhood, and the man who has never really left his boyhood behind. Michael Shannon reminds us here in the briefest of cameos, both what the movie is trying to say about life (all sorts of things float on down the river, and boys will be boys) while underscoring just how wasted he was in the Man of Steel fiasco.
Notable Missed films: Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, White Reindeer, Fruitvale Station, Bastards.
Worth
Mentioning, (The “11s” if you will): Night Moves, Before Midnight,
Sweetwater, Nebraska, 12 Years A Slave, Spring Breakers, Only Lovers
Left Alive, The Dirties, The Lone Ranger, Gravity, The Last Stand.
*** 1. Inside Llewyn Davis: Simply put, no other film connected with me this year the way the Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis did. Maybe it was my decision to move from Halifax to Toronto on my own and pursue film scholarship, and how I connected with Llewyn Davis’ pursuit of his craft come hell or high water, and why that pursuit of true art will always be what I seek. Maybe it’s because 2013 was a truly difficult year, and I connected with the Coen’s understanding of why that pursuit of true art is worth continuing on with. Inside Llewyn Davis is my favourite film of 2013 for so many reasons. I love the film’s maturity in the context of their filmography, and how a genuine progression of emotional clarity seems to have taken place in the Coen brothers work since their creative renaissance of No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man. While A Serious Man is gravely concerned with the struggles of the self-defining subject (“I’m TRYING to be a serious man!”), Inside Llewyn Davis moves past the nihilism of A Serious Man and The Man Who Wasn’t There to something more hopeful: the film examines how we communicate with others, and the difficulty of pursuing one’s selfhood in a community. Every character Llewyn Davis meets in the film positions themselves as a certain kind of subject defined by ‘authenticity’, while constantly being undermined by their own true selfhood. The film asks difficult questions of remaining true in the art of performance, and if such a thing is even possible, but concludes hopefully with the determination that such a pursuit is worth dedicating one’s life to. If anything, Inside Llewyn Davis is as personal a film as the Coen’s will ever make, without ever succumbing to insincerity. The film is among their funniest work, while never turning a judgemental eye to any of their characters. At the end of the day, both Inside Llewyn Davis and my year in 2013 keep me hopeful for what’s to come in the future, and why I pursue my studies more determined than ever. Inside Llewyn Davis reminds me of something Levon Helm says in Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, something that leaves me ultimately hopeful for 2014: “Yeah, New York, it was an adult portion. It was an adult dose. So it took a couple of trips to get into it. You just go in the first time and you get your ass kicked and you take off. As soon as it heals up, you come back and you try it again. Eventually, you fall right in love with it.”
2. The Act of Killing: Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a tremendous accomplishment, investigating the relationship between cinema and the nature of memory in the face of true evil. Images from the film, especially the genuinely out-of-body experience of the final scene, have stayed with me since first seeing it in July. The Act of Killing is a haunting and once-in-a-lifetime achievement of documentary filmmaking. Oppenheimer finds a genuine transformation in Anwar Congo, an Indonesian former warlord who relishes in re-enacting his part in the 1965 genocide. As Congo turns his crimes into films in the styles he used to go see as a boy, The Act of Killing displays these scenes in crime and musical cinema stylizations, creating a genuinely surreal and fever-dream environment. Oppenheimer delvers further and further into Congo’s psyche, as these men finally come face to face with their conscience and how they choose to live with their actions today.
3. Closed Curtain: Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain is a dizzying display of self-reflexive cinema, bringing in the context of his entire career to reveal his most personal work to date. Returning to the simplistic ‘one house setting’ of This Is Not A Film, this time around Panahi is coming to terms with his twenty year ban on making films and there is more genuine pain and anger in this film than any other released this year. Panahi is haunted by the characters he’ll never get to engage with outside of his home. While there are traces of humour, this is a much more bitter film than he’s made before, and arrives at a powerful conclusion of why he continues to make the art that is so necessary to his existence. As the curtains are literally closed and then torn down around Panahi, he brings in more characters that blur the line between his various films, and asks questions about the manipulation of the film from various outside forces including the director himself. Never arriving at a simple answer, Closed Curtain is as personal a film a director can make and is stunning in its simultaneous complexity and emotional simplicity.
4. Short Term 12: Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 is a masterpiece of subtlety, revealing powerful characterizations in simple acknowledgements of humanism. It’s perhaps the ‘smallest’ film on this list in a year of personal and spiritual journeys into the cosmos and into the past, but rings more emotionally true than any other film released in 2013. Depicting a few months in the life of workers at a group home for young people, Short Term 12 does not take the easy route of ‘the Sundance film’ where easy resolutions run abundant. Instead, Short Term 12 parallels the challenges of the young people in the home with the lives of the care workers, transcending ‘quirk’ to reveal how people overcome challenges in their lives not through any grand gesture or statement but through functioning and learning to manage the triggers in their lives. It’s the film’s subtlety that keeps coming back to me, months after I first saw the film. Many films have a moment of realization, where we suddenly reach an understanding of why a character behaves the way they do. Short Term 12 comes to these understandings so organically, simply and naturally, in a way that feels effortless. Most of the revelations about these characters arrive so quietly, in a way that suggests a lifetime without ever saying a word like the finest of Ozu’s films while remaining an incredible and uniquely personal masterpiece of 2013. Brie Larson gives the finest performance of the year.
5. Her: Spike Jonze’s filmography is filled with high concepts grounded in an emotional truth, whether its escaping into the mind of John Malkovich to avoid ourselves, or running away to an island of Maurice Sendak’s monsters to depict the challenges of living in a community. Jonze’s Her is perhaps his most hopeful film to date, synthesizing a relationship between a man and his OS to produce a universal catharsis of self-acceptance and shedding of the past. In the hands of any other filmmaker, Her would have fallen into the traps of simple contemporary moralizing, or criticizing of our dependent relationship with technology. Jonze avoids such conventions in creating an emotionally believable and dazzlingly functional relationship between his Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), where both characters are deeply realized. In particular, Johansson avoids the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ connotation, instead portraying a real consciousness who has wants, needs and desires beyond simply waking Theodore out of his stupor. Her asks real questions about our relationship with technology, and concludes with a tremendous realization of how we interact with other people in an age where we spend most of our time isolated on our cell phones.
6. Before Midnight: The third film in Richard Linklater’s decades-spanning trilogy, Before Midnight is a wonderful summation of the quiet maturity of his career. Reuniting with Jesse and Celine, almost twenty years after their first encounter in Before Sunrise, Linklater puts his characters through the ringer this time around, and the investment he’s built with these characters makes their arguments hurt. As with each film in this series, the passing of time is felt in reality and in the narrative constructs of the film, and the development of Jesse and Celine is both believable and surprising at the same time. Once again, Linklater manages to find the perfect note to end on, though it comes a close second to Celine’s dance at the end of Before Sunset (my favourite ending of any film, ever).
7. 12 Years A Slave: Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave is a nightmareish two hours spent in one of the darkest eras of history. Perhaps the film’s greatest impact is felt in relation to its context among other cinematic depictions of slavery. Previous films like The Colour Purple or last year’s Lincoln insisted on grounding their depictions of slavery within a moral centerism that, while helpful in the simple dramatization of narrative conflict, still operated under a system of depicting certain characters as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ slave-owners. Similarly, these films function under a narrative of ‘perseverance under adversity’ that fail to use the language of cinema to depict the loss of humanity and destruction of identity that happened during the period of slavery in America. 12 Years A Slave bears no simplistic dramatic moralizing, instead focusing on the painful erosion of identity in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Solomon Northup. McQueen’s finest work to date.
8. Gravity: Gravity combines three wildly disparate elements of cinema into a terrific and exciting vision of a potential future; all at once, it is a subtle rewriting and reconfiguring the language of cinema to create a feeling of ‘weightlessness’ never before experienced, a stellar example of the traditional Hollywood star formula, and a radical affirmation of spirituality that is in line with the rest of Cuaron’s work. Seeing the film in IMAX was one of the most immersive viewings I’ve ever experienced.
9. Blue Is The Warmest Colour: Kechiche’s Blue Is The Warmest Colour is equal parts intimate and epic in scale. Exarchopolous and Seydoux give stunning performances in a dizzying film that depicts the entirety of a long-term relationship, from excited beginnings to its painful conclusion. In particular, jumping a few years into the future in the second part of the film, Kechiche succeeds wildly in displaying how the relationship falls apart in domesticity. Blue Is The Warmest Colour manages to adeptly navigate its position in relation to the director’s male gaze; a success in its ability to depict the emotional truths of any relationship.
10. The World’s End: Edgar Wright’s final entry in the Cornetto trilogy is also his finest, most mature film to date. More than any other filmmaker today, Wright understands both the allure and dangers of nostalgia and what it truly means to live in the past. Simon Pegg gives career-best work as Gary King, finally providing Wright with a complex and difficult character to explore. In The World’s End, Wright links his hyperactive cinema with a humanism that builds to a truly life-affirming conclusion of new beginnings.
