As usual, hundreds of movies were released in 2013. I've seen about 80 of them. It was quite a good year, so picking just 10 isn't easy. Only four of my Top Ten are also included in the
nine films nominated for the Oscar Best Picture. I did like eight of the nine Oscar Best Picture nominees, including American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, and Philomena which didn't make my list. However, The Wolf of Wall Street is an abomination. What was Scorsese thinking? But here are my picks for the Top Ten Films of 2013.
Any of my top three films could, and perhaps should, be number one. 12 Years a Slave is not only great, but is very difficult to watch. It's also one of the most important films in a long time. Everyone should see it, particularly here in Louisiana, where most of the action is set, in New Orleans and on three plantations. The plot follows the true, tragic events in the life of Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man living in New York state, who is kidnapped, sold as a slave, and is unable to contact his family and friends for 12 years. This film also has nominations for Best Director for Steve McQueen, and for the actors, Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender as his sociopathic slave owner, and Lupita Nyong'o as a fellow slave, whose suffering is beyond belief. It could have had more nominations for the rest of the amazing cast including Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, and, of course, Brad Pitt.
This is in many ways the most interesting, and different film of the year. It also may win Best Screenplay for its great writing. Spike Jonze is only 44, but already has an amazing list of director credits for films that are not your typical mainstream films, such as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are. Jonze wrote and directed Her, which follows the life of a schlubby guy (Joaquin Phoenix), who gets a new phone with a Siri-like OS (voiced by Scarlet Johansson) which is also an A.I. That is to say, it is learning and may be sentient. Her is so well done that there is no problem believing that this guy is falling in love with his phone. And beside the fact that his ex-wife is Rooney Mara, his BFF is Amy Adams, and he doesn't want to go out with Olivia Wilde, Her is a very believable film!
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I was a bit dubious when I saw the trailer for Gravity, with Sandra Bullock wildly spinning around in space. But the movie, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, won me over completely. It helps that I am a Sandra Bullock lover and not one of her many haters. I am also a George Clooney lover. That guy really makes good choices of films to make. Be sure to see his new movie, The Monuments Men. Ignore the reviews. It will make you cry. Ok, where was I? Oh ya, Gravity depicts, very realistically, a disaster where two astronauts are stranded alone in space after the Space Shuttle and the Hubble Space Telescope (sniff) are destroyed. This a two person movie and both actors do very well. Gravity is a film where IMAX 3D really makes sense. It is a joy to watch, at least, for geeks like me.
This amazing film, directed by J.C. Chandor, does Gravity one better. It has only one actor, Robert Redford, as a sailor, alone in the middle of the ocean, fighting for his life after his boat is holed by a shipping container. All is Lost is gripping despite only having one septugenarian actor, who has a total of two lines of dialog in the whole film. It is one man against the sea, and it is really nice to see Robert Redford in a starring role. It is a long time since Barefoot in the Park, The Way We Were, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid etc., but Redford can still bring it. The Oscars has ignored All is Lost except for Best Sound Editing, but Redford was nominated for a Golden Globe. This film sank without a trace, but you should see it now that it is out on DVD.
I saw this documentary at the Nantucket Film Festival, and it blew me away. It is a fantastic history of the female backup singers in pop music, starting in the 1960's. 20 Feet From Stardom follows a group of backup singers, from the days of their enslavement by the infamous Phil Spector, to their emancipation by various British Rock bands who put these great singers up front, to the present day. Many of the singers are featured in interviews and performances, including Lisa Fischer, who has been on every Rolling Stones tour since 1989 singing duets with Mick Jagger. This is a fascinating documentary. An added bonus at the Nantucket Film Festival, was a performance live by Judith Hill, who was supposed to tour with Michael Jackson on his last tour but which never happened due to his sudden death.
This film should have had some Oscar nominations just because it may be the most entertaining movie of the year, and definitely, it is the feel-good movie of the year. Now You See Me tells the story of four street magicians (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer, Dave Franco) who are recruited to take part in a series of high profile magic shows that involve robbing banks. This gets the interest of the FBI (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol (Melanie Laurent). Now You See Me is a very fun movie, and you don't know what is really going on until the very end. The cast is great, also including Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. There is a nice chemistry between Ruffalo and Laurent, and I like any movie that has a scene in the men's room at Napoleon House!
I never would have seen this brilliant Indie movie except that it played at the Nantucket Film Festival. But I wasn't the only one who noticed this nice little film. It was nominated for Best Female Lead (Brie Larson) and Best Supporting male (Keith Stanfield) at the Independent Spirit Awards. Larson runs a group home for at-risk teenagers, and Short Term 12 intertwines her story with the kids that she is caring for. This film is a roller coaster of emotion as Larson's past, present, and future get in the way of doing her job. And, I love the exhilarating, recurring subplot where one of the kids keeps making a break for for freedom and everyone tries to catch him before he can escape out of the front gate to the outside world. Larson is an eye opener. She has suddenly exploded out of nowhere, appearing in three films this year, The Spectacular Now, Don Jon, and Short Term 12.
What can I say? I do love quirky, and one of the best purveyors of quirky along with the Coen Brothers (see Inside Llewyn Davis below), and Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom), is Alexander Payne (The Descendants, Sideways). Nebraska is a about a cranky, old guy (Bruce Dern) in a small midwestern town who gets one of those, "You may have already won..." letters and believes it. So he decides to walk to Nebraska to pick up his winnings. Along the way, he exposes the seams of his whole life so they can be seen by everyone. It's a joy to watch an old pro, and one of my favorite actors, Bruce Dern in action. The supporting cast is also great. June Squibb, playing Dern's long-suffering wife, is also nominated for an Oscar. Not much happens in Nebraska, but it is very fun to watch.
I wasn't sure that I was going to like or even buy into Saving Mr. Banks, but it won me over completely by the end of the movie, I loved it. I always have trouble with biopics about people, like Walt Disney, who were real people to me. When I was a kid, the whole family would watch The Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday night. Anyway, it took me a while, but Tom Hanks became Disney, and Emma Thompson gives a wonderful performance as P.L. Travers. This film slowly rises up and takes you over, but you don't really realize how amazing the story is until the ending credits, when they play one of the actual tapes of Travers working with the Disney people. The supporting cast is worth seeing on their own, including Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Paul Giamatti, and Colin Farrell. The interweaving of Travers' backstory in the outback ,and how it all plays into the title of the film makes it all a Wonderful World of Disney.
Sometimes I love movies by the Coen brothers and sometimes I don't. But I just want them to keep making more movies. Some of their films, like Raising Arizona or The Big Lebwoski, are set in a weird and bizarre version of the world. Others, like A Serious Man, are played straight and don't have the Coen brother wackiness. Inside Llewyn Davis is one of these. It is played straight, except maybe for the many important roles that cats play in this film. Anyway, Inside Llewyn Davis tells the story of a Bob Dylan-esque character, playing music in Greenwich Village in the 60's. He isn't very successful and he is his own worst enemy. There are a lot of great small supporting parts including Carey Mulligan, Adam Driver, John Goodman, and Justin Timberlake. But this movie is all about Oscar Isaac in the title role. And the cats, of course.
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