Top 10 of 2013 (A.J.'s Picks)

by A.J. 

January and February are the time of year when I get to catch up on the prestige pictures released over the holidays and also watch any major award nominees that I've missed. A few dozen movies later, I've seen enough to make my picks for the best of movies of the past year. 

10. All is Lost

I was skeptical when I heard about a movie about a lone, nameless man lost at sea. Robert Redford plays “Our Man,” the film’s only character. The hull of his yacht has been punctured by a stray shipping container. We watch as his situation becomes bleaker and the sea does everything it can to kill him. We never learn why he is at sea; there are no flashbacks, he gives no monologues. But despite what numerous screenwriting books have told us about backstory, all you need to know about “Our Man” is that he lost and alone but alive and struggling to survive in a place that is as harsh and inhospitable to human life as the surface of the moon. There are intense thrills and heartbreaking moments. While watching this movie, you prepare yourself for the worst and hope for the best, just like “Our Man.” 

9. American Hustle

For the past few years director David O. Russell has turned out well-made, well-acted entertaining movies. While I think that Russell is overpraised for his “style” I must admit that when I see his name on a movie now, I know it is one I’m going to watch. I enjoyed American Hustle from start to finish. What makes this movie so good, more than any stylistic flare, is the excellent performances from its two leads: Christian Bale and Amy Adams. They play a team of low level con artists in 1970s New York that get caught up in an FBI sting operation loosely based on the real life sting operation called Ab-scam. Their situation becomes unstable and dangerous as the FBI agent leading the sting, played by Bradley Cooper, proves to be a loose cannon. Though details of the scam do not become any clearer as the film progresses, it never stops being fun and exciting. This film introduces you to low-life, adulterous con artists and by the end of the movie you’re rooting for them. 

8. The World’s End

I was on the fence about watching this movie. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and director Edgar Wright have done self-aware send ups of genre pictures that are also good genre pictures successfully twice (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), but could they do it again? Yes, they did. The World’s End is about reasonably average friends whose reluctant reunion is interrupted when they find themselves in an end-of-the-world-alien-invasion. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the leads, just like in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but they are not playing the same character types as in those previous films which keeps their performances fresh and interesting. I got so caught up in the lives of these characters that I was disappointed, for a moment, when I thought that the "estranged friends reunite" movie would end once the alien invasion plot began. This was not the case; neither storyline gave way to other. This movie pulls off both stories incredibly well, all while being insanely hilarious. 

7. Frozen 

The best animated film of this year was not from Pixar, but from the Disney Animation Studios. That’s not a big surprise, but it has taken the computer animated Disney movies a while to catch up to the level of quality that has become synonymous with their sister studio Pixar. Adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen story The Snow Queen, Frozen contains all the familiar elements of Disney movies: princesses, magic, a handsome woodsman, and a lovable sidekick. But the makers of this movie have told this story in such a wonderful and different way that it makes all of these things feel new again. The queen-to-be, Elsa, can create snow and ice, a power which she cannot control. She shuts herself away in an ice palace in the wilderness after inadvertently freezing the entire kingdom at her coronation. Her younger sister, Princess Anna, sets out after her. There are villains in this movie, but the story is not about good vs. evil. It is about love vs. fear. One character has to be saved by an act of “true love” and the act that saves her says so much about the creativity that went into this movie. The main characters of this movie are two sisters and while other studios would’ve worried about what that meant for the movie’s “appeal,” Disney knows that if you tell a good story people will watch. 

6. The Heat

Sandra Bullock has unfortunately been in more than few bad comedies, but she’s only as good as the material she has to work with and fortunately The Heat is hilarious material. She plays a straight laced FBI agent working with an eccentric Boston cop played by Melissa McCarthy. It’s a tried and true formula but all the important elements (script, story, characters, jokes, direction) are in place and top notch. There have been a lot of good buddy cop movies, but not so many female buddy cop movies. That the leads are women is the obvious thing separating The Heat from other buddy comedies, but what truly sets this movie apart is its confidence to not care that its leads are women and just let them be funny. 

5. 12 Years a Slave

It is rare for a good film to also be good history. There are many aspects of American slavery and the American slave experience, and to try and cover all of those aspects in a single movie could lead to a lot of scenes and characters shoehorned into the plot and a movie that is more concerned with teaching than with telling a story. 12 Years a Slave is based on the slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped into slavery in the 1840’s. Every aspect of slavery and the antebellum south in this movie feels authentic, from the master slave relationships to the way people speak. Steve McQueen directs every scene with thought and care. There are great performances from the whole cast, especially Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon, who despite of all of the suffering and injustice committed against him, keeps alive his hope and his freedom. 

4.  The Place Beyond the Pines

We often hear complaints from critics about the lack of well-written, character-based movies; however, each year a few films step up to the challenge and The Place Beyond the Pines was one of the most deserving of notice. This movie was released early in the year and, though it is quite remarkable, it was left off most “best of” lists and was not given any awards recognition. Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper deliver solid performances, as you might expect. The movie spans 15 years giving us an intimate story of fathers and sons with a grand feeling.

3. Gravity                                   

There is no other movie quite like Gravity. It is a one person survival thriller, not unlike All is Lost or Cast Away. The key difference between Gravity and those movies is not the setting but the casting; Gravity chose to rest its weight (no pun intended) not on a single actor, but a single actress: Sandra Bullock. She plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a NASA mission specialist, which means she is a scientist, not a pilot. After debris destroys the space shuttle she is lost and drifting alone in the vacuum of space. George Clooney plays astronaut Kowalski, attempting to guide Dr. Stone, but for the most part she is alone. The special effects are exquisite, but do not call attention to themselves. The score by Steven Price is unlike any other film score; it seems to rise up from the sounds of space. There are small scientific inaccuracies that only make the story more compelling and tense. I rarely encounter a movie that is so engrossing it is truly an experience to watch. 2013 was a very good year for Sandra Bullock.

 

1. I couldn't bring myself to pick a single best movie of the year for 2013. There were two films I enjoyed so thoroughly and completely that I could've picked at random which was number one and which was number two and that would've worked, but it would not have felt right. Fortunately there are no rules to making top 10 lists. My two top movies of last year, in no particular order, are:

The Wolf of Wall Street 

"Epic" is a word usually only applied to big budget adventure movies, but that is the perfect word to describe Martin Scorsese’s 3-hour biopic of Jordan Belfort, the drug-addicted, lascivious, misogynistic, greedy, criminal stock broker who, yes, cheated a lot of people out of a lot of money in the late 1980s and 90s. That epic feel comes largely from Leonardo DiCaprio’s grandiose but never over-the-top performance as Belfort. He is easily my pick for best actor for this year’s Academy Awards. The film’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, deserves high praise for her effective work taking the movie into montages and extended sequences with invisible ease. The Wolf of Wall Street has drawn criticism for not bluntly judging the actions of its characters; however, the movie doesn’t need to wag its finger. The judgment lies in simply letting the scenes of debauchery and white collar crimes play out; any audience member who needs the movie to tell them that it is wrong for rich executives to hire a little person to be thrown like a lawn dart while referring to him as “it” is probably lost beyond hope. 

Unlike American Hustle, which turns con artists into heroes, The Wolf of Wall Street’s criminals remain contemptible and essentially unpunished. The blame for that is not on the movie, but on our culture and laws that reward such behavior and allow for such loopholes. The Wolf of Wall Street is not a cautionary tale, not an expose or indictment, it is a portrait of how unlimited wealth and greed with practically no consequences leads to glorious destruction and ruin of anything decent and moral, especially if you’re a sociopath.

and  

About Time 

You should know what you’re in for when you know that Richard Curtis, the writer/director of Love Actually, made About Time. It is filled with sentiment from start to finish, as well and romance and wit, and I’m not ashamed to say it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling while watching and afterwards, too. About Time uses a science fiction/fantasy plot device to give unconventional, amusing spin to what would otherwise be a straightforward coming of age and romance story. We follow Tim, who finds out that the men in his family can travel back in time but only to events in their own lives. He uses this ability to fix embarrassing moments and tries to get things just right, but it doesn't always work. The scenes of Tim approaching the same situation multiple times will remind anyone of Groundhog Day and have the same comic effectiveness. He meets the girl of his dreams, Mary, played by Rachel McAdams, then changes something accidentally and un-meets her, and then meets her again.

About Time is about Tim's life, his life with Mary, and so much more. At the heart of the movie is Tim's relationship with his wise, content, and witty father, played wonderfully by Bill Nighy. There are certain things, Tim learns, that cannot be changed without major consequences. There are other rules to his time travel and fixing, but the movie isn't too concerned with time technicalities or paradoxes. It wants to tell a story about life and love and consequences and acceptance. If I am honest with myself, I know that I would use time travel the same way Tim did. I could go back and change major events, who I met, what I did, but then I wouldn't have the life I do today. All those mistakes and unfulfilled plans led to something very good. No, I'd make the same life, just with fewer embarrassing moments.