Nebraska was here in the "best of 2013" spot for four weeks.
Then came Her.
I like to watch movies. I also like to make lists and cross things off those lists. I'm going to see all the "good" (read: majorly hyped) movies of 2013 over a relatively short span of time. I'm going to feel all the feels that accompany those movies. I'm going to drink all the coffee (I don't like popcorn too much). Then I'm going to cross those movies off the list. Then probably take a bathroom break from all the coffee. Brief thoughts about said movies will be added shortly thereafter.
Here's the list.
12 Years a Slave
In total agreement with everything everyone (except Armond White) has been saying about this movie, especially regarding Chiwetel Ejiofor. Two notes to add:
• Not too many people are mentioning Sean Bobbitt, the director of photography who beautifully helped realize Steve McQueen's "unflinching gaze" through stark selective focus, mastery of light and shadow, and uncomfortably extended shots (read more about his M.O. here), so I'm mentioning him.
• The movie is based on a true story, and the Brad Pitt character is integral to the film's resolution, but his scenes seemed unauthentic compared to the rest. Probably because it was Brad Pitt. I don't know.
The Act of Killing
Jesus H.
Here's a movie that temporarily shuts down the 'Murica drip and reminds us how nearly every other part of the world is quite different from our own in terrible, unimaginable ways. That Joshua Oppenheimer manages to depict the horrors of the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965 without ever showing an actual act of violence is nothing short of remarkable. The concept is brilliant and surreal (Oppenheimer gets the documentary's protagonists to re-create their crimes against humanity on film, Hollywood-style), the characters are simultaneously likable and horrifying, and the dearth of consequences is astounding — unless you consider Anwar Congo's final scene a consequence of sorts.
My viewing of this was sandwiched between finishing Sherman Alexie's Flight (a time-travel narrative in the style of Slaughterhouse-Five) and starting Crime and Punishment — both complementary bookends to the moral justification and emotional fallout (or lack thereof) of the gangsters in this movie who brutally exterminated their own people. This fact should have no bearing on your own viewing.
All Is Lost
American Hustle
When it comes to long cons, I've always been partial to Hammett and Mamet (House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner). I didn't think I'd be an especially easy mark for David O. Russell's latest effort, especially since I was one of the handful of people who didn't see much of a silver lining in Silver Linings Playbook.
But this movie was fucking fun from the feet up, thanks to a Goodfellas-style soundtrack, smart dialogue, exceptional period detail, and stellar performances from its top-tier stars (especially Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence). Maybe all the superlatives distract from a lack of any real substance, but who cares. Plus I was unexpectedly attracted to Christian Bale's gut (seriously, that's one sexy, confident gut!). So there's that.
August: Osage County
I wasn't excited about this movie because I knew it would be overacted and overblown and kind of ridiculous. And it was. Its whole was definitely not anywhere near the sum of its fun-to-watch parts. But Terry Letts wrote the screenplay, and I really liked Killer Joe, which he also wrote, so it was worth checking out. I liked it (not loved it), despite its flaws, for its campiness and masochistic one-degree-away-from-being-everyone's-dysfunctional-family quality.
Hard, bitter Julia Roberts was also a revelation, especially during her rants against the cancer-ridden, Darvocet-addicted Meryl Streep. "Eat your fish, fucker! Eat your fuckin' fish!" just made its way onto my Julia Roberts soundboard.
Before Midnight
Marathon-watched all three Linklater films in this series over the summer and realized that this is why you need to rewatch this sort of movie every 10 or 20 or 30 years, especially if you didn't appreciate it the first time around. No real surprise, but Before Sunrise and its successors make a lot more sense to a 40-something who's stumbled down the falling in love/marriage/kids/good times/bad times/what happens now? path than to someone just making the turn onto that thoroughfare. Hope they put out a fourth installment so I'll know what to do with it all a few years from now.
Blackfish
Won't dispute the main concepts here: Wild animals should be in the wild, separating whales from their families is cruel and heartbreaking, SeaWorld acts in the interest of profits instead of animal altruism. Plus the trainers interviewed all seemed like decent people on the up-and-up, and SeaWorld was offered the chance to tell its side for this piece and declined.
But I wish this movie had been a little more even-handed. It's hard for me to get 100 percent behind an exposé that's only showing one heavily slanted side of things. I like to see all the angles and then make my own decision. But it doesn't look good, SeaWorld. No, it does not.
Blue Is the Warmest Color
Blue Jasmine
Cate Blanchett is all that's really memorable from this movie. As it should be.
Captain Phillips
Solid, suspenseful action-thriller. Terrific acting by Barkhad Abdi and Tom Hanks (and I'm no "oh my God Tom Hanks" campaigner). There were some nice touches (no subtitles for the Somali interactions so the audience could feel as disoriented as the captain and his crew, Greengrass' choice to shoot the opening scene in the car between the captain and his wife without ever really showing their mouths moving). Not sure the film belongs in the best pic category, though.
Dallas Buyers Club
I've been following Matthew McConaughey's upward trajectory for quite some time, so good on you, dude. Hope you get one of those big-time Hollywood awards for this (Jared Leto, too), though you're probably raising those adorbz kids with Camila and playing the bongos and don't even care. Anyone who makes SEVEN really, really good-to-outstanding movies in just two years deserves love. I've seen them all, as well as the eighth movie in his recent compilation, Magic Mike, which was all kinds of meh — but those aren't bad stats.
Keep up the great work. Hope everyone watches True Detectives on HBO, too. You're going places, big guy. Wait. You're already there.
Enough Said
The first third of this movie was the divorced-and-dating version of Celine and Jesse from Richard Linklater's Before series, with authentic conversations and issues that wooing couples of a more mature age realistically face. The second third was basically Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character, Eva, acting like an asshole, while the third third was her character realizing (maybe?) what an asshole she is/was/had been.
Part of me thinks this was a poignant, funny grownup movie about middle-aged dating and heartbreak, and that part was totally driven by the empathy (not pity) I had for James Gandolfini's Albert. The expressive Louis-Dreyfus perfectly captured her character's insecurities, flaws, and fears, making her one of the more accurate depictions of a divorced mother than we're accustomed to seeing onscreen. But it was hard to root for Eva, a shallow, oblivious, self-centered ball of neuroses who surrounds herself with similarly shallow, oblivious, self-centered friends. I don't get it, A.O. Scott.
Fruitvale Station
As soon as I finished watching this, I had to know more about director Ryan Coogler. Got my mind blown by discovering he's only 26. It takes a skilled cinematic hand to suck you into Oscar Grant's world in the 24 hours before he was murdered, yet still manage to gut-punch you with the ending you already knew was coming.
Gravity
Oy.
OK. Cuarón pulled off a cinematographicsupercalifragilisticexpialidocious feat, at least in terms of how the heck he meshed those visuals into such a stunning look-see. He deserves a best director nod for that alone. Sandra Bullock can act her astronaut ass off when she has to, and I can expertly attest to the aural realism of the film's outer-space sounds: I own this Brookstone sound machine that uses authentic NASA recordings, and the movie sounds JUST LIKE IT. Swear to God.
But it shouldn't be a contender for best picture. Which means it's probably going to fucking win. George Clooney was given nothing else to do but be George Clooney (go ahead, argue that that's all he should be doing here); the clichéd dialogue made me cringe; and the treacly backstory was unnecessary — it would have been just as captivating and more bearable without the dead child/running away metaphors. But I guess test audiences like that sort of thing.
The Great Beauty
Her
* I haven't seen this yet. But I've fallen in love with a computer. It ended badly. I want to see how Joaquin Phoenix handles it.
** My Twitter review of this movie: "Watching Her was like watching the first 10 minutes of Up over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and o"
A Toronto Star reviewer's review: "A poignant love story that measures the emotional toll of living too deeply within the virtual world."
Besides that, "devastating" and "revolutionary" are the only words I can use to describe what Spike Jonze pulled off with this film, simultaneously transmitting today's technologically driven loneliness and isolation, as well as all of the universal yet unique emotions we feel when we've felt and lost what we believe is true love. It's the best modern-day love story you'll see for a very long time.
Why is Joaquin Phoenix not one of the frontrunners during this awards season? Not sure I'd award him the win (there were many fantastic actors in 2013), but this guy performed the incredible feat of holding up his end of an intense relationship onscreen BY HIMSELF for the entire movie.
Inside Llewyn Davis
Much like the Dogfish Olde School barleywine I consumed right before theatering, ILD isn't something you can expect to fully digest right away. It needs to be savored. Its notes may be obvious, thank to T Bone Burnett, but it has to be more closely scrutinized for a full appreciation of all the other hints. And, after the fermentation process is complete, I think Inside Llewyn Davis will be considered one of the best of the Coen Brothers' creations.
Most of all, this movie needs to be respected — it might go down real smooth (and give the erroneous impression that it's one of the Coens' more straightforward efforts), but it will sneak up on you, disarm you, and resonate long after the snifter has been depleted. If you've ever thought you had what it takes, there's going to be a bit of an aftertaste. It's the Coen Brothers, though. You should have known this would be the case going in.
Labor Day
Long Walk to Freedom
Nebraska
This is not a perfect movie. If I go back and watch it a second time, I'm sure I can find those slight imperfections. But its imperfections, in combination with its perfections, are what makes it perfect. It is This Year's Perfect Movie. Contradictions abound.
Don't want to take my word for it? Need more tangibles? June Squibb. Bruce Dern. Will Forte. The simple, nothing-happens-but-everything-happens story. Authentic, funny, heartbreaking dialogue. June Squibb. Bruce Dern's eye-acting. The beautiful black-and-white cinematography. The secondary and tertiary characters who complete the movie. It's the whole package. Trust me.
Philomena
Steve Coogan did nicely here in his myriad writing, acting, and producing duties. It was nice to see him take a more dramatic turn, and Judi Dench can act like a boss without saying a word. Best picture, though? It was a nice story, but I don't think so. See how many times I said "nice"? It never really went beyond that. Get on with The Trip 2, please.
Rush
Spring Breakers
On the fence whether I really liked this movie for upending the spring break genre or hated it for its knock-you-on-your-butt existential dread. I already have a surplus of existential dread; I don't need any more of that shit. Either way, James Franco (yes, James Franco) was a fascinating spectacle, especially if you watch interviews with Riff Raff, the rapper/drug dealer on which Franco's character, Alien, is based.
You don't have to dig too deep to pull a Rob Ager and draw an Alien/Charles Manson parallel. Watch an old clip of Chuck ranting to Geraldo or Diane Sawyer, then compare and contrast with Alien's diatribes. I've never been able to erase from my mind the scene of the Manson Girls holding hands and singing as they entered the LA Courthouse, the same way I'll never hear Britney Spears' "Everytime" ever again without thinking of the most haunting, beautifully shot scene from this movie. OK, I guess I did like this movie after all. It's not leaving me.
Stories We Tell
The Wolf of Wall Street
* Tried to see this on New Year's Eve day.
Told to pay a $4.50 upcharge to see it as a Regal RPX theater "experience."
Replied that the regular theater experience was fine, thank you.
Told it was only playing in the RPX theater.
Paid the extra cash.
Sat down in a cushy leather seat I assume was part of the "experience."
Became immediately suspicious because the audio was blaring but there was no picture on the screen.
Became even more suspicious when the trailers started and there was still no picture.
Tried to fend off seizures as the same picture of Mark Wahlberg flickered on and off during The "Lone Survivor" trailer.
Watched with great interest as the social experiment of "who is going to get up and tell the theater people that the projector isn't working" began.
Mulled over what "RPX" might stand for but gave up after "Ruins People's... ."
Watched with great compassion as a sad-looking theater manager who was a cross between my old AOL boss and Mayim Bailik from Blossom came in to inform everyone that the projector was broken and we could pick another movie or get a free ticket, plus a comp ticket for our troubles.
Picked up two free tickets.
Went home, climbed under the covers, and read for the rest of the afternoon.
** OK, finally saw this. Hated the first five minutes, then forgot for the next three hours I was watching a movie. That's a compliment. It was basically Goodfellas 2 — the main character's voiceover (Jesus, Leonardo DiCaprio even sounded and looked like Ray Liotta in the later scenes), the pacing and setup, the character parallels (Jonah Hill = Joe Pesci; Aunt Emma = the babysitter; Naomi = Debi Mazar) — but whatever. It was highly entertaining. I'll take a Goodfellas facsimile over 90 percent of the other crap out there any day. It just makes it harder to determine if Scorsese has become a little lazy and unoriginal or if he has consciously decided to repurpose more of what the people want to genius effect from here on in.
Wadjda
The Wind Rises
ONE-SENTENCE INCIDENTALS
Bad Grandpa
I laughed at poop and penis jokes. The movie succeeded.
Cyrus
This creepy, dark comedy by the Duplass brothers was surprisingly moving.
Side Effects
Thrillers in which Jude Law gets fucked over are always pretty good — despite its progressively ridiculous storyline, this film was no exception.
