Closing out our year-end coverage is individual top ten lists from a variety of The Film Stage contributors, leading up to a cumulative best-of rundown. Make sure to follow all of our coverage here and see Jared Mobarak’s favorite films of the year below.
You know 2013 has been a banner year for cinema when Sony Pictures Classics gets shut out of the Best Foreign Film category it’s ruled the past four, a French film like Blue is the Warmest Color has a better shot at Oscar glory not being picked by its country for foreign consideration, and studio CBS Films has a guaranteed Best Picture nomination with Inside Llewyn Davis. Yes, CBS Films. I have yet to see some big ones like the aforementioned Coen Brothers flick, Her, The Past, The Great Beauty, Short Term 12, and The Grandmaster, but even with those absences I have no regrets listing any of the following fifteen films as my personal favorites. And when you have that kind of confidence in selections you know may be bumped off in the coming weeks, it’s easy to see the level of quality these past twelve months have given.
Honorable Mentions:
10. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
It’s not the best of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, but boy does it pack a punch the two previous entries never could considering where leads Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s relationship was. A wonderful depiction through wall-to-wall dialogue of what stress and familiarity can do to a couple so many years down the line despite the absolute love and devotion we all know exists between them, you can’t help but relate to his incredulity or her yearning for more than the stagnancy to which they’ve fallen prey. It’s honest, full of the warts we began to see crop up at the end of Sunrise, and an authentic look at how much more complex love is beneath the façade we allow to be seen in public.
9. Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
A never-dull portrayal of love’s genesis and deterioration that transcends its lead characters’ sexual orientation too many enjoy letting overpower the rest, Blue is the Warmest Color may be the first film I would actually accept someone’s description of an actress being “brave.” It’s the type of adjective that is generally seen as a cop-out, blanket phrase for any female who sheds her clothes on screen, but Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos both bear their souls whether they’re naked or not each and every frame. You need the explicit love scene to understand their passion before interest wanes with time and rapturous sexual attraction proves less important than initially seemed.
8. American Hustle (David O. Russell)
The perfect example of a filmmaker taking a true story and making it cinematic rather than hoping it will translate on its own, David O. Russell’s caricature of the ABSCAM operation of the 70s/80s is entertaining, involving, and genuinely funny beyond the vintage clothes and hairstyles. Christian Bale and Amy Adams are shoe-ins for Best Actor nominations with Jennifer Lawrence continuing her domination of the independent scene on top of her success in Hollywood. Don’t discount Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, or a slew of memorable supporting players, though, because everyone plays their role to perfection alongside Russell’s inventive use of time and heavy voiceovers that actually enhance how the story unfolds for more laughs and a welcome twist or two.
7. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
As divisive a film as any in 2013, Harmony Korine’s exposé on today’s co-ed culture raises questions on just how little we know about our kids once they fly the coup for consequence-free fun in the sun. Hooked on drugs and the adrenaline rush of getting away from home to shed inhibitions and parental suffocation, these ex-Disney and CW youth starlets dive right into the chaos of sex and crime provided by James Franco’s unforgettable hoodlum with a heart of black gold. Shot in a fantasy glow of phosphorescent light to drive home its dark fairy tale sheen, what results should be a cautionary nightmare yet actually proves to be a warped journey of bloody—and avoidable—retribution.
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
I mistakenly put this on my list last year, but it is good enough to go on again now that it finally saw release outside of the festival circuit in 2013. Easily and understandably labeled by some as twee and obnoxious fare suitable for hipsters and few else, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s look at twenty-something angst, insecurity, and lack of motivation is a delight. Consistently funny and endearing without the mean-spirited edge the director has fallen prey to more than once the past decade, it’s easy to relate to the titular Frances as she traverses a world maturing too quickly for her to catch up or comprehend how everything she thought would be forever has left her behind.
5. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery)
Another love story—there appears to be a trend here—David Lowery’s subtle and quiet portrait has a tad more dysfunction than the rest considering the crimes we witness Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck commit before she’s made to raise their daughter alone while he serves a stint in jail. Stunning cinematographer and a sure hand from the director paint this 1970s-era Meridian, TX landscape with complexity and danger as an undissolvable love risks ripping them apart when the distance proves too much for Affleck’s Bob to simply take laying down. A brilliant character study wherein every person on screen is faced with a hard choice resonating beyond the law, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a gorgeously bittersweet romance where survival is forever intertwined with tragedy.
4. Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler)
What could have been an exploitative look at an instance of police brutality and the unfathomable outcome wrought from fear and abuse of authority in an incident more complex than simple racial undertones might describe, writer/director Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station decides instead to show how integral each life on this earth is to those he/she loves. It isn’t about vilifying the white murderer or turning the black victim into a hero; it’s about showing the life of a complicated man with faults and a checkered past finally understanding what matters above selfish wants and desires. And with some of the year’s best performances—Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Melonie Diaz—we’re made to understand both the good and bad results of our actions and that things are never as cut and dry as we’d like to believe.
3. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
If Martin Scorsese said he only had 3-4 films left in him before retiring into the night last year I would have understood. Saying it after one of his most raucous, hilarious, and sprawling character studies that’s easily his best film in two decades, however, makes me genuinely sad to think a time where new Scorsese pictures are impossible is on the horizon. His adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s real-life age of debauchery, drug comas, and million dollar weekly paychecks contains the best performance of the year (Leonardo DiCaprio), a slew of supporting successes (Jonah Hill & Margot Robbie), and the sort of bit parts to have you humming weirdly improvised melodies days after watching (thanks Matthew McConaughey). It’s three-hours long but feels no more than two; is laced with the profanity and nudity you’d expect from such hedonistic excess; and never steps off the throttle until its 21st century epic cuts to black.
2. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
I’ll admit that it took until the end of Shane Carruth’s newest science fiction slowburner before I truly appreciated its superiority in 2013, but once I did I couldn’t get it out of my head. Definitely not for everyone with its oddly connecting road forks, pig/human collective consciousness, and parasitic horrors, Upstream Color makes good on Primer’s promise that this cinematic renaissance man chose wisely when he gave up an engineering career for the shoe-string budget genius he’s captured on screen. It’s a film that will haunt you, challenge you, and—out of all those on this list—make you want to watch it again and again to decipher its secrets because you never know how long the wait will be until Carruth reemerges with his next.
1. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
It may have evolved into the “safe choice” for movie of the year, but 12 Years a Slave remains the one that I seem to compare all others to ever since seeing it this fall. Steve McQueen is at the top of his game getting amazing performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, and a ton of recognizable faces from start to finish; orchestrating unsettling scenes such as falsely enslaved Solomon Northrup hanging from a tree by his neck in an excruciatingly long take; and meticulously ensuring the look and feel of the era comes through in all its brutal injustice. People say it’s excessive, but it’s actually just authentic. This is the pain and suffering way too many have forgot. This is our nation’s darkest day, uncensored and in-your-face so you can no longer ignore its blight on our history as “land of the free.”