My Top Ten Films of 2013

Like just about every blogger out there, I felt the need to write up a Top Ten List of last year's films.  I haven't seen all of the major Oscar contenders, but as of now I feel like I've seen enough of them that my Top 10 is pretty stable.  Among those I haven't seen yet: Mud, Frozen, Nebraska, All is Lost and, most regrettably, Short Term 12.

The links will take you to my original reviews of each film.

1. 12 Years a Slave - Honestly, my top three films are pretty much a dead heat, but I feel inclined to give 12 Years a Slave the edge because it takes subject matter that could have felt like pandering Oscar bait and finds a way to make it a horrific personal film about one man trapped in a living nightmare.  It knows when to be subtle and when to beat us over the head with the brutality of slavery.  Of all the films I saw this year, this might have been the one that left me with the most to think about afterwards.  There's little doubt in my mind that Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves the Oscar for his performance here and Steve McQueen is equally deserving of a Best Director nomination.

2. Gravity - I don't know how you begin to write a film like Gravity, much less direct it.  Alfonso Cuaron's film is a marvel of directing, visual effects and acting.  Some say there's no character arc in this, which to me is just indicative that they're not looking closely enough.  Many films this year offered spectacle, but for my money, no film delivered on that promise better than Gravity.

3. Her - Her could flippantly be described as a story about man who falls in love with his Siri.  That's not totally accurate.  The computer "operating system" Samantha is a few evolutionary steps above Siri, but not to a ridiculous degree.  Our lead character, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), is a lonely introvert who's still not made piece with his separation and impending divorce from his wife. Every part of Theodore's world has a veneer of phoniness to it, so it's not terribly surprising that he'd bond with his newly purchased O.S. "Samantha." In exploring the relationship, the film first seems to deconstruct the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope and in going beyond that, writer/director Spike Jonze begins to explore more universal truths about relationships.

4. The Wolf of Wall Street - A portrait of excess that's unfortunately been misunderstood by many. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese do some of their best work ever in this three-hour film about one of the greediest, slimiest stockbrokers to ever make a penny off his clients' greed and have them come back begging for more.  In its own way, it forces us to confront that part of ourselves that wants the life Jordan Belfort represents.

5. Captain Phillips - aka "the film that reminds us why Tom Hanks is so revered." The final scene of the film is incredible, as Hanks vividly shows us that the trauma of the hostage situation didn't end immediately with Phillips's liberation.  Equally impressive is how Barkhad Abdi holds his own with Hanks every moment they are on screen together - a feat that's even more remarkable once you realize this is Abdi's first feature film.

6. The Spectacular Now - There are a lot of virtues to be found in The Spectacular Now, but perhaps one of the most satisfying elements is the honest writing of the characters.  This is one of those movies where the viewer can't help but marvel at how authentic everything feels, even when it would be so easy for the script to veer into more common explorations of first love and high school cliques.  Director James Ponsoldt does a wonderful job of conveying the subtlety and nuance in Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's script. This is the sort of film that is so natural that the writing appears deceptively easy, even though the truth is precisely the opposite. If you overlooked this one last summer, check it out on DVD when it's released later this month.

7. American Hustle - I didn't get to do a full review of this one back when I first saw it and now I wish I had because the capsule review here won't do justice to all my thoughts on it.  My big takeaway from this film was how rich and fleshed-out the characters were.  You want to know how to get a movie made? Get strong talent attached. And how do you do that? Write characters with as much range and complexity as the principle cast here.  Everyone scores here.  I've seen complaints that the structure was too loose, that the plot was too slight.  I don't agree with that and even if I did, guys like Christian Bale's Irving and Bradley Cooper's Richie were so fascinating, I'd have watched a whole movie of those guys just interacting.

8. Man of Steel - I rewatched this one a second time just a few weeks ago and found that my strong first impressions of the film weren't just "midnight screening" excitement. If anything, I enjoyed the film even more a second time.  David Goyer's script isn't quite as strong as some of his Dark Knight entries, but he still does a teriffic job of making an old story feel new. Some condemned this because this didn't feel like the Superman they knew.

As someone who's lived with multiple interpretations of the mythos including two or three comic book reboots, the Donner films, Lois & Clark, Smallville and more, I've gotten used to accepting sometimes wildly distinct takes on the continuity.  Judging this film on its own terms rather than what came before is not only fairer to the film, but a better way to enjoy it.  Henry Cavill is perfect casting as Superman and for my money one of the most exhilarating visual sequences of the year is Clark exiting the spaceship in full costume and gradually learning to take flight.  If the joy on Superman's face when he finally soars doesn't make you smile, you probably have no soul.


9. The Conjuring - The was the one unqualified success in horror this year.  Several reviewers have focused on the "clapping game" scare, but for my money the opening sequence was one of the first genuinely unsettling things I've seen in a horror film in a while.  More amazingly, it involves zero violence.  There's an amazing sense of dread achieved just with a dark hallway, a shaft of light bisecting the darkness, a prone doll and creepy writing on the wall.  As the director of Saw, James Wan bears some responsibility for the decade of torture porn scripts that I suffered through in its wake. Thus, I feel his role in reviving a more restrained approach to horror might be the biggest redemption story of the year.

10. Dallas Buyers Club - I've never really understood the hate for Matthew McConaughey. Like Ben Affleck, the guy's gotten a lot of hate and derision that seems undeserved.  There might have been a period where he was trapped in rom-com hell, but I've always liked the guy, maybe just out of affection for his work in A Time to Kill.  That's why it's so great to see him remind everyone just how good he can be in this 1980s-set story about a man with HIV who's given 30 days to live and prolongs his life through illegal medications which he also provides to other patients in his situation.  This is one I definitely feel I'll need to revisit outside of the awards glut, just to fully absorb it.  Jared Leto does great work as a transgender HIV-positive patient.  It's not really a feel-good movie and is probably my most-debated entry here, but man, is this a great second act for McConaughey.

Overall, 2013 was a great year for film.  This was the first year in a long time where I was often seeing more than one movie a week and still felt like I was falling behind in the awards season crush.  I could probably craft a full top ten list out of my runner-ups and still be leaving some great movies off.  Among the other films I really enjoyed that almost made the cut were Saving Mr. Banks, Don Jon, Rush, Side Effects, Lone Survivor and This is the End.  Also, V/H/S 2 was about 75% awesome, particularly the cult segment "Safe Haven" written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans.

Even the summer tentpoles were generally pretty good, with Iron Man 3 being the best movie of the trilogy (though nothing beats the first hour of the original film), Star Trek Into Darkness managing some great work with Kirk's character, even if the film wasn't quite as good as Abrams's previous effort, and World War Z proving that you CAN save a film late in production and that Damon Lindelof is capable of being your script's trauma surgeon.  There might have been some duds this year, but it definitely felt like the quantity of good material was a lot higher than in recent years.

No matter what your tastes were, there should have been something that came out this year that restored your faith in the movies.  If you came out of 2013 cynical about the state of film, I'm quite confidant in saying that nothing would satisfy you.

Spike Jonze's "Her"- Siri as Manic Pixie Dream Girl

There's an old expression that dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog - you can't accomplish the task without killing it.  And so as I dive in to explore my feelings on Spike Jonze's Her, I fear that the same adage would apply to this film.  It's a fantastic film, one of the best films in what has been a terrific year for film.  The more you examine it, the more you're likely to marvel at how effortlessly it accomplishes some rather profound work.

I'm a fan of Jonze's directorial debut, Being John Malkovich, and though Charlie Kaufman scripted that film there's some value in contrasting it with the Jonze-scripted Her.  Malkovich is an absurd film played totally straight, and no matter how grounded it feels, it lives in a world rather different from our own.  That was perfect for the tone of that film, and so it's fascinating to see Her tethered to lees ridiculous world.  You won't find a 7 1/2 floor here, to say nothing of portal's into an actor mostly remembered for his role as a jewel thief.

Her could flippantly be described as a story about man who falls in love with his Siri.  That's not totally accurate.  The computer "operating system" Samantha is a few evolutionary steps above Siri, but not to a ridiculous degree.  Our lead character, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), is a lonely introvert who's still not made piece with his separation and impending divorce from his wife.  His day job involves writing romantic letters for other people to give to their loved ones on particular holidays.  He spends all day composing poetic and romantic speeches for those who apparently can't do it themselves and then retires to his empty apartment, where he retreats into video games and phone sex with anonymous strangers.

Every part of Theodore's world has a veneer of phoniness to it, so it's not terribly surprising that he'd bond with his newly purchased O.S. "Samantha."  Speaking with the smooth and alluring voice of Scarlett Johansson, Samantha initially seems designed to be a voice-operated program that merely handles all of Theodore's computer functions like organizing his email, keeping his calendar and so on.  And yet, there's something remarkably human about this artificial intelligence.

Before long, Theodore is having ongoing conversations with her as if she was a real person, and she's taking it upon herself to read his emails and comment upon what's going on in his life.  He opens up to her about his feelings and desires and somewhere along the way, this relationship becomes as real to him as anything else in his life.  This is aided, of course, by Samantha's programming expanding as a result of their prolonged interaction.  She might be little more than a simulation, but feed her enough data and she can reasonably approximate what Theodore needs from human companionship.

Except that it's not real, and little-by-little it dawns on us that we're seeing a canny deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. The term apparently traces to critic Nathan Rabin who identifies it as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."  (Prime examples: Garden State, Elizabethtown). 

It's a subversion of the trope because even as we see Theodore coming out of his shell, we're aware of how artificial the relationship is.  Samantha isn't real. She can never be real.  The very nature of her programming would seem to make her Prime Directive to please Theodore.  That she's better at achieving the illusion means nothing.  There's as little substance to this as the phone sex fantasies that Theodore indulges in.  It's a healthy escape, but it's no way to live.

A lesser film might have had Theodore only confront the empty nature of his relationship at the film's climax.  Jonze actually has Theodore open his eyes to this a little more than halfway through the film, and its fascinating to see how that upsets his relationship with Samantha.  And at this point, we've reached the part of the film that I hesitate to examine too deeply.  I think what we take from the final 30 minutes or so of the film is largely going to be informed by our own individual experiences.

A lot of credit for the film's success has to go to Joaquin Phoenix.  He's makes Samantha's interaction so natural that it's easy to forget that most of his scenes have him essentially talking to himself (or likely, talking to an off-screen script supervisor reading Samantha's lines.  It's an even more Herculean task than an actor in a VFX film who is tasked with making his reactions to post-production produced environs believable because Phoenix has to make us feel human emotions for a totally artificial connection.  It's one of the year's best performances while simultaneously being one of its most subtle.

And who would have thought that one of Scarlett Johansson's most memorable and charming roles wouldn't involve her body at all? She's the other half of that connection, and if it wasn't for her interpretation of Samantha making the audience want to believe in this romance, even just a little, the movie would be far less effective.

There's a deluge of truly great films all coming out around the same time this year.  It's going to be really easy to fall behind.  (My personal "To See" list still includes: The Wolf of Wall Street, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, All is Lost and Dallas Buyers Club, as well as guilty pleasure Anchorman 2.)  As you're setting your viewing priorities, make room in the upper tier for Her. It's one that everyone's going to be talking about at Oscar time.