Hey there. I'm Andrej, author of Lost, but Homeward, and also part-time-but-not-seriously film reviewer. I check out so many movies every year it's become a tradition for me to make a Top 10 list; and I'd wish to share mine with you to start some sort of film talk over here. For my comics and pretty much everything else I do with an artistic eye, most of my visual and narrative inspirations come from film -- and for my money, these were the most outstanding, iconic works from what was pretty bold, visionary 2013. Hope you enjoy the list and share some thoughts!
However -- I'll start with an honorary mention. In this case:
#11 - Blue Jasmine, directed by Woody Allen.
I may be more in love with his time-space escapisms of Midnight in Paris, but I can admit this one's a more refined, elegant piece of work. "Woody's always been great at writing women", the saying goes, and when he comes out with two of his finest, you gotta pay attention. His writing allows for a fascinating, Memento-like editing that puts you in the thick of a sensational, immensely welcomed-back Cate Blanchett and her before-and-afters; while Sally Hawkins' forgiving but-still-made-of-tough-love sister lends itself for a perfect symmetry of fraternity and anti-fraternity, as the faults on one are the virtues on the other. Here's hoping Woody stays this rich, Cate's return to the cinema'll be a long one, and a soon-to-come Oscar for the one-of-a-kind Sally H.
#10 - Before Midnight, directed by Richard Linklater.
I gotta add "directed by Richard Linklater" as a formality, but honestly, how could you talk about the Before trilogy without giving proper authorship to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as well? The three of them have made one of the most vital, deepest, and flexible to audiences trilogies in the history of cinema. 10 weeks dedicated to the screenplay, and a mere 15 days to the shooting... and I don't want to come across as saying "you can tell it's a deeply written film", because their supremely free-flowing performances are ones you'll easily fall into thinking they're improvised just out of how natural they seem. This is a Project's Project, and one I hope to meet again 9 years from now, and so on until they're 98.
#9 - Gloria, directed by SebastĂan Lelio.
If there was one movie that blind-sighted this year me was our local export to the world cinemas, Gloria. Paulina Garcia's magnetically electric, up-and-down performance's undeniably entertaining at first viewing, as she bounces from activity into activity with a new story to tell as soon as she enters a different room; but upon repeats her gloomier truths become more apparent, as everything she does is born out of a need to stay in touch and feel reciprocated by her loved ones. But after stumbling, there's only one direction to go: up, and so she does with a very Mike Leigh-ian attitude about facing life as a 50-something year old, with a unique sensual sincerity and the best(ish) music the Santiago dance halls have to offer.
#8 - Inside Llewyn Davis, directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
Whenever the Bros drop a new film you gotta cheer. Only they can come up with such an odd, sprawlingly memorable array of characters -- and here, they also remind us they're a force to reckon with when working with folk music. Not since Once I've seen music in film telling so much about their characters, moreso than they would even admit in normal conversation, and together they choir a song about Llewyn, about resignation to mediocrity, and the just plain bad luck involved. True, Llewyn's a cat tough to like, but as you travel with him you feel where he's coming from; with the rest of the band doing a sensational job of bouncing him around -- from Carey Mulligan's good-bad-and-ugly Jean, to the armonically produced, pop-ish Jim, and so many others to list here. It's just the Coens, man.
#7 - In A World..., directed by Lake Bell.
2013 was an exceptionally rich year for female filmmaking and narratives, but one that checks out both checkboxes with wit and humor is Lake Bell's riotous In a World..., a title which you must say with that iconic Don LaFontaine voice to get it right. Even if it's a story about an industry as specific as voice acting for ads and trailers, her views on the whole industry are read loud and clear and with a sexy, silky-smooth voice no less. It's a world of a handful of men seizing the best opportunities, leaving newcomers and women without many options to succeed -- to become their competition; but Bell's smart enough to not turn it into a soap-box speech. Instead, she goes forth with some of the best sitcom-like, pro-geek humor I've seen in years to subtly deliver her thesis with a dearfully connected professional web. Directing, performing, writing -- can't wait to see more from Bell, this young and major triple threat.
#6 - Stories We Tell, directed by Sarah Polley.
It's also been a great year for documentaries, and the best one for me was also directed by a woman: Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell's an impenetrable-at-first documentary about events too personal and private for mass consumption, but soon enough it finds itself echoing universal notions about perception, and the lives each of us live through the eyes of someone else. It's a documentary about the bigger story, the one that doesn't start with your birth and ends with your death, but one that expands on why and how you're here, what you meant for other people, and how you rippled through them; and it's all told with the most lovingly clashing opinions and accounts from Polley's family and friends. If you're one of narrative inclinations, you owe yourself to check out an exposé as intimate and trascendent as hers.
#5 - Pain & Gain, directed by Michael Bay.
Yes, THAT Michael Bay. Maybe because the financial downfall's part of the vox populi nowadays, 2013 was also a year busied with movies about excess and deception -- Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle, Blue Jasmine, Spring Breakers, to name a few; but the one that truly stood out for me as the most precise and rotund one of the bunch was Bay's vibrant, muscular, truthfully ballsy Pain & Gain. With his unique over-the-top sensibilities and self-aware AMERICA FUCK YEAH neo-patriotism, he simply cuts to the chase on the matter: it's not about wit, or about unbreakable legal loops and invisible strategies. It's about opportunity, and most of all, dumb, DUMB luck so no one notices what's really going on -- and with a story about knowing your neighbor this scary, this funny, and, once again, this real, you just have to believe in second chances and FITNESS. Bay's never been in better shape.
#4 - The World's End, directed by Edgar Wright.
I don't drink or indulge myself in chemical vices, but man do I felt like having a pint with my buds after seeing this. We got two movies about the apocalypse, and the british one won me over with its focus on frienship retrieved out of a time capsule, of remembering what was so great about your peers now that you've known them for years, and the time apart's made it easier for judgement to creep in. But as the end of human civilization warns us, you shouldn't worry about being above or lower on the social strata, as those are mere conventions, and we're all allowed to run our lives as we see fit -- and friends accept that and help each other out when in need. But to not overly soften the movie, this world's end's an outstandingly estimulating one, made of outer poise and silence, and inner noise and lights, and pulsating Steven Price music (the year's musical revelation, having scored Gravity as well) -- all to cap the barely-labelable-as-such Cornetto Trilogy.
#3 - The Hunt, directed by Thomas Vinterberg.
Few movies had me wondering "how did they do that" more so than the blood-boiling, socially fracturing The Hunt, a study of persecution without proof, and how innocence can be weaponized; featuring a monumental, resilient performance by Mads Mikkelsen and the best child performance the year (well, 2013 borrowing from 2012, at least) had to offer in Annika Wedderkopp's Klara, the carefree and careless child who summons torments on her small towns out a lack of attention at home. It's a story about a man unjustly accused of pederasty, and how society takes a stand against him as they're too enraged and concerned to think things through, making his life impossible in the process. You may take a posture against the origins of his downfall, but the end result's a painfully, even disgustingly so truthful one about mass hysteria and social judgement.
#2 - Gravity, directed by Alfonso CuarĂłn.
Well of course. If there was one movie to see in 2013 at the movies -- just the one and nothing else, it had to be the out-of-this-world, adrift voyage of Gravity, a film made possible only by CuarĂłn's minimalistic but in no way simplistic screenplay and direction, Emmanuel Lubezki's impossibly free-roaming lensing, and Sandra Bullock's dawning empathy and rebirth in the dangerous, debris-laden space. Movies this commanding are a rarity, not since Chris Nolan's Inception I felt that I had to go to the theaters as early as possible and pay good money for a 3D screening only to see how it's all resolved. And it's one of the most sensorially transporting movies ever made, no doubt. I just hope years from now, the WB bring the movie back around in cinemas so newer generations get to experience something this revolutionary and visionary like it was meant to (and with 700 million dollars in box office, they've got more than enough reasons to do so).
#1 - Ernest et Célestine, directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner.
Even if 2013 was a rather disappointing year for animation (besides this entry, I'd save Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Frozen and little else, to be honest), when it was good, it was good enough to balance things out -- and Ernest et CĂ©lestine had charm, affection and artistry in spades. It's a story about how a bear and a mouse become fugitives of their own respective societies and learn to cope with their fears through company and creative inspiration, as Ernest the bear's a musician and CĂ©lestine the mouse's an aspiring illustrator. In little more than 80 minutes it showcases the finer prints of how their upper and lower world work through adorably workaholic characters, while deep down, it's a tale about learning to deal with the struggles of feeling like a pariah out of your own decisions and mistakes: I mean, I don't know. If you can get this one genuine, heartfelt response of validation, you feel like it's all worth it. And the movie handles it with true touches of humanity and kindness, enough to turn me into a pile of mush for a solid hour while still making me giggle with its fuzzy, warm watercolors. As it handles issues too personal for me to put away with the sweetness of a bedtime story, no other movie hugged my heart this tightly, and thus, it's my favorite film of the year.
And there you have it. 10 (eleven) movies that'll unvariably, in ways more noticeable than others, influence my work this year -- and the ones I'd recommend the most for you to check out. I hope 2014 will keep up the pace and take it further, because there was so much greatness in 2013 that writing up this list was a rather painful process. Hope you enjoyed the read