The Film Babble Blog Top 10 Movies Of 2013

Since it’s nearing the end of January and the Oscar nominations have been announced, I figured it’s about time that I post my Top 10 favorite films of 2013.

Any year that boasts such vital work by film makers as Martin Scorsese, Richard Linklater, the Coen brothers, Woody Allen, Alexander Payne, Edgar Wright, Alfonso Cuarón, and Spike Jonze is a good year for film, and this last year was the best in my book, or more aptly on my blog, since 2007.

My picks start off with what is, for sure, a very personal favorite:

1. BEFORE MIDNIGHT (Dir. Richard Linklater)

No other movie in 2013 spoke to me more than Richard Linklater's third film in the ongoing saga of Jesse and Céline, respectively rendered by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. BEFORE MIDNIGHT catches up with the couple we first met as strangers in Vienna in 1995's BEFORE SUNRISE, having wed since meeting up again in Paris in 2004's BEFORE SUNSET.

Now on a summer vacation in Greece, Hawke and Delpy walk and talk down memory lane while dealing with whether they want to continue on the same path together. It could be that I'm the same age as this couple, and overly relate to the depiction of a marriage that keeps one philosophically on their toes, but, whatever the case, this film got to me big-time. Glad to see it scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy. My review is here.

2. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
(Dirs. Joel & Ethan Coen)

The Coen brothers’ 16th film, concerning the failings of a fictional folksinger in early ‘60s New York, may be one of their most divisive films. While it’s won many awards from Film Critics associations (National Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle), it didn’t get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and many folks I know, including my wife, thought it lacked an emotional connection. I, however, was transfixed by everything the brothers were going for from the film’s aesthetics aping the iconic album cover for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan to the T. Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack of authentic sounding folk tracks to the nuanced performances by Oscar Isaac in the title role, Carey Mulligan as his pissed-off former lover, and John Goodman, in his first Coen brothers’ film since 2000’s O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? Read my review.

3. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
(Dir. Martin Scorsese)

I wrote in my review last December: “Martin Scorsese’s 23rd film, and fifth with Leonardo DiCaprio, nails the rampant excess of the ‘80s greed era with such a fearlessly funny, and raunchy as Hell glee that it makes Oliver Stone’s 1988 insider trading spectacle WALL STREET look like Sesame Street.” Read the rest of my review.

4. BLUE JASMINE (Dir. Woody Allen)

Cate Blanchett sure looks hard to beat in the Oscar race for Best Actress for her ace acting as hot mess Jeanette “Jasmine” Francis, a former Manhattan socialite previously married to Jack Abramoff-ish millionaire investment banker Alec Baldwin. Allen's film, one of the 77-year old film maker's most substantial later works, is also up for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Helping the film make my Top 10 is its excellent cast including the also nominated (for Best Supporting Actress) Sally Hopkins as Blanchett's adopted sister, the aforementioned Baldwin, Michael Stuhlberg, Peter Sarsgaard, and especially, and a bit surprisingly, Andrew Dice Clay. My review.

5. THE WORLD’S END (Dir. Edgar Wright) 

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy concludes with this more than worthy follow-up to SHAWN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ. Pegg, along with Nick Frost, Paddy Constadine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan, attempt to complete the “Gold Mile” pub crawl they never finished two decades ago and the results are uproarious. My review.

6. 12 YEARS A SLAVE (Dir. Steve McQueen)

McQueen's powerful period piece fearlessly tackles one of the most harrowing and hardest-to-take subjects in history: slavery in the pre-Civil War era Deep South. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Lupita Nyong'o all got well deserved acting Oscar noms as did McQueen for direction. The film itself at first seemed a shoo-in for Best Picture, but AMERICAN HUSTLE seems to be gaining momentum these days. My review of 12 YEARS A SLAVE.

7. NEBRASKA (Dir. Alexander Payne)

Read my review of this near perfect piece of major Payne here.

8. THE GREAT BEAUTY (Dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

This Italian film, nominated by the Academy for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, hasn't opened in my area yet so I'll withhold my review, but I'll just say that its a visual feast of Fellini-esque proportions in which pretentious performance art is savaged by the wit of Toni Servillo, as a once promising but now jaded journalist.

9. GRAVITY (Dir. Alfonso Cuaron)

Click here to read my review of this Sandra Bullock/George Clooney outer space-set thriller in which I say that “it’s so refreshing to find a film set in the heavens, on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to be exact, that doesn’t need attacking aliens or big ass asteroids to be scary - the prospect of being stranded, untethered in outer space is terrifying all by itself.”

10. HER (Dir. Spike Jonze)

I was delighted that this lovely poetic movie set in the near future about a man (Joaquinn Phoenix) who falls in love with his operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Read why here.

More later...

Feeling Right At Home With The Authentic Tone Of Alexander Payne's NEBRASKA

Opening today at an art house near me:

NEBRASKA (Dir. Alexander Payne, 2013)

At one point in this excellent film, I was reminded of a bit that I saw late night talk show host/comedian Craig Ferguson do last month at the Carolina Theatre about how you can get away with saying practically anything cruel by saying “I’m not judging, I’m just being honest.”

As Bruce Dern’s long suffering wife, June Squibb is reminiscing out loud in a cemetery about folks she used to know in the film’s fictional small town of Hawthorne, Nebraska. In the mist of her blunt takedowns of the not so dearly departed she remarks of her husband’s sister: “I liked Rose, but my god, she was a slut!”

Comic actor Will Forte (Saturday Night Live, MACGRUBER), as Dern and Squibb’s son, snaps “Mom, come on,” but Squibb simply states “I’m just telling the truth” and continues her trash talking walk through the headstones.

It’s a fitting line, for NEBRASKA, Alexander Payne’s follow-up to his much more commercial George Clooney vehicle THE DESCENDANTS isn’t judging its characters, it’s being honest about them. Its simple premise of Dern’s protagonist Woody Grant erroneously thinking he’s won a million dollars sweepstakes because of a piece of junk mail hawking magazine subscriptions superbly sets up a bunch of bluntly funny scenes, made all the more sharper by being shot in black and white.

Working with first time screenwriter Bob Nelson’s words, Payne gives us a road movie in the vein of ABOUT SCHMIDT (my personal favorite Payne), which bleeds through in such moments as Dern revisiting locations from his youth (the auto shop he used to co-own, his former watering hole, etc.). Shades of Nicholson’s Schmidt walking into The Tires Plus store that stands on the site of his childhood home for sure.

Despite the protests of mother Squibb (another SCHMIDT factor as she was the wife in that too) Forte opts to drive his ornery out-of-it father from their Billings, Montana home to the lottery office in Lincoln, Nebraska. They stop in Hawthorne for a family reunion, which includes a terrific turn by Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show, Breaking Bad) as Forte’s older newscaster brother, the soft spoken Rance Howard (a great grizzled character actor who’s been in everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Seinfeld) as Dern’s brother, and Mary Louise Wilson (another recognizable longtime veteran of the big and small screen) as Howard’s wife.

A slimy Stacy Keach as Dern’s former auto mechanic partner makes it well known that he wants a cut of Dern’s winnings, as do ne-er-do-well nephews Devin Natray and Tim Driscoll, who have some of the film’s funniest moments especially in a scene where they mock Forte for how long it took him to drive the 750 miles from home to Hawthorne (Driscoll: “Two goddamn days from Billings!”).

It's a career best for Dern, once one of New Hollywood's shining lights of '70s cinema, who definitely deserves an Oscar nomination for his role as the ole codger drunkard, but Squibb steals large chunks of the movie with her fearless bluster. A scene in which she tells off the folks, “vultures” she calls them, clamoring for their cut of Dern's supposed winnings with a resounding f-bomb alone should get her a nomination nod from the Academy.

It's also great to see another side of Forte, as a somewhat beaten down smalltime stereo salesman dealing with a recent break up with his girlfriend of two years (Missy Doty). Forte's effective everyman embarking on a trip to bond with his father, and for a change of scenery resonates beautifully.

Speaking of scenery, the wide lonely spaces of the spare Midwestern settings that surround these sad characters look stunning through the lens of cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, who also shot Payne's SIDEWAYS and THE DESCENDANTS. Anyone's who's traveled across country through the empty terrains of America will get the ambience Payne is going for.

I felt right at home with the authentic tone of NEBRASKA. It has more genuine laughs than most comedies, and more heartfelt humanity than most dramas. It's a near perfect piece of major Payne that makes most of its indie competition this year look pretty shallow. And you know, I'm not judging - I'm just telling the truth.

More later...

THE DESCENDANTS: Quaffable, But Far From Transcendent

THE DESCENDANTS (Dir. Alexander Payne, 2011)

In his consistently fine films, Alexander Payne excels in capturing his characters’ descent into desperate goofiness.

From school teacher Matthew Broderick’s scheming to have an ill-fated affair in ELECTION, to Paul Giamatti’s reacting to news that his book has being rejected by yet another publisher by swigging the spit bowl at a public wine tasting in SIDEWAYS, Payne has nailed some hilariously pathetic behavior.

Which is why I kept waiting for Payne’s latest protagonist, a well-to-do lawyer in Hawaii played by George Clooney, to lose his cool. Oddly, except for some doofish running in flip-flops, and darting behind bushes, Clooney mostly keeps it in check.

Clooney’s wife is in a coma after a boating accident, he’s responsible for handling the sale of the 25,000 acres of Kaua’I island land his family owns, and his 2 daughters (the rebellious Shailene Woodley and the foul mouthed Amara Miller) are more than a handful.

There’s also that Woodley, home from private school, tells her befuddled father that “mom was cheating on you.”

With all that I expected more of a breakdown than a simple sobbing at a creek, but Clooney shows admirable restraint, only allowing his emotions to flow at appropriate points. Even when confronting the dorky real estate agent who his wife was seeing on the side, Clooney does teeter on the edge of desperate goofiness, yet still saves face.

Clooney narrates us through the tropical world where businessmen look like beach bums, as he tolerates Woodley’s druggie boyfriend (Nick Krause, who gets way too much screen-time), and the meddling members of his family (including the gruff as ever Robert Forester, and the easy going Beau Bridges).

Like with his last 3 films, Payne has adapted a contemporary novel, this time Kaui Hart Hemmings’ 2007 book of the same name, and changed crucial details to make it his own.

It has a lot going for it in its execution, Clooney’s performance, and the lushness of Hawaii is as strikingly shot by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael as the wine country he shot in SIDEWAYS was (no ‘70s-style split screen action though this time), but THE DESCENDANTS is not as sharp or vital as Payne’s previous work *, because of a padded story-line which makes its premise lose power over the course of its nearly 2 hour running time.

There’s also the difficulty of fully feeling sorry for or relating to Clooney’s character. Despite how much of a schlub they try to make him, he’s still George Clooney in all his charms, and it feels too pat that all he and his daughters need to do to heal their pain is to sit together on a sofa, eat ice cream, and watch MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. As comforting a notion as that may be to some people.

In Payne’s most popular film SIDEWAYS, protagonist Giamatti appraises one wine as being “quaffable, but far from transcendent.”

Ditto for THE DESCENDANTS.

* My personal favorite of Payne’s films is ABOUT SCHMIDT (2002) starring Jack Nicholson. Definitely see that if you haven’t already before, (or instead of) THE DESCENDANTS.

More later...

A Medium Blizzard In A Moral Universe

I haven’t seen any new movies lately. I’ve re-watched a few flicks between writing and other life crap including, one of my favorites, Alexander Payne’s ABOUT SCHMIDT ‘cause a friend had never seen it.

I was reminded how Scott Tobias really nailed SCHMIDT in his Onion A.V. Club review: “In one of the many simultaneously funny and heartbreaking scenes in Alexander Payne’s wonderful ‘About Schmidt,’ recently retired Omaha insurance salesman Jack Nicholson steals away to a local Dairy Queen and orders a medium Blizzard. That he has to sneak off from his wife (June Squibb) to do it is telling enough; that he treats himself to a medium instead of a large speaks volumes about his character's diminished sense of self-worth.”

“Medium Blizzard” seems to really sum it up. So much so that Tobias brought it up again in his reviews of Payne's Schmidt follow-up SIDEWAYS: “Payne (Election) defines his universe through these sorts of wry behavioral observations; in his last film, ‘About Schmidt,’ Jack Nicholson's order at an Omaha Dairy Queen says more about him than reams of dialogue would have accomplished.” Yep, that medium Blizzard really made an impact on Tobias.

As well it should - the most effective devices in character presentation are the tiny seemingly meaningless day-to-day decisions and off the cuff behavior that speaks volumes as Tobias says. “The Devil is in the details” as the expression goes.

I’m still making my way through the 4th season of Six Feet Under, which is a good example of the little-things-say-so-much deal I was just babblin’ about. One particular intense episode, “That's My Dog” (involving Fisher Funeral-home family member David being abducted by a crackhead con man), which originally aired last summer struck me as both outrageously manipulative and wickedly brilliant.

I know it can be seen as an extremely geeky process, but I watched it a second time with the commentary track by director Alan Poul. Poul addressed viewers’ negative reactions, told me things that were intended as fantasy but I wrongly interpreted as reality, and pointed out an excellent article written by Emily Nussbaum in New York Magazine that anyone with even a passing interest in the show should check out: “Captive Audience” (New York Metro 8/04)

At one point during his insightful and economically worded commentary, Poul also touchingly said: “You put stuff out there in order to get a reaction from the world with the best of intentions and what you get back is often not what you expect or deserve or even consider to be an answer.

There is such a thing as a cry that goes unheard but all that added up does not mean we're not living in a moral universe.”

That immediately brought to mind this Woody Allen quote: “An artist creates his own moral universe” (from Allen’s 1994 comedy BULLETS OVER BROADWAY).

Definitely heady stuff, though on the other hand - in its obnoxious glib quick wham-bam style an episode of Family Guy that aired earlier tonight made a jab at Six Feet Under. In one of their patented cut-away gags an intestinal worm says: “You know, I’m 3 weeks old, my world view spans no further than the walls of this dog's intestines and I still find Six Feet Under pretentious.”

Take that Alan Ball! From an astute New York Magazine appraisal to some TV criticism voiced by a cartoon worm I think I can see the takeaway balance. Anyway, I need to go and get a medium Blizzard. Actually, maybe just a small one. Depends on if I can steal away I guess.

More later...

List-O-Mania 2004! The Best, The Worst, & The Near Misses

“I know it might sound ridiculous, like this is the scene of the movie where the guy tries to get a hold of the long lost son, you know, but this is that scene. This is that scene and I think that they have those scenes in movies because they really happen. And you've got to believe me, this is really happening.” 

- Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman in MAGNOLIA, 1999) 

It's LIST-O-MANIA 2004!

Starting with Film Babble Blog's 10 Top Best Movies of 2004:

1. SIDEWAYS (Dir. Alexander Payne)

2. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (Dir. Michel Gondry)

3. MARIA FULL OF GRACE (Dir. Joshua Marston)

4. BEFORE SUNSET (Dir. Richard Linklater)

5. FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (Dir. Michael Moore)

6. THE AVIATOR (Dir. Martin Scorsese)

7. BAADASSSSS! (Dir. Mario Van Peeples)

8. THE INCREDIBLES (Dir. Brad Bird)

9. SHAUN OF THE DEAD (Dir. Edgar Wright)

10. RAY (Dir. Taylor Hackford)

Film Babble Blog's 5 Worst Movies of 2004:

1. THE STEPFORD WIVES (Dir. Frank Oz)

2. GODSEND (Dir. Nick Hamm)

3. THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT (Dirs. Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber)

4. CLOSER (Dir. Mike Nichols)

5. THE TERMINAL (Dir. Steven Spielberg)

5 Near Misses (You know, 5 flicks that almost had the right stuff, but were misguided or mishandled or just planned missed something):

1. THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (Dir. Wes Anderson)

2. I HEART HUCKABEES (Dir. David O. Russell)

3. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Dir. Jared Hess)

4. SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (Dir. Kerry Conran)

5. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (Dir. Jonathen Demme)

More later...