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.

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Joaquin Phoenix Is Smitten With His Operating System In Spike Jonze’s HER

HER (Dir. Spike Jonze, 2013) 

This is way too lovely and poetic a film to find mixed in with the formulaic fodder at your local multiplex. Yet that’s where it’s playing in my area having bypassed the independent theater circuit because of awards season buzz.

Set in a shiny clean Los Angeles in the near future, where everyone wears beltless high-waisted pants, the film concerns a love story between a meek mustached Joaquin Phoenix and his phone’s sentient operating system voiced by the sultry Scarlett Johansson.

Having weathered a painful breakup (we catch fleeting glimpses in flashbacks of Phoenix in an extremely emotional relationship with Rooney Mara, best known for the American version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), our soft spoken protagonist purchases said OS1, which is billed as the first artificially intelligent operating system, and is immediately taken with the disembodied voice of Johansson.

Johansson, names herself Samantha after reading the book “How To Name Your Baby” in two one hundredths of a second, and goes about sorting through all of Phoenix’s files on his hard drive.

Phoenix writes for a company that produces custom made greeting cards (Beautiful Handwritten Letters Dot Com), so his sentimental “sad and mopey” (as Amy Adams, his documentary film maker friend, puts it) nature comes in handy.

After Adams sets him up on a blind date (played by Olivia Wilde in a small but crucial cameo) that at first goes well but ends badly when commitment comes up, Phoenix finds himself falling hard for Samantha. What’s freaky is that Samantha feels the same and even hires a surrogate (Portia Doubleday) to act as her body so they can have sex.

Phoenix’s predicament isn’t an anomaly as many others are having relationships with their OS’s including Adams since her marriage (to a jaded Matt Letscher) went south. The film’s take on a future world in which isolationism is a lifestyle choice, isn’t so farfetched as anybody who’s been in a public place filled with folks with their faces buried in the screens of their devices can attest.

Jonze first solo screenplay, which won Best Screenplay at Sunday’s Golden Globes Awards), shows that he learned much from Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the director’s first few films (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION).

There’s a lot of emotional material that’s hard to pull off on display here, but Jonze handles it with endearing delicacy and a pure sense of purpose. He’s greatly aided by Phoenix putting in one of his most fully realized performances as the supremely sympathetic lead – a man who looks like he’s aching inside even when he’s smiling. 

Factor in Johansson conveying the OS’s evolving vulnerability with poise, and Adams making a stunning transition from being a ‘70s glamour puss con woman in AMERICAN HUSTLE to embodying the mousy insecure frizzy-haired could-be love interest and you’ve got a cast as charming as the film itself.

HER’s soundtrack doesn’t expand much on the musical palette of Jonze’s previous film, his and David Egger’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, as both Arcade Fire and Karen O. both return to provide songs, but this is so not a complaint as their music, especially when matched with Hoyte van Hoytema’s incredible cinematography effectively fits the highs and lows of the lightly surreal scenario.

The concept of having cyber sex with Siri aside, I can’t think of another recent film dealing with romance that better captures the way it feels to first fall in love; how wonderfully intense and scary it can be. It also nails how painfully fleeting the losing of love can be as well. HER is an immersive and beautiful cinematic conversation about what our real wants and needs are.
 
But it may not be for everybody – just those with two eyes, two ears, and a heart.

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WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: The Film Babble Blog Review

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (Dir. Spike Jonze, 2009)

The long awaited live action movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book is a big boisterous production - a fetching and fiery piece of cinematic eye candy. To flesh out the original book, which was only 10 sentences long, Jonze and Dave Eggers gives us a believable back story for our ten year old hero Max (Max Records). 

Lonely Max uses his active imagination to escape a world where he just can't seem to get noticed. He's neglected by his overworked divorced mother (Catherine Keener) who's taken up with new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo), his older sister (Pepita Emmerichs) is busy straddling an awkward age, and all we see of his father is a gift reminiscent of better times.

Of course, that's not what you want to hear about. Like a child being read the book at bedtime you'll want blast past this set-up in all too relatable reality and get right to the ginormous fluffy fantasy land. 

Unlike in the book, it's not Max's bedroom that acts as a portal. He runs from his mother into the dark woods at the edge of their housing development and somehow enters a different dimension. He travels on a boat through a sea of time to an island inhabited by 7 large "Wild Things" - that is, giant headed puppet people courtesy of Jim Henson's Creatures Shop. 

Though there is some in-fighting they are an affable bunch featuring the voices of James Gandofini, Forest Whitaker, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, and Angus Sampson. Despite the lack of New Jersey edge to his voice, it's difficult to not think of Tony Soprano when Gandofini speaks as Carol, the Wild Thing that is closest to Max, yet the illusion still holds for the most part.

Max is crowned King by the Wild Things and declares as his first order of business: "Let a wild rumpus start!" This is pretty much all the original story was - illustrations of Max and his subjects dancing and cavorting take up half the book - so, of course, conflict and clashes have to occur, and Max has to learn lessons from his interactions with these strange beasts and eventually sail back to reality. 

With an imagination like this though, who needs reality? The soaring sweep of imagery and the absorbing soundtrack (written by composer Carter Burwell and Karen O. of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs) provides a delightful reprieve from the day to day drudgery of everyday life, not to mention the soullessness of most kid's films.

This is escapism at its finest with a heart as big as its budget. I'll be very surprised if audiences don't eat it all up.

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