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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Ralph Fiennes' Wispy THE INVISIBLE WOMAN Doesn't Do Dickens Justice

Now playing in the Triangle at the Raleigh Grande in Raleigh and the Chelsea Theatre in Chapel Hill:
 
THE INVISIBLE WOMAN 
(Dir. Ralph Fiennes, 2013) 

In Ralph Fiennes’ follow-up to his directorial debut, the little seen but acclaimed 2011 Shakespeare adaptation CORIOLANUS, the English actor casts himself as literary legend Charles Dickens in this star-crossed Victorian era love story.

Fiennes’ film, adapted by Abi Morgan (THE IRON LADY) from Claire Tomalin’s 1991 bio “The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens,” is an artsy attempt to shed light on the young actress who Dickens left his wife of 22 years for in 1858.

The story is told through the eyes of Nelly Ternan, portrayed by Felicity Jones, who captured many critics’ hearts in Drake Doremus’ 2011 college romance drama LIKE CRAZY.

In 1885, 15 years after Dickens’ death, Jones’ Ternan is the wife of a stuffy British school headmaster (Tom Burke) directing students in a production of one of Dicken’s plays.

This causes her to reminiscence, in cinematic flashback form, about when she was an 18-year old aspiring actress who became the object of Dicken’s affections three decades earlier.

That was when Ternan was part of an acting family with her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and two sisters (Perdita Weeks and Amanda Hale). Fiennes’ Dickens has been estranged for some time from his indifferent overweight spouse (Joanna Scanlan keeping poise in an especially especially unflattering role) as we see them walking on egg shells around each other as they sleep in separtate chambers.

When noticing that Ternan is harboring a crush, Mrs. Dickens dismissingly tells her that her husband’s work is merely “designed to be entertainment.” Ternan affectionately counters: “Surely it’s more than that – it changes us.”

We see what a superstar Dickens was when he’s mobbed when recognized at a racetrack (mostly by middle aged men, mind you), but when he dissolves his marriage in order to be with Ternan there is only the mildest talk of a scandal; no real damage appears to be done to Dickens’ reputation.

Cinematographer Tom Hardy gives the film a lush look, and Michael O’Connor’s immaculate costume designs definitely deserve the Oscar nomination (the film’s only nod) it got last week, but the romance between Fiennes and Jones is severely lacking.

Jones, who Hardy’s camera appears to adore in a series of soft focus close-ups, too quickly goes from being smitten with the man behind such works as “Great Expectations,” “A Christmas Carol,” and “David Copperfield,” to seming like she’d rather be anywhere else. This is especially notable in their awkward sex scene.

Seemingly out of respect, Fiennes does what he can to make Dickens more charming than creepy, but the end result is a dull detachment to the character. We never get the feeling that Dickens was madly in love with this woman; in fact the impression is that he’s just slightly happier to be with somebody younger and prettier than his wife of two decades.

Maybe the absence of chemistry can be attributed to Fiennes and Jones having played father and daughter in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s CEMETARY JUNCTION in 2010. That may have gotten in the way of them putting their all into the May-December love story conventions here.

It is also a waste that Scott Thomas, who also acted previously with Fiennes in the Oscar winning Best Picture THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996), doesn’t have much to do as Jones’ mother. One scene even has Scott Thomas asleep on a couch while the leads are making moony-eyes at each other.

While its well acted and shot, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is too wispy a film to be engaging.  When first telling the world about Dickens’ mistress, Tomalin wrote of Ternan as having been “someone who almost wasn’t there,” someone “who vanished into thin air.” This all too restrained and uninspired costume drama most likely will have the same fate.

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JACK RYAN: Shallow Reboot

Opening today at a big ass multiplex near you:

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT 
(Dir. Kenneth Branaugh, 2014)

I just got through the painful process of accepting Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the relaunched STAR TREK series, now I have to accept him as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in another reboot of a Paramount franchise too?

Apparently so as Pine is the fifth actor to fill the shoes of the intrepid CIA agent since the techno thriller series based on Clancy's novels started in 1992 with Alec Baldwin in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Harrison Ford took over the role for two entries - PATRIOT GAMES and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER in 1992 and 1994, then after a break of eight years, Ben Affleck made an unsuccessful stab at the Ryan role in THE SUM OF ALL FEARS (2002).

Now, after another long break we've got JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT, helmed by Kenneth Branaugh, who also plays the cold-eyed Russian villain. This being his directorial followup to THOR, Brannaugh has now officially re-branded himself as a big studio action movie maker.

David Koepp and Adam Cozad's screenplay, which isn't based on any particular Clancy novel, rewinds to the beginning of Ryan's career - we first see him as a student at the London School of Economics watching the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers on television. After a stint in the Marines where he almost loses a leg in a helicopter accident, Pine's Ryan gets recruited by Kevin Costner as a CIA operative to be a deep-cover financial analyst working on Wall Street. This is something he keeps secret from his fiancé (Keira Knightley), TRUE LIES-style, into the present day.

So far, so formulaic.

Learning of a possible terrorist attack that would lead to an American financial crash, Pine travels to scenic Moscow to thwart Branaugh's evil industrialist plotting to bring on what he calls “the second Great Depression.”

I feel like J.K. Simmons as a befuddled CIA man in the Coen brothers' BURN AFTER READING when I ask “the Russians?” I mean, I know that the roots of Ryan are based in Cold War espionage, but here it seems that the Soviet backdrop is aping recent similarly set spy capers like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL or, worse, the fifth DIE HARD movie which came out this same time last year.

The lack of genuine suspense is palpable in this routine mess in which the fight and chase scenes are horribly edited, the dialogue stiff, and the pacing scattered through the distractingly shiny surfaces.

And the film has no business being in IMAX as it wasn't shot by IMAX cameras and it has no big cinematic money shots that warrant such presentation. Even in what's supposed to be the movie's big climax, involving a van carrying a nuclear device going off the side of a bridge into the Hudson river and exploding, they don't show it long enough to make any impact.

There's also a mind-numbing Russian restaurant-set centerpiece sequence in which Knightly (who should go back to Victorian-era costume dramas and not attempt an American accent again) tries to distract Branaugh over dinner while her hubby is breaking into Branaugh's office that drags the whole narrative down. Hard to believe that screenwriters Koepp and Cozad thought that this was inspired material at all.

In a confident yet somewhat wooden performance, Pine is fine as the reluctant title character, but beyond his egghead calculations there's not much of a persona on display. 

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT (such a generic title) is a shallow reboot that doesn't know how to elevate its hero into anything approaching the heights of Bond or Bourne, and make itself out to be anything better than standard issue spy fodder. 

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