Top 10 Movies of 2013

Before I get started, just wanted to say how sad I was to hear about Philip Seymour Hoffman passing away today.  A great actor.  Probably my faves of his would be Magnolia, The Master and Capote.

Finally, here they are ... my top 10 movies of 2013:

(10) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - Though this is ranked lower in my list than the first Hunger Games was in last year's list, this is the better movie.  Darker, and with a more tangible sense of the loss of life, it's a worthy sequel.  I particularly liked Jena Malone and, sadly, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

(9) Now You See Me - This one surprised me a bit.  The commercials for the movie were interesting enough, but the movie was a bit deeper than they let on and the storyline more clever.  About a group of magicians recruited for a project by a mystery benefactor for a goal that is not as obvious as it may seem.  A great cast which includes Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman and Isla Fisher.

(8) Star Trek: Into Darkness - I think fans and critics are torn on this one.  Either giving director JJ Abrams credit for putting a twist on what is generally considered the best Star Trek movie (Wrath of Khan), or criticizing them for unoriginality for the same reason.  I believe it works because of who they chose in the role in question ... Benedict Cumberbatch.  Both charming and threatening, he is the heart of the movie.  I also liked how the relationship between Kirk and Spock was advanced.

(7) Ender's Game - I didn't want to like this.  I wasn't even sure I was going to go because of my deep disagreement with Orson Scott Card's personal politics.  But ultimately, the book and the movie stand on their own.  And Card had no involvement in the movie.  The filmmakers do a great job of distilling the main points of the book into a more manageable time frame.  And the young leads:  Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Abigail Breslin are well-cast.  The  training battle scenes are how I envisioned them when reading the book.

(6) The World's End - Brought to you by the makers and cast of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, this movie is funny, irreverent, yet poignant.  Pub crawl, end of the world sci-fi, social commentary, and nostalgia trip all rolled up in one. Simon Pegg and Martin Freeman are both great.

(5) Sound City - Former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl made this documentary about the famous LA studio that produced many of the classic rock albums of the 70's, 80's, and 90's including Nirvana's Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.  I wrote a bit more about it here.

(4) American Hustle - I just saw the movie this last weekend.  Very funny and evocative of many Scorcese movies, to whom director David O. Russell is often compared.  The acting is universally outstanding ... probably the best ensemble acting of any of the movies in this list.  I especially liked Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence.  She is a fireplug and hilarious.

(3) 12 Years a Slave - A hard watch.  Much like Schindler's List, this movie is not intended as a comfortable watch.  There are going to be moments that have you squirming.  Moments that have you convinced that the human race is not worth salvaging.  But also with moments of unlikely beauty.  Director Steve McQueen, and actors Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men, Serenity), Michael Fassbender  and Lupita Nyong'o are all deservedly Oscar worthy.

(2) Rush - I wrote fairly extensively about this here.  A movie about racing, but not really.  Rush is more about the things that motivate us in our lives.  Sometimes they are external, but often they are internal.

(1) The Wolf of Wall Street - 5 minutes into The Wolf of Wall Street and several older couples exited the theater.  Perhaps it was the frequent f-bombs.  Maybe it was the snorting of cocaine off of naked breasts.  But they apparently had enough.  Me and the 85 year old lady sitting next to me who howled with laughter throughout the movie couldn't get enough.  Like the best of Scorcese movies, you revel in the debauchery and almost root for the bad guys, yet you never lose sight of the fact that these are morality plays.  The movie is a metaphor for the financial gluttony of the 80's (and now) and the belief that there will be no negative consequences for wantonly fucking people over and elevating the accumulation of money above all else.  DiCaprio and Jonah Hill have never been better, and Australian newcomer Margot Robbie is fantastic.

Honorable Mention: A few indies:  Upstream Color, Prince Avalanche, Drinking Buddies, Side Effects and The Europa Report.  Some big budget films that were good ... just not quite good enough:  The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, Gravity and Pacific Rim.

Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it’s probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it.

Banksy

 Just finishing up my watching of some of '13's best flicks.  I'll be posting my top 10 in the next few days.  Since I've been lazy for awhile now, I might even give a best of '12 list since I skipped right over it before.

Top 25 Movies of the Decade

With a nod to Reel Fanatic's much more ambitious Top 10 Movies of each year of the 2000's, here's my list of top 25 movies of the decade. I thought about doing 10 for the decade, but you'd really have to cut out a lot of great movies.

Ultimately, for me, what make a movie great is that it sticks with me. There are a lot more movies than are not on my list that I really liked but I look back on them now and there just isn't something that strikes me as eternal. I'm all for mindless stuff but when it comes to my favorite movies, they have to say something about us as humans, good or bad. And being the movies of the decade, they need to define that decade to a certain extent.

And there are other movies that I may not have thought much about at the time or didn't get a chance to see until much later and now I appreciate their significance.

It was such an ordeal for me to trim it down to 25 that I'm not even going to try and put them in order. I'll just separate them into categories and chronologically within those categories.

Science Fiction:

Lord of the Rings (all of them) 2001 -- I realize I'm cheating a bit here, but it's really one story. A story that only 15 years ago, most people would have thought unfilmable.


V for Vendetta 2006 -- This movie does a remarkable job of pillorying the media and the American and British post-9/11 governments while not letting us, as citizens, off the hook. Those institutions only take those things that we give them willingly.

Children of Men 2006 -- Dark and relentless, set in the near future, also an indictment of our modern society much like ... Vendetta. Quite possibly the best sci-fi movie of the decade.

District 9 2009 -- I'm perhaps a bit too close to this to be objective, but a movie that surprised me and undoubtedly one of the best sci-fi of the decade. Like most of these sci-fi films, the genre is just the setting for much more serious political themes.



Politics & Race:

Slumdog Millionaire 2008 -- One of the more clever premises for a movie. Great music and beautiful despite the impoverished setting of Mumbai, India.

Crash 2005 -- The intersecting story-lines method of exposition has been criticized but I thought it worked and gave one of the most even-handed studies of race issues that I've ever seen.

Syriana 2005 -- If you need a primer of how oil and the Middle East drive our politics, this is it.

Good Night and Good Luck 2005 -- It may be set in the McCarthy era, but the politics of fear portrayed in the movie had a lot of parallels in our modern governments.

Hotel Rwanda 2004 -- How a whole country (a whole planet, really) could ignore the genocide of Rwanda in the 90's, who knows? This movie tells the story and exposes a new generation to what happened.

The Contender 2000 -- A very underrated political thriller with Joan Allen and Jeff Bridges. Gives a lot of insight into what the modern election/appointment cycle does to good people. Instead of electing true leaders with intelligence, we most often elevate those with vanilla resumes.

Traffic 2000 -- Stephen Soderbergh's best film, I believe. A great ensemble cast and beautifully shot (by Soderbergh himself).

Drama:


There Will Be Blood 2007 -- A modern Citizen Kane. A stunning performance by Daniel Day Lewis.

No Country for Old Men 2007 -- I read the book after seeing the movie and I think I appreciate the movie even more now. One of the Coen brother's best movies. Javier Bardem's performance is one for the ages.

Into the Wild 2007 -- Most likely my favorite movie of the decade. Great music by Eddie Vedder, great cinematography and Sean Penn's best directing job. Says a lot about the emptiness of our modern materialistic society and how it drives us apart. But the irony is that our true salvation is not alone but with others.

Memento 2001 -- This one will tweak your head. This is a GREAT movie and holds up almost 10 years later.

Million Dollar Baby 2004 -- One of Eastwood's best acting and directing jobs. He is just consistently great.

Brokeback Mountain 2005 -- The late Heath Ledger's best acting performance, understated and deep. It's odd how often foreign directors (in this case, Ang Lee) seem to capture America in movies better than an American director would.

The Machinist 2005 - A haunting, scary performance by Christian Bale, perhaps taking method acting a bit too far. A psychological examination of the power of guilt.


Foreign:

Amelie 2001 -- I love this movie. Audrey Tautou is charming and cute, the story is clever, funny and touching. The look of the movie is vivid and inventive.


Children/Animated:

Where the Wild Things Are 2009 -- One of the best movies about what it feels to be a child.

UP 2009 -- Honestly, you could have put just about any Pixar movie of that decade here. Certainly Wall-E or The Incredibles. What elevated this one just a bit is the poignant montage near the beginning of the movie.

Comedy:


High Fidelity 2000 -- Coming from a person that is a little obsessive about making lists and loves music, this is nirvana (more than a little bit of a pun intended). Jack Black can be annoying in most films but is well-cast here. Cusack is made for his role.

Thank You for Smoking 2006 -- One of the best satires of the decade. Does a good job of making fun of both sides and captures the cynicism and sarcasm of the times.

O Brother Where Art Thou 2001 -- Coen quirkiness in spades. A modern interpretation of The Odyssey set in Depression-era Mississippi with arguably one of the best soundtracks of recent memory.


Documentary:

Inconvenient Truth 2006 -- You could make a case for any of the Michael Moore films. I really liked Shut Up and Sing (about the Dixie Chicks). But this movie will be the one that people are still talking about years from now because of where we are headed.


What just missed the list for me:


Gladiator 2000
Best in Show 2000
American Psycho 2000
Audition 2000
A Beautiful Mind 2001
Spirited Away 2001
A.I. 2001
Donnie Darko 2001
Ghost World 2001
Bourne Identity 2002
Minority Report 2002
Monster 2003
Incredibles 2004
Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban 2004
Serenity 2005
The Sea Inside 2005
History of Violence 2005
Munich 2005
The Departed 2006
Pan's Labyrinth 2006
Michael Clayton 2007
Zodiac 2007
The Wrestler 2008
Iron Man 2008
Frost/Nixon 2008
Star Trek 2009

Top Ten Movies of 2009

I've put this off too long. Here are my top 10 movies for 2009:

(10) Avatar: Big budget - yep. Clichéd - perhaps. But sometimes it's not absolutely necessary to try and out-think the room. So, grab that bucket of popcorn, put on your 3D glasses and have one of the most visually stunning movie experiences you have ever had.

(9) Fantastic Mr. Fox: In the animation realm, this is about as far away from Avatar as you can get. Old-school stop-motion, great voice talent (Clooney, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon), and the twisted eye of Wes Anderson. Smart enough for adults but interesting enough for kids. One of Alex's favorite movies for the year.

(8) Drag Me To Hell: A reminder of the lower budget scary/funny movies of Sam Raimi's younger days (Evil Dead, Army of Darkness). I'll forgive Spiderman 3 if he takes the time to put out a few of these once in awhile.

(7) Up: I've probably said it too many times, but it bears repeating - the collage scene early in this movie is as good as the best 5 minutes in any movie ever. Ed Asner as the voice of the main character is very good and Pixar comes through ... again. These are great movies, not just great "animated" movies.

(6) Food Inc.: The best documentary of the year. People really need to start thinking about what they are eating. It's not just about health. It's about our environment. It's about the treatment of animals. It's about our dependence on foreign oil. I dare you to watch this film and pause the next time you bite into a burger or chicken nugget.

(5) Star Trek: Completely rescues the Star Trek franchise and introduces a great young stable of young actors (Pine, Quinto) and veterans in new roles (Urban, Pegg). J.J. Abrams of Lost fame makes an entertaining film that is both respectful of the past and hopeful for the future.

(4) Up in the Air: A very good year for Clooney with this and Fantastic Mr. Fox and the lesser Men Who Stare at Goats. Up in the Air is perfectly enjoyable as a straightforward romantic comedy (Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick are great). But, it's more than that. As a professional corporate hatchet man, Clooney's character comes the realization of the disconnectedness of his life. That freedom that he always saw as a perk is actually a yoke. How he lives, what he does, and the industry in which he works are all evocative of the 00's and his uprooted existence represents society as a whole.

(3) Where the Wild Things Are: I've already wrote a longer review of this previously. Maybe a controversial movie, but that's beauty of it. If you are not pissing someone off, are you really making art?

(2) The Road: Just saw this in the last week. Based on Cormac McCarthy's book of the same name (which I loved), the movie is very faithful. I don't think you could have picked a better actor than Viggo Mortensen to place the role of the father. He has an amazing ability to say more with just his eyes than lesser actors can with a whole monologue. This is a dark vision of a post-apocalyptic future, but not without hope. The scenes between the father and son are gut-wrenching and I can't imagine any parent watching this without feeling something. If you don't mind your movies a little on the depressing side, check this out.

(1) District 9: Very surprising, even to myself, that a movie like this would be my favorite of the year. But that's really what District 9 was ... surprising. I was hopeful that it was going to be an entertaining sci-fi movie. Peter Jackson being involved as producer gave me hope. However, this was quite a bit more. It was fantastically original with social and political overtones that you don't see in the average action movie. You can completely take the movie at face value and it's completely gripping as an action thriller, but the larger implications give District 9 that added punch.


Honorable mention: Inglourious Basterds, Harry Potter, Blind Side, The Age of Stupid

Worst movies of the year: I do a lot of reading about the movies I'm thinking about seeing before I go see them. But some real stinkers still seem to sneak past my defenses. I have a pretty good idea how the following 3 did: The Fourth Kind, Whiteout, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Let's see ... Milla Jovovich, Kate Beckinsale, and Megan Fox might have had something to do with it. Despite their, ahem, assets, these movies were still not worth seeing. Occasionaly being a male is a hindrance to good judgment.

My Favorite Movies: Sid and Nancy

"There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow." -- Dorothea Brande (American Writer and Editor, 1893-1948)

With a nod to Cyberkitten and his very entertaining series of "Favourite Movies ...", I'm going to take a wack at a few of my faves. Much as Gary Oldman was first up in my series of favorite actors, the first movie I saw him in, Sid and Nancy, is what I'll kick off my favorite movies with.

Sid and Nancy is the story of the destructive 22 month love affair between Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious and American groupie Nancy Spungen that broke up the band, led to her murder, and later, Sid's death by overdose.

Dialog:

I've seen this movie so many times (at least 50), that I'm pretty sure I could recite the entire script from memory. And as far as random quotes that I say on a daily basis, it surely rivals the Holy Grail. The script, written by director Alex Cox, is alternatively funny and dramatic.

Feel:

It's not presented as straight reality. There are scenes where Sex Pistols' manager Malcolm McClaren shoots the ground with a pretend gun, where Sid and Nancy walk away from a crime-scene unscathed, and another where Nancy comes back from the dead. Obviously none of them really happened, but like most other things with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, they may present more truth than the actual occurrence. Truth is all relative.

The cinematography by the famous Roger Deakins (Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, O' Brother Where Art Thou, No Country for Old Men) is gritty and fits the subject matter and setting.

Cast:

Gary Oldman is the obvious star here. I think it is his finest performance. Chloe Webb's Nancy Spungen is annoying, but that is pretty much the point. By every account, Nancy was violent, drug-addled, and verbally abusive.

The rest of the cast was largely unknown actors but included cameos by other punk notables such as Iggy Pop and the Circle Jerks. Courtney Love also has a small role.

Nostalgia/Music:

It's evocative of a time in my life that I'm very fond of ... my college years. You have to consider that these were the pre-Nirvana wasteland days of music. All pop-metal and pop-garbage. We were hungry for anything that went against that and thus immersed ourselves in punk, especially the Sex Pistols. So when we saw this movie, we just ate it up. Full of pop-culture references from late 70's London (Rod Stewart, Gary Glitter, Dr. Who) and with a great soundtrack (Joe Strummer, The Pogues), Sid and Nancy was permanently near our VCR. We watched it pretty much every weekend for about a year and a half.

There is a sick beauty in observing wanton self-destruction. It reminds me a lot of the similar death spiral of Nic Cage's character in Leaving Las Vegas. It's obvious that the person is intent on somehow killing themselves and you have a front-row seat. People say that movies like these glorify drug-use, but I think they do the exact opposite. If you can watch what happens to Sid and Nancy and still want to do drugs, then you are truly a sick puppy.

Definitely one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time, Sid and Nancy has stood the test of time. It came out in 1986 but I watched it again last night and it had the same power.

"Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight." -- Marilyn French (American Writer, b.1929)