Editor's Note: It's well-known among cinephiles that there's a looming falsity to the concept of "Top Ten" lists, because of the subjectivity of movies and how different personal factors effect when and why you may consider some movies better than others, and many movies simply aren't comparable to one another, so rather than following the traditional Top Ten formula, all the following lists are made in no specific order, where they apply to the category in the headings, but may not necessarily be affected by its fellow films.
MY FAVORITE MOVIE QUOTES OF 2013
"I wouldn't go in there for 20 minutes!" -IRON MAN 3
"I think you bit off more than you can chew with Earth, mate." "Yeah, because we're more belligerent, more stubborn and more idiotic than you could ever imagine!" -THE WORLD'S END
"Considering the circumstances, he owns slaves." -12 YEARS A SLAVE
"I'll tell you what, I'm never eating at Benihana again. I don't care who's birthday it is." -THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
" There's got to be something other than being a fisherman or kidnapping people." "Maybe in America, Irish, maybe in America." - CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
"By the hymen of Olivia Newton John!" -ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES
"There's only a few things I really care about in life. My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. My porn." -DON JON
BEST MOVIE POSTERS OF 2013
- THE WOLVERINE -Teaser
- THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE -The Sun Persists In Rising, So I Make Myself Stand
- DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES -Teaser
- CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER -Teaser 2
- GRAVITY -Adrift
- SAVING MR. BANKS
- INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
- FROZEN
BEST TRAILERS OF 2013GRAVITY -Teaser
GODZILLA -Teaser
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER -Teaser
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES -TeaserMY FAVORITE MOVIE QUOTES OF 2013
"I wouldn't go in there for 20 minutes!" -IRON MAN 3
"I think you bit off more than you can chew with Earth, mate." "Yeah, because we're more belligerent, more stubborn and more idiotic than you could ever imagine!" -THE WORLD'S END
"Considering the circumstances, he owns slaves." -12 YEARS A SLAVE
"I'll tell you what, I'm never eating at Benihana again. I don't care who's birthday it is." -THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
" There's got to be something other than being a fisherman or kidnapping people." "Maybe in America, Irish, maybe in America." - CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
"By the hymen of Olivia Newton John!" -ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES
"There's only a few things I really care about in life. My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. My porn." -DON JON
BEST ACTION SCENES OF 2013
THE FIRST DEBRIS WAVE from GRAVITY
With no sound effects and only a few minutes after plunging us into the empty beauty of outer space where the crew of a space shuttle is tuning up equipment on a routine spacewalk, a positively novel and terrifying form of action set-piece kick-starts the story as bullet speed space junk rips through the space shuttle and a couple of the astronauts in a white-knuckle visual feast. In the zero-gravity atmosphere, pieces of metal tear right through the scene sending the structures into separate disarray, with only the audio of the astronauts vocal terror and an accomplished musical score by Steven Price. GRAVITY is full of many intense, chilling action scenes, but the first wave of debris in the first few minutes, grabs you by the throat and pulls you deep into its reality in a way that you cannot hope to refuse.
THE TRAIN CHASE from THE LONE RANGER
Yeah, yeah, everybody hated THE LONE RANGER, but according to the box office reports, most of you didn't see it anyway. It may have been a bloated mess of epic proportions, but it also had a sense of fun that was absent from some of the summer's bigger offerings, never more apparent than in its excellent climatic action sequence, a four star action-set-piece in a two star movie. Utilizing two speeding locomotives through a gorgeous western wilderness, a rousing rendition of the William Tell Overture, made suitable for a blockbuster climax, booms over the soundtrack in a rhythmic cooperation with the onscreen images of heroes and villains exchanging pistol fire between the two trains, mixed with moments of slapstick comedy and action movie coolness, topped off the most unnecessarily bombastic conclusion ever applied to the western genre. And I had an idiotic grin of glee plastered on my face the whole time.
THE BULLET TRAIN from THE WOLVERINE
The worst thing that I can say about this scene is that it was too short. In James Mangold's take on the X-Men fan favorite character, Logan/Wolverine trades blows with Yakuza thugs atop a bullet train speeding through Tokyo at 100+ mph speeds. With the characters surrounded by a blur of the passing landscape, Wolverine lets loose his grip on the train roof only long enough to avoid overhead obstacles or to let the train pass under him, bringing his opponents right into his waiting claws. Like I said though, it shows an incredibly rare and admirable, but undesirable, restraint.
THE BARRELS from THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
The one hour marker in the second part of Peter Jackson's bloated Hobbit trilogy is a cinematic thrill ride, genuinely reminiscent of a theme park flume ride, kicked off by the pulling of a lever as the barrels containing dwarfs roll clankily into a river below and then tumble down the rapids, mixed with an ongoing battle with pursuing orcs which leads to all kinds of juicy opportunity for inventive and violent visual gags. If only the entire movie were as brilliant as this one sequence, it would be a must-see film in every sense.
THE FREEWAY CHASE from FAST & FURIOUS 6
In one of the strangest franchise arcs in movies, the Fast & Furious films, the first released in 2001, have gone from being idiotically self-serious PG-13 exploitation films to being self-aware, dumb fun action heist films with a blatant disregard for physics and common sense in the best (or at least, the better) way. While also featuring an infamously lengthy airplane runway at its climax, the freeway chase/battle where the good guys interfere with the bad guy's heist happens to include a damn armored tank ripping down a Spanish highway and blowing the hell out of half the cars in its way and flattening the others, and to top it all off, some hilariously improbable stunts in which our heroes leap from car to car at freeway speeds.
THE BEST PERFORMANCES OF 2013
SANDRA BULLOCK as DR. RYAN STONE from GRAVITY
Sandra Bullock may have won herself an Academy Award for her performance in 2009's THE BLIND SIDE, but she'd much better deserve it for her role as the rookie astronaut stranded in space above Earth in Alfonso Cuaron's GRAVITY. Thrust into mishap upon mishap, Bullock plays her part with convincing terror, but never annoying or whiny, and as the only character on the screen for the majority of the film, she practically plays the part of the sole human connection in a film about the loneliness of space. What's more to consider is that Bullock is filmed on blue-screen sets, later filled in with computer-designed scenery, so it's a performance exceeding in spite of the sterility of her environment.
LUPITA NYONG'O as PATSEY from 12 YEARS A SLAVE
A newcomer in her feature film debut, Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o plays Patsey, the tragic slave girl who works on the plantation lorded over by Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) and is cursed by the affections of Mr. Epps, which earn her both his wrath and his lust, as well as the bitter jealousy of Mrs. Epps. In a film about brutality, Nyong'o plays the most brutalized, a difficult role that she fills with convincing passion and detail, earning the sympathy and pride of the audience.
TOM HANKS as CAPTAIN RICHARD PHILLIPS from CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
BARKHAD ABDI as ABDUWALI MUSE from CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
As the titular character in CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, Tom Hanks has created his best performance since CAST AWAY, and he shares the screen with Barkhad Abdi, the Somalian newcomer who plays the leader of the pirates who hold Captain Richard Phillips hostage, together forming one of the most effective screen pairs in recent memory. They play equal but opposite parts, both of them everymen fighting for survival in their respective worlds, both trying to earn a living according to their circumstances. Each compliment each other as onscreen presences, and each earn your sympathy with such fortitude that any conclusion cannot be anything other than bittersweet, and it is.
CATE BLANCHETT as JEANETTE "JASMINE" FRANCIS from BLUE JASMINE
As Jasmine Francis, a beautiful and elegant Manhattan socialite fallen from grace, in the mold of Blanch DeBois, Cate Blanchett's performance is bold, astonishing and endearing, even as she leaves a path of self-important white collar destruction in her wake. As a character, she represents the out-of-touch nature of modern super-wealth, a snobby and selfish character who can't understand why the lower middle-class who now make up her undesired peers don't better appreciate her. And yet, we don't hate her. We pity her and all that she represents, a full-bodied persona formed by a totally committed performance by Blanchett.
JULIE DELPY as CELINE from BEFORE MIDNIGHT
It's incredible to successfully engage an audience's attention on such an emotional level when your film is a dialogue-driven character study, but as before with its predecessors, BEFORE MIDNIGHT makes it appear like the easiest thing in the world. But I think that Julie Delpy, who stars as one half of the focal relationship here, and also co-wrote the screenplay with her co-star Ethan Hawke and the director, Richard Linklater, does most of the heavy-lifting in an already plenty heavy film. Not only is she saddled with the uglier side of the explosive rift that forms the main tension of the film, but she does a well-sized bit of it partly nude in an utterly non-sexy (frankly, scary and harpy-esque) context. And yet, through Delpy's powerful acting, we can't hate her, or even really blame her. We don't eant either side to leave this scene apart from each other, and Delpy does as much as her co-star, but with much more difficult material.
EMMA THOMPSON as P.L. TRAVERS from SAVING MR. BANKS
As the real-life Robert Sherman (played in the film by B.J. Novak) once put it about author P.L. Travers, "She was such a witch!" Indeed, Emma Thompson plays her character as such, and yet, she is also just as sympathetic as a lead character must be in a successful movie. Rude in the most British fashion imaginable, condescending, manipulative and desperate, witty, tragic and even a little sweet at times, Thompson's performance embodies the woman.
JENNIFER LAWRENCE as ROSALYN ROSENFELD from AMERICAN HUSTLE
CHRISTIAN BALE as IRVING ROSENFELD from AMERICAN HUSTLE
AMY ADAMS as SYDNEY PROSSER from AMERICAN HUSTLE
AMERICAN HUSTLE features a stellar cast, several of them returning from earlier films with David O. Russell, but this trio make up the meat of the film. Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld, a sleazy con-man, put on substantial weight in order to grow a distinctive gut immediately following his work on THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, and is surprisingly funny as a grumpy, middle-aged con-man with an elaborate comb-over (the creation of which makes up the first few minutes of screen time). Amy Adams is always a welcome presence, but as Irving's on-and-off girlfriend Sydney Prosser, she goes places where she hasn't before, playing a steely ex-stripper who puts on a phony English accent to seduce men into making junk investments. Jennifer Lawrence though, last year's Academy Award-winner for Best Actress and my favorite celebrity of the moment (her interviews are as quotable as any decent Judd Apatow comedy), is magnificent as Irving's estranged wife, Rosalyn, a sexy buffoon with a wit and reasoning of her own, playing those around her while bumbling through their plans.
THE BEST FILMS OF 2013
BEFORE MIDNIGHT
You don't need to have seen BEFORE SUNRISE or BEFORE SUNSET to fully appreciate BEFORE MIDNIGHT on nearly every level, but I can't think of a good reason not to watch those. Even still, BEFORE MIDNIGHT exceeds its 4-star predecessors with a darker, heart-wrenching continuation of the saga of a relationship between an artistic American man and a purpose-driven French woman. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are back, nine years after their last film, and nine years after that film's events, and now with children and 40+ years of age, their love is tested to the breaking point while they converse over a night in scenic Greece. Like the best movies do best, BEFORE MIDNIGHT breaks you down into a bloody emotional pulp, but before leaving you to despair, reaches down and pulls you up into the heights of triumph, reassurance and bliss.
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Based on the true life story of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates, Tom Hanks gives one of the best performances of his already illustrious career as the title character who bargains himself for the lives of his crewmen, leading to a hostage situation and standoff between the pirates and the U.S. Navy on the open sea. As he'd previously done on the controversial 2006 drama UNITED 93, director Paul Greengrass crafts a nerve-wrackingly intense cinematic story populated by multi-dimensional characters, and never cheapening the material. An effective thriller and an important social statement.
SAVING MR. BANKS
I didn't care much for the previews for this. By all suggestion, SAVING MR. BANKS would be a bit of fluffy, feel-good schmaltz about good ol' Uncle Walt convincing a crusty old Brit to let him make his best movie ever from her books. But to its every advantage, SAVING MR. BANKS is much more than that; a touching and earnest expose on the people behind MARY POPPINS, the book and the movie, about the collisions of interests in the collaborative creative process and the nature of personal pop art. There's still a bit of schmaltz, and there's also some sneakily self-justified revisions, but its a noble companion to the Disney classic, filled with top-notch performances.
FROZEN
I cannot pretend that FROZEN is perfect, or even quite as good as Disney classics like THE LION KING and THE LITTLE MERMAID. I've seen it five times as of this writing (once in stereoscopic 3D, four times in good old-fashion 2D), and every time, there are things that I wish were done a bit differently and jokes that fall flat. But through each and every of those five viewings, I've thoroughly enjoyed it regardless. The characters are engaging and interesting, the scenery is beautiful and it has the best new Disney songs since THE LION KING. It may not be Disney at their most refined, but it is Disney at their most emotionally satisfying.
12 YEARS A SLAVE
12 YEARS A SLAVE is a film that actually can be described all too aptly as "important." Oh yes, we as Americans are so proud of ourselves for freeing the slaves, that we forget why we made the need to "free the slaves" so necessary in the first place. But this film has no qualms about putting us face to face with our history, and we well may not wish to look. It's not a film for repeated viewings, at least, certainly not with any frequency. It's unpleasant and it hurts, but it really is important to know. It is our truth, and one that we should not forget, if only to understand why we do things the way we do now.
THE WORLD'S END
The final chapter in Edgar Wright's and Simon Pegg's cult-favorite "Three Flavours Cornetto" trilogy is also their most surprising and unusual. At first, you might know what to think, but you like it. Like SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ though, it only gets better with subsequent viewings, packed with Wright's penchant for lacing each scene with relevant details, or "Easter Eggs," and a moving and involving sci-fi story about a bunch of chums drinking as much ale as possible in one night, whilst also facing off against aliens. These kinds of movies are the sort that movie-lovers dream of. Plus it's gut-bustingly funny, super witty and has some crackerjack fight sequences drenched in blue blood!
THIS IS THE END
The premise is golden: during a wild party at James Franco's house, populated by all the hottest stars in Hollywood, the Apocalypse strikes, as described in the Book of Revelation from the King James Bible. Those who don't initially die gruesome deaths and fall into the massive crevices opening up Hell, are forced to barricade themselves in Franco's house, among them Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and Emma Watson, and as terrifying as the literal beasts of Hell from outside are, they are also forced to share the house with Danny McBride. Packed with achingly funny self-parodies and an incredible heap of vulgarity and all manner of offensiveness, THIS IS THE END is the funniest movie of 2013 and an unlikely and unexpectedly brilliant piece of comedy.
GRAVITY
By
a significant margin, the highest-grossing original film of the year
(the highest-grossing original film since INCEPTION, in fact), GRAVITY
is also one of the most visually stunning feats ever put to film and the
biggest leap in visual effects since AVATAR, but it also has a much
smarter, much trickier story, all pulled off without substantial flaws.
You can dismiss it as pulp philosophy with groundbreaking visuals, but
films as ambitious and as skillfully crafted as this are very rare.
Films Frequently Appearing on Published "Top Ten" Lists That I Missed (as of this writing...)
ALL IS LOST
NEBRASKA
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
HER
PHILOMENA
FRUITVALE STATION
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
THE KINGS OF SUMMER
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