Top 10 2013

What a year! I still haven't seen half of the movies I would like including Her, Wolf of Wall Street, The Hobbit and Inside Llewyn Davis to name a few, but the movies I have seen are ample evidence to demonstrate that this was an unusually rich year for cinema. Numbers one and two are set, but I could easily replace the rest with any of the "honorable mention" movies. They're all that good. Anyway, my top 10, as it stands now: 

1. Upstream Color- It starts as a horror movie with a hint of sci-fi and some straight out fantasy elements. It's also kind of a crime thriller and a detective story,  but ultimately, Upstream Color is a romance. It’s about a man and a woman’s difficult journey to trusting one another so completely that their identities become inextricably linked, as the movie’s wonderful poster suggests. Kris and Jeff have it hard, but once they connect, its a joy seeing them work together in perfect unison. The movie boasts a fearless performance by Amy Seimetz and by writer/director/composer/cinematographer/star Shane Carruth. I knew it was something special the first time I watched it, but like many great films it really came alive the second time around. This one’s an instant classic. It’s reputation will only grow with time.

2. Before Midnight- Devastating. After nine years of uncertainty, Julie Delpy Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater finally revealed that Jesse did miss his plane. What Midnight shows us is a couple, not on a one day tryst, but simply on one day of the countless they have now spent together — albeit one day in which the relationship is tested to its very core. Like its predecessors, the film has some brilliant use of setting, this time ancient Greece, and it has some of the greatests, most naturalistic dialogue ever written for a film. It also has the most chilling and horrifying scene of the year, the epic 30 minute fight that serves as the climax to the movie. Hopefully, this is not the last chapter in the series, and if the movie’s closing line is any indication  (“it must have been one hell of a night we’re about to have.”) then I think we’ll be seeing these two lovers again at least once more. 

3. Gravity- An avant-garde box-office hit in 2013, the year of the unbearably lame Hollywood blockbuster, who would have thought? Only Alfonso Cuaron could have done it, but not without the help of master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki — who also shot Cuaron’s  harrowing Children of Men and the sublime Tree of Life — and the always beautiful Sandra Bullock — here displaying amazing physicality and vulnerability which is all the more impressive considering that she’s alone onscreen for most of the movie. In space, life is impossible, the opening titles inform us. Bullock’s Dr.Stone has only one goal: to come back safely to earth so as live life how it was meant to be lived. Pure and simple, this is a humanist survival tale told with elegance and grace. It’s perfect. 

4. Stories We Tell- The less you know about this one the better, but I promise it will change the way you look at documentaries forever. What begins as the story of the director’s mother transforms into a story about the director herself, until it finally becomes about our need to construct stories out of our own lives to make sense of them. Through this highly personal, moving tale, Sarah Polley somehow manages to show how stories are universally important to each and every one of us.  That’s no small feat, and this film deserves all the praise it can get for pulling it off. 

5. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints- Ruth and Bob love each other, but there’s one little problem. He's is in jail and she has to constantly live with the fact that she was the one who committed the crime that put him there; She also has to raise their child, conceived shortly before dad went to prison. Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck are two of the most talented and underrated actors working today. Here, they give stunning performances playing a couple separated by fate yet unwilling to give up hope of reunification. Each little moment in the film builds up to the couple's eventual meeting, which is one of the most profoundly saddest scenes I’ve seen. The movie is also a Western, lovely to look at. 

6. Monsters University- Friendships take time and hard work to develop and strengthen. Mike and Sully’s was no different, but their relationship was so solid in the original Monsters Inc, it was easy to assume that they had always been best pals. MU takes that assumption and shatters it to pieces in its opening minutes, and that takes guts. Anyone accusing this movie of being lazy and formulaic is just plain wrong. Also, it comes with a short, The Blue Umbrella, which I could easily place by itself at number 3 or 4 on this list.

7. Frances Ha- Frances, a twentysomething college graduate, hops from couch to couch, trying to make a life and a home for herself in NYC. Greta Gerwig is brilliant. If you don’t laugh during this movie, I can’t help you. Also, it was shot in black and white, like New York always should be. Here’s the marvelous trailer, which captures the spirit of the film: 

8. The Grandmaster- Words are inadequate to explain any film, but that applies doubly to any film directed by Wong Kar Wai, so I’ll leave you a clip. That right there is how you shoot an action sequence! 

9. Like Someone in Love- The exiled Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami proves again why he’s considered one of the world’s best filmmakers. This time around, he’s in Japan, shooting Tokyo in that roaming melancholy, deeply affecting way he shot Tuscany for 2010’s Certified Copy. A call girl, a professor and a mechanic get into a Volvo... The whole movie, as Jeffrey Overstreet claims, seems like the setup for a joke, and it is indeed very funny, but also unbearably sad. Kiarostami’s characters inhabit a super-technological, completely commercialized dreamscape that works wonders for their careers, but heavily impares their failing quest for love. "Isn’t everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?” So said Celine in Before Sunrise. That’s  all these three want; they just have to find the right way to go about it. 

10. The World's End- Englishmen. Friends. Beer. Wright. Pegg. Frost. Action. Aliens. Apocalypse. Starbucks.  If any one of these appeals to you — except the last one, naturally — I guarantee you’ll love this film. 

Honorable Mention- The Bling Ring, Stoker, From up on Poppy Hill, 12 Years a Slave, Rush, About Time, Blue Jasmine, Pacific Rim, To The Wonder, Side Effects, Warm Bodies, Prisoners, Mud, Frozen. 

12 Years a Slave

Early in 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup, a free man who has been betrayed, kidnapped and sold into slavery, stands up to one of his cruel masters. He was willing to quietly labor until he found some way to escape, but there was a limit to the amount of abuse he would take. On one particularly hot day, Solomon refuses to follow the unreasonable demands of his master which leads to an ugly fight that ends up with Solomon turning the whip on his tormentor. Immediately afterwards, Solomon is told by another slave-driver — seemingly kinder, more rational, and for that reason all the more disturbing — to stay put, because maybe his life could be spared. Out of fear of death, Solomon obeys. He is hanged, but doesn’t die. In a tight closeup, his feet are shown grazing the thick mud beneath. His neck doesn’t break. He doesn’t choke. He simply hangs there breathing slowly and heavily. Director Steve McQueen pulls back to show this in an almost unbearably long take that lasts for a few minutes and long shot that allows the audience to see everything going on around Solomon. Solomon weakly flails about, but slaves and owners alike continue with their day. Only one woman, a  slave, approaches him to comfort him and offer him water. The rest have seen this before, and they would probably see it again long after Solomon has gone, so they continue with their daily routines. Children, also accustomed to the sight, play in the background.

Solomon's life story is fascinating, more than most, but the story of slavery the same for all. It is the story of a race's  survival under the face of unspeakable cruelty, ignorance, and indifference. Solomon is at once a unique individual and a stand in for all slaves.  The first shot of the movie is of a line of slaves on a field, awaiting instructions for a hard day of work. The message is clear. Solomon is far from the only one going through "a difficult time these past years," as he puts it once he’s free — in fact, many of them had to endure a whole lifetime of difficulty. For Solomon it was 12 years a slave, but for many more it was closer to 70 years a slave. McQueen rarely lets you forget. That’s the point of the film. Through this vivid, sickening, necessary portrait of slavery, McQueen makes sure no one ever forgets the atrocity.

After this episode, Solomon is sold, beaten, and humiliated countless times. His new master, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), takes perverse pleasure in breaking slaves, and twists law and religion for self justification. These slaves are property, he tells himself over and over. If he stopped believing it for a second, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself, so he screams it with all of his might. Years pass, shattering Solomon's spirit and hopes of reuniting with his family. Towards the end of the film, he is instructed, at gunpoint and the threat of death, to whip a fellow slave, the closest person he has to a friend. For a second, it seems as if Solomon will rise up and fight like in the beginning of the film, but he sadly gives in. The movie all too effectively shows how a barrage of sustained abuse can lead a person — even one as decent and morally upright as Solomon Northup — to succumb and commit any number of atrocities to survive.

After the grueling test, Solomon’s face is drained from all joy, pain and passion. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s eyes tell us all we need to know. McQueen knows this, and gives his actor a heartbreakingly beautiful closeup that might just be the best shot in one of the most visually stunning films of the year. 

At this point in the story, as the answer to an unspoken prayer, a good man appears. He is played by Brad Pitt, who does a wonderful job with the small, though crucial, material he is given. In his first scene, he argues with Epps, saying that in the eyes of God, and whether black or white, what’s true and right for one is true and right for all. Afterwards, he hears Solomon’s story and writes to his family to set him free once and for all. Many critics feel this turn in the story jarring and out of sync with the rest of the movie, but it is rightfully earned, and a relief. 


Without the familial reunification the film would have been too bleak to bear, so McQueen gracefully delivers the poignant and necessary scene. But the movie doesn’t end there. Titles let us know that Solomon kept fighting the rest of his life to end slavery. Slavery might be over, but it is real and present in the film and reminds us all sorts of violations against humanity continue to happen around us. We must not forget.

Verdict- 4/4
12 Years a Save (2013) 2h 13min. R

Random Thought.
-Steve McQueen is British. Few directors operate at his level, but why was it not an American director who first tackled slavery in such a meaningful way?