Top 10 Week... Films of 2013

#10: Captain Phillips
Paul Greengrass delivers another taut, inspired by true events thriller with Captain Phillips, which depicts the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates. What makes the film a cut above is the way that it manages to both narrow and broaden its scope, making the film a battle of wills between two men who have more in common than either might suspect, while also making it an examination of the larger socieconomic factors at play on the international stage. At the end of the day, both men are pawns in a bigger game, hanging on to the economic ladder as best they can.

Top 10 Week... Performances By Women in 2013

#10: Mia Wasikowska, Stoker
There's nothing groundbreaking about an alienated teenager, but when the role is conquered with as much skill as Mia Wasikowska brings to Stoker, it seems fresh in spite of itself. As an outcast whose sexual awakening is also an awakening towards violence, Wasikowska brings a steely intensity to the film and finds a way to let her character flower beneath the veil of a deliberately flat affect. Although the character is at once repulsed and attracted to violence, she never feels inconsistent which is due in no small part to Wasikowska's firm grasp of her complicated psychology. Stoker was one of the first movies of 2013 to really blow me away and though the year had many great things to come, Wasikowska's performance stuck with me all year, it's that good.

Top 10 Week... Performances By Men in 2013

#10: Jake Gyllenhaal, Prisoners
Jake Gyllenhaal's performance in Prisoners as the detective with no unsolved cases is a thing of perfection. Gyllenhaal nails the cop-speak cadence, a sort of calming, neutral and to the point tone, and anchors the film with his quiet, single-minded determination. It's an unfussy performance of the type that is rarely recognized for being as good as it is, but here it's crucial to the film's success. Although Hugh Jackman has the flashier role as the father taking the investigation into his own hands, it's Gyllenhaal's quietly simmering detective who drives the story forward.

Top 10 Week... Scenes of 2013

#10: "Paris Weekend," Frances Ha
Technically not one scene, but a sequence of scenes, yet I couldn't not include the lonely, spur of the moment trip to Paris from Frances Ha. The eponymous character, trying to prove that she's doing fine and has it together, decides to go on a trip that she can't afford, wastes much of it sleeping off jet lag, and spends the rest of it wandering around by herself as Hot Chocolate's "Every 1's a Winner" plays on the soundtrack. Basically, Frances flies 7 hours to see Puss in Boots, which is sad but also slightly funny, unlike the rest of the film which is funny while also being slightly sad.

Top 10 Week... Posters of 2013

#10: Saving Mr. Banks
A bit obvious? Perhaps, but charming nevertheless. And, really, what other image could better encapsulate a movie about the creator of Mickey Mouse and the creator of Mary Poppins?

Review: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

* * * *
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Oscar Isaac

Midway through Inside Llewyn Davis someone threatens to put a curse on the eponymous folk musician. By the time the film winds its way to its final scene (I won't call it the "ending" due to the film's circular structure), you have to wonder if maybe Llewyn was experiencing a bit of deja vu because it sure seems like he's already been cursed, even if only by his own caustic personality. In their melancholy new film, the Coen brothers follow their protagonist from one desperate situation to another, the victim of both circumstances beyond his control and circumstances of his own making. He's not a "hero," exactly, but it's difficult not to feel some sympathy for him as the reverberations of his actions come back to smack him in the face over and over again, with no hint that it's going to let up anytime soon.

Review: Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)

* * * *
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Starring: Adele Exarchopolous, Lea Seydoux

Perhaps 2013's most written about film, by the time it hit theaters Blue is the Warmest Color already had an exceptionally heavy burden in terms of the sheer weight of external issues resting on its shoulders. From the sex scenes which dominated the conversation, both in terms of their length and explicitness, to the feud between director Abellatif Kechiche and star Lea Seydoux which, in the immortal words of Ron Burgundy "escalated quickly," the film hasn't had a moment to exist free of controversy. Yet, when you clear all of that away and simply look at the film what you're left with is a work of emotional honesty, messy around the edges as life itself is messy, raw, intense, and utterly heartbreaking.

Canadian Film Review: Stories We Tell (2013)

* * * *
Director: Sarah Polley

There's a line in No Country For Old Men when Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is asked if a story he's just told is a true story, and he replies that it's true insofar as it's a story. It's a line that always comes to my mind whenever a story is billed as being true, as having actually happened, or as being based on actual events. It's true, but it's "true" because a story being told is always told from a specific and limited point-of-view, one which can relate reality as the teller sees it but which may, without being a lie, differ greatly from someone else's telling of the same event. Sarah Polley's third feature as a director knows and exploits this fact to perfect effect, telling not one true story but a story mosaic concerning the same core events. It's a moving and skillfully crafted picture that confirms Polley as one of the most interesting and exciting emerging filmmakers working today.

Review: Nebraska (2013)

* * * *
Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: Bruce Dern, Will Forte

Although the plot of Nebraska is driven by the promise of a financial windfall, the film itself is really about the little things. It's about a having a new truck, getting a new air compressor in order to replace the one loaned to a friend 40 years earlier, and enjoying a moment of getting to "be somebody," somebody important, after enduring years of life kicking your ass. The victories to be found here are small, but they are victories nevertheless. Anchored by a great, less is more performance, and a solid, straight forward performance from an actor best known for broad comedy, Alexander Payne's latest film is a magnificent portrait of a man mentally slipping away, and the family struggling to cope.

Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

* * * *
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender

Whether its the story of IRA hunger strikers in the 1980s, a sex addict in the present day, or a man kidnapped and kept in slavery in the 1840s, director Steve McQueen has a way of telling stories in an unvarnished and largely unsentimental way, laying bare the unique brutality of each individual situation in a direct and unflinching fashion. This method worked to brilliant effect with Hunger, but rendered Shame just a touch too cold and clinical, and where 12 Years a Slave is concerned it falls somewhere in between (though it leans towards the Hunger end of the scale). This is a hard film, full of horrific events and evil in many guises, but although excellent overall it is also, at times, oddly bereft of passion. It's still one of the best (if not the best) films dealing the subject of slavery that I've ever seen, but its excess of formality and arm's length treatment of its subject does sometimes make for a film that favors the intellectual at the expense of the emotional.

Review: Captain Phillips (2013)

* * * *
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi

With razor sharp precision, and an absence of proselytizing, director Paul Greengrass dramatizes the politically charged events of 2009, in which four Somali pirates hijacked the American container ship Maersk Alabama, an incident brought to a close with the intervention of the Navy SEALs and the deaths of three of the pirates. Although a story like that could easily be reduced to an "Us vs. Them" type narrative, the film is a lot less interested in taking sides than it is in exploring the mechanics of the event in all its intensity. Captain Phillips is one of the most engrossing films of the year, a gripping thriller with two marvelous performances at its center. This is absolutely a must see.

Review: Gravity (2013)

* * * *
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

I don't like 3D. I've said so before and I'm saying it again, and the reason I don't like it is because 99% of the films released in that format have absolutely no business being 3D, their sole purpose in using the technology being to pad box office receipts. Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity is a film that belongs in the 1%, a masterwork that uses the technology as it should be used, creating new cinematic vistas and giving the audience something it's never seen before. But the film is not just a technological achievement. It has a strong, well-told story, great performances, and thematic depth that will make it compelling in 2D as well but, man, do yourself a favor and see it at least once in 3D.

Review: Frances Ha (2013)

* * * *
Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Greta Gerwig

I don't know yet if Frances Ha is the best movie of the year, but I know that no other movie released so far this year has made me smile more. Less acidic than director Noah Baumbach's other recent works, but containing his typically fine attention to character detail, the film is light without being flimsy, picaresque without being scattered, and reminiscent of Woody Allen at his peak. Frances Ha is an utterly delightful movie from beginning to end, one which I can't wait to go back and watch again.

Review: Before Midnight (2013)

* * * *
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Deply

The tragedy of The Great Gatsby (the novel, at any rate; I can’t comment on any of the films) is that Gatsby spends most of his adult life trying to recapture something which he doesn’t realize he already destroyed by capturing it in the first place. His relationship with Daisy is never more perfect than in that moment before it is consummated, because until that moment it’s ideal – there are nothing but possibilities; it can be anything. Afterwards reality sets in, the relationship is out of Gatsby’s head, and it takes a course he couldn’t have predicted. This is a long way of saying that part of the reason why the relationship of Jesse and Celine – the couple at the centre of Richard Linklater’s Before movies – can be seen as one of romantic ideal is that for two films it existed in a transitory space. It’s a relationship that at once is and isn’t. Now, with Before Midnight, Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy give us a view of the relationship that definitely is, one which no longer exists as a romantic ideal, but instead as a sometimes painful reality. It’s a harder movie than many viewers will want it to be, but it’s still great.

Review: Upstream Color (2013)

* * * *Director: Shane Carruth
Starring: Amy Seimetz, Jeff Carruth

Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is less the kind of movie that you watch and more the kind of movie that you experience. It’s a work that isn’t so much about the story – though the narrative itself is dense and rewards multiple viewings – but about the sensory reaction to it. It isn’t, by any means, an “easy” film but the skill behind it matches its ambitions, which helps keep it from drifting into the realm of pretention. Difficult as it may be, Upstream Color is an absolutely enthralling film that doesn’t demand multiple viewings so much as it seduces the viewer into returning time and again to try to unravel its mysteries.