Late-ish 2013 Retrospective: Top 20 Best Films

So, here it is. 2013 was a damn good year for films if I do say so myself. It was hard reducing this list down to just 20, because any one of my honourable mentions would have had a welcome place in my list. 2013 had some game-changers (in more ways than one), some rule-breakers, and some life-changers. There were plenty of films that came out that you could just tell would live on into the future. We had Alfonso Cuaron defying the restrictions of cinema, Spike Jonze defeating every other portrayal of love in cinematic history, and Leonardo DiCaprio destroying any notion that he's not a proper actor with a singular Quaalude-induced scene. What a time to be alive.

Alas, let's close the book on 2013 before we close the book on May 2014. Because there's no time like the present...

Honourable Mentions: Spring Breakers, What Maisie Knew, Pain & Gain, The Bling Ring, This is the End, Fruitvale Station, Don Jon, Rush, Dallas Buyers Club, Drinking Buddies, Inside Llewyn Davis, Philomena, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Frozen.

"Every thing you do, someone out there can see."

Here's one of these films that slips so far under the radar that it is pretty much criminal. This film should be taught in schools. Sure, it gets extremely melodramatic in some places, but the general message behind it is about the only message we've desperately needed a film to cover. Not to mention it has some fantastic performances from Andrea Riseborough, Jason Bateman, Jonah Bobo, Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton. Very, very impressive.

"I think anybody who falls in love is a freak. It's a crazy thing to do. It's kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity."

Just as Disconnect shows the dangers of the internet, Her shows the good things it could be capable of in the future...which is also doubled with the bad. This isn't really a film about a guy falling in love with his computer, but about love itself. As I said in my director's post, it was a damn brave film for Spike Jonze to make, and possibly one of the more realistic portrayals of love on film in recent times. Oh, and Scarlett Johansson. That's all.

Annual Awards Nerdism - Oscar Predictions - Visuals, 'Bests' and Writing

I won't go into a whole lot of detail, but tonight I'll be predicting the winners for the 'visual' awards (Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Editing and Best Achievement in Visual Effects), the 'bests' awards (Best Animated Feature Film of the Year, Best Foreign Language Film of the Year and Best Documentary, Feature) and the writing awards (Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published). Remember: Red = the longshot, Orange = the predicted winner, Green = who I want to win.

Best Achievement in Cinematography

Emmanuel Lubezki - Gravity / Bruno Delbonnel - Inside Llewyn Davis / Phedon Papamichael - Nebraska / Roger Deakins - Prisoners / Phillipe Le Sourd - The Grandmaster

Remember that time when Emmanuel Lubezki didn't win best cinematographer for The Tree of Life? Does anyone remember that travesty? The Academy has a lot of atoning to do, and I can definitely see them righting their wrongs this year by giving him the award for his brilliant, transcendent work in Gravity. I still haven't seen Prisoners but maaaaan, Roger Deakins must be getting fairly annoyed with all these nominations he's getting without actually winning. I still can't believe he lost for Skyfall, but, well, this looks like another year that he'll go empty handed.

You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone: Blue Jasmine and Side Effects (Motifs in Cinema 2013: Economics and Money)

This is the long-awaited final entry into my series about money, and also my entry into Encore's World of TV and Film's blogathon "Motifs in Cinema", where I've obviously chosen the "Economics and Money" motif. Here's a little more info here: Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2013 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea – Motifs in Cinema assesses how various themes emanating from a single idea change when utilized by varying artists.

Also in the series about money: We Might Be Hollow, But We're Brave: Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring (young girls and money) and Baby, You're a Rich Man: The Wolf of Wall Street and Pain & Gain (men and money). And for those wondering why I haven't/am not going to cover The Great Gatsby in this 'series', unbelievably I've had enough of incessantly making a case for talking about it and that's all about old money and stuff so yeah. There's a bit of spoilerage here for Side Effects, but y'all should have seen it by now.

I'm a big "past" person - always looking back at things and internally crying that they are no more. Alas, I don't think I have such a problem with the past as Jasmine French does in Blue Jasmine and Emily Taylor in Side Effects. Why? They used to have money. And they miss it now it's gone.

My Unofficial Top 15 Films of 2013

Well, 2013 is drawing to a close, so of course, everyone is rolling out their year in review lists. Me? I've only seen around 30-40 films of 2013, so I'm not the best person to come to if you're expecting a list filled with 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle and Short Term 12, this ain't the one. Come back in June next year, and I probably would have sussed out 2013 film wise. However, I do have 15 favourites out of the 2013 releases I did manage to catch this year, so here they are, in all of their "Stevee picked me!" glory:

15. Spring Breakers, Dir. Harmony Korine
I'm never sure of how to explain Spring Breakers in a way that makes it seem like a favourable experience. That's because it isn't the kind of film that can be easily summed up, but you can put a few colourful adjectives under the umbrella of the "Spring Breakers experience". I have to applaud Harmony Korine for being different, and not choosing to put a filter on it (which we'll see more of further down in this list), and for all the anti-feminist statements that could be made about this film, there's plenty of pro-feminist statements to back that up. The four girls in this film are awesome. And hey, how awesome is the "Every Time" scene? Definitely one of my favourite scenes of the year.

14. The Past, Dir. Asghar Farhadi
I saw this back at the New Zealand Film Festival, and just like I was with A Separation, I was left utterly in awe of how Asghar Farhadi can create a thriller with words. He is so deftly talented at writing, creating these very real accounts of life which don't need copious embellishments and adjectives to help get them off the ground. The performances are all fantastic in this, particularly from Berenice Bejo, the Cannes winner, who sheds every ounce of Peppy Miller in The Artist to play one of the most difficult characters of the year. I'm a little shocked that it didn't make the Foreign Film shortlist, and will most likely pass without a whimper because of that. Which is a great shame, because Farhadi hits the mark yet again.

13. Frances Ha, Dir. Noah Baumbach
All I can say is that I'll be watching this when I'm Frances' age, and I'll probably find plenty of parallels. Which is either depressing, or kind of cool, because I'd love to be Greta Gerwig.

12. Disconnect, Dir. Henry Alex Rubin
One of the years most cruelly underseen and underrated films, but such an important film on so many levels. It is too rare that films can get the dangers of technology so right and not get caught up in the "zeitgeist" of looking cool with their Facebook/Twitter/Instagram plugs. Even when things perhaps get a little bit too overdramatic, there's some fantastic performances by the likes of Jason Bateman, Jonah Bobo, Andrea Riseborough, Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard and Max Theirot to make it an extremely special film. I'm calling it: this should be required viewing at schools.

11. Stories We Tell, Dir. Sarah Polley
Another film I caught at NZFF, and one that surprised me to no end. I wanna be Sarah Polley. It was so brave of her to make her family story the subject of this documentary, but also to comment on the way that stories are passed down through the years. Stories We Tell does so much more than it says on the packet, and is all kinds of awesome and inspiring.