I live in a world of dreams. I sit and watch images pass by
me as they find their way into my memory and my heart. I vicariously live
through their suffering, heartache, triumph and desires. I latch onto the
images and stories of people I wish I could be and the people I wish I could
know without this boundary of screen, but I find myself there while it lasts
and for moments I am with them and they are a part of my world. It’s not just
the power of escapism that draws me to cinema, but the power of seeing entire
worlds created and finding a connection to those people living within them. I
live my life through the scope of everything I experience within the world of
cinema. It has been the one constant in my life for as long as I can remember
and those experiences I had with this sacred art in 2013 were immense and
unforgettable.
Best Films
1. Top of the Lake (Jane Campion): Campion’s mini-series seems to play out like a 21st
Century reimagining of the cryptic small town setting and abject weirdness of
Twin Peaks, but turns out being much darker than one could have imagined. The
difference between something like Peaks and Lake is that Campion never shrouds
the evil of humanity in a metaphorical evil spirit. She plays everything much
closer to reality and the evil that Top of the Lake confronts is rape culture. It’s pervasive, creeping and around every
corner of the world these characters live in, and I’m not sure if a more
poignant film came out this past year.
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2. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach): A film about Female friendship as platonic soul mates, economic
frustrations, arrested development and dance all wrapped up in a nice French
New Wave inspired package. This film lives and dies on the strength of Greta
Gerwig and luckily she’s at a career best. It’s telling that so many people
relate to Frances. I think in part it’s because she serves as a kind of mascot
for the current generation of post-graduates who are trying to find their way
in the world. Baumbach and Gerwig capture those feelings of plowing ahead
through uncertainty perfectly. Although there should have been more dance. More
dance in movies in 2014 please
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3. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine): I’m convinced Spring Breakers is a film
of contradictions, and an endlessly fascinating one. Feminism exists within
surface level male gaze, Terrence Malick’s ethereal templates are grafted onto
Spring Break culture, Korine shows affection for his characters while
simultaneously damning them. All these things together create something that is
ridiculously compelling from a purely interpretational viewpoint, and when you
add onto that the pop art aesthetic being baptized in the waters of Malick and
Mann you have something truly unique.
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4. Drug War (Johnnie To): Johnnie To’s brand of film making has often been compared to Jazz
at times (especially in the case of something like Sparrow, and rightfully so),
but in Drug War it’s a little different and I’m more prone to compare his work in
action to thrash metal. The way everything is so tightly constructed, the way
the action viscerally moves from one scene to the next without losing the
rhythm of the movement. It’s anything but rigid, and like thrash metal it moves
over you like a machine and pummels everything in it’s way.
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5. Inside Llewyn
Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen): It's not entirely difficult to make the claim that this is the Coen’s Ulysses
to their Odysseus (O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Filled to the brim with the
kind of darkly comic tragedy we’ve come to expect from them and punctuated by
an incredible soundtrack. I still have Please Mr. Kennedy stuck in my head.
Someone please send help.
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6. The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt): A film dedicated to Rohmer that
echoes his influence on cinema. The way
Sallitt has a control of the rhythm of dialogue calls upon the late director’s
work and the transgressive look at incestual desire always feels respected and not presented as taboo. It's just a facet of this young girls blossoming sexuality. Tallie Medel is astounding and the therapy sessions are something of a marvel
in the way he makes sitting and talking feel vibrant and alive.
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7. White Reindeer (Zach Clark): For a little while White Reindeer held
the top spot on my year end list, and I still love it deeply. Zach Clark’s
picture absolutely floored me when I watched it earlier this year, and captures
spiraling depression in a really human and loving way. Anna Margaret Hollyman
also gives the best performance I’ve seen all year. The film is really funny
too.
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8. Wolf Children (Mamoru Hosada): Making me cry is a common theme of the films I tend to fall
in love with and it was no different this year. Wolf Children left me in a pool
of tears. The melodrama is incredible and the single parent-motherhood narrative
mixed with it’s identity politics really hit close to home.
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9. Bastards (Claire Denis): There is something deliriously evil about this
film. Claire Denis and Agnes Godard’s collaborations have never been this bleak
and pessimistic. Every ounce of her usual sensual-bodies in motion- style is demonized and repurposed
to chill instead of sensualize. Like my #1 of the year Top of the Lake it
takes you down the rabbit hole of a pervasive culture and like that film as
well it’s horrifying to find out what lies at the center.
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10. Lesson of the Evil (Takashi Miike): This may very well be the most
nihilistic film of the lot, but I can’t help but fall in love with Miike’s
craft, the colours he uses and the black comedy inherent within slasher films
to once again show everyone who the best in the world is at making horror
films. (This might have been undistributed. It had a NY festival date so I'm counting it)
--
The other films I loved this year
11. The World's End (Edgar Wright)
12. Fast & Furious Six (Justin Lin)
13. The Punk Singer (Sini Anderson)
14. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan)
15. Viola (
Matías Piñeiro)
16. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
17. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
18. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
19. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
20. The Heat (Paul Feig)
21. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
22. The Grandmaster (Wong Kar Wai)
23. Leviathan (Lucien Casting-Taylor,
Verena Paravel)
24. Frozen (Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck)
25. The Past (Asghar Farhadi)
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (Pain & Gain)
Anna Margaret Hollyman (White Reindeer)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Suzanne Clement (Laurence Anyways)
Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis)
Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)
James Franco (Spring Breakers)
Zhang Zyi (The Grandmaster)
Simon Pegg (The World's End)
Amy Acker (Much Ado About Nothing)
Nick Frost (The World's End)
Julie Delpy (Before Midnight)
Sun Honglei (Drug War)
Emma Watson (The Bling Ring)
Adam Driver (Inside Llewyn Davis)
Adepero Oduye (12 Years a Slave)
Mattew McConaughey (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Melissa McCarthy (The Heat)
*I
would have liked to have written something about their performances,
but I quickly realized that is not my forte and it would have quickly
devolved into cliche acting buzzwords so I'll spare you all from that.
Best Direction: Johnnie To: Drug War
Runner Up: Claire Denis: Bastards
Best Cinematography: Benoit Debie: Spring Breakers
Runner Up: Emmanuel Lubezki: To the Wonder
Best Screenplay: Dan Sallitt: The Unspeakable Act
Runner Up: Joel and Ethan Coen: Inside Llewyn Davis
Best Usage of Music (this means ALL music): Laurence Anyways
Runner Up: Inside Llewyn Davis/Bastards/Spring Breakers
Best Undistributed Film: Blind Detective (Johnnie To) *Sammi Cheng gives maybe my favourite performance of the year as well. Here is hoping it gets a 2014 release
Most Quotable Movie: Frances Ha (Ahoy, Sexy! Frances Undateable)
Runner Up: The World's End (Oh, Fuck Off! You Big Lamp! Smashy Smashy Eggman)
In closing I just want to say I had a great year, and each year in cinema always opens itself up to more viewings and reworking your favourites over the years. Life through cinema is a never ending journey and this post is only a checkpoint, a timestamp of my opinion at this moment, because I still have so much more to see and to discover and I can't wait to find out. I know 2014 will bring just as many riches.
