my top ten films of last year

And here they are, late, in order of love, and swathed in shadows.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A Turkish police procedural which reaches so gracefully beyond the bounds of its genre in all directions that it touches the numinous.

Looper
dir: Rian Johnson. An action movie with time travel, so well written, acted, and directed as to transcend its genre.

Kill List

the Loneliest Planet
dir: Julia Loktev. A perfectly orchestrated symphony of good acting, lovely cinematography, bold editing, and a story so finely told that its turning point, although it happens so fast you might miss it if you turn your head at the wrong moment, shocks in a reverberant way which even horror films seldom achieve.

the Master dir: Paul Thomas Anderson

Seven Psychopaths

Lawless
dir: John Hillcoat. Violence and family loyalty amongst bootleggers via the pen of Nick Cave and director of the Proposition and the Road.

Beyond the Black Rainbow

Sleep Tight
dir: Jaume Balaguero. A low-key Spanish psych-thriller that will leave you speechless and possibly sleepless.

Searching for Sugar Man




An odd thing about films from this past year: one thing they have in common, even those on this list (with the possible exception of Looper), is that I think I will never be tempted to watch any a second time. That goes for Moonrise Kingdom, too, for all its sweetness, and Django Unchained, for all its fun.

With the exceptions of Searching for Sugar Man and The Loneliest Planet, every movie on my list gets dark to a place of such uncomfortableness, as Jayne Cobb would say, that I doubt I will be tempted to return. That goes for Silver Linings Playbook as well, just barely knocked off in the final stages. Because it's David O. Russell, it isn't an easy ride, but it manages to bring to the surface both darkness and light in the dynamics of family and other relationships with veracity and apparent ease by exploding well-planted depth charges around his characters. I was glad that Jennifer Lawrence took Oscar home for that.

Obviously I enjoy flaneuring in the shadows or I wouldn't have chosen most of these. Cruelty is hard, though, and this seems to be a year for examining cruelty, from Zero Dark Thirty on down. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia succeeds most fruitfully in its exploration, most gorgeously, and with stunning patience and wisdom in leaving unanswerable questions unanswered. Looper comes in second in its exploration of the genesis of evil in a human being. The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson's tour-de-force, makes his last one, There Will Be Blood, a movie so tough that audience members were left breathless and anxiety-ridden in its wake, seem like an easy amble in the park.

It might be a reflection on my own current psychic place, or it may be a reflection of the changing movie-going experience, which used to be a sanctuary when I was young and now more resembles an assault, but I found that many of the films I saw this year I enjoyed objectively while never immersing myself fully in their worlds. Runners-up Moonrise and Django were two of these, both of which I enjoyed for their vision and galloping enthusiasm, but which felt so pointedly contrived that I felt they were holding me at a distance, not letting me enter fully in. Stand over there, Wes Anderson was saying, and watch, and feel, but from that distance. Stand over there, Tarantino always says these days, watch the awesomeness as I spew my love of cinema all over the screen, but stay over there, watching from the appropriate metafictional distance.