my favorite films of 2013

These are my subjective favorites, not the ones I think "worthiest". (The most important film of the year is no doubt the Act of Killing, but I'll be damned if I'm going to call it a favorite.) On the other hand, nothing on this list is shabbily done; they are all objectively delightful in their own ways. It should also be noted the many I have not yet seen, including Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, American Hustle, Bastards, and, most crucially, Under the Skin.

In no particular order:

1. Stoker:

A darkly beautiful Gothic thriller, shot and assembled with brio and care. It's like getting the good parts of a Tim Burton film, the gorgeous palette and huge vision and attention to detail, without the kitsch and camp and script mishaps. It's best to go in knowing as little as possible, but if spraying blood and violent death make you squeamish, you may want to head for a different party.

2. the Lone Ranger and also here

3. Before Midnight:

If you haven't watched the other two and so haven't built up a relationship with Jesse and Celine, this may seem like getting caught in the middle of a marital thunderstorm, which is never pleasant. For those of us who have grown into adulthood alongside these people (because they do feel like real people. We've watched them age, seen the sameness and the differences), this is the best of the three. I have never before seen an ongoing conversation between long-time lovers which felt so extraordinarily true, and the fight they have is just flat-out courageous. Delpy in particular lets herself go way over the edge into bitchdom, which we all do in real life, just nobody ever does it onscreen, not in a real way. Hawke's Jesse, too, lets himself be very annoying (with his repeated accusations of her having "blown" other men), although it's clear that part of the problem in their relationship is that he is the "nice" guy, that she carries the bulk of the shadow in the household.

For many years, I was the anti-Hawke poster-child. A trusted friend once came to me and said, "There's this movie, Gattaca, you have to see it, you'd love it," and my response was, "I believe you, but I've taken an oath that I will not watch anything with Ethan Hawke in it." I did, too, I avoided all his movies for many years. This was the series which made me change my ways, and turned my mind around about him. (I'm still tentative, though. It was Reality Bites. Did you see that? I hated him so much in it that even in the wake of this "Before" series, a series I think as great as any trilogy ever made, possibly the greatest, even now I approach his films sidelong and slowly, ready to bolt at a single wrong move.)

4. Much Ado About Nothing:

The play itself is so extraordinarily well-written and its characters so engaging that no matter how often you see it, there are lines which never fail to delight. In this one, Benedick's "Your answer is enigmatical," is particularly pleasing, and Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk as Dogberry and his Verges are an unexpected laugh-riot. (Unexpected because I always groan and roll my eyes when Dogberry comes onstage, but this version is whittled down to emphasize the funny bits, and Fillion is just the guy for the job.)

5. the Last Stand:

Ji-Woon Kim is right up there alongside Mel Gibson as a master at storytelling through action. He loves speed, yes, is intoxicated with copious, exaggerated amounts of it, but he also loves putting on the brakes suddenly to explore a slow, quiet moment, as when a bad guy gets his ear blown off, or the villain and the hero are driving sportscars through a cornfield and must stop and hover and listen. His pacing is perfect, and his exploration of dynamics is revitalizing.

There's some American cornpone, but that must be attractive to a first-time player in the American sandbox, and although a little Johnny Knoxville goes a long way, the second time I watched this I actually thought he was funny. Eduardo Noriega disappointed me: his voice is weak when he speaks English. In my favorite section, at the bridge, at the beginning of the final showdown, he seems to be imitating Eli Wallach from the Magnificent Seven, and I wish he had done more of that.

Great music.

6. Mud:

Sometimes I feel like a voice in the wilderness, calling out to unhearing masses about the consistently high quality of McConaughey's work, but I think my long years of faith are about to be rewarded. Between this and the Oscar-Obvious Dallas Buyers Club (so Oscar-Obvious, in fact, that I may not watch it), this may be his year to shake off the pretty-boy stoner label and find recognition among the real actors. (He has long belonged with one foot firmly in both camps, and why not? I love a guy who can surf.)

It looks on the surface like another boys' coming-of-age story, but it's really about love between men and women, about how near-impossible it is to learn and even harder to practice, and how tenuous it is even when you get it right. (As one boy says early on after another admits to a crush on a girl, "You know you'll have to talk to her," to which the other replies a little despondently, "Yeah, I know.") It bears some resemblance to Winter's Bone in its evocation of a backwoods existence, this time in the islands and riverlands of the South. Even secondary characters, like Michael Shannon as an unlikely parent-substitute trying his best, are clearly delineated and fully alive.

The young actors are good, all the actors are, but, as always, it's McConaughey who has the money scene. I don't want to give it away, but it involves a copperhead, and the glorious physical immediacy he brings to the sequence is a thing that few actors could conjure.

7. Room 237:

Relentlessly pursuing cinematic obsession and movie criticism into a beautiful realm of absurdity, Rodney Ascher has given four (five?) Shining fanatics of various levels of sanity free reign in which to expound their theories about the film at some length. We never see them, watching only footage from the original interspersed with various visual aids to further our understanding. The resulting connotations are intriguing: about how we immerse ourselves in film in order to investigate metaphysics, politics, and the other, vaster levels of life, about the complexities of mental labyrinths, and also a remarking on the wild genius of Stanley Kubrick, whose works inspire such overtime.

It's a tribute to the original film that, even in mere cuttings and kept at arm's length by narration, it still creeped me out to the point at which it was hard to sleep.

8. Ain't Them Bodies Saints:

Lodged firmly at the fulcrum point connecting Nick Cave (sans the ultraviolence) and Terrence Malick (but with both feet lodged firmly on the ground), it's an old story of crime and longing in old Texas, superbly shot and edited. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara underplay to perfection, and the rest of the cast (Keith Carradine, Ben Foster, Nate Parker) follow suit.

9. 12 Years a Slave:

This kind of film rarely escapes the life-nullifying grip of toe-ing the Politically Correct line, but this one very nearly accomplishes it. McQueen is one of our best, Ejiofor and Fassbender are both stunning; the telling of the story on a canvas stretched across the many years should be clunky but McQueen makes it seamless, timeless, and a joy. My complaint is that he shies away from the complexities of relationship, but that's a thing you give up when you have so many years to run across at a gallop. Also, there were moments when he lost me, like when the girl cries out that she wishes our hero had been the one to whip her.

For some fascinating insight into its flaws from someone who's read the source material, see Walter Chaw's review at Film Freak Central.

10. The World's End:

I was later to the party than most, having been less impressed by Shaun of the Dead than... well, anyone else I've ever talked to, actually, the result being that I failed to watch its follow-up, Hot Fuzz. Having greatly enjoyed Simon Pegg's turn as Montgomery Scott, however, I made it a point to traverse the Golden Mile to the World's End pub alongside the lads, and Pegg is now my total hero. More satisfying in every way than its American-Comic-Royalty counterpart This is the End in emotional gratification, dynamic flow, excitement, and sheer funniness, it's literally like nothing you have ever seen before, I guarantee it. (Except, maybe, Shaun of the Dead, which I don't frankly remember very well.) Plus, I love Rosamund Pike.


Also worthy of mention:

Gravity: This is the first movie I've seen in 3-D that didn't give me a headache, and I came out thinking, "That is exactly what 3-D is for." The test will be, once it comes out on DVD, whether it is watchable WITHOUT 3-D. (Go back and watch Hugo. Pretty dull, and certainly too long, once you strip away the tricks.)

Post Tenebras Lux: I can't say I loved it, but it was the boldest movie I watched all year, and I'm still thinking about its startlingly eldritch images and perfect, merciless editing.

We Are What We Are: *SPOILER ALERT* A cautionary tale against raising your kids to be cannibals, it's an impressive endeavour, with smooth camerawork, three-dimensional characters, a strong sense of backstory, and atmosphere to spare. It descends jarringly into (unintended?) comedy at the end, although even that bit carries the virtue of poetic justice. The acting is good, and Michael Parks deserves special mention in a gentle and true performance as the doctor who won't give up.

All said, its flaws are few, and it's easily one of the best horror films of the year.

peter o'toole: gone to the great marcus luccicos room in the sky

He had a room in his house set aside for rehearsal and private study with a plaque proclaiming it "the Marcus Luccicos Room", named for a character mentioned early in Othello who never appears onstage. When he took on Macbeth, he tried to circumvent its infamous curse by referring both to the character and the play as "Harry Lauder", who was a popular Scottish entertainer from the early part of the 20th century. (It didn't work. The production was notoriously plagued by dark occurrences and opened to mortifying reviews.) When he retired, his statement read, "It's time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won't come back."

All this is meant to point up that he was not only one of the great, completely original actors of our time, but also a man of charm, endearing whimsy, and great intelligence.

Here, from Nicholas Wapshott's 1984 biography, are some words of wisdom.

"I can't play inarticulates, I find. When I play reflective types I tend to reflect myself right off the screen."

"Success brings prizes, but most of them are consolation prizes. Mostly success has taught me to expect the right hand. Only now I know where to put my guard, because, believe me, it's coming, that right hand, and it's going to hurt. The trick is getting off the floor."

"What, am I older? Yes. Am I more profound? Not at all. All experience, in my experience, corrupts. You learn too many tricks. Tell me any experience you've had that has ennobled you?"

It is possible that one day Keith Richards and Tom Waits will die (although I am far from convinced of it). When they do, I'm certain I will suffer some kind of an existential crisis. That is not the case with O'Toole. I always knew he would die; I was, in fact, surprised that he outlived his drinking cronies Richards Harris and Burton. Still, it is a loss to be mourned, and if you have not followed his career, your life is poorer for it, and now's as good a time as any to explore. Be forewarned, however, that outside of two or three classics, he wound up in a lot of stinkers. (Katharine Hepburn, whose nickname for him was "Pig", used to tell him, "You're a bad picker, Pig." See Wapshott.)

Outside of the obvious (Lawrence of Arabia, Beckett, the Lion in Winter), you should watch 1980's the Stunt Man. It doesn't age particularly well, but his performance in it does, and it's an odd enough mélange of humour and dread and banality to leave a certain wake of possible greatness behind it. It was the last time he might have won an acting Oscar (I don't count My Favorite Year, because although he shines in the sending up of his own rakish persona, it is altogether too lightweight a project to tempt Oscar), and it was his misfortune that De Niro chose that particular year to play Jake LaMotta. Maybe my own favorite O'Toole performance is in the gargantuan, unwieldy, and utterly chilling Night of the Generals from 1967.

I wanted to mark his passing by watching Lord Jim and Murphy's War, two of his early, enigmatic films which I'd seen years previous and didn't much cotton to, give them a second chance to communicate, but Netflix is relatively O'Toole-poor, it turns out, so I settled on the three earliest available that were still unknown to me.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Zulu Dawn: (1979. dir: Douglas Hickox) I have a soft spot in my heart for these old nostalgia-for-the-empire British films. Before the English discovered they could make a mint on sentimental hogwash about the lower classes triumphing over hard times with the help of their mates (I think it was the Full Monty which kicked off that whole antic hay), the sixties and seventies followed up the success of Lawrence of Arabia with a ton of these old things: Young Winston, Conduct Unbecoming, this and Zulu come to mind. Hollywood pitched in, too, with my favorite, the Man Who Would Be King. Although they tend towards an elegiac quality and a general recognition of the political incorrectness of the whole demnable thing, this is the British version of Civil War movies which cast a wistful eye toward the Antebellum South. You know it's untenable; the way of the life was wrong and had to stop, but wasn't it pretty in its way? If your skin was the correct color, naturally.

Zulu Dawn recreates a particularly grim moment for the Empire: when hubristic governing aristocrats in the English colony of Natal, separated only by a river from Zulu lands, took it upon themselves to make war upon the natives, unleashing a horrific defeat at Isandlwana. It looks like an episode of Sharpe, as we spend time getting to know the various officers and lads, all played by stunningly good British character actors (Nigel Davenport, James Faulkner, Bob Hoskins, Simon Ward, Denholm Elliott, Ronald Pickup, to name only a few), then we spend a lot of time watching troop movements and observing the unwieldy nature of the English army traversing foreign ground. We come to know pertinent details, such as that the quartermaster plays exactly by the book, a habit which will be ominous in the heat and chaos of battle when he's handing out ordnance methodically, box by box, while the boys at the front are using it up as fast as they can shoot.

Although it's a grand and chilling moment when the hillsides darken with waves of barefoot, dark-skinned warriors, befeathered and chanting, the best part is the end: where they strive to save The Colours by riding them across the river, lose them to the enemy, then a downed officer manages to shoot the flag out of enemy hands and we watch it plunge into the water and curl down with the tide. After that, we ride with Peter O'Toole, the general most at fault for the massacre, who has taken his own sweet time to come to the aid of his central column, into a decimated, smoke-enshrouded camp, and end on a wonderfully lit view of his face as the enormity of the horror descends.

Zulu, from 1964, was Michael Caine's first role (and he's awfully good), and depicts the Battle of Roarke's Drift, a story just following this one, chronologically, but with a more upbeat ending for the denizens of the Empire. (And it's a better movie.)

How to Steal a Million: (1966. dir: William Wyler) Candy-coated sugar-flavored mid-sixties heist flick ala Topkapi and the Italian Job. O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn work easily enough together, but there's nothing earth-shaking here. It's edited for mega-panorama-epic-vision, so you get a ton of filler on either ends of scenes, always a screw-up as far as the precise dynamics of timing needed for both heist films and comedies, so neither aspect is entirely successful. The comedy is self-satisfied, over-written and heavy-handed. The whole movie, in fact, bears a feeling of weightiness, as if it were filmed using huge, unwieldy, immovable equipment, and it's just the opposite of the light touch such a venture requires. I believe O'Toole started taking these pretty-boy roles (starting with What's New, Pussycat?) because he wanted to be a heart-throb, and certainly to move away from the heavy-drama, man-alone impression he'd created with Lawrence of Arabia and Lord Jim. And he does have a nice, subtle touch with comedy. This is a failure, but not his fault, or Hepburn's.

Casino Royale: (1967. Multiple directors, including John Huston) It turns out that he just has the merest of cameos in this, a cameo in a movie made of cameos and schtick, and his may be the worst (he is playing bagpipes in a sort of hallucination sequence). It has more in common with Laugh-in and Get Smart than with the Bond films it's sending up. Some good actors give it a good try (special mention goes to Deborah Kerr for a fine but doomed effort), and Peter Sellers is the one who ends up shining most brightly. There's a bit in the middle done on mock German Expressionist sets which is amusing for a minute, it's got some very fine secondary turns by character actors you'll recognize, and, to its credit, it never claims to be anything but a schmaltzy tribute to psychedelic fun. Still, you'll probably fast-forward through some stuff.

hammer of the gods: a half-assed night in valhalla

(2013. dir: Farren Blackburn) I always get my hopes up for Viking movies. Normally, I'm disappointed, and this is no exception. This may have been derived from a computer game; if not, it ought to have been that instead. It's got the "motley group on important quest" picaresque format, and revels in its violence (very badly edited, as is the absurd preference these days).

It's also extraordinarily well acted, beginning with the incomparable James Cosmo as the King of the Land at his Death-Time, and Charlie Bewley brings a startlingly light touch and easy grace to his turn as the youngest of the princes, a performance which shines when compared to, say, Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans or even (my hero-worshipped) Fassbender in Centurion. (And it's all in a sense the same character, right? Strong, handsome hero worthier of our attentions because he's less calcified by his wonderful powers of machismo than are all the other macho guys around him.) Bewley, new to me, apparently learned his craft from the Twilight series, the Vampire Diaries, and Nashville, not a resume I'd have guessed for him, but something obviously worked, because he's got some skills.

The script, certainly not the worst I've ever run up against, still kept taking me back to my high school Senior All-Night, where part of the evening's festivities included a showing of Heavy Metal at the Varsity. I keep thinking that the roots of this movie delve further into that and Frank Frazetta than having anything to do with actual Vikings on English shores. Although, now I think of it, there is too much blather about what crap religion is (both of The Gods and of God) and how superior science is (although you never see any evidence at all of science at work here, only the glories of machismo and how they save the day). If you're not religious, then you still might be offended by the incest, fratricide, homophobia or matricide, but probably not, not if you're part of the targeted demographic (male gaming addicts between the ages of 12 and 19, I reckon). The mother-figure here is cut from the Only God Forgives cloth, except she's more extreme and hysterical. What is it with kids these days and their "evil mom" imagos? ("The same Great Mother who has given us life is speeding us toward extinction, and all in the service to a great mystery which befuddles the conscious mind, terrifies the heart and stirs the soul.” James Hollis, Mythologems.)

It's not the worst Viking movie you'll ever see, as long as your expectations are low. The colours are of the yawningly familiar teal and orange variety, and here's a drinking game for you: see who's the first among you to recognize the scenes lifted straight out of Apocalypse, Now! and Titus Andronicus, or the various pretentions towards replicating the power of Valhalla Rising.