My End-Of-Year Favourite 20 Movies List For 2013 (Part Two)

[philosoraptor42]

If you missed it, you can check out the movies I ranked between 11 and 20 here.
Below is my top 10 movies from 2013. Do be aware that this is an end-of-year list and, not being a proper movie critic, there are tons of movies that I have as yet to see and review. But this selection below are the best so far.


10. Monsters University (2013)
UK release date: 12 July 2013

The demise of Pixar has been hugely exaggerated. It may be Pixar's marketing strategy that is suffering the biggest decline. I found the marketing for "Brave" to be somewhat uninspiring, but absolutely loved the final product (not least because of similarities to my favourite Disney movie of all time, "Sword In The Stone"). In the case of "Monsters University" I was actively horrified by the teaser trailer showing Mike, the smaller one-eyed green monster, being bullied by Sully, the giant blue furry monster, and treated like a living disco ball. Yet strangely this prequel to one of the Pixar films which never really spoke to me turned out to be enormous fun and absolutely crammed full of clever little details. I'd actually argue that this is one of the better Pixar movies, not the mediocre entry I was expecting at all.

(My review here)


9. Gravity (2013)
UK release date: 7 November 2013

On the negative side there's a typical "oh no, what can my life possibly be worth without children" element to the central female character which I found enormously irritating. On the positive side however, there are great performances from the two actors. (I don't count the voices of Houston or the Eastenders actor whose face is only shown in a photograph. There's only really Clooney and Bullock giving a performance here.) And of course the biggest positive point is the absolutely incredible spectacle. There's some wonderfully creative artistry involved here. Sorry astronauts if this didn't entirely capture the way everything works in outer space, but you've got to give it some poetic license and full credit for the incredibly ambitious vision involved here. As Bullock's character travels across space doing whatever she has to do to survive there's a kind of 'action movie' feel here.

This was a welcome surprise considering I'd imagined that this movie would mainly feature a woman stranded in the empty blackness of space having an existential crisis as she contemplates her inevitable death. "Gravity" isn't perfect, but it's both a fun and an intense cinematic experience. Wondering why it received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture? Heck, flipping "Avatar" received an Oscar nomination and that was nowhere near so worthy. If technical achievement is going to swing in a movie's favour at the Oscars (which, let's face it, normally isn't how it works) then "Gravity" seems like a film more worthy of that kind of special treatment. The wow-factor is strong with this one.

(My review here)



8. Mud (2012)
UK release date: 10 May 2013

Matthew McConaughey's "McConaissance" continues. ("McConaissance" is a term which McConaughey adopted himself, though I'm not sure where the term originated, to describe his movement back to serious acting after a long period making mostly naff romantic comedies.) He seemed to be the best thing in "Bernie", a major highlight in "Magic Mike" and his plethora of excellent performances recently have meant that he will be the main star in Christopher Nolan's upcoming sci-fi film "Interstellar".

Here he plays a mysterious fugitive two boys encounter on a small local island when they find he's been using the area they intended to make into a secret den as a hideout. This is a big change in style for the director, Jeff Nichols, whose previous movie "Take Shelter" was a damn creepy psychological thriller which occasionally looked like it might even turn into a zombie film at times.

Apparently this film has connections with Huckleberry Finn. I'm not actually terribly familiar with Huckleberry Finn myself, but I know enough to have a basic gist of what is meant by that. It's essentially the Southern US equivalent of 'William and the outlaws'. A bunch of children who get into scrapes which are partially their own fault and partially due to a certain level of naivety. Though certainly there's a darker and edgier side to things here which you wouldn't find in the William stories.

In the end though "Mud", overall, is pretty much a feel-good movie. A part of me admittedly would have wanted this movie to be darker, but I cannot argue with the quality, nor argue that I didn't have a great time watching it.

(My review here)


7. Byzantium (2012)
UK release date: 31 May 2013

A vampire movie with a difference. These aren't exactly traditional vampires, but this is a film somewhat in the style of "Let The Right One In" (though it suffers somewhat from a direct comparison). The book of "Let The Right One In" had some flashbacks to the early days of the central vampire which were left out of the movie, but here they have decided to use flashbacks to earlier history as a means to build up a specific mythology.

Initially the differences between Saoirse Ronan's character and Gemma Arteton's character seem jarring, but eventually it becomes clear that these are two people stopped in time. They are forever fixed as the people they used to be and, due to the circumstances of their era, they ended up being very different people. These two central performances help to ground the movie, allowing us to gradually recognise the subtleties of these new kinds of vampire brought into modern times.

(My review here)


6. Rush (2013)
UK release date: 13 September 2013

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl face off in this exceptional biopic about the real life rivalry between James Hunt and Nikki Lauda. Brühl in particular is absolutely incredible here, but both actors have a wide range of exciting British talent backing them up.

It seems that CG has been used in order to give us a F1 car's perspective. Though I wouldn't have known this, were it not for the sheer impossibility of the filmmakers ever catching certain shorts if they were shooting from a real F1 car. Not to mention the shots seemingly taken from within a F1 driver's helmet.

Beautiful, brilliantly acted and compelling in a way that few biopics achieve. Even while covering a deeply tragic true story, this is a wonderfully fun tribute to two electric personalities.

(My review here)


5. A Hijacking (2012)
UK release date: 10 May 2013

A fantastic Danish movie about the experience of a hijacking by Somali pirates, both from the perspective of a crew member aboard the ship and from the perspective of a company man entrusted with the responsibility of negotiating with the pirates. Even though the film centres around scenes at the negotiating table taking conference calls, that does not prevent it from being extremely tense at all times. I was often on the edge of my seat. This is an amazingly realistic portrayal of a hijacking with brilliant natural performances. At times it felt more like expertly-edited fly-on-the-wall documentary footage than a staged film with actors.

(My review here)


4. The Impossible (2012)
UK release date: 1 January 2013

Perhaps it is not surprising to hear that there is a horror director at the helm on this feature film about the tsunami. While here in the UK the film received a 12A rating, there were reports of audience members throwing up and fainting in the aisles. Some amazing work has been put into making the audience feel the pure brutality involved in being a tsunami survivor. (A very different project from his prior movie "The Orphanage" about ghosts.)

We've all already seen the footage of waves sweeping aside huge areas and hundreds of people aside as if they were nothing, but this film gets you inside the head of a victim suffering through the huge torrents and desperately holding onto life.

I hope future films do more to show the plight of ordinary people native to the countries affected, since this was focussed entirely on a country where 50% of the victims were tourists. Still, it seems that Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor and the three child actors have done a fantastic job of portraying the experience of one particular family of Spanish tourists who were separated by the enormous waves that day. This has heart-warming and heart-breaking elements and is a massive rollercoaster ride of emotion.

(My review here)


3. Django Unchained (2012)
UK release date: 18 January 2013

A return-to-form for Quentin Tarantino. I know there are a lot of people out there who loved "Inglourious Basterds" but I'm afraid I'm not really one of them. Tarantino's films are never exactly awful (not even "Death Proof), but "Django Unchained" seemed to me to be closer to a consistent storyline than Tarantino has offered for a long while. Add to that the awesome central performances from Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as the general sense of fun and you're looking at one of the best movies of the year. Sure, "Django Unchained" insists on constantly reminding you that you are watching a movie, but I cannot fault Tarantino for the quality of entertainment he provides here.

(My review here)


2. The World's End (2013)
UK release date: 19 July 2013

I am fed up with hearing about how "Shaun of the Dead is still the best" of Edgar Wright's movies. "Shaun of the Dead" was about as unoriginal as you could get. It was a zombie comedy and we were up to our ears with zombie comedies long before it was ever released. Movies like "Return of the Living Dead", "Reanimator", "Braindead" are, to my mind, all superior zombie comedies to Edgar Wright's effort. And let's not forget that Wright had already done zombie comedy elements in his tv series "Spaced".

Now don't get me wrong; "Shaun of the Dead" is a great movie. However, everything else that Wright has released has been absolutely game-changingly incredible. "Hot Fuzz" contrasted police action movies with elements of real life policing ("actually we call it the 'service', not the 'force'") and then tied it with classic horror tropes from movies like "The Omen" and "The Wicker Man". "Scott Pilgrim" was naturally an adaptation, but it was a very ambitious adaptation which was like nothing we had seen in film before.

"The World's End" however, struck me as Edgar Wright's best film yet. His experience with action from working on Scott Pilgrim is very obvious. While Edgar Wright has always been meticulous in any set pieces he commits to film, the choreography for some of the fights here is quite incredible. This also has more emotional depth than previous films, featuring some very strongly defined characters who feel more real than in any of Wright's previous outings. The premise appeals particularly strongly to people of my sort of age, coming to realise that the places they grew up feel alien to them now. However, the most important point is arguably that this seems (to me at least) to be by far the funniest of Edgar Wright's films. This is thanks to the fantastic anti-hero role of Gary King, played by Simon Pegg. It's the most obnoxious character ever and it's quite clear that he's an enormous loser (and a pretty tragic one too) and yet I absolutely could not stop laughing at every little thing he says and does.

"The World's End" has some neat little references to a number of movies, particularly "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", but also "The Day The Earth Stood Still", "The Thing", "They Live" and towards the end there's even a "Mad Max" connection. I also felt the pub setting made this quite strongly reminiscent of the more recent "FAQ About Time Travel". However, "The World's End" is very clearly its own unique movie and it is a brilliant addition to Wright's filmography. I cannot wait to see what he does next.

(My review here)


1. Stoker (2013)
UK release date: 1 March 2013

I'd been losing interest in Chan-Wook Park as a director as his movies seemed to be getting sillier and sillier (though he always kept a consistently awesome visual style). I wasn't at all sure what he was going to do with his English-language debut.

What we get here is kind of more serious take on "The Addams Family", sort of. It's about a quirky female character who realises that her Uncle who arrives out of nowhere, has a sinister edge to himself. But this is also a coming-of-age tale with the lead character Mia recognising a sinister edge within herself too. Mia Wasikowska is absolutely amazing in this central role and Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode are similarly brilliant as her mother and uncle respectively.

Dark, beautiful, haunting, thrilling, stunning, and every scene is wonderfully composed. This is a film with clear themes which are subtly explored and beautifully realised. There is a lot of room for interpretation (though it has been pointed out to me that there's more than a little poetic license here too), but there's also a sly wink and a nod involved here. As creepy as this movie gets, there's a biting satirical edge. Just like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" which forever twisted the popular conception of salt-of-the-earth southerners, this movie takes a harmless setting and makes it deeply disturbing. For example, at one point India and her uncle decide to form an alibi around a television performance of an opera. There's a strange contrast between this extremely civilised activity and the brutal and twisted activities that the characters are really involved in.

"Stoker" is a cut above the rest of the films I saw this year. It is ridiculously underrated and if you haven't seen it yet, prepare to be astounded by this diamond in the rough.

(My review here)
(Plus some comparison with the Hitchcock movie "Shadow of a Doubt" here)