My
aim is to make this round-up useful and fun, both for me and for you, but I’ve
got forty or more new films to comment on, so let’s get right to it. I’ll start with the prestige pictures of the
year, notable for award nominations or high critical ranking, continue with my
own particular recommendations, and then work my way through various groupings
by category or theme. (Included for
each film -- links to Metacritic and Netflix, plus rankings in Film Comment and
IndieWire critical polls for 2013.)
I
already covered five of the year’s top films here, but the most
acclaimed of all was Best Picture Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave (MC-97,
FC #2, IW #1, NFX), and I am no nay-sayer about that. It was an honest piece of work, and I found it an appropriate
successor to Lincoln and antidote to Django Unchained, in historical films from the previous year. Well-directed by Steve McQueen and
well-acted by Chiwetel Ejiofor and others, with a decent respect for historical
accuracy, unflinching but not sensational, my only quibbles with this film were
the almost-too-pretty cinematography and cameos by actors whose recognizability
threw me out of the veristic sense of period.
I’m
a dedicated follower of Paul Greengrass and his immersive documentary-like
style, but going in, I put Captain Phillips (MC-83, FC #50, IW
#41, NFX) more in a crowd-pleasing category with the Bourne films than with Bloody Sunday, so I was pleasantly
surprised to find it effective in the vein of United 93, making the reality of a recent news story come alive
with vivid immediacy and broad sympathy.
Tom Hanks dials back the charm to play the matter-of-fact ship captain,
and real Somalis play the pirates who hijack his container ship and take him
hostage. The film elicited an
intriguing disparity of opinion among reviewers I typically trust, with one
finding it a “disturbing celebration of
American power,” another suggesting that Greengrass “wants this victory to
shatter you,” while a third wonders, “how does a left-wing
conscience find room to maneuver in a right-wing form?” I side with those who find this film an
exceptional success.
A different perspective on Somali piracy comes
across in the Danish feature A Hijacking (MC-82, NFX). In Tobias
Lindholm’s film, American military might is not involved, and the
incident goes on for 134 days of tense negotiations by phone, with the pirate
mastermind on one end, and a Danish shipping CEO on the other. The boss is all business. but not without a
conscience, and can’t always accept the advice of his professional piracy
consultant. This is “Getting to Yes”
with a vengeance. Instead of slam-bam
action, we get excruciating tedium with an ominous hum of potential violence,
for an involving experience nonetheless.
Another approach to maritime adventure is applied in All is Lost (MC-87, FC #26, IW #19,
NFX). J.C. Chandor’s film, quite a
departure from the financial thriller Margin
Call, follows a solitary sailor from the moment his yacht’s hull is
breached by an errant flotsam shipping container to the time when, despite his
inventive and arduous efforts, it sinks and abandons him at sea in the Indian
Ocean. Unlike Captain Phillips, which was actually shot on a ship that was a
corporate twin to the original, this was mostly filmed in a tank with a green
screen background, but special effects and sound design convey a genuine sense
of being at sea. Robert Redford, doing
a lot of stunts for a 77-year-old, also does a lot of characterization with
virtually no dialogue. We watch because
the character is making an inventive and fascinating series of stabs at
survival, but we really pay attention because it’s that familiar face, however
weathered by the storm.
Going
back to Best Picture nominees, there are three I haven’t seen yet, but one I
sadly decline to recommend. There’s lot
to appreciate in The Wolf of Wall Street (MC-75, FC #37, IW #21, NFX), but I
found its extended length fundamentally unrewarding. You can see why Leonardo DiCaprio would want to play the
financial sleazeball Jordan Belfort, a person who is all over-the-top performance
anyway. And Martin Scorsese brings a
good deal of filmmaking genius to the bad-boy spectacle, but no discernible
soul, despite his typical autobiographical subtext. Much of it is funny, but in a disgusting way, Hangover-style. None of it is very enlightening.
As
“Best Foreign Film,” The Great Beauty (MC-86, FC #24, IW
#14, NFX) was a more reputable Oscar choice than many. I went into it with a certain skepticism,
but came out reasonably enchanted. I’d
even venture the heresy that it’s as good as the film it updates after fifty
years -- La Dolce Vita -- not that I
rank that benchmark among my favorite Fellini films, I much prefer the view of
Rome in The White Sheik. And I have to say Paolo Sorrentino does a
better job than Scorsese in satirizing decadence and debauchery without exemplifying
it. Toni Servillo excels as the central
character who holds the pulsing, scattershot energies of the film
together. He’s a jet-set writer, just
turned 65, who long ago swapped his commitments from literature to the high
life, to become the party master of the Roman rich. He’s understandably weary of his world, but not yet dead to the
beauties of his city.
As
usual, the most esteemed foreign release was not even nominated for an Oscar,
though it did not lack for notoriety. Blue
is the Warmest Color (MC-88, FC #12, IW #8, NFX) is best known for its
explicit lesbian sex scenes, and would probably be better with them cut, given
the three-hour running time, but Abdellatif Kechiche has plenty of other stuff
to offer in his follow-up to The Secret
of the Grain. This film has an
intimacy that goes well beyond sex, as we follow Adèle
Exarchopoulos as a character named Adèle in tight, constant close-up,
registering every change of color or expression on her face, from a schoolgirl
who develops a tortured passion for an older art student, into a teacher of
young children trying to put her life back together after their break-up. It’s a rich emotional experience, and your
heart goes out to Adèle as hers breaks.
Turning
to films rated among the top fifty of 2013 in critical polls, I’ll start with
two I personally would rank higher, and then go on to five I’d rank lower.
I expect to like any film by Nicole Holofcener, but
Enough Said (MC-79, IW #47, NFX)
surprised me with delight. It’s honest
and funny about romantic relationships in a way rarely seen this side of Eric
Rohmer. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a
divorced LA masseuse who meets a possible mate (James Gandolfini, in one of his
last roles) and a new best friend (Catherine Keener) at the same party, but later
finds out they know each other, and keeps the secret from both. Meanwhile each of them has a daughter about
to go to college. The slight but
significant story follows each character with wit and empathy, and offers a
steady stream of sparkling dialogue.
Short Term 12 (MC-82, FC #47, IW #16, NFX)
is set in a foster care facility, and clearly bears the fruit of direct
observation from writer/director Destin Cretton. Based on his previous short film, which had a male protagonist, this
film revolves around Brie Larson, who may prove a star with real gravitational
pull. She certainly holds this group of
kids, and this film, together. The
character’s name is Grace and she displays plenty of it, in a modest,
understated way, as she supervises the facility. Clearly subject to some neglect and abuse in her own childhood,
she is adept at caring for her charges and dealing with her fellow staff
members, with one of whom she’s romantically involved. Potentially grim, with sad stories of
damaged children, this film celebrates small steps and glimmers of hope, with
humor and heart.
As
for films that worked better for some other people than they did for me, I’ll
start with Upstream Color (MC-81, FC #10, IW #9, NFX), a freaky sci-fi-ish
thriller/romance/something by one-man-band Shane Carruth. I was content to let some of the spectacle
wash over me, but I didn’t care enough to try to figure out the enigma.
In Frances
Ha (MC-82, FC #9, IW #10, NFX), Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig get to
play out their mutual attraction through a scrim of early French New Wave
visuals and music. Like the
20-something title character, footloose and at loose ends in NYC, this film is
endearing up to a point, and then it’s a little much, or not enough.
Large
claims are made for another small film, which had its moments, but made no
strong impact on me – Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours (MC-83, FC #11, IW #20,
NFX)
tracks the passing connection between two lonely middle-aged people, a
Canadian woman in Vienna to watch over a cousin in a coma, and a guard at the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, where she idles away the waiting hours. The pair are appealing enough, but the
proceedings are so low-key that the most exciting thing in the film is a
gallery lecture on Bruegel.
Nonetheless, I would definitely consider showing this at the Clark, if I
ever wind up showing anything at all.
Wong
Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster (MC-72, FC#20, IW #33, NFX) is a splendid
visual spectacle, with Oscar-nominated cinematography by Philippe Le Sourd, and
serious about the philosophy of martial arts, while delivering all the
outlandish kicks and jabs that the genre demands. But it’s an insider’s film that leaves me on the outside.
Some
people keep announcing Woody Allen has made his best film in years, and I keep
feeling that I don’t care whether I ever see another Woody Allen film. Blue Jasmine (MC-78, FC #25, IW #27,
NFX) is worth viewing for Cate Blanchett in full-diva mode, as someone like
Mrs. Madoff after the fall, but not much else held my attention or earned my
appreciation.
Of
other highly ranked films, I’ve already expressed my love for Polley’s Stories We Tell (FC #16, IW #12), my
admiration for Bujalski’s Computer Chess (FC
#8, IW #18), and my ambivalence about Malick’s To the Wonder (FC #31, IW #23).
After the jump, I will comment on two good indies about run-ins between
the police and African-Americans, three films from the Middle East, four teen
comedies, two made for viewers mad about Mads, two about intellectuals and two
about artists, and three foreign films titled with a woman’s first name.
