10. STOKER
Another
coming of age tale, but one that is completely different to “Mud”, because when
India Stoker finds and grows into her true self, she becomes someone not as
innocent as you would expect. “Stoker”
is Park Chan-Wook’s English language debut and the change of language has
changed nothing else, because the film is a stunning achievement and has all
the hallmarks of the director’s previous work.
It is visually gorgeous to look at and the visuals themselves give the
film a fairytale like quality to it all.
The film is blessed to have three generations of Australian actresses
(Nicole Kidman, Jacki Weaver and Mia Wasikowska) fill the major female roles
and they are all magnificent but it is Wasikowska as India Stoker who owns this
film. This is her most complex and best
role to date and her character has one of the most complete arcs I have seen in
a Hollywood film for quite some time.
What I loved about the film is the dark themes that are within it,
something that Park Chan-Wook has never been afraid to tackle, and yet despite
the darkness of theme, the film has been shot the opposite. True, there are shadows always present on the
edge, but it never envelopes the film fully and you can always see what is
going on. Being a huge Hitchcocck fan, I
loved the allusions to his classic film “Shadow Of A Doubt”, with both films
antagonists being an Uncle Charlie. I
also believe that the visual style of “Stoker” is very reminiscent of Hitchcock
too and if Hitchcock were alive today, I am sure that this is the kind of film
he would be making. Also similar to De
Palma’s “Passion”, this is a film that gets better with each viewing. Click here to read my original review.
9. DRINKING
BUDDIES
This was
the surprise of this year’s MIFF for me and was a film I almost didn’t end up
seeing. I was feeling so burnt out and
wanted a break and was going to skip “Drinking Buddies” as I was only seeing it
because Anna Kendrick had a role in it.
Thank god I changed my mind because I absolutely loved this film. “Drinking Buddies” is actually a rare
commodity in cinema because it is about friendship rather than love. The film has a very real vibe to it all and
this is because there was no dialogue written in the script, rather
writer/director Joe Swanberg just wrote down the story beats and the dialogue
was totally improvised by the actors themselves. This is a dangerous technique for a film
particularly if you have not cast the right actors, but Swanberg has done a
stellar job in that department because both Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson have
the most natural chemistry I have seen on film in ages. They work so well off of each other that you
would swear that, like their characters, they were age old best friends. My absolute favourite thing about “Drinking
Buddies” though is that it doesn’t go for the cop out Hollywood ending with the
two friends realizing they were perfect for each other and end up falling in
love. If that happened I would have been
shattered, but thankfully Swanberg ends the film on the most perfect note. While “Drinking Buddies” is only a small film,
it is endlessly entertaining. I love this
film and recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone. Click here to read my original review.
8. WE ARE
WHAT WE ARE
Jim
Mickle’s “We Are What We Are” is almost the perfect remake. Mickle has taken the basic elements from the
Mexican original and taken the story in a completely different direction,
complete with different locale. While
the original film is an urban drama, the remake takes place in a country town
completely altering the feel of the film and separating itself to be its own
being. Both films deal with a
cannibalistic family preparing a religious ritual, as the power shifts from one
member to another after the leader of the family dies unexpectedly. Mickle has added another subplot of a doctor
searching for his missing daughter’s remains and whose investigations lead him
to the Parkers, the aforementioned family.
The doctor is played by Michael Parks who underplays his role to
perfection; he has a quiet presence throughout the film full of heartbreak and
hurt. Another change that Mickle made to
the original was reversing the genders of all the main characters, so in this
film, the leaders of the family are the females and it is up to 19 year old
Iris to take her mother’s place after her death. Knowing what comes with the leadership, Iris
is reticent to take on the job and must rely on the help of her younger sister
Rose. As good as Ambyr Childers is as
Iris, for mine, it is Julia Garner as Rose that steals this picture. She is simply amazing and has such presence
on screen that she out acts veteran actors three times her age. My favourite thing about “We Are What We Are”
though is, and this may surprise you, is the visual style. Firstly, Liz Vastola’s costume designs,
particularly for the girls, are just brilliant and give the film an
otherworldly or “old” appearance even though the film is set in the modern
day. In terms of camera moves and shots,
the film is shot very classically but Mickle has fun with a number of camera
techniques such as overhead shots and the use of the split diopter. Even when not using trickery, the film is
always shot in gorgeous compositions creating quite the beautiful horror
film. Now as good as “We Are What We
Are” is, it does stumble at the final hurdle with its terribly misjudged
ending. The film is never gory but for
some reason Mickle decides to go for the gore for the finale and it is
ludicrous and just does not fit the tone of the rest of the film. It is a truly horrible ending but doesn’t
quite undo this brilliant horror film. Click here to read my original review.
7. RUSH
I have
already mentioned that Ron Howard’s “Rush” was my biggest surprise of 2013 and
it really was. When I started watching
the film I had no expectations of it being any good at all and yet here it is
in my top ten of the year. I was
literally blown away by the quality of the film; in all departments: directing,
acting and production design. Even
though I had no interest in the subject of Formula 1 racing, the way that
Howard has put this film together had me riveted the whole time. I was on the edge of my seat through all of
the racing scenes (it helped that I did not know the real life outcomes) and I
loved how different both James Hunt and Niki Lauda were in their philosophies
of racing. Hunt had to do it because he
was brilliant at it and had an undying passion to prove that he could be the
best, while Lauda took a more mathematical approach in terms of getting ready (both
his car and his own body) to get maximum performance when on the track. No doubt both men were brilliant drivers
though; the best in their time and their rivalry is thoroughly
entertaining. Both Chris Hemsworth and
Daniel Bruhl are perfectly cast as Hunt and Lauda respectively, but it is Bruhl
that takes the honours just for making the prickly and potentially unlikable
Lauda, in fact likable.
6. PRISONERS
French
Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” is quite a masculine piece of
cinema and another real big surprise for me this year. The story of a kidnapping of two young girls
and the consequences that come after the said abduction is one of the most
powerful films I saw all of 2013. First
and foremost, the performances of the two leads are truly stellar. Hugh Jackman, as the aggrieved father, has
never been better; it is such a strong and aggressive performance as this man
is pushed to the limit in an attempt to find his daughter. He is actually terrifying in just how far he
is willing to go and the moral ambiguities of this film is another one of its
strong highlights. We know what
Jackman’s character is doing is very wrong, but if it was our daughter would we
not want to do the same? Jake Gyllenhaal
always seems to come across as quite young in film because of his baby face,
but this is the first time that I have ever seen him come across as a real
man. He is so masculine and intense as
Detective Loki, the man in charge of searching for the missing girls and keeping
an eye on Keller Dover (Jackman) so he doesn’t do something he will regret. This is actually the second of two films that
Gyllenhaal has done with Villeneuve (the first film, “Enemy”, has yet to be
released but is due early this year) and the director obviously knows how to
get the best out of his leading man.
While Gyllenhaal’s role is much more controlled and internalized, it is
just as full of testosterone as that of Jackman’s. Probably the biggest surprise about
“Prisoners” is where the film actually goes and just how dark it gets. This is a brutal film with some graphic
torture sequences that aren’t for the faint of heart but even with the film’s
uncomfortable subject matter and its extended running time (“Prisoners” is just
over two and a half hours long), it is always riveting; you cannot take your
eyes off the screen and this intense tale.
That is the perfect word to describe this incredible movie: it is
intense, and you may be surprised at just how emotionally involved you become
with it too. Special mention must be
made of Roger Deakins gorgeous, but very dark cinematography. He has made true beauty out of a number of
very ugly situations. “Prisoners” is a
must-see and was the best thriller to come out in 2013.
5. BYZANTIUM
Irish
filmmaker Neil Jordon may be the most underrated director working today. There was a brief period where his genius was
recognized (around the time of “The Crying Game” and “Interview With A
Vampire”) but most of the time his work seems to get overlooked. This is such a shame because he continually
makes films that are well worth seeing and “Byzantium” may be the very best of
them. Like the film’s director,
“Byzantium” itself may be 2013’s most underrated film. This film saw Neil Jordan return to the world
of vampires for the first time since his most famous film, and what he came up
with is absolutely sublime. I adore this
film with a passion, in every way possible.
Personally I think Jordan is at his best with his fantastical films;
films that live in a realm that is not quite reality. He seems to have an ability to add a fairy
tale quality to these films from “The Company of Wolves” to “In Dreams”, all
the way up to “Ondine” and now his latest, “Byzantium”. As I said, the film is a vampire drama but
this is not a “Twilight” rip-off instead Jordan brings back the most vital
component to a vampire tale; the fact that the vampire is a tragic
character. Their lives are filled with
sadness and despair and their immortality may be a curse more than anything
else. The vampires of “Byzantium” are not
your traditional sort (they don’t bite, they lacerate with a large finger nail
that extends when ready to feed), rather we have a mother / daughter team
(played by Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan) on the run from their very own
makers after breaking the sacred and secret code of their sect. Tired of constantly running from town to
town, Eleanor (Ronan) starts writing about her life and exactly what she and
her mother are, and then shares these stories with a young boy she starts to
fall in love with. So we have the
tragedy of a love story that will never be, as well as the tragedy of how the
girls came to be which is reiterated to us (the audience) as Eleanor writes
about it, so the movie cuts between the past and the present, and it is done so
magnificently. This is a slow moving
film but personally I thought it was perfectly paced and the story was
beautifully told. Visually, the film was
gorgeously shot by Sean Bobbitt (who is fast becoming one of my favourite
cinematographers) who regularly frames the girls in the center of the shot with
long halls or corridors enveloping them and making them look smaller. I was stunned by how beautiful each shot in
the film was, and one of the most stunning images in the film that you will see
is of this giant blood waterfall. Sadly
this film went straight to DVD in Australia (it was originally set for a cinema
release, but it never happened) but please do not let that cloud your judgment
of the quality of this film. This is a
brilliant film, in all departments, that I hope more and more people take the
chance to see.
4. THE
CONJURING
The best
horror film of the year was, without a doubt, James Wan’s “The Conjuring” which
was a throwback to the ghost stories of old.
Wan forgoes blood and gore to create a chilling film built on atmosphere
and suspense with its best and scariest scene being one that is left totally up
to the audience’s imagination (the shadow behind the door). Wan’sdirection is very impressive (his best
yet) and I loved the way he framed and composed the majority of his shots. “The Conjuring” is actually based on truth of
sorts, as the story has been taken from the files of real life paranormal
investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have been portrayed in the film by
Patrick Wilson and the always fantastic Vera Farmiga. Both bring a reality to their characters that
is paramount to the success of the film because they sell that everything that
they see, feel and hear is as real as anything else in the room, no matter how
ridiculous it may seem. Like all great
ghosts stories of the past, “The Conjuring” builds slowly as the stakes
continue to grow until the chilling finale, but what is interesting about this
film is that while the film starts off as a ghost story, by the end of it, it
has morphed into something else entirely.
It goes from a ghost story to a story about possession and it is the
best example of possession I have seen in a film since “The Exorcist” which is
the absolute highest praise I can give.
Personally I found the finale of this film to be absolutely terrifying
and that’s because Wan was able to present the situation with the same reality
as the rest of the film. Aside from the
horror aspects of the film, everything else about “The Conjuring” has been
brilliantly put together. The film is
set in the 70’s and the period fashions and décor of the house is totally spot
on. Everything feels exact and of the
era and the production design of the house itself is gorgeous with its run down
look and lived in feel, giving it plenty of opportunity to help build the intense
atmosphere of the film. Another
impressive bit of production design is the very creepy “trophy” room of the
Warrens which houses mementos from all the cases they have been involved with,
and because this is a James Wan film, it includes a very creepy doll. Thankfully, audiences flocked to see “The
Conjuring” and the film became a massive success which was well deserved
because the film is brilliant and a new horror classic. Click here to read my original review.
3. THE PLACE
BEYOND THE PINES
Derek
Cianfrance’s triptych of tales is really a complex look at fathers and sons,
and how much their influence defines one another and whether or not sons are
doomed to repeat the sins of their father, but it has been cleverly disguised
as an involving crime drama. As good as
the genre elements are within “The Place Beyond The Pines”, make no mistake
about it, it is the family elements that is what this film is truly about. The film grabs you by the throat immediately
in the fast paced opening segment that sees Ryan Gosling play a new father
making the dubious decision to rob a bank to care and support his new
family. Luke (Gosling) is a stunt rider
at a local carnival and he uses his amazing skills on a motorbike to help him
with his robberies. Gosling is yet again
electric in the role of Luke, a no-hoper who dreams of doing good for his
family. It is an amazingly charismatic
performance that is anchored by an emotional honesty that makes it easy to care
for the man even though want he is doing is dumb, to put it lightly. Bradley Cooper is equally impressive, as a
cop who attempts to take on corruption within the force, even though his role
is far less showy than Gosling’s and much more internalized. Like all of the segments of this film, the
second part is incredibly emotional because much of Avery’s (Cooper) pain comes
from when he was injured on the job stopping an intruder entering a woman’s
house. Whilst stopping the man, he
himself is shot but not before he kills the intruder with his own shot. When he learns that the man he killed had a
son the same age as his own, he is devastated and can’t bring himself to look
at his child anymore due the guilt he is holding, so he basically abandons his
son from an emotional standpoint. After
the cracking pace of the opening segment, there is a jarring effect when the
second, slower segment begins but once you get to know the characters, the level
of quality in regards to story is as equal as the first.The less said about the
third sequence the better because it holds a few secrets better not spoken
about but it is a real examination about whether or not sons are doomed to
repeat the same mistakes of their fathers, as well as looking at the nature
versus nurture debate. “The Place Beyond
The Pines” is a long film at close to two and a half hours but I was with it
for every minute. Not once did I feel
bored or want to look at my watch. The
reason for this is that the characters and the actors playing them are naked,
emotionally speaking. Everything feels
honest and real in all of the situations presented; nothing ever feels off. Once again Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography is
outstanding and yet, it is totally different from what he showed in
“Byzantium”. His work here relies a lot
more on natural light and handheld camerawork is employed regularly and yet it
is all extremely beautiful. The other
great positive “The Place Beyond The Pines” has is Mike Patton’s score which is
never intrusive, nor does it attempt to influence you to feel a certain way,
rather it elevated the emotional content present within the film. “The Place Beyond The Pines” is just an
amazing cinematic experience that I loved wholeheartedly. Click here to read my original review.
2. THE PAST
How do
you follow up the masterpiece that was “A Separation”? Well if you are AsgharFarhadi, thus arguably
the greatest working director in cinema today, you just roll up your sleeves
and make another film because while “The Past” may not quite be as good as its
predecessor, it is almost better than anything else I saw all year. Farhadi has created yet another spellbinding
family drama with “The Past” but for the first time in his career, he is
working outside of Iran and in a foreign language. This new film is set in France, and it is
amazing to notice how the change of language and location has not changed the
quality of Farhadi’s work at all. The
reason for this is that Farhadi deals with human emotions that have no
geographical boundaries; they are stories that everyone can relate to. Like “A Separation”, this film although a
drama is told in a style that is more akin to a thriller where we are given
more and more information as the film goes along that ultimately changes
everything we thought we knew from before.
What I love about Farhadi’s films is that he works in levels of grey;
none of his characters are defined as good or bad, they are just people trying
to deal with their own problems. Seeing as how Farhadi deliberately holds back
certain pieces of information from us, until he shares that information with
his characters, it is best that I do not talk about the plot, but suffice to
say this is a film about dealing with the past; trying to escape from it or
coming to peace with it and how it is very hard to plan for a future until you
have successfully done so. What is
interesting about “The Past” is that he starts the film in a very similar
manner to “A Separation”, with our two main characters coming together in an
attempt to get a divorce and end the marriage on good terms. What is different about this new film though
is that unlike the previous one, “The Past” is not shot in a documentary style,
it is much more classically shot and it is gorgeous to look at. I must say that with each new film Farhadi
gets more and more comfortable with the visual side of his films and “The Past”
is easily his best looking film. I loved
his use of the autumn colour palette; that is consistent with the colours
within the house; the browns, yellows and dark greens. I also like that Farhadi shoots through
obstructions within the frame, like plants, glass windows, door frames so it
gives us the feeling we are watching something private. The intense conversations these people are
having are not for stranger’s ears and thus it feels like we are catching these
characters in private moments not meant for us.
Performances in “The Past” are all tops with Berenice Bejo showing
stunning range especially compared to her role in last year’s “The
Artist”. However my favourite performance
in the film is that of young Pauline Burlet who plays Lucie, the teenage daughter,
in the film. It is such an emotionally
devastating performance and she is convincing in every frame she is in. Her character arguably is carrying the most
emotional baggage during the film, and it shows particularly in the why Burlet
holds herself physically. She drags
herself around, with her shoulders slumped and her head down, never making eye
contact with anyone; you can feel the emotional weight and guilt that she is
carrying. The only problem I have with
“The Past” is that it is probably ten minutes too long, and Farhadi goes for
one revelation too many. Personally, I
think less would have definitely been more in this case, but gee, this is
another spectacular film from Asghar Farhadi that I just adore. Click here to read my original review.
1.
BLANCANIEVES
Well
there you have it, that was my round-up of the year that
was 2013. Hopefully you got some enjoyment out of it, but before I
finish, lets have a brief look at the upcoming year and my most
anticipated films of 2014.
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