Best of 2013 Part 1

Greetings and Salutations

Earliest I've ever starting writing this list, not sure when I'll finish. 2013 was a year when I paid more attention to the award nominees than ever before. I saw seven out of the nine best picture nominees before the Oscars aired. I've been trying to be more discerning and am retiring the "worst of" list, I figure being more professional and adult, I don't need to tell anyone just how bad The Starving Games probably was.

Due to how long and cumbersome this list has gotten (and how I don't write hardly at all), I thought I'd post in 3 parts.

Honorable Mentions: The Way, Way Back, 12 Years a Slave, the Place Beyond the Pines, Blackfish, Stoker, Blackfish, Spectacular Now

10. Blue is the Warmest Color

            I know including this movie on the list will cause some eyebrows to raise or eyes to roll. I understand this movie has a roughly seven minute, explicit lesbian sex scene. Let’s clear that elephant out of the room first. Also, director Abdellatif Keciche has been called out and shamed for poor treatment of the actresses while filming. Lastly, this movie a three hour long epic. Similar to 2014’s Boyhood, it’s a long movie with some really mundane stretches about the same characters growing up. I didn’t catch it in theaters because it was given the NC-17 kiss of death and actually saw it after the last of the Oscar movies.

            So why put it on the list at all? I think Blue is the Warmest Color has one of the most honest depictions of love and relationships that I’ve ever seen in a movie. For those who aren’t aware, the movie is simply about an epically intimate portrait of the life of Adele, portrayed by Adele Exarchopoulos. This actress puts in one of the best performances of the year with a lot of nuance. I feel playing such a subdued, realistic introvert throughout adolescence would be difficult especially given the emotional involvement throughout.

Adele’s story focuses on her relationship with the intriguing bordering on cliché artiste Emma, played by Lea Seydoux.  As things progress throughout the rest of the film, you can’t escape (except to pause, hey, it’s a three hours) but are stuck right there with Adele, feeling her vibrant passion, anger, frustration, and heartbreak.  It’s a mesmerizing portrait of love, one of the best films of the year, and contains probably the truest resolution of this type of story I’ve ever seen.

9. This is the End

            It’s a tough movie to review because spoiling all the jokes isn’t worth talking about and the acting is nothing entirely special. Seth Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg got all their good friends together and improvised a movie about the end of the world that’s hilarious and touching in equal turns.

            Danny McBride as Danny McBride gets one of the funniest introductions of any movie character, Michael Cera steals his portion of the movie completely, the underhanded Jonah Hill, the extended Emma Watson cameo (that the trailer spoiled)… All excellent.

            What I liked the most about this movie is that huge portions weren’t in the trailers at all – the trailers focused on the first act and the Watson cameo and left huge unspoiled tracts of comedy. A pet peeve of mine is seeing a trailer that ruins every beat and set piece from a comedy (The Other Woman comes to mind for a recent offender).

8. The World's End

It’s hard to talk about or review the World’s End without talking about the other Wright/Pegg/Frost Cornetto movies. It’s an odd, unique trilogy without the same characters but the same actors and flair throughout. They work on their own merits as well as being champions of specific genres. Shaun of Dead is the zombie movie and love letter to horror directors such as George A Romero and then Hot Fuzz took its cues from action movies, including Point Break. The World’s End is far more difficult to categorize, a braver more unique beast, definitely grounded in a science fiction world, but doesn’t have the specific homages that the first two are so rife with.

Even though the first two had their moments, the World’s End contains more emotions and was more affecting than Shaun or Fuzz. The thread going through the film is the honest depiction of friendship and growing up. While the pub culture aspect may have ostracized some viewers with its sheer Britishness, at its heart, the Worlds’ End, reflects on how much of an impact addiction and emotional trauma can affect those closest to us, as well as ourselves if we’re the ones at the center of the destruction. Pegg’s Gary King really is a tragic-comic work of genius, managing to elicit laughs through gritted teeth, while just retaining enough likeability to carry the film as a focal point.

Of course this being the work of Wright and Pegg, you’re free to take as much or as little from the film as you’d like and the more times you watch it, the more you’ll notice. While the latent emotional core struck a cord with many, there’s also the ever present comedy which runs the gamut from literal toilet sight gags, to recurring plays on dialogue such as the 'WTF' moments (again which serve as more than they first seem) to the sheer joy of watching five friends acting like drunken idiots.                                                                                    Like Shaun and especially Hot Fuzz, World’s End is also a first class action as the fight choreography is just remarkable. I’ll try and refrain from giving too much away, but the incredible blend of physical action mixed with visual effects make for some unforgettable punch ups. And even when you’ve adjusted to the initial shock of what’s happening on screen, the impact never lessons even in later events. Along for the ride in The World’s End cast are plenty of familiar faces (and voices) from other parts of the trilogy, which greatly appeal to my “Hey, it’s that guy from..!” and again enforces the sense of insider rewards that Wright and Pegg have always championed for their loyal supporters over the years.                                                                                                                                                  The principal cast here are also outstanding, with the spark between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as strong as ever, Martin Freeman especially is in great form (just watching him react and his facial expressions is quite sublime). Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan are two lesser known Brits who round out the fivesome. Rosamund Pike get some of the films’ sweeter moments to shine (and a far cry from her icy turn in Gone Girl). Overall, World’s End may not have the depth of broad humor that This is the End does but the emotional moments are lot more affecting, which is why I put it at #8.

Part 2 to come in the future