To begin, as I do every year, with my standard
disclaimer: This may be my list of the Top 10 Movies of 2013 – but it’s not
necessarily a rundown of the year’s 10 Best Movies. Because, quite frankly, I
haven’t seen every single movie released anywhere during the past 12 months. But
this most certainly is a list of my favorite films
to open in U.S. theaters in 2013.
(To be sure, at least one hasn’t yet opened in a Houston theater – but it will, soon.)
These are, of course, purely arbitrary and totally subjective choices. And I’ll freely admit that, a decade or so hence, I might look back on the following lineup and want to make additions or deletions. At this point in time, however, I can honestly state these are the 2013 releases that impressed me most. And best. So there.
(To be sure, at least one hasn’t yet opened in a Houston theater – but it will, soon.)
These are, of course, purely arbitrary and totally subjective choices. And I’ll freely admit that, a decade or so hence, I might look back on the following lineup and want to make additions or deletions. At this point in time, however, I can honestly state these are the 2013 releases that impressed me most. And best. So there.
Why is this year’s list different from previous lists? Well,
it’s a funny thing: While compiling these titles, I found that they more or
less naturally divided themselves into pairs. Kinda-sorta like the animals Noah
led onto the ark. Or like my Top
10 list of 2006, which really was a Top 20. If there still were such a
thing as the revival house
circuit, these would be five terrific double features.
Nebraska and Inside Llewyn Davis –
The year’s most melancholy and bleakly funny road movies. In Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, a dutiful son (beautifully played
by Will
Forte) tries to better understand, or at least bond with, his willfully unknowable
father (Bruce Dern) during a long-distance drive that ends in disappointment, followed
by a quietly moving moment of grace. In Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, a self-absorbed and
(apparently) second-rate early-‘60s folk singer (Oscar Isaac) is repeatedly
impeded by his bad decisions and worse attitude, and winds up discovering after
a long auto trip that, sometimes, you can’t move far or fast enough to get from
where you’re stuck.
American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street – A double
dose of adrenaline rushes, explosively funny and exhilaratingly entertaining,
and all the more gobsmacking for being based on real-life events. David O.
Russell’s American Hustle is a bold
and brassy dark comedy about con artists eager to deceive everyone, even
themselves, and the fine art of making people believe what they really want to
believe, even when they should know better. Martin Scorsese’s marathon Wolf of Wall Street traces the rise (to
dizzying heights) and fall (to impermanent and not-so-terrible depths) of a
self-made wheeler-dealer, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio, in the performance
of his career so far), whose insatiable appetites – for more money, more women,
more drugs – fuel his frenzied pursuit of success and excess. Some folks have
chided Scorsese for not explicitly condemning Belfort’s bad behavior. (Like, we
poor dumb lugs watching the film really need to be told: Hey, kids, don’t try
this at home.) My gut response to both films: Wheeeeeeeeeee!
Gravity and Hours
– The clock ticks, the tension mounts, the audience sweats. Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, a thrillingly spectacular
existential adventure, focuses on a lost-in-space astronaut (Sandra Bullock,
never better) who has no reason to survive, and will do so only if she chooses
to. Eric Heisserer’s Hours, a smartly
crafted small-budget indie drama, focuses on a desperate father (Paul
Walker, exceptionally fine in one of his final roles) who struggles to keep
his prematurely born child alive in an evacuated New Orleans hospital in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The Great Gatsby and Tim’s Vermeer – Two very
different tales of obsession – one deliriously romantic, the other meticulously
schematic, both uniquely fascinating. In Baz Luhrman’s audaciously stylized take
on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leonardo DiCaprio affectingly plays the flip side of
his Wall Street Wolf, a man who pursues wealth only as a means to an end – i.e.,
to recapture the elusive object of his desire. In Penn & Teller’s documentary Tim’s Vermeer (set to open wide in
January after Oscar-qualifying runs in New York and L.A.), a San Antonio
inventor named Tim
Jenison sets out to prove his theories about 17th-century
painter Johannes Vermeer by replicating one of the Dutch Master’s masterpieces.
Much like Jay Gatsby, he goes to extremes, for a very simple reason: He can.
This
is the End and The
World’s End – Apocalypse winningly played for laughs, with surprisingly
serious undercurrents. For all of its free-wheeling and foul-mouthed hilarity, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s This is the End is the most weirdly sincere religious-themed
movie since The Rapture.
(And, mind you, I mean that as a compliment.) Meanwhile, Edgar
Wright’s The World’s End – the latest
gem from the guys who gave us Hot Fuzz
and Shaun of the Dead – persuasively insists
that life as a delusional, struck-in-the-past under-achiever is preferable to a
life as an extraterrestrial-enhanced mutant with all human frailties smoothed
away. Or something like that.
Ten Runners-up: Blue
Jasmine, Dallas Buyers Club, The
Sapphires, 12 Years a Slave, One
PM Central Standard Time, Fruitvale
Station, Medora,
Herblock:
The Black & The White, LUV
and In
a World…
I Stand Alone: While fully realizing I am in a tiny
minority, I still feel The
Incredible Burt Wonderstone was much funnier than its critical
reception would indicate. But, hey, I kinda-sorta liked MacGruber,
too, so what do I know?
will be converted into 3-D format and reissued in theaters on April 6, 2012 -- just in time for the 100th anniversary of the luxury liner's first and last voyage -- strikes me as, at best, a mixed blessing.
, ranked as the No. 1 box-office champ of all time -- and 
