The Usual Choices
American Hustle (David O. Russell)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)
Her (Spike Jonze)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
But how about...
Begin Again (John Carney)
This is an immensely likeable film...I mean, yeah, sure...one puff and it would blow away, but so what, you know? A blend of two of the all-time great movie plot cliches (two people meet and both lives are changed + hey let's get a band together and put on a show), there are no villains, just truly nice people who you enjoy getting to know. While Mark is the stand-out as the drunk, hip, indie music mogul, everyone else is spot-on in their roles (and Keira Knightley, in her first singing part, has an impressive & expressive voice). Best of all, the songs are genuinely good to listen to (in a poppy Aimee Mann / Freedy Johnston kinda way)...just think about that...original movie songs which are memorable...the 1930's returneth! My only gripe is that I never met anyone like these wonderful characters when I was in a pub band... most people I came across in bands were either stoned, drunk arseholes or just arseholes.
P.S. The track "Tell Me If You Wanna Go Home" shoulda been a 2013 global hit.
...and what about...
Charlie's Country (Rolf de Heer)
This is an Indigenous Australian story that encompasses humour, tragedy and hope and as such, is quite unique in Australian cinema. David Gulpilil is an old-before-his-time Aborigine living far away from his long-lamented Mother Country in the outback. He tries to exist in a small town without hassling, or being hassled by other people, but is increasingly frustrated by the impositions placed upon him by modern white culture. The film is split into 5 sections: living in a town & taking handouts + living in the bush & nearly dying + living in a city and sliding into the alcohol abyss + living in jail & becoming a zombie + returning to town & accepting a future of compromise. Just as It's a Wonderful Life is an annual Christmas staple, this film should be broadcast every Australia Day...to remind us that there were other, non-celebratory consequences of Arthur Phillip the Englishman stepping on a foreign shore.
...not to mention...
Parkland (Peter Landesman)
Yet another JFK assassination film, but this time it's not about the conspiracy, but rather, the chain of events which took place in the killing's immediate aftermath. This includes the horror and chaos at the Parkland Hospital when the now-bloodied cavalcade turned up; the bullyboy tactics and badgering that Zapruder experienced; the aggressive dispute between the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA and the Dallas police force for control; the clumsy, tragicomic transport of the President's coffin; the barely-suppressed ill-treatment of Oswald's innocent family (mother, brother, wife, children) by everybody; the sheer panic shown by the local FBI office (we blew it!..now, cover it up); and the spartan, hurried burial of Oswald. Mysteriously underrated, this movie manages to combine a you-are-there feel (via shuddery handheld camerawork that, this time, isn't overdone) with a high-impact understanding of both the human and the national tragedy. The conspiracy has become a puzzle for pedants; this film reminds us that a good man was murdered.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Devil's Knot (Atom Egoyan)
This is the worst true-murder film since 2001's Bully. Supposedly based on the horrendous 1993 West Memphis Three child murders case, the focus is shifted from the three pre-teen victims and the three falsely-accused teenagers, to a brooding, noble investigator and a grieving, noble mother. But no matter what angst is stirred up, the tribulations of those two are made trivial by the sheer enormity of what really happened. It's not so much why would you make this film about him and her...it's how could you make it about them? I mean, Jeezus...three little boys were savagely killed and three young men had their lives ruined. And the truth still hasn't come out. Surely that's the story.
Look...just don't watch this. Don't. The four documentaries to watch instead are Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000), Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011) and West of Memphis (2012)...and only if you are interested in human evil, stupidity in action and no justice whatsoever; if you are interested in us at our absolute worst.
My Top 10 Films of 2013
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| Every perm is sacred. (sorry) |
#02 A Nebraska (Payne)
#03 A- Locke (Knight)
#04 A- Parkland (Landesman)
#05 A- Begin Again (Carney)
#06 A- Charlie's Country (de Heer)
#07 A- Blue Jasmine (Allen)
#08 A- The Railway Man (Teplitzky)
#09 A- The Weight of Elephants (Borgman)
#10 B+ Captain Phillips (Greengrass)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ Computer Chess (Bujalski)
#12 B+ The Selfish Giant (Barnard)
#13 B+ Iron Man 3 (Black)
#14 B+ American Hustle (Russell)
#15 B+ 12 Years a Slave (McQueen)
#16 B+ All is Lost (Chandor)
#17 B+ The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese)
#18 B+ Dallas Buyers Club (Vallee)
#19 B+ Gravity (Cuaron)
#20 B+ Inside Llewlyn Davis (Coen)
#21 B+ Tracks (Curran)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B Snowpiercer [impressively clever dystopian sci-fi that is too much of a bloodfest]
> B Philomena [a mother/child true story that tugs at the heartstrings but only from a distance]
> B Lone Survivor [War is Hell, so when the tough get going, they have to die horribly...and in slow-motion]
> B Man of Steel [risky over-rejigging of He-Who-Came-First doesn't completely pay off]
> B Prisoners [well-acted, nerve-twitching mystery about sadism & despair that is overoverlong]
> B Under the Skin [unsettlingly-bleak but forceful sci-fi Art with a despicable ending]
> B Thor: The Dark World [no, geeks, this is not a superhero flop; it's about average as far as these things go]
> B- August: Osage County [I bet this dysfunctional family talks more than yours...or anybody's]
> B- Enemy [weirdo, creepy Art about identity & sex which is outshone by Cronenberg's Dead Ringers]
> B- The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet [quirky kids story that has a warm heart but says "motherfucker"...hmm]
> B- Saving Mr Banks [portrays Walt Disney as a cuddly cartoon character...he really wasn't]
> B- I'll Follow You Down / Continuum [a time travel tale that gets bogged down in trying to make itself feasible]
> B- The Wolverine [a necessary familiarity-exercise for the awesome excellence of 2017's Logan]
> B- The Counselor [dark philosophical talktalktalk interrupted by beheadings and mechanophilia]
> C Pacific Rim [truly great sci-fi sagas are much more than just visual flash, okay Transformers rip-off?]
> C The Butler [some people call this Black Forrest Gump...some people are reasonably astute]
> C The Book Thief [please...just read the book]
> D After Earth [soppy sci-fi that would have made a great Imax movie if it had no actors with no dialogue]
> D Blue Ruin [an almighty gorging on US Gun Culture that tries to throw up a thriller, but gags on it instead]
> E Devil's Knot [A Personal Unmentionable]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 2013 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
After the Dark / The Philosophers (Huddles); Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (Lowery); Before Midnight (Linklater); The Bling Ring (Coppola); The Call (Anderson); Coherence (Byrkit); The Double (Ayouade); The East (Batmanglij); Enough Said (Holofcener); Europa Report (Cordero); Exhibition (Hogg); Filth (Baird); Fruitvale Station (Coogler); Hank and Asha (Duff); How I Live Now (Macdonald); The Immigrant (Gray); In Secret / Therese (Stratton); The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (Tillman); Joe (Green); Lad: A Yorkshire Story (Hartley); The Machine (James); Mystery Road (Sen); Only God Forgives (Refn); Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch); Out of the Furnace (Cooper); Palo Alto (Coppola); Rush (Howard); The Spectacular Now (Ponsoldt); Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (Fleischner); Still Life (Pasolini); Sunshine on Leith (Fletcher); This is the End (Goldberg; Rogen); Trance (Boyle); Warm Bodies (Levine); The Way, Way Back (Faxon; Rash); The World’s End (Wright); The Zero Theorem (Gilliam)
Best Performances of 2013
Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock in Gravity
Bruce Dern in Nebraska
Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club
Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club
Lupita Nyong'o in 12 Years a Slave
But how about...
Tom Hardy in Locke
The very definition of a One Man Show, this tells the story of a guy who makes a fateful decision: he chooses to turn right rather than the intended left. Tom drives along a British freeway one night, his life falling to pieces and rearranging itself through a series of in-car phone calls. The man is a fixer, a construction supervisor who is used to coping under pressure while those around him crumble, remaining calm and solving problems as they are dished out to him by his boss, his work colleague, his wife, his one-night-stand, his sons, his absent father, himself. In lesser hands, this film would have sunk into soap opera hysterics, but Tom makes room for us to sit alongside him for the entire trip, sharing his spoken attempts to correct what he has done. The actor holds us close as we witness the exact moment when things will never be the same for this decent man again. Empathy without judgement; compassion without pleading for it.
...and what about...
Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin
Playing a creature from another planet who looks perfectly human must be quite an acting challenge. I mean, you appear to be from around here, but you are actually the ultimate out-of-towner. Jeff Bridges in Starman and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth and now Scarlett in this role...aliens all, and absolutely fascinated by our behaviour, daily routines, language, need to be social and, above all, by our endearing flaws of nature. Scarlett is on a secret mission to collect male specimens (from Scotland!) and she does this quite easily by driving around and being gorgeous, openly sexual and appealing to the dark lust inside her victims. The major performance achievement here is that the actress convincingly changes from alien to human, the more she gets to know us. And then discovers that there are those among us who look human, but are capable of monstrous acts. Initially creeped out by what the alien does, we are finally appalled by what is done to her. The actress creates and shows to us an inhuman who has a soul.
...not to mention...
Demos Murphy in The Weight of Elephants
Set in smalltown New Zealand (South Island?), this gentle & impressive film focuses on a misfit, sensitive 11YO boy who is already shouldering more than his fair share of Life's burdens (run-off Mum; non-existent Dad; mentally-ill & adored Uncle; school-bully target). While the film has a lot going on in the background (a mystery of abducted children who may or may not be living next door), at the forefront is the boy, taking it all in and grappling to understand how things work. This is an amazing child performance because it doesn't seem to be a performance...this is a real kid, from his silent, wide-eyed staring at how the grown-ups carry-on, to his preoccupation with trying to locate some kindness. Inevitably bringing to mind 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird, this film depicts a child who believes that the adult world is one of mystifying and frightening hardness. And young Demos not only makes that fear understandable, he also shows that it is something we have all gone through...whether we remember it or not.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Jaden Smith & Will Smith in After Earth
The plot-driver of this sci-fi post-apocalypse space opera is...Can I prove to my dad that I am a man? Trying to answer that is 14YO Jaden. His mission is to retrieve a signal beacon on a hostile planet (Earth, after we have made a mess of it) and save the day. Essentially a kids' quest movie, Jaden tries his darnedest to be the classic everyboy hero, but his acting instincts are significantly twisted. He shows terror by moping, rage by sulking, courage by grunting, wonderment by blank staring and sadness, grief and guilt by being a total wuss about it. Clearly out of his depth, Jaden is an unconvincing amateur in a big-budget popcorn movie.
And as for Daddy Will...he plays a hard-as-nails military man by putting on a sweaty constipation face. Will is earnestly on the job, not enjoying a second of it, and who can blame him...this soppy film was all his idea.
Sometimes, children shouldn't listen to their parents.
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| Trump has bought himself a new suit, ready for the 2020 Campaign. |
My 10 Favourite Performances of 2013
#01 Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street
#02 Tom Hardy in Locke
#03 Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle
#04 Matthew McConaughey in The Wolf of Wall Street
#05 Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin
#06 Demos Murphy in The Weight of Elephants
#07 Mia Wasikowska in Tracks
#08 Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine
#09 David Gulpilil in Charlie's Country
#10 Bruce Dern in Nebraska
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewlyn Davis
#12 Christian Bale & Amy Adams & Bradley Cooper in American Hustle
#13 Lupita Nyong'o in 12 Years a Slave
#14 The ensemble cast of Prisoners
#15 Jacki Weaver in Parkland
#16 Colin Firth in The Railway Man
#17 Conner Chapman in The Selfish Giant
#18 The ensemble cast of August: Osage County
#19 Ed Harris in Snowpiercer
#20 Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club
#21 Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips
#22 June Squib in Nebraska
#23 Emma Thompson in Saving Mr Banks
#24 Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Sandra Bullock in Gravity [a one-woman show-role that the SFX still manage to overshadow]
> Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave [serves the harrowing material well, but still isn't particularly memorable]
> Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club [I know this is petty, but I can't forgive him for trying to be The Joker]
> Robert Redford in All is Lost [an impressive physical performance but his face stays a blank]
> Judi Dench in Philomena [nice...that's it...just nice]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 2013 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Her (Spike Jonze)
SILVER: Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
BRONZE: Locke (Steven Knight)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
SILVER: Tom Hardy (Locke)
BRONZE: David Gulpilil (Charlie's Country)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin)
SILVER: Mia Wasikowska (Tracks)
BRONZE: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Matthew McConaughey (The Wolf of Wall Street)
SILVER: Ed Harris (Snowpiercer)
BRONZE: Ben Kingsley (Iron Man 3)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
SILVER: Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
BRONZE: Jacki Weaver (Parkland)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Christian Bale & Amy Adams & Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
SILVER: Hugh Jackman & Jake Gyllenhaal & Terrence Howard & Paul Dano & Melissa Leo & Viola Davis & Maria Bello (Prisoners)
BRONZE: Julia Roberts & Meryl Streep & Julianne Nicholson & Margo Martindale & Chris Cooper & Juliette Lewis & Ewan McGregor & Benedict Cumberbatch & Abigail Breslin & Dermot Mulroney & Misty Upham & Sam Shepard (August: Osage County)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Demos Murphy (The Weight of Elephants)
SILVER: Conner Chapman (The Selfish Giant)
BRONZE: Kyle Catlett (The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet)
The Alternate Razzies for 2013 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Devil's Knot (Atom Egoyan)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Jaden & Will Smith (After Earth)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Sophie Nelisse (The Book Thief)
