*An opening disclaimer: last year’s Oscars post, covering the evening’s nominations, will be our first and last. Seeya, Academy.
Riley: Greetings! For the sake of content, I'm posting my forgotten "Best of 2013" I began writing back in January. Timely, right?
12 Best Films in particular, difficult, inevitably interchangeable order:
- Her
- The Place Beyond the Pines
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- The Spectacular Now
- Nebraska
- Philomena
- 12 Years a Slave
- Prince Avalanche
- Mud
- Mama
- The World’s End
Best Runners-Up
- Monsters University - Not the best animated film of the year, but damned if it was criminally ignored by the year’s end. A very funny, visually beautiful Pixar homage to campus comedies, elevated from humorous to heartbreaking by a late third-act twist.
- Spring Breakers
- Ain’t Them Bodies Saints - Aesthetically gorgeous with an incredibly pretty original score.
- You’re Next - This should have been the highest grossing horror movie of 2013. It’s hilarious and disgusting in equal measure and includes the best use of a song in a horror movie since “Mama Tried” led to death in The Strangers.
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Haven’t read the book, haven’t seen the first film in the franchise. But boy, was this a thoroughly entertaining adventure to be a part of, especially in 3D. One of the few films I saw twice.
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - One of the rare cases in which the critical reviews (fairly neutral/poor) made me go into the experience with the intent to seek and defend the filmmaker’s POV, rather than emptily accept pre-written judgments. This was an imperfect film, yet contained such thematic and aesthetic beauty that I wholeheartedly embraced its positive ideas. What dragged it down for me, primarily, was the missed opportunity of an ending, which is something Stiller seems to drop the ball on. The film had the opportunity to end with an unusually effective message. Instead, it kept going, and Stiller chose the path of ending his movie like he normally does - with his male protagonist and his love interest talking amicably in public and then the credits rolling.
Three Best Final Scenes
- Sightseers
- Mud
- This Is The End
Best Scene Put to Film
- James Franco as “Alien” serenades the ladies with an ocean-side performance of “Everytime” by Britney Spears, in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. The entire sequence made me laugh, cry, and feel uncomfortable - almost always simultaneously. It also made me feel the beating love of what creativity and sheer lunacy can do on a movie screen.
Three Best Films I Haven’t Actually Seen Yet, But Instinctively Feel They Would Have Ended Up In My Top 10 If I Had
- Frances Ha
- The Act of Killing
- Short Term 12
Most Convoluted List
- See above
Cheers! See you at the movies!
*A closing disclaimer: More categories to be included in next year’s Best-Of post.
