By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com
2013 Year End: Leonard Klady
Most year-end reviews tend to lead with: “(fill in year) was betlter/worse than ….” Personally the annual challenge has invariably been finding a minion of cinematic efforts I’ve wanted to revisit. Ultimately time is the great leveler of this sort of exercise but it’s nonetheless somewhat helpful to this writer to have a record of what turned his crank in the heat of the moment.
These 10 or so movies on the plus side (and a couple of notable misfires) don’t offer me any glib observations of trends or movements. If they have some collective thread it’s likely that each required enormous strength to secure financing and equal stamina from the filmmakers not to unduly succumb to compromise his/her vision.
In no particular order:
Stories We Tell: Sarah Polley’s document is a chase film in pursuit of her late mother. At least that’s the starting point. Along the way it picks up stream as the issue becomes more personal and ultimately becomes a rumination on the nature of the truth. It’s a rigorous and thoughtful exercise with a persuasive if variegated conclusion.
Captain Phillips: Based on the real life incident in which Somali pirates took control of an American cargo ship in 2009, director Paul Greengrass shows the sort of adroit storytelling that fueled his earlier efforts Bloody Sunday and United 93. It’s more manipulative than last year’s similarly themed A Hijacking and ultimately more dramatic, comprehensible and satisfying. Tom Hanks gives a first-rate performance as the ship’s captain, a character in isolation that towers above the work of Robert Radford in All is Lost that it curiously parallels. One suspects the filmmakers would have liked to have made more of the dichotomy between U.S. might and the desperation and nerve of the Somalis hoping for a tiny victory.
A Touch of Sin: It’s refreshing to see a contemporary Chinese film that hasn’t been subsumed by that nation’s drive to create a commercially driven cinema of spectacles and comedies. Rather it’s a series of incidents that connect in their frustration with the system that ultimately lead to violent and tragic ends. Its potency comes from simple, underplayed observation and characterization and that’s been sufficient to keep it off the screen on its native turf.
Gravity: The saga of astronauts on a scientific research probe trying to get home following a catastrophic accident is a gripping tale of survival and wits. It’s also the most visually authentic depiction of space exploration since 2001 … and the most technically innovative film of the digital era. But it’s not simply the fact that it employs 3D and other state-of-the art effects for purpose, Gravity has a first-rate script and a stellar central performance by Sondra Bullock that keeps everything grounded.
Spring Breakers/The Bling Ring: Two films that explore a generation of disaffected youth; one that pushes to extremes, the other culled from the headlines. Harmony Korine takes the annual ritual of college students descending on the Florida Beaches and focuses on a quartet of young women confronted with temptation and apt to make bad decisions when they fall in with a dazzling gangsta portrayed in all his glory by James Franco. Sofia Coppola’s Bling Ring looks at a more pampered Beverly Hills pack that gets their kicks from stealing from the rich and giving to themselves. Neither portrait is particularly encouraging about the next generation but each has an underlying verisimilitude that’s impossible to ignore.
20 Feet from Stardom: It’s nice to be overcome by a musical document in a time when the majority of non-fiction movies ought not to be accorded a theatrical release. The trials and frustrations and artistry of session singers who lead lives of service are compelling by dint of those put in the spotlight. I’ve long been a champion of Merry Clayton and Darlene Love and now have a few other names to add to my list thanks to this ultimately joyous paean to the creative spirit.
Upstream Color: Filmmaker Shane Caruth presents a tone poem about the travails of a young couple that’s poetic and effortlessly emotional. It’s also a visual stunner in its quiet, incisive observational style. And no film in the past 12 months has presented such a challenge to penetrate its daunting narrative; keep with it and be overcome by the force of its convictions.
The Hunt: This tale from Denmark zooms in on a teacher accused of sexual misconduct. Relentless and absorbing in the telling it mercilessly diagrams a community willing to mark him guilty until proven guilty. Filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg is unsparing in his portrait and Mads Mikkelsen provides another searing performance of a tortured soul.
The film also made the cut in a highly competitive foreign-language race for this year’s Oscar. Among the superb submissions that failed to make the cut (and pre-figure in next year’s list) were The Disciple from Finland, the Khazak The Old Man based on Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Romania’s Child’s Pose and The Rocket, an Australian film set in Laos with a quality of magic realism. Oscar should seriously consider allowing up to 10 foreign-language finalists as it does in the best picture category.
Nebraska: Alexander Payne’s glorious road picture about an old coot convinced he’s won $1 million in a sweepstake and his son who drives him to his point of destiny in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s meticulously balanced to convey humor, betrayal, avarice and compassion and also benefits visually and metaphorically from the decision to go monochrome. Bruce Dern’s Woody is also hands down the performance of the year in a film rife with surprise, emotion and truth.
Her: There’s an unexpected sweetness to Spike Jonze’s yarn about an introvert brought out of his funk when he becomes involved with an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. This 21st century amour fou benefits from the absence to judge or condone and the vulnerability Joaquin Phoenix invests in the character. It’s a heartbreaker without a tell and that may be the recurring theme of the pictures that moved me in 2013.
Also worthy of mention is Philomena, another based on a true story about a journalist who abets a woman in finding the son she was forced to give up that evolves into a potent drama about faith and Act of Killing, a documentary about the former assassins of an Indonesian regime that are not simply unrepentant about their work but wholly willing to relive it for the camera.
On the flip side I’ll spare all a long list of dislikes but zero in on two misguided efforts. The Family somehow managed to attract a prestige cast (could it have been a big paycheck?) to a slim piece about a former gangster clan relocated by the witness protection program to France. Intended to be black comic, it proved mirthless and, frankly, two hours devoted to nothing.
And finally a last chance to kick The Lone Ranger. Though set in Texas it opted not simply to film in Utah but to utilize some of the area’s most iconographic landscapes including Monument Valley. The story also focused on the “silver rush,” an occurrence that took place in Colorado and Nevada and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad whose route bypasses Texas. Is it any wonder that a film with so little regard to facts should go seriously off the tracks.
