2013 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 2013:

1. Frozen
2. Iron Man 3
3. Despicable Me 2
4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
5. The Hunger games: Catching Fire
6. Fast & Furious 6
7. Monsters University
8. Gravity
9. Man of Steel
10. Thor: The Dark World

What are your top three films for 2013? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. Before Midnight
2. Stranger by the Lake
3. Manakamana

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

2013 was a strong year by American release dates, but with international release dates it is picked pretty bare.

The Immigrant and The Wolf of Wall Street both came close. Inside Llewyn Davis and Blue is the Warmest Color are both very moving. Gravity is better than its reputaton. Hard to Be a God, The Strange Little Cat, and Stray Dogs are all strong. The World's End was genuinely surprising, and hopefully that Wright comes back one day.

 

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. Under the Skin
3. Inside Llewyn Davis

I feel guilty not including Before Midnight but I can't take any of those three out for it. The Immigrant is so close. I still don't think Gray has since reached the heights of Two Lovers and The Immigrant. I considered Her but couldn't place it over the five I've mentioned so far. I wish Ryan Coogler could return films as intimate as Fruitvale Station, he's been able to keep the personal and humanistic core in his blockbuster work, though. The Congress was underseen, it's a much better pop culture dystopia than stuff like Ready Player One, in that it's actually able to grapple with identity and humanity within the "everyone lives online as an avatar of the pop culture influenced aesthetic they like" story. I like the Bling Ring, and prefer it over probably Sofia Coppola's last two movies. Only Lovers Left Alive is so gorgeously shot, one of the best visual representations of Detroit I've seen in recent cinema despite the many mainstream films that used southeast Michigan and Detroit as shooting locations when our tax incentives were still active. I couldn't finish Drinking Buddies when I first started it, I thought it was banal and the epitome of "likable actors improvising together" type of indie film that I wasn't interested in at all at the time, but when I re-watched it I found it very special. This is also the year of hugely entertaining and thoughtful films in The World's End and Snowpiercer, and the less thoughtful but still very entertaining Pacific Rim. Like Avatar, even if I find the story and characters hold too close to their archetypes, I'm astounded by what the visual team accomplished in that movie, similar to how I feel about Gravity, which I think is a very good movie. Iron Man 3 is disliked by a lot of MCU fans because it's attempting to be subversive and grapple with the impact the events of the films would have on a human being, something the rest of the MCU ignores or pays empty lip service to. I watched The Grandmaster for the first time recently and it's really great.

 

1. Her
2. Before Midnight
3. Hope

4. Nymphomaniac
5. Enemy
6. The Wind Rises
7. About Time
8. The Dance of Reality
9. The Wolf of Wall Street
10. Ida

Also love The Conjuring, Fruitvale Station, Dallas Buyers Club, Short Term 12, Why Don't You Play in Hell, 12 Years a Slave, Upstream Color, Prisoners, Evil Dead, A Wolf at the Door, Like Father, Like Son, Nebraska, Jodorowsky’s Dune, V/H/S/2, Blue Ruin, Starred Up, Snowpiercer, The World's End, Only Lovers Left Alive, Under the Skin, Gravity and Coherence.

Huge year, Her is probably my favourite of the decade.

 

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. Prisoners
3. Under the Skin

Inside Llewyn Davis is a huge blind spot for me, will get around to it very soon. Top HM spot goes to Johnnie To's hilarious, quirky, mildly unhinged romcom Blind Detective, which everyone should watch, as it is on Netflix

 

1. Under the Skin
2. A Field in England
3. Hard to Be a God

 

1. The Conjuring
2. Her
3. Evil Dead

 

1. Wolf of Wall Street
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. The Kings of Summer

 

1. Under the Skin
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. The Wolf of Wall Street

Honorable mentions:

Her
Before Midnight
Gravity
Nebraska
Only Lovers Left Alive
The Immigrant
Enough Said
Blue Ruin

 

Inside Llewyn Davis
Prisoners
Before Midnight

HM: Her, Under The Skin, Wolf of Wall Street, About Time, The World’s End, Gravity, Only Lovers Left Alive, Evil Dead, Nebraska, About Time, Captain Philips, Blue Ruin, Upstream Color (fuck Shane Carruth), Philomena, The Kings of Summer, Big Bad Wolves, The Immigrant

 

Nice

 

1. Under the Skin
2. Wolf of Wall Street
3. Stranger by the Lake

 

1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
3. The Kings of Summer

Her, Prisoners, Under the Skin, The Immigrant, The World's End, Short Term 12, Gravity, Snowpiercer, and Blue Ruin are all great as well. Pacific Rim was pretty fun. 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips weren't great as a whole but were some phenomenal acting showcases. Catching Fire, Iron Man 3, and Star Trek Into Darkness were all really solid blockbusters. Man of Steel, Thor 2, and Hobbit 2 were all really bad blockbusters.

 

1. Before Midnight
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. Kings of Summer

 

1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
3. Prisoners

Other standouts: Dallas Buyers Club, Fruitvale Station, American Hustle, 12 Years A Slave

 

1. Before Midnight
2. Pacific Rim
3. Gravity

 

I think this is another slightly slim year for me.

1. The Lunchbox
2. Like Father, Like Son
3. Enemy

The Lunchbox is a really charming middle-aged grounded romance of sorts, between two people, exchanging notes back and forth through their lunchbox deliveries. It's a sensitive and small film, but with huge amounts of well drawn character, and some great shots of the bustling Mumbai streets.

Like Father, Like Son is Kore-Eda's excellent family drama, about a pair of couples who realise that learn that the children they're raising were accidentally switched at birth, and are not biologically theirs. Conventionally filmed, but a great look at nurture vs nature, and class divides in Japan.

Went for Enemy third - as it's one that's stuck with me for a little while, and while I do think that it bites off more than it can chew, there's a great concept here (watching a film, you see someone who's your double). Fantastic last scene too, with the tarantula.

Honourable mentions;

A couple from Iceland, Metalhead, which I only watched yesterday, a portrait of grief, as a young women turns to metal music following her brothers death. Of Horses and Men is a funny film, a series of vignettes about horses and men (duh) in Iceland, which has some great moments.

Lots of good stuff from the UK this year. Filth is a bleak psycho-drama about a crooked cop in Scotland, well adapted from an Irvine Welsh novel, and with a great James McAvoy performance. Locke is a great one man show from Tom Hardy, about a man travelling down the motorway facing a professional and personal crisis. The Selfish Giant is Clio Bernard's bleak drama about a pair of poor kids trying to make a bit of money. A Field in England is a fantastic psychedelic horror, set in the Civil War. Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin is an intriguing sci-fi horror about an alien shapeshifter in Glasgow.

From a comedy perspective from the UK, there's The World's End, Alan Partridge and I Give it a Year, none of which are perfect, but all have some good laughs.

Hong Sang Soo has two this year, Our Sunhi & Nobody's Daughter Haewon, both of which are excellent films, full of his consistent themes.

For some miscellaneous stuff, from Mongolia, Remote Control is great and one of the few Mongolian films set in the city, not the steppes. From Australia, Mystery Road is a great modern noir / western about a murdered indigenous girl. Only Lovers Left Alive is Jim Jarmusch's laconic Vampire film.

There's also the utterly bizarre Fateful Findings by auteur and madman Neil Breen, which is really something else entirely as a piece of outsider art.

 

1. The Wind Rises
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. The Wolf of Wall Street


Also!!!!
4. Spring Breakers
5. Frances Ha
6. Her
7. Before Midnight
8. Short Term 12
9. The Place Beyond the Pines
10. This Is The End

 

1 The Wolf of Wall Street
2 Under the Skin
3 Kings of Summer

One of the weaker top 3s for me. I don’t think I’ve seen too much from this year. I still haven’t even seen Before Midnight

 

We will pause the poll until you correct this.

 

1. Wolf of Wall Street
2. Gravity
3. Inside Llewelyn Davis
4. Snowpiercer
5. Spectacular Now
6. Nebraska
7. The World’s End
8. Blue Ruin
9. Her
10. Twenty Feet from Stardom

 

I’ve had Nebraska burning a hole on my DVR for at least 7 years and still haven’t watched it.

 

1. In A World...
2. Coherence
3. Short Term 12

 

This is a weak year for me, trying to watch Stranger by the Lake before voting.

 

1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. Before Midnight
3. The Wolf of Wall Street