IL's Top Films of 2013

Here's my list for 2013. I only saw 32 films with a 2013 release date, so admit doing a Top 10 feels a bit fraudulent. In fact, looking at my spreadsheet for the year, I found it hard to pick 10 in total that I could really say I wholly liked. Plus I should say that, as I see most films at home via Virgin On-Demand and at my film club, both of which run 3-6 months behind commercial cinema release, it's entirely possible that there are some great films from last year which I'm still to see (eg, going to see Blue Jasmine this week). Or maybe it was just a really bad year? Or maybe I'm a grumpy old git who's increasingly hard to please? You decide!


Anyway, for the above reasons, there's no 'honourable mentions' this year, and I can't really be doing with all the best actor/best director stuff. But you won't be surprised to know that I have no problem whatsoever in picking the films I hated, so in time-honoured tradition (ie, like last year), and in a tragically bad mixed metaphor, let's dismiss the flotsam before diving for the pearls...

Worst Films

3) Star Trek 2: Into Darkness

No cliche goes unflogged in JJ Abrams' second part of the reboot, which amazingly, managed to be worse than the first one by putting all the previous films into a gigantic liquidizer and setting the dial to 'baby food'. A bit like one of those karoake megamix 'tributes' you find all the time on iTunes.

2) Only God Forgives/A Place Beyond On The Pines

In a piece of ornithological freakery, 2013 will go down as the year in which a Gosling begat two turkeys. Nicolas Winding Refn's laughable 90 minute jizz into Ryan Gosling's face at least looked amazing, but was still just an hour and and a half of moody stares and severed limbs, and a film that's supposed to be ridiculously pretentious is, I'm afraid, still both ridiculous and pretentious. Far worse though was A Place Beyond The Pines, which was overlong and bloated with its own misguided self-importance.

And by a country mile, my worst film of 2013 (and most other years) is...

1) Gravity

Please don't get me started again. I mean...really!? Really?? Seriously, I mean, really!!! REALLY????

 

Best Films

10) What Maisie Knew

The conceit of reflecting a marital breakdown through the eyes of a child may not be that new - the source novel is over 100 years old - but this one stayed with me, and full marks to Steve Coogan and particularly Julianne Moore for their portrayals of the wholly unlikeable (ex)-couple.

9) What Richard Did

In what is turning out to be a great year for films whose titles start with 'What', this low-budget Irish tale of a nice middle-class boy who does something really bad nicely highlighted how lives can change in a moment of madness.

8) Upstream Color

Parasitic worms, a symbiotic relationship between humans and pigs, and avant garde electronic music all (sort of) hook up in Shane Carruth's weirdly fractured narrative. Although it can frustrate and occasionally feels like they dropped the script on the floor and put it back together in random order with a few pages missing, it's distinctive for sure, which sort of lets it off (sort of).

7) Side Effects

I was expecting the usual anti-pharma industry nonsense, but this turned out to be an effective, engrossing and twisty thriller. Although, like 'Trance', although albeit to a lesser extent, best you don't think too much about the plot once you leave the cinema.

6) Spring Breakers

I can see why Harmony Korine gets chastised for trying to have his cake and eat it, and there's certainly a lot of teen flesh on display here, but I think some overlook his scalpel-like satire. Unpredictable, with an outrageous turn from James Franco, and with the best ever use of a Britney song in a film, this to me nailed modern America while never quite letting you off the hook for enjoying some of its more prurient excesses.

5) Django Unchained

We need to continue to praise Tarantino when he's good, as I fear he will be taken for granted otherwise. The usual amazing long dialogue scenes, tension and directorial pizzazz, but he's really on form here. Could have been a masterpiece, were it not for flagging slightly in the final reel once Christoph Waltz is despatched.

4) Stories We Tell

Sarah Polley's pseudo-documentary about her own family's secrets subverts the genre by making you keenly aware of the filmmaker's role in fashioning the tale to meet their own agenda, and that alone would make this a fascinating watch. But the story is almost as gripping as the journey to unearth it.

3) Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

OK, if I'm honest, this is probably the film I enjoyed most last year. It's certainly the only one I've bought on DVD and watched again. And will watch again and again until I can quote it by heart. Alan is the gift that just seems to keep on giving. It's packed with vintage Alanisms, and Steve Coogan on the big screen proves just proves that he is a TOTAL COMEDY GENIUS!

2) Beyond The Walls

And so, my top 2 films this year are both, er, Belgian. Didn't see that one coming. For some reason this two-act tale of a gay relationship which first comes together, and then just falls apart, has seared itself onto my brain. Much more effective than last year's overpraised fairytale 'Weekend', and improved by the fact that neither of leads are entirely likeable or behave particularly well, maybe this just resonated with my own jaundiced worldview (lol). It certainly seemed all-too believable.

1) Bullhead

I have to say that this was far ahead of any of the opposition as my film of the year. A complete original, this visceral tale of a boy damaged by an unspeakable (and unwatchable) boyhood trauma, seeking redemption but having to face the consequences of his own actions, is a stunning piece of cinema. The grim yet almost bland setting among the flat fields of the Flemish cattle-farming industry only adds to its otherworldliness. Harrowing, unforgettable, but with a strange kind of beauty too, I want 2014 to provide a few more films like this with emotional power and integrity. And a lot less ludicrous arsing about in space.

Ian X 
06/01/2014