CHRIS KNIPP'S BEST MOVIES OF 2013


J.C. Chandor and Robert Redford

It's annoying to discuss this year by listing last year's best movies, but there didn't seem to be a roster in 2013 that could match Holy Motors (Leos Carax), Amour (Michael Haneke), Oslo, Aug. 31st (Joachim Trier), Sister (Ursula Meier), Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard),The Kid with the Bike (Dardennes), The Deep Blue Sea (Terrance Davies), in my non-US list, or Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson), The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), and Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) in my US list. However I was riveted by All Is Lost. It's a crime that it was badly promoted and distributed and Redford didn't get an Oscar nomination. Nebraska is a real auteur film. Upstream Color is as delightfully mystifying as Caruth's Primer but adds great visual dazzle. Computer Chess is a mind-boggler, with its retro-style meditation on how nerdy were the beginnings of the world that we all live in now. And The Selfish Giant is immensely real, simple, and touching. So that's pretty good, and The Great Beauty is a dazzling epic of ennui, a triumph of the long collaboration of Toni Servillo and Paolo Sorrentino, and Reality is a panorama of naivete in the great Italian tradition: funny how we lament the total decline of Italian cinema and yet they still make great ones. I am happy with the whole "Foreign" list, and several of the shortlisted items are just as good. It seems Miles Teller's clear promise in The Spectacular Now is borne out in this year's Whiplash, debuted at 2014 Sundance, and he may become a star. In the documentary list, several are quite notable politically, like The Gatekeepers, Dirty Wars, and We Steal Secrets (different levels as films), but The Square is in a class by itself as a film, a record of the Egyptian youth revolution of 25 January 2011 that's not only moving but now tragic in the light of how Egypt has degenerated back into dictatorship: this is a record of a short period of nearly ecstatic revolutionary hope. Maybe 2013 wasn't a bad year at all.

BEST ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS:
ALL IS LOST (J.C. Chandor)
NEBRASKA (Alexander Payne)
UPSTREAM COLOR (Shane Carruth)
COMPUTER CHESS (Andrew Bujalski)
THE SELFISH GIANT (Clio Bernard)
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES (Derek Cianfrance)
MUD (Jeff Nichols)
BEFORE MIDNIGHT (Richard Linklater)
SPRINGBREAKERS (Harmony Korine)
THE OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (Terence Nance)


Connor Chapman in The Selfish Giant

BEST FOREIGN FILMS (Including non-US-release)
THE GREAT BEAUTY (Paolo Sorrentino)
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (Abdellatif Kechiche0
REALITY (Matteo Garrone)
BASTARDS (Claire Denis)
A HIJACKING (Tobias Lindholm)
WADJDA (Haifaa Al-Mansour)
ALYAH (Elie Wajeman)
THEY'LL COME BACK (Marcelo Lordell)
THE CLEANER (Adrián Saba)
CLUB SANDWICH (Fernando Eimbcke)
ABUSE OF WEAKNESS (Catherine Breillat)
THE STRANGER BY THE LAKE (Alain Guiraudie)
DRUG WAR (Johnnie To)
ALI BLUE EYES (Claudio Giovannesi)
THE HUNT (Thomas Vinterrberg)
THE DANCE OF REALITY (Alejandro Jodorovsky)

BEST BLOCKBUSTERS:
MAN OF STEEL (Zack Snyder)
FAST & FURIOUS 6 (Jason Lin)


Ahmad Hassan in The Square

BEST DOCUMENTARIES (alphabetical)
56 UP (Michael Apted)
AMY WINEHOUSE: THE DAY SHE CAME TO DINGLE (Maurice Linnane)
DIRTY WARS (Rick Rowley)
FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED (Alan Berliner)
THE GATEKEEPERS (Dror Moreh)
GIDEON'S ARMY (Dawn Porter 2012)
THE SQUARE (Jehane Noujaim)
JOE PAPP IN FIVE ACTS (K. Thorsen, T. Holder)
LEVIATHON (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
MUSEUM HOURS (Jem Cohen) (semi-documentary feature)
WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS (Alex Gibney)


Gael Garcia Bernal in No

SHORTLISTED, ALL CATEGORIES
THE SPECTACULAR NOW (James Ponsoldt)
NO (Pablo Laraín)
BEHIND THE CANDELABRA (Steven Soderergh) (TV)
IN THE HOUSE (François Ozon)
SHORT TERM 12 (Destin Cretton)
SOME VELVET MORNING (Neil LaBute)
BLUE CAPRICE (Alexandre Moors)
TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM (Morgan Neville)

NOT YET SEEN:
CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 (Bruno Dumont) - very limited release NYC Oct.
NARCO CULTURA (Shaul Schwarz) - doc showing in NYC
INEQUALITY FOR ALL - (Jacob Kornbluth) doc about Robert Reich

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.