The Top Ten Films of 2013

For we small-time movie bloggers with full-time jobs and limited access, the top ten lists always come out a little late, as we spend much of December and the early months of the next year to hunt down and consume as many of the must-see films we'd missed as possible, and try to get this list completed by the Oscars, when the previous year becomes a permanent fixture of the past. So, given all that, I'd say we made good time this year. Here is our collaborative list, as well as the remainders of our individual lists

Rollie's Picks
Jon's Picks

1. Blue Jasmine (Rollie - #1, Jon - #5)

A class war in a powder-keg, Woody Allen has crafted a poignant family comedy into a frank examination of income inequality, an indictment of idle wealth, and a tragic portrait of the contemporary poor. This is a comedy befitting comparisons to those of Preston Sturgess, invoking the plight of the working man, and doubling as a cautionary tale for the dated tradition of women who elect to define themselves by the men in their lives, investing their fortunes in a patriarchal society. That Blue Jasmine is the best film of the year depends on the tact and the craft with which Allen melds so many prescient issues into such a modest pleasure.

2. The Wolf of Wall St. (John - #1, Rollie - #6)

Martin Scorsese's latest film is, on the face of things, a dark comedy about the hedonism and excess that reigned on Wall Street during the high-flying 1980s. Beyond that, it's also a masterpiece that encapsulates and further explores all the themes that have permeated Scorsese's films since the 1970s -- temptation, sin and the ruinous ramifications of living life without a centre. Scorsese also plays some fun games in his narrative with the audience about voyeurism, the desire for wealth and escapism. Scorsese knows that he's in a similar business to the one that Jordan Belfort engaged in with his securities fraud, and while Scorsese's racket is substantially more moral, he seems to still have some kind of Catholic guilt complex about it.

3. Mystery Road (Jon - #2, Rollie, N/A)

Mystery Road is an elegant thriller, a gripping drama, a visual feast and at times even a solid action picture. Anchored by the sure directorial hand of Ivan Sen and a cast of actors that are uniformly stupendous (Aaron Pederson and Hugo Weaving are two that spring to mind), Mystery Road is a smart movie, realistic about race relations in remote Australia while also being aware of the need for its central murder mystery to work. It builds to a finale that retains the elegant pacing of the rest of the film while also proving to be more exciting and tense than most big studio cops and robbers films.

4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Rollie - #2, Jon - N/A)

Llewyn Davis, the struggling folk artist at the heart of the Coen Brothers’ latest masterpiece, exists inconsequentially within a time and a place where the very cultural paradigm shift he had advocated was occurring anyway. With him? Without him? He’s hurling stones at the tide, so to speak. Inside Llewyn Davis becomes a film that challenges our sense of purpose, and becomes one of the most political films the brothers Coen have produced, looking harshly on the “institution” as an abstract, plutocratic conceit that suffocates individualism, making Llewyn’s isolating hesitancy toward his peers the arbiter of his own failure.

5. Blue is the Warmest Color (Rollie - #3, Jon, N/A)

A visceral, physical movie of extraordinary emotional vulnerability, “Blue is the Warmest Color” looks at the galvanized culture of the LGBTQ community as a byproduct of social exclusion, dictated by the very element of their identity that finds them ostracized in the first place, and observes the intense social difficulties that arise from being gay without participating in that culture. French director Abdellatif Kechiche’s use of sex as an arena for revelation, both for maturity and for desire, is transformative. Scenes of exhilarating duration are choreographed like thrilling action set-pieces. It is fearless film making.

6. Lincoln (Jon - #3, Rollie - N/A) ('Lincoln' was a 2012 release in America)

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is essentially the sort of film we would expect a docudrama about Abraham Lincoln to be -- reverent, sombre, sumptuously detailed, beautifully photographed. It worships Honest Abe, even to the point that it takes some liberties with history to really lionize him. Spielberg, though, is a sure handed, competent director whose evocation of the ending of the Civil War and emphasizing on the strengths of Lincoln as a leader cast a mesmerizing and touching spell. Daniel Day-Lewis interprets the cadences and tics of the great man to magnificent effect, and his performance provides the audience with something the film desperately needed to be effective -- a personal connection to the 16th President.

7. American Hustle (Jon - #4, Rollie - N/A)

David O. Russell - that most artistically mercurial of modern American indie directors - outdoes himself with American Hustle, an almost undefinable combination of humour, thriller, docudrama and analysis of American social milieu. Christian Bale once again completely transforms himself physically for the role of con man Irving Rosenfeld, who along with his partner Sydney (Amy Adams, excellent here) is extorted by an unscrupulous and ambitious FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, turning in yet another charismatic and funny performance) into entrapping corrupt politicians, including the mayor of Camden, New Jersey (Jeremy Renner, in an underrated performance). What ensues is funny, engrossing and hugely entertaining. American Hustle is a solid comedy/drama that becomes a cut above due to the quality of its performances.

8. The Counselor (Rollie - #4, Jon - N/A)

Ridley Scott’s latest film, based on a screenplay by Cormac McCarthy, is an existential meditation on the folly of brutish masculine ambition. Mexican drug cartels provide the impetus for McCarthy’s morality play, a subject he’s approached before. Here they exist as an omniscient aura of consequence, indifferent to regret and to redemption. It is that very absolution that arouses the appetites of the power-hungry and the proud, who discover too late that this harsh world exists without apologies or lessons to be learned, but merely with death and futility. Buried within this somber, eloquent, beautiful fable is a parallel theme of men who are undone by their mistreatment or patronizing misunderstanding of women. Ambition here is neither fruitful nor noble, and McCarthy’s running parallel between ambition and self-destruction endures.

9. Gravity (Jon - #6, Rollie - #8)

Our fragility as beings in the vacuum of space and the implied value of our planet as a kind of organic spaceship are in the crosshairs of Gravity, the ultra-tense science fiction film directed by Mexican New Waver Alfonso Cuaron. Sandra Bullock may well win an Oscar for her role as medical engineer turned reluctant astronaut Ryan Stone, and it would be hard to argue against it. She extracts humanity and terrified wonder in equal measure, and for most of the film she does so with no co-stars. Cuaron expertly guides the action as director; one impressive aspect of this film is its physical accuracy, and aside from a thriller, Gravity operates as an entertaining explanation of how space works. Cuaron doesn't waver from the humans at the forefront of his tale, though, and in their plight we come to appreciate even more our odd, special place in the cosmos.

10. 12 Years a Slave (Rollie - #6, Jon - N/A)

Steve McQueen has elected to view the Antebellum South, as adapted from Solomon Northup’s autobiography of the same name, with the same sense of hyper-control and composition that he brought to his earlier feature films. The approach makes his view of the horrors of slavery stringent and unbending, the hopelessness of this institution born of the depth of its roots. This is a confrontational film, even a combative one, insisting that we observe unflinchingly the shame of our history, that we embed it in our conscience all over again. The result has been difficult for many to endure, and I can understand why. Engaging with this material is nearly impossible. Its catharsis is minuscule. And the more we allow ourselves to think in this way, the more necessary Mr. McQueen’s film becomes. 

The Rest of Our Lists

Jon

7. This is the End

8. The Conjuring

9. Pacific Rim

10. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

Rollie

7. Nebraska

9. To the Wonder

10. Frances Ha

Wild Dogs Everywhere

Mystery RoadDirected by Ivan Sen
Four Stars

By Jonathan Fisher

Mystery Road doesn’t surrender its secrets readily. It is a difficult film to describe and review, because like other great thrillers of its ilk (Wake in Fright, Fargo) it functions on a number of planes. First and foremost, it is a murder mystery – its opening scene makes that clear. A truckie pulls over to the side of a deserted highway, checking his load. Perturbed by the ruffling of wild dogs, the truckie investigates a small underpass, and finds the mutilated body of a teenage Indigenous girl.

Shortly thereafter, we meet the film’s protagonist, Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen), who has recently returned to his home town in isolated western Queensland after some time working in the city. He investigates the murder of the aforementioned Indigenous girl. He finds himself up against an intransigent local police force that would prefer to brush the whole thing under the carpet, as well as resentment in the Indigenous community when he questions the locals.

Complicating all of this is Jay’s ethnicity, you see – he is the sole Indigenous officer on the local force, in a community that clearly has a high Indigenous population. There is rancour, tension and of course racism between the whites and blacks in the town, and Jay is caught right in the middle of this. Mystery Road manages to incorporate the issue of race into its tale quietly, and its tone benefits from the fact that this aspect of the story isn’t shouted from the rooftops. It’s clear that racial tensions are fuelling most of the action in the story, and for the most part the movie lets the issue be, appreciating the toll it has taken on Swan and how it affects the choices he makes.  It isn’t overstated, which is often a risk in a film like this.

As the movie gets into the swing of things, it becomes clear that it has aspirations beyond being a straightforward whodunit. As with most modern cinema, it’s almost impossible to watch new movies without thinking about what they remind you of. Oh, that scene was a bit like a Coen Brothers scene; that shot is a bit like the one from the old Scorsese movie; isn’t this all a bit like LA Confidential? Most of modern cinema harks back to things that have come before – we live in the era of the pastiche. This poses a problem for modern cinema’s aesthetics. How can a movie stand on its own two feet if it is constantly reminding its audience of other, presumably better works?

I tried my hardest to draw comparisons between Mystery Road and other movies, but I gradually realised that most comparisons were superficial in nature. Yes, the black humour (and Mystery Road is very funny on occasion) is a little like a Coen Brothers picture. Yes, the overarching plot of a ‘good cop’ trying to beat the corrupt system to preserve justice is a bit like LA Confidential. And yes, many of the shots and sequences reminded me fleetingly of other directors. (interestingly, I found many shots and sequences of Mystery Road to be quite reminiscent of another Australian crime masterpiece from recent years: Animal Kingdom by David Michôd. Australian cinema, so vastly improved in recent years, now seems to be worth imitating)

Mystery Road is its own movie, and while it doesn’t quite maintain its focus and meanders every so often, for the most part it’s a viciously precise and thoughtful thriller. Aaron Pederson is Oscar-worthy as Jay Swan, and a host of supporting actors also inhabit their characters like a second skin. The film benefits from Ivan Sen’s directorial style, which is straightforward and considered. There are plenty of images that leave an imprint on the memory here – the recurring motif of the ‘bird’s eye view’ that intercuts scenes, even images as simple as Jay sitting solemnly in front of his dinner, considering his next move.

Sen is also adept at using simple, powerful signals to demonstrate Swan’s precarious position as an outsider to both the police force and his own community. One of the biggest ones is his car, a sturdy looking Holden. An Australian make, and a fine one – for the most part shiny and clean, a striking symbol of an upwardly mobile citizen. It drives others in the town, who aren’t so lucky, crazy. Swan’s ambivalence towards alcohol (which makes sense due to numerous hints about his prior proclivity to drink before entering the force) sets him apart from his loutish fellow officers. When his boss suggests they go for a drink to escape the bleating heat, Swan looks at his watch suspiciously, before we see him sipping an ice water. The optics of a 60-plus-year-old constable drinking beer in a country pub full of white people while on duty are far less damaging than a young Indigenous officer doing the same thing.

Lovely little moments like these abound in Mystery Road. It’s a smart movie, realistic about race relations, while also being aware of the need for its central murder mystery to work. The investigation is engrossing, and builds up to a finale that, while retaining the elgant and deliberate pacing of the rest of the film, is more visceral and exciting than most big studio cops and robbers movies we typically see. Mystery Road, by most measures, is a quiet masterpiece.