Film Feature: The Best Films of 2013

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Mud

8. “The Wolf of Wall Street”

There are gentle, quiet films on this list and then there’s Martin Scorsese’s three-hour party otherwise known as “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Working from a brilliant screenplay by Terrence Winter, Scorsese chronicles the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a man who only lived in the moment — buy, sell, buy, sell, drink, snort, f*ck, buy, sell, and do it all again the next day. Belfort is one of 2013’s most magnetic creations (thanks in no small part to the Best Actor Performance of 2013), a man with little or no moral compass who couldn’t just make money, he had to make the MOST money. He couldn’t do drugs, he had to do the rarest, craziest drugs he could find. He couldn’t just win, he had to destroy his competition to do so. One of 2013’s most fascinating cinematic trends was the move by major filmmakers to examine our current culture of excess in films like “The Bling Ring,” “Spring Breakers,” and “Pain & Gain,” but no one captures the runaway insanity of it all like Scorsese.

Mud

7. “Upstream Color”

Shane Carruth brought one of the most divisive films of Sundance 2013 to Park City and left with a movie that people are still arguing about a year later. Personally, I’m fascinated by a talent like Carruth choosing to defy so much of what we expect about traditional narrative. Carruth’s film asks questions more than it gives answers. It is a film without a straightforward plot, one that demands you discuss it, dissect it, and consider it before even trying to convey what it’s about. Issues of identity, self-control, love, memory, and religious themes are woven into a film that’s also a technical marvel. Every shot, every cut, every moment works in unison to create one of the most mesmerizing films of the last several years. What’s it about? I don’t know but the reason I love it is that I don’t care that I don’t know.

Mud

6. “The Act of Killing”

Joshua Oppenheimer tracked down one of the best documentarians of all time in Werner Herzog and showed him a rough cut of this stunning piece of work in which members of the Indonesian death squads recreate their brutal murders. Herzog was stunned to the degree that he has claimed this to be one of the best films of all time and helped bring it to an international audience. Why is Oppenheimer’s film so special? We’ve seen films about atrocities before. And yet we’ve never seen one that plays with the form of cinema as much as this. Men like Anwar Congo often rationalized their crimes by comparing themselves to Hollywood characters but when they actually become actors in their own stories, the demons come out to co-star. All the dark words so often used about stories of true atrocities seem to apply here more than ever: Cinema that is so disturbing that you can’t ignore it.

Mud

5. “Short Term 12”

There are ways to stop the bleeding. There are ways to move forward that don’t require medication or years of therapy. We can move on. Whether it’s through a rap song, a helping hand, or a baseball bat to a car — there are small ways to heal what has broken us. There are very few films that I can think of that get to this truth more effectively than Destin Cretton’s “Short Term 12,” the best debut of 2013. Cinema has tried to teach us that change happens quickly — love at first sight, third-act epiphanies, definitive endings, etc. Cretton, anchored by great performances from the much-lauded Brie Larson and an amazing supporting cast, has given us a gift of a film that gets to something deeper about emotional scars. We can always carry them; it’s just how we move forward as they heal that matters.

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