I am totally stealing content ideas from Filmspotting, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, because the original inspiration for even creating Contra Zoom was their podcast. They started doing episodes about their top films of the year from before their show started. CZP started in 2015, making that the first best of list we made (check out all of our best of the year episodes). So every once in a while, I’ll do the same as Filmspotting and name my top 10 from years before the show started. Here we have my ten favourite flicks from 2013 with some honourable mentions at the bottom. Notable films from this year I haven’t seen yet include Blue is the Warmest Color, Short Term 12, Like Father Like Son and Stoker.
Check out the Best Films of 2014 blog post to read the first entry into this series.
10. Ida – directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
Veteran Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski dabbled in making films partially (or majorly) in English for a few years, but with Ida he returned to his Polish roots. The film follows a young woman in the 1960’s named Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) who is about to say her final vows and become a full fledged nun. Before she can perform the ritual Anna’s superiors tell her she must visit with her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) in the city. At first she is revolted by her aunt’s drinking, smoking and sexually active lifestyle while being a single woman. Her aunt reveals to Anna some dark secrets from her family’s past, including her real birth name, which was Jewish. Anna and Wanda embark on a road trip to help Anna find more information about her birth parents that she didn’t know while tracing Poland’s tragic history during World War Two. The film ends with Anna fully coming to terms with her past, her aunt and her spirituality. The black and white film won Pawlikowski a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, he would follow this film up with Cold War, a film that would get two Oscar nominations and end up on my 2018 Best Of list.
9. Prisoners – directed by Denis Villeneuve
Prisoners will be the first of two entrants from the Québécois director this year marking the arrival (pun intended) as one of Hollywood’s most unique mainstream filmmakers. This indie with a star studded cast features performances from Hugh Jackman, Terrence Howard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Viola Davis and others. Jackman and Howard are neighbours and when their daughters are kidnapped we get to go along on an ethics rollercoaster in terms of how much will a person do to reunite their family and what are they capable of doing to others. We watch as Gyllenhaal’s Detective Loki follows the rules and does his best to contain his rage while searching for the young girls, while Jackman’s Keller will stop at nothing to get his daughter back as Howard’s Franklin internally battles between supporting one man over another to get his girl back. The film ends on an absolute gut-punch and features a supporting turn from Dano that will be seared into your brain. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Oscars continuing what was at the time an insane streak of nominations without a win for Roger Deakins.
8. Fruitvale Station – directed by Ryan Coogler
Before Black Panther turned its director into a household name and gave Marvel its best villain and before the Rocky franchise was rejuvenated with Creed, we got a film that featured the directorial debut of Ryan Coogler and starred The Wire’s Wallace (Michael B. Jordan) all grown up. Oscar Grant tragically was shot and killed by transit police on January 1st, 2009 in San Francisco. Here we get a day in the life of Oscar. We see him argue with his girlfriend, try to get his job back, celebrate his mother’s birthday and decide to go downtown with friends to celebrate New Year’s. It’s a powerful reminder that people that are killed by police are real three dimensional humans and not just a headline or statistic. None of the back story really matters when police are either incompetent or more interested in being judge, jury and executioner when it comes to interactions with civilians. Oscar Grant died when he didn’t need to. We’re lucky to get such a delicate and somber biopic from emerging stars Coogler and Jordan.
7. Before Midnight – directed by Richard Linklater
In the first Best Films of the Year post I wrote, I named Linklater’s twelve years in the making film Boyhood as the best of 2014. A year earlier he released the last (as of right now) installment of the Before series. We got the indie hit Before Sunrise in 1995 about an American, Ethan Hawke, playing Jesse, and the French Julie Delpy, playing Celine, as they meet and spend one night together in Vienna. Nine years later we were graced with the sequel Before Sunset, then we were surprised by a third installment with Before Midnight coming nine years later again. At this point Jesse and Celine are now married and have a young family. They are taking a vacation in Greece and the film follows in almost real time as the couple is possibly at a breaking point almost twenty years after they first met. It’s funny, sad, poignant and does a deep expose on the human need for connection. We’ve now passed the nine year mark since this with no follow up and the Linklater, Hawke and Delpy trio have said at this time they don’t plan on making another Before film, but they also have not ruled out returning to the realest couple in screen history.
6. Under the Skin – directed by Jonathan Glazer
This enigmatic British filmmaker pops up every once in a while, releases an utterly complex and difficult film and then retreats again. He previously directed Birth with Nicole Kidman who believes a ten year old boy is her reincarnated deceased husband and Sexy Beast where Ray Winestone plays a gangster who is dragged out of retirement. Scarlett Johansson plays an alien creature who takes over the body of an attractive Scottish woman as she drives around the streets at night and seduces lonely young men. She lures them back to her flat where their bodies get evaporated into goo. After letting a man go after realizing he was a good person, she runs away from her handler in search of humanity and finds both the best and worst of us all. The film is notable for Johansson actually driving around Glasgow and using hidden cameras to unsuspectingly film her encounters with the lonely men. It features arguably the best performance to date from ScarJo.
5. Enemy – directed by Denis Villeneuve
Here is the second film by Villeneuve to crack the list. While Prisoners was a gut punch of ethics violations, it still was an easy to follow crime procedural. Enemy couldn’t be more different. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as two men, a boring university professor who notices he has a doppelgänger in a movie he rents. This actor moonlights in a shady sex club where women crush spiders under their stiletto heels while he worries about becoming a father as his wife is about to give birth. When they meet and realize they truly are the same, things get dark. The film is punctuated with an ambiguous scene where Isabella Rossellini plays the mother of one of the men and gives them advice except she is vague enough that she could be talking to either one of them. The film is confusing and terrifying (especially if you have arachnophobia) and the end will leave you stunned and guessing as to what it all means and if they were one person or two. Other than Gyllenhaal’s other wordly duel performances, we also get excellent work from Melanie Laurent who plays the professor’s bored girlfriend and Sarah Gadon as the actor’s suspicious and pregnant wife.
4. The Great Beauty
Very rarely have I walked out of a film and felt so utterly compelled to write about it. The Great Beauty is one of the very few instances that happened, and isn’t ironic in the slightest given the subject matter that you may only come across a single piece of true greatness once in your life. Paolo Sorrentino’s breathtaking film shows why Italy is the country for lovers of all things beautiful. The sights, sounds, music, parties, alcohol, women and more make up something truly special. The film is layered with depths of cynicism, but it’s hard to take it too seriously when the film looks that damn good. The movie deservedly won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar against the other very worthy Danish film The Hunt.
3. The Act of Killing – directed by Joshua Oppenhiemer
This film remains the greatest documentary I have ever seen and an all time masterclass in tension building. It also is a film I will likely never watch again, even if offered money. The film follows Oppenhiemer as he visits Indonesia and interviews former members of the death squads that carried out the murder of almost one million people that were deemed communist or other undesirable groups by the ruling party at the time. These former contract killers now hold prominent roles in local government offices, the police and other parts where they continue to hold control over other people. The catch here is Oppenhiemer films them as they re-enact their murders in the form of different movie genres including musicals, westerns, gangster flicks and others. Seeing the joy of them reliving their glory days is jaw dropping, all while other people in society are still deathly afraid of these powerful men.
2. Her – directed by Spike Jonze
The premise of this movie still sounds silly today, which says a lot about a movie from a decade ago. In the near future, Theodore (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is in love with his AI assistant. It’s hard to take this premise seriously, but Jonze makes the story not only believable but heartbreaking too. Theodore is about to divorce his estranged wife when his operating system gets an upgrade that includes having a voice assistant. Slowly he begins having deeper and deeper conversations with this AI and he realizes that he has fallen in love with “her”. The film works because Phoenix is committed to the mostly solitary acting performance, having conversations with thin air. On the other end is Scarlett Johansson who voices Samantha the AI. Her vocal work is playful, flirty, intelligent and seductive. The two performances force you to take this relationship seriously. The film also has a great minimalist futuristic look that is soothing and unique from anything else you’ve seen on film.
1. Inside Llewyn Davis – directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
In what was the breakout and first true starring performance for Oscar Isaac, he plays struggling Greenwich Village folk singer Llewyn Davis. Davis used to be in a semi-popular folk-pop duo, but after his bandmate died his solo music took a much darker and somber tone. We watch as Davis is at his breaking point in his life, he is broke, his friends wife is pregnant and it might be Davis’ and he struggles to progress his musical career. We watch as every decision he makes inevitably is short sighted or just the wrong one to make. His pride prevents him from showing contrition as his own self is often his biggest obstacle. In typical Coen Brothers fashion, the more serious the subject matter is, the funnier the film gets. Davis is equal parts blunt to the point of trouble, petty, stubborn and a musical genius. The heart breaking scene where Oscar Issac performs an unbroken take getting his one last audition in front of a music executive, played by F. Murray Abraham, is one that will get the waterworks going. The movie ends with a gut punch that only the Coens can inflict on a viewer.
Honourable Mentions: 12 Years a Slave, the Best Picture winner the following year is a brutally honest look into what life was like for a slave that was kidnapped into it. The courageous performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o lead the way.
All is Lost is a one man show from Robert Redford. He is alone in his sailboat when things start to go very wrong for him. This was the second film in a debut three movie run from director JC Chandor that at one point made him my favourite emerging filmmaker.
The Bling Ring isn’t the best film in the list, but as an avowed Sofia Coppola stan I had to include it. The downward spiral these rich teens go down is so satisfying to watch and the silent Audrina Patridge robbery is the highlight.
Captain Phillips is here mostly for the excellent Tom Hanks performance that comes to a crescendo in the final moments after the whole ordeal is over. It’s a fairly routine Paul Greengrass thriller that is elevated by Hanks and a great supporting turn from Barkhad Abdi.
Gravity is not the most realistic space movie, but it is the most believable space movie ever. Seeing this movie in IMAX was an intense movie experience that I don’t think can ever be replicated.
