FILM FEATURE: DON SIMPSON'S TOP TEN FILMS OF 2013

Jep (Toni Servillo) in The Great Beauty.

One man's opinion is another person's read

By Don Simpson

I have an extremely difficult time ranking films that share no common elements other than they were all shot on a medium that captures both moving images and sound. I guess there are certain basic mechanisms of filmmaking that can be done well or poorly, for the most part it is all just the personal opinion of the critic. I prefer to approach the discussion of cinema in terms of whether or not a certain film works for me; whether it is interesting and stimulating, whether it does something new and exciting with the cinematic medium.

So, below are ten films (in alphabetical order) that reverberated in my mind as the most interesting and/or exciting from 2013.

12 Years a Slave – In his triad of films (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave) about human pain and suffering, Steve McQueen observes the relationships between punishment and dehumanization. These films are fully immersed, psychological studies of crumbling human fortitude. For American viewers, 12 Years a Slave also packs a crushing wallop of historical guilt, as McQueen’s outsider perspective invites us to learn from our nation’s past mistakes and inform our future with those lessons.

Computer Chess – The ensemble’s propensity for philosophizing is reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Slacker; but, whereas Linklater’s film ruminates upon the existential crises of humans, Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess expounds upon the existential crises of synthetic consciousness. All the while, Bujalski achieves an ultimate level of realism by enlisting a cast of computer savvy actors who at least seem like they know what they’re rambling on about. The production design is the real show-stopper though.

The Great Beauty – Watching The Great Beauty prompts me to daydream about what types of films Federico Fellini would have made in the 21st century. While this particular film owes a great debt to the work of Fellini (specifically La Dolce Vita), the sensory overload of the visuals is much more akin to Baz Luhrmann. Beneath the shock and awe campaign of the assault on the senses, Paolo Sorrentino meditates upon happiness, love, sex, art, aging and death; also contemplating the significance of theology, history, economics and politics in our everyday lives.

Pilgrim Song -- Martha Stephens is never condescending or patronizing of her characters, yet she never romanticizes them either. Stephens casts highly naturalistic actors and places them in scenes alongside real people; she captures their stories as if shooting a documentary, allowing the narratives to breath while unfolding naturally and organically. Her unabashed desire to capture the purist possible realism is akin to the tone, pacing and visual aesthetic of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Wendy & Lucy. Reichardt is certainly someone with whom Stephens shares a fondness for what has come to be known as “slow cinema.”

The Selfish Giant – Borrowing her film’s title from Oscar Wilde children’s fable, writer-director Clio Barnard utilizes the fantastic milieu of a landscape that is perpetually shrouded in the misty grayness of a fairytale to convey the brutally grim reality of this story. Barnard then uses the social realism techniques of Ken Loach and Alan Clarke to ensure that the audience comprehends the true levels of authenticity within this story.

Short Term 12 – On paper, Short Term 12 may sound like a schlocky, feel-good Hollywood movie and that could not be further from the truth. The scenarios and conversations within Destin Cretton’s film shimmer with a high level of authenticity, due in no small part to the amazing ensemble cast and impeccable writing. Brie Larson, for one, is astounding; proving herself to be one of the most talented twenty-something actors working today.

Stories We Tell – We all tell stories. We all have our own unique perspectives and interpretations of events. There is no absolute Truth. Everything is filtered through the various lenses of our past and present. Director Sarah Polley approaches Stories We Tell knowing full well that stories are just that: stories.

Sun Don’t Shine – Building upon the already nightmarish elements of the narrative, Sun Don’t Shine unfolds with the oblique stream of consciousness of a dream — such as when Terrence Malick-esque voiceovers follow the characters’ thoughts as they are lulled into daydreams by the ephemeral rhythms and patterns of the roadside imagery and the unbearably balmy Florida air. Sun Don’t Shine refuses to abide by a traditional narrative structure; the road movie elements are not used to propel the narrative forward, but to trap Crystal and Leo in a smothering and smoldering incapacious space. Their car is like a prison cell with an ever-changing view of the real/reel world; the car windows function like movie screens, dangling carrots of perceived freedom and success just out of Crystal and Leo’s reach.

Upstream Color – Functioning as writer, director, producer, cinematographer, composer, and editor, Shane Carruth is the epitome of the modern day auteur. No matter how confusing and frustrating Upstream Color may be, there is no denying the amazingly singular artistic vision that produced this film. Echoing the godlike control that is held over the film’s test subjects, Carruth is the grand creator and chief inquisitor of this uniquely cinematic world.

Welcome to Pine Hill – Welcome to Pine Hill provides the most naturally positive portrayal of a black character that I have ever seen dedicated to film — and I am incredibly embarrassed to say that if I knew that a white guy directed Welcome to Pine Hill, I probably would not have even bothered watching it. But the outsider perspective actually works in writer-director Keith Miller’s favor, and it certainly helps matters that he avoids all of Hollywood’s racial stereotypes. Most importantly, Miller does not approach Welcome to Pine Hill as a direct discussion of race; though he understands that our world is far from being colorblind and race-related issues are inescapable.


Honorable mentions: The Act of Killing; After Tiller; Ain’t Them Bodies Saints; All is Lost; Blackfish; Blue Is the Warmest Color; Concussion; Dirty Wars; Frances Ha; Her; In the House; I Used to Be Darker; Mother of George; Mud; Pilgrim Song; Post Tenebras Lux; Simon Killer

 

 

TOP TEN OF 2012: DON SIMPSON'S PICKS

A scene from Attenberg.

Grouch the Oscar

By Don Simpson

Attenberg -- One might say that Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenbergis like the mellow chaser used to calm the crazy rush after experiencing the sheer frenzy of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth(which Tsangari produced), but it is certainly no less meaningful and pervasive. Attenberg may not be quite as fantastically absurd as Dogtooth, but the two Greek films do share a certain cinematic kinship in farcically discussing the aftereffects of overly restrictive parenting, specifically the social and sexual repression of the offspring.

 

Bad Fever -- The dark and intimate mood that writer-director Dustin Guy Defa is able to develop during the 77 minute-long Bad Feveris intoxicating. Defa’s timid approach to his characters — and the narrative as a whole — forces the audience to observe the world from Eddie’s (Kentucker Audley) perspective. Eddie carefully flirts with adjectives such as creepy and deranged, yet he always seems deserving of our sympathy and affection; occasionally he hints of a slight mental handicap, but refrains from utilizing such a “burden” to tug at our heartstrings.

 

Beasts of the Southern Wild --A masterful blend of neo-realism, magic realism, Southern Gothic and children’s fantasy, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild is told from the childlike perspective of Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) with wandering eyes wide open engulfing the natural magnificence of the world. Beasts of the Southern Wild never once purports to exist in our world; instead, like any good fantasy or science fiction story, it functions as an otherworldly critique of our reality.

 

Cosmopolis -- I cannot imagine a better writer-director to adapt Don DeLillo’s dense-yet-dreamily-poetic dialogue. David Cronenberg nails DeLillo’s token tone, rhythm and pacing that has differentiated him from his peers. DeLillo and Cronenberg saturate every single word, sound and image with significance creating a presumably impossible-to-crack puzzle, not unlike some of Cronenberg’s most challenging films: Existenz, Crash, and Videodrome.

 

Green -- Writer-director Sophia Takal’s Green approaches female relationships and jealousy with a dreamy haze of obliqueness. The densely forested environs are not only suffocating and ostracizing but they also lend Green the spooky and menacing air of a horror film. Greenis a purely psychological horror film — the violence is all in the mind -- and one of the best I have seen in ages.

 

Holy Motors -- Like David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors shuttles us through its narrative in a white limousine, allowing us a tour of the decaying moral fiber of our post modern world. Holy Motors might be a film about playing roles and fulfilling the fantasies of others, but there is so much more to it than that.

 

Only the Young --Elizabeth Mims and Jason Tippet’s film is kind of like a punk rock Real World but more gritty and authentic; and like Real World, authenticity is in the eye of the beholder. Some viewers will accept Only the Young as fact, while others will probably believe that it is fiction. Regardless, Only the Young works extremely well as a visual essay on post-suburbia, contemplating the effects that regional economic downturns have on teenagers that are left floundering in the wake.

 

Oslo, August 31 -- With the visual poeticism of Robert Bresson, Joachim Trier creates an incredibly complex 24-hour character study with the intellectually insightful panache of Camus and Sartre. In this modern day example of existentialism, Trier avoids the Hollywood cliche of drug addiction — which informs us that drug addiction is perpetuated by financial woes and unstable families — revealing that wealthy, intelligent and resourceful people can become addicts too.

 

Tchoupitoulas -- The Ross brothers’ Tchoupitoulas functions as both a documentary that borrows from narrative storytelling techniques and a narrative film that paints a realistic portrait of its protagonists by utilizing documentary devices. The narrative unfolds like an improvised jazz album with various tangents that flow seamlessly away from and towards the forward-moving primary thread. Tchoupitoulasis a cerebral experience that continues to reverberate in my subconscious like a fading childhood memory.

 

Wuthering Heights --Writer-director Andrea Arnold de[con]structively whittles down Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to its core elements of cruelty and violence. A strange Frankenstein-like creature that combines the distinct cinematic worlds of kitchen sink realism, art house and slow cinema, Wuthering Heights truly is a beautiful beast.

 

Honorable mentions: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry; Alps; America’s Parking Lot; Blancanieves; Cabin in the Woods; The Color Wheel; The Comedy; Girl Model; The Island President; Magic Mike; The Queen of Versailles; Turn Me on, Dammit!; You Hurt My Feelings

TOP TEN: DON SIMPSON'S BEST FILMS OF 2011

Oliver (Ewan MacGregor) in Beginners.

Blessed states

By Don Simpson

The Arbor -- With a unique merging of fact and fiction, The Arbor is able to reconstruct the pain and struggle within Andrea Dunbar’s work as well as reveal the dour consequences her life choices had on her family. Clio Barnard’s stylistic choice of having her actors confide in the camera (therefore the audience) is a purposeful cinematic devise to add more hyper to the hyper-reality and bring more self-consciousness into the mix.

Beginners -- Only in Hollywood will characters like Hal and Oliver both find perfect partners exactly when they need them the most. That is Beginners’ only flaw and it is one that I can easily forgive. Otherwise, writer-director Mike Mills’ (Thumbsucker) film is as perfect as a tearjerker, romantic drama can get in my book. Very few films handle family skeletons, the loss of loved ones, and the rediscovery of love (in both straight and queer relationships, no less) with such agility. Oh, and just be sure to keep lots of tissues close at hand, Beginners is guaranteed to conjure up some waterworks.

Better This World -- In constructing their narrative, Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway must first re-create for the audience what happened prior to the commencement of their production, so they rely on archival footage and talking head interviews recollecting the events. De la Vega and Galloway allow everyone, including the FBI, to tell their version of the story and surprisingly enough, they all seem to be on the same page (or at least the same chapter), except for the actions of the FBI informant. The unfolding of the events is spine-tingling (at least for someone of my political persuasion). Better This World represents how conservative America’s post-9/11 War on Terror went terribly awry, ripping away the civil liberties of American citizens and instantly squashing any form of political dissent.

Film Socialisme -- For English-speaking audiences, Godard obliterates any resemblance of coherent/cohesive dialog (or narrative) by releasing Film Socialisme with what he refers to as “Navajo” English subtitles. By doing so, Godard deconstructs the primarily French dialog into an oblique code that isolates or concatenates specific nouns and verbs (presumably) from the spoken dialog. But without grammar or structure, the words remain just that, words. The spoken dialog becomes part of the film’s soundtrack and the subtitles present mere clues of what might be going on. Knowledge of multiple languages becomes power; the ability to effectively communicate across borders leads to peace, love and understanding. It is difficult to ignore the inherently Godardian “fuck you” to the Anglophone imperialists in the audience. It is as if Godard does not want non-Francophones to know the true meaning or purpose of Film Socialisme.

Martha Marcy May Marlene -- For me, the real payoff of Martha Marcy May Marlene can be found in the ending, which is rivaled only by Meek’s Cutoff in terms of sublime ambiguity. The comparisons between Martha Marcy May Marlene and Meek’s Cutoff do not end there. Both films toy with the audience’s preconceived notions of cinematic genres and traditional narrative tropes, while they also rely solely upon their infinite layers of subtext to communicate their significance. Most importantly, both films proselytize the unique power of the cinematic art form. These are stories that could never be properly conveyed via any other medium — that right there is precisely why Martha Marcy May Marlene and Meek’s Cutoff are two of my favorite films of 2011.

Meek’s Cutoff -- Kelly Reichardt’s film — penned by Jonathan Raymond (Reichardt’s co-writer on Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy) — is, at least in theory, a western but with most of the genre’s conventions flipped completely inside out. Cinematographer Chris Blauvelt’s grand panoramas of the striking Oregonian vista is photographed in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, which adds a unique sense of claustrophobia to the image. Reichardt and Blauvelt rely quite heavily on long and medium compositions, but the camera does occasionally cut to various characters’ facial expressions to convey meaning, intent or emotion.

Shame -- Shame is one of those rare modern films that I would love to construct a hearty critical analysis of, mainly because the perspectives and framing of every scene convey as much purpose as the characters themselves. But a discussion of this film at that level will require several more viewings and a significantly higher word count. (Heck, it might take me a few thousand words just to discuss the scene in which Sissy performs “Theme from New York, New York“.) As much as I admire the writing, direction and performances of Shame, I do not know how many repeat viewings I could endure. Shame is an emotionally exhausting film; it is certainly not a film that is intended to be enjoyed.

Tomboy -- With Tomboy, writer-director Céline Sciamma delves much deeper into the taboo (at least on this side of the Atlantic) theme of childhood sexuality that she discussed all-so-eloquently in her 2007 feature-length debut, Water Lilies. Laure is five years younger than Water Lilies’ Marie, Anne and Floriane; thus Laure is also significantly more innocent. The root of Laure’s deception is not about sexual attraction to girls — though she does kiss a girl — it is about wanting to play like a boy.

Weekend -- We observe Russell and Glen as they flounder about, attempting to negotiate the course of the first couple days of their relationship — just as a lot of heterosexual couples do. That is one of the other brilliant aspects of Weekend, the way the story becomes a universal one, transcending all notions of sexual preference and gender. Other than when Russell and Glen kiss each other and have sex, there is nothing gay about these characters, they transcend categorization. Even the film’s ending co-opts a classic trope from heterosexual cinema, cleverly pointing out that the gender of the characters bidding farewell to each other on the train station platform really does not matter; what matters is that the audience is adequately convinced that the two characters love each other and the impending division will tear their hearts apart.

Where Soldiers Come From -- Despite the obvious temptation to bombard the audience with additional footage of the war-torn soldiers and their families railing against U.S. economic, military, and foreign policies, Heather Courtney refrains from turning Where Soldiers Come From into a heavy-handed political diatribe; instead, the resulting film is a deeply humanistic tale of five young men yearning to earn some basic financial stability in their futures. This, however, does not mean that the audience will refrain from bringing politics into their viewing experience, because there are a lot of political issues at the heart of Where Soldiers Come From.

 

TOP ELEVEN: ED RAMPELL'S BEST FILMS OF 2011

Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) in A Dangerous Method.

Exit stage lefty

By Ed Rampell

The criteria for my favorite films are progressive political and cultural content, plus artistic excellence in terms of using the uniquely cinematic attributes of the movie medium. Astute readers may observe that half of the motion pictures on my Top 10 list for 2011 were shot and/or set in France. And while it’s true that your erstwhile cinephile actually did return to France last August, and that I do indeed speak French, it would be a mistake to assume that I am a Francophile. In fact, I did lots of reporting on the nuclear free and independent Pacific movement that was highly critical of French colonialism in New Caledonia and French-occupied Polynesia. But that is a flashback to another life; so suffice it to say that the land of the Lumiere Brothers, Georges Melies and the New Wave remains a vital cinematic force and center, so -- in no particular order –my Top 10 films of 2011 are:

Hugo – And speaking of Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley), Martin Scorsese’s optically opulent, loving tribute (with an antiwar subtext) to that movie master of illusion in sumptuous 3D is a delightful tribute to a motion picture pioneer and the art form we are so besotted with: Cinema.

The Artist – French auteur Michel Hazanavicius’ film, set in Hollywood in the 1920s as the talkie emerged, is likewise an adoring ode to the silent screen that reminds us silence truly is golden.

The Iron Lady – Meryl Streep uncannily depicts Britain’s dictatorial Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom husband Denis (Jim Broadbent) nicknames “M.T.” (Get it? As in “empty.”)

The Conquest – Xavier Durringer’s biopic about reactionary pig Nicholas Sarkozy’s (Denis Podalydes) rise to the presidency of France, and his miserable relationship with wife Cecilia (and with just about everybody else), is a rightwing bookend to The Iron Lady about another conservative tyrant. 

Coriolanus & The Flowers of War – Both Ralph Fiennes’ modern dress version of Shakespeare’s drama about a Roman general co-starring Vanessa Redgrave and Zhang Yimou’s epic about the rape of Nanking co-starring Christian Bale are both historically set antiwar films that tied for a space on my Top 10 list. 

Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 – This documentary about Civil Rights activists, nationalists and revolutionaries perfectly captures what one of its interview subjects, Stokely Carmichael, once said (and I paraphrase): “Molotov cocktails and ghetto riots – ahhh, that’s the stuff dreams are made of.” With Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Louis Farrakhan, and other luminaries of the Black liberation struggle during the sizzling sixties and seventies.

Potiche – This 1970s-set French feminist farce and musical comedy stars the ever radiant Catherine Deneuve, whose factory owner husband (Fabrice Luchini) vies with the town’s Communist mayor (Gerard Depardieu) in the class struggle and for his wife’s affections. Deneuve delightfully turns the tables on these Frenchmen when she enters politics as a matriarchal candidate.

A Dangerous Method – The psychological ménage a trois of patient-turned-shrink Sabina Spielrein (poetically portrayed by Keira Kinightley), Carl Jung (Michael Fassbinder) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson) is anything but comic as the founders of psychoanalysis clash. This historical drama is spellbinding, and poor Spielrein’s offscreen fate is absolutely heart rending.   

Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen’s wonderfully witty time traveling comedy is a laugh a minute romp that takes a contemporary emotionally lost scriptwriter (a droll Owen Wilson) back to the Lost Generation of American and other expatriates who inhabited the City of Light in the 1920s. Full of insights about the creative process (not to mention human longings, in and out of bed), this is the Woodman’s funniest comedy in years, as well as reportedly Allen’s highest grossing film ever. And you haven’t lived until you see Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, the role she was born to play!

The Names of Love – I’ve saved the best for last, as this very sexy, very funny French farce is my favorite film of 2011, one of those movies that makes you feel glad to be alive. What can I say? – I’m in love. Sensuous Sara Forestier deservedly won the Best Actress César (the French counterpart to the Oscar) for her role as the Reichian dream girl incarnate, a lefty woman who (pardon my French) fucks for freedom. Viva la revolucion!