2013 is probably one of the best years for film I can think of since 2010. There was a great surge in dramatic fare, indie fare, and so many great horror films arrived in to theaters for fans to savor and consume.
Surely, there were flops, and really bad films, but there were so many really great films, which is refreshing when you consider the state of Hollywood and cinema’s entire transformation from a theatrical presence and home media in to a digital realm where physical media is slowly disappearing.
It was a tough task to take our favorites of the year and decide on ten of our favorite, but in the end these ten won out as our favorite of 2013.
10.5 Evil Dead
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Sony Pictures Releasing
Release Date: April 5th
Forced in to a corner I’ll always choose Sam Raimi’s original, but Fede Alvarez’s authorized remake of the classic cabin in the woods standard is excellent in its own right. Compelling, brilliantly acted, and smarter than the original, Alvarez and co. realize the deadites as humanity’s own inner demons that seep in through the darkness of our souls. Though this remake does offer nods to the original with mostly visual cues, “Evil Dead” is able to act as a companion piece to Raimi’s horror film. Director Alvarez packs in incredible special effects, an amazing sense of visual style, and brilliant performances all around with a rising sense of dread and terror that leads in to a wonderful showdown that’s both terrifying and an act of ultimate catharsis for its heroine Mia.
10. Man of Steel
Directed by Zack Snyder
Warner Bros.
Release Date: June 14th
Zack Snyder is able to take Superman to new realms of the fantastic with his take on the iconic character that’s both bold, exciting, and emotionally gripping. “Man of Steel” presents a unique and brilliant new Superman for modern audiences as a superhero who finally finds his calling when Earth is doomed to be taken over by super powered war criminals. Snyder is able to channel the feelings of alienation beautifully by making Earth feel very foreign to Clark as he grows in to a man struggling to find his way. Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” isn’t just the origin of Superman, but the origin of the superhero who takes over for his birth father, while inheriting the courage and heroism of his adopted father to become Earth’s protector and guardian. By implementing his immense power to protect the innocent and keep his adopted home safe, he lives up to his title as Superman and the Man of Steel.
9. Resolution
Directed by Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Tribeca Film
Release Date: January 25th
Director Justin Benson’s horror thriller is a wonderful de-construction of the traditional horror narrative, and also dissects the cabin in the woods sub-genre. While it has been compared to “Cabin in the Woods” numerously, it works as a companion piece with an equally brilliant meta-structure. Nothing is ever quite as it seems, the characters are stuck in a world with a fate handed to them they can’t escape, and the audience is a conscious entity within the foundation of the story. And we never quite know it until director Benson allows us to. The characters Michael and Chris are so dead set on their goals as friends, that they can’t see that there is something around them leaving them clues to something larger than themselves. Their realization that something wants them to see how their life ends isn’t just horrifying, but might be accidental. Maybe we are the monsters and our predictions of how they may die have dripped in to the narrative, allowing the characters to change their outcomes once and for all. What if characters in a horror film suddenly built a sentience deciding to work against the conventions of their world? From the subtle crackle of film in the actual movie, to the mind blowing ending, “Resolution” left me very affected.
8. Stoker
Directed by Chan Wook Park
FOX Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: March 1st
Director Chan Wook Park’s American debut is an excellent deliberately paced tale of a twisted family, and a young girl blossoming in to adulthood. With a past filled with a family drenched in blood, who sparks the attention of her maniacal uncle, Mia Wasikowska handles the dread soaked and unnerving thriller with subtlety and finesse. Director Park unfolds much of the story through subtle cues and symbolism, exploring how Wasikowska may have just inherited her uncle’s taste for blood, and his thirst to help her realize it. Park also equates her eventual growth in to a maniac with her sexual awakening as she starts her life as a social misfit who just may grow in to a vicious, sadistic, and violent killer. Star Matthew Goode plays well off of Wasikowska, and Park paints the film as one long fever dream through the eyes of two psychopaths that build a bond for their love of pain and blood.
7. The We and the I
Directed by Michel Gondry
108 Media
Release Date: March 8th
Director Michel Gondry’s two hour ride on a public bus in the South Bronx is a like a modern urban re-invention of “The Breakfast Club.” After their last day of school before summer, a large group of high schoolers ride the bus home, and interact as if it’s just another day. Within the bus we’re given insight in to the infrastructure and social dynamics that ensue during school and within these small cliques. Characters are obnoxious, loud, and tend to be despicable, but deep down they’re also human, flawed, and have genuine emotions. The film is raucous and fast paced, and then as the characters get off the bus, the cast dwindles and the personalities change almost instantly. Within the two hour bus ride, we’re given a keen look in to the minds of teenagers living in the city, all of whom have their own need for validation, and experience a life changing event that will alter their entire summer. Gondry’s film kept me hooked from minute one.
6. Mama
Directed by Andrés Muschietti
Universal Pictures
Release Date: January 18th
One of the first films I saw in 2013, “Mama” is a deeply moving and very creepy tale about family, love, and the power of being a mother. Centered on a horrific and tragic prologue, “Mama” involves two orphaned young girls adopted by their long lost uncle. When he brings them back home to recuperate them for society, something follows them home and is desperate to re-claim the girls. Filled with great direction, excellent writing, and a deeply moving sense of character dynamics. “Mama” is as heartbreaking as it is scary. Director Andrés Muschietti’s feature film debut is a masterful horror drama that builds its heart on truly incredible sequences of pain and grief, as well as subtle and touching moments involving star Jessica Chastain’s character Annabel’s attempts to gain the trust of her nieces, both of whom are torn between their adopted mother, and their otherworldly entity that has taken on the role of their mother. I admittedly wept in the finale, and fell for the human tale of struggle and coping, behind this harrowing ghost story.
5. The Conjuring
Directed by James Wan
New Line Cinema
Release Date: July 19th
Director James Wan’s tale of a family tormented by a demon within the heart of their house is a brilliant, and terrifying battle of good and evil. Rather than side stepping the genre, director Wan embraces the devices of the haunted house movies, providing excellent direction, and memorable performances by a seasoned cast. Director Wan relies on old fashioned devices like sound and terror lurking within our peripheral vision to draw terror from his audience. “The Conjuring” was one of the few films in 2013 that caused me to turn away in fright sporadically with incredible editing and genuinely horrifying moments like the finale involving the mythical haunted doll in the prologue, and the game of hide and seek involving clapping that quickly turns in to a lure for the entity lurking in the home. It’s been a long time since the haunted house film has hit a nerve with me, and “The Conjuring” is a welcome success.
4. Gravity
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Warner Bros.
Release Date: October 4th
It’s a simple yet epic tale of two astronauts struggling for some form of survival when their space launch goes terribly wrong. Director Alfonso Cuaron is able to compose a compelling and rich struggle for survival, as two explorers fight the tide, and must rely on their wits and training to get them in to a safe haven, and hopefully home. The special effects are incredible, while Cuaron’s direction, and masterful ability to dizzy and disorient kept me so engrossed in plight of the two explorers. Often times I’d have to look away from the utterly mind bending sense of loss of control that Cuaron embraces, allowing no security for the characters lost in a weightless void of space. “Gravity” is surely one of the best survival dramas ever made, if only for its ability to unfold a story that could be interpreted by theists and atheists in vast differences. It’s either a narrative about an astronaut saved by her own innate sense of skill with machines, or a woman saved by the heavenly spirits of her loved ones that helped guide her back to her home.
3. The Battery
Directed by Jeremy Gardner
O. Hannah Films
Release Date: June 4th (Video On Demand)
Director Jeremy Gardner’s zombie drama takes a small budget and works around it to create quite possibly one of the best zombie movies made in over a decade. Based around small locales and a deliberate pace, director Gardner has the chance to fill the screen with zombies and splatter, yet doesn’t. Displaying surprising restraint, “The Battery” instead chooses to focus on two men living in a world overrun by the walking dead, and how they respond to it both emotionally and psychologically. What would it be like to depend on someone you barely know and probably didn’t like very much? Is it better to drown out the world around you or do nothing but focus on your quest for survival?
Gardner’s “The Battery” is primarily a road film with a dark sense of humor, and a remarkable skill for developing interesting well complex characters. Gardner centers on two ex baseball players while they venture across the countryside clearing out houses, killing the dead, and find themselves going stir crazy. We don’t need to see destruction to understand that the world is now overrun by the walking dead, and Gardner is more uses most of the film to build the two men travelling through this new world, to deliver the gut punch in the final twenty minutes. “The Battery” is an extraordinary horror film, a rich drama about survival and humanity, and one of a kind.
2. 12 Years a Slave
Directed by Steve McQueen
FOX Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: November 8th
Steve McQueen’s chronicle of the true story of Solomon Northup and his thrusting in to slavery against his will is a shocking, horrific, and brilliant exploration of the slave struggles, and how the slaves would inevitably lose sight of their own goals in life. How can you respond to a life under the servitude of a cruel master? Do you submit to the slave master and risk losing all sense of dignity and self-respect, or do you rebel until you’ve dropped dead with no one to mourn you? “12 Years a Slave” is as much a thriller as it is a drama, as Solomon Northup is stripped of his freedom after being tricked and kidnapped by two white trader that gain his trust. Northup is an educated, clever, and talented man, and he is forced to hide it all in the face of murderous white masters.
Many of whom could murder him if they feel slightly threatened by his ability to outthink and outwit them. Northup is thrown through the ringer and barely escapes death time and time again, deciding to play the character of the meek slave, and eventually discovering that he may end up becoming the very character he’s playing, if he doesn’t escape the clutches of his tormentors soon. Though the film is filled with an excellent like Alfre Woodard, Brad Pitt, and Paul Dano, the film’s real power is in the performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a long underrated actor who is finally given a chance to show audiences that he’s one of the greatest actors of this generation. “12 Years a Slave” is grueling, but in the end it’s a gripping tale of a broken man who may spend the rest of his life re-building himself all over again.
1. You’re Next
Directed by Adam Wingard
Written by: Simon Barrett
Starring: Sharni Vinson, AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Nicholas Tucci
Lionsgate
Release Date: August 23rd
A great film doesn’t have to be complex or hopelessly existential to be appreciated. Sometimes the best films are simple, embrace core concepts, and still hit a homerun in terms of entertainment and storytelling. “You’re Next” surprised me as claiming the spot of my favorite film of the year. It’s an excellent slasher film, an excellent survival action film, a great look at familial dysfunction, and is skilled at fooling audiences. While the film garners a slick sense of humor, deep down it’s a fantastic look at what happens when the predator meets another of its kind with twice the skill. That predator just happens to be in the form of an unassuming Australian girl that not only thinks on her feet, but fights back against a group of large hunters with weapons, and animal masks.
Director Wingard directs “You’re Next” with unabashed brilliance, building on its prologue to lull us in to a sinister trap, and then unfolds more and more layers beneath its story to reveal a simple but very effective twist. Wingard is able to derive a lot of tension and excitement from the struggle to survive, and simultaneously creates a brand new horror heroine who stands up and fights instead of runs away crying. And while I typically groan at the inclusion of in-jokes, the supporting cast that’s made up primarily of indie horror directors is a wonderful little spice that makes the film so much more unique and fun. From Larry Fessenden, and Joe Swanberg, to Ti West, all the current up and comers are here to either be slain, or do some dirty work. Very reminiscent of gems like “Fortress” and “Straw Dogs,” director Adam Wingard is able to channel the grindhouse fervor of Sam Peckingpah while also providing a darkly funny slasher thriller that’s destined to be a classic.
OTHER GREAT MOVIES IN 2013:
Terms and Conditions May Apply, The Great Gatsby, Spring Breakers, Pacific Rim, Before Midnight, Dear Mr. Watterson, The Wind Rises, The World’s End, Frozen, Nebraska, Out of the Furnace, Inside Llewyn Davis, Lesson of the Evil, The Spectacular Now, The ABC’s of Death, VHS 2
MOVIES WE WANTED TO SEE BUT COULDN’T:
Short Term 12, Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle
YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T SEE IT, BUT YOU SHOULD, YOU REALLY SHOULD:
Stories We Tell
Actress-Director Sarah Polley’s documentary about her mother’s ill fated and tragic past is a brilliant and often heart breaking attempt from a daughter to get to know her mom. In order to gain insight in to the woman she knew, Polley asks for recollections from everyone including her father, her brothers and sisters, her best friends, and close friends of her mom. What ensues is a heartfelt and brilliant look at how memories can often differ from person to person. What’s most striking is that Sarah Polley inevitably discovers that her mother, while loving and well loved by many, was also a flawed, complex, and often suffering individual who made mistakes. Does that devalue the peopple we love? Does it also devalue our own memories of them before they left us? “Stories We Tell” shouldn’t be so engrossing, but Polley’s direction, matched with the excellent storytelling make this a documentary everyone needs to watch at least once. If only to help us garner a second look at the people we emulate.
2013’S GUILTY PLEASURE
GI Joe: Retaliation
I really dug “The Rise of Cobra” if only for embracing its cheesiness and being a genuinely fun and raucous action picture. The odds of the studio giving the series a dramatic angle like the comics is thin, and “Retaliation” proves it. Bringing the cast down to only a few characters, “Retaliation” pictures GI Joe on the verge of losing their battle with Cobra, now that they’ve seized the White House and have proclaimed them enemies of the state. The sequel alters the storyline to the series’ benefit, dialing down Duke, bringing in Dwayne Johnson to take on the reins, and placing a greater dramatic emphasis on the relationship between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. It’s an action packed bit of escapism I more than happily consumed this year, and I look forward to the third leg in the film seiries.