The Films I Watched In 2013 Awards

It’s that time of the year again, folks! Time for me to take a look at the movies I watched this past year and determine which ones were the very best in a variety of silly categories. Other bloggers do Best of 2013 lists and accolades. Me, I’m as always way behind on my viewing of 2013’s movies, so I focus instead on what I actually saw this year, regardless of when it was released.

Not counting rewatches, I saw a total of 145 films during these past 12 months. A sharp drop-off from last year’s 209, but an expected one. Work and budding interests in other hobbies took some time away from the movies, something that has also contributed to a lower update rate on this here blog. To quote Vonnegut: So it goes.

But 145 movies are still quite a bit, and most of what I saw was good. It has been a fine movie year indeed. One well worth commemorating with these highly prestigeous awards of mine.

If you want to go back and see the awards for 2011 and 2012, the links are right here and here.

On that note: on with the show!

Most Explicit Food Porn Award
Winner: Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I’m not much of a fish eater, and I’ve never had sushi in my life. This movie could easily change that, because it makes the food looks absolutely mouth-wateringly delicious. And it’s all shot in intense tantalizing close-ups, too! Mmm…

Most Surprising Director Award
Winner: Compliance

A seriously creepy based-on-a-true-story thriller featuring dark manipulation and sexual abuse, directed by… Craig Zobel, co-creator of kid-friendly web series Homestar Runner?

Alpha Award for Best Opening
Winner: We Need to Talk About Kevin
Runner-up: Les Misérables

Certain opening shots in movies just have a way of hooking you right from the start. They make you wonder what it is you’re seeing, then why it’s there, and finally what you’re about to see next. Tilda Swinton floating around in a sea of people all drenched in tomato sauce certainly manages to do all that.

Omega Award for Best Ending
Winner: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Runner-up: Martha Marcy May Marlene

You might think that a romcom set during the last days before the end of the world can only end in one conceivable way, and perhaps you’d be right. What I didn’t expect from this film, however, was the emotional reaction I had to its conclusion. When I sat down to watch the movie, I was looking for something easy to go along with my hangover. What I got was something far more impressive. Martha Marcy May Marlene earns the silver medal by initially making me go “What!? This is where you end it? Just like that?”, but then making me question what the film was really trying to tell me, and subsequently sticking with me for days afterward.

Best Worst WTF-est Use Of Fried Chicken Award
Winner: Killer Joe

Scenes that leave you dumbfoundedly staring at the screen wondering just what the hell you’re seeing are rare. Even rarer is when they do this in a good way. William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe certainly manages this with its most infamous scene, featuring Matthew McConaughey, Gina Gershon, and some fried chicken.

Award for Excellence In Sexiness
Winner: Scarlett Johansson – Match Point

While not as overt or smoldering as previous winners in this category (the entire cast of Nine, and Clooney + J-Lo in Out of Sight), Scarlett Johansson’s turn in Woody Allen‘s infidelity thriller Match Point still has a ton of fire to it. Her pulling Jonathan Rhys Meyers into an affair with her certainly seems believable.

“What’s The Big Deal?” Award for A Beloved Film That Left Me Underwhelmed
Winner: Animal House
Runner-up: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Animal House is hailed as a comedy classic in most American writing I find online. I rarely if ever hear much reverence for it from Swedish writers. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. I didn’t find much to like about the movie, other than a few John Belushi moments. But if I want Belushi, I’ll just stick to The Blues Brothers, thank you very much.

Masticating The Environs Award for Most Acting
Winner: Keira Knightley – A Dangerous Method

Nobody tried harder on a screen I found myself in front of in 2013 than Keira Knightley in David Cronenberg‘s psychosexual drama slash biopic. Whether her chin-jutting and high-strung performance fully works is most definitely up for debate, but she certainly gave it her all.

High Concept Award for Best Premise
Winner: Timer
Runner-up: Grabbers

Irish horror comedy Grabbers features invading monsters averse to alcohol, necessitating that the protagonist townsfolk stay drunk all the time. This is such a brilliant and obvious idea for the genre that I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before. But the best idea I saw this year was in Timer, a sci-fi romance set in the future where someone has invented a timer that counts down the seconds until you first meet your soul mate – but it only starts counting once they too get a timer. It might sound gimmicky, but to its further credit, the movie plays the premise for all its worth, exploring different angles of it right up to its logical yet surprising conclusion.

Grumpiest Old Man Award
Winner: Harrison Ford – Morning Glory

Veteran TV journalist Mike Pomeroy used to cover wars, politics and other high prestige stories. In Morning Glory, he finds himself having to host a breezy morning news show. This does not exactly sit well with him. Harrison Ford plays him almost like a parody of Clint Eastwood‘s Gran Torino character, where every word is delivered like a raspy grunt. “Are you drunk?” Rachel McAdams‘ distraught character asks him before a broadcast. “Insufficiently”, he replies.

Brains Over Brawns Award for Smartest Fighter
Winner: Paul Newman – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Sometimes, all you need to win a knife fight is some swift thinking and an even swifter kick to the groin.

Shannyn Sossamon Award for Best Shannyn Sossamon Performance
Winner: Shannyn Sossamon – Catacombs

Shannyn Sossamon continues to dominate this category, taking home the award for the third year straight. Her work in humdrum horror flick Catacombs is hardly career-best stuff from her, obviously, but she does make for a fairly effective state of distress protagonist. It’s just a shame that the movie is still terrible.

Best 3D Eye Candy Award
Winner: Life of Pi
Runner-up: Gravity

In 2013, Life of Pi became the first movie I ever paid to see more than once in theater. Part of the return trip was to watch the story unfold while knowing where it’s ultimately going, but the chief reason was simple: a film as gorgeous as this deserved to be seen on the big screen more than once.

Best Underwear Award
Winner: Sightseers

Because hasn’t everyone always wanted to type the phrase “knitted crotchless panties” at some point in their life?

Most Forgettable Award
Winner: Sleepwalk With Me
Runner-up: Employee of the Month

The only thing I remember about Employee of the Month is that it had a bunch of twists near the end. This is more than what I recall about Sleepwalk With Me, which was one of those movies that showed up on Netflix and a lot of bloggers ended up watching for some reason. My scorecard tells me I gave it a decent score after watching it almost a year ago, but I remember nothing about it today.

A Swede Loves This Movie Award
Winner: Les Misérables

As you may recall, I crushed pretty hard on this movie when it arrived in theaters here back in the early parts of 2013. My love for it hasn’t diminished since then, and I still rewatch it on Blu-ray every other month or so. It’s not the best movie I saw last year, but there is no movie that spawned such an obsession in me in a way that honestly no other movie has ever done. For that, it deserves a special award.

Best 2013 Film So Far Award
Winner: Gravity
Runner-up: Before Midnight

For sheer visceral power and physicality, no 2013 film seen by me could top Gravity this year. It has left nearby theaters by now, and I’m kicking myself for not rewatching it while I had the chance. It’s that kind of movie. I’m not ruling out the possibility that runner-up Before Midnight could surpass it when revisited on home media, though.

Worst 2013 Film So Far Award
Winner: Upstream Color
Runner-up: The Purge

The Purge squandered an intriguing idea by employing it in a repetitive and tired home invasion horror flick. It wasn’t very good. That said, Upstream Color takes the prize here for being a film that I just couldn’t wait for to be over. I know there are plenty who like the film, but it just wasn’t for me.

Best Swedish Film Seen By Me In 2013 Award
Winner: The Girl
Runner-up: Winter Light

With Winter Light, Ingmar Bergman came close to repeating the victory in this category that Persona brought him last year, but ultimately, I was more moved by Fredrik Edfeldt‘s story of a girl trying live by herself for a summer. The Girl is a touching and thoughtful movie, and one deserving to be seen by more people outside my country.

Worst Film Seen By Me In 2013 Award
Winner: Cosmopolis
Runner-up: Valhalla Rising

I’ve described Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising as a Bergman film without any of the things that make Bergman films interesting, but it does at least have some striking cinematography going for it. What does Cosmopolis have? Nothing.

Best Film Seen By Me In 2013 Award
Winner: Shame
Runner-up: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I think I died a couple of times while watching Shame, and I didn’t even care. A spellbinding movie with amazing acting, fully deserving of all the praise it got upon its release. Could Steve McQueen take home this award again next year through 12 Years a Slave? Time will tell.

What’s the best film you saw in 2013? And what did you think of my picks here?

 

Scene of Awesome: “Do I need to worry about you, Bob?”

One of my favorite observations from the late great Roger Ebert appears in his review of Lost in Translation. In it, he wrote: “you can only say ‘I feel like I’ve known you for years’ to someone you have not known for years.” It’s the irony of how sometimes you’re able to have deeper conversations with people you’ve only just met than with those you’ve known all your life. With no mutual baggage, discussion is free to soar between you. This is of course an important part of Sofia Coppola‘s masterpiece, in which Bill Murray‘s Bob and Scarlett Johansson‘s Charlotte encounter one another in a hotel bar in Tokyo and together discover how lost they are in their lives. The two connect is a wonderful way, but they know it’s a temporary thing. Perhaps that knowledge is what allows the connection to happen at all.

The other side of the coin is that we can feel distant to the people we have known well for a long time. This too is part of the film for both main characters. With Charlotte, it can be seen in how little time she and her husband (Giovanni Ribisi) get to spend with one another, but it’s also shown in an early scene where she phones home to a friend and talks about how visiting a shrine didn’t make her feel anything. The conversation reaches an abrupt end. She has a need for deeper discussion, but it feels awkward.

Similar ground is explored with Bob later on in the film, and it’s one of my favorite scenes of Lost in Translation. Bob is in a bath, getting a phonecall from the woman he has been married to for the past 25 years. Bob is going through a midlife crisis; he has probably been aware of this himself for a while – he seems prone to introspection – but spending time with Charlotte has made it more tangible to him. He wants to change things in his life. He tries to communicate this to his wife, and you can really feel how he’s struggling to get the right word out. But he can’t do it. All he can muster up is how he wants to eat healthier food, to which he gets a snippy response about how maybe he should just stay in Tokyo if things are so great there. Then he asks how their kids are doing, to which he gets the reply that they miss their dad but are getting used to him not being around. Ouch.

And then this wonderful exchange happens.

“Do I need to worry about you, Bob?”

“Only if you want to.”

Nothing dramatic. No anger. No tears. Just calm resignation. This is Bob’s life.

 

My Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2001

Time to set the time machine to 2001, a year that like many others had a great deal of great films to offer. There’s a nice mix to be had with this list, I think. Sure, it leans slightly towards comedy as my lists tend do – although there’s nothing here that i’d classify strictly as a laugh-out-loud type of movie – but there is some international variety. USA, France, Spain and Norway are all represented in one way or another.

I don’t normally do honorable mentions for these lists, but I do need to give a shout-out to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The trilogy as a whole is a remarkably ambitious cinematic accomplishment which does such a great job of bringing the world of the novels to life. Both The Two Towers and The Return of the King barely missed out on spots on their respective year lists. The Fellowship of the Ring – my personal favorite of the three – was sitting at #9 on this list at first draft. Then along came a movie I hadn’t seen before (#7), and Fellowship got bumped down. And then I realized a teriffic film I thought belonged to 2000 was actually released in 2001 (#2), and just like that, Fellowship dropped off. So an honorable mention goes out to that film and, by extension, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

On to the list proper. As always, this is 2001 as listed on IMDB to avoid confusion with international release dates.

10 – HUMAN NATURE (Michel Gondry)

“Remember: when in doubt, don’t ever do what you really want to do.”

The most overlooked of the films written by Charlie Kaufman, Human Nature is a movie of many questions about – of course – human nature. What’s fun is the strange ways in which it goes about asking them. The central characters are a scientist (Tim Robbins) trying to teach mice to have a formal dinner, a man (Rhys Ifans) who grew up in the wilderness thinking himself to be an ape, and a woman (Patricia Arquette) who voluntarily abandoned civilization as an adult due to feeling out of place because of her thick body hair. This story proves to be a good fit for Michel Gondry, here making his feature film debut and immediately establishing his unique style – how many directors would go with a sudden Disney-esque song number in a film like this? Human Nature is both funny and thought-provoking, and it deserves more attention than it tends to get.

9 – A KNIGHT’S TALE (Brian Helgeland)

“Now that I got their attention, you go and win their hearts.”

Wikipedia describes this as an action-adventure film. This is false. A Knight’s Tale is very much a sports movie, with all the familiar story elements and tropes associated with the genre. It just so happens to take place in medieval times, with the sport in question being jousting. What makes the film stand out even more is the anachronistic music. Here we have a dance scene in at the royal court set to David Bowie’s “Golden Years”, and joust audiences clapping along to Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. Heath Ledger makes for an effective protagonist, Shannyn Sossamon is as radiant as ever as his love interest, and Paul Bettany and Alan Tyduk as comedic sidekicks take turns to steal the movie. Often hilarious, always feel-good. A Knight’s Tale never fails to put a smile on my face.

 

My Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2003

Would it be unfair of me to say that 2003 sucked movie-wise? Yes, of course it would. Not even going into how I’ve only seen a small percentage of all films released all over the world during the year, just looking at what I have seen tells me that there were plenty of good movies out there and no disproportionately large number of stinkers. I’m sure the average 2003 movie I’ve seen isn’t much worse than the average of most other years.

But this list is still… weak? No, not weak. These are all very good films. That might be the problem, though. Most of these are indeed very good. It’s just that there are few truly great ones on here. Movies I love. Compared to most other years from the decade, 2003 was a bit lacking at the upper section. Some of these films would have a hard time finding spots on previous top 10 lists I’ve made.

It’s all good, though. I’ll gladly take more years like 2003 as long as I get one film as good as what’s at #1 here.

As usual, to avoid international confusion, I go by years listed on IMDB to determine what is and isn’t “a 2003 movie”.

10 – AMERICAN SPLENDOR (Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini)

“Why does everything in my life have to be such a complicated disaster?”

Two things are key if you want to make a good biopic. 1: Find an interesting character to make a film about. 2: Find the right actor for said character. American Splendor accomplishes these two steps with gusto. Paul Giamatti plays Harvey Pekar, notorious underground comic book writer. A complicated character with plenty of odd quirks and a vitriolic personality, Giamatti nevertheless finds the human being within and offers a nuanced and believable performance. A lot of the film’s success is due to the actor. Without him, the movie might have been just as interesting, but probably not as good.

9 – MATCHSTICK MEN (Ridley Scott)

“She said you were a bad guy. You don’t seem like a bad guy.”

Of course Roy (Nicolas Cage) doesn’t seem like a bad guy. He’s a conman. It’s his job to appear trustworthy. And he’s doing good for himself, despite having to combat his OCD and other mental hang-ups. But then his daughter (Alison Lohman) whom he has never met before enters his life, and things get complicated. Matchstick Men tells an entertaining story with twists and turns a-plenty and features one of Cage’s better performances of the decade. Also: Pygmies!