Movies of 2013 Part 5: 60-41

And we dip our toe into my top 50. But first, some films that didn't make the top 50. That's the way countdowns in lots of 20 sometimes work...

60) X-Men: First Class (2011, Matthew Vaughn)

So this is the other film that is far more sophisticated than it has any right to be, and another of the films I watched on planes. I found this film actually gripping, which is quite a startling achievement, given how high-concept the whole X-Men universe is. It’s helped here in no small way by the stellar cast, and in particular the byplay between James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender in the leads. There are most definitely problems with this film: the scene where the young recruits are sitting around coming up with ‘nicknames’ for each other is excruciating, but the fandom elements are cleverly worked in otherwise. As an outsider I didn’t recognise Magneto’s helmet until Fassbender actually put it on, and later in the film it suddenly struck me how well-cast he was as a young Ian McKellen (not that McKellen is the definitive Magneto, but it created a nice symmetry with Bryan Singer’s ­X-Men film universe). I’d maybe regard this more of a guilty pleasure, but it remains a remarkably sophisticated piece of action filmmaking.

59) Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski)

Did I call Polanski utterly baffling before? Well this sophomore feature effort from him didn’t do much to dispel that image after Knife in the Water, if for no other reason than that I watched them in the opposite order. Actually this is a far more comprehensible film for the most part because it takes the form of a conventional thriller; a visceral and quite disturbing one however. There’s something quite polished about his style here, as well as the unsettling performance he gets out of Catherine Deneuve, and the tortured maiden vibe here has more than a little foreshadowing of Rosemary’s Baby in it. This is not an enjoyable film, but it is a stylish and provocative early horror effort, well-made.

58) My Name is Joe (1998, Ken Loach)

I haven’t watched a lot of Ken Loach – just this and The Wind that Shakes the Barley, but I’ve been pretty warm towards what I’ve seen. I’d got the impression from listening to David and Margaret back in the day that he was a dour, cynical kind of filmmaker, but in spite of the dank, impoverished settings that he uses, he has a very keen, humanist eye for storytelling, and it’s plainly apparent here. OK so this is a romance as well as a drama, but the romance is not sappy in the slightest and Loach allows it to take a back seat to Joe’s principal dilemma and his conflict of loyalties (similar themes, in fact, to those explored in The Wind that Shakes the Barley). Loach obviously has one eye on the darker recesses of human behaviour in society, but the other eye zeroes in sharply on the brighter side, so I find him quite an interesting and intelligent director. I look forward to catching up with more of his work in 2014.

57) Anatomy of a Murder (1959, Otto Preminger)

This is another film that came with the strong recommendation from my brother, and while it’s an enjoyable courtroom drama I again must admit I didn’t love it as much as he did. We’ve had discussions about this, in particular about the fact that I prefer Witness for the Prosecution while he prefers this. Having caught up with only my second Preminger film very, very contemporaneously to writing this review (like, I literally finished watching it about three hours ago), his very methodical, procedural narrative style is very apparent, and it’s that that didn’t quite work for me in this film. Interesting and thought-provoking that it is, it just lacks the drama and excitement that I want from a courtroom drama. They’re not elements I demand, or expect, but when the film you’re dealing with is as long as this, I just need more overt conflict to keep me fully engaged.

56) Life, and Nothing More... (Zendegi va Digar Hich, 1992, Abbas Kiarostami)

The second in Kiarostami’s ‘Koker trilogy’, after Where is the Friend’s Home (which will come up later – possibly in the bottom ten of the year, but almost certainly higher than this), this stands firmly in the Iranian school of meta-filmmaking. The basic plot summary is that, after having made Where is the Friend’s Home in a rural area of Iran called Koker five years previously, an earthquake hits the town and the earlier film’s director (portrayed by an actor, it’s not documentary-style) visits the town to try and find out if the novice actors he used are OK or affected by it. This also has a very meditative and reflective quality to it, as one would expect from Kiarostami, as the ‘director’ meets and converses with various people along the way about how they’re coping with life and discovering what values people hold as important. The film doesn’t conform to any of the more conventional narrative themes from such a story, as its interest is more in posing questions than answering them, but it does so admirably. It left me quite deeply contemplative about the society depicted, and what is really worth valuing in life.

55) The Big Heat (1953, Fritz Lang)

The funny thing about film noir is that sometimes the most easy examples to watch and enjoy are those where the sense of danger is lessened. Maybe it’s just the more wise-cracking the detective, the more likeable, or the less high the stakes, the more enjoyable is the game. The Big Heat strikes me as a very gritty example of the genre, where the detective starts out talking tough, but gets broken down in many ways by the perilous circumstances in which he finds himself. As a result, this is certainly less of a joyride than encountering The Maltese Falcon for the first time, for example, but it’s well-plotted action, and with one or two obvious heavy-handed exceptions, a really good moody piece.

54) The Killer (Dip Huet Seung Hung, 1989, John Woo)

Probably John Woo’s most famous film and certainly now my favourite of his (I’ve seen two (three) and you’ve already read me discussing the other(s)). This is Hong Kong action filmmaking at its best, really. Following a similarly noir story to the above, we follow the misadventures of Chow Yun-Fat’s assassin as he plots one final job. I’m sure it’s a pretty archetypical character, but there’s (antecedent) shades of Clint Eastwood’s Bill Munny in this: the apparently remorseless killer who has an inexplicably protective instinct for innocent people. However, Woo doesn’t have Clint Eastwood’s knack for moral ambivalence, so the two sides of the character are both presented in narratively schizophrenic ways: oh, he’s violent and ruthless; oh, now he’s rescuing a baby. The relationship between him and Inspector Dumbo, though, is enjoyable, and while the film’s sentiment is fed to us through the emotional equivalent of a beer bong, it’s all part and parcel of the 80s Hong Kong action vibe.

53) To Have and Have Not (1944, Howard Hawks)

Howard Hawks was another director whose filmography I tried to catch up with, despite the fact he strikes me very much as a studio man of the golden era rather than someone with a distinctive style of his own. To Have and Have Not does have a similar sort of vibe to another of his works, The Big Sleep, owing mainly to the fact that it’s got practically the same entire cast. Yes, well spotted, it actually only shares two actors in common, but when those two actors are Bogart and Bacall, there will inevitably be ‘chemical’ cross-contamination, if you know what I mean. Anyway, all that said I had a goodly amount of fun with this film: there’s a decent amount of suspense with a subtle political undercurrent played out largely through the tension between Bogart and the French authorities. Walter Brennan seems oddly out of place here, but there is obviously a strong on-screen relationship between the two leads, and that’s really at the heart of this film.

52) Searching for Sugar Man (2012, Malik Bendjelloul)

I was definitely set up for a disappointment for this film, having been told by everyone, living or dead, and many not yet born, that this was the greatest conceivable movie. In the end it didn’t disappoint me, even in spite of the fact that I went in having already read a couple of pieces that debunk a lot of its mythology. The fact is this isn’t traditional documentary filmmaking at all, but very much part of the new wave of documentary style films more or less covering real events. The fact is that however much spin and creative licence were taken with the story of unearthing ‘Rodriguez’ doesn’t bother me at all. It helps, of course, that the subject matter is not controversial, and the fallout from the making of this film would never hurt anybody, but notwithstanding it doesn’t matter a whit whatever this lacks in veracity. It’s really just classic storytelling.

51) 12 Years a Slave (2013, Steve McQueen)

I’m writing this the day this film just picked up the Golden Globe for best motion picture – drama, so I feel immediately on the defensive that this film has fallen outside my top 50. To be honest I can really only put it down to maybe a bit of a difficult 50/50 decision when sorting these films that went the other way, but moreover I’d put it down to personal resonance. While I appreciate McQueen’s scintillating eye for drama, and his clinical restraint in portraying such dark subject matter, I still didn’t manage to get as emotionally tied up as I would expect. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o deliver towering performances (from what I’ve seen so far of the competition, they both deserve an Oscar, not just Nyong’o) and there’s outstanding support all the way down the line – yes, even from Brad Pitt, Adam from Filmspotting – but the film didn’t really get me in the feels until the redemption at the end (that’s not a spoiler, I mean the guy clearly wrote his own memoir somehow). At least, not in a cathartic way.

50) Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959, Alain Resnais)

Resnais was another filmmaker whom I was kind of stalled trying to discover due to scarce availability (legitimately or otherwise). This and one other of his films was all I managed to see, although they are certainly a good start. This film carries a fair amount of emotional baggage, both as a bittersweet love story and as a sort of post-mortem dissection of Japan after the war, and it was nice, following last year’s Amour, to catch Emmanuelle Riva in an earlier, younger role. Overall the film had an oddly detached quality to it, which worked to its artistic credit, but made me feel strangely conflicted by the end. I shouldn’t expect too much of course, but as with the previous film, the emotional wallop is there to be delivered and I felt like it either missed me, or I somehow dodged it in watching.

49) Au Revoir les Enfants (1987, Louis Malle)

Wrapping up my Louis Malle retrospective, this is most certainly the most ‘complete’ film of his I watched this year. To be honest, the only real problem I had with this is that it has a very samey, generic “French cinema” feel to it, but it’s good storytelling, and has some beautifully shot sequences. I’m not quite sure yet what I make of Malle as a director, but I can say this is his most visually appealing film, and probably the one I emotionally connected with best. It’s no mean feat to make a film that feels so genuine and heartfelt with a cast of such young actors, but this film manages to pull it off.

48) The Mirror (Ayneh, 1997, Jafar Panahi)

A film that Adam from Filmspotting pimped the hell out of during their contemporary Iranian cinema marathon, it shot right to the top of my to-watch list. And I wasn’t disappointed. Again in the school of Iranian meta-filmmaking, this has a very similar vibe to the other Panahi film I’ve seen, Offside, in that you’re never really sure if you’re watching a fictional narrative unfold or some kind of pseudo-documentary. Regardless of the veracity, this is another really fascinating snapshot of urban Iranian society and culture, typifying norms and values as it follows a little girl’s journey home from school. The girl’s voice is undoubtedly irritating in its screechy register, but the story she leads us on is interesting enough to cut through.

47) The Life of Oharu (Saikaku Ichidai Onna, 1952, Kenji Mizoguchi)

Another in the Mizoguchi catalogue, this one, surprisingly, doesn’t have anything, at all, to do with prostitutes! Except that the lead character is a prostitute, and the story is exclusively about her long career as a prostitute. This one doesn’t venture into the preachy territory that I reacted against in some of Mizoguchi’s other films, but rather focuses on the heartfelt story of the ageing Oharo: themes of family honour, regret and the class divide are dredged up and explored, but without proselytising. Kinuyo Tanaka, who appears in many of Mizoguchi’s films, delivers a subtle but brutally honest performance as Oharu, and the film is worth watching for that alone.

46) Django Unchained (2012, Quentin Tarantino)

Wow, this is embarrassing. Only several films after I’m in defensive mode over 12 Years a Slave and suddenly this quandary. I am pretty sure when doing my sort on these films, I was never offered the choice between 12 Years a Slave and this, because the former would most certainly have come out on top. I can only say some other film became a pivot point where ‘enjoyment’ of this worked in its favour. As well as Django Unchained falls into Tarantino’s new genre of ‘righteous historical revenge fantasy’, there’s also a certain moral corruptness in the ‘good guys vs bad guys’ black-and-white approach he takes here. What makes 12 Years a Slave a far more worthy film is the way it portrays slavery as a subtle evil by focusing light on the people who just sat and watched and let it all happen. Obviously Django is a fun film, full of memorable characters, quotable dialogue and satisfying vengeance sequences, but the fact is its particular spot on this list I’m marking down as a statistical anomaly.

45) Captain Phillips (2013, Paul Greengrass)

Another statistical anomaly, I hear you asking? Actually, no. I thoroughly enjoyed this real-time drama from the master of this non-genre. The funny thing was, about twenty minutes into this film, it struck me that it had a vaguely familiar air, and that was when I realised that the atmosphere was very similar to United 93. For some reason I’d had in my head that the latter was directed by Michael Winterbottom, but it made sense instead that Greengrass was applying that real-time horror aesthetic to this retelling of the 2009 capturing of an American freight ship by Somali pirates. The atmosphere is wonderfully chilling, and the performance by the unknown Barkhad Abdi is profoundly impassioned. The other big, pleasant surprise though, was the subdued but captivating performance by Tom Hanks as the eponymous lead. It’s fair to go into this film expecting one of Hanks’ trademark scenery-chewing Oscar pitches, but there’s a commanding honesty and gravitas to his Captain Phillips that forms the heart and soul of a tense and gripping film.

44) Up in the Air (2009, Jason Reitman)

Another pleasant surprise, this, and with Sleepwalk with Me another candidate for worst possible film to watch on a sleep-deprived flight. This was the only one of ten Best Picture nominations I managed to avoid in 2009 (feeling safe that it wouldn’t win anything), and even against my better judgement, felt it was worth catching up with. What really surprised me is what an emotional core this film had. I’d gone in expecting some of Reitman’s typical quirky, cynical comedy – and there is that; I mean ‘quirky, cynical comedy’ is basically a three-word description of George Clooney’s acting style – but it also packs a surprising emotional sting. The most crucial scene (without spoiling too much) is also a thoroughly thought-provoking one, simply because it’s a scene we’ve seen a hundred times before, but with the traditional gender roles reversed. Somehow that subversion makes it not only surprising but also largely affecting. I found it fascinating because it also asked questions about my own preconceptions and prejudices. It’s a respectable film that can do all of that.

43) An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no Aji, 1962, Yasujiro Ozu)

In spite of my ambition to catch up with more Ozu this year, he really is a difficult filmmaker to get your hands on without, you know, the radical step of actually buying DVDs. This one I did watch in bought-DVD form, and it brought me to many of the same places that his masterpiece Tokyo Montagatari did last year. The two films are similarly meditative, and both have a deep interest in ageing and the duties that a family should perform for each other. While this doesn’t have quite the profound philosophical bent that Tokyo does, there are many moments that were quite touching, as well as lots of moments of humour (generally drunken humour). Ozu definitely strikes me as a director with a distinctive style and eye, and I look forward to agglomerating more knowledge of his singular body of work in the future.

42) Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s Kino-Apparatom, 1929, Dziga Vertov)

So last year, about here in my rankings, was a film called Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, which was basically just a silent documentary of a day in the life of Berlin. Man with a Movie Camera, I think regarded by many as one of the first documentaries (although Berlin was earlier, go figure), is basically the same premise in the Soviet Union (Mostly Moscow, although apparently also Kiev and Odessa). This is slightly less straightforward fly-on-the-wall filming though, and progresses in a far more narrative style. There’s almost a gonzo feel to some of the sequences as we see Vertov with his movie camera become part of the scene. Basically it’s an absurdly simple premise, but while such a simple premise can form the basis of a fascinating historical document, it can also lead to a remarkably entertaining 60 minutes as well.

41) Like Stars on Earth (Taare Zameen Par, 2007, Aamir Khan)

Another sort of recommendation from Jez, but also one I just happened to acquire from my local library, this is part of what I see (and, in case you haven’t cottoned on yet, I know nothing) as a modern Bollywood trend of telling dramatic, topical stories in Bollywood style, rather than pulling from the more tried and true well of folklore and fairytales. What you get as a result isn’t nearly as colourful or entertaining as your typical Bollywood film (there is only one really upbeat song and dance number here) but rather an oddly sombre musical piece. The very quixotic tale Khan tells (and stars in) here revolves around the message that children with learning difficulties need to be treated with equal patience and care as their more able compadres. The message is somewhat preachy, but it’s easy to forgive it for two reasons: firstly, the inherent camp quality of Bollywood filmmaking allows for a certain leniency; but secondly and more importantly, it strikes me that such things as learning difficulties are more likely to be treated as a greater stigma in developing economies like India, so films like this are probably important in informing the communal consciousness. Along with all of that, I do enjoy a bit of Bollywood.