Each year there are so many great movie moments worth cherishing and recommending. This year got fairly ridiculous in how many media outlets had to make extensive lists for even the most minuscule things. I don’t have the time, patience or resources to write so many year-end lists, but it remains fun to make them. You can read my Best Movies of the Year list here; many included there can be found here.
Top 15 Scenes
- Solomon Northup dangles from a noose struggling to keep his toes on the ground as other slaves go about their day in the background of an agonizingly long wide shot
- Jesse and a half naked Celine argue in a Greek hotel room
- Richie DiMasso and Edith Greensley dance in a club and agree in a bathroom stall to “No more fake shit” while a drunk Rosalyn predicts the exact moment when her husband Irving will say “We need to talk business”
- The Weston family dinner table scene
- The opening shot of “Gravity”
- Captain Phillips can barely function as he’s just been rescued and Navy doctors tend to him
- Theodore and his operating system Samantha have sex for the first time
- Llewyn Davis auditions with a solo of “The Death of Queen Jane” before a producer coldly says to him “I don’t see any money here”
- David and Ross Grant steal a compressor from a barn that turns out not to be their father’s
- Detective Loki isn’t sure if he hears a faint whistle coming from somewhere
- India and her uncle Charlie play a duet on piano complete with tension and forbidden sexual sensations
- Audrina Patridge’s completely bright and see-through Hollywood home is robbed as seen from a single shot far off in the distance
- Sutter has a fight with Aimee and kicks her out of his car
- James Franco and Danny McBride argue about where they can and can’t masturbate
- Kris is drugged and hypnotized by an unseen assailant with “a deformity in which his face is made by the same material as the sun”
Top 10 Lead Actors
- Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup in “12 Years a Slave”
- Robert Redford as “Our Man” in “All is Lost”
- Ethan Hawke as Jesse in “Before Midnight”
- Tom Hanks as Richard Phillips in “Captain Phillips”
- Matthew McConaughey as Ron Wooddruff in “Dallas Buyers Club”
- Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombley in “Her”
- Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis in “Inside Llewyn Davis”
- Bruce Dern as Woody Grant in “Nebraska”
- Mads Mikkelsen as Lucas in “The Hunt”
- Simon Pegg as Gary King in “The World’s End”
Top 10 Lead Actresses
- Amy Adams as Sydney Prosser and Lady Edith Greensley in “American Hustle”
- Meryl Streep as Violet Weston in “August: Osage County”
- Julie Delpy as Celine in “Before Midnight”
- Adele Exarchopoulous as Adele in “Blue is the Warmest Color”
- Cate Blanchett as Jasmine in “Blue Jasmine”
- Julia Louis Dreyfus as Eva in “Enough Said”
- Greta Gerwig as Frances Halloway in “Frances Ha”
- Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone in “Gravity”
- Scarlett Johansson as Samantha in “Her”
- Shailene Woodley as Aimee Finnicky in “The Spectacular Now”
Top 10 Supporting Actors
- Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps in “12 Years a Slave”
- Bradley Cooper as Richie DiMasso in “American Hustle”
- Jeremy Renner as Mayor Carmine Polito in “American Hustle”
- Andrew Dice Clay as Augie in “Blue Jasmine”
- Barkhad Abdi as Muse in “Captain Phillips”
- Jared Leto as Rayon in “Dallas Buyers Club”
- James Gandolfini as Albert in “Enough Said”
- Matthew McConaughey as Mud in “Mud”
- Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki in “Prisoners”
- James Franco as Alien in “Spring Breakers”
Top 10 Supporting Actresses
- Lupita Nyong’o as Patsy in “12 Years a Slave”
- Sarah Paulson as Mistress Epps in “12 Years a Slave”
- Jennifer Lawrence as Rosalyn in “American Hustle”
- Julia Roberts as Barbara Weston in “August: Osage County”
- Lea Seydoux as Emma in “Blue is the Warmest Color”
- Sally Hawkins as Ginger in “Blue Jasmine”
- Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”
- June Squibb as Kate Grant in “Nebraska”
- Melissa Leo as Holly Jones in “Prisoners”
- Emma Watson as Nicki in “The Bling Ring”
Best Ineligible Movies of the Year
These are the films that were either released this year but I saw at a film festival last year, or movies I saw at a film festival this year that won’t be released until next year, if at all. In an appropriate calendar year, they could quite possibly crack my list.
As experimental and visually groundbreaking as “Gravity” but even more minimalistic, this surreal “documentary” turns the fishing industry into an otherworldly hellscape with little more than a couple of miniature GoPro cameras.
Something in the Air
A colorful, thoughtful and youthful period piece, Olivier Assayas explores teenagers and nostalgic ‘60s history and politics with a feather touch.
Like Father, Like Son
This heartbreaking yet tender story tells of a mother and father forced to choose after learning their son was swapped at birth with another boy. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film could be depressing in so many ways but finds the perfect, achingly beautiful middle.
“Le Week-end” resembles what Jesse and Celine might look like 20 years from now. Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent are charming and hilarious in this intellectual and romantic romp around Paris.
Equally surreal and deadpan funny, this picturesque Romanian comedy captures just the right note of family banter and at-home life with a comically sadistic twist.
Celeb Crushes of 2013
- Emma Watson as an axe wielding survivor not about to get raped by Jay Baruchel in “This is the End” and as a skanky valley girl who flashes just the right amount of cleavage to the hot delivery guy in “The Bling Ring.”
- Shailene Woodley as the cutest and nicest girl you never noticed in high school in “The Spectacular Now.”
- Jennifer Lawrence as a real life movie star who is honest and cool enough to ask for, wear and complain about the smell of a giant pink comforter on Letterman and then go on “Daily Show” a day later and talk about Jon Stewart’s nipples. Also as a housewife who loves “Live and Let Die” in “American Hustle.”
- Olivia Wilde as a Chicago hipster who works at Revolution Brewing, loves Foxygen and has an adorable way of saying, “Aww, thanks Mom, thanks Dad,” in “Drinking Buddies.”
- Amy Adams as a vixen with a fake British accent in “American Hustle” and a video game designer and amateur filmmaker with frumpy clothes and curly hair in “Her.”
Best Film Scores
- Shane Carruth – “Upstream Color”
- Alex Ebert – “All is Lost”
- Steven Price – “Gravity”
- Skrillex and Cliff Martinez – “Spring Breakers”
- Arcade Fire – “Her”
Best Cinematography
- Emmanuel Lubezki – “Gravity”
- Sean Bobbitt – “12 Years a Slave”
- Linus Sandgren – “American Hustle”
- Hoyte van Hoytema – “Her”
- Bruno Delbonnel – Inside Llewyn Davis
- Phedon Papamichael – “Nebraska”
- Roger Deakins – “Prisoners”
- Benoit Debie – Spring Breakers
- Phillipe Le Sourd – The Grandmaster
- Shane Carruth – Upstream Color
Movie Song most hummed/whistled in 2013 – “Please Mr. Kennedy” (Runner Up: “Young and Beautiful”)
Most Overrated: Computer Chess
Most Underrated: August: Osage County
Most Disappointing: Elysium
Most Surprising: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Best Book Based on a Movie I’m in the process of reading: “12 Years a Slave”
Most Prolific Person Award: James Franco (Runner Up: Benedict Cumberbatch)
Coolest Person Award: Jennifer Lawrence (Runner Up: None)
Best Movies of 2013 I haven’t seen yet:
- The Act of Killing
- Short Term 12
- Berberian Sound Studio
- Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
- The Past
- Wadjda
- A Touch of Sin
- At Berkeley
- The Great Beauty
- Bastards
- The Wind Rises
- Blue Caprice
- Saving Mr. Banks
- Cutie and the Boxer
- Hannah Arendt
Worst Movies of the Year
I still have the luxury of avoiding bad movies, and the ones that are bad are never as bad as they could be. Last year I split my list into “The Worst Interesting Films” and “The Worst Uninteresting Films,” but I’d imagine those dividing lines are pretty clear on this list.
Only God Forgives – It’s stylish, but lifeless, forcing us to sit through obscene brutality but expecting us to feel nothing.
Evil Dead – As stupid as the original but trading in the original’s classically low-fi, campy charm for disgusting gore and splatter.
Man of Steel – The ugliest, most depressing superhero movie ever made, operating in apocalyptic imagery and cataclysm in exchange for levity or melodrama.
The Counselor – A talky, existential mess masquerading as a surreal thriller.
Jobs – A list of Apple’s greatest hits in awe of its founder but with nothing to say about the world he changed.
42 – A biopic that turns its hero into a mute, whitewashed, unfailing legend who merely played baseball while the world changed around him.
Last Vegas – An awful waste of talent and too tame to be even remotely memorable.
The Missing Picture – Powerfully emotional and inventively made, but quite literally a series of horrific set pieces.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – As padded and as boring as the first. It is so overly plotted, it lacks a purpose or set of values to accompany it.
Somebody Up There Likes Me – A comedy that reaches for Wes Anderson deadpan but comes across smug, ugly and horribly insincere.