1 of 11
Andrew Wyatt. Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
2 of 11
3 of 11
4 of 11
5 of 11
6 of 11
7 of 11
8 of 11
9 of 11
10 of 11
11 of 11
It’s been a rough year for cinema here in the Heartland. The multiplex has been cluttered with smash-bang mediocrities and outright boondoggles, while the arthouse scene has been decidedly anemic. St. Louis is still waiting forlornly for many of the feature films that are setting critics abuzz elsewhere, such as At Berkeley, Bastards, Drug War, Room 237, Upstream Color, Viola, and The We and the I. However, while cinema as a whole may have been dispiriting in 2013, the standout films were positively electric. This year renowned filmmakers produced some of their finest features to date, and spectacular efforts emerged from indie obscurity and distant shores. The gap between great films and the also-rans has become more conspicuous in 2013, which only reinforces the need for St. Louis filmgoers to be dauntless and discriminating in their search for the diamonds in the rough.
For the purposes of this list, a film qualifies as a “Film of 2013” if it could be viewed theatrically in St. Louis between January 1 and December 31, 2013. Festival screenings and other limited engagements are included, so long as they were open to the public.
10. The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance; USA)
Just when the male-centric preoccupations of auteurist crime thrillers are wearing out their welcome, Derek Cianfrance’s mesmerizing and impassioned The Place Beyond the Pines gives such thematic concerns a vigorous second life. While the film’s riveting chase scenes and stellar performances are crucial to its achievements, Pines most enduring feature is the absolute sincerity of its engagement with the thorniest of questions about family, violence, and forgiveness.
9. Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler; USA)
Ryan Coogler’s aching wallop of a film approaches Oscar Grant III’s 2009 murder by humanizing the man’s last day with waves of prosaic detail. The result is not merely a righteous broadside against racist police brutality, but a masterful rendering of an American existence in all its complexity. Fruitvale Station deftly conveys the knotty contradictions that characterize modern life, and then shreds that portrait in one heartbreaking moment, leaving the viewer shattered and numb.
8. Only the Young (Elizabeth Mims and Jason Tippet; USA)
When Elizabeth Mims and Jason Tippet turn their cameras on handful of Christian teenagers in a California desert town, wondrous things happens. The filmmakers quietly observe as a diverse array of troubled, earnest kids—skaters and musicians, freaks and outlaws—wrestle with the universal travails of adolescent life. What emerges is a virtuosic work of folk sociology, and also a dreamy, visually stunning evocation of youth’s keenly felt miseries and joys.
7. To the Wonder (Terrence Malick; USA)
Terrence Malick’s contemplative, lyrical brand of filmmaking finds its most fitting expression to date in To the Wonder, a swooning cinematic reverie on the blossoming and withering of love. Within the film lies a tale of romance, resentment, and betrayal, but it is raw sensation and emotion, not narrative, that reign supreme in Malick’s world. Like a shoebox full of long-forgotten love letters and snapshots, To the Wonder is an enticing and bittersweet discovery.
6. Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche; France)
Abdellatif Kechiche’s sumptuous film is a devastating epic of the heart. Its depiction of love’s remorseless arc—from the first glance across a busy street to the last, sob-choked walk home—is emotionally brutalizing and yet irresistible. Anchored by two ferocious performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, Blue Is the Warmest Color explores matters of gender, sex, and class, but it is first and foremost a peerless breakup film, a Wuthering Heights for the twenty-first century.
5. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, and Anonymous; Denmark / UK / Norway)
Gut-wrenching and wholly surreal, The Act of Killing performs a disquieting alchemy, transmuting the statistics of genocide back into the tragedy of murder. The filmmakers achieve this through the unthinkable: urging the perpetrators of the 1960s Indonesian anti-Communist purges to reenact their evil deeds for the camera. Dense with moments both ghastly and bewildering, Killing presses at the bounds of cinema and journalism, revealing itself as the indisputable documentary film of the year.
4. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami; France / Japan)
Like his masterpiece Certified Copy, Abbas Kiarostami’s latest film is deliriously difficult to categorize or describe. Like Someone in Love looks on attentively as a handful of lost souls in Tokyo fumble and collide through their frustrated lives. Kiarostami serves up not only an enigmatic and formally masterful exploration of modern disconnection and longing, but also the most unexpectedly potent and desolate scene of 2013: a woman riding in a taxi and listening to her voicemail.
3. Beyond the Hills (Christian Mungui; Romania)
What begins as a naturalistic character drama set in a remote Romanian convent eventually reveals itself as a sickening plunge into a demon-haunted realm of superstition and good intentions gone rotten. By inverting the formulae of the modern horror film, Christian Mungui crafts a superb, caustic criticism of religious terror and patriarchal control. Stark, original, and transfixing, Beyond the Hills provides a chilling glimpse of a devil for the secular age.
2. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen; USA / UK)
Director Steve McQueen lends his astonishing cinematic talents to a long-overdue species of historical drama: a realistic depiction of the black American slave experience, treated with all the unblinking horror that the subject warrants. What makes 12 Years a Slave so indelible and disturbing, however, is not merely the grotesqueries of cracking bullwhips and midnight violations. It is also McQueen’s preternatural facility for conveying the subtleties of sensation, feeling, and power that characterize Solomon Northrup’s decade-plus exile in hell. Just as crucial is Chiwetel Ejiofor’s landmark portrayal of Northrup, which teases forth innumerable colliding and overpowering emotions.
1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan and Joel Coen; USA)
For one bitterly cold winter week in 1961 New York, frayed and faltering folk singer Llewyn Davis trudges round and round in an infinity loop of failure, bouncing from one couch to the next and consistently making exactly the wrong decisions. The Coens are the chroniclers-in-chief for the absurd miseries of life, and Llewyn—portrayed by Oscar Isaac with phenomenal wit and intricacy—is their latest misfortunate-attracting schlimazel. The Coens have trod this path before, so what makes Inside Llewyn Davis the best film of 2013? Never before have the Brothers taken us so completely inside the experiences of an individual without plans or hopes for tomorrow. Never has one of their hapless protagonists been so perfectly balanced at the intersection of guilt, sorrow, loathing, and snarky self-righteousness. In Davis, the Coens have crafted a vessel for the viewer’s own stymied ambitions, lurking doubts, and gnawing regrets. Inside Llewyn Davis might be the most thoroughly human film the Brothers have ever crafted, a work that speaks to universal agonies and indignities. And naturally, the Coen deliver this marvel wrapped in knockout visuals, an infectious soundtrack, and a plethora of memorable performances both outlandish and poignant.
The Next Best
11. Michael Kohlhaas
12. Mud
13. Pavilion
14. The Kill Team
15. The World’s End
16. Blackfish
17. Gravity
18. Nebraska
19. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
20. Side Effects
Honorable Mentions: 7 Boxes, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, All Roads Lead, The Bling Ring, Carrie, Frances Ha, The Grandmaster, In a World..., La Pirogue, Maniac, Short Term 12, Sign Painters, Stoker, The Summit, The Wolf of Wall Street
Overrated, Slightly or Highly: American Hustle, The Conjuring, Dallas Buyers Club, Not Fade Away, Pacific Rim, Spring Breakers, Stories We Tell, Zero Dark Thirty
Underrated: Insidious: Chapter 2, John Dies at the End, Man of Steel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Not Underrated Enough: Oz the Great and Powerful
Notable Films I Missed: All Is Lost, Amour, Before Midnight, A Highjacking, From Up on Poppy Hill, Kon-Tiki, The Gatekeepers, Leviathan, No, Nostalgia For the Light
