GREG KLYMKIW's 10 BEST FILMS of 2013 (in alphabetical order)
Dir. Alan Zweig
Inspired by Ray Robertson's book, Zweig chose to document real stories based upon the 15 chapter headings - Love, Solitude, Critical Mind, Art, Individuality, Home, Work, Humour, Friendship, Intoxication, Praise, Meaning, Body, Duty and Death. The film brings binds everything that makes Zweig's work so special; all the compassion, humour and humanity that one's heart could desire within a cohesive package celebrating life itself.
. . . a double dose o' Zweig TIE
Dir. Alan Zweig
Zweig interviews a raft of Jewish comics about Jewishness and its relation to humour. The real journey Zweig takes is the most profoundly moving element of the film - those things that shaped us in our youth that haunt us still - fleeting, flickering ghosts that dissipate, save for our memory and spirit. If anything, we’re all God's children and share in Zweig's desire to hold onto the past for dear life through the special eyes of His chosen people.
Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer
Co-Dir. Christine Cynn & Anonymous
This is an iron-clad guarantee. You have not seen, nor will you ever see a movie like this one. Never. Ever. Focusing upon several notorious members of a death squad who committed unspeakable acts of torture and murder almost fifty years ago are given the opportunity to recreate their killings on film in any way, they so desire.
Dir. Ziad Doueiri
Starring: Ali Suliman, Reymonde Amsellem
The incendiary backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict yields a romantic, intense and profoundly moving love story that leads its central character to an inevitable truth - one that faced Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris during the immortal confession: "Even if a husband lives 200 fucking years, he'll never discover his wife's true nature." The Attack exposes the futility of war, the joy and heartbreak of love and the notion of nationhood and its link to personal identity within the context of assimilation. It's an important work that exposes a world that pays mere lip-service to individuality and in reality requires total acquiescence, full submission to the Status Quo.
Dir. James Franco
Starring: Scott Haze, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Parrack
Based upon Cormac McCarthy's terrific novel of Southern Gothic, director James Franco triumphantly handles the weirdly moving, but ultimately horrifying and shocking picture with verve and style. He elicits a wide range of great performances (especially Scott Haze's genuinely affecting and often downright bravely brilliant work) and Franco's actual coverage and composition of the dramatic action feels like the achievement of someone who's been directing movies his whole career. The movie is grotesque, at times sickening, but rooted in genuine humanity and it's this, if anything, that will earn the movie immortality.
Dir. Sébastien Pilote
Starring: Gabriel Arcand, Sophie Desmarais
Sébastien Pilote's second feature knocked me on my ass. Starring the legendary Gabriel Arcand as a Quebec sheep farmer forced to dismantle his whole life's work, this stunning film from the young auteur is painstaking in its detail. Infused with King-Lear-like tragedy, Pilote demonstrates world-wise maturity in his handling of this life-affirming and deeply elegiac tribute to old age and old ways forced to make way for the new. I defy any audience member to not be moved to tears by this film - especially during its similarity to the kicks to the gut one expects and gets from Italian neo-realism. We're not only winded, but eventually elated. It's about death, alright, but infused with a deeply truthful sense of regeneration.
. . . tied with this other devastating drama
Dir. Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Ariana Neal
A young man begins to fulfill his potential as a life partner to the woman he loves, a father to his sprightly daughter and a son worthy of his Mother's unconditional love. The film is essentially, a feature length depiction of a turning point in the life its central character. Director Coogler doesn't pull any punches and there isn't a second of this movie that feels false, forced or contrived. If, by picture's end, you aren't quaking in your seat, wracked with shock and sobs, I feel sorry for you.
Dir. Paolo Sorrentino - Starring: Toni Servillo
The picture opens with a bang! A cannon explodes in our faces - its force signals the beginning of the greatest party sequence - bar none - in movie history. Not a single screen revelry comes close. The first few minutes of this movie throbs with the most gorgeous, dazzling, opulent images of triumphant excess ever to strut and swagger before our eyes. This polychromatic orgy of beautiful people and their devil-may-care debauchery is the kind of sordid, celebratory saturnalia that the movies seem to have been invented for.
. . . tied with another stylish art picture
Dir. The Coen Bros.
Starring: Oscar Davis
Desperately hoping to hit it big, a broke, down-on-his-luck, couch-surfing Greenwich Village folk singer during the early 60s embarks upon a very strange and telling odyssey to Chicago. He also loses a cat. I can't get Inside Llewyn Davis out of my head. It has individual moments of greatness and one extended sequence in the middle of the film that is as great as anything the Brothers have set to celluloid. I suspect this is a great film and I can hardly wait to see it again. And again. And yet, again.
Dir. Christoffer Boe
Starring: Nicolas Bro, Pilou Asbæk
Fear and Loathing in Denmark is certainly one way to pitch Christoffer Boe's perverse, manic, absurdly hilarious and sometimes dangerous (but absolutely gratifying) belly flop into this fact-based tale charting a 20-year-long unlikely friendship that began during Copenhagen's swinging 60s. Ripped from Danish headlines, the movie turns out to be a worthy fantasia of the strangest corporate dynasty in Denmark's history. There are moments in the film so gloriously absurd, so sex-drenched, booze flooded and drug charged that one can do little more than soar along with a movie that dazzles us with stylistic flourishes, compelling storytelling and characters as engaging as they are reprehensible.
. . . tied with another stylish sicko picture
Dir. Harmony Korine
Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane
Violence permeates every frame of Harmony (Gummo) Korine's savagely beautiful Spring Breakers and the overall effect of his film places us in an almost hypnotic state where sex, celebration, friendship and love - the very foundations of humanity - give way to acts of barbarism. The Bottom Line? Babes in Bikinis. Babes with Guns. Babes with James Franco. What's not to like?
Dir. Lukas Moodysson
Starring: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
Three very special little girls on the cusp of puberty are surrounded by conformist girlie-girls and immature boys toying with societal expectations of machismo. Two of the young ladies are self-described punk rockers, while a third comes from a goody-two-shoes ultra-Christian background. Joyfully the trio find each other in an otherwise antiseptic Sweden where most of their peers, teachers and family are still clinging to outmoded values, Our pre-teen rebels form a punk band which results in a happy hell breaking loose.
Dir. Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Alexie Gilmore, Bryce Johnson
It's Official, Bobcat Goldthwait is one of America's Best Living Directors. His new film is as hilariously brilliant as it is crap-your-pants terrifying. This Bigfoot-comes-a-callin' picture is a corker! It forces you to emit cascades of urine from laughing so hard and then wrenches wads of steaming excrement out of your bowels as it scares you completely out of your wits.
Dir. Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill
Based upon the life of Jason Belfort, one of the biggest scumbags in America, Martin Scorsese delivers a propulsion-charged white-collar-crime epic spanning the early days of this petty middle-class totem-pole-low Wall Street stockbroker, his rise to the top as one of the richest men in high finance and eventual crash to common criminal and FBI rat. The movie Scorsese gives us is as fun, funny and sexy as its leading character. We're as seduced and delighted by Belfort's greed as we might be with the fortitude of any great movie hero. In fact, we often forget while watching the movie, that Belfort is little more than a bottom feeder.
RUNNERS-UP TO GREG KLYMKIW's BEST FILMS OF 2013
(in alphabetical order)
DOCUMENTARY runners-up
AKA Doc Pompus
Blackfish
Continental
The Devil's Lair
The Ghosts in Our Machine
Griot
Informant
Interior: Leather Bar
Jingle Bell Rocks
The Last Pogo Jumps Again
The Manor
Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth
Oil Sands Karaoke
Special Ed
The Unknown Known
Valentine Road
Who is Dayani Cristal?
DRAMA runners-up
Behind The Candelabra
Blackbird
Border
The Canyons
Computer Chess
Concrete Night
Europa Report
Ilo Ilo
The Lone Ranger
Machete Kills
Man of Steel
Pain and Gain
Paradise: Faith
Prince Avalanche
This is the End
Thursday Till Sunday
White House Down
BEST FILM (Drama) of 2013: Child of God
BEST FILM (Doc) of 2013: The Act of Killing
BEST HORROR FILM of 2013: Willow Creek
BEST SCIENCE FICTION FILM of 2013: Europa Report
BEST ACTION FILM of 2013: The Lone Ranger
BEST COMEDY FILM of 2013: This is the End
BEST SHORT FILM of 2013: Portrait as a Random Act of Violence
BEST DIRECTOR (Drama) of 2013: James Franco - Child of God
BEST DIRECTOR (Doc) of 2013: Alan Zweig - 15 Reasons To Live & When Jews Were Funny
BEST ACTOR of 2013: Michael Douglas - Behind The Candelabra
BEST ACTRESS of 2013: Mira Barkhammar - We Are The Best
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR of 2013: James Franco - Spring Breakers
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS of 2013: Reymonde Ansellem - The Attack
BEST ENSEMBLE CAST of 2013: Computer Chess
BEST SCREENPLAY of 2013 (Original): Sébastien Pilote - Le démantèlement
BEST SCREENPLAY of 2013 (Adaptation): Ziad Doueiri, Joelle Touma - The Attack
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (Drama) of 2013: Michel La Veaux - Le démantèlement
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (Doc) of 2013: Anonymous, Carlos Arango De Montis, Lars Skree
BEST EDITING (Drama) of 2013: Cristiano Travaglioli - The Great Beauty
BEST EDITING (Doc) of 2013: Randy Zimmer - When Jews Were Funny
BEST MUSICAL SCORE (Drama) of 2013: Éric Neveux - The Attack
BEST MUSICAL SCORE (Doc) of 2013: Michael Zweig - When Jews Were Funny
BEST OVERALL SOUND (Drama) of 2013: The Lone Ranger
BEST OVERALL SOUND (Doc) of 2013: The Act of Killing
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN of 2013: Pentti Valkeasuo - Concrete Night
BEST COSTUME DESIGN of 2013: Penny Rose - The Lone Ranger
BEST VISUAL and SPECIAL MAKEUP EFFECTS of 2013: Septic Man
(in alphabetical order)
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*NOTE* My lowest rating for a motion picture is 1 PUBIC HAIR. A movie must truly earn the right to such a hallowed position. Normally, a film like THE COUNSELLOR would deserve the lowest rating I can bestow, but if I did that, I fear I would be causing injury to a motion picture like SHARKNADO (which did, in fact, earn my previous lowest rating of 1 PUBIC HAIR). I am therefore compelled to create a NEW rating lower than 1 PUBIC HAIR. So, for Sir Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy's aborted fetus pretending to be a movie, I hereby announce a rating even lower. I hereby call it: TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND "HARRY'S CHAR BROIL & DINING LOUNGE". The new rating will be accompanied by the photo of the real thing: |
Dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Pérez, Rubén Blades, John Leguizamo
If you must see this movie, do not pay to see it. Its makers do not deserve a single penny. Anyone who exhibits it does not deserve a single penny. Download it illegally. Or better, see it at a multiplex with loosy-goosy ticket-taking, pay for an indie or foreign movie, go see The Counsellor (if you really must) and THEN sneak in to a good movie. Anyone who pays for this movie is a chump of the highest order and deserves a good face-sitting from someone who has not wiped or washed for weeks. Cormac McCarthy's first official screenplay yields this horrendous crime melodrama, poorly directed by Ridley Scott. The movie opens with the worst pillow talk dialogue imaginable between Michael Fassbender and Penélope Cruz while they loll about under a blanket and just before Fassbender starts to muff dive Cruz, she suggests she needs to clean her pussy and Fassbender tells her not to bother. Obviously, he'd prefer to lap up the smegma, dried-Fassbender-spunk and all other manner of the viscous fluids and Krusty Kremes churning around "down there" and while he starts Hoovering it all up twixt her fetid thatch, Cruz has the temerity to tell him how to do it and I'm, like, not only on the verge of puking, but a tad annoyed that she'd dare be making any suggestions as to his tongue-action at all as he's graciously offered to spic n' span her sullied vaginal septic tank sans a thorough douching. It was at this point I suspected I might be in for a rough ride with this one. Not too long after, there is a sequence wherein Cameron Diaz humps the windshield of Javier Bardem's Ferrari. I rest my case.
Dir. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore,
Tony Danza, Glenne Headley, Brie Larson
Go ahead, folks. Knock yourself out if alternating between the following resembles your idea of a good time: (1.) Joseph Gordon-Leavitt with a bad haircut and smirking like some malevolent ventriloquist's dummy (think Michael Redgrave's murderous wooden pal in Cavalcanti's segment of Dead of Night) AND . . . (2.) Scarlett Johansson as a repulsively Bovine White Trash girlfriend constantly nagging and cockteasing him whilst chewing gum with her mouth open in a decidedly cud-like fashion. Half the blame rests with writer-director-star Gordon-Leavitt's screenplay, jammed with his idea of working-class Jersey-speak and the rest of the blame resides in his direction which forces most of the actors to spit and shout their lines with what he (and they) think is the stuff of life itself. It's not. It's just a lot of privileged actors pretending they know what it's like to be poor and ignorant. The whole ugly, wretched mess, of course, is what lets pundits and players congratulate the filmmaker (and by, extension, themselves) for being "smart". Smart, my ass.
Dir: Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson
Wall-to-wall action and none of it well staged. Every set piece is a patchwork quilt of badly composed shots edited machine-gun style and with no sense of geography. Especially heinous is that most of the cuts are driven by sound cues, not visual ones. Today's audiences love this style - it just left me exhausted and depressed.
Dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
In addition to his electrifying first feature Y Tu Mamá También and the overwrought, but powerful dystopian science fiction thriller Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón has the distinction of making the ONLY good Harry Potter film (The Prisoner of Azkaban). Gravity is basically a two-hander involving George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as AMERICAN space station astronauts who get bombarded by a storm of debris from a nearby satellite that's been nuked by its NON-AMERICANS because it's no longer working properly. As we all know, America NEVER does stupid things like that because AMERICA is NEVER responsible for creating ANY form of interstellar (or Earthly) polluton and once again, it is AMERICANS who are placed at risk by goddamned FOREIGNERS. The result of the incompetence of foreigners is that Bullock gets separated from her tie-cord. Luckily, Clooney rescues her. Unluckily, when he realizes that only one person can properly get into the space station and escape, he sacrifices himself and goes hurtling into space whilst Bullock - on her own - tries to kick start the escape pod. From here, it's all Bullock all the time. All that's left to enjoy are some dazzling digital effects (though The Right Stuff and 2001: A Space Odyssey have much better "specs" effects generated OPTICALLY), annoying dialogue - some of it bordering on sickening - and some nice shots of Bullock floating around in her skin-tight astronaut undies. The latter is probably, for some, worth the price of admission. I, for one, will not take away that pleasure from anyone.
Dir. Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher
Have you seen Scary Movie 5? No? Well, I can promise you a far more edifying experience than suffering through Baz Luhrmann's rectal drippings masquerading as a movie. If Luhrmann had wanted to do a greater disservice to F. Scott Fitzgerald than miserably adapting The Great Gatsby, he'd have been better off digging up Zelda Fitzgerald's corpse and penetrating her withered maggot-lubed anus, whilst having videotaping the whole unsightly affair and posting it to YouTube. This is unequivocally the most horrendous work of Luhrmann's rancid career - a canon of one smelly pinched-loaf after another (each resplendent with undigested niblets of corn). This utter abomination is so reprehensible one wishes to God there was a way to wash the sheer grime of it from one's brain.
Dir. Todd Phillips
Starring: Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianikis, Ken Jeong, John Goodman
Could anything be worse than The Hangover Part II? Yes. The Hangover Part III. Reaching a nadir I didn't think was possible after Part II, Part III opens with Zach Galifianikis killing a giraffe. If that's funny, kiddie porn is legitimate erotica, America's War On Terror is not about money and marine parks are humane. I'll go a step further. If you think this is a good movie, you're just plain stupid.
Dir. Peter Landesman
Starring: James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver
Shot in urgent annoying shaky-cam and blended with real footage, Parkland shoehorns a parade of cameos into cheesy dramatic recreations of JFK's fatal visit to Dallas, his assassination, the desperate unsuccessful attempts to keep him alive, the assessment of Zapruder's 8mm film, the capture and subsequent shooting of Oswald and finally, juxtaposing the state funeral of the slain President with the threadbare proceedings afforded to the purported assassin. This abysmal misfire offensively avoids acknowledging conspiracy in JFK's murder. If anyone was watching this film without a whole lot of knowledge on the subject, they'd be leaving this film convinced that the Warren Commission findings were NOT a whole lot of hogwash.
Dir. Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis,
Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano, Len Cariou
There's nothing substantive about this child abduction thriller. It purports to be thoughtful, intelligent and high-minded. To play on parental fears and deliver stupidly by-rote cliches is simply beyond the pale. This is not only a dreadful movie, but an evil, dangerous one at that. It allows some visceral thrills, but does so by delivering a conclusion to placate its audiences. This movie is so reprehensible, I feel deep embarrassment for all those involved. Movies like this are the true pornography of contemporary cinema.
Dir. Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Starring: Liam James, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, AnnaSophia Robb
Maybe it's just me, but I find indie-minded domestic coming of age dramedies like this one really sickening. They almost always involve a lonely teenager who goes on a vacation with his now-single Mom and her new boyfriend, an utter and total dick. Mom is so desperate for a man she allows herself to be cheated on, psychologically abused and look the other way when her paramour verbally abuses her son. Of course, the vacation is in some mildly exotic locale aimed at the ever-dwindling bourgeoisie of the world, allowing for a lot of "colourful" locals (who are mostly sickening) and for the kid to develop a crush on a sweet young thang whose Mother is revoltingly "kooky". Since everyone needs to be quirky, the kid meets a charming, uh, quirky, loser who turns into a less-than-stellar, though very amusing, role model. I can't imagine anyone wanting to sit through this predictable, by-rote, pretend-edgy glorified TV sitcom expanded to feature length proportions. The characters populating the world of these films bear no resemblance to anyone I'd want to know. All I can think of is that the audiences for them must be seeing themselves and their friends and/or family in such movies, thus allowing them to nod knowingly as they look into the mirror purporting to be a movie. It's not only sickening, it's pathetic.
Dir. Marc Forster
Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz
World War Z is the worst zombie movie ever made. Amongst a litany of complaints, the worst I can level is that it's so visually inept, they might well have secured the directorial services of Blind Pew. Once again, a gargantuan budget has been afforded to a filmmaker (I'm using this term loosely here) who has absolutely NO TALENT for directing suspense and action. The picture is a major snore. It's cacophonous, boringly relentless, bereft of any sense of spatial geography and NEVER scary or suspenseful.
JUST FOR FUN, I've Amalgamated the 10 Best Dramas with the 15 Dramatic Runners-up to create:
GREG KLYMKIW's TOP 25 Dramatic Films of 2013
(in alphabetical order)
The Attack
Behind The Candelabra
Border
The Canyons
Child of God
Computer Chess
Concrete Night
Le démantèlement
Europa Report
Fruitvale Station
The Great Beauty
Ilo Ilo
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Lone Ranger
Machete Kills
Man of Steel
Pain and Gain
Paradise: Faith
Prince Avalanche
Sex, Drugs & Taxation
Spring Breakers
This is the End
Thursday Till Sunday
We Are The Best
White House Down
Willow Creek
The Wolf of Wall Street
JUST FOR FUN, I've Amalgamated the Docs on the 10 Best List with the Doc Runners-up to create:
GREG KLYMKIW's TOP 20 Documentary Films of 2013
(in alphabetical order)
15 Reasons To Live
AKA Doc Pompus
The Art of Killing
Blackfish
Continental
The Devil's Lair
The Ghosts in Our Machine
Griot
Informant
Interior: Leather Bar
Jingle Bell Rocks
The Last Pogo Jumps Again
The Manor
Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth
Oil Sands Karaoke
Special Ed
The Unknown Known
Valentine Road
When Jews Were Funny
Who is Dayani Cristal?
