2013 was a fun year for movies but not a particularly great year. The big budget action movies were good or decent but not great. The Oscars contenders were well-scripted, well-acted, and well-executed dramas but left no lasting impression. The Kids movies had a few highlights but nothing like the amazing releases of the past few years. Here are the movies that I think will stick around
1. Gravity
This movie has been described many times as “a ride”. And it is that, but it’s much more as well. As Sandra Bullock’s astronaut struggles to return to earth from a space catastrophe the audience is with her the whole way. All of the scenes in space look, sound, and feel real. All of the technological wizardy isn’t used just to dazzle us, it’s used to connect us with how the character is feeling. And as an audience we do, more than any other movie in quite some time.
2. Star Trek:Into Darkness
J.J. Abrams has been accused of making his two Star Trek movies more Star Wars than Trek. This sequel has all the elements of a good Trek or Wars movie. There’s good action scenes, a great villain, galactic politics, and plenty of in-jokes. But it’s a great Trek movie because it focuses on Captain Kirk’s motives for breaking the rules when necessary and the friendship between Kirk and Spock.
3. Pacific Rim
When this movie came out, there was a lot of people who complained that it was just a big dumb action movie where giant mechs fought sea aliens. But it’s not a dumb action movie. There are some very interesting sci-fi elements to this movie and some amazing monster and mech designs. And the big dumb action scenes are the best big dumb action scenes of the year.
4. Mud
This movie is about two boys who befriend a drifter who is hiding from cops and various other people. He’s come back to their town to convince his true love to run away with him. It doesn’t go as planned for the drifter or the two boys. The two boys are between being kids and being teenagers and this movie really captures growing up. The main character Ellis (Tye Sheridan) gets his first disappointment in love, finds out that grownups aren’t always right, and learns that things won’t always be the same as the years go by. It sounds trite written out like that, but it comes out in the story organically.
5. The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese’s epic tale of Wall Street stock broker’s life doesn’t have the same weight as his Goodfellas did. But like Goodfellas it is a dizzying, non-stop entertaining, and inappropriately funny tale of one man’s rise and fall. And Leonardo DiCaprio puts in an amazing performance as Jordan Belfort, the Wolf. You can see the obsession in his eyes.
Honorable Mention – Blue Jasmine, Ender’s Game , Frozen, Her, Iron Man 3, Kick-Ass 2, Monster’s University, Pain & Gain, the Wolverine, the World’s End
I have to confess that this year I missed an appalling number of movies that likely would have changed this list considerably. So here are the notable titles I missed –
12 Years a Slave, Anchorman 2, Before Midnight, Blue is the Warmest Color, The Butler, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, Elysium, Ernest & Celestine, Fruitvale Station, The Grandmaster, Inside Llewelyn Davis, Nebraska, Only God Forgives, Philomena, Machete Kills, Saving Mr. Banks, The Wind Rises