Mxdwn Movies Official Top 10 Movies of 2013

2013 was an excellent moviegoing year. By our estimation, much stronger than 2012. There are a lot of movies we wanted to recognize, and while we hope we’ve had a chance to mention most of the ones we’d like to somewhere in our Best of 2013 coverage, we recognize that there are some very good movies, maybe even some of your favorites, which were left off our list. Feel free to tell us exactly where and how we went wrong in the comments, but we humbly ask you to consider…

The mxdwn Movies Top 10 Movies of 2013

Our voting panel consisted of Charlie Burroughs, Desetoiles, Erik Paschall, James Tisch, and Tim Falkenberg. So without further ado:

10 – Frances Ha

Noah Baumbach’s witty, generous, and alltogether blissful comedy of manners stars the fantastic Greta Gerwig as a flighty aspiring dancer in present day Manhattan.  Shot in gorgeous black and white with the style and verve of a lost French New Wave classic, it really could have been set anytime and anywhere, so truthfully and honestly does the film explore the woes of grown-up angst and the realities of dreams lost, rationed, and substituted.  Thoughtful and focused, yet shot with a bristling electricity as if everything was being made up on the spot, the film marks a beautiful distillation of trying to be a part of the creative process as well as a rumination of late twenty-something insecurities.   Nothing moved me more personally, nor better sparked my love of cinema, its possibilities, and its joys than Frances Ha.

— James Tisch

9 – American Hustle

Much funnier and far more strange than you might expect, David O. Russell’s latest movie luxuriates in the eccentricities of its characters, but is best watched without focusing on the big names in the cast. It’s the surprise minor roles that are among the most fun.

— Erik Paschall

Read the review

8 – Out of the Furnace

Relentlessly pessimistic, yet strangely poetic at times; a good companion piece for No Country for Old Men, if you’ve got the Prozac ready. Casey Affleck and Willem Defoe stand out amongst an already amazing cast.

— Erik Paschall

Out of the Furnace manages to be artistic without ever feeling artificial. Scott Cooper has got to be on of the directors to keep an eye on in the coming year, with now to excellent films to his name in two tries. As well as anyone else in the business, Cooper excels  in crafting a sense of place, grounding Out of the Furnace in a context that makes it 100% authentic. A gorgeously sad tragedy.

— Tim Falkenberg

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7 – Saving Mr. Banks

While much of the appeal in Saving Mr. Banks comes from its connection to Disney’s adaptation of Mary Poppins, the film also provides an interesting look at the process of adaptation. Shout outs to Poppins and its soundtrack are woven into the storyline to help emphasize how much the material means to Ms. Travers and how the writers of the Poppins movie are gradually finding common ground with her. Rather than portray Walt Disney and his team as a group of uncaring hacks looking to cash-in, their fondness for the material shines through. Everyone is doing the best they can to satisfy Travers while making the best movie possible. The process of adaptation necessitates that some things will change to suit a new medium, a new audience, and a new creative team with its own vision. Obviously the version of events shown in the film is a romanticized version of what actually happened. After all, Saving Mr. Banks is itself an adaptation from history to historical fiction.

— Charlie Burroughs

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6 – Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen Brothers’ wintery tale of a never-was folk singer marks one of the warmest, freshest and most engaging original tales the siblings have ever concocted for the screen.  Shot with a beautifully authentic and expertly detailed eye of early 1960s New York and a focus that makes it hard to believe is a work of pure fiction, yet magnetically a Coen Brothers joint with its sharp, eclectic ensemble of weirdos and people on the fringe, Inside Llewyn Davis marks perhaps one of the most mature films of their career, but perhaps also one of the warmest.  Llewyn Davis, played by a blistering good Oscar Isaac, is a folk singer with a beautiful, vulnerable voice, who has the misfortune of a string of failures that cost him his dream, yet the sly trick and charm of the movie is the way it makes you root for him.  On the onset, Inside Llewyn Davis seems to be cold and chilly movie of a talented loser, but there’s a warmth that permeates through every frame.

— James Tisch

5 – 12 Years A Slave

12 Years A Slave might well be epitomized by Solomon’s attempts to send a letter northward to friends in order to secure his release. The paper he uses was stolen far in advance, on the off chance that he might find a pen and ink someday. He struggles to make ink out of berry juice and mud. He tries to send a letter once and is nearly killed for the attempt when he’s turned in. By the time he’s finally worked up both the courage and the ability to try again, there’s a cloying sense that even Solomon doesn’t believe he’ll ever be free again. In a more typical film, all of the time and preparation invested into that letter would pay off in a linear, cause-and-effect sort of way, but not here. Solomon’s eventual rescue comes nearly out of the blue, nearly independent of any action he can take on his own. That sense of helplessness in 12 Years a Slave paints one of the most brutal and honest depictions of American slavery and the pre-Civil War South ever seen on the big screen.

— Charlie Burroughs

4 – Gravity

The most breathtaking imagery of any film of 2013.  The visuals of Alfonso Cuarón’s magnificent space odyssey are hypnotic and pure cinematic poetry, yet the visual prowess on display would mean precious little without the beatific and very human heart at its center that comes from Sandra Bullock’s enormously commanding and sympathetic performance.  I was moved and floored ever more so upon revisiting Gravity not just on its visual authority but economically compact emotional through-line, a haunting display of the capacity of the human heart and motivation to go on, all within the lithe, yet tight as a pin structure of a thrill ride spectacle.

— James Tisch

Gravity is my favorite kind of movie. Rather than just provide a window into its plot, Gravity fully immerses its audience in its setting and the mindset of Dr. Stone. The long, swooping camera shots coupled with the lack of background noise made me feel like I was floating alongside the actors. Seeing this film in 3D is likely the closest that I will come to actually walking in space. Coupled with a stellar performance from Sandra Bullock, the film maintains its edge-of-you-seat intensity throughout its entire runtime. Gravity is the definition of atmospheric, for its entire runtime I felt like was Ryan Stone, an astronaut desperately trying to find a way home.

— Charlie Burroughs

3 – Before Midnight

Perhaps the most inexplicable trilogy ever made, but also one of the most glorious.  It’s been eighteen years now since Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) first met and talked and fell for one another on that train ride to Vienna, and the fullness of their characterization – their charm, wonder, exasperation and intelligence – make them seem like old friends at this point.  Yet there’s a different and even unsettling magnitude in store for Richard Linklater’s third outing, one that makes the film a far deeper, more difficult examination of a relationship.  The acting is sublime, as it always is and was, and there’s  that same twinkle of magnetic chemistry that sharpens the performances from both Hawke and Delpy, but in Before Midnight the stakes are raised, the drama is bolder and the realities of romantic happy endings are held up to examination. The miracle of the film and the series that holds it is that unwavering connection to both Jesse and Celine.  To fans of the series, the latest installment just further solidifies that.  I hope this series last forever.

— James Tisch

2 – The Wolf of Wall Street

Naturally, a movie about corruption on Wall Street will make the viewer feel angry at how easily a pack of idiots can suddenly become so rich and powerful. What surprised me was just how moronic the ringleaders of this scheme are. Jordan Belfort and company are not the clever, conniving villains some may expect. Instead they know just enough about investing to make them dangerous and not much else. They do not seem to have any desire to do anything other than make lots of money and spend it in increasingly frivolous ways. Rather than get angry I found the whole thing hilarious, both for the dark comedy and for some real laugh out loud moments. The highpoint, or lowpoint depending on your perspective, comes when Jordan frantically flails his way back home to stop his friend from accidently framing them while absolutely wasted on extra potent qualoodes. This moment takes a horrifying turn when the friend starts choking and Jordan has to do a line of coke so that he can perform chest compressions, and I was laughing my butt off the whole time. Wolf of Wall Street does suffer from some pacing problems in the second act, I probably did not need to see Leo snort cocaine off of every hooker’s breasts, though I am still curious to see what a longer unrated cut of the movie would look like.

— Charlie Burroughs

Read the review

1 – Her

I recently came to an understanding of why it is I watch movies. I watch to feel. If I want to think, I’ll read a book. When I watched The Conjuring I felt terror, afraid for the poor family’s lives. When I watched American Hustle, I felt joy – it’s one of the funniest movies this year. When I watched Out of the Furnace, I felt despair – the evil and pain present is never justified or rationalized. When I watched The Wolf of Wall Street I felt contempt for those amoral, hedonists – not that they weren’t entertaining to see.  When I watched The Hobbit, I felt the adrenaline rush through my body as scenes from my childhood imagination unfolded on a giant screen. And when I watched Her I felt all of this and more. Like the OS, Samantha, I felt things I couldn’t really put into words. That’s why I love this film. Sure, it might pose questions and ideas about love, about human interaction, about where we’re going as a society and a species, but I just don’t care about any of that. This movie made me feel. If you want to get technical, fine: the music was good, the sets were beautiful, and Jaoquin Phoenix gave the best performance of his career. One last thing: if Scarlett Johansen doesn’t receive at least an Academy Award nomination, it will only help to demonstrate how culturally irrelevant the ceremony has become.

— Erik Paschall

Her was closer to flawless than any film I saw this year, but that’s not why it’s in the top spot for me. It’s up here because it is more thoroughly human than any other movie I saw this year. Theodore Twambly is real. Samantha is real. Amy is real. Never mind that they’re characters played by Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, and Amy Adams, respectively, and never mind that this is a story that takes place in some imagined near future Los Angeles instead of the one I live in. That doesn’t matter. Her is a stunning telling of a meaningful story that is not afraid to take risks, not afraid the make the audience’s skin crawl, to achieve telling the story it wants to tell. It speaks deeply to not just to one facet of the human soul, but several. It is a beautifully complex film handled masterfully by writer/director Spike Jonze, and it is a work I feel very happy to say he’ll have a hard time topping.

— Tim Falkenberg

Read the review

So, our complete list is: