Ranking the 2014 Best Picture Nominees, Plus Some Observations

I have now posted reviews for all nine films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.  I am not done yet.  I intend to write reviews for those films I have seen that received other Oscar nominations, and that I would recommend.  Look for reviews of The Hunt, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and others as I have the time to post leading up to the Oscar telecast.  You can read my previously posted reviews for nominees Despicable Me 2, Iron Man 3, and Star Trek into Darkness by clicking on those titles.  You can read my comments on The Lone Ranger, a film I didn’t recommend, here.

In regards to ranking the nine nominees, right off the bat I have a tough time picking not only the best film of the year, but what order to put the best three in.  My top three are Gravity, Her, and The Wolf of Wall Street.  It’s almost impossible to compare them because you could probably not pick three films more unlike each other.  One is a thrilling adventure drama set in space, another is a sweet, near-future tale of unlikely love, and the third is a comedy/drama period piece about the rise and fall of a Wall Street trader.

In terms of which ones I am most looking forward to seeing again, that would be Wolf and Gravity.  I will definitely watch Her again, but I am not quite as anxious to see it as the other two.  That puts it in third place.  Between the two remaining I’m going to have to go with The Wolf of Wall Street for the sheer fun and entertainment it provides across its three hour running time.  While Gravity is also very entertaining it does have some “less fun” moments in it.

So, here is how I would rate the nine Best Picture nominees from best to not quite the best.  I have also included how these films are ranked according to the Rotten Tomatoes critics (RTC), the Rotten Tomatoes audiences (RTA), and the IMDB voters. 

Me	Nominee	Reviewed?	RTC	RTA	IMDB
1	The Wolf of Wall Street	Read my review here	9	8	1
2	Gravity	Read my review here	1	7	4
3	Her	Read my review here	3	6	3
4	Philomena	Read my review here	8	4	8
5	12 Years a Slave	Read my review here	2	1	2
6	American Hustle	Read my review here	6	9	9
7	Nebraska	Read my review here	7	5	5
8	Dallas Buyers Club	Read my review here	4	2	6
9	Captain Phillips	Read my review here	5	3	7

Last year I aligned closest with audiences and was most out of touch with professional critics. (Or were they the ones out of touch?)  This year I don’t really align with any of these three groups.  IMDB comes closest, with agreement on two of the top three films.

A few more observations now that I have seen the nine movies: 

1. Three years ago only one of the ten nominated films exceeded two hours (Inception).  It was a welcome change from the three hour long depress-fests that often get nominated.  Two years ago six of the nine films were over two hours long, but none were over 2 ½ hours.  Last year eight of the nine films were at least two hours long, and four of them were at least 2 ½ hours long.  This trend back to longer and longer nominees was not one I was thrilled by.  Thankfully, this year only one film (The Wolf of Wall Street) clocks in at three hours and it is so entertaining that you don’t even notice the time passing.  Six of the other eight nominees are just under or just over two hours long.  And the final two are 98 minutes (Philomena) and 91 minutes (Gravity).
2. Gravity is one of the stronger contenders for Best Picture.  If it wins it might be the shortest film ever to win that prize.  Annie Hall was 93 minutes long.  Marty was 90 minutes, but has an alternate version that runs 94 minutes.  I might be forgetting another short Best Picture winner, but off the top of my head those are currently the two shortest.
3. Two years ago there were only six of nine nominated films that I felt were worth recommending.  Both last year and this year I liked all nine Best Picture nominees enough to recommend them.    
4. Two years ago only one of the nine nominees was rated R, and that was only for a few bad words.  That was quite a change from years past when the nominees were almost always R rated films.  Last year we edged back more towards the past.  Four of the nominees were rated R, four were rated PG-13, and one was rated PG.  And last year Spielberg’s movie Lincoln got a PG-13 when it would have received an R rating if directed by anyone else.  This year six of the nine nominees are rated R, and a seventh was originally rated R, but received a PG-13 upon appeal (Philomena).  The remaining two films (Gravity and Captain Phillips) are also rated PG-13.  There is one ludicrous R rating.  Nebraska has no sex, no nudity, no violence other than a punch being thrown, and a total of two, count ‘em two, F-bombs in it (neither used in a sexual way).  It’s rated R for “some language.”
5. Two years ago was for misty eyed nostalgia (The Artist, Midnight in Paris, and Hugo).  Last year was for re-creating true events (Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty.)  This year goes even further with the latter trend.  The Wolf of Wall Street, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club, American Hustle, and Captain Phillips were all based on real events.
6. Last year Jennifer Lawrence broke a string of 27 straight years, and all but 4 years since 1970, where the Best Actress winner has done nudity.  Many of the winners appeared nude in the role that won them the Oscar.  (So much for “real actresses don’t do nudity.”)  This year’s frontrunner, Cate Blanchett, has also not done a nude scene.
7. The biggest surprise for me among the nine nominees was Philomena.  I was thinking it would be a touching light drama and it is much harder hitting than I expected it to be.  It is almost on par with 12 Years a Slave in regards to showing the evil that people can do to each other.

Movie – Philomena (2013)

Philomena is based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith.  It tells the story of how the title character tried to find a son that had been essentially stolen from her when she was young.  Sixsmith helped her find out what happened to the son and wrote the book on both these people and his experiences.  He is played by Steve Coogan in the film.  Coogan also co-adapted the screenplay and earned an Oscar nomination for that.  Playing Philomena is Judi Dench and she earned yet another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress.  The film itself is nominated for Best Picture.  Director Stephen Frears, who had worked with Dench previously in Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), didn’t receive a Best Director nomination, though.  The movie is quite harrowing in places and if you don’t get angry at some point during the film you must be one very jaded person.  Philomena, quite frankly, caught me by surprise.

Movie – Nebraska (2013)

In the tradition of Oklahoma! (1955), Kansas (1988), Texas (1994), and South Dakota (2013), comes Nebraska (2013), a movie that takes place in the Midwestern United States.  (Sorry North Dakota – there’s no movie named after you, although there is 1996’s Fargo.)  Director Alexander Payne loves setting movies in his home state of Nebraska (i.e. Election, About Schmidt), but surprisingly he didn’t write the screenplay for this film.  It’s the first film where he hasn’t directed his own story.  You wouldn’t know it from the film, though.  There are a number of Payne touches in it.  In fact, it’s sort of a re-imagining of About Schmidt, although done better.  Nebraska has more humor in it than I was expecting.  No, it’s not as funny as Election, but it certainly does have its moments.

Movie – Gravity (2013)

Gravity was the first of this year’s Oscar nominees to make a splash at the box office and it ended up tying with American Hustle for the most Oscar nominations – ten.  Four of American Hustle’s nominations were in acting categories.  Gravity wouldn’t have ever been able to match that because the entire movie really only consists of two performers – Sandra Bullock as Mission Specialist Dr. Ryan Stone and George Clooney as Mission Commander Matt Kowalski.  There are a few other people seen or heard briefly, but their presence in the film is minor.  There is a vocal cameo by Ed Harris as the voice of Mission Control, which is fitting given his Apollo 13 role.  Bullock received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.  Some people, including myself, felt that Clooney might get a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but he did not.  Despite the small cast Gravity really delivers in regards to characterization and a compelling, edge of your seat story.

Announcement on the Future of this Site

About a month ago I alluded to the fact that I might have some news to report soon.  It took longer than I expected, but I can finally talk about it.

I may not be able to post my recommendations for movies quite as often as I have been.  It’s for a good reason, not a bad one.

I started this site a couple of months into a sabbatical.  I had originally intended my time off to be one year, with a cash buffer of a second year to find work.  I estimated very conservatively, so I ended up being able to take three years off while I lived on my savings.  The entire three years I have been doing this site it has been either my number one or number two priority.

Well, that now has to change.  I am finally going to be a productive member of society again.  I started a new job Friday.  I will be a Project Manager in the IT department of L.L. Bean.  (No, I can’t get you a discount on their products.)  In addition to once again having a full work week, I also have a two hour round trip commute on top of it.  This job will be taking up the large majority of my time.

Now I know that many, if not most, of the bloggers reading this are already holding down full time jobs of their own while still posting reviews.  I’m not looking for sympathy; I’m simply explaining why I may not be able to post quite as often as I have been.

Long time Followers may remember that I posted a review almost every single day for the first two years.  In this last year I had cut that back, posting only 3-4 times a week.  I also stopped posting comments on many of your sites almost altogether.  That was due to the fact that I had another big project: I have been working on a 15 year Supplement to a 900 page genealogy book I published in 1999.  Researching all the families again, gathering information, getting it into the manuscript, looking into self-publishing, etc. have been taking a sizable chunk of my time.  I need to complete this by mid-year 2014 in time for the 90^th anniversary of the first meeting of a family association.  This has been my top priority in more recent months.  With starting a new job, this now becomes my number two priority and I will be spending much of my evenings and weekends on this, probably in peaks and valleys as I either get more info or have to sit and wait for someone to send me more.

What this means for Tips from Chip is that it unfortunately has to be only my third priority.  I would like to be able to say that I ought to still be able to keep up only three posts a week, but the simple truth is I don’t know how much time either the job or the book will take.  I especially might have to invest even more hours in the job at first to try to come up to speed there as quickly as possible.  I will say that my intention is to try to keep to the same posting schedule, but if you don’t see anything for a week it’s probably because I got pulled away for either the job or the book.  Once I get the book published I should be able to return to devoting more time to this site.

In the immediate future I still have one more Best Picture nominee to recommend (Gravity).  There are two others (Philomena and Nebraska) that I have not seen and now do not know when I might.  Normally I do a post ranking the Best Picture nominees and include some analysis of them as a whole.  I’m unsure if I will still do that having seen only 7 of 9.  (Trekkies/Trekkers – feel free to insert your own Star Trek: Voyager joke.) 

In either case, I will then do what I have always done leading up to the Oscars which is continue with recommendations for films that received nominations in other categories, post an Oscar quiz, my predictions, and then the results and analysis.  Following that will be my Top 10 of 2013.  That gets me into March.  After that I don’t know what category of movies I will do, but I might pick ones with fewer entries simply because of how spread out they may be.  If I did one with 15 movies in it people will have forgotten what the category is by the time I finish it.

So, I might not be around my site as much, which unfortunately means I might not be around your sites as much either (even though I hadn’t been commenting, I had still been reading when I could.)  I will still reply to any and all comments I get here, so please don’t stop with those.  I enjoy the feedback and thoughts that you share.

January Movie Status

I saw 53 new movies in the month of January, I re-watched 3 others, and I watched a season of a TV show.  A majority of these films were focused on Oscar nominees and other 2013 films for my eventual Top 10 of 2013 post.  I also did my annual check of IMDB’s year ending Top 250 list.  I’ve been doing it since 1998 and now have 16 years worth of lists, resulting in 552 unique movies.  (You can see it here.)  I had already completed all the films that have ever been on it, so it’s now just a matter of knocking off any new entries.  There were nine films on the latest year ending list that I had not yet seen.  I now have three left, so I expect to complete them in February.

Other than that I am actively working on the following lists: Oscar Best Picture Nominees, the six 101 [Genre] Films You Must See Before You Die lists, They Shoot Pictures Don’t They, and Roger Ebert’s Great Movies.  Some of these overlap, but I am showing films under only one list’s count in the details below.  The 2014 Oscar nominations added another nine films to the overall total.  It now stands at 512, of which I have seen 454.  I did complete the top 400 films on the ranked TSPDT list, so that’s something.

All of these different lists can be seen by clicking on the names of them.  They link to my Lists from Chip posts on them.

Here are the 53 new movies and 3 old ones I saw in January.  Highlighted movies are ones to which I would give at least three stars out of five.  I will single out the four and five star films, as well as the worst films, in the paragraphs below the lists.

IMDB (5): Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009), Incendies (2010), Memories of Murder (2003), The Hunt (2012), Rang De Basanti (2006)

Oscar Nominees (8): Little Women (1933), Captain Philips (2013), American Hustle (2013), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Her (2013), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

101 Genre (2): Dillinger (1973), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

TSPDT (15): Salvatore Giuliano (1962), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Flowers of St. Francis (1950), The Sacrifice (1986), Nostalghia (1983), Nouvelle Vague (1990), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), The Rise of Louis XIV (1966), The Blood of a Poet (1932), Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), Early Summer (1951), Fellini’s Casanova (1976), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), Muriel (1963), Mother (1926)

Ebert (7): Seven Up! (1964), 7 Plus Seven (1970), 21 Up (1977), 28 Up (1984), 42: Forty-Two Up (1998), 49 Up (2005), 56 Up (2012)

Other Movies (16): Sherlock: The Empty Hearse (2014), Upstream Color (2013), Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (1989), Take a Chance (1918), Young Mr. Jazz (1919), His Royal Slyness (1920), Sherlock: The Sign of Three (2014), Rid of Me (2011), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), Sherlock: His Last Vow (2014), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), The Family (2013), Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), Mud (2013), Jobs (2013), The Kings of Summer (2013)

Re-watches (3): Kick-Ass 2 (2013), Safety Last! (1923), 35 Up (1991)

TV Series (1):  Archer Season 4

I saw a number of excellent films in January.  While no single film in the Up documentary series would merit 5 stars, the series as a whole more than earns that rating.  If you have never heard of it, in 1964 a bunch of British 7 year olds from different socio-economic backgrounds were interviewed on what they thought about their lives and what they thought the future would bring.  Director Michael Apted has gone back every seven years to re-interview them.  He most recently talked to them at age 56.  The result is a fascinating look into the changing times, mores, looks, attitudes, and most important, the lives of these people.  Imagine the changes that occur over nearly five decades in people’s lives.  We see them as awkward 14 year olds, confident 21 year olds, starting families (28), losing their parents (35), realizing not all of their hopes and dreams may happen (42), becoming grandparents and being more content (49), and dealing with aging (56). These are not the uber-exhibitionists that compete to be on TV “reality” shows now.  Some of these folks aren’t exactly thrilled to have millions of people think they can understand them by seeing 10 minutes of their lives every seven years, but they continue to participate because of how important so many people feel this series is.  Perhaps Roger Ebert said it best when he wrote that it is “an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium.”  I wrote more about this series in this post.  I suggest watching them in order to get the best experience from them.

A very good film I saw that didn’t quite merit a 5 star rating from me is Incendies (2010).  It showed up on the IMDB 2013 year end list.  In fact, with this film, Departures, The Hunt, and Rang De Basanti, most of the new foreign films on the list were very pleasant surprises.  Incendies is a powerful movie, wrapped within a family mystery that takes some serious unraveling. The only reason I didn't rate it 5 stars is that the writing is awkward on the reason for the mystery to unwind the way it does. In real life the movie would have been over in the first 10 minutes because the mother would have just told her kids about her life, but then there wouldn't have been a movie, of course.  This is a powerful drama, so if you only like to see feel good movies this is not the film for you.

Here are the other four star films I saw:

Rang De Basanti (2006) is an Indian film starring Aamir Khan (Lagaan, 3 Idiots) that starts out as a light drama with some goofy moments, but eventually becomes a deadly serious drama.  The transition is slow enough that it did not feel awkward at all.  There are some interesting comparisons and contrasts with the leads playing dual roles as modern Indian youths and early 20^th century Indian rebels.

His Royal Slyness (1920) is a Harold Lloyd two-reeler about an American book salesman who agrees to impersonate the Prince of a tiny European nation – one that is ripe for revolt.  I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t Harold Lloyd playing both parts until the characters were standing in the same frame.  It turns out Harold’s brother Gaylord played one of the parts.

Sherlock: His Last Vow (2014) is the last of the three TV movies in Season 3 of the show Sherlock.  It is the best of them for the most recent year.  I can’t describe why I liked it so much without giving a massive spoiler so all I will say is that it caught me by surprise and that doesn’t happen that often anymore.

Mud (2013) is part of Matthew McConaughey’s triumphant year of acting.  He’s Oscar nominated for Dallas Buyers Club, and his scene in The Wolf of Wall Street has been much talked about, but for my money Mud is his best starring role in 2013.  He plays the title character, a mysterious man living on an island.  Two boys meet him while exploring and his stories captivate them.  They get caught up in helping him and that’s not a very safe thing to do as we get more and more hints of what Mud’s real story is.  This is simultaneously a mystery, a realistic look at love, and a coming of age for the two boys.

Finally, I recently did four star reviews of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Her (2013).  You can read them by looking at my January posts.

I had a few one star films in January.  I’ll just mention The Sacrifice (aka Offret), a 1986 film from Tarkovsky.  It was his last.  I generally like his films, but this was a disappointment.  He is basically aping the style of Ingmar Bergman in this, or at least Bergman’s style from the late 60s (i.e. The Hour of the Wolf).  Unfortunately, instead of getting the best of Tarkovsky and Bergman we get the worst.  There are long stretches where not much of anything happens (Tarkovsky) and when characters do interact they don’t talk TO each other, they talk AT each other in artificial non-sequiturs (Bergman circa the late 60s).

Movie – Her (2013)

Like American Hustle, the film Her was also nominated in the Best Comedy or Musical category at the Golden Globes, and like American Hustle it’s mostly a drama.  There is a phone sex scene that is played for laughs, and there is the normal level of bantering in the relationship that produces some chuckles, but by and large it is a drama about an unusual love story.  How unusual?  Well, I never thought I would write this, but Her features a relationship as unlikely, yet still believably touching, as that in the 1971 film Harold and Maude.

Movie – Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Dallas Buyers Club is a story that combines a real life person with fictional characters in order to tell the tale of a straight man diagnosed with AIDS in Texas in the mid 1980s and how he came to be a proponent of alternative medications for treating the disease.  Both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto have been praised for their performances in this film.  They have already won the Golden Globes and SAG Awards for Best Actor (McConaughey) and Best Supporting Actor (Leto).  They are also the odds-on favorites to take home the Oscars.  In my opinion they are the main reason to see this film since the presentation itself has a couple of flaws in it.  It’s a film worth your time, especially if you are not old enough to remember when AIDS first started becoming huge news in the 1980s.

Movie – American Hustle (2013)

American Hustle won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical and is nominated for 10 Academy Awards.  I’ll be honest: if I had not known about the Globes win it would not have even occurred to me to think of this film as a comedy.  Yes, there are a few moments here and there that elicit a chuckle, but by and large this is a drama.  Among the Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street is much funnier than American Hustle.  Music plays a big part in American Hustle, up to and including one of the characters lip-syncing along to a song, so perhaps the combination of a little comedy and a lot of popular songs is what garnered it the Globes win.  Overall, this is a good movie, but you do have to have some patience.

Movie – 12 Years a Slave (2013)

The film 12 Years a Slave is based on the 1853 memoir of the same name written by Solomon Northup.  It’s been made into a film before, but not one on such a large scale as this one.  12 Years a Slave received nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay – four of the “big five”.  It also received nominations in the two supporting actor and actress categories.  Those three acting categories are for the three main characters in the film.  There are smaller appearances from a number of other familiar faces.  It probably wasn’t hard for director Steve McQueen to attract talent to such a high visibility production.

Movie – The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

The film The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the book of the same name by Jordan Belfort.  He is the main character in the film and is played by Leonardo DiCaprio.  It details Belfort’s meteoric rise to riches in the late 1980s by running a brokerage company that sold, sold, sold, to naive customers who were looking to get rich quick themselves.  It also shows the excess that he and his employees enjoyed during their high flying run.  And in a movie about excess, this certainly has an excess of it, from dwarf tossing, to paying someone to shave their head, to prostitutes practically being employees of the company, to mounds of drugs, and to piles of money.  I’ve only seen four of the Best Picture nominees at this point, but so far this is the most entertaining one.

Movie – Captain Phillips (2013)

The film Captain Phillips is based on the book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty.  Changes were made in the film’s plot to pump up the part Captain Phillips played and this has led to some backlash about “falsifying the story”.  I see it more as the filmmakers were simply trying to increase the tension and heroism in some scenes, much like the film Argo (2012) did last year.  The nomination it received is for “Best Adapted Screenplay”, not “Most Faithful to the Truth Screenplay”.  Despite this, if you are like me and remember the news story from 2009 then this is a pretty straightforward movie with no real surprises.  Don’t worry, though.  I will not be spoiling the ending for anyone who does not know what happens.

2014 Oscar Nominations and Observations

The 2014 Oscar nominations were announced a few hours ago.  Going down through them I didn’t see any really huge surprises among the major nominees.  This is a big change from last year when the Best Director category had multiple WTFs in it.  In 2013 the nominations were announced before the Golden Globes were awarded, so I couldn’t do any observations there.  This year they once again came after the Globes, so I will be able to have some analysis on that.

Here are the nine Best Picture nominees:

12 Years a Slave

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Dallas Buyers Club

Gravity

Her

Nebraska

Philomena

The Wolf of Wall Street

I will post reviews for as many of these movies as I can prior to the Oscar telecast on March 2^nd.  At this point I have seen only a few of them.  I will also post my predictions in the days leading up to the ceremony.  And I will have another Oscar quiz like last year’s one on early films from Oscar winners.  This year’s quiz will be on the titles of Best Picture nominees.

Click “Read more” for a complete list of the nominees, what got the most nominations, and some other things of interest.

A Tribute to Bill Knight and The Way We Get By

Chances are pretty good that unless you’ve seen the 2009 film The Way We Get By you’ve never heard of Bill Knight.  He was a Maine Troop Greeter.  And chances are pretty good that if you’re not from Maine or you didn’t serve in the U.S. military in the Middle East that you’ve never heard of the Maine Troop Greeters.  They are based in Bangor, Maine.  And chances are pretty good that if you’ve even heard of Bangor, Maine it’s only because Stephen King lives there.  So why should you care at all about a man you’ve never heard of, that’s part of an organization you’ve never heard of, in a place you’ve never heard of?  Because it’s a profoundly moving story.

Movie – Oklahoma! (1955)

Okay, all together now: “Ooooooooooooooooh-klahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!”  There, now that that’s out of our systems let’s talk about this film.

Oklahoma! is among the biggest and most popular of musicals.  When it opened on Broadway in 1943 it ended up setting what was then a record with more than 2,200 performances.  Both the Broadway cast album and this film’s soundtrack album were immensely popular, spending years on the Best Seller charts.  There are a number of songs that even today many people will recognize.  But this isn’t your standard nice, innocent, happy musical.  If you stop to actually listen to the lyrics you find that they go to some dark places.  And some of the more suggestive lyrics from the stage musical had to be censored to make it past the Production Code requirements for films.

Movie – Human Desire (1954)

In 1953 Fritz Lang directed Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame in the noir film The Big Heat.  The very next year the three joined forces again for Human Desire.  And just like with The Big Heat, for some reason Grahame was not the first choice for the female lead.  Lang wanted Rita Hayworth, but couldn’t get her. 

The film is officially based on the 1890 Emile Zola novel La Bete Humaine, but beyond the big plot points it’s not a very faithful adaptation.  Jean Renoir’s 1938 movie La Bete Humaine starring Jean Gabin and Simone Simon stuck more closely to the way the characters were originally presented, including making the train itself almost a character in the film. 

Movie – The Big Heat (1953)

In my parent post for this set of Gloria Grahame movies I mentioned that she had been twice nominated for Oscars, winning once, but that I felt she should have been nominated two other times.  One of those I discussed in my review of In a Lonely Place.  The Big Heat is the other.  I was surprised when I found out she wasn’t the first choice to play the part she did.  The producers wanted Marilyn Monroe, but she would have cost too much, so they “settled” for Grahame.  I can’t imagine Monroe in Grahame’s role in this film, especially with the grit that is needed for it.  The Big Heat is not a nice film.  The bad guys are really bad, and even the good guy, driven by revenge, does things that are not much better.  The title of the film is very fitting.

2013 – A Look Back at a Year in Movies

Note: This post is not specifically about the films that were released in 2013, but rather the ones I watched during the year.  I will do my annual Top 10 of the prior year list towards late February/early March when the Oscars are over and I have had a chance to see most of the acclaimed 2013 films.  I haven’t seen many of the potential Oscar nominees yet.

2013 Movie Milestones:

·        In January I joined Letterboxd and rated over 5,000 of the films I had seen.  I had to add hundreds they didn’t have.  Other than the 1990s, I never have gone back and tried to do a thorough check for the movies I missed.

·        In February I completed watching the new films that had appeared on the IMDB Top 250 list for Year end 2012.  I had seen the 500+ other films from the 1998-2011 year end lists, so this was just “re-completing” the whole.

·        In May I completed the Entertainment Weekly Top 100 Films of All Time list.

·        In July I completed the entire 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

·        In October I completed the 49 new September 2013 additions to the 1,001 Movies list.  I also completed the Time Magazine All-Time Top 100 Films list and the Sight & Sound Directors’ Top 100 list.

·        In December I completed the Sight & Sound Critics’ Top 250 list.

In 2013 I saw a total of 666 films that were new to me.  Really.  I wasn’t even trying to hit that number, so what are the odds?  I actually double checked my math to be sure.  There are a dozen or so shorts in the big total.  I also re-watched 22 movies in 2013.  I had a high of 106 films (and 5 shorts) in March and a low of 5 films in August.  Of those 666 films I had 2 I rated five stars, 7 I rated four and a half stars, and 48 I rated four stars.

Here are those 57 movies I saw in 2013 that I rated at least 4 stars.  Among them are 13 non-English language films, 3 animated films, 7 documentaries (plus 3 more “mockumentaries”), and 4 silent films.  The four star films are not presented in any kind of ranking within the star rating, but simply the order in which I saw them.  You will perhaps note that three of them had exclamation points in their titles.  This did not in any way affect my ratings of them.  Probably.  J

Five stars (ranked):

1.  3 Idiots (2009) – a comedy/drama from India all wrapped within the mystery of a classmate that disappeared.

2.  Gimme Shelter (1970) – a contemporary documentary on the Rolling Stones’ 1969 U.S. tour which ended with the killing at Altamont.

Four and a half stars (ranked):

3.  Departures (2008) – Japanese film with poignancy, unexpected humor, and great beauty.

4.  POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011) – documentary from Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) on product placement in films…that was entirely paid for by product placements in the film.

5.  Django Unchained (2012) – Tarantino’s most recent film.

6.  The Last Command (1928) – Emil Jannings’ crowning achievement, and that’s saying something considering his acting career.

7.  The Other Dream Team (2012) – documentary on the battle the lesser known Lithuanian Olympic basketball team went through to make the 1992 Olympics against the celebrated Americans.

8.  Wreck-It Ralph (2012) – a fantastic journey down memory lane for anyone old enough to have played arcade games as a kid, as well a genuinely entertaining story.

9.  Thor: The Dark World (2013) – a worthy successor to The Avengers and much better than the first Thor film.  It takes its place alongside the first Iron Man film as the best of the individual Avengers movies.

Four stars (not ranked):

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Life of Pi (2012)

She Gets What She Wants (aka Slap Her, She’s French) (2002)

Ruby Sparks (2012)

Argo (2012)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Bernie (2012)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Side By Side (2012)

Friends (with Benefits) (2009)

The Nines (2007)

Man Bites Dog (1992)

The Story of a Cheat (1936)

The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

The Intouchables (2011)

Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell (2012)

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Johnny Belinda (1948)

Shaft (1971)

The Secret World of Arietty (2010)

Too Big to Fail (2011)

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Day for Night (1973)

Sayonara (1957)

Tonight You’re Mine (2011)

Whisky Galore! (1949)

Real Life (1979)

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

Hysteria (2012)

Turn Me On, Dammit! (2012)

The Great White Silence (1924)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

F for Fake (1973)

Now You See Me (2013)

Delicacy (2011)

Castaway on the Moon (2009)

Placido (1961)

Your Sister’s Sister (2011)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

Les Miserables (1935)

One Hour With You (1932)

Souls for Sale (1923) 

Micmacs (2009)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Gravity (2013)

The longest films among these are 3 Idiots (170 minutes), Django Unchained (165 minutes), and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (161 minutes).  The shortest are The Adventures of Prince Achmed (65 minutes), One Hour With You (80 minutes), and Tonight You’re Mine (also 80 minutes).

In addition to the lists I completed during the year I am actively working on several others.  Here are my year end statuses for them.

Film List	How Much Complete	Percent
Oscar Best Picture Nominees:	445 of 503	88.47
101 [Genre] Films You Must See Before You Die:	456 of 607	75.12
They Shoot Pictures Don’t They – Current list:	801 of 1,000	80.10
They Shoot Pictures Don’t They – Complete list:	966 of 1,395	69.25
Empire Top 100 World Films:	95 of 105	90.48
Empire Top 500 Films of All Time:	465 of 500	93.00
Roger Ebert’s Great Films:	321 of 374	85.83
Consolidated Top British Films:	108 of 178	60.67

And two other major lists I have that are mostly dormant for now:

New York Times Top 1,000 Films list:	681 of 1,002	67.96
U.S. National Film Registry:	358 of 600	59.67

And just for the sake of completeness, here are the movie lists I finished before 2013:

IMDB Top 250 15 Year Consolidated and Weighted list:  535 of 535

Consolidated AFI Best Films list: 412 of 412

Note: the 2013 Year End IMDB Top 250 list has yielded 8 films that I have not yet seen, so I will be working on knocking those off as soon as I can.  The new 16 year Consolidated and Weighted IMDB Top 250 list now has 552 films on it.  It can be seen/downloaded here.

December Movie Status

I saw 33 new movies in the month of December, plus I re-watched 3 others.  Last month I mentioned I had found myself working on several different movie lists and as a consequence had some films that I simply could not locate.  Please see my prior post for big news on that.

Because I had only one film left to complete the Sight and Sound Critics’ Top 250 list, and because it was one of the movies I was able to finally obtain in December, I finished off this list by watching the nine hour documentary Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003).

Where that leaves me is actively working on the following lists: Oscar Best Picture Nominees, the six 101 [Genre] Films You Must See Before You Die lists, They Shoot Pictures Don’t They, Empire’s lists of the Top 100 World Films and Top 500 Films, Roger Ebert’s Great Movies, and three different lists of the Top 100 British films of all time.  Many of these overlap, but I am showing films under only one list’s count in the details below.

All of these different lists can be seen by clicking on the names of them.  They link to my Lists from Chip posts on them.

Although not complete, I did pass 800 entries seen of the 1,000 on the current TSPDT list.  I’m also approaching 1,000 seen of the entire 1,395 entries that have ever been on the list, although passing this milestone could be further off.

Here are the 33 new movies and 3 old ones I saw in December.  Highlighted movies are ones to which I would give at least three stars out of five.  I will single out the four and five star films, as well as the worst films, in the paragraphs below the lists.

Oscar Nominees (2): The Love Parade (1929), Alibi (1929)

101 Genre (6): I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978), Frankenhooker (1990), The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), City Streets (1931), Battle of Britain (1969)

SSC (1): Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003)

TSPDT (9): The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971), Empire (1964), Liebelei (1933), Under the Bridges (1946), Anatahan (1953), Minimata: The Victims and Their World (1971), Variete (1925), The Italian Straw Hat (1928), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Ebert (1): Departures (2008)

British (0):

Empire World (0):

Empire Top 500 (0):

Other Movies (14): Wedlock House: An Intercourse (1959), DesistFilm (1954), The Heat (2013), The Big Empty (2003), The King’s Skeleton: Richard III Revealed (2013), Frozen (2013), The Guilt Trip (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), 30 for 30: Youngstown Boys (2013), Gravity (2013), Orgasm, Inc. (2009), Computer Chess (2013), Red Dawn (2012), Daydream Nation (2010)

Re-watches (3): It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Jack Reacher (2012), POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2012)

TV Series (0): 

I had no five star movies in December, although one came close.  Here are the four star films I saw:

I avoided Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner Departures (2008) for some time thinking it would be depressing.  Instead I found a film that is poignant in places, surprisingly humorous in others, and above all a work of great beauty.  I gave it 4.5 stars on Letterboxd and when I watch it again it might move to five stars.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) is definitely better than the first Hobbit film in that it is a lot less silly.  Radagast the Brown and his bunny-drawn sled are barely to be seen.  Book purists may be bothered because a majority of what appears onscreen in this film comes from the imagination of the screenwriters, not Tolkien.

Gravity (2013) definitely has a lot going for it, especially the visuals and Sandra Bullock’s performance.  I think it’s a lock for her to get another Oscar nomination.  There are some unfortunate errors during a couple critical moments of the film that harmed the impact of it for me, but if you do not know much about physics you won’t even notice them.

I had several one star films in December.  Empire (1964) probably takes the cake because it is nothing but an 8 hour 5 minute 13 second long static shot of the Empire State Building.  That’s from Warhol.  Brakhage brings us The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (1971), which is nothing but 30 minutes of real human autopsies.  Thanks TSPDT for this one-two punch. 

(Please see my next post for my look back at 2013 as a whole.  Last year I tried to combine both in a single post and it was too unwieldy.)