It's
that time of year again. Time to choose the best films of 2013,
which I hope you’ll catch up with on DVD.
Early in the year,
Blancanieves, an amazing black-and-white
silent movie from Spain, told the story of Snow White in a 1920s
bullfighting motif.
Gravity teamed Sandra Bullock with George
Clooney in a superb story of two astronauts marooned in space.
Even real astronauts have marveled at its special effects.
12 Years a Slave,
adapted from an 1853 book, tells the shocking true story of
Solomon Northrup, a free black man kidnapped and sold into
slavery.
All Is Lost
found Robert Redford marooned on his sinking yacht in the Indian
Ocean.
Fruitvale Station
is the true story of an innocent African American murdered by
San Francisco police on New Year’s Eve 2008. Captain Phillips
casts Tom Hanks as the real-life skipper of a cargo ship
hijacked by Somali pirates.
The Dallas Buyers Club, yet another
true story, gives Matthew McConaughey his fi nest role as a
Texas bull rider/electrician stricken with HIV in the eighties
who refuses to take heavy doses of AZT, and then opens a
quasi-legal “club” for buyers of imported AIDS drugs.
The Book Thief,
adapted from a best-seller, concerned a fatherless girl in Nazi
Germany sent by her fl eeing mother to foster parents, played by
Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson.
Capital is director
Costa-Gavras’s riveting story of a corrupt French bank fighting
a hostile takeover by an American rival.
Frances Ha
concerns a single young woman living in Manhattan. In
Philomena,
another true story, Dame Judi Dench portrays an elderly Irish
mother searching for her son, snatched from her as a toddler by
nuns and sold to a childless American couple.
Saving
Mr. Banks casts Emma Thompson as Mary Poppins
author P. L. Travers and Tom Hanks as a frustrated Walt Disney,
begging for permission to adapt her book into a musical with
animation, both of which she abhorred. It was a fine year for
movies.
Winter may find moviegoers cooped up, so watch the upcoming
HBO series
True Detective.
The riveting eight-part crime drama teams Woody Harrelson with
Matthew McConaughey as Louisiana State Police detectives
investigating the gruesome ritual murder of a young woman. The
thing I found most interesting is the dynamic between these
characters and their disparate psyches. Both stars are
Texas-born, sound like the real deal, and ease into their
characters effortlessly. The story spans nearly two decades.
As it unfolds, you’ll quickly become deeply absorbed, almost
like another detective on the case, watching silently as the
clues begin to unfold at a believable pace. It is well worth
devoting eight viewings to this skillful drama that kicks off
the new year.
Current fi lms include the fascinating documentary
Particle Fever,
which documents the effort by theoretical and experimental
physicists to fi nd the element that caused the Big Bang using a
20-mile tunnel they’ve built in Switzerland. The science is easy
to digest. Don’t be put off by the egghead premise. The
cooperation between physicists from all over the world and from
varying intellectual perspectives is the real message of this
remarkable film.
The doc
Divorce Corp.
looks at why divorce is so expensive. Prominent divorce lawyers
take us through the twists and turns of family court, and
explain why a divorce settlement can take almost as long to
resolve as the failed marriage lasted.
Brave Miss World,
directed by Cecilia Peck (the actress/filmmaker daughter of
Gregory Peck), is a documentary about Linor Abargil, Miss
Israel, who won the crown of Miss World just five weeks after
being raped. She turned that life-changing event into a cause,
becoming a lawyer and helping to prosecute her attacker. She
traveled the world to interview women who’d survived rape. They
include actress/comedian Fran Drescher, raped at gunpoint in
front of her husband; Joan Collins, who lost her virginity to a
rapist at 17; and South Africans and Americans who have moved on
but who have also fought back in court. It is an inspiring,
informative, and important film.
Awards season is just beginning, but the only one that
really matters beyond prestige is the Oscars. Look for
nominations to go to Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and
Michael Fassbender for 12 Years a Slave; Matthew McConaughey for
Buyers Club; Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle; Cate
Blanchett for Blue Jasmine; Idris Elba for Mandela: Long Walk to
Freedom; Michael B. Jordan for Fruitvale Station; Tom Hanks for
Captain Phillips; and Dame Judi Dench for
Philomena.
And a fond farewell to stars who left us in 2013: Dale
Robertson (a vocal and physical duplicate of Clark Gable);
character actors Richard Griffi ths, Ed Lauter, Tony Musante,
and Milo O’Shea; former Mouseketeer and beach movie star Annette
Funicello; brilliant funnyman Jonathan Winters; star ingenue
Deanna Durbin; aqua queen Esther Williams; The Sopranos’ James
Gandolfini; former Chicago cop-turned-actor Dennis Farina;
Michael Ansara, Star Wars villain and Cochise on TV’s Broken
Arrow; action director and former stuntman Hal Needham; Fast and
Furious costar Paul Walker; That ’70s Show’s Lisa Robin Kelly;
and gorgeous Eleanor Parker of Detective Story, Scaramouche, and
The Sound of Music; Peter O’Toole, nominated eight times for a
Best Actor Oscar but whose only statuette is an honorary one;
and Joan Fontaine, who, just a day later, left us as well. We
will miss you all.
[HS]
