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World Poll wordle 2013

THE ENTRIES


PART 1

Francisco Algarín Navarro
Victor Alicea
Michael Anderson
Geoff Andrew
Julian Antos
Armas Miguel
Charlotte Aumont
Sean Axmaker
Martyn Bamber
Mike Bartlett
Raphaël Bassan
Gustavo Beck
Sean Bell
Pamela Biénzobas
Vassily Bourikas
Samuel Bréan
Lisa Broad
Mimi Brody
Thomas Caldwell
Michael Campi
Celluloid Liberation Front
Lesley Chow
Adam Cook
Al Cossar
Sean Cubitt
Aaron Cutler
Fergus Daly
Toni D’Angela
Michael Da Silva
Dustin Dasig
Alex Jack Davidson
Mónica Delgado
Wheeler Winston Dixon
Russell Edwards
William Edwards
Ted Fendt
Adalberto Fonkén
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Jean-Michel Frodon
Andrew Gilbert
Antony I. Ginnane
Paul Douglas Grant
Jaime Grijalba
Barthélémy Guillemet

 

 

 

 

PART 2 >>

Lucas Hammer
Lee Hill
Wai Ho
Alexander Horwath
Peter Hourigan
Cerise Howard
Brian Hu
Christoph Huber
David Hudson
Darren Hughes
Tara Judah
Dominik Kamalzadeh
Daniel Kasman
Christopher Kearney
Ehsan Khoshbakht
Dylan Kiewel
Nelson Kim
Carlotta Kliemann
Rainer Knepperges
Jay Kuehner
Adam Kuntavanish
Eugenia Lai
Marc Lauria
Maximilian Le Cain
Elaine Lennon
Dennis Lim
JB Mabe
Fidel Jesús Quirós Maquiera
Miguel Marías
Neil McGlone
Duncan McLean
David Melville
Adrian Mendizabal
Lloyd Michaels
Mads Mikkelsen
David Miller
Olaf Möller
Brent Morrow
Bill Mousoulis
Peter Nagels
Mario Naito
Renfreu Neff
Boris Nelepo

 

 

 

 

PART 3 >>

Darragh O’Donoghue
SvenErik Olsen
George Papadopoulos
Michael Pattison
Yoana Pavlova
Antoni Peris
Sierra Pettengill
Raymond Phathanavirangoon
David Phelps
Jit Phokaew
Andréa Picard
Matías Piñeiro
Kazik Radwanski
Alessandro Raja
Lalit Rao
Kiva Reardon
Robert Reimer
Bérénice Reynaud
Marcos Ribas de Faria
Luke Richardson
Peter Rist
Adam Roberts
Julian Ross
Miriam Ross
André Roy
Ben Russell
Dan Sallitt
José Sarmiento
Howard Schumann
Ravi Shankar
Shimmin  Nick
Christopher Sikich
Mark Spratt
Brad Stevens
Graham Swindoll
Gerwin Tamsma
Tan Bee Thiam
Antoine Thirion
Gorazd Trušnovec
Robert Von Dassanowsky
Nicholas Vroman
Tomasz Warchol
Christian Were
Virginia Wexman Wright
Eddie White
Eleanor Wilkin
Barbara Wurm
Neil Young
Alexandra Zawia

 


FRANCISCO ALGARIN NAVARRO

EDITOR, LUMIÈRE MAGAZINE.

— ——– (Short Line Long Line) (Thom Andersen, Malcolm Brodwick, 1967)
British Sounds (1969), Pravda (1969), Vladimir et Rosa (1970), Groupe Dziga Vertov
De Bomberpilot (1970), Willow Springs (1972), Der schwarze Engel (1973), Palermo oder Wolfsburg (1980), Werner Schroeter
Die Bergkatze (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921)
Echoes of Silence (Peter Emanuel Goldman, 1967)
Educação Sentimental (Sentimental Education, Júlio Bressane, 2013)
Footnotes to a House of Love (2007), My Tears Are Dry (2009), Llora cuando te pase (2010), The Room Called Heaven(2012), Laida Lertxundi
Frame Line (1984), Light Years (1987), Natural Features (1990), Gunvor Nelson
Hours for Jerome (1982), Song (2013), Spring (2013), Nathaniel Dorsky
House by the River (1950), Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1959), Das Indische Grabmal (1959), Fritz Lang
Il lago (soggettivo-oggettivo) (1965), Doppio autoritratto (1974), Marinella Pirelli
La Fille de l’eau (Jean Renoir, 1925)
La Jalousie (Jealousy, Philippe Garrel, 2013)
Les Soviets plus l’électricité (Nicolas Rey, 2002)
Les Trois Désastres (Jean-Luc Godard, 2013)
Man’s Favorite Sport? (Howard Hawks, 1964)
Mes Entretiens filmés (Boris Lehman, 2013)
Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes, 1971)
Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Lav Diaz, 2013)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon, Uri Sunhi (Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
Ödenwaldstetten (1964), Ein Arbeiterclub in Sheffield (1965), Von Griechenland (1965), Rheinstrom (1965), Die Donau rauf (1970), Peter Nestler
Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man (Jonas Mekas, 2012)
Passion (Brian de Palma, 2012)
Porch Glider (James Herbert, 1970)
The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013)
The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998)
The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Raoul Walsh, 1956)
The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
Three Landscapes (Peter Hutton, 2013)
Feng ai (‘Til Madness Do Us Part, Wang Bing, 2013)
to be here (Ute Aurand, 2013)
Umbracle (Pere Portabella, 1970)
Un Conte de Michel de Montaigne (Jean-Marie Straub, 2013)
Winged Dialogue (1967/2000), Plan of Brussels (1968/2000), Listening to the Space in my Room (2013), Robert Beavers


VICTOR ALICEA

PROGRAMMER FOR WUD FILM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON. 

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 2013)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
The World’s End (Edgar Wright, 2013)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)
La vie d’Adèle: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
Du zhan (Drug War, Johnnie To, 2012)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)
Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)

Gravity

Gravity


MICHAEL J. ANDERSON

PROPRIETOR OF TATIVILLE AND TEN BEST FILMS, PHD IN ART HISTORY AND FILM STUDIES, YALE UNIVERSITY. 

Jiao you (Stray Dogs, Tsai Ming-liang, 2013)
Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai, 2013)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel, 2012)
La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
O Som ao redor (Neighboring Sounds, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012)
Vous n’avez encore rien vu (You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, Alain Resnais, 2012)
După dealuri (Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)


GEOFF ANDREW

HEAD OF FILM PROGRAMME AT LONDON’S BFI SOUTHBANK AND THE AUTHOR OF A NUMBER OF BOOKS ON THE CINEMA. REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR TO SIGHT AND SOUND AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO TIME OUT LONDON.

My year’s ten best of 2013:

  1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)
  2. Vidros partidos (Broken Windows, Víctor Erice, 2012) episode from compilation film Centro Histórico)
  3. L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
  4. La Maison de la radio (Nicolas Philibert, 2013)
  5. Poziția copilului (Child’s Pose, Călin Peter Netzer, 2013)
  6. Hayatboyu (Lifelong, Asli Özge, 2013)
  7. L’Image manquante (The Missing Picture, Rithy Pahn, 2013)
  8. Soshite chichi ni naru (Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2013)
  9. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
  10. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

And 20 more very enjoyable/impressive films in alphabetical order:

All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013)
Camille Claudel 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
Un Château en Italie (A Castle in Italy, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, 2013)
Le Dernier des injustes (The Last of the Unjust, Claude Lanzmann, 2013)
Epizoda u zivotu beracaca zeljeza (An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, Danis Tanovic, 2013)
Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013)
La grande belleza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight (Stephen Frears, 2013)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
Omar (Hany Abu-Assad, 2013)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013)
The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard, 2013)
Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
Uroki Garmonii (Emir Baigazin, Harmony Lessons, 2013)
La Vénus à la fourrure (Venus in Fur, Roman Polanski, 2013)
La Vie d’Adèle, chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)

Newly restored films I’ve most enjoyed this year:

The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray, 1952)
Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964)


JULIAN ANTOS

CO-PROGRAMMER AT THE NORTHWEST CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY.

New movies – my favourite new releases seen in a theatrical setting in 2013. Mostly playing catch up from 2012 and waiting to see things on 35mm.

  1. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) (70mm, The Music Box Theater)
  2. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013) (HDCam, The Music Box Theater)
  3. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012) (35mm, The Music Box Theater)
  4. The Paperboy (Lee Daniels, 2012) (35mm, Gene Siskel Film Center)
  5. Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan, 2012) (Blu-Ray, Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago)
  6. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, 2012) (35mm, Doc Films)
  7. Aint Them Bodies Saints (David Lowey, 2013) (DCP, The Music Box Theater)

Best advertisement

L’Invitation au Voyage (Louis Vuitton) (Romain Gavras, 2013)

Best trailer

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)

Revivals – top 10 screenings me and my NWCFS colleagues didn’t program and then eleven that we did 

  1. Wild Girl (Raoul Walsh, 1932) (35mm from the Museum of Modern Art, Block Cinema at Northwestern)
  2. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999) (35mm, Gene Siskel Film Center)
  3. Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988) (35mm, Gene Siskel Film Center)
  4. Get Crazy (Allan Arkush, 1983) (35mm, The Music Box Theater)
  5. Nostalghia (Andre Tarkovsky, 1983) (35mm from Kino, Gene Siskel Film Center)
  6. Thirty Day Princess (Marion Gering, 1934) (35mm from UCLA, Gene Siskel Film Center). “To eat sundaes with a straw is the essence of insanity.”
  7. 8 Flags for 99 Cents (Mike Gray Associates, Chuck Olin and Joel Katz, 1970) (16mm restoration from the Chicago Film Archives)
  8. Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989) (35mm, Gene Siskel Film Center)
  9. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973) (35mm, Gene Siskel Film Center)
  10. Wake Up and Live (Sidney Lanfield, 1937) (16mm, Cinefest, Syracuse, New York)

NWCFS screenings (alphabetical)

Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979) (35mm)
Colossus: The Forbin Project (Joseph Sargent, 1970)
Convoy (Sam Peckinpah, 1978) (35mm)
The Crimson Kimono (Samuel Fuller, 1959) (35mm)
Desire (Frank Borzage, 1936) (35mm)
Diamond Jim (A. Edward Sutherland, 1935) (35mm)
Flaming Star (Don Siegel, 1960) (35mm)
The Flying Ace (Richard E. Norman, 1926)
Gunman’s Walk (Phil Karlson, 1958) (35mm)
The Intruder (Roger Corman, 1962) (35mm)
The Vikings (Richard Fleischer, 1958) (35mm)

The Master

The Master


MIGUEL ARMAS

WRITER AND TRANSLATOR, LUMIÈRE 

Some old and new films seen for the first time in 2013.

Allan Dwan’s early one-reel Westerns: The Ranch Girl (1911) / Blackened Hills (1912) / Maiden and Men (1912) / Man’s Calling (1912) / The Thief’s Wife (1912) / The Mormon (1912)
Von Griechenland (Peter Nestler, 1965) / Die Donau rauf (Peter Nestler, 1970)
East Side, West Side (Allan Dwan, 1927)
Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh, 1942)
Les Trois Désastres (Jean-Luc Godard, 2013)
Léonce cinématographiste (Léonce Perret, 1913)
Ruins of Infinity (aka The Rise and Fall of the Bourgeoisie aka Socratic Monologues 2011-2013) (David Phelps, 2013)
Seeking the Monkey King (Ken Jacobs, 2011)
The Host and the Cloud (Pierre Huygue, 2010)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)
Menaces (Edgar T. Gréville, 1940)
The Extravagant Shadows (David Gatten, 2012)
Traveling Light (Gina Telaroli, 2011), Starting Sketches #1-#12 (Gina Telaroli, 2013)
Winged Dialogue (Robert Beavers, 1967/2000) / Listening to the Space in my Room (Robert Beavers, 2013)
Willow Springs (Werner Schroeter, 1973) / Der schwarze Engel (Werner Schroeter, 1975)
La Fille de l’eau (Jean Renoir, 1924)
Porch Glider (James Herbert, 1970)
Echoes of Silence (Peter Emanuel Goldman, 1965)
Kochiyama Soshun (Sadao Yamanaka, 1935)
Mudar de vida (Paulo Rocha, 1966)
Forest of Bliss (Robert Gardner, 1986)
Three Landscapes (Peter Hutton, 2013)
Baby riazanskie (Women of Ryazan, Ol’ga Preobraženskaja and Ivan Pravov, 1927)
Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man (Jonas Mekas, 2012)
La Jalousie (Jealousy, Philippe Garrel, 2013)
Hours for Jerome (Nathaniel Dorsky, 1966-70/1982) / Song (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2013)
Mes Entretiens filmés (Boris Lehman, 2013)



CHARLOTTE AUMONT

L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
La Fille du 14 juillet (The Rendez-Vous of Déjà-Vu, Antonin Peretjatko, 2013)
La Vénus à la fourrure (Venus in Fur, Roman Polanski, 2013)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
No (Pablo Larraín, 2012)
Le Temps de l’aventure (Just a Sigh, Jérôme Bonnell, 2013)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
Shokuzai (Penance, Television mini-series, Kyoshi Kurosawa, 2012) 



SEAN AXMAKER

CONTRIBUTOR FOR CINEPHILED AND MSN AND THE FOUNDING CONTRIBUTOR OF PARALLAX VIEW.

New in theatres or at festivals in 2013:

Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)
La Vie d’Adèle: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Après mai (Something in the Air, Olivier Assayas, 2012)
La noche de enfrente (Night Across the Street, Raul Ruiz, 2012)
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery, 2013)
E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me, Joaquim Pinto, 2013)
Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
Vous n’avez encore rien vu (You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, Alain Resnais, 2012)

Movies that remind me why I love movies so much. These may not be Top Ten material, but they all embrace a joy of and delight in filmmaking, storytelling, and cinematic expression (in alphabetical order):

Byzantium (Neil Jordan, 2012)
Du zhan (Drug War, Johnnie To, 2012)
Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai, 2013)
Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013
Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)

Eight standout discoveries of 2013 (in alphabetical order):

The First Born (Miles Mander, 1928) 35mm print with live accompaniment at San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Feu Mathias Pascal (The Late Mathias Pascal, Marcel L’Herbier, 1926) Flicker Alley Blu-ray
Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil, 1967) Criterion Blu-ray
Les Maudits (The Damned, René Clément, 1947) Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray
Les Nouveaux Messieurs (The New Gentlemen, Jacques Feyder, 1929) Flicker Alley DVD (on the set “French Masterworks: Russian Émigrés in Paris 1923-1928”)
The Pleasure Garden (Alfred Hitchcock, 1925) DCP print at Hitchcock Silents retrospective at SIFF Cinema Uptown (Seattle)
Le Pont Du Nord (Jacques Rivette, 1981) repertory screening of restored 35mm print at Northwest Film Forum (Seattle)
Yoyo (Pierre Étaix, 1965) and the films of Pierre Étaix – retrospective at Northwest Film Forum (Seattle) and on Criterion Blu-ray

Bastards

Bastards


MARTYN BAMBER

CONTRIBUTOR TO CLOSE-UP FILM, CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK AND SENSES OF CINEMA.

Favourite new releases from 2013 seen in the UK (in alphabetical order): 

Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki, 2012)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski, 2012)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
A Field in England (Ben Wheatley, 2013)
Io e te (Me and You, Bernardo Bertolucci, 2012)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2013)
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
The World’s End (Edgar Wright, 2013)


MIKE BARTLETT

WRITER FOR MOVIEMAIL AND ZOMBIEHAMSTER.

Ten best new(ish) films I saw for the first time this year:

The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
Aurora (Cristi Puiu, 2010)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Exhibition (Joanna Hogg, 2013)
Història de la meva mort (Story of My Death, Albert Serra, 2013)
Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)
Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz, 2013)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-soo, 2013) / Uri Sunhi (Our Sunhi, Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
Soshite chichu ni naru (Like Father Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2013)
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)

I’m still processing Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, 2012) and can’t decide whether it’s a tidal wave of genius or a wet weekend in Margate.

Strong runners-up include:
Après mai (Something in the Air, Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011)
A Field In England (Ben Wheatley, 2013)

Most overrated film of the year:
Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

Most cruelly disappointing:
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
(or Leviathan depending on how things work out)


RAPHAËL BASSAN

FRENCH FILM CRITIC, HISTORIAN OF CINEMA, SPECIALIST IN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA, WRITES FOR EUROPE, REVUE LITTERAIRE, BREF: LE MAGAZINE DU COURT METRAGE AND ENCYCLOPAEDIA UNIVERSALIS.

¡Vivan las Antipodas! (Victor Kossakovsky, 2011)
Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2011)
Tey (Today, Alain Gomis, 2012)
Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013)
A batalha de Tabatô (The Battle of Tabatô, João Viana, 2013)
La Vie d’Adèle: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Le Dernier des injustes (The Last of the Unjust, Claude Lanzmann, 2013)
Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man (Jonas Mekas, 2012). Seen at the Mekas retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, 7 January 2013
Ren shan ren hai (People Mountain, People Sea, Can Shangjun, 2011)
Soshite chichi ni naru (Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2013)

Experimental films:

Pourvoir (Patrice Énard, 1981)
The Freemartin Calf (Jayne Amara Ross, 2010)
Free Women (Viviane Vagh, 2008-09)
Amnesiac on the Beach (Dalibor Baric, 2013)
Ici rien
(Daphné Hérétakis, 2011)

Blue is the Warmest Color

Blue is the Warmest Color


GUSTAVO BECK

NEW YORK-BASED BRAZILIAN FILMMAKER, CURATOR AND CRITIC.
  1. Feng ai (‘Til Madness Do Us Part, Wang Bing, 2013)
  2. Norte, hangganan ng kasaysaya (Norte, The End Of History, Lav Diaz, 2013)
  3. Redemption (Miguel Gomes, 2013)
  4. L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
  5. E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me, Joaquim Pinto, 2013)
  6. La Jalousie (Jealousy, Philippe Garrel, 2013)
  7. Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
  8. Loubia Hamra (Bloody Beans, Narimane Mari, 2013)
  9. Lacrau (João Vladimiro, 2013)
  10. Mille soleils (A Thousand Suns, Mati Diop, 2013)

SEAN BELL

BLOGGER, SEX AND THE ETERNAL CITY.

Cinema Releases (Italy 2013):

La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
Despicable Me 2 (Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud, 2013)
Les Misérables (Tom Hooper, 2012)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
La Vie d’Adele: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarión, 2013)
Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)
The Impossible (J.A. Bayona, 2012)

DVDs (or coulda been contenders in 2012): 

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Ben Zeitlin, 2012)
După dealuri (Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
En kongelig affœre, (A Royal Affair, Nikolaj Arcel, 2012)
Berberian Sound Studio, (Peter Strickland, 2012)
Searching For Sugar Man, (Malik Bendjelloul, 2012)

Worst:

Los amantes pasajeros, (I’m So Excited!, Perdro Almodóvar, 2013)
Even the exclamation mark annoys me. A comedy bereft of laughs with some limp social commentary tacked on at the end. The tired old gay stereotypes that populated the film would have got a heterosexual director into deep mierda. Perhaps Almodóvar should start directing commercials for “pro-family” Barilla off-shoot, Mulino Bianco, after all they already have Antonio Banderas.


PAMELA BIÉNZOBAS

PARIS-BASED FILM CRITIC AND JOURNALIST FROM CHILE, CO-FOUNDER OF REVISTA DE CINE MABUSE.

Unclassifiable:
Stemple Pass (James Benning, 2012)

Two wonderful female characters, in two wonderful films:
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013)

One film about psychoanalysis and embracing the other; one filmed psychoanalysis, about embracing oneself:
Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table! (Me, Myself and Mum, Guillaume Gallienne, 2013)
Jimmy P. (Arnaud Desplechin, 2013)

From Eros to Thanatos (made in France):
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Mes Séances de lutte (Love Battles, Jacques Doillon, 2013)
La Vie d’Adèle: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

Despairing violence:

La jaula de oro (The Golden Dream, Diego Quemada-Diez, 2013)
Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz, 2013)
Pelo malo (Bad Hair, Mariana Rondón, 2013)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)

Two overwhelming attempts to film the invisible, and to deal with barbarity in different ways and under different circumstances:
L’Image manquante (The Missing Picture, Rithy Pahn, 2013)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)

Amidst the violence, one huge, welcome laugh, and an unexpected talent for comedy:
Quai d’Orsay (Bertrand Tavernier, 2013)

Frances Ha

Frances Ha


VASSILY BOURIKAS

FILM PROGRAMMER AND CINEASTE, ATHENS, GREECE.

This below is a short list of some experiences in cinemas that I really enjoyed this year, in order of appearance (to my eyes). I will remember 2013 particularly as the year of Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran. Their From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf was one of the most complex, multifaceted and glaringly different films I have seen in a long time. Gym Lumbera’s Anak Araw and Aran Hughes and Christina Koutsospyrou’s Sto Lyko, are the other two films that I will remember for a while, for tampering audaciously with their form while maintaining a solid sense of purpose and humanity.

All Magic Sands, Chappaqua (Andrew Lampert, 2013)
Dad’s Stick (John Smith, 2012)
O quinto evanxeo de Gaspar Hauser (The Fifth Gospel of Kaspar Hauser, Alberto Gracia, 2013)
Letter (Sergei Loznitsa, 2013)
GHL (Lotte Schreiber, 2012)
Suchy Pion (Dry Standpipe, Wojciech Bąkowski, 2012)
From Gulf To Gulf To Gulf (Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran, 2013)
Anak Araw (Albino, Gym Lumbera, 2013)
Élevage de poussière (Dust Rubbing, Sara Vanagt, 2013)
Sto lyko (To the Wolf, Aran Hughes & Christina Koutsospyrou, 2013)
Letter to a Refusing Pilot (Akram Zaatari, 2013)
L’Image manquante (The Missing Picture, Rithy Panh, 2013)
Jiao you (Stray Dogs, Tsai Ming-liang, 2013)
El ojo del tiburón (The Shark’s Eye, Alejo Hoijman, 2012)
Alberi (Michelangelo Franmartino, 2013) as installed in Cinema Manzoni, Milan
Buffalo Death Mask (Mike Hoolboom, 2013)


SAMUEL BRÉAN

PARIS-BASED TRANSLATOR AND RESEARCHER. CO-EDITOR OF THE ONLINE JOURNAL L’ ÉCRAN TRADUIT.

Best films (alphabetical order)
Die andere Heimat – Chronik einer Sehnsucht (Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision, Edgar Reitz, 2013)
Borgman (Alex van Warmerdam, 2013)
Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013)
Le Dispositif, episodes 1-52 (Thomas Bertay, Pacôme Thiellement, 1999-2013)
Du zhan (Drug War, Johnnie To, 2012)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
La Jalousie (Jealousy, Philippe Garrel, 2013)
Saibi (The Fake, Yeon Sang-ho, 2013)
See You Next Tuesday (Drew Tobia, 2013)
Le Tableau (Laurent Achard, 2013)
Tirez la langue, mademoiselle (Miss and the Doctors, Axelle Ropert, 2013)
Les Trois Désastres (Jean-Luc Godard, 2013)

Most overrated film
La Vie d’Adèle – chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

Two remarkable retrospectives
Jean-Claude Biette (Cinémathèque Française, Paris)
A long-overdue homage to a great film critic and maverick filmmaker, accompanied by a lovingly written book and a documentary, both by Pierre Léon.

Planète Marker (Centre Pompidou, Paris)
An impressive, extensive season of all the films that Marker made or had a hand in, along with ones that he loved.

Best film books
Santos Zunzunegui, Lo viejo y el nuevo (Cátedra, Madrid, 2013)
Michael Witt, Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian (Indiana University Press, Bloomington/Indianapolis, 2013)
Guillaume Basquin, Fondu au noir (Paris Expérimental, Paris, 2013)
William Friedkin, The Friedkin Connection (HarperCollins, New York, 2013)

Computer Chess

Computer Chess


LISA K. BROAD

PHD CANDIDATE IN CINEMA STUDIES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.
  1. Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai, 2013)
  2. La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
  3. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
  4. Leviathan (Lucian Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, 2012)
  5. Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012)
  6. Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
  7. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
  8. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
  9. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
  10. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012)

MIMI BRODY

CURATOR OF FILM, BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. 

My top films of 2013:

Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012)
Lemale et ha’halal (Fill the Void, Rama Burshtein, 2012)
Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013)
Paradies: Hoffnung (Paradise: Hope, Ulrich Seidl, 2013)
At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman, 2013)

Honourable Mentions:

Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener, 2013)
Vi är bäst! (We Are the Best!, Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel, 2012)
Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan & Joel Coen, 2013)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 30130
Du zhan (Drug War, Johnnie To, 2012)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers & Ben Russell, 2013)
Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013) 


THOMAS CALDWELL

WRITES FILM CRITICISM BLOG CINEMA AUTOPSY, REVIEWS FOR 3RRR 102.7FM.

Favourite ten films with a theatrical release in Melbourne, Australia in 2013

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Mystery Road (Ivan Sen, 2013)
The Rocket (Kim Mordaunt, 2013)
Broken (Rufus Norris, 2012)
No (Pablo Larraín, 2012)
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
The Paperboy (Lee Daniels, 2012)

Honourable mentions 

ParaNorman (Chris Butler & Sam Fell, 2012)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012)
Jagten (The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)
Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)
Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Oh Boy (Jan Ole Gerster, 2012)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)

Favourite ten films that had a public screening in Melbourne in 2013, but not a full theatrical release (and no known release for 2014) 

Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)
Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel, 2012)
L’intervallo (The Interval, Leonardo di Costanzo, 2012)
Tore tanzt (Nothing Bad Can Happen, Katrin Gebbe, 2013)
Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier, 2013)
Cheap Thrills 
(E.L. Katz, 2013)
Le Jour des corneilles 
(The Day of the Crows, Jean Christophe Dessaint, 2012)
The Weight of Elephants 
(Daniel Borgman, 2013)
Starlet 
(Sean Baker, 2012)
What Richard Did 
(Lenny Abrahamson, 2012)

Special mention 

Top of the Lake (Television miniseries, Jane Campion & Garth Davis, 2013)

Top of the Lake

Top of the Lake


MICHAEL CAMPI

LONG CAPTIVATED BY THE MOVIES WITH INVOLVEMENT IN NON-COMMERCIAL FILM EXHIBITION IN VARIOUS CAPACITIES OVER THE PAST FORTY YEARS.

While the commercial film scene in Australia seems to have dipped in quality to an all time low, I was almost surprised and delighted that so many stimulating, challenging and otherwise exciting new works have been seen in a variety of locations for the first time in 2013. A few of the very best would normally been in my 2012 list if circumstances had permitted.

At the very peak of these achievements are these:
Armour (Michael Haneke, 2012)
Bella addormentata (Dormant Beauty, Marco Bellocchio, 2012)
După dealuri (Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
O Gebo e a sombra (Gebo and the Shadow, Manoel de Oliveira, 2012)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Jin (Reha Erdem, 2013)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012)
Pardé (Closed Curtain, Jafar Panahi & Kambuzia Partovi, 2013)
Le Passé (The Past, Asghar Farhadi, 2013)
Soshite chichi ni naru (Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2013)
Uroki garmonii (Harmony Lessons, Emir Baigazin, 2013)
A última vez que vi Macau (The Last Time I Saw Macao, João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata, 2012)

In addition my movie watching has been enhanced and enriched by these:

Atambua 39° Celsius (Riri Riza, 2012)
Ai de ti shen (All Apologies, Emily Tang, 2012)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
Après mai (Something in the Air, Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Bad Film (Sion Sono, 1995-2012)
Fallout (Lawrence Johnston, 2013)
Fen shi ren (The Cremator, Peng Tao, 2012)
Fune wo amu (The Great Passage, Yûya Ishii, 2013)
L’Image manquante (The Missing Picture, Rithy Panh, 2013)
Inori (Pedro González-Rubio, 2012)
Linhas de Wellington (Lines of Wellington, Valeria Sarmiento, 2012)
Mud (Jeff Nichols, 2012)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-Soo, 2013)
One Night and Two Days (Leesong Hee-il, 2012)
Rebelle (War Witch, Kim Nguyen, 2012)
Sinapupunan (Thy Womb, Brillante Mendoza, 2012)
Tang huang you difu (Emperor Visits the Hell, Li Luo, 2012)
Tian mi mi (Together, Hsu Chao-Jen, 2012)
Tôkyô Kazoku (Tokyo Family, Yôji Yamada, 2013)
Traviata et nous (Philippe Béziat, 2012)
Workers (José Luis Valle, 2013

In Melbourne we can never be grateful enough for the presences of the Melbourne International Film Festival, the Melbourne Cinémathèque and the programming of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

It can never be stated enough that the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato, commencing late in June each year, is an astonishing banquet of cinema riches of the distant and not so faraway past. This marvellous festival provided me with a supreme highlight of 2013, a first viewing of an astonishing film from long ago. Amongst the very memorable collection of Japanese films from the early sound period was Sotoji Kimura’s Ani imôto (Older Brother, Younger Sister, 1935). There could be no more startling reminder that we can never be complacent about our knowledge of the history of the cinema. From the rich history of Japanese cinema, 2013 has seen a celebration of the career of Keisuke Kinoshita, especially his earlier films and particularly the ineffably moving Konyaku yubiwa (An Engagement Ring, 1950), Hakai (Apostasy, 1948), Rikugun (The Army, 1944), Yabure-daiko (A Broken Drum, 1949) and Shito no densetsu (Legend of a Duel to the Death/A Legend or Was It?, 1963). A bountiful collection of work to celebrate Kinoshita’s centenary. 


CELLULOID LIBERATION FRONT

A MULTI-USE(R) NAME, AN “OPEN REPUTATION” INFORMALLY ADOPTED AND SHARED BY A DESIRING MULTITUDE OF INSURGENT SPECTATORS.

Assault on Wall Street (Uwe Boll, 2013)
Pour la beauté du geste. Film of the year.

Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg, 2013)
A sensitive, profound and delicately observed film about insufferable hipsters and their irritating lives.

Silver Lode (Allan Dwan, 1954)
Along with High Noon possibly the most accurate depiction of western values.

Az Prijde Kocour (The Cassandra Cat, Vojtéch Jasny, 1963)
A colourful hymn to the visionary immaturity of childhood.

The Canyons (Paul Schrader, 2013)
A film about the perpetual rebirth of cinema and its omnipresent, meaningless and pervasive presence in our daily fiction.

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2013)
An atemporal, sensorial trance staring in awe at the horror vacui of a lost, immor(t)al dream.

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
For showing us with utmost sincerity the coming world order.

Snowden Interview for The Guardian Newspaper (2013) by Laura Poitras
The kind of film that had it come from a non-aligned country would have been a huge hit on a par with Pussy Rioters and Ai Weiweis.

E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me, Joaquim Pinto, 2013)
A drop of selfless beauty in an ocean of self-obsessed mediocrity.

Captain Philips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)
On the disproportionate power that three desperate fishermen can exert against the world’s most powerful army.

Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips


LESLEY CHOW

FILM CRITIC AND ASSOCIATE EDITOR AT BRIGHT LIGHTS, AND ART CRITIC AT ARTINFO.

Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012) One of the greatest of essay films, which pulls back to show the loving shaping of its own characters.

Un Voyageur (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Marcel Ophüls, 2013)

Xi you xiang mo pian (Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, Stephen Chow & Derek Kwok, 2013)

You’re Next (Adam Wingard, 2011) – Clearly, what every earnest indie drama needs is a serial killer. This horror flick easily surpasses Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008) and Your Sister’s Sister (Lynn Shelton, 2011) in terms of character development, but the addition of genre sticks into the film like an abstract wedge. There is something electrifying about placing a family romance side-by-side with an anti-human view of the world, as characters are heartlessly picked off. The juxtaposition of intricate relationships with slash violence is worthy of Claude Chabrol.

The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) A cathartic, powerful film about the wear and tear of appearing sober and dignified every day. As Viola Davis has pointed out, “dignity” is the word most used by critics to describe any black actor with superb diction.

Best Performances

Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012) – DiCaprio is perfectly cast as a charismatic white supremacist.
Forest Whitaker in The Butler – A performance which reveals the cleverness and self-betrayal involved in maintaining two faces: one controlled and benign, the other hidden and unresolved.
Rosario Dawson in Trance (Danny Boyle, 2013) – This is a rare instance of an actress holding a film captive with the power and flexibility of her voice.
Sandrine Kiberlain in Violette (Martin Provost, 2013).
Sharni Vinson in You’re Next.


ADAM COOK

WRITER & PROGRAMMER FOR MUBI, CONTRIBUTOR TO CINEMA SCOPE, CINEASTE, FILM COMMENT.

What follows is simply a list of my ten favourite new films I saw this year. I’m not fond of playing by the rules most polls govern, so there are no 2012 holdovers here nor do I exclude undistributed films I was fortunate enough to see. This space is usually reserved for talking about what “defined” cinema this year, but it’s very difficult to effectively remark about changes happening before your eyes, especially in this time of rapid, perpetual technological evolution. The democratic access to filmmaking enabled by digital cameras may bring forth new possibilities, but it has also diluted style, and while that’s not a new development, I noticed it even more in 2013. I’m tired of the lazy approach to mise en scène and craftsmanship in mainstream and independent cinema. Of course great films still emerge and stand out (Frances Ha and Computer Chess, notably both black and white, as if to announce their division from this trend), but the default level of quality has plummeted. So few filmmakers seem to attend to style with any level of rigour. Most of the American films that impress me come from established auteurs (Scorsese, Gray, Linklater, Raimi) and directors working within popular genres (Verbinski, James Wan, Rob Zombie, Shyamalan). I eagerly await Pompeii in the New Year with more enthusiasm than any “serious” films that come to mind. I think it’s a great time for cinema, and for experimentation, and each year I fall in love with movies all over again (and in new ways!) – but as much as I want to celebrate this medium, 2013 marked for me a time when I noticed dangerous holding patterns at the multiplexes and at festivals alike. It goes without saying that the list of ten films here – five of which are American, though only two of those were distributed – exemplify the opposite. They are united by their difference, by the distinct (and precise) visions that lead to and carried out their creation:

  1. The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013)
  2. Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)
  3. Stemple Pass (James Benning, 2013)
  4. Les Trois Désastres (The Three Disasters, Jean-Luc Godard, 2013)
  5. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
  6. Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz, 2013)
  7. L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
  8. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
  9.  The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski, 2013)
  10. Vic+Flo ont vu un ours (Vic+Flo Saw a Bear, Denis Côté, 2013)

Honourable mentions:

Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, 2013) & Uri Sunhi (Our Sunhi, 2013) (Hong Sang-soo)
Drug War (2012) & Blind Detective (2013) (Johnnie To)
Song (2013) & Spring (2013) (Nathaniel Dorsky)
E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me, Joaquim Pinto, 2013)

Special mention:

Venice 70 – Future Reloaded (Wang Bing, Abbas Kiarostami, Hong Sang-soo, Jean-Marie Straub, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)

Perhaps it bears mentioning that 2013 has also been the year where I felt the most out of step with critical consensus. Acclaimed films like Upstream Color, The Act of Killing, Gravity, American Hustle, Her and Inside Llewyn Davis all failed to bewitch me (to put it mildly), but I’d rather not dwell on them and prefer not to formally assemble a “worst-of” list.

Finally, a short list of my favourite performances (in alphabetical order):

James Benning, Stemple Pass
Marion Cotillard & Joaquin Phoenix, The Immigrant
Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Dwayne Johnson, Pain & Gain
Lee Kang-sheng, Stray Dogs
Brie Larson, Short Term 12
Andy Lau & Sammi Cheng, Blind Detective
Sheri Moon Zombie, The Lords of Salem

The Immigrant

The Immigrant


AL COSSAR

FILM PROGRAMMER, CRITIC, MELBOURNE.

Favourites: Some released or seen in Melbourne (some internationally old, but locally new) / a few acquainted elsewhere:

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)
All is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013)
American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013)
At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman, 2013)
Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier, 2013)
Dast-Neveshtehaa Nemisoosand (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, Mohammad Rasoulof, 2013)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
Omar (Hany Abu-Assad, 2013)
Ozymandias” Breaking Bad, Season 5, Episode 14 (Rian Johnson, 2013)
Starlet (Sean Baker, 2012)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
These Birds Walk (Omar Mullick & Bassam Tariq, 2013)
The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard, 2013)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhangke, 2013)
Uroki garmonii (Harmony Lessons, Emir Baigazin, 2013)
Vi är bäst! (We Are the Best!, Lukas Moodyson, 2013)

Minor notes (some explaining to do):

Re: American Hustle – from the time Jeremy Renner gives Christian Bale a microwave oven, henceforth referred to as a “science oven”, this was on a steep incline to the year’s best; a freewheeling reckoning of its characters’ manic aspirations which plays out as one of the most purely entertaining of 2013.

Re: “Ozymandias” Breaking Bad, Season 5, Episode 14 – yes, I’m the guy who adds in a TV episode to lists such as these when none is clearly called for. While the series finale was probably the most discussed, this prior episode in the final season was a perfect storm of horrific rolling climaxes, full of dread and an electric tension which was the equal or more of much of what I saw in the cinema this year.

Re: The Act of Killing – the fictions inherent in truth, and the truths possible in fiction.

Re: These Birds Walk – the curse of kids old before their time, a film that could have been worthy but instead was beautiful.

Re: Vi är bäst! – it’s nice to have the “nice” you back, Mr Moodyson.


SEAN CUBITT

GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.

Film of the year: La grande belezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013).

Modes of beauty and its betrayal in Berlusconi’s Roma. Inspired sound design exceeds even Fellini.

DVD release of the year: Song of the Shirt (Sue Clayton and Jonathan Curling, 1979).
Remaster of political indie classic available from the filmmakers.

Best effects: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013). Walkin’ in a Weta wonderland.

Gallery film of the year: JG (Tacita Dean, Frith Street Gallery, 2013). Better than her Tate Turbine hall installation, landscape reimagined through Ballard and Smithson.

Documentary: The King and The People (Simon Bright, 2013). Banned in Swaziland, a study of kleptocracy that reverberates far beyond the post-colony.

Turkey of the year: the entire Hollywood summer blockbuster season.

The Great Beauty

The Great Beauty


AARON CUTLER

PROGRAMMING AIDE FOR THE SAO PAULO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL; KEEPER OF FILM CRITICISM SITE, THE MOVIEGOER.

A highlight of 2013

My 2013 essentially began with a complete retrospective of films by Kira Muratova, programmed for the International Film Festival Rotterdam by Evgeny Gusyatinskiy. The first such series to happen outside Muratova’s native former Soviet Union revealed an incredible waltzing clown spirit whose approach to filmmaking has transformed continually over the past fifty-plus years. The Ukranian artist began her career co-directing lyrical works of Soviet realism with her first husband, Alexander Muratov. These films are deliberately small and sensitive studies of pastoral life alive with attention to Nature’s details, leaving space for running rabbits and pecking birds to animate the frames to the same extent that any potential human actor could.

From then on in her filmmaking, things grew more diffuse and crazed. From the beginning Muratova’s films matched flows of music, choreography, and camera movement in perpetual perfect elegance, denying the viewer’s eyes the chance to settle. She has since flooded her frames with more information over time, as though daring her audience to keep dancing along with her. The sad, sweet grace with which the rural lovers orbit around each other in Getting to Know the Big Wide World (1979) widens out to encompass the circular encounters in films like Change of Fortune (1987) and The Asthenic Syndrome (1989), with a disparate cross-section of strangers and social outsiders bouncing pinball-like off of each other, sometimes violently, in demented ways reflecting upon the madness of their surrounding culture.

The boundaries of the worlds that Muratova depicts – between rich and poor, men and women, street and theatre, lunacy and sanity, life and cinema, ideas and earth – are always in the process of dissolving. They do so partly thanks to a regular company of beautiful grotesque performers forever on the move to discomfort with pleasure.

Here are 11 great Muratova films:

  1. Korotkie vstrechi (Brief Encounters, 1967)
  2. Dolgie provody (Long Farewells, 1971)
  3. Poznavaya belyy svet (Getting to Know the Big Wide World, 1979)
  4. Peremena uchaste (Change of Fortune, 1987)
  5. Astenicheskiy sindrom (The Asthenic Syndrome, 1989)
  6. Cuvstvitelnyy milicioner (The Sentimental Policeman, 1992)
  7. Tri istorii (Three Stories, 1997)
  8. Vtorostepennye lyudi (Second Class Citizens, 2001)
  9. Chekhovskie motivy (Chekhov’s Motifs, 2002)
  10. Dva v odnom (Two in One, 2007)
  11. Vecnoe vozvrascenie (Eternal Homecoming, 2012) 

FERGUS DALY

FILM CRITIC, WRITING AT FERGUSDALY.COM.

Best recent films seen in 2013

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
Magnificent inflection [culmination?] of the style Malick has been experimenting with since The Thin Red Line.

Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life (Tamar Halpern, 2011)
Children’s Manhattan mystery in the great tradition of The World of Henry Orient.

Liv & Ingmar (Dheeraj Akolkar, 2012)
Despite the horrible music score, this is a movingly honest account of the relationship from Ullmann’s viewpoint.

Yeralti (Inside, Zeki Demirkubuz, 2012)
Turkey’s finest filmmaker gives us the best Dostoevsky adaptation in a long time.

Stand Up Guys (Fisher Stevens, 2012)
Who could resist Arkin, Walken and Pacino together?: oddness cubed.

Nancy, Please (Andrew Semans, 2012)
Worth it for the great Eleonore Hendricks alone.

Kid Thing (David Zellner, 2012)
Wonderful, felt like early Malick meeting Haruki Murakami.

Bad Fever (Dustin Guy Defa. 2012)
Not as Dostoevskian as its progenitor Frownland, but almost as funny.

The Last Rites of Joe May (Joe Maggio 2011)
Dennis Farina finally in a decent lead role.

Union Square (Nancy Savoca, 2011)
Mira Sorvino and Tammy Blanchard, two of the finest actresses around, as sisters going at it head-to-head.

Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Best of the trilogy.

This is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan, 2013)
Superb performance from Richmond Arquette.

Touchy Feely (Lynn Shelton, 2013)
Josh Pais creates a very interesting Bartleby-esque character in Shelton’s follow-up to Your Sister’s Sister.

La noche de enfrente (Night Across the Street, Raúl Ruiz, 2012)
My favourite of Ruiz’s late works.

Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-Soo 2013)
Hong continues to demonstrate why he may be the most cherished filmmaker working today.

Worst films of 2013

On the Road (Walter Salles, 2012)
Ill-conceived to the point of insanity – so bad it makes Michael Polish’s Big Sur look like the masterpiece it certainly isn’t.

Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Offensive in the way it attempts to steal the body and soul of mumblecore (ie Greta Gerwig) and give it a post-Nouvelle Vague gloss (even including a downright stupid “tribute” to Denis Lavant in Mauvais Sang), but, because it misconceives the innovations of mumblecore, it only succeeds in contributing to its ongoing devaluation.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery, 2013)
The fake poetic title speaks volumes.

Disappointment of the Year

Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
Even Bruce Dern can’t ignite what is in essence a pretty empty project.

Film-related event of 2013

Ennio Morricone open air concert, Dublin

Best TV Series

Rectify (Sundance Channel)

Best Film Criticism

Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian by Michael Witt

La Querelle des dispositifs: Cinema, Installations, Expositions by Raymond Bellour

Night Across the Street: Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ by Adrian Martin (Online at Fandor/Keyframe)

Holy Motors: Ruinous Representation by Tony McKibbin (Online at tonymckibbin.com)


TONI D’ANGELA

FOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, LA FURIA UMANA.

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
Passion (Brian De Palma, 2012)
Flight (Robert Zemeckis, 2012)
The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013)
The Canyons (Paul Schrader, 2013)
Le Dernier des injustes (The Last of the Unjust, Claude Lanzmann, 2013)
Mille soleils (A Thousand Suns, Mati Diop, 2013)
La Vénus à la fourrure (Venus in Furs, Roman Polanski, 2013)
Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz, 2013)
The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt, 2012)

Short movies
Saudade (Jean-Claude Rousseau, 2012)
Prisons – Notre corps est une arme (Prisons – Our Body is a Weapon, Clarisse Hahn, 2012)
La Madre (Jean-Marie Straub, 2012)
26 (Daphné Hérétakis, 2013)


MICHAEL DA SILVA

GRADUATE STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.

2013 was an engaging year in cinema. As my list below makes clear, many auteurs released interesting work. The list does not demonstrate the fact that Canadian auteurs in particular made impressive Hollywood breakthroughs. Edgar Wright and James Wan both produced fun genre fare. There were also surprises. For instance, both Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener, 2013) and Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton, 2013) felt like welcome gifts from another era. While the mainstream story of 2013 was the failure of the blockbuster, one blockbuster, Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013), provided the year’s most fun twenty-minute film segment. All is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013) was superior both as a film and as a genre exercise, but it is one of many films that did not include a superior action sequence to Gravity’s crash.

Below is my list of the top ten primarily English-language films released in Toronto in 2013. Films that only played the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012 are eligible. As in previous years, I did not see enough foreign-language cinema to rank 2013’s contributions to world cinema. My English-language requirement helps limit the scope of my analysis. That being said, my favourite film at TIFF 2013 was La Vie d’Adèle: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013). This list was produced on 12 December 2013, prior to the Toronto releases of American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013), Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan and Joel Coen, 2013), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013) and The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorcese, 2013). World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013) was the worst film I saw in 2013. Oldboy (Spike Lee, 2013) was the most disappointing film and a Canadian-directed film, Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013), was sadly the most overrated one.

  1. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
  2. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
  3. Hannah Arendt (Margarethe von Trotta, 2012)
  4. Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2012)
  5. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
  6. To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
  7. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
  8. Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
  9. Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)
  10. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012) / The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola, 2013)
Before Midnight

Before Midnight


DUSTIN DASIG

PROFESSOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, WRITER AND SECURITY TRAINING DIRECTOR, PHILLIPPINES.
  1. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
  2. Camille Claudel 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
  3. À perdre la raison (Our Children, Joachim Lafosse, 2012)
  4. Camille redouble (Camille Rewinds, Noémie Lvovsky, 2012)
  5. Boven is het stil (It’s All So Quiet, Nanouk Leopold, 2013)
  6. L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
  7. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
  8. Después de Lucía (After Lucia, Michel Franco, 2012)
  9. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
  10. No (Pablo Larrain, 2012) / Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)

With distinction 

Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012)
Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)
După dealuri (Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mingiu, 2012)
Lemale et ha’halal (Fill the Void, Rama Burshtein, 2012)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai, 2013)
Le Passé (The Past, Asghar Farhadi, 2013)
Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

Best performances 

Actor: Jeroen Williams in Boven is het stil (It’s All So Quiet, Nanouk Leopold, 2013)

Runner-up: Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)
Actress: Juliette Binoche in Camille Claudel 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
Runner-up: Paulina Garcia in Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013)

Best narrative and technical achievements
Best directing: Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
Best writing (screenplay): Bruno Dumont, Camille Claudel 1915 (Runner-up: Asghar Farhadi, Le Passé)
Best aural design (sound): The sound effects team of Gravity
Best visual design (cinematography): (tied) Barry Ackroyd, Captain Phillips and Kiko de la Rica, Blancanieves


ALEX JACK DAVIDSON

Best films

1. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2013)
Daring, vivid and different, Harmony Korine’s movie about greed and evil in today’s society is powerful in its strength of vision; a totally uncompromising portrayal of human evil in a way that we haven’t seen since Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, only updated for the dubstep generation. Beautiful, mesmerising and seductively malevolent, this is easily the most important film of the year, and it desires a lot more credit than it has received. Brilliant acting from both Selena Gomez and James Franco, and some of the most genuinely scary moments of all time, hidden under the guise of a “good girls go bad”, sex and drugs movie. Wise beyond compare.

2. The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)

More of a Cormac McCarthy film than a Ridley Scott film, The Counselor is intelligent, devious, and, with almost no moral characters, the most moralistic film in a long time, with its complex storytelling, rich dialogue and brooding message about the corruption of evil. This is a movie which challenges the “shades of grey” moral cowardice of films about anti-heroes, and misunderstood villains, by giving us a world in which there is only absolute good or total evil, and these two worlds shall never mix. As Malkina tells us; “…Nothing is crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining.” A dismal, mature cautionary tale of the finest order.

3. Byzantium (Neil Jordan, 2013)

Rich in lore and imagery, this horror film came out of nowhere, and told us perhaps the best vampire story since the original Hammer Dracula. Full of longing and an age-old weariness, this film combines beauty and sadness in a deftly romantic blend. Continually thought-provoking, Neil Jordan returns in style with a film which will hopefully dust off the Twilight curse for good. Gemma Arterton deserves to become the most sought after actress in Britain after this. The best British film of the year.

Worst films of 2013

1. Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013)

A tepid entry in a deeply annoying franchise, which asks us how long we can stand watching a hero who not only isn’t heroic, but who makes a habit of being the most arrogant and annoying human being in the world. This tiresome crowd-pleaser fulfilled its quota, by managing to find something in it which everyone hated, be it the tired regulars, the Mandarin twist, the lack of action, the brainless special effects, the nonsensical plot, or all of the above.

2. The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

Vinterberg’s tale of paranoia is an exercise in tedium, and rotten to the core with its ambiguous treatment of child abuse. Full of inconsistencies and illogical plot twists, this attempts to be realistic, but instead, is simply turgid, although the ever excellent Mads Mikkelsen manages to come out looking respectable. A rotten film about a truly rotten and subversive culture, this is an art film masking a very unpleasant philosophy.

Spring Breakers

Spring Breakers


MÓNICA DELGADO

PERUVIAN FILM CRITIC AND DIRECTOR OF DESISTFILM.

From one side, the other Spain, the one which tries to escape the crisis, the one which searches for new ways to realise a true independent cinema, sees the light strongly through a series of films about political and historical memory, or a simple cinephile nod or nostalgia for the Nouvelle Vague. From the other side, from South America, Argentina keeps surprising the world with its risky bets, from a body musical such as Los Posibles (Santiago Mitre and Juan Onorfi Barbato, 2013), to a “cumbia opera” about skaters somewhere along the province in P3nd3j05 (Raúl Perrone, 2013).

My best films of 2013

Redemption (Miguel Gomes, 2013)
Trois exercices d’interpretation (Three Exercises of Interpretation, Cristi Puiu, 2013)
Passion (Brian De Palma, 2012)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)
P3nd3jo5 (Raúl Perrone, 2013)
Costa da Morte (Coast of Death, Lois Patiño, 2013)
La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
Les Trois désastres (The Three Disasters, Jean-Luc Godard, 2013)
Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
Los Posibles (Santiago Mitre and Juan Onorfi Barbato, 2013)
Arraianos (Eloy Enciso, 2012)
Viola (Matías Piñeiro, 2012)
Salvo (Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, 2013)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
Pays Barbare (Barbaric Land, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, 2013)
El quinto evangelio de Gaspar Hauser (The Fifth Gospel of Kaspar Hauser, Alberto Gracia, 2013)
E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me, Joaquim Pinto, 2013)
El Futuro (Luis López Carrasco, 2013)
Soft in the Head (Nathan Silver, 2013)
Los ilusos (The Wishful Thinkers, Jonás Trueba, 2013)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Stemple Pass (James Benning, 2012)
Terra de Vikingos (Vikingland, Xurxo Chirro, 2011)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)


WHEELER WINSTON DIXON

RYAN PROFESSOR OF FILM STUDIES, COORDINATOR OF THE FILM STUDIES PROGRAM, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, LINCOLN, AND EDITOR IN CHIEF, WITH GWENDOLYN AUDREY FOSTER, OF THE BOOK SERIES NEW PERSPECTIVES ON WORLD CINEMA. 

Le Weekend (Roger Michell, 2013)
Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013)
In a World (Lake Bell, 2013)
What Maisie Knew (Scott McGehee & David Siegel, 2012)
The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
The Purge (James DeMonaco, 2013)
A Teacher (Hannah Fidell, 2013)
Adore (Anne Fontaine, 2013)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)

12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave



RUSSELL EDWARDS

SYDNEY-BASED FILM CRITIC SPECIALISING IN ASIAN AND AUSTRALIAN FILM.

Han Gong-ju (Lee Su-jin, 2013)
I Declare War (Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson, 2012)
R100 (Matsumoto Hitoshi, 2013)
Ilo Ilo (Anthony Chen, 2013)
The Conjuring (James Wan, 2013)
Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)
Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Mystery Road (Ivan Sen, 2013)
Flight (Robert Zemeckis, 2012)


WILLIAM EDWARDS

FILM FANATIC, SYDNEY.

My top ten of 2013:

  1. Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013)
  2. Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
  3. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)
  4. Soshite chichi ni naru (Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2013)
  5. Paradies: Glaube (Paradise: Faith, Ulrich Seidl, 2012)
  6. Call Girl (Mikael Marcimain, 2012)
  7. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (Nicholas D. Wrathall, 2013)
  8. Shokuzai (Penance (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2012)
  9. L’Inconnu du lac (Stramger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
  10. Sightseers (Ben Wheatley, 2012)

Worst of 2013:

  1. Carrie (Kimberley Peirce, 2013)
  2. Thanks for Sharing (Stuart Blumberg, 2013)
  3. Savages (Oliver Stone, 2012)
  4. The Paperboy (Lee Daniels, 2012)
  5. The World’s End (Edgar Wright, 2013)

TED FENDT

TRANSLATOR, OCCASIONAL CRITIC, FILMMAKER.

Films of the year (New releases/New York premieres)

Le Pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette, 1981)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)
Listening to the Space in My Room (Robert Beavers, 2013)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-Soo, 2013)
Dialogue d’ombres (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 2013)
La Madre (Jean-Marie Straub, 2012)
The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie, 2013)
La Jalousie (Jealousy, Philippe Garrel, 2013)
Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013)
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2013)
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Jeff Tremaine, 2013)
What Places of Heaven, What Planets Directed, How Long the Effects, or The General Accidents of the World (David Gatten, 2013)
Bullet to the Head (Walter Hill, 2013)
Fast & Furious 6 (Justin Lin, 2013)
A Primer to Sky Socialism (Ken Jacobs, 2013)

Repertory snapshot

I’ve seen far too many repertory films to organise into a coherent list so the following are just some of my absolute highlights.

Cheyenne Autumn (John Ford, 1964) 70mm print
The Fighting Odds (Allan Dwan, 1917)
Calamity Anne’s Ward (Allan Dwan, 1912)
Enchanted Island (Allan Dwan, 1958)
The Last Wagon (Delmar Daves, 1956)
Jeanne la Pucelle I: Les Batailles (Jacques Rivette, 1994)
Jeanne la Pucelle II: Les Prisons (Jacques Rivette, 1994)
Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard, 1990)
Fish (Unknown, 1916) One of Bert Williams’ two film appearances, in MoMA’s Cruel and Unusual Comedy series
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1927)
Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class (William Greaves, 1968)
He (Tom Palazzolo, 1966)
Paris 1900 (Nicole Védrès, 1947)
This Day and Age (Cecil B. DeMille, 1933)
Life is a Dream (Raúl Ruiz, 1986)
Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1983)
Wild Boys of the Road (William A. Wellman, 1933)
Northern Lights (John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, 1978)
The Apparition (Lawrence Jordon, 1976)

To the Wonder

To the Wonder


ADALBERTO FONKÉN

LIMA-BASED SOCIAL COMMUNICATOR AND FILM WRITER FOR THE SÉPTIMA ILUSIÓN BLOG.

Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
A long afternoon of memories, reflections and bitter confessions.

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
The weightlessness, far from the earth, can be astonishing and terrible.

The Conjuring (James Wan, 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
The controversial search for the most wanted man in the world.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

El Limpiador (The Cleaner, Adrián Saba, 2012)
Minimalist and post-apocalyptic Peruvian film in a desolate and silent Lima.

La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)
A bohemian journalist/writer walking through the streets of “Felliniana” Rome.

Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Heli (Amat Escalante, 2013)
Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013)
Paradies: Hoffnung (Paradise: Hope, Ulrich Seidl, 2013)

Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)
An Italian sound studio with terrifying and typical sounds of Giallo.
O Som ao redor (Neighboring Sounds, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012)
Sounds, insecurity and routine in a Brazilian urban neighbourhood.

Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 2012)
Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)
La noche de enfrente (Night Across the Street, Raúl Ruiz, 2012)
Viola (Matías Piñeiro, 2012)
Educación Física (Physical Education, Pablo Cerda, 2012)

Documentary

Vers Madrid (The Burning Bright!) (Sylvain George, 2012)
Leviathan (Lucian Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, 2012)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
Searching for Sugarman (Malik Bendjelloul, 2012)
As Canções (Songs, Eduardo Coutinho, 2011)


GWENDOLYN AUDREY FOSTER

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, LINCOLN, CO-EDITOR OF QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO, AND SERIES EDITOR (WITH WHEELER WINSTON DIXON) OF THE BOOK SERIES NEW PERSPECTIVES ON WORLD CINEMA FOR ANTHEM PRESS.

Post Tenebras Lux (Light After Darkness, Carlos Reygadas, 2012)
Hors Satan (Outside Satan, Bruno Dumont, 2011)
După dealuri (Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
Adore (Anne Fontaine, 2013)
Jagten (The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)
Camille Claudel, 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
À perdre la raison (Our Children, Joachim Lafosse, 2012)
Abus de faiblesse (Abuse of Weakness, Catherine Breillat, 2013)
Concussion (Stacie Passon, 2013)
A Teacher (Hannah Fidell, 2013)

Camille Claudel, 1915

Camille Claudel, 1915


JEAN-MICHEL FRODON

FILM CRITIC AT SLATE.FR AND PROFESSOR AT PARIS SCIENCES PO.

Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Leviathan (Lucian Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2012)
La Jalousie (Jealousy, Philippe Garrel, 2013)
The Lebanese Rocket Society (Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, 2012)
L’intervallo (Leonardo Di Costanza, 2012)
Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai, 2013)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Leones (Jazmin Lopes, 2013)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan and Joel Coen, 2013)
La Vie d’Adèle: chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Història de la meva mort (Story of My Death, Albert Serra, 2013)
Jimmy P. (Psychothérapie d’un Indien des Plaines) (Jimmy P., Arnaud Desplechin, 2013)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
Camille Claudel 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
Pink (Jeon Soo-il, 2011)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
Vic+Flo ont vu un ours (Vic+Flo Saw a Bear, Denis Côté, 2013)
Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2013)


ANDREW GILBERT

CURRENTLY WORKING ON HIS PHD ON WOMEN, GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, UNITED STATES. HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN FILM REVIEWS FOR CLÉO AND SCREEN MACHINE.

Stemple Pass (James Benning, 2012)
The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt, 2012)
Les Salauds (Bastards, Claire Denis, 2013)
Sun Don’t Shine (Amy Seimetz, 2012)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang Soo, 2013)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Du zhan (Drug War, Johnnie To, 2012)
Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013)
The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie, 2012)
The Canyons (Paul Schrader, 2013)
The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013) 


ANTONY I. GINNANE

PRODUCER, DISTRIBUTOR AND COMMENTATOR, MELBOURNE / LOS ANGELES. PRESIDENT OF FG FILM PRODUCTIONS (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD / IFM WORLD RELEASING INC; CURRENTLY PRODUCING TURKEY SHOOT RELOADED AND BLOWBACK IN AUSTRALIA.

Top 10 (Eligibility: 2013 theatrical, festival or premiere DVD or VOD first release in the USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand) listed alphabetically by title:

The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)
Ridley takes on Tony’s mantle with this visual feast with ice-cold Cormac McCarthy dialogue. A very hot view of a very cold world.

Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Tarantino continues with his encyclopaedic and introspective review of genre – here the western. Postmodern irony blended with a Leone like post-classical eye.

După dealuri (Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
Extraordinary stark visuals compliment the madness of the cult like devotion of the protagonists – their doubts and a complex exit path.

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Both a technical tour de force and an oddly spiritual tract – the philosophical edges of a sci-fi subset that began with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Alfonso Cuarón mixes magic and sentiment. Both work.

Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai, 2013)
The same ethereal, almost surrealistic narrative style that bled through In the Mood for Love (2000) is mixed with big screen martial arts sequences that strangely recall Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955). More poetic than epic.

Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)
Peckinpah meets Walter Hill in this revenge-blooded taste of crime and punishment laced with existential black humour.

Passion (Brian De Palma, 2013)
No one moves a camera like De Palma anymore and no one frames mystery or eroticism or cuts suspense like he does. A stimulating potpourri of his obsessions.

Rush (Ron Howard, 2013)
Howard is the able successor to Howard Hawks. Here pitting two professionals against each other, the group and the system with the same sense of fatalism and nonchalance that imbued Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939) or Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965).

Side Effects (Steven Soderberg, 2013)
The conspiracy thriller – a 70s sub-genre that never went away. And Soderberg’s take on Big Pharma like Cronenberg in The Brood (1979) suggests no good can come from messing God-like with man. Not a new notion, but a new view.

Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
The other Hawks apostle, Kathryn Bigelow, does a mission picture that recalls so many of his men-on-a-job pics. Pain promotes endurance equals success.

Other titles that have excited or inspired me during the year include:

Lo imposible (The Impossible, J.A. Bayona, 2012)
Gangster Squad (Ruben Fleischer, 2013)
Parker (Taylor Hackford, 2013)
Dead Man Down (Niels Arden Oplev, 2013)
The Call (Brad Anderson, 2013)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2013)
Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012)
Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013)
The Company You Keep (Robert Redford, 2012)
Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013)
Despicable Me 2 (Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud, 2013)
All is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013)
The Wolverine (James Mangold, 2013)
Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013)
Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)
Carrie (Kimberly Peirce, 2013)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
August: Osage County (John Wells, 2013)
Mama (Andrés Muschietti, 2013)

Django Unchained

Django Unchained


PAUL DOUGLAS GRANT

TRANSLATOR OF SERGE DANEY’S POSTCARDS FROM THE CINEMA. TEACHES CINEMA STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN CARLOS, CEBU, PHILIPPINES.

1. Kordero sa Dios (Keith Deligero, 2012)
2. Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim (A Star’s Journey into the Dark Night, Arnel Mardoquio, 2013)
3. Restored Maynila: sa mga kuko ng liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Light, Lino Brocka, 1975)
4. Behind The Flickering Light (Hafiz Rancajale, 2013)
5. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 2012)
6. Aliyana Ang Enkantada (Eugene Labella, 1974; found 2013)
7. Gema Dari Menara (Mohasbi Ahmad, 1968; found by Mervin Espina 2013)
8. Pimean Akas (Celestial Space, Ukrit Sa-Nguanhai, 2013)
9. Restored Oro Plata Mata (Peque Gallaga, 1982)
10. Jungle Love (Sherad Anthony Sanchez, 2012)


JAIME GRIJALBA

STUDIED FILMMAKING, WRITES SCREENPLAYS, REVIEWS MOVIES, AND IS INVOLVED IN TWITCHFILM, WRITING EXCLUSIVELY ON THE SUBJECT OF CHILEAN CINEMA.

20. We’re the Millers (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2013)
19. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
18. Naomi Campbell (Nicolás Videla and Camila José Donoso, 2013)
17. Moebius (Kim Ki-duk, 2013)
16. Narco Cultura (Shaul Schwarz, 2013)
15. Il futuro (The Future, Alicia Scherson, 2013)
14. Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)
13. Koto no ha no niwa (The Garden of Words, Makoto Shinkai, 2013)
12. Barroco (Barroque, Estanislao Buisel Quintana, 2013)
11. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
10. Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
9. Trance (Danny Boyle, 2013)
8. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2013)
7. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
6. The Dirties (Matt Johnson, 2013)
5. Top of the Lake (Jane Campion and Garth Davis, 2013)
4. Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
3. The World’s End (Edgar Wright, 2013)
2. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013)
1. Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-Wai, 2013)

Inside Llewyn Davis

Inside Llewyn Davis


BARTHÉLÉMY GUILLEMET

L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
La Vénus à la fourrure (Venus in Fur, Roman Polanski, 2013)
La Fille du 14 juillet (The Rendez-Vous of Déjà-Vu, Antonin Peretjako, 2013)
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhangke, 2013)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013)
No (Pablo Larraín, 2012)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

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