The Best Films of 2013

Luke Miksa's: The Negative Space Bar

2013 was a pretty fantastic year for cinema — as long as you look past onset of blockbuster/superhero fatigue, often ridiculous Australian release schedules for smaller films (aka Stupid Australian Release Schedules), and a strange fascination with the apocalypse arriving a year too late. But I kid; for every annoyance, the medium produces many things to be excited about. I’m keeping this positive!

Let’s get down to it:

Missing the cut: The Wolverine, The Way Way Back, Side Effects, The Kings of Summer

I havn’t seen these (mainly due to Stupid Australian Release Schedules) but I’d probably dig them: The Wolf of Wall Street, Her, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, Dallas Buyers Club, 12 Years a Slave, Short Term 12

Cloud Atlas was released in Australia in 2013 (Stupid Australian Release Schedules), but for the sake of this list it will be treated as a 2012 film.

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10. Captain Phillips

The second-most intense film of the year (number one is below), which is made more so due to the fact that the incredible events depicted in Captain Phillips actually happened (sans the Hollywood artistic license). Tom Hanks knocks this role out of the water with an incredibly strong showing, and his performance in the final scenes left me in shocked silence for a while. Director Paul Greengrass knocked this one up a notch, even with his visceral, shaky-shaky handheld style (which I’m generally not a fan of).

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Review: Pacific Rim (2013) — A Big-Budget Movie Worth Getting Excited Over

Pacific Rim

This is a world where humanity is deep in a years long war with giant monsters, known as Kaiju; creatures that have emerged from deep beneath the ocean and have begun attacking major cities. These Kaiju have necessitated the design of unique weapons: enormous robots known as Jaegers, simultaneously controlled by two pilots, psychically linked to each other as well as the gigantic mechs, an act known as ‘drifting’. With mankind’s resources tapped, and the annihilation of the human race imminent, a washed-up Jeager pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) find themselves in a desperate last stand against the Kaiju, with the ultimate fate of the world at stake.

More believable than the Australian accents.

The first thing I can say about Pacific Rim is that it is a breath of fresh air among a sea of clunky, cynical, and dark blockbusters. In the world of irony-laced, mega-budget films, this is a film which relishes in its humanity and humility; it has a general sense of altruism which makes seeing big movies like these such an exciting experience. Director Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Cronos) has created pure spectacle, free of self-reference and cheeky nods.

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