Rollie's Picks
Jon's Picks
A class war in a powder-keg, Woody Allen has crafted a
poignant family comedy into a frank examination of income inequality, an
indictment of idle wealth, and a tragic portrait of the contemporary poor. This
is a comedy befitting comparisons to those of Preston Sturgess, invoking the
plight of the working man, and doubling as a cautionary tale for the dated
tradition of women who elect to define themselves by the men in their lives,
investing their fortunes in a patriarchal society. That Blue Jasmine is the
best film of the year depends on the tact and the craft with which Allen melds
so many prescient issues into such a modest pleasure.
2. The Wolf of Wall St. (John - #1, Rollie - #6)
Martin
Scorsese's latest film is, on the face of things, a dark comedy about the
hedonism and excess that reigned on Wall Street during the high-flying 1980s.
Beyond that, it's also a masterpiece that encapsulates and further explores all
the themes that have permeated Scorsese's films since the 1970s -- temptation,
sin and the ruinous ramifications of living life without a centre. Scorsese
also plays some fun games in his narrative with the audience about voyeurism,
the desire for wealth and escapism. Scorsese knows that he's in a similar
business to the one that Jordan Belfort engaged in with his securities fraud,
and while Scorsese's racket is substantially more moral, he seems to still have
some kind of Catholic guilt complex about it.
3. Mystery Road (Jon - #2, Rollie, N/A)
Mystery Road is an elegant thriller, a gripping drama, a visual feast
and at times even a solid action picture. Anchored by the sure directorial hand
of Ivan Sen and a cast of actors that are uniformly stupendous (Aaron Pederson
and Hugo Weaving are two that spring to mind), Mystery Road is a smart movie, realistic about race relations in
remote Australia while also being aware of the need for its central murder
mystery to work. It builds to a finale that retains the elegant pacing of the
rest of the film while also proving to be more exciting and tense than most big
studio cops and robbers films.
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Rollie - #2, Jon - N/A)
Llewyn Davis, the struggling folk artist at the heart of the
Coen Brothers’ latest masterpiece, exists inconsequentially within a time and a
place where the very cultural paradigm shift he had advocated was occurring
anyway. With him? Without him? He’s hurling stones at the tide, so to speak. Inside Llewyn Davis becomes a film that challenges our sense of purpose, and
becomes one of the most political films the brothers Coen have produced, looking
harshly on the “institution” as an abstract, plutocratic conceit that suffocates
individualism, making Llewyn’s isolating hesitancy toward his peers the arbiter
of his own failure.
5. Blue is the Warmest Color (Rollie - #3, Jon, N/A)
A visceral, physical movie of extraordinary emotional
vulnerability, “Blue is the Warmest Color” looks at the galvanized culture of
the LGBTQ community as a byproduct of social exclusion, dictated by the very
element of their identity that finds them ostracized in the first place, and
observes the intense social difficulties that arise from being gay without
participating in that culture. French director Abdellatif Kechiche’s use of sex
as an arena for revelation, both for maturity and for desire, is
transformative. Scenes of exhilarating duration are choreographed like
thrilling action set-pieces. It is fearless film making.
6. Lincoln (Jon - #3, Rollie - N/A) ('Lincoln' was a 2012 release in America)
Steven
Spielberg's Lincoln is essentially
the sort of film we would expect a docudrama about Abraham Lincoln to be --
reverent, sombre, sumptuously detailed, beautifully photographed. It worships Honest Abe, even to the point
that it takes some liberties with history to really lionize him. Spielberg,
though, is a sure handed, competent director whose evocation of the ending of
the Civil War and emphasizing on the strengths of Lincoln as a leader cast a
mesmerizing and touching spell. Daniel Day-Lewis interprets the cadences and
tics of the great man to magnificent effect, and his performance provides the
audience with something the film desperately needed to be effective -- a
personal connection to the 16th President.
7. American Hustle (Jon - #4, Rollie - N/A)
David O.
Russell - that most artistically mercurial of modern American indie directors -
outdoes himself with American Hustle,
an almost undefinable combination of humour, thriller, docudrama and analysis
of American social milieu. Christian Bale once again completely transforms
himself physically for the role of con man Irving Rosenfeld, who along with his
partner Sydney (Amy Adams, excellent here) is extorted by an unscrupulous and
ambitious FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, turning in yet another charismatic and
funny performance) into entrapping corrupt politicians, including the mayor of
Camden, New Jersey (Jeremy Renner, in an underrated performance). What ensues is
funny, engrossing and hugely entertaining. American
Hustle is a solid comedy/drama that becomes a cut above due to the quality
of its performances.
8. The Counselor (Rollie - #4, Jon - N/A)
Ridley Scott’s latest film, based on a screenplay by
Cormac McCarthy, is an existential meditation on the folly of brutish masculine
ambition. Mexican drug cartels provide the impetus for McCarthy’s morality
play, a subject he’s approached before. Here they exist as an omniscient aura
of consequence, indifferent to regret and to redemption. It is that very
absolution that arouses the appetites of the power-hungry and the proud, who
discover too late that this harsh world exists without apologies or lessons to
be learned, but merely with death and futility. Buried within this somber,
eloquent, beautiful fable is a parallel theme of men who are undone by their
mistreatment or patronizing misunderstanding of women. Ambition here is neither
fruitful nor noble, and McCarthy’s running parallel between ambition and
self-destruction endures.
9. Gravity (Jon - #6, Rollie - #8)
Our
fragility as beings in the vacuum of space and the implied value of our planet
as a kind of organic spaceship are in the crosshairs of Gravity, the ultra-tense science fiction film directed by Mexican
New Waver Alfonso Cuaron. Sandra Bullock may well win an Oscar for her role as
medical engineer turned reluctant astronaut Ryan Stone, and it would be hard to
argue against it. She extracts humanity and terrified wonder in equal measure,
and for most of the film she does so with no co-stars. Cuaron expertly guides
the action as director; one impressive aspect of this film is its physical accuracy,
and aside from a thriller, Gravity operates
as an entertaining explanation of how space works. Cuaron doesn't waver from
the humans at the forefront of his tale, though, and in their plight we come to
appreciate even more our odd, special place in the cosmos.
10. 12 Years a Slave (Rollie - #6, Jon - N/A)
Steve McQueen has elected to view the Antebellum South, as
adapted from Solomon Northup’s autobiography of the same name, with the same
sense of hyper-control and composition that he brought to his earlier feature
films. The approach makes his view of the horrors of slavery stringent and
unbending, the hopelessness of this institution born of the depth of its roots.
This is a confrontational film, even a combative one, insisting that we observe
unflinchingly the shame of our history, that we embed it in our conscience all
over again. The result has been difficult for many to endure, and I can
understand why. Engaging with this material is nearly impossible. Its catharsis
is minuscule. And the more we allow ourselves to think in this way, the more
necessary Mr. McQueen’s film becomes.
The Rest of Our Lists
Jon
7. This is the End
8. The Conjuring
9. Pacific Rim
10. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
Rollie
7. Nebraska
9. To the Wonder
10. Frances Ha
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