By Brett Blake As we start a new year, I feel it’s something of a responsibility to highlight films from the previous year that aren’t quite getting the appreciation they deserve, films that may have been well-received when they were released (in fact, all that follow were, for the most part), but for whatever reason are basically nowhere to be found in the big end-of-year conversation that’s taking place in the film community. I’m not just talking about awards consideration, either, but also the general “Hey, such-and-such was a really good movie” kind of discussion that takes place as one year rolls into the next. So, since nobody else is really talking about these, the task falls to me. Now, I’ll be completely honest, this is really just an excuse to highlight some good films that didn’t quite make it onto my “Best of 2013” list (still coming soon!). So consider this something of an appetizer to tide you over until the main event. With that said, here are seven films haven’t yet gotten their due… THE BOOK THIEF Despite appearing - on paper, anyway - to be something of an Oscar-bait film, THE BOOK THIEF has shown up on hardly any “Best of” lists, and awards pundits forecast it being essentially shut out from any significant nominations, save for John Williams’ lovely score (though he’s always nominated when he has an eligible score, so that really says more about respect for him than for the movie itself). I won’t make an argument that THE BOOK THIEF should be in major awards contention, but I will make the argument that it’s a high quality, genuinely affecting World War II drama. Yes, it plays with tropes we’ve seen before, but it does this extremely well, and Sophie Nélisse gives a remarkably accomplished performance for somebody so young. MY AMITYVILLE HORROR This documentary film is ostensibly a look the famed “Amityville Horror” haunting case from the 1970s through the eyes of one of the (now grown) children who lived through it, but the movie is actually much more than that, and it evolves over the course of its running time to become a portrait of deep psychological trauma. While the broad strokes of the haunting and its history are covered, the movie never loses sight of the damaged man at the center of it all, and more than anything else, it makes the case for how easily events can shape the entire outlook of the rest of a person’s life. PRISONERS PRISONERS is one more script draft away from a masterpiece of suspense. There are some spectacular sequences in this film, as well as a pair of tremendous performances from Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. At times the movie is almost unbearably tense, and while developments in the third act come dangerously close to being too overwrought (and even silly), the film’s mastery of tone keeps everything from flying apart. Special mention must go to the starkly-beautiful cinematography (courtesy of the brilliant Roger Deakins), as well as the gutsy ending which won’t leave every audience member satisfied, but will get them talking about what they’ve just experienced. SIDE EFFECTS We have to go all the way back to February of 2013 for this one, and I really think that distance of time is the reason we’re not hearing more about SIDE EFFECTS at the end of the year. Director Steven Soderbergh claims this will be his final theatrical motion picture, and it’s a terrific note to go out on, a film clearly inspired by the works of Alfred Hitchcock - and, if we’re being honest, there’s a lot of Brian De Palma in here, too - that works as a top-flight suspense film of the sort that constantly keeps you guessing as to what the outcome will be. Soderbergh’s direction is as classy as ever, and the movie features Jude Law giving one of the performances of his career as a man whose life is slowly spinning out of his control. YOU'RE NEXT I think that 2013 was, all things considered, a fine year for mainstream (read: big-studio-released) horror films, and YOU’RE NEXT is one of the better poster children for that opinion. It’s a really clever spin on the “home invasion killers” subgenre (take THE STRANGERS, for example), and the way it both fulfills and subverts your expectations for this kind of movie is quite inventive on a script level. It’s a ton of fun, and it showcases a capable, badass female lead character rarely seen in horror films. The movie’s not particularly terrifying (it’s more of a dark romp, really), but it’s never anything less than completely entertaining. OUT OF THE FURNACE This film was released barely a month ago, and nobody is talking about it, which is both perplexing and a shame, since it features awards-caliber work from at least three of its cast members, the standout being Christian Bale. This could be the performance of Bale’s career so far (time will tell); it’s a performance of restraint, rage, and - ultimately - deep humanity that I found to be enormously affecting. OUT OF THE FURNACE is a pitch-black film, a tale of vengeance and crime, with a tone that some could find oppressive or hard to stomach, so I can understand it not being for everybody, but I hope people eventually do give it a look, because the acting is that good. ROOM 237 No movie this year - fictional or otherwise - was able to convey the power of cinema as well as this documentary. On the surface, it’s a deceptively simple film - we’re presented with several theories/interpretations/analyses of Stanley Kubrick’s seminal horror movie, THE SHINING. The proponents of these theories never appear on camera; we only hear their voices as they speak over the film itself, which almost serves to transform them into one of the many disembodied spirits occupying the sinister, haunted Overlook hotel of THE SHINING itself. Most of the theories put forth are, quite honestly, rather goofy (one involves Kubrick using THE SHINING as subtle means to confess his involvement in faking the moon landing in 1969), but they illustrate the unique property of cinema, which is the idea that you can sit a hundred different people down in front of this collection of moving images and you’ll get a hundred different perspectives on what it all means. As much as ROOM 237 is a celebration of the greatness of THE SHINING, it’s equally a celebration of the magic of cinema itself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|