As usual in the midst of awards season, my cinematic viewings lately have been pretty heavy. And now it’s time for something completely different.

Girl Walk // All Day is one of my favorite films I’ve seen lately, except that I’m not sure it’s a film at all. It used to be that movies came in pretty much one format — you went to the theater and watched them all in one go. If it was a super long movie, maybe you’d get an intermission, but that was it.

But times have changed, my friends, and so has cinema. What separates the stuff we watch on YouTube from the stuff we’d watch in a theater? Quality and budget, mostly — but not necessarily. Girl Walk // All Day is feature-length with pretty good production value; it takes place all over New York City and is quite competently shot and edited, which is more than you can say about the majority of stuff currently floating around the internet. And yet, content-wise, it has more in common with the flash mob videos your mom still posts on your Facebook wall than it does with Zero Dark Thirty.

Girl Walk // All Day is essentially a 71-minute music video set to Girl Talk’s album All Day. There’s a loose story about three strangers who are inexplicably possessed by the spirit of Girl Talk’s music, presumably, and wander New York City dancing all the while, occasionally joined by passersby and sometimes crossing paths with one another. The most memorable of these is The Girl, performed by Anne Marsen, who clearly has some talent but is far from a technically perfect dancer; her go-for-broke moves are relatable, and what make her so compelling to watch.

There’s also a guy dubbed The Creep (John Doyle), so named because he exhibits some minor stalker tendencies and is dressed like a skeleton. He’s another compulsively watchable dancer, and again, not too polished. The least interesting figure is The Gentleman, who is probably the most technically proficient dancer but also the least interesting of the three. That’s because the other two, in some ways, come across as if they’ve never danced before — or at least, never like this. There’s a spontaneity to their movements (even if there must have been a fair amount of rehearsal to get this film right), a sense that this is one crazy day in their lives. But in the case of The Gentleman, it feels like he’s been doing this his whole life.   It hardly takes away from the fun of watching any of them perform, though. Girl Walk // All Day is a true New York City movie because most of the passersby by stride right past the dancers without so much as a glance of acknowledgement. That’s Manhattan, a place where you often will see people vigorously dancing on their own, perhaps for profit, perhaps as a result of insanity. (There’s even a delightful accidental cameo by New York legend Bill Cunningham, snapping photos as ever.)

The film moves through enough different locations and scenarios to keep things interesting; briefly, there’s a hint of romance, but that storyline never bogs down the rest. There’s also some Occupy Wall Street political commentary, as well as a couple moments when The Girl tries to get real people to dance with her, with mixed results. The film is divided into twelve segments, all of which are distinct. There’s a real progression here, if it isn’t in the service of a conventional narrative.

It’s all set to Girl Talk’s album, a radio-friendly collection of pop and hip hop hits that should be at least 90% familiar to most casual listeners of music. It’s where artists like Ke$ha and Waka Flocka Flame meet U2 and John Lennon, which is exactly why All Day is the perfect album for a film like this, and why New York is the perfect location. From the interior of an Apple store to the Apollo in Harlem (my old stomping grounds), somehow Girl Walk // All Day manages to capture the New York experience in total better than any other film in my mind. As The Girl and her pals dance through the city, we brush up against all the same people you do every day in Manhattan, which is why New Yorkers, I think, can find a special affinity for this film.

After all, if ever there was a city built for mash-up culture, it’s New York — a place where people from all walks of life are smooshed together, everybody bringing a little something different to the table. And somehow, all those disparate noises become homogenous, even harmonious.

Like Girl Talk’s album, Girl Walk // All Day is available online in its entirety (because obviously the music rights would cost millions of dollars). In some ways, the do-it-yourself, sell-it-for-free approach feels rather revolutionary, like we’re catching a glimpse at the future of filmmaking. And since I watched chapter after chapter like a junkie in desperate need of his next fix, I’d be just fine with that.

Which brings me to another surprisingly good movie I caught up with recently — Pitch Perfect. The summer release was unfortunately marketed as some sort of unholy cash cow lovechild of Glee and Bridesmaids, which doesn’t nearly do it justice. (That’s the reason I avoided in theaters… if only I’d known.) Mercifully, this movie has much more in common with the latter than the former (namely, Rebel Wilson and one major gross-out centerpiece), and even goes so far as to slyly poke a little fun at the Fox debacle it will inevitably be compared to. Pitch Perfect is smarter, though, primarily because characters only burst into song when performing (and with more inspired music choices, generally).

Anna Kendrick stars as Beca, a moody mash-up artist who’d rather skip college to move to L.A. and be a music producer. (It plays less awful than it sounds.) Thanks to a fairly contrived situation with her father, Beca gets roped into singing along with one of four campus a cappella groups, headed by Anna Camp and Brittany Snow. There’s also a geeky love interest played by Skylar Astin, who sings on a rival team… and, okay, now that I’m describing it, it sure doesn’t sound like a good movie. But I promise: the writing is sharper than usual, the supporting characters more winning than your average college comedy, and the script has a self-aware quality that avoids taking any of this very seriously. It’s one of the most quotable joke-a-minute comedies since Mean Girls, even if a few conventional trappings (mostly with the romantic subplot) stop it from truly transcending every cliche of the standard teen comedy.

Pitch Perfect manages to make almost much use out of mash-ups as Girl Walk // All Day. The song selections don’t feel like such shameless “you’re going to go to iTunes and download this now, right?” commercialism behind them, a la Glee. (Plus, Beca’s “Cups” is just awesome.) Both films use other people’s music to great effect and have the same endlessly rewatchable quality of musical/comedy greats.

I know I’ll be watching them both again, as soon as possible. Maybe even right now.

*

It’s Oscar time!

As usual, the Academy Awards are poised to make some very wrong decisions this year. So as usual, I am prematurely correcting them by releasing my Top Ten of the year.

That year is 2012, of course — real film critics release such lists at the end of December or beginning of January, but since I have numerous other obligations, you get it in late February, once I’ve had a chance to catch up with nearly all eligible films.

It was, overall, a good year for cinema — not the best in recent memory, but better than the past couple of years, on the whole. Women facing great obstacles factored largely into my faves this year, and a surprising three of my picks are in French. (But no other languages — sorry, rest of the world.)

You can find my full-length review by clicking on the title of the movie. Bon appetit!

HardintheCity’s Top 10 Films of 2012:

10. GIRL WALK // ALL DAY

My #10 slot tends to be my “I recommend this, but…” spot, and this year I’m cheating even more than usual. Girl Walk // All Day is not actually a 2012 film, nor was it given a proper theatrical release. In fact, the entire thing can (and should) be watched online. (Legally!) You have no excuse not to watch it immediately.

Jacob Krupnick’s film is essentially a lengthy music video set to Girl Talk’s album All Day, which itself “borrows” music from huge artists like Rihanna and U2 and Lady Gaga. Rights? Who needs right to anything in the age of the internet? Well, nobody, as long as you’re not making any money. Anne Marsen, Dai Omiya, and John Doyle carry the movie on the spirit of their moves alone — not so much technically polished as compulsively watchable — and you never know just what’s going to happen next. I just couldn’t turn it off.

So what makes this different than any YouTube video of a flash mob? I’ll tell you: I don’t know. I can only go with my gut, in that it feels like a film rather than some silly clip that’s been put up online. It’s full-length, for one thing, and for another there’s a lot more thought put into the craft and the execution than most things you’ll find on the internet. And yet it has the same fun “let’s put it on a show!” / do-it-yourself / handmade quality as the best of what the internet has to offer. In the future, I reckon, more films will be like this, so I may as well start putting them on my Top 10 now.

And yet, if anyone still has a problem with this pick, then I will happily substitute my #11 film of the year, Pitch Perfect, a surprisingly sharp and hilarious film that also uses mash up culture to great effect. So there.

9. AMOUR

Fun! Laughter! Dancing! Joy! Those are things you will never find in a Michael Haneke movie. (Even when it’s called Funny Games.) Amour is no exception. It is, however, a departure from his more confrontational body of work that preceded this slow and steady meditation on growing old and dying. Did I mention it’s not a comedy?

Plenty of films are about love, but few tackle this end of it. Decades after riding off into the sunset together, or however it is they met, any couple that grows old together will face some version of this story. Neither Georges nor Anne is as quick or spry as they used to be; they’ve stopped looking forward, and are looking back. Then one of them suffers a stroke and becomes greatly disabled, both mentally and physically — but not completely, because that’d be too easy. Emmanuelle Riva’s astonishing performance makes us guess how much of Anne is present in every scene, and how much of her mind has wandered far, far away. For a character who can hardly move, her performance is quite physical — even when it’s just her face doing the heavy lifting.

In Amour, Haneke gets the chance to be something he almost never is — subtle — and is a better filmmaker for it. That isn’t to say he completely loses his relish for punishing the audience, but here it feels earned, because Amour is no crueler than life is. Unlike its title, Amour is merciless and not easy to cozy up to, but its power lingers long after it’s over. Like being haunted by a loved one.

8. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

At last! 2012 was the year Joss Whedon finally emerged as a filmmaking force to be reckoned with, and yes, The Avengers was quite good — especially compared to your average superhero movie (if still not quite on par with the very best, like The Dark Knight). It had a few Whedon signature touches of banter and humor, and yet, for a full dose of what fans love about the geek auteur, there’s an even better bet — The Cabin In The Woods, which he co-wrote with former Buffy The Vampire Slayer scribe Drew Goddard. It is, of course, no straight-up slice-and-dice affair, as anyone unfamiliar with Whedon’s genre send-ups would expect from the generic title. Instead, it’s the cleverest and most meta horror movie since Kevin Williamson’s Scream. What Scream did for slasher flicks, The Cabin In The Woods does for the rest of the horror genre.

The Cabin In The Woods doesn’t work quite as well within its genre as Scream does, at functioning both as a truly scary horror piece while also making sly commentary on over-familiar tropes. The genre conventions of The Cabin In The Woods are, well, generic, but thankfully there’s a lot more going on than just that. The third act in particular is to die for, but what cuts even deeper is what the film has to say about human nature — why do we watch horror movies? What does that say about us? Why do we want to see the same types of people die, over and over and over?

This the ultimate valentine to the horror genre, which is why many critics and horror fans fell for it, but it’s to Whedon’s credit that the film doesn’t settle for just a couple of winks and nudges, but also goes for the jugular thematically. The most callous scene has a major character about to meet a gruesome end, unnoticed, as a party rages around the image on a TV monitor — a sly response to the way we, too, often feel nothing when stereotypical horror heroines meet their maker. The last scene is a winking “fuck you” to the audience, but not a mean-spirited one; to reference a very different auteur whose work is also present in this list, The Cabin In The Woods basically makes the same point Michael Haneke has made numerous times, but actually has a little fun doing so. And so do we. Is that so wrong? Well, if so, we’re likely to be punished for it…

7. HOLY MOTORS

A fitting segue from The Cabin In The Woods, Holy Motors is as much a commentary on cinema as Whedon and Goddard’s horror film — it’s just a little less blatant about what it’s trying to say. I was tempted to include the ambitious and occasionally haunting Cloud Atlas in my list, even though the film had its share of awkward misfire moments — particularly with some distracting casting choices which have actors like Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Jim Sturgess playing characters of various races, genders, and ethnicities that they really have no business embodying. A much more successful endeavor on this front is Holy Motors, featuring Denis Levant inhabiting the skin of an assortment of quirky creations — a creepy and vaguely monstrous sewer-dweller, a scuzzy assassin, a harried father, and the actor who is assigned to play all these roles in various locations throughout Paris. Essentially, it’s a series of short films tied together by a loose narrative; then again, not really.

There’s no real way to take Holy Motors at face value — trying to figure out the “plot” is a worthless endeavor, like applying real-world rules to a David Lynch movie. Holy Motors follows a dream-like logic where there are sometimes life-and-death consequences to actions, sometimes not; no two segments are alike, either in tone or in how we perceive the world that’s been created for us. It’s all artificial, and Holy Motors is pretty direct about that — but every movie is artificial, after all. Holy Motors is a bizarre meditation on the way cinema has the power to move us, manipulate us, and make us marvel even if we don’t have the faintest idea what the hell is happening. Its protagonist, a kind of actor who seems to drag the emotional weight of every role he’s ever played around with him, might be an allegory for performers, or perhaps for storytellers — Holy Motors is broad enough that you can read almost anything into it.

The film is too bizarre (and French) for many mainstream filmgoers, but for serious cineastes, it’s a treat. Leos Carax has packed it with references that almost no one seems to get, and that’s fine. The nuttier the better, in this case. The final few minutes of Holy Motors go so absurdly off the rails that it’s almost like Carax just didn’t know how to top all the craziness that came before; in the future, I’ll probably watch it like I’d watch Paris Je T’aime, returning to my favorite bits more often than the film as a whole. This little wonder contains several of the most mesmerizing and memorable moments I saw all year — an ill-fated duet with Kylie Minogue, a fashion shoot that takes an oddball turn, an abrupt musical intermission, and especially a haunting “sex” scene involving motion capture suits. They’re more satisfying individually than the film is as a whole, and I can’t wait to rewatch them.

6. LOOPER

Science fiction tends to imagine brave new worlds that say something about the here and now — at least, they should. But most of Hollywood’s recent sci-fi offerings give us predictable story beats and zero food for thought. Looper is different — not because its premise is so much more original than, say, the hokey Justin Timberlake vehicle In Time, but because it was clearly made without any adherence to formula or genre conventions. Here is the rare movie that doesn’t feel like it’s on autopilot; rather, it unfolds in ways that are truly surprising and feel wholly organic to these characters and this world.

For a futuristic story, Looper spends an awful lot of time on a rustic Kansas farm. And for all its big ideas, what it really boils down to is surprisingly intimate and small-scale — a mother’s love. A lot of care was taken to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like a young Bruce Willis, which I’m not sure was necessary — Gordon-Levitt’s performance alone sells it. Looper has several visual moments that catch the audience off guard, but it’s more notable for the emotional undercurrent that gives it a real pulse. It’s like a Sundance movie dressed up in Hollywood clothes; that low-budget indie that just so happens to take place in a dystopian future — more specifically, a dystopian future that doesn’t feel so far removed from our not-so-utopian present.

Time travel doesn’t often make sense in movies, and if you think about it too hard, perhaps Looper doesn’t either. But what it does have is a sense of originality and innovation absent in the works of all other filmmakers — hints of Kubrick and Tarantino, amongst others. If we could time-travel to the future, I bet we’d see that writer/director Rian Johnson is a filmmaking force to be reckoned with.

5. MAGIC MIKE

Take away the stripping — I know, no one wants that, but just go with it for a sec — and Magic Mike is a sobering look at the youth of America, the ones that don’t follow the straight-and-narrow path of a higher education followed by 9-to-5 mediocrity. You don’t need to take your clothes off for a living to relate to that.

Now put the stripping back in, and you have a rollicking good time that is also smarter than any film based on Channing Tatum’s life should be. Steven Soderbergh doesn’t shy away from the sex appeal that drove women and gays in droves to see Magic Mike opening weekend; the stripping sequences are great fun to watch, thanks in large part to the surprising skill and charisma of Channing Tatum. I’ll admit, I wrote him off long ago, but in 2012 he proved himself a talented performer, so I’m delighted to be wrong. He is, in fact, actually quite good here as the stripper with a heart of gold — a role that, with weaker writing and acting, could have been truly wince-worthy. (The whole ensemble is pretty solid, especially a standout Matthew McConaughey, who neatly parodies his real-life status as Hollywood’s resident ladykiller.)

To the surprise of many, Magic Mike is a bit of a tragedy — about creative people who are victims of an economic downturn, and about what happens to people who pay the bills with their body. It doesn’t dig as deep as Black Swan or The Wrestler on that subject, and for some, perhaps, the more dramatic elements of the story felt a bit inert. They came for a rain of men, not a storm of drama. But, fittingly for a movie about stripping, Magic Mike is all about money — the side jobs these guys perform to stay afloat, the price of living it up in your twenties. “I’m not my lifestyle!” Mike says in self-defense to his love interest, but of course, we all are — and all the sexy boys of Magic Mike become victims of their lifestyle one way or another, whether it’s drugs or debt or plain ol’ narcissism. Mike’s just the only who’s starting to realize it.

Magic Mike takes place in Tampa — what better place to explore the underbelly of the American dream? Isn’t that dream as much of a striptease as a lap dance from a guy in a G-string? Stripping might be harmless, but it’s a gateway drug to browner pastures, and respectable people don’t look on it kindly. Dallas, Mike, and the rest are ultimately disposable — one-night-only fantasies for women at bachelorette party or on their birthdays. They’re dressed up as firemen, cowboys, police… all those generic fantasies. Sex is a powerful and lucrative commodity — the good girl played by Cody Horn is both tempted and repelled by Mike, speaking to the conflicting sexual interests within us. For the audience, a night with Magic Mike is just a horny splurge, and indulgence, but for them, it’s life. Magic Mike gets us hot and bothered and all worked up, then pulls back the curtain and shows us what happens when these fantasy figures go home after a hard night’s work, or age a decade or two. What happens when the singles stop coming?

4. RUST AND BONE

Attraction doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes you fall for a movie the same way you fall for a person — you just happen to find each other in the right time and place, and something unplanned happens. That’s what happened to me with Rust And Bone, a film I wasn’t expecting much of and saw primarily because Marion Cotillard was getting solid awards season buzz for her performance. I knew very little about what I was getting into, and that ended up being a good thing.

Rust And Bone is by far the sexiest movie about a woman whose legs get eaten off by an orca. The special effect of excising Cotillard’s lower limbs are shockingly convincing, as is her performance — it’s a shame the Oscars couldn’t make room for her, though it was a particularly strong year for Best Actress candidates. Matthis Schoenaerts is equally strong as the film’s protagonist, a rather obtuse security guard and underground fighter who never seems to foresee the consequences of his actions. If Rust And Bone is a romance at all — I wouldn’t call it one, exactly — then it’s a very adult one, with two characters who behave like flesh-and-blood 21st century people rather than cliches operating according to a script. The film has no singular plot, but meanders pleasantly as we get to know these two characters without a clear sense of where they’re going. The film’s climax was a true surprise, but then, the whole movie was.

There’s not one thing I can easily point to that’s brilliant in Rust And Bone; you either fall for it or you don’t, and I doubt any further analysis would change anyone’s mind about it. It’s about chemistry. On paper, the synopsis sounds pretty maudlin. But Jacques Audiard makes it all so plausible and lived-in that I found myself totally falling for it, which happens sometimes. Attraction doesn’t always make sense.

3. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Speaking of movies that don’t work so well on paper… Silver Linings Playbook constantly flirts with being ordinary, and yet somehow narrowly misses it at every turn. It’s the first film to receive acting nominations in all four categories in ages, and they’re all deserved — the marvelous Jacki Weaver may be slightly underused, but even the minor characters have their own lives happening in the margins. They don’t feel merely functional.

That’s particularly true of the standout leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Cooper unleashes a leading man charm he must’ve been saving for the right movie, while Lawrence is a live wire who feels like she could wander into any movie and be the best thing in it. They’re both compulsively watchable, and when they come together it’s like two trains constantly threatening to wreck, consistently missing each other by inches.

Silver Linings Playbook has a wonderful energy. It’s always marching forward, never stopping on one detail long enough for us to catch up and get bored waiting for the next beat. David O. Russell’s script is sharp and nimble, his direction maybe even a little moreso, but it’s the chemistry of the ensemble that feels just right. (The original plan was to make it with Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel in the lead roles — I shudder to think.) I wouldn’t call Silver Linings Playbook a monumental film or even a must-see; it’s probably a bit too slight to take Best Picture, even with all of Harvey Weinstein’s might on its side. Yet it’s also nice to see a lighter movie made as well as all those heavy ones; if only all comedies had this much skill behind and in front of the camera.

2. THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Impossible is not a film for the cynical. It wears its heart on its sleeve, and in a Spielbergian way, cares more about hope than it does about darkness and depravity. Yet, also like Spielberg, director Juan Antonio Bayona isn’t afraid to immerse us in chaos and confusion when need be, and it’s a visual spectacle on par with some of Spielberg’s most breathless sequences, like War Of The Worlds’ initial alien attack or the Omaha Beach opening of Saving Private Ryan.

Naomi Watts cements her status as one of Hollywood’s most fearless actresses as she is twisted and turned and slammed by a giant tsunami, an electrifying sequence that outdoes pretty much any disaster movie sequence that came before it (rivaled only by Titanic, perhaps). The fact that was done practically on a budget of $45 million or so is mind-blowing. That’s not Naomi against a green screen, and you can tell.

After a hard-hitting opening, the film follows two surviving members of the happy family literally ripped apart — we don’t know whether or not the rest have survived until much later — and it isn’t afraid to get sentimental. Nor is it afraid to get reasonably dark, as when an adolescent boy advises his mother that they leave behind a crying child because he might slow them down. It faces the stark realities of an unimaginably catastrophic situation, with excellent performances all around (Naomi, Tom Holland, and Ewan McGregor). What’s truly remarkable, though, is the way Bayona stages that fucking tsunami — definitely the most breathless sequence I’ve experienced in a movie in years. It’s a shame this film didn’t quite break out the way it should have — with a stronger marketing push, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it win Best Picture. Perhaps my #2 slot is a fitting consolation prize?

1. ZERO DARK THIRTY

In my original review, I predicted Zero Dark Thirty for Best Picture and Kathryn Bigelow making history as the only woman to ever win Best Director twice.

Oops. Back then, I didn’t anticipate the weird backlash the film received regarding its depiction of torture, and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with why the film hasn’t been embraced as it probably should be; especially in a year that features a film so similar in many (superficial) ways as a Best Picture front-runner. Homeland, after all, has been handed just about every conceivable television award this past year, and yet it depicts far more torture than Zero Dark Thirty even hints at. (Rumor has it both edgy female protagonists are based on the same real-life CIA agent.) Why is Zero Dark Thirty held up to such a hypocritical, impossible standard of veracity, when Argo literally invents its entire third act? (Oh, don’t answer that, I already know why.)

Apparently, the film about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden is a controversial one. Who knew? Perhaps I (and Sony) should have anticipated more unease from the general public. Great and important films aren’t always recognized right away, after all, and the topics explored by Zero Dark Thirty are still fresh. (Meanwhile, everyone’s had time to get over a hostage situation from the 70′s.) Maybe I was more prepared to confront them. For me, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the few definitive films of this century so far, in large part because it deals with the most defining event of it.

Jessica Chastain’s Maya is a fascinating portrait of obsession. She’s a perfectionist. The fact that she’s a woman makes this a little more interesting, but ultimately doesn’t matter. Some have said they didn’t understand Maya’s motivation enough, but that’s ludicrous. Her motivation is 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history — and a very recent one. We didn’t need to lose someone personally in New York that day to feel the effects, despair and fear and an overwhelming vulnerability. Neither did Maya. She would have already been working for the CIA at that point (we’re told she was recruited out of high school), so it is literally her job to answer the questions all of America is asking. Why wouldn’t she do her job to the best of her ability? What could possibly be a stronger motivation than the deaths of thousands of innocent people?

Some may have wanted Osama bin Laden dead out of vengeance; others might just feel safer knowing he’s not in the world. Mark Boal’s Zero Dark Thirty script is smart enough to to not tell us what exactly Maya wants. By keeping her backstory almost nonexistent, she becomes a stand-in for all of us, seeking answers or retribution or catharsis and some kind of closure. And does she get them? Well… did we?

Clearly I was wrong about Kathryn Bigelow’s lock on Best Director — that snub is just a shame. This is clearly her best work. It’s a near-flawless film on every level. I was also almost certainly wrong about Zero Dark Thirty winning Best Picture, but perhaps it’s just too important a film to take home such a populist prize. The fact that it’s stirred so much debate is only a testament to its quality, but controversy doesn’t win awards. At least, not Oscars.

Argo is bullshit. It’s fine if you like bullshit, just know that that’s what it is. It’s a slick thriller that, I guess, is “prestigious” enough for the Academy because it takes place in Iran? It’s really just Speed in a turban. Zero Dark Thirty, on the other hand, is actually about something — some of the most significant events of the past dozen years. It portrays these things not only tensely and entertainingly, but honestly and accurately. But to borrow a phrase from another movie: “You can’t handle the truth!” A lot of people can’t, apparently.

But I can.

*

Is there a male star more objectified than Ryan Gosling?

One or two, maybe, but none with as much cred. Ryan Gosling is an Oscar nominee — but possibly not as many times as he should be, in roughly the same position Leonardo DiCaprio was a few years back. Admired and almost respectable enough for the Academy, and yet, with Tigerbeat-grows-up looks that stop some from taking him seriously.

I can’t claim to know why Ryan Gosling selects the roles he does, but based on his work lately, I’d surmise that he prefers parts that allow him to say very little and look awesome doing it. The scorpion jacket and leather gloves of Drive; the ’40s mobster chic of Gangster Squad; whatever the hell goes on in Only God Forgives. His roles tend to exalt him to a James Dean-level of pretty boy stoicism, one part Jason Statham and one part Zac Efron. Maybe it’s a coincidence that most of his roles are overly stylized — even his grungy dad in Blue Valentine had a certain showiness, complete with “can you believe Ryan is slumming it this hard?” baldness and facial hair. Or how about the killer drag of All Good Things? I’m not sure if Ryan is more drawn to characters who are interesting, or characters who look interesting, but either way, the role of “Handsome Luke” seems like it was written for him.

Oh — because it was.

Director Derek Cianfrance is one to watch. He made the shattering Blue Valentine, one of the most memorable and durable indie dramas of the past few years, earning an Oscar nod for Michelle Williams (but none for you, Ryan Gosling). This time, he ups the ante with a story about fathers and sons, cops and robbers, spanning decades. On the one hand, it’s an intimate story focused on a handful of characters, more muted and concentrated than it would be in the hands of most filmmakers. On the other hand, it is sprawling and epic, with an ominous score by Mike Patton and overall sense of fatalistic foreboding. (It manages to make Schenectady, New York, look like the most hopeless place in America. They won’t be playing this at the visitor’s center.)

Fairly early in the movie, daredevil motorcyclist Handsome Luke learns that he fathered a son and takes it upon himself to provide for the boy, mistakenly believing that it’s cash rather than a father figure that the boy needs. Thanks to a suggestion from a new pal Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), Luke gets the brilliant idea to rob banks, using his motorcycle as an initial getaway vehicle. We’re pretty sure right from the start that this isn’t going to end well, because Luke seems doomed right from the moment we meet him. (And speaking of Mendelsohn, he was discovered by many of us in Animal Kingdom, probably this film’s closest cousin.)

Another character eventually becomes a major player — a cop named Avery, played by Bradley Cooper. He’s been on the job less than a year when chance brings Luke and Avery together. Avery has a law degree and has joined the police force against the wishes of pretty much everyone in his life, including his wife (Rose Byrne) and cop father, and eventually a corrupt cop (played by Ray Liotta, Hollywood’s go-to corrupt cop). Both Luke and Avery have sons that are the same age, so we witness two very different styles of (absentee) parenting. The nature versus nurture debate may arise in viewers’ minds, because the movie invokes questions about how much who our fathers are informs who we are. (Class issues are a definite factor as well.)

To say too much about the plot is a bit of a spoiler, especially since the film has been marketed as a Ryan-centric story. It’s true, his role is the showiest. He wears awesome skull pants and sunglasses that could only look cool on him, and he performs many of his own stunts on that motorcycle. He’s just a badass, and Gosling is great in the role. But other performers also get large chunks of screen time in this triptych tale, meaning that The Place Beyond The Pines is an ensemble with a rare structure that makes it feel more epic than it might otherwise. Even when the movie focuses on another character, the shadows cast in previous segments loom large the way some people do even when they’re no longer with us. Few films take enough time to explore the toll that things like crime, violence, absence, neglect, guilt, and soforth take on us. It’s ultimately somewhat depressing to see how this all affects a reasonably innocent bystander, Romina (Eva Mendes), who transforms from a young woman to a middle-aged weary one over the course of the film. Of course we often see characters at different ages in a movie, but rarely does the passage of time feel quite so lived-in and bleak. Characters take action against certain elements in this film, but we never feel like things will get much better because of them.

The Place Beyond The Pines isn’t a flawless film, but it’s one I had few problems with. It unfolds more like a novel than a film, thanks in large part to its structure. You could view the segments in reverse order and have a completely different experience with the film. (Maybe that should be a DVD extra.) I wonder how much was cut out of it, because in some ways, it could and perhaps even should be longer. Not every character gets a lot of screen time — Avery and Luke’s love interests get lost a bit in the shuffle, and yet they make quite an impact with what they’re given.

The film’s chapters give us diminishing returns, since the first section is the best and the last is probably the least developed. A few actions feel rushed, especially since the third act of this film could easily sustain an entire movie all on its own. I wasn’t entirely sold on the desperate actions taken in the climax, even if the emotions that went along with them did feel real. (It didn’t help that it felt too much like scenes we’ve seen before.) But I’d also be eager to watch the film again and bathe even further in the atmosphere and themes that Cianfrance is getting at. They’re not exactly subtle, but there’s truth to them, and to just about everything in this movie. The characters we admire most are on the periphery, and just about any of them could be the protagonist of this story. We could easily watch another triptych focusing on Rose Byrne, on Eva Mendes and her boyfriend, on Avery’s cop buddy. It feels rich enough to sustain another few hours.

Yet none of them would ever look so good on a motorcycle as Ryan Gosling, so at least Cianfrance knows where the money is.

*

The Before trilogy is maybe the most unlikely trilogy of them all — if you can even call it one. The word “trilogy” conjures an epic vibe, as if Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy should be running around in cape and cowl fighting crime in order to justify a three-part, decades-spanning story. Before Sunrise certainly wasn’t conceived as anything more than a one-off, and what’s truly amazing about these films is that each ends on a perfect note of ambiguity, so perfect that we almost don’t want to know what happens next.

But of course, ultimately we do want to know — or at least, we want to check in with them every nine years to see whether or not Jesse and Celine are where we expect them to be.

Once we’ve had nearly a decade to decide for ourselves whether Jesse and Celine end up together (left unclear at the end of both previous movies), Richard Linklater answers with his own version. Before Sunset was, as far as I can tell, a perfect film, a bit of fantasy wish fulfillment at the same time as it was realistic enough to buy as something that might really happen to this couple. It gave Jesse and Celin’s romance a dash of practicality — they never did end up meeting in Vienna as promised — but also indulged us in the fact that they did meet again, improbably, older and with more baggage than when they were twenty-somethings with their lives ahead of them. There was more urgency this second time around. The real-time conversation, a walk-and-talk through the lovely streets of Paris, was somehow even more romantic than their more passionate first meeting. It’s easy enough to have chemistry with a hot, foreign stranger when you’re young — but how likely is it to have an entirely different chemistry with that person nearly a decade later?

Before Midnight puts even more distance between these two and their optimistic former selves, of course — but it’s no romantic lark. If Before Sunrise was about how easy it is to fall for a stranger when we’re young, and Before Sunset was about how true romance is less likely but still possible a decade later, then Before Midnight is about what happens when those possibilities are gone and you’re essentially stuck with each other, for better or worse. It’s no coincidence that the title conjures up a much darker picture in our mind’s eye. Along with the difficulties of lasting love, regret and mortality are frequently invoked, the same way we’re more likely to think of such things in our forties than in our twenties or thirties. Before Midnight is, in some ways, a drastic departure from its predecessors, but not an unwelcome one. It’s merely growing old, along with its protagonists.

Before Midnight finds Jesse and Celine saying goodbye to Hank, Jesse’s son from his previous marriage. This creates a rift between the couple (who never married, based on her wishes) — Jesse would like to move back to Chicago to be near his son, while Celine doesn’t relish the idea of giving up her European life for Chicago (and close proximity to Jesse’s difficult ex-wife). Before this conflict comes to a head, though, we get to bask in Jesse and Celine’s rat-a-tat banter, which both feels entirely natural and also much wittier and more thoughtful than most everyday conversations between lovers.

Before Midnight is even more plotless than its prequels, so that it’s maybe a full 45 minutes or more before the real story even kicks in. But Linklater knows his audience by now, and he knows that we’re down for lengthy chats about love, life, death, and everything in between — we’ll basically follow these two anywhere. Jesse and Celine have a pair of adorable twin girls and have been summering in Greece, thanks to Jesse’s popularity as an author (whose first two books are thinly-veiled retellings of his romance with Celine). It all feels as idyllic as possible, and aside from an early argument about that relocation, we could almost feel a total lack of conflict if not for our sense that there’s something brewing under the surface.

That there is. When Jesse and Celine are finally alone, the gloves come off, and let’s just say that, like its predecessors, this film again calls into question whether or not the two will end up together. As usual, the screenplay Linklater has crafted with Delpy and Hawke is pitch perfect at every turn, giving us little insights into these characters — some of which are so specific they can only be taken from the actors’ personal lives. Jesse and Celine are as engaging when they’re fighting as when they’re loving each other, and some will find their traded barbs painfully familiar. (I sure did.) A key moment in the film finds Jesse and Celine in the dark with a murky body of water just a few feet away, and yes, there is that threat that they’ll tumble in (metaphorically speaking) and never find each other again. Before Midnight finds Jesse and Celine at their darkest hour, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll come out of it as a couple. Like real life, this relationship is complicated and there’s maybe no one solution that can make everyone happy. (Including the audience.)

Before Midnight isn’t the warm souffle that Before Sunrise and especially Before Sunset were. The Greek setting is lovely, the conversation sparkling — but there’s more under the surface. The centerpiece of the film is one long dinner table conversation between various lovers, young and old and middle-aged. It’s absolutely perfect in the way it ebbs and flows, and reminiscent of Certified Copy in the way it reflects similar loves throughout different generations. It’s as if the topic of conversation is Life Itself, and in that lengthy scene it feels like the group touches on just about every aspect of the human condition. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.

As with Before Sunset, I find absolutely nothing to complain about in Before Midnight. I still can’t compare them, because they’re very different movies with very different goals, despite starring the same characters. It would’ve been a safe bet for Linklater, Hawke and Delpy to deliver another cutesy rom-com, something that would go down easy. Instead, they opted for a rather bitter pill — bittersweet, at least — that’s truer to life. I will say that it  than the film offers.

But to be left wanting more? That’s not a bad thing — in fact, that’s life.

*

United 93. The Social Network. Zero Dark Thirty. And now… The Bling Ring.

Not many movies are made so directly after the true events in them took place, and often a “too soon” haze lingers over them — especially prior to their release. We weren’t sure we wanted a 9/11 docudrama recreating that fateful flight, or a chronicle of the inception of Facebook, or a manhunt-for-Osama thriller — until we got them, but all three films were respectful approaches to the subject matter and brilliant pieces of cinema to boot. Of course The Bling Ring is not attempting to match the loftiness of such films, given that the real-life subjects aren’t nearly as widely known nor as significant on a global scale. But in its own way, The Bling Ring is just as much a time capsule selling “now” right back to us, commenting on recent events without the benefit of distance to look back on them. At the showing I attended, there were chuckles every time that familiar “thump thump thump” of TMZ sounded, every time a familiar celebrity face popped up on the screen. It’s all too familiar. And unlike heavier fare like United 93, The Social Network, and Zero Dark Thirty, The Bling Ring feels exactly right coming just a few short years after the robberies took place. Even moreso than those films, you could easily call The Bling Ring the defining movie of our time.

Yeah. There. I said it.

The Bling Ring is a smart movie about something stupid. It’s a deep movie about the most shallow of subjects. And yet it doesn’t wear its smarts or its depth on its (designer) sleeve. Though we spend a lot of time with the teenagers who were convicted of robbing a slew of celebrity homes at the tail end of the last decade, we never get to know them, exactly. We never scratch past the service. But then, that’s the point. What is there to get to know? Is there really much of a person in there? Sofia Coppola doesn’t have much interest in allowing us to feel for her subjects (though she doesn’t demonize them either). Beyond some lazy and indulgent parenting, there’s no real motive for any of these kids to commit such large-scale crimes so breezily. But their bad behavior isn’t any different from any other rich kid acting out, except that they did it against other rich kids — because what are TMZ’s favorite celebs but a bunch of overgrown spoiled teenagers whose antics are really just cries for attention?

The Bling Ring meets Marc (names changed to protect the not-very-innocent) starting at a new “dropout” school after missing too many classes at his last one. He’s gay and a loner, until he makes “fast friends,” as they say, with Rebecca, who is a bit of a sociopath. (But such a stylish one!) The Bling Ring smartly makes no big deal about Marc’s sexuality, since teens in an affluent California community wouldn’t (though he does have an affinity for a pair of hot pink heels he picks up later at Paris’). Before long, they’re stealing wallets and purses out of unlocked cars and dropping in on out-of-town friends to borrow their Porsche for joyride to Kitson. Marc is always much more nervous and conflicted than Rebecca is, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it. (Marc is the closest thing to “sympathetic” we get from this gang, interestingly, since he’s a sheep following the whims of the flock. But Coppola doesn’t let him off the hook.)

Once the game changes to hitting celebrity homes, this bling twosome becomes a full-on Bling Ring. This also includes Emma Watson as Nicki, based on Alexis Neiers, the only one in the group with serious aspirations to do more than just look like a celebrity, but actually be one. They hit Paris Hilton’s pad first, an amazing beacon of tackiness with seemingly no artwork that doesn’t feature Paris herself. The joke of it is: Paris has so much stuff she doesn’t even notice anything is missing for a good long while.

Were this not a true story, it’d be impossibly hard to buy that the kids had so much ease breaking into over 50 celebrity homes, many of which are merely unlocked. (Paris’ key is under the mat.) But it’s hard to feel very sorry for the well-to-do victims of these crimes if they can’t even bother to install a security alarm to protect their many valuables. If they’re going to be so vulgar about their wealth, don’t they kind of deserve to have at least a fraction of it taken away from them?

That’s the weird morality of The Bling Ring, a movie we watch that feels like it’s watching us right back. The teenagers of the Bling Ring are reckless, careless, and deserve to be caught. They don’t take any precautions to avoid security cams, they brag about their conquests at parties, and many of them quickly fall down the drug-addled rabbit hole that most movies about people rapidly making money depict. But let’s not kid ourselves about having any sympathy for the victims, either. These are the stars we routinely jeer on TMZ and the like. We love ripping apart Paris, Lindsay, Megan, and all the rest — and most of them have done a stupid thing or two (or 100, in Lindsay’s case) that seem to justify our scorn. It’s not that we love to hate them, exactly, but we do love to feel superior to some of the limelight’s biggest stars, even as we also worship them. We envy their luxuries and want to live like them even while picking apart that lifestyle. We’re hypocrites, which is how The Bling Ring makes up complicit in these robberies. Because at the same time we’re judging these kids for their stupid immoral behavior, we’re loving every second of it — and kind of wishing we could go along for the ride.

Sofia Coppola knows that there’s a very thin line between the victims and the perpetrators in The Bling Ring. These teens weren’t after Meryl Streep or Martin Scorsese (who, we can assume, have the good sense to lock their doors when they head out of town). They went for the shallow tabloid celebs whose fame seems rather arbitrary — many of whom, in fact, gained notoriety from reality shows that exploited their rich and glamorous lifestyles. (They picked them in part because they thought they’d be dumb enough to leave their doors unlocked.) Basically, this is just another a case of the fans feeding off the stars, stars who are more lucky than they are talented. Like the Bling Ringers, these celebs have their own DUIs, thefts, and arrests — Lindsay Lohan and Alexis Neiers were actually on the same cell block at the same time — and yes, we the American public have a sick fascination with all things Hollywood, so we’re living vicariously through the teens’ bad behavior just as the teens are living vicariously through their favorite stars. We’re not that different from the Bling Ring, are we?

The Bling Ring takes us on an admittedly (and shamefully) fascinating tour through celebrity homes, giving us the same peep inside so many delighted in via MTV’s Cribs (but with a sinister steal-from-the-rich-and-give-to-the-also-rich angle). Entire magazines and websites are devoted to what celebs are wearing and where they’re living — this is like the big screen adaptation of an Us Weekly magazine, with a few more artistic flourishes. A couple of the robberies, especially the early ones, are accompanied by fun pop music and let us indulge in the candy-colored fun of a tour through Paris’ house. But other moments are given a distinctly darker atmosphere, which is how we know Sofia Coppola knows what she’s doing. (Though the anachronistic music and cell phones, more current than 2009, seem like a missed opportunity to really give us a slice-of-life from a mere four years ago.)

Both stylistically and thematically, this film has a lot to do with Sofia Coppola’s earlier works — particularly Marie Antoinette. Coming from a wealthy family herself, Coppola often condemns (or at least critiques) the rich and famous. This feels, in many ways, like a summation of her other films — the restless teens of The Virgin Suicides, the celebrity angle from Lost In Translation and Somewhere, the vapid luxury of Marie Antoinette. Sofia Coppola doesn’t judge the audience with The Bling Ring the way Michael Haneke likes to, but walking out of it, it’s hard not to judge ourselves. There’s no one to root for in this film, not even ourselves, because we all have the same disease. The celebrities are just as guilty as the fans who worship them a little too much, and so who’s stealing from who, exactly? Aren’t we the ones who made them stars in the first place? Don’t they owe us something?

In this day and age, celebrity is a knotty subject and The Bling Ring leaves a lot unsaid. The Nicki character has an outrageously ignorant bit of dialogue or two, but it’s nothing we don’t see on reality TV every day. (If we choose to watch that stuff.) The Bling Ring could even be considered fluff, if you choose to engage with it from a distance, but it kept me thinking all the way through. It’s one of the best modern movies about celebrity, because the real stars are just in the periphery. The movie is actually about the people who obsess over stars, without whom there would be no stars at all.

The Bling Ring is like an open letter to tabloid celebrities everywhere: “We love you. We hate you. We want to be you. We made you. So can’t we just play with some of your stuff for a little while?”

*

“If there’s any town this world would be better without, this is it.”

It’s been nearly ten years since Dogville debuted in theaters. I remember wrestling with where to place it in my Top 10 back then, when notable competitors included Before Sunset, Maria Full Of Grace, Bad Education, Closer, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Those films all made my Top 10, but in 2004, the film I admired the very most wasn’t so immediately obvious as it is in most years. I had to mull it over for a bit.     

As you may have figured out, I placed it at #1 — it was so unique and hard to categorize. It either felt that it had to be #1 or not on the list at all. It’s that strange of a movie — at least, it was back then. In 2004, Lars Von Trier was best known for Breaking The Waves and Dancer In The Dark, and Dogville similarly punished a guileless female protagonist. Though it’s hard to imagine, it punished her even more.

Dogville is the story of Grace (Nicole Kidman), whose name suggest the very purity that nearly all of Von Trier’s heroines possess. She arrives in a small town hunted by gangsters, with nowhere else to turn. And the people of Dogville take her in. Sounds warm and cozy, right?

Narrated in a sing-songy, storybook way that could just as easily fit Babe, everything starts off just peachy. Dogville is an idyllic (though quite poor) small town in the Rocky Mountains with only a handful of quaint citizens, including the old blind man, the dim-witted church lady, the town drunk, and so on. The closest thing to a leader is the self-appointed town intellectual Tom Edison Jr. (Paul Bettany). The citizens of Dogville are reluctant to take in a potentially dangerous fugitive, but humble Grace quickly works her way into their good, um, graces, by doing any menial task they ask of her. As time goes on, however, what they ask of her increases exponentially… until they’re no longer asking at all. (The cast is a total powerhouse, including Paul Bettany, James Caan, Philip Baker Hall, Patricia Clarkson, Lauren Bacall, Stellan Skarsgard, Jeremy Davies, and Chloe Sevigny.)

The most notable novelty in Dogville is the minimalism of its set — few of the buildings actually have visible walls or roofs, although all the characters act as though they do. We see them turn doorknobs that are not actually there. It’s like a really fucked up game of charades. While this obviously makes for a surreal viewing experience, something about this effect only enhances (rather than lessens) the dramatic weight of what happens as the story unfolds. It feels somehow less artificial with only the bare minimum props included, forcing us to focus on what’s important rather than be distracted by set dressings. In a God’s eye view from above (which Von Trier shoots often), we can see into every home in Dogville. We view a rape happening in one home and simultaneously view what everyone else in town is doing that moment, though they remain oblivious.

It’s this element that made Dogville so fresh and exciting in 2004, even if thematically, the material was pretty familiar to anyone who’d seen Von Trier’s previous films. In the time since, I still don’t think there’s been another film quite like it.

And yet it’s interesting viewing Dogville nine years later, because of two factors:

One, because Von Trier has worn out his welcome with many filmgoers (including myself, more or less) by hitting the same punishing notes repeatedly ever since, in films from Antichrist to Melancholia. (They’re about as pleasurable as they sound.) It’s hard to get too excited about a new Lars Von Trier film now, since they’re so predictably punishing. He’s perhaps our most sadistic filmmaker, right next to Michael Haneke. (These guys should really team up once, just to spice things up.) It’s not that I don’t still respect him, but I have a lot less interest in what he has to say these days.

The other factor is what’s happened in America since 2004. And that’s where Dogville still has quite a lot of value.

Dogville was intended as a criticism of America. Not just small-town America in the 1930s, but America as a whole, now and forever. (Many of Von Trier’s films hit this note, too.) Perhaps it wasn’t as obvious before the economic crisis, but now it’s easy to see the way Grace, who essentially “immigrates” to Dogville without any resources, is exploited. The little town of Dogville seems welcoming at first, but soon all those who are more privileged than she is — in this case, everyone in town — is willing to use and abuse her for their own gain. When things go south, they’re quick to distrust her and then punish her for the ways she attempts to protect herself — and any number of comparisons can be drawn to immigrants, low-income minorities, Occupy Wall Street-ers, or anyone who’s ever been screwed by a system they couldn’t fight. Von Trier doesn’t make his point about America gently, and as someone who’s never been here, one could argue he shouldn’t have much say at all. But in the wake of that awful fucking recession, wasn’t he kind of right?

What makes Dogville unique in Von Trier’s oeuvre is its delightfully over-the-top ending, a sequence of vengeance that would blow even Quentin Tarantino’s mind. Grace is no martyr, at least, not by the end. The film’s minimalist approach might be the only thing that renders this ending palatable — if it were too realistic, it might just be in poor taste. Yet the very theatricality of the sets just heightens the revenge fantasy wish fulfillment that closes the film. It’s probably just Von Trier criticizing American violence, but it’s also what makes Dogville, for all its Dogma 95 minimalism, so cinematic. It’s maybe the only time Lars Von Trier has ever given the audience exactly what they wanted, on a base level.

That said, Dogville may have been a turning point for Von Trier. Or at least, in audiences’ willingness to go along with his torment of women. Following Dogville, he made the sequel Manderlay, which was not well received (and which Nicole Kidman wisely chose not to reprise her role in, sending Bryce Dallas Howard to Hell in her stead). Antichrist had many calling it torture porn, while Melancholia was both adored and reviled. He certainly still has his ardent admirers, yet I’d say his popularity has waned over the past decade. It has with me, to a degree. (The awkward Nazi sympathizing statements that got him kicked out of Cannes didn’t help.)

Would I still name it as my #1 film of 2004? Hard to say. But that’s what makes a Top 10 list worthwhile — it’s a time capsule. I certainly still think it’s a worthwhile film and an original one, and while not every single moment rings true (Grace’s conversation with her gangster father is rather on-the-nose), the film is still surprisingly brutal considering that there is no actual bloodshed on screen. (Unless you count invisible blood — just another prop that’s implied but never visualized.) Dogville makes a similar point to Haneke’s Funny Games, yet in a way that’s not quite so unappetizing. Until recently, I hadn’t revisited it since 2004, because it’s not a film that requires or invites too many viewings. Maybe once a decade or so.

In other words: Dogville. a nice place to visit, but I definitely wouldn’t want to live there.

*

General audiences tend to hear about the year’s best indies in fall or winter, if they hear of them at all. These films’ releases aren’t quite as calculated as the major Oscar contenders, which tend to open in November or December, sometimes a few weeks earlier. Indies can roll out in the less cluttered summer months, where they don’t have to compete with studio prestige dramas; they serve as counter-programming to the mindless superhero fare that’s distracting the rest of the moviegoing public. If they’re lucky, these movies gain traction with lengthy releases in arthouse theaters, maybe adding screens as the weeks roll on, and may even get some love come Oscar time — think Winter’s Bone or Beasts Of The Southern Wild.

But for those who keep up, these movies are on the radar several months prior to the moment when the general public can see them, thanks to film festivals. Two of this year’s most promising indie titles are gaining steam now but have been praised for months now thanks to auspicious debuts at fests earlier this year. Fruitvale Station is probably the most serious Oscar contender to see a release thus far in 2013, as foretold by its buzz at Sundance, while Short Term 12 is less likely to go for the gold — but no less worthy — after a splashy premiere at South By Southwest. Both films took home both the Jury Prize and the Audience Award at their respective fests, meaning they hit the sweet spot across the board with critics and audiences alike. It’s a good sign that both have miles to go yet, in terms of wider audiences discovering them.

I know it’s still summer, and there are a lot of noisy, bright, metallic, indestructible objects clanging in your face trying to rip that $13 out of your pocket, but keep an eye on these quieter titles, too. Because they’re worth your attention.

Fruitvale Station begins with some real-life footage shot on a cell phone. It’s hard to watch. But in case you somehow walked into it without knowing what kind of story you’re in for, it becomes clear right away that there’s no happy ending here. On December 31, 2008, Oscar Grant went about his day — taking his daughter to and from school, picking up fish for his mom’s birthday party, hooking a buddy up with some weed, and heading out for a night on the town to celebrate the coming of a New Year that he’d only barely see. Most of what is depicted in Fruitvale Station is quite ordinary indeed, to the extent that the film might be interminably boring if it weren’t for the sense of dread that extends through its brief running time. It’s a well-made movie, but would Oscar’s actions on that last day of his life be compelling if not for the poignancy that we’re seeing him do it all for the very last time?

As portrayed by Michael B. Jordan in Ryan Coogler’s film, Oscar Grant is no saint. He loses his job after being late to work one too many times, he’s a bit hot-headed, he has cheated on his girlfriend, and he’s considering getting back into selling weed in order to make ends meet. In particular, a flashback to his stint in prison shows that he has the ability to lose his temper in a big way. Still, it’s clear that Oscar Grant has good intentions. He loves his friends and family. He’s doing his best to stay out of trouble. He’s a good father. He probably represents more people out there in the world than not, and he certainly isn’t someone that the streets of Oakland are safer without. But he’s black and wears baggy clothing, so the police don’t necessarily see it that way.

Fruitvale Station is a harrowing film to sit through, more harrowing even than other films about arguably more troubling situations. I’ve watched films like Schindler’s List and United 93 depicting unimaginably horrifying scenarios, things you can scarcely imagine experiencing. While these films strike a powerful and troubling emotional chord, the real-life shooting of Oscar Grant by a police officer is disturbing in a different way because, in this day and age, it’s actually not that hard to imagine something like this happening to you — particularly if you’re a young black male, but even if you’re not. It’s easy to imagine a police officer or two abusing their power and shooting just about anybody “by mistake,” even if Fruitvale Station makes a larger point about the limited prospects for a certain class of African-American males. The echoes of Trayvon Martin are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean this story is timely, because it has repeated itself over and over for decades.

Despite the politically-charged subject matter, however, Fruitvale Station is far from an angry movie, or even an incendiary one. It is content to present the facts of Oscar’s final day at face value and let the tragedy speak for itself. There’s a cloud of doom hanging over the film, but watching it is not a particularly dour experience, even if it is unnerving. Oscar is an engaging character, and though he meets an unfair and unnecessary end, the point of the movie seems to be less about inciting a debate over the details of his death and more about celebrating his life — what little time we get to spend with him. A different approach to this story might also have given us some time with the cop (played, curiously, by Chad Michael Murray) who ends up killing Oscar. This cop allegedly mistook his gun for his taser, which landed him in prison. While that might be an interesting angle to explore, Fruitvale Station is probably wise to keep its scope as small as possible. It’s about one man’s life, so it’s seen through one man’s eyes.

Perhaps most impressive of all, there’s genuine love found in Oscar’s relationships in this movie — particularly with the three primary females in his life: his proud mother (Octavia Spencer), not afraid to play the tough love card when need be; his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who gives him shit for his poor choices but loves him anyway; and his cutie of a daughter, who we know will spend most of her life without a father. All of these relationships feel lived-in, particularly Oscar and Sophina’s; very little in Fruitvale Station feels staged or calculated, which is rare for a film dealing with the death of a real-life individual. Fruitvale Station is emotionally wrenching, particularly in its final scenes depicting the suspense and then grief surrounding Oscar’s fate. But ultimately, somehow, what lingers is a halo of positivity — Oscar Grant’s death was sad and meaningless, but his life wasn’t. The tender relationships he had with his friends and family outweigh the stupid moment of violence that ended them. It’s similar to the way we remember a loved one of our own.

Overall, Fruitvale Station is a remarkable feature debut from Oakland-born 27-year-old USC alum Ryan Coogler, winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance this year. (Oscar Grant may not be the only “Oscar” associated with this film come February, if you catch my drift.) There are one or two moments that feel self-conscious, such as when Oscar’s mother suggests he take a BART train out to San Francisco because it’s safer — and later breaks down over the suggestion that inadvertently cut her son’s life short. But by and large, Fruitvale Station is absent any contrivances. It’s impressive mainly for just how unambitious it is, choosing to tell a small, day-long story within one that could have been much larger and messier. Many young filmmakers bite off more than they can chew in a debut, but Coogler gets it just right.

Much of the same praise can be heaped onto Short Term 12, a feature from another young filmmaker, Destin Daniel Cretton. While not exactly a true story, it is based on the filmmaker’s real-life experience working with at-risk teenagers, and every character in it rings true in every scene.

The protagonist is Grace (Brie Larson), a young woman who at first seems positively heroic in the way she interacts with her many-faceted charges, each of whom is fucked up in a unique way, each of whom needs a very particular kind of special attention. There’s the oft-shirtless boy who frequently makes a dash for it and tries to escape the facility, but otherwise spends all his time sulking in bed; the moody 17-year-old who is about to age out of the program and is acting out to cover his gnawing fears of facing the world as an angry black man on his own; and the newest, a cutter named Jayden who declares that she doesn’t like short-term relationships and thus intends to not make any friends in her brief stay here.

As with almost any material dealing with troubled teenagers, Short Term 12 could be horribly maudlin if handled the wrong way. It’s hard to avoid the standard cliches — on paper, the teen characters sound pretty trite and typical. But as portrayed in the film by a uniformly talented cast, each of them has enough shading and complexity to get us wholly wrapped up in their individual storylines. We recognize what a rough hand they’ve been dealt and wonder if anyone of them will be able to escape and transcend it. (It’s reminiscent of Oscar Grant’s limited options in Fruitvale Station.) Cretton cares deeply about these characters; thus, so do we.

But what makes Short Term 12 a shade more interesting is the focus it places on the staff, who, under a layer of competence and professionalism at their jobs, are just as broken as the foster kids. Grace is still struggling with her past as she learns that she’s pregnant, which may determine whether or not she keeps the baby; her devoted boyfriend Mason, who works alongside her, was raised by loving foster parents, without whom he would’ve turned out entirely differently. It takes a special kind of person to work with and understand the difficult teen personalities found at Short Term 12; Grace and Mason are excellent at their jobs, yet Grace may not have matured past her own childhood traumas enough to keep a cool head on one particularly taxing day at the office. Ultimately, she’s just as much “at risk” as the kids she’s meant to be taking care of.

Short Term 12 is well-written, well-acted, and well-directed across the board. It’s a small movie and feels like one, but it hits some big emotions along the way. There are a handful of standout scenes that cut to the core of these characters, whether its Marcus rapping about his mother beating him or Jayden telling a story about a shark befriending an octopus with shocking insinuations. Again, this all sounds kinda sappy on paper, but it works like dynamite in the film because you’ve come to care about these kids. They’re not just “types” from the Fucked Up Teen Character Handbook as in so many movies. Like Grace, Short Term 12 knows that each one of these cases is unique.

Toward the third act, Grace’s unraveling may accelerate a bit too quickly to be fully believed, and perhaps the parallels between her character and Jayden end up being a tad too convenient as they rumble down the road toward recovery. These are minor blips in an otherwise open and honest movie, one that, like Fruitvale Station, doesn’t have an ounce of cynicism to be found in it. Both films deal with difficult subject matter in ways that is ultimately life-affirming; not in a treacly bullshit way, but in a way that acknowledges the darkness while still leaning toward the light. They’re two of the year’s best movies thus far.

*

In space, no one can hear you scream. Or gasp. Or cheer. Or breathe all heavy, because you’re having a panic attack.

How do I know? Because I’ve been to space — or, at least, gotten as close as I’ll ever get, thanks to Alfonso Cuaron’s immersive Gravity.

The universe is a dark, unforgiving place. Life is hard out there. But sometimes, just when you think there’s no hope left, a hand reaches out to save you, pulling you away from the void of nothingness and back toward where intelligent life thrives. No, I’m not describing a scene from Gravity, I’m actually talking about my faith in the film business — and Cuaron is that hand who can save us.

There are so many reasons why Gravity shouldn’t be a hit. But it is. It’s the movie everyone was talking about this past weekend, in that art-meets-commerce way that just had so many of us chattering about Breaking Bad, so it’s heartening to see another fine specimen of moviemaking become the topic of public discourse so soon. Is our taste as a species getting better? Or is this just a fluke? Either way, I’ll take it.

It was a pretty dismal summer, blockbuster-wise, and the studios know it. There were a handful of hits, including a few that did not deserve to be, but moreso there were failures on both a critical and commercial level. You got the sense that Hollywood is just making the wrong movies — The Lone Ranger? Really? Did that ever seem like something people would actively want to see? But I’m not here to pick on easy targets — it’s just nice when the good guys win, because it happens too infrequently.

Alfonso Cuaron is one of the good guys. Since the turn of the millennium, at least, he’s made nothing but great movies, including a raunchy bisexual tryst called Y Tu Mama Tambien, the best of the Harry Potters, the flawless, criminally underseen masterpiece Children Of Men, and now Gravity. Obviously Harry Potter And the Prisoner Of Azkaban did quite well at the box office, but Children Of Men didn’t even make its budget back internationally, and Y Tu Mama Tambien was a hit only by the modest means a foreign indie can be. So the man is due a bona fide smash, and Gravity looks to be it.

The movie stars Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, and virtually no one else, save for Ed Harris as ground control (AKA “Houston”, still reeling from all those Apollo 13 jokes all these years later). Houston informs Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski that they’re about to, err, have a problem minutes before debris from a demolished Russian satellite hits them head on. Ryan Stone goes spinning into space, and…

Well, what happens next is all a part of the ride that is Gravity. It’s best to go in knowing as little as possible. With gripping, mesmerizing 3D and breathless pacing, Gravity is as much of a ride as any movie in recent memory, the most immersive film experience I’ve had since Inception. (Before that, it was Children Of Men.)

Gravity is less high art, more entertainment, but the skill Cuaron brings to that makes pure popcorn entertainment seem like an art. If every blockbuster was made this way, movie audiences would be a whole lot happier. You can’t help but marvel at the visuals and craft on display; it’s hard to imagine how it was filmed, but I’d rather not know. It’s like magic.

I imagine almost every filmmaker who made a mainstream action film or thriller recently has attempted to dazzle audiences just this way, but few have succeeded. Spielberg used to do it. James Cameron did it with Avatar, but that was more because of the technology than the storytelling, since that film hasn’t aged well otherwise. Christopher Nolan gets close sometimes.

Alfonso Cuaron has done it twice in a row now, even if Children Of Men is hardly the zeitgeist-level entry that Gravity is already. Gravity isn’t as dramatically satisfying or thought-provoking as Children Of Men — nor is it trying to be. There’s much less story, and the scope is limited to the survival of a couple of people rather than humanity as a whole. (Which is not to say that the film doesn’t have strong themes — rebirth, moving on. Ryan Stone is a more interesting character here than she would be in a bigger, dumber blockbuster.) The screenplay is merely competent, since a few lines of dialogue fall into the “too obvious” category — particularly nearing the climax. Themes are hammered home a bit too bluntly, but better that than not at all. And a number of dramatic moments are aces — Sandra Bullock howling like a dog, for one. These actors had a daunting job to do, and they did it exceedingly well. Don’t be surprised to see Sandy up for Best Actress again.

I don’t want to overpraise Gravity — is it my favorite movie so far this year? Quite possibly. But it engages on a kinetic level rather than an emotional one. You’ll feel dread, terror, panic, and occasionally relief — it’s not so much a moving experience as a visceral one. But Cuaron’s filmmaking is so damn exciting, it’s nearly impossible not to be impressed. Can a straight-up thriller, so painstakingly made, be compared to more artistic endeavors? How does Gravity compare to, say, Zero Dark Thirty? It does and it doesn’t. Ultimately, a movie should engross us, and few of them do so completely. Whether it’s a hard-hitting drama or Cuaron’s wizard-like popcorn moviemaking, perhaps it doesn’t matter.

I imagine this debate will continue well into Oscar season. Movies like Avatar and The Dark Knight and Inception have stirred up similar discussions, these few titles that straddle the line between art and commerce. Gravity made over $55 million this weekend — not exactly Avatar money, but a strong start. And word of mouth is very, very good. It could find its way into several major Oscar categories, including Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Picture, along with a few more technical ones. Could it win Best Picture? If Argo can, I don’t see why not — though it will likely be challenged by more traditional Oscar fare like Twelve Years A Slave and The Wolf Of Wall Street. Gravity doesn’t exactly need a slew Oscars, since it’s already made its mark in other ways. The fact that Cuaron will get his due, and be permitted to take further creative risks, is enough.

At this point, I’m not sure there’s a single working filmmaker more exciting than Alfonso Cuaron. A certain notorious sequence in Children Of Men is still maybe the most jaw-dropping bit of filmmaking of the past couple decades, in my opinion, but Gravity is that scene stretched out to 90 minutes. It’s like he’s inventing a whole new way of making movies, and hopefully it emboldens the studios to take more chances on the truly daring, innovative, and capable auteurs out there. (I’m not sure who besides Steve McQueen, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Darren Aronofsky should be mentioned in this camp — and none of these guys dazzles quite like Cuaron does, from a technical standpoint.)

Already, Gravity is more than a hit — it’s an Event. You can sense the excitement surrounding it. Watching it is like witnessing the birth of something new and amazing. It’s one-of-a-kind. Its closest cousins, I’d say, are Titanic and Alien. Like Alien, this is a story of a woman up against what space throws at her — quite literally, in this case. It feels progressively feminist, in a subtle way, even though the heroine strips down to inappropriately skimpy space attire in both movies. And like Titanic, Gravity is a story of two humans facing a random catastrophe that threatens to swallow them. Titanic had an attention to detail, too — the threats were mainly organic to the sinking of that ship than they were plot-driven (Billy Zane going gun-crazy notwithstanding). There’s a similar dread and mournfulness to both films that most major studio movies wouldn’t bother with, not to mention a certain “I’ll never let go, Jack” familiarity. What Titanic did for the ocean, Gravity does for space.

So all hail Alfonso Cuaron, who finally gets the kudos he deserves from audiences and critics alike. May he have a long and storied career, and may he keep making movies like this. Gravity defies expectations, defies history, defies everything that’s been done before; it throws the rulebook in the trash and starts all over. There’s no formula. It’s just a good, solid story made excellent through Cuaron’s spellbinding direction. (Also, Steven Price’s haunting score and Emmanuel Luzbeki’s peerless cinematography deserve special shout-outs.)

After so long adrift in a black void with loud, dumb, pieces of junk flying at us — Transformers, this means you — Cuaron has finally extended a lifeline to moviegoers. If you have to be lost in space, Alfonso Cuaron is the man you want to take you there.

*

Sometimes, you feel like a movie is just speaking directly to you.

I saw Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave last night, and I could so identify with the protagonist Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) — because I, too, have been subject to the twisted whims and brutal hand of cruel fates and a merciless master. I saw the movie in the Arclight’s Cinerama Dome, and as the final credits rolled, I was struck by a peculiar feeling of melancholy and despair. Not because I’d just been witness to an innocent man’s dozen years of brutal torture — no, something far worse. I searched my pockets, my wallet, under my seat… and yet I knew, without a doubt, that my parking ticket had been displaced some time ago, and certain suffering awaited me in the near future.

I checked my car, knowing it fruitless. I proceeded back to the Dome, which had already all but shut down for the night. I was told to try the box office, so I embarked upon a journey there, only to be met with a long line and an employee sympathetic to my plight who scoured for lost tickets, finding none. He printed me a movie ticket for my showing (since I had only a digital copy) and suggested I tell the people at the gates of my plight.

Slightly emboldened, I returned to my car and presented my ticket to the middle-aged Latina woman. Surely she would show mercy? I plastered on my best dumb blonde look (not really an act — I am pretty stupid), informing her that I had lost my ticket but the people at the box office said to present this movie ticket so I could be on my merry way. She would have none of my nonsense. “Did they tell you a lost ticket pays twenty dollars?” she hissed, having been through this charade before. Finally she surmised that since I had the movie ticket, I could get away with paying the $12 daily maximum rather than the $20 nightly maximum (what the difference is is beyond me). I complied, realizing I would never bargain myself down to the $3 charge per validated ticket. I was resigned to my fate.

Negotiating a $20 fine down to $12 is a lot like being a slave for a dozen years rather than your entire life — a little better, sure, but it doesn’t exactly erase the sting of those twelve years (or, in my case, twelve dollars). I drove away from the theater with a murderous rage in my belly, which only subsided when I compared my bad luck to that of Solomon Northup. Then I decided that it was a bit silly to feel sorry for myself after watching the abject horror and unthinkable torture he was subjected to oh so long ago. But still.

I couldn’t help but feel Solomon and I were a little simpatico. I should write a tale of my own misfortunes at the hand of an unforgiving master — Twelve Dollars A Slave, coming never to a theater near you.

All kidding aside, Steve McQueen is one of the most exciting filmmakers out there, and though he’s been notable mainly to hardcore cinephiles thus far (for his Michael Fassbender showpieces Hunger and Shame), he’s about to join the mainstream conversation with 12 Years A Slave. (Which isn’t to say he’ll be a household name any time soon, though the movie may very well be.) The slave drama got some excellent buzz out of the Toronto Film Festival and is already one of the top contenders in premature Oscar conversations, drawing comparisons like “it’s the Schindler’s List of slavery.” Neither Hunger nor Shame was made to appeal to a particularly wide audience (which is partly what made them so good), but 12 Years A Slave stands a good chance at being seen by a lot of people. Lee Daniels’ The Butler has made over $114 million domestically so far, and last year’s Django Unchained grossed over $400 million worldwide and scored a slew of Oscar nominations (and a couple of wins). Clearly, there’s a willing audience for these stories.

12 Years A Slave isn’t like either of those movies — especially since it’s much better. It’s neither as palatable as The Butler nor as sensational as Django Unchained, which might diminish its box office (if not its shot at an Oscar). Last year’s Lincoln earned $272 million worldwide, meaning that today’s moviegoers really will see an earnest historical drama set in the 19th century — and again, Lincoln has some factors that 12 Years A Slave doesn’t, including a very recognizable historical figure and the trusted Spielberg name. Still, audiences will turn out for the right historical drama, even one as hard-hitting as this one, every now and then. It’s a big year in black cinema, and if justice is served, 12 Years A Slave is the main course. African-American audiences tend to show up for movies that speak to them, and while 12 Years A Slave is about as nasty a depiction of their ancestry as we’re ever likely to get, it’s a respectful and honest one. There’s a chance that the mainstream will shy away from the experience altogether, but I’m guessing they won’t. I think this is one of those harrowing film experiences people (of all races) actually want to sit through. It might just be the definitive movie on American slavery, after all.

12 Years A Slave is the story of Solomon Northup, a free man living in New York who takes what turns out to be an ill-advised sojourn to Washington, D.C., where slavery is still legal. After a night of drinking with supposed friends, he wakes up literally in chains, and thus begins the worst dozen years of his life. 12 Years A Slave is, in ways, a straight-up horror movie, because we easily identify with gentle-hearted family man Solomon in the beginning. He’s just another cinematic everyman who finds himself in an impossible situation, unlike most slave characters we’ve seen on screen. There’s a petrifying “what if this happened to you?” element in what happens to him — to him, this is almost as unthinkable as it is to us, that a free man could suddenly be anything but. Ejiofor portrays both utter bewilderment and terror at his extreme turn of fortune — and if it can happen to him, it’s almost like it could happen to us.

12 Years A Slave is an unspoilable movie, since the duration of its story is given away in the title. Solomon is a slave for twelve years, then finds his way back to freedom. (Obviously we’d know nothing of his story if those twelve years ended in his burial as an anonymous slave at a Louisiana plantation.) Along the way, Solomon meets many heinous white people, including but not limited to those played by Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, and Garret Dillahunt. He also meets a nice one (from Canada, natch), portrayed by Brad Pitt, who ends up being instrumental in his freedom. (It must be said, Benedict Cumberbatch’s plantation owner is also halfway decent, considering.) Of course, several slaves also figure notably in his dozen miserable years of servitude, primarily the cotton-picking whiz Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o, in a performance likely remembered come Oscar time). Regardless of the ways these characters fit into certain archetypes of the era — the sadistic plantation owner, the helpless slave beauty, the cowardly brute with a whip — each is a specific enough character that they feel real, rather than trotted out from the Oscar bait factory. There are many famous faces here, most in relatively brief roles, but this isn’t The Butler. (That means no Mariah Carey, no Robin Williams, and no Alex Pettyfer.)

The cinematography by Sean Bobbitt is gorgeous, the score by Hans Zimmer alternately beautiful and brash, the screenplay adaptation by John Ridley just about perfect. (And all, in my eyes, Oscar-worthy.) The movie, I am told, closely follows Solomon Northup’s own account of those dozen years, but Steve McQueen directs it to feel fresh, vital, and visceral, without losing perspective of the subject matter. The man is no stranger to cinematic suffering — both Hunger and Shame chronicled various miseries endured by Michael Fassbender, though those were largely self-imposed. Hunger was hard to watch, a test in endurance; 12 Years A Slave has some of this, but is less willfully challenging. (Shouldn’t a movie about slavery be hard to watch, after all?) Shame, meanwhile, was my #1 movie of 2011, largely because I found McQueen’s filmmaking so fascinating. Not everyone appreciates a showy director, but I do.

Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Alfonso Cuaron — these are the guys I admire most, and now McQueen is very much a part of the same conversation. He shows a fair amount of restraint in that regard — pulling out only a handful of tricks when he really needs them. (As in his other films, there’s a particularly long take here, and it’s a stunner.) Mostly, though, McQueen’s filmmaking feels appropriately muted for a 19th century story, though his flair for the visceral is apparent here and there, such as when we creep through the brush during Solomon’s work day, or when we get a long, unbroken shot of Solomon staring out at the distance, then staring into us. His visuals are carefully considered — the way he composes a shot of Solomon laying next to a slave woman, then cuts to a flashback of Solomon laying next to his wife at an opposite angle, is quietly brilliant visual storytelling. There’s a lot that goes unsaid in this movie, but the actors and direction are strong enough that we get all the information we need, and then some.

Even without 12 Years A Slave, 2013 would’ve been a strong year for black cinema. Inclusive of it, it’s a momentous one. Between 12 Years A Slave, The Butler, and Fruitvale Station, filmmakers are running basically the entire gamut of the African-American experience in this country (with varying degrees of success). It’s astounding to view 12 Years A Slave and Fruitvale Station side by side, for example — despite the difference of roughly 170 years, there’s a shocking similarity between the way Solomon is unjustly shackled and beaten for his protestation, and the way Oscar Grant is unfairly detained in a subway station on New Year’s Day in 2009, leading to his death at the hands of a white police officer. Both films are true stories depicting gross abuses of power, and neither ends with justice being served to the oppressors (as we’re told in title cards at the end of both movies).

Comparisons to Lee Daniels’ The Butler are less favorable to Lee Daniels. I expected The Butler to be a provocative mess like his other movies; and in a way, it was, though not exactly a bad mess. It’s a well-intentioned one. Forest Whitaker delivers a solid performance as Cecil Gaines, even if his (heavily fictionalized) character is passive and ultimately not that memorable a guy. The film suffers from stunt casting, with most of its presidents ranging from distracting to ridiculous — Liev Schreiber, James Marsden, John Cusack, and Robin Williams amongst them, none of whom quite work in the roles. Surprisingly enough, it’s Oprah Winfrey who delivers the strongest performance as Cecil’s not-so-faithful wife Gloria, a more dynamic character than Cecil himself. Cecil’s passive role as servant to a slew of white presidents is presented in stark contrast to the activities of his son Louis (David Oyelowo), who goes from Rosa Parks-style Civil Rights protests to joining the Black Panthers. The Butler certainly bites off more than it can chew, endeavoring to tell essentially the entire story of race relations over 90 years, from a 1920s cotton plantation in Georgia to the election of Barack Obama. Obviously, a lot of glossing over is necessary, and even with all that, the movie still doesn’t know when to end, overstaying its welcome for an extra ten minutes or so.

So yes, The Butler is flawed, deeply flawed — but seriously flawed movies have been nominated for Oscars before and even won them. A strong performance at the box office and mostly positive responses from audiences and critics meant that it stood a fighting chance at major Oscar nominations — at least until 12 Years A Slave came along. I won’t underestimate the general public’s taste for easily palatable pap — like last year, when I assumed Zero Dark Thirty would blow Argo out of the Oscar conversation, only to watch the opposite happen. Often, a nice “safe” movie that follows the rules trumps a more challenging one. But could the Academy seriously agree that The Butler is better than 12 Years A Slave? It’s hard to fathom. 12 Years A Slave is just about perfect, and as lame as it sounds to say, it’s also an important movie. It’s a film that humanizes everybody it depicts, even while depicting some of their ugliest features. (Sarah Paulson’s Southern belle, for example, is a complex villainess, and she delivers a terrific performance.)

12 Years A Slave is at once incredibly subtle and totally in-your-face — few movies find that balance. Already it has the feel of an instant classic, a film that will be discussed and admired for years to come. That doesn’t guarantee it’ll win Best Picture (though it probably should). As history has proven, justice isn’t always served. Either way, Steve McQueen has made his masterpiece. It makes the unhappy ordeals titularly depicted in Shame and Hunger look like Bliss and Too Much Cake in comparison, and yes, it pretty much blows every other slave movie out of the water.

This is how it’s done, everybody. Long live McQueen.

*

Some movies are tougher sells than others. Certain films are almost willfully difficult to sell. How about a nice uplifting movie called All Is Lost, which features exactly three instances of dialogue — some voice over in the beginning, a distress call spoken into a malfunctioning radio, and one expletive shouted to the heavens. (If I were in this character’s place, there would have been a lot more profanity.)

As in many years, the slate of films that will compete in 2013′s awards race have many differences, but a slew of similarities are cropping up. All Is Lost is not the first film to feature a beloved Hollywood veteran in peril on the Indian Ocean — first upon his own vessel, then on a lifeboat. The other is Captain Phillips, with Tom Hanks in the titular role; like Robert Redford in All Is Lost, he remains cool as a cucumber for a long stretch of the film despite rapidly decreasing chances for survival. Both Redford and Hanks will be major factors in the Best Actor conversation this year.

And then there’s Gravity, one of the year’s biggest success stories. Like All Is Lost, it’s primarily concerned with one character’s survival in a rather hopeless situation — outer space is probably the only lonelier and more terrifying place than being adrift in the middle of a massive ocean. Unlike All Is Lost, it’s presented in 3D with jaw-dropping, state-of-the-art visual effects, which makes it feel like a thrill ride. Gravity was a bit of a tough sell, by Hollywood standards — it’s an original story, after all! Its success was in no way guaranteed. Still, it made a few concessions for mainstream audiences — so guess which film has grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide, and which has made a little over $4 million? The difference is a little shocking, considering that, at heart, All Is Lost and Gravity are the same movie.

But All Is Lost is a tough sell. There’s virtually no dialogue, and it’s probably the only movie this year to have a smaller cast than Gravity. It’s just Robert Redford. That’s it. And he isn’t even given a name. Last year’s Oscar-winning shipwreck drama Life Of Pi gave its hero a handful of animals to chatter with; Robert Redford doesn’t even have a volleyball. Tom Hanks carried Cast Away largely on his own, as Suraj Sharma did with Life Of Pi and Sandra Bullock does in Gravity. But there’s no Wilson, no Richard Parker, and no howling Chinese guy for Redford to bounce off of here — he doesn’t even mutter to himself the way a lot of us would. He is alone. All Is Lost makes Cast Away, Life Of Pi, and Gravity look positively sprawling with supporting players.

The film begins with Redford’s character, in voice over, dictating a letter to his family (presumably), declaring that “all is lost” and his doom is impending. That’s roughly all the insight into this man we’ll get — he apologizes for his stubbornness, but it’s too little, too late. Flash back eight days, and we see the beginning of this man’s troubles as a crate that must’ve fallen from a barge impales his vessel, Virginia Jean, leaving a sizable hole in it. (The contents of the crate? Thousands of pairs of children’s shoes, ironically — for when we get old, it’s as if countless young are kicking us out of this world.) “Our Man,” as he’s credited, is surprisingly cavalier at finding his boat flooded with water. (Like I said, if it were me, this movie would have earned an R rating for profanity in those first five minutes.)

But that’s because Our Man is the kind of guy who knows enough about survival to go sailing in the Indian Ocean unaccompanied. We can guess that his family wasn’t too happy about it, but Redford is playing the kind of guy we’ve probably all encountered at least once, likely within our own families — whose stubbornness increases at the same rate as his age, even as their physical bodies grow less and less capable of withstanding trauma. When they get to a certain age, perhaps they’ve withstood enough to think they can withstand anything; that, or they’ve full enough lives that the notion of death doesn’t frighten them anymore. (At least, not until they’re staring it right in the face.)

Our Man faces a number of setbacks, none of which are at all unbelievable. Those first few minutes are troubling enough, with Redford wading through water on the Virginia Jean; already all seems lost, and we wonder how the hell he’s going to stay afloat for even one more day, let alone eight. All Is Lost is not as edge-of-your-seat gripping as Gravity, though it grows more involving as it unfolds; nor do we come to know Our Man as well as we know Captain Phillips. Redford’s character is a little more resigned to his fate than these other characters — as we may guess from the title — and we’re less certain of his survival.

This is a story about an old man and the sea — a story that’s been told many, many times over, with the sea often winning. It would be a very different film if writer/director J.C. Chandor had cast someone thirty years younger, because a man at that age is not prepared to die. Neither is Our Man, but we get the sense that it’s primarily because he doesn’t want to be beaten, and doesn’t want to be proven wrong. He wants it to be on his terms. The movie’s scrappy, mainstream-bucking aesthetic is similarly stubborn — no talking, no flashbacks, and only the sketchiest outline of a main character. Like a crotchety old dude who heads into the Indian Ocean on a sailboat himself, ignoring warnings, muttering, “To hell with what you people think!”, All Is Lost isn’t here for your love, it’s here for your respect. J.C. Chandor is going to make this movie his way, dammit. And get off his lawn!

While that may make All Is Lost sound like some pretty bitter medicine — Amour H2O — it goes down rather smoothly. I’ll admit to being a bit disenchanted in those early scenes, but as Redford’s predicament becomes more dire, the film won me over bit by bit. I stopped wishing that the film had opened with Redford saying farewell to his family to give us a little context, or that we even see a picture of them. I no longer wondered, “Would this be better if someone else was on the boat with him?” I didn’t even ask, “Why the fuck isn’t he swearing?” The film does make a few concessions for the audience, including some rather gorgeous underwater shots (as the ocean predators grow increasingly menacing) and a lovely score by Alexander. I can’t discuss the ending without spoiling whether or not it lives up to its title, except to say that it both does and doesn’t — but I did find it haunting.

Some years, Redford’s turn in All Is Lost might be a shoo-in at the Oscars. Unfortunately, in 2013, he has some competition. He’ll likely lose the “Hollywood star in peril on the sea” vote to Tom Hanks, since he’s in a more mainstream-friendly film that more people have seen, and because the last five minutes of Captain Phillips are pretty juicy, performance-wise, whereas Redford remains rather understated. That leaves Redford with the “senior citizen we don’t see too often these days” vote, which he’ll be splitting with Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern. But Robert Redford has already gotten his due from the Academy (though for directing, not acting) and the world at large, whereas Bruce Dern is rather unsung. (Strange sidenote, though — Redford has been nominated only once as an actor, for The Sting. Rather surprising for the George Clooney of yesteryear.) If I had to place my bets between the two, I’d put my money on Dern.

It’s not all political. Dern has a showier, scene-stealing performance. (Redford can’t exactly steal scenes when there’s nobody else on screen.) Alexander Payne’s Nebraska isn’t exactly a likely blockbuster, either, but it is more of a crowd-pleaser than All Is Lost. While in many ways it’s just as melancholy as All Is Lost, what lingers afterward is the comedy in the clever script by Bob Nelson, as well as Dern’s unforgettable performance as Woody Grant, a man who is both demented and lucid somehow. He’s not “cute” the way many crazy old cinematic coots tend to be; he’s lost most of his marbles, but it still holding onto a few. It’s a depressingly realistic portrait of a half-senile senior citizen, despite the comedic accoutrement.

We meet Woody as he’s en route from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska — on foot. He’s soon intercepted by the police, but it’s far from the last time he’ll attempt this journey. Gradually it becomes obvious that stubborn old Woody will never stop setting out on this quest, so his youngest son David (Will Forte) decides to drive him there. The Holy Grail Woody seeks is a million dollars, which has been promised to him in the mail. It’s a scam, which is immediately obvious to everyone in the film but Woody, but of course, old people fall for such things all the time. It’s amazing the way human beings hold onto some of their faculties while certain clarities just fall by the wayside. Money, especially, gets very confusing for the elderly — maybe because of inflation, maybe because expenses change as we age, maybe because approaching death means divvying up their assets amongst loved ones, maybe because they’re no longer working for it. We worry about money all of our lives, and even in the bitter end — even if we’re imagining it — it’s there, mocking us.

“Life sucks, and then you die.” I’ve never cared for that flippant observation, and I wouldn’t seriously call it the theme of Nebraska. But it kind of is. Woody’s a hard drinker who cheated on his wife with at least one woman. He has a tenuous relationship with his sons. He never amounted to much. What he wants out of life — a new truck — isn’t much, and he still can’t attain it. David isn’t faring much better — he shills home entertainment systems and has been dumped by his girlfriend (who, when we meet her, doesn’t come off all that great to begin with). His older brother Ross (Breaking Bad‘s Bob Odenkirk, playing it slightly less slick) is better off, but only marginally. Can anyone be happy in Billings, Montana? Or Nebraska, for that matter?

You could argue that Nebraska has a pretty condescending view of Middle America. I wouldn’t argue otherwise. But I’m not convinced that it’s Middle America rather than America itself. David’s extended family turns out to live even humbler lives than he does. They’re more content, maybe, but also dim-witted. Cruelly or not, Payne does accurately (though exaggeratedly) peg a certain slice of American pie here — the unambitious and small-minded people you often do find in small towns like Hawthorne, Nebraska.

Alexander Payne is from Omaha, so perhaps he’s earned the right to skewer his homeland. Many of us can relate to the oddities of our country bumpkin cousins, how certain family members have nothing in common but blood. David hasn’t seen his extended family since he was a child, and it’s immediately obvious why — it’s painfully, uproariously awkward when they get together, and eccentric Woody no longer seems like the craziest guy in the room. It’s difficult to be both bleak and hilarious in the same moment, but Payne manages it.

On the surface, Nebraska is simple — at first it may seem even too simple — but there are many layers underneath. As news of Woody’s “winnings” is ill-advisedly shared, greedy friends and family members come out of the woodwork looking for a handout that may or may not be earned. (Several claim to have loaned Woody money, but who knows for sure?) No one in this movie is anything close to rich, but they’re all obsessed with money once even the mention of a million dollars is made. To them, it sounds like a billion. (Clearly they missed Justin Timberlake’s speech in The Social Network about how a million dollars is no longer cool.) There’s also a lot of nuance in David and Woody’s father-and-son dynamic — the film’s final shot says it all. Ultimately, what we walk away with is a story about life itself — we’re all aging, and in a way, we all go on the same journey. We’ll all lose our minds one way or another. We’ll all become irrelevant. We’ll die still wanting something, however silly that thing might be. With all this existential trauma popping up in our minds, it’s a wonder that the film manages to be so funny along the way. But it is.

Nebraska is Alexander Payne’s second film dealing explicitly with aging, and one of several set in Nebraska. It’s shot in black-and-white, and not the crisp, strikingly cinematic black-and-white you’ll see in Schindler’s List or The Man Who Wasn’t There, but a drab, muddy-looking one. The aesthetic has several effects — most obviously, to render Nebraska as dull and lifeless as Kansas was in The Wizard Of Oz. Some would argue that black-and-white is a filmmaker’s bid to be taken seriously and show off — to add a coat of pretense to an otherwise standard picture.  But I’d wager that in Nebraska and a couple other notable black-and-white releases from 2013, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, the choice is actually meant as a bid to be taken less seriously. As if to say: “We’re kinda just playing around here, guys!” For all its grappling with heavy issues, Nebraska is, at heart, a comedy with a whimsical score and an unstoppable lead character who is never trying to be funny, but nearly always is. A color film with a brown palette would have felt more “real,” and perhaps be even more of a downer. All Alexander Payne films mix pathos with biting humor — from Election to About Schmidt to Sideways — but Nebraska is never as rooted in reality as, say, The Descendants. The black-and-white gives us a bit of remove from this world, making it impossible to ignore that this is all being presented to us. We’re outside of it rather than immersed in it.

The effect that has (on me, anyway) is that it makes Nebraska feel like an instant classic. The small-town Americana, complete with a rather broad villainous turn by Stacy Keach, is reminiscent of something like It’s A Wonderful Life. (Old black-and-white movies, like this one, also tend to be grayer rather than have stark contrast between the black and white.) At the same time, there are some strikingly modern touches, like Woody’s foul-mouthed wife Kate, played by June Squibb (who also played Jack Nicholson’s wife in About Schmidt, but survives longer here). The muted cinematography masks the fact that this might be Payne’s most visual film — like a memorable, almost Wes Andersonian shot of Forte and a bunch of senior family members watching TV in roughly the same flannel shirt. There are other visual flourishes, from the telling final shot to Dern’s epically mad hairdo, which is practically worthy of its own spin-off.

The result is a hybrid, both a throwback and very modern day, just like Nebraska itself. The people of Hawthorne seem rather backwards to the kind of people who would pay to see a black-and-white Alexander Payne movie in theaters (I wonder if Nebraska will even play in Nebraska). But we’re all Americans, all existing in the same time, even if some of us choose to live and think in a way that feels more like 1946 than 2013. The people of Hawthorne drink in mom-and-pop taverns, own farms, and think it’s breaking news when a millionaire might be in their midst. (They still have a town newspaper! Who says print is dead?) The black-and-white cinematography makes this feel at once like a beloved old classic and a skewering present tense satire. Some will complain that it feels a bit too cutesy and quaint, insubstantial. It does, in ways, have the simplicity and neatness of a great short film. The climax is utterly satisfying and a total delight.

For my money, Nebraska is Payne’s best film at least since Election, and certainly one of the most essential of his filmography despite its surface smallness. It’s the kind of film you can only make before you’re successful or after you’ve been nominated for multiple Oscars, because no one wants to finance a black-and-white small-town dramedy whose biggest stars are Laura Dern’s dad and a former cast member from SNL. As Chandor was in making All Is Lost, Payne is being willfully stubborn here, isolating people who won’t see a black-and-white indie (exactly the kind of people this film is about). The movie has Woody Grant’s scrappy spirit, going his way or the highway, common sense be damned. There’s some weak acting in the mix, thanks to folksy unknowns I expect are not professional actors. But that’s made up for by a perfectly adequate Forte, along with likely future Oscar nominees Bruce Dern and the scene-stealing June Squibb. (She flashes a tombstone!)

Neither Nebraska nor All Is Lost was made with dollar signs in mind, or else they’d be more genial movies. Like the grumpy old protagonists that star in them, they are mule-headedly going at their own pace in their own direction, even if it kills them.

However, that path just might lead them to the Oscars.

     *

How’s this for irony?

A film about an unappreciated artist made by some of the most praised filmmakers in the world.

To many, the Coen brothers are gods of cinema, peerless in American cinema. They can do no wrong. (Well, they can do The Ladykillers.)

I’m not one of those people. Too many of their films left me cold — or lukewarm, at least. I don’t adore The Big Lebowski like so many do (but I do need to see it again). I liked their version of True Grit. I did not much like Burn After Reading. No Country For Old Men made my Top 10 list for 2007 (in slot #9), but I somewhat begrudge it for robbing Paul Thomas Anderson and There Will Be Blood of more deserved Oscars. And in 2009, a year which found a film called A Single Man as my #1 film, I absolutely loathed the Coens’ A Serious Man — so much that I put it at the very bottom at #64 (after the fourth Fast And Furious). The only Coen film I actually consider truly great is Fargo.

I should probably catch up on some of their earlier works (though also was not a big fan of Raising Arizona). But I think it’s safe to say that the Brothers and I just don’t totally gel. I find their films populated with great performances from some of the best actors around, and many of them contain great scenes. But the stories themselves don’t always connect with me. Their characters can be exhausting; they’re not generally people I want to spend much more screen time with. If there’s ever a criticism lobbed at them, it’s usually about their cynicism. They sometimes seem to hate their characters, and often punish them for it. (That was essentially the entire story of A Serious Man.)

So I walked into Inside Llewyn Davis with mild trepidation, knowing that many critics have already heralded it as one of the year’s best, knowing that it wowed at Cannes, and fearing that it’d be yet another Coen brothers film I can’t help but feel is overpraised. (It’s the same feeling I had walking into Nebraska, though in that case, my fears were quelled.)

Inside Llewyn Davis begins with a stage and a spotlight, but unlike most dramas about musicians, it’s the story of a man who isn’t famous and never will be. That, in and of itself, is a novelty — we’ve seen plenty of biopics that begin with someone, like Johnny Cash or Ray Charles, living meagerly, facing rejection from men in suits who fail to see what we so clearly can — this guy’s the real deal! But in such cases, it’s just a bump on the road to acclaim and stardom (and usually some kind of addiction). That’s why we’re watching a biopic about them. (Even movies about fictional musicians nearly always depict them as wildly popular — see Country Strong, Crazy Heart, That Thing You Do!, and so on.) That’s not the case with Llewyn Davis, a folk music singer you’ve never heard of for a reason. Because no one has, really. Beyond his small circle of family and friends, he never left his mark.

Llewyn Davis is definitely talented. It’s not that he can’t get work — it’s just that he can’t get the kind of work he wants, and he doesn’t want to sell out. The film takes place in New York City’s budding folk music scene circa 1961, but it couldn’t be any more modern or resonant thematically. A great many of today’s starving artists will identify with Llewyn Davis — homeless, broke, lacking a proper winter coat — with nothing but his artistic integrity to keep him warm. Llewyn’s pride is his downfall — he can be prickly, snapping at the few people kind enough to show him charity. There are compromises he could make to earn money, but that’s not what he wants to do. He’s like an indie musician from 2013 who traveled back in time to 1961 — arguably more a contemporary character than a period-appropriate one.

You could read Inside Llewyn Davis a few different ways. Is he a great artist who just never got his due? Did the world miss out on a wonderful (fictional) talent? Or are the Coens critiquing his holier-than-thou artist’s mentality, his refusal to just grow up and get a real job, man? This is a very 1960s dilemma, but also a very 2013 one — there’s every reason to believe that Llewyn Davis is the vessel through which the Coens are exploring post-recession America, particularly as it impacts twenty- and thirtysomethings. (Though Llewyn Davis seems a little too snarky to be 1961′s version of an Occupy Wall Street protester — he’d more likely sit that out.) None of this is didactic, but it’s hard not to view the film through a very modern prism.

You could see Llewyn Davis as a victim — of a capitalist country that favors making money over making art — and in a way, he is. (Aren’t we all?) But I doubt that’s what the Coens were aiming for — their characters tend to be blind agents of their own fates. The filmmakers do have some affection for Llewyn Davis — it’s hard not to, though he is definitely sometimes quite an asshole. He’s not square, and doesn’t play safe, and isn’t always nice — the same is true of the Coens, so I must imagine they love the character. Llewyn Davis is just one of those guys who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere — and doesn’t expend a whole lot of effort trying to. It’s almost surprising that he sings so earnestly and beautifully, and in such a straightforward genre as folk — taking place twenty years later, Llewyn Davis probably would have been totally punk rock. (But I guess folk was kind of the punk rock of the early 60s.)

There’s a squarer folk singer in the movie, Jim Berkey, played by Justin Timberlake, who is everything Llewyn Davis is not. He asks Llewyn to back him up on a self-penned ditty called “Please Mr. Kennedy” that is truly silly, with Girls’ Adam Driver providing ridiculous vocals in the background. It seems eager, talented young artists were faced with the same hit-hungry bullshit from the music business in 1961 as they are today. There’s a terrific scene late in the film featuring F. Murray Abraham as a Chicago club owner and record exec that cuts right to the bone of what it’s like to be an unsung artist unable to pay the bills with talent, unwilling to let go of the dream. Llewyn’s debut record as a solo singer is also called Inside Llewyn Davis; it’s an apt title for a movie about a man who sings from the heart, because when you’re an artist, that’s what it feels like they’re rejecting: your insides. Llewyn bares his soul, but nobody’s paying for it.

Like many Coen brothers films, Inside Llewyn Davis is not that straightforward a story, but a rather episodic one. It takes some bizarre detours along the way, most noticeably a lengthy road trip sequence to Chicago featuring a mostly silent Garrett Hedlund and John Goodman as a character who grows tiresome quickly. In my eyes, much of this strange sequence was a little too offbeat — distracting from an otherwise small-scale and intimate story. The film is book-ended with a scene we see twice, one I’m not sure we even needed to see once — and showing it twice gives it a significance I’m still puzzling over. (It follows a moment of drunken heckling that makes Llewyn’s frustrations more explicit than they needed to be.) There’s also an odd father-son encounter that feels rather extraneous — but I’m pretty sure it’s the only scene in the history of cinema that ends quite like that.

Questionable tangents aside, there a few truly funny moments in the film, and several poignant ones, too. A couple dinner party scenes fire on all cylinders, with Llewyn trying to defend his artistic integrity to the point of being a total jerk. (One of them features another Girls star, Alex Karpovsky — do these boys get a call any time someone writes a movie about being destitute in New York or what?) And then there’s the cat. Of course, the music is very good — especially when sung by Oscar Isaac, who delivers a strong career-altering performance that should guarantee him as a leading man in plenty of upcoming films. (He’s great.) There’s less singing than you might expect from Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, who plays Jim’s feisty, hypocritical, unfaithful girlfriend, who hates Llewyn Davis for reasons we never get a full handle on. (But her surly comedic presence is certainly welcome.)

Is Inside Llewyn Davis a triumph, as its Grand Prix Award at Cannes and critical fawning suggest? I don’t know. As with most of their films, the Coen brothers have left me with mixed feelings — though there’s more in Inside Llewyn Davis that I love than in most of their films. I’ll want to watch it again at least once. It’s a film you might expect from a younger, newer filmmaker (though it could never have been made quite like this). Inside Llewyn Davis is a tragedy many of us can relate to — the tragedy of talent without luck. Llewyn doesn’t have a lot of appealing options available to him, and neither do many of us. It’s almost depressing, really, what little change can occur over fifty years.

For proof of this, see Frances Ha. Frances Ha was also directed by someone who’s seen his fair share of success — Noah Baumbach, probably still best known for his breakout film The Squid And The Whale. (His subsequent films have received very mixed reviews.) It’s a little more fitting that Noah Baumbach has made a film about a young, struggling artist in New York City, because he’s not an Oscar winner as the Coens are. (He was a nominee, though.) He hasn’t achieved film god status like they have. Baumbach co-wrote the movie with its star, Greta Gerwig, who seems very in sync with her title character. (Gerwig’s own parents play Frances’.)

Frances Ha is like an even artsier, black-and-white movie version of HBO’s Girls. (And yes, Adam Driver is in this one, too. Dude has seriously cornered this market.) It’s another unconventional young woman refusing to sacrifice her individuality or her dream, despite a serious lack of funds and only a questionable level of talent. (See also: Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, which saw Lena casting her own family as well.) Like Llewyn Davis, Frances bounces around from apartment to apartment and is told by someone who should know that she has some talent in her chosen field, but not quite enough to make a living at it. (In her case, it’s dancing.) Like Llewyn Davis, Frances spends most of the movie unwilling to accept that, going after her dream anyway. (Though that’s not necessarily this movie’s focus.)

It’s a little surprising how similar Frances Ha and Inside Llewyn Davis are in that respect. Despite its black-and-white cinematography, though, Frances Ha is a much warmer movie with only a slightly bittersweet melancholia at its center, lacking the Coens’ trademark cynicism, and it ends optimistically enough. It’s also very episodic, with charming (rather than distracting) tangents in Sacramento, Paris, and Poughkeepsie. There’s a bit of a story, but only a bit — Frances’ BFF decides to move in with her BF, pulling away from a friendship that was basically Frances’ whole life. Frances tries to cling to that dying friendship in a way that is sad and a little pathetic — it’s another film that should easily resonate with millennial twentysomethings facing similar crises, as will Frances’ bummer of a financial situation.

Frances Halladay is probably not as talented a dancer as Llewyn Davis is a folk singer, and her artistic failure is not so tragic as Llewyn’s. (In her case, it’s probably best that she give up the ghost and try compromising.) The film has a surprising amount of charm, mostly thanks to Gerwig’s unique performance — Frances is quirky and exuberant in a way that might annoy the people around her, but won’t likely annoy the audience. Like Nebraska, it’s a contemporary film in black-and-white; here, that choice feels more like celebration than color-drained depression. For all its timeliness, it feels a little retro, too — like old school Woody Allen. It’s low-stakes, a lark — but something about it stays with us.

Frances Halladay is a woman who needs to dance — but the world doesn’t need her to dance, and it certainly won’t pay her to. Llewyn Davis is a man who probably only expresses pure, genuine emotion when he’s singing — but only a few old people at a dinner party want to hear it. As depicted in Inside Llewyn Davis and Frances Ha, there are more artists in the world than there is a demand for art — or at least more people who think they’re artists. Of course, they all want to make a living doing what they love. Not many do. Frances and Llewyn are two who fell through the cracks, for better or worse.

Thankfully, these stories about them were made by artists who did manage to break through, so it seems Frances and Llewyn found their audience after all.

*

Hey, Academy, are you paying attention?

But of course you are! Here’s a movie featuring a whole bunch of last year’s Oscar nominees, including several past Oscar winners, made by a guy who’s made two Oscar favorites in the last three years. (And now one more.) Basically, there was no way in hell American Hustle wouldn’t be a part of the Oscar conversation this year. And it is.

American Hustle is the partially true story of the controversial Abscam operation carried out by the FBI against some high-ranking politicians, mainly by accident (or so this movie says). Except it’s not really that story, because the Abscam hijinks are actually David O. Russell and co-writer Eric Singer’s excuse to explore a variety of swindlers, colorful characters all, who hustle in a variety of different ways. (The script’s original, even more fitting title was American Bullshit.)

The plot is a little twisty-turny, but as you might expect from the man who recently made The Fighter, a boxing movie that was not so much about boxing, and Silver Linings Playbook, a movie that mixed gambling and romance and mental illness into a wholly unique concoction, American Hustle is much more interested in the relationships between these characters than it is in the plot or politics of what happened. And I’m all for that — we’ve seen enough movies about clever swindles, which tend to hinge on one clever third act “gotcha” and little else. But we’ve never seen an ensemble quite like this.Amy Adams plays Sydney, who falls hard for the paunchy but charismatic Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), whose “elaborate” come-over is the star of the film’s very first scene. (Several key characters are shown taking great pains with their ‘do — yes, even these people’s hair is bullshit.) Irving makes a living by screwing people he considers “bad” out of their money; when Sydney finds out, she’s oddly intrigued, and decides she can prove to be a valuable asset in the operation, thanks mostly in part to an ability to take on a pretty good British accent. But ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) enters the equation and shakes things up, setting his sights on taking down a possibly-corrupt New Jersey mayor and finding that their scheme keeps taking them higher and higher up the ladder. The movie begins as a love triangle, evolves into a love rectangle, then turns into a love pentagon… and so on. The reasonably late addition of Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Irving’s loose canon firecracker of a wife, to the mix, really shakes things up.

Where the story goes doesn’t much matter. This is a movie featuring five supremely talented actors (Oscar nominees all); they’re dressed up in outrageous 70s clothes with their own “elaborate” hairstyles, and they all seem to be having a good time. For once, Amy Adams gets a lead role rather than a supporting one — more predictable casting would have seen her take the Jennifer Lawrence role and vice versa, but it works. The two women share an exceptional scene in the restroom of a casino, one of the film’s many standout moments that has nothing whatsoever to do with moving the plot forward, and everything to do with showcasing intriguing dialogue spouted from the mouths of these dynamic, beloved performers.

Each character is a bullshit artist in their own way. Everybody’s using what assets they have to scam the others, whether it be sex (Sydney), the law (Richie), smarts (Irving), or a man’s love for his child (Rosalyn) — in fact, the most genuine character on screen is probably the “corrupt” politician, Mayor Carmine Polito. (He and his wife, played by an unrecognizable Elisabeth Rohm, feel like they wandered over from a Sopranos dinner party.) Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn is, in some ways, the film’s most fascinating (and least seen) character, who only makes an impact in the second half of the film — she has the film’s funniest lines in a showy performance that’s sure to nab her an Oscar nod (and quite possibly win her another). “Thank God for me!” Rosalyn says at one point; Lawrence should probably thank God for Russell.

American Hustle very much feels like David O. Russell “doing” the 70s — in particular, Scorsese influences are all over the place. (A cameo from Robert De Niro playing a mobster sure doesn’t hurt.) As in his previous films, Russell’s directorial flourishes are far from invisible, but they make otherwise standard fare more interesting than it might otherwise. (It’ll make a fabulous double feature with Boogie Nights.) The movie’s tangents and indulgences tend to be its most delightful moments, while the actual story gives us less to chew on. (There’s a nifty sequence where Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper dance 70s-style, and another with Jennifer Lawrence doing a radical sing-along to Wings’ “Live And Let Die.” Necessary? No. Fun? Yes!)

Something about the film as a whole feels rather inconsequential. The Abscam story isn’t all that monumental as told here — it’s a crazy whim that spiraled out of control, and quite possibly never should have happened in the first place. Maybe the fact that nearly everyone is manipulating everyone else makes it hard to find any one character to really grasp onto — we’re constantly guessing at whether these people have genuine feelings for one another, or whether they’re just playing each other. The film shifts its focus between different relationships at different points in the movie, so we get fascinating moments between Adams and Cooper, Adams and Bale, Bale and Renner, Bale and Lawrence — with none of these exactly emerging as the focal point of the movie. Even Adams and Bale get lost for what feels like long stretches.

It’s a movie to see primarily for the performances, which have already divided critics. Lawrence again plays a character who feels a little older than the actress is herself, but for me, it totally worked. She’s the movie’s best bet for an Oscar. The Best Actor race is too crowded for Bale this year, though he’s good, too — though I question his casting a bit. Even with some weight gain and a gnarly come-over, the man is maybe more attractive than he should be; why not just cast a legitimately beer-gutted actor? Amy Adams should find herself up for Best Actress after four Supporting Actress nominations under her belt, but she’ll likely be edged out to make room for the older vets (Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench). I really enjoyed Bradley Cooper’s wacky take on an FBI agent who should probably not be in a position of power of any kind; then again, Cooper and Lawrence seem to be acting in a movie that’s slightly funnier than the one Renner, Adams, and Bale are in. Believe it or not, it’s Louis C.K. as DiMaso’s FBI higher-up who ends up being the straight man in this crowd in American Hustle‘s most underplayed performance. (I’m not sure the role totally works, but it has its moments.)

I seriously enjoyed American Hustle. It’s hard to find much to say about it. It’s a mess, but it’s a whole lot of fun — not so much a story as it as a movie. The hair, the costumes, the performances, the camera angles, the music — it all feels self-conscious. You’ll never forget you’re watching a film. But do you need to?

American Hustle is about a group of con artists getting together to put on a show and captivate their audience, wrestling a few dollars out of them in the process. David O. Russell and company are mainly just playing around here, and even so, the film is one of the fixtures of awards season buzz. So who’s conning who here?

At the end of the day, movies are just lies we pay Hollywood to tell us, to make us feel better for a little while. David O. Russell is likely aware that in America, Hollywood is the biggest bullshitter of all. And like Irving Rosenfeld, and a good many other Americans, he’s totally okay with making his living as a hustler.

*

Is Leonardo DiCaprio this generation’s Robert DeNiro?

Yes — at least in the sense that he’s Martin Scorsese’s current muse, and yes in the sense that the movies he stars in tend to have some very hefty running times. From Titanic, the blockbuster that made him an international superstar, to The Aviator, his previous three-hour collaboration with Scorsese (with gargantuan films like Gangs Of New York, Inception, and J. Edgar thrown into the mix), DiCaprio-starring movies are rarely nimble, and the same can be said about the films of Martin Scorsese.

They are, however, usually pretty good.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is another of these movies — very long, and very good. Clocking in at three hours, it feels just as lengthy as it is, unlike certain other epics which sometimes have enough momentum that they feel much shorter than they are. Martin Scorsese has found an apt 21st century muse in Leonardo DiCaprio, and The Wolf Of Wall Street may be their best pairing yet. Is it the Raging Bull of Scorsese’s DiCaprio era? Not exactly, but it’ll do.

This is a film that’s all about excess — excessive drugs, excessive sex, and most of all, an excess of money. The film is refreshingly explicit in its depictions of this, with a whole lot of nudity and enough Qualuudes to sedate all of Manhattan for life. It’s a very adult film, and with a budget of $100 million, it’s not an inexpensive one. Basically, it’s the kind of movie that hardly anyone besides Martin Scorsese can get made anymore.

Does it need to be three hours? Did it need to cost $100 million? No and no — but that’s the point. For Jordan Belfort, too much is never enough, and so fittingly, The Wolf Of Wall Street is way too much movie — and yet, just enough. So why complain about too much of a good thing?

The Wolf Of Wall Street is the true story of Jordan Belfort, a self-made mogul who built his own empire on Wall Street in the late eighties and early nineties. Like many stock brokers, he’s a criminal. Unlike many, he’ll answer for his crimes before the film is through. (Partially, at least.)

For a three-hour film, there’s not actually much of a plot here. Jordan trades in his lower-middle-class Long Island life for one of a high-powered mover and shaker, with all the trimmings — supermodel wife, country club membership, yacht, helicopter, drug habit. The transformation happens quickly, and that’s it. There are no real surprises on a story level — the FBI is looking to nab him, and we know already that Jordan will be caught, or how would he have written a book about it? The Wolf Of Wall Street is all about basking in the pleasures of a luxurious life, and then gradually becoming numb to them. With so much gratuitous sex and drug use on display, it eventually ceases to be that stimulating, and we need more and more to get our cinematic high. So, too, for Jordan Belfort.

What the film does have is a whole lotta everything. The script by Terence Winter (a Sopranos writer) crackles with wit and raw nerve — nearly every scene unfolds just right, but they take their time. Scorsese and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker are in no hurry to arrive at any certain point, and though the movie is, in a sense, bloated, few moments would be better off on the cutting room floor, because it’s all done with such  panache. The performances are big — most of them colossal. Matthew McConaughey appears early on and has only one major scene, but it’s a doozy. As Donnie, Jordan’s WASPy partner in crime, Jonah Hill finds a nice balance between his kooky comedic persona and a career as a “serious actor” (following his Oscar nod for Moneyball). Jean Dujardin makes a welcome appearance as a sleazy Swiss banker, and the as-of-yet largely unknown Aussie actress Margot Robbie makes a memorably feisty turn as Jordan’s ultra-hot second wife Naomi, whose idea of punishment for her husband involves spreading her legs when she’s not wearing panties. (TV spin-off idea: Naomi and American Hustle‘s Jennifer Lawrence character become Long Island BFFs and spend their days devising ways to torture their no-good swindler husbands.)

And Leo. Oh, Leo. The Academy has more often than not given DiCaprio the cold shoulder — he’s been nominated for only two Oscars since the nod he got as a teenager for What’s Eating Gulbert Grape, and oddly enough, one was for the forgettable (and forgotten) Blood Diamond. (The other, of course, was for another Scorsese movie.) This year’s Best Actor race is already overstuffed with worthy recipients, including Bruce Dern, Tom Hanks, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael B. Jordan, Robert Redford, Oscar Isaac, Joaquin Phoenix, and DiCaprio’s Wolf co-star Matthew McConaughey. But it’s hard to imagine that Leo won’t receive his fourth nod for this, perhaps his most towering performance in a pretty epic career. He’s busy and brash and fearless, and DiCaprio’s star wattage perfectly aligns with Belfort’s essential charisma. It’s the kind of part best played by a major movie star, the dark cousin of his dynamic title role in Baz Luhrmann’s otherwise flaccid The Great Gatsby. That movie was all about excess, too — money and the evils of the monied. It was long and lavish and loud and over-the-top just like The Wolf Of Wall Street, but it was also a soulless bore.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is not soulless, though some of its characters are — it’s been lambasted by some critics and at least one victim of Belfort’s crimes for reveling in Wall Street’s bad behavior, but that’s a limited reading of it. The Wolf Of Wall Street is a clever critique, not just of Wall Street but of America itself. It’s timely, of course, coming on the heels of the financial collapse, but Winter and Scorsese wisely leave their audience to draw those associations on our own. The Wolf Of Wall Street doesn’t judge or punish its subjects for their erratic and often illegal misdeeds, but it certainly isn’t a flattering portrait of what goes down behind the scenes in Manhattan’s financial district. There’s a perfect sequence featuring Jordan struggling after knocking back a few too many “lemons,” and another outrageous moment on their ill-fated yacht, both of which show the absurd consequences of Belfort’s recklessness. Anyone who thinks these characters are getting off scot-free isn’t looking hard enough.

The film takes place in that sweet spot before America was made aware of its vices — the late eighties and early nineties were all about more, more, more; living well, and not caring how the rest of the country was living. In many ways, these years were the epitome of the American dream. But America, like Jordan Belfort, would eventually pay for its profligacy. Jordan Belfort is an unstoppable, larger-than-life character who gets so drunk on power that he tries bribing a straight-laced FBI man (Kyle Chandler) just to see if this guy, too, will take the bait. We learn very little about what truly makes Jordan tick — he’s a bit of a cipher, standing in for so many other suits who lost their moral compass on the way to Wall Street.

Jordan Belfort is, in a sense, all of us — or at least, the person we’d become if we were handed untold millions of dollars and the keys to the world. The Wolf Of Wall Street‘s thesis is that just about anyone can be corrupted if they find themselves in a world without limits, egged on by a band of brothers who make fraternity hazing look like child’s play. The film isn’t about greed so much as gluttony; everyone has a price, and everything has a cost, and at a certain point, Jordan’s family and closest friendships will be put up for sale just like everything else he’s acquired. Like Jordan Belfort, America started out with the best of intentions, but then maybe we started thinking a little too highly of ourselves and started to take it all for granted. It’s lonely at the top — especially on the way down.

Yes, Scorsese does a certain kind of movie better than anyone else, and this is it. It’s a (relatively recent) period piece and features voiceover from our protagonist, so The Wolf Of Wall Street feels like coming home to the best of Scorsese, and it’s wonderful that the man can still make a movie that sits right up on the shelf alongside some of his greatest. The Wolf Of Wall Street isn’t quite the landmark that GoodFellas was, because there’s nothing exactly new here — coke-addled, power-hungry dude wanted by the law? We’ve seen that from Scorsese. But in a way, it’s a return to form for a man who didn’t exactly need to return to form, but it’s nice to get another big, bold movie like this anyway. Certain sequences are so fun and electric, they’re burned into my brain, and I already can’t wait to watch them again.

It would be excessive to see it again so soon, of course, but when it comes to moves like this, I’m a glutton. Pretty much nobody makes movies like Scorsese — unless it’s David O. Russell, aping GoodFellas in American Hustle. This one is masterfully made on every technical level, with cinematography, music, editing, and visuals that give cinema junkies like me a badly-needed fix that cannot be duplicated. I’d rather have a foul-mouthed, sex-drenched, drug-spattered, three-hour movie like this than a nicer, leaner alternative; I guess you could say I want it all, as much as possible.

When it comes to movies, I like excess. I like ‘em big and loud and flashy, filled with unforgettable performances and scenes so unusual they become instant classics. I daresay The Wolf Of Wall Street will endure the test of time and be remembered as a truly great movie. It’s decadent and fun and naughty — like a guilty pleasure, except we’re supposed to feel as much guilt as pleasure.

By saying very little outright, The Wolf Of Wall Street manages to speak volumes about America then and now. We’ll laugh at Jordan Belfort for his weaknesses, we’ll rebuke him for his extravagance, yet we’ll continue striving for the American dream so we can live just like him. Because at the end of the day, we all want to be wolves, don’t we?

*

Think of Rome.

All sorts of images may flash into your mind. You might first think of religion, or perhaps of the Italian glamor captured by Fellini in the sixties. Maybe you think of the history, the architecture, the art.

Whatever it is, you’ll likely find it in La Grande Bellezza, the latest film from Italian director Paolo Sorrentino. The title translates to The Great Beauty, and it’s true — the film is utterly gorgeous and breathtaking to behold, in part because of the showy cinematography, and in part because Rome itself is so aesthetically beautiful.

But the title is perhaps an irony, because The Great Beauty isn’t about prettiness at all. There are many beautiful things in it, but it’s a film about ugliness and waste and excess, about too much of a good thing. The film is drenched in death — the glorious opening scene comes to a halt with the sudden demise of a random tourist, and several other characters will expire before it’s over. These deaths make little impact — life just goes on.

Yes, these deaths are accompanied by beautiful images and beautiful music. They look great, but it’s all surface. Life is beautiful, La Grande Bellezza proclaims, and death even moreso. Sorrentino depicts ugliness in a very beautiful way, but The Great Beauty constantly reminds us that what we’re seeing is superficial and hollow and ultimately unsatisfying. Life is a non-stop party for these fabulous beautiful people; it only ends when they die. That sounds great at first, but then it goes on… and on… and eventually the parties seem more like punishment. What good is cutting loose when there’s nothing to be cut loose from? When all of life is one big party, how do you take a break? You can live la dolce vita for as long as you like, The Great Beauty says, but there comes a point where it ceases to be so sweet. And by then, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

The Great Beauty is not a film that is easily summed up. It’s not as elusive as many movies that favor style over substance, for it states its themes fairly openly in several bits of dialogue — but there are also many curiosities to be found within. The film takes on a dream-like effect, especially in the outrageous final third. In many ways, The Great Beauty is a love letter to Rome — “love” being a rather strong word for it, since our protagonist Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) has mixed feelings on the life he lives there.

Jep is a somewhat successful novelist, but he quit after his first book. He claims he was too busy partying to finish another, and that seems to be true — he’s up late every night, drinking and dancing and talking at length with a group of friends who are as superficially successful as he is. He goes to bed when the sun comes up, just when an average man would be waking up to go to work. He has no children, and we get the sense that he hasn’t had a serious relationship in the recent past. He lives the life of a young bachelor, even though he’s now getting to be an old man.

The film begins with a busload of Asian tourists taking in the glories of Rome; we, too, are tourists in Sorrentino’s magnificent vision of this ancient city. Then the tourist dies. Sorrentino jumps from there into a long party scene, featuring several delightful minutes of dancing, drinking, and debauchery. Later, there will be talk about how Rome is not what it used to be; it is, essentially, dying. Art is dying, religion is dying, these glamorous parties are dying. There is a lively band of socialites still living it up until the wee hours of morning, but they’re aging fast now. There will come a point when none of these people are left, and who will replace them? We don’t meet many characters of a younger generation, and when we do, they don’t wind up too well off, either. (Witness the strange and heartbreaking sequence of a young girl furiously painting on a huge canvas for an audience of rich observers.) Everything is dying.

Jep, like the film, is preoccupied with aging. He still lives like his younger self, but feels old while doing it. He begins an unlikely romance with a stripper past her prime named Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli), the daughter of an old friend he hasn’t seen in thirty years. She’s younger than Jep but too old to continue taking her clothes off for money, and she has a dark disposition that gradually reveals itself to us and explains, at least partially, why she’s stuck in a rut. There’s not much hope for Ramona, either, in this decaying Rome.

As in many European films, there is much intellectual discourse on the decline of society, particularly from Jep at these party scenes. The film is episodic, some episodes more surreal than others, though I suppose we are meant to take most of it at face value. We accompany Jep, now a journalist, on an interview with a pretentious young artist; we observe as he learns that his first love has recently passed away (another death!); we attend the funeral of another character with Jep and Ramona, which Jep is initially glib about until he breaks down in very real tears once actually confronted with the experience; we attend a dinner Jep hosts for a decrepit old holy woman who is revered by many — but not by Jep. Mostly, we party.

The film takes an odd turn when it focuses on religion in the third act, or at least on religious characters. Religion feels a little off-topic for these characters, since there’s very little talk of religion before this point. (Though there are a lot of nuns scurrying about throughout.) I’ll admit, The Great Beauty lost me for a little while — but it makes sense for an older man grappling with his mortality to flirt with religion near the end.

The Great Beauty is populated by unforgettable images and energetic editing; we encounter a drunk midget and a toothless nun along the way, for example. (Okay, actually, the nun does have one tooth left.) It’s a dazzling film, and also a rambling and rather pretentious one, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fun.

On the one hand, The Great Beauty evokes older Italian cinema — Fellini in particular — but rather than serve as a mere pastiche, it’s all about the death of what Rome used to be. Out with the old, and in with… well, The Great Beauty doesn’t seem to have anything new to replace them with.

Art, religion, tradition, and tourism will die — and the parties will, too. But they will be the last to go, raging on as the rest of the world decays around them.

*

Hollywood is obsessed with money, I say.

Duh, you think in response.

But hear me out.

In 2013, Hollywood was particularly obsessed with money. Not just with making money, but with telling stories about making — and losing — money. In my Top Ten list last year, I named Zero Dark Thirty my favorite film of the year; it’s a movie that serves as a symbol of America’s search for catharsis after 9/11.

And now, in 2013, we have Hollywood’s response to a very different national crisis — the recession from several years back that’s still taking its toll on our economy. It’s a subject that has woven its way into the fabric of many, many films this year — so many that explore what America stands for, strives to be, fails to be, and is.

Of course, lots of films from any era use money as a major motivator for its characters — particularly action and drama. Yet in examining my ten favorite films from the past year, as well as several others, I couldn’t help but notice a connective tissue. It’s like all the filmmakers in the world got together and decided to make on giant meta-movie that was all about the cracks and crevices marring our American dream.

Not all of them are good. Not even close. The past year gave us two very similar stories of our nation’s leaders in crisis — Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. Neither set the world on fire — just Washington, D.C., har har — but they’re emblematic of 2013′s cinematic mood. Escape From Tomorrow is a nightmare vision of the Happiest Place On Earth. Gangster Squad depicts the senseless violence, greed, and corruption of some of Los Angeles’ darkest days. Parkland is another take on the assassination of one of our most beloved presidents. Even Lone Survivor, a mostly rah-rah tale of American bravado, perhaps accidentally sheds light on questions about the wisdom of what we’ve been doing over in the Middle East.

Oz The Great And Powerful is the story of an American man who swindles the denizens of a fairyland and convinces them he’s a worthy leader. We’re The Millers is a comedy about a bunch of misfits mimicking a perfect American nuclear family. Identity Thief is a comedy about a very sad woman taking money that doesn’t belong to her in hopes of filling the void in her soul. The East is about an extremist group that takes revenge on American corporations guilty of actions that they’ll never be punished for in a court of law.

These are not the best movies of the year. Some of them are very bad, actually. They’re just a handful of titles that had such themes on their minds, though the better films I’ll discuss below are more provocative. Ask many film fans, and they’ll claim that 2013 was a very good year, cinematically; awards season is an embarrassment of riches, with the focus actually placed on very good, very deserving films for once.

So. Here are 2013′s best films, y’all.

(Click on the film title to read my original review.)

10. THE GREAT BEAUTY (LA GRANDE BELLEZZA)

While my list this year is largely America-centric, one foreign film I saw late in the game did manage to find its way into my year-end kudos, and that’s La Grande Bellezza, released as The Great Beauty here in the U.S.

Last year’s list had the brilliantly bizarre Holy Motors in the mix, and The Great Beauty is a worthy successor — though a slightly more cohesive one. Whereas Holy Motors was essentially a series of loosely connected vignettes, The Great Beauty does tell a singular story — though it, too, is vividly heightened with only a tenuous attempt at an anchoring plot.

Though The Great Beauty is specifically about life in Rome, it also bears many similarities to 2013′s crop of American movies. It’s about life as a non-stop party, even if several of these partygoers are starting to feel like they’re too old for this shit. There’s a scene in which our protagonist Jep encounters a less-privileged man, asking him what his plans for the night are. A little dinner and TV with his spouse, the man replies. Jep thinks that sounds nice — luxurious, even. But that’s not Jep’s life. Jep wouldn’t know an ordinary existence if it slapped him across the face.

Co-writer and director Paolo Sorrentino delivers the year’s most purely cinematic effort, with breathtaking images that are simultaneously dazzling and disorienting. It’s an overabundance of arresting scenes, so that days after seeing it, you might suddenly remember a mesmerizing moment you’d forgotten merely because there were already so many others caught in your brain. The Great Beauty is best viewed as a wild ride through Roman decline with a host of tantalizing surprises along the way. It took me some time to figure out just how to respond to The Great Beauty; now I’m certain that it’s one of the year’s most striking films, one I’m eager to revisit to take it all in again.

The Great Beauty isn’t an American movie, but like many domestic films this year, it taps into “rich people problems” — the boredom and blase attitude that can arise out of a too-easy life. Clocking in at well over two hours, the film is as much about excess as Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, with similarly exhilarating sequences of raunchy behavior. (It’s not quite as sordid as what Jordan Belfort did, though — The Great Beauty actually makes a lot of this look fun.) We’re not the only ones dealing with a troubled economy, societal decline, and the questionable priorities of religious leaders — and we’re definitely not the only ones drinking and dancing the night away to forget it all.

9. FRANCES HA

The only way you’d catch Frances Halladay occupying Wall Street is if someone else convinced her to — that would probably be her best friend Sophie. (“We’re the same person with different hair,” Frances says, unaware that Sophie has ceased to feel the same way.) But Frances is very much a product of Right Now in America. She’s yet another broke twenty-something who expected things to fall much more easily into her lap, and now has no idea how to reconcile her broken dreams with a hard reality.

Frances bounces around between a number of different apartments, paying less and less rent each time. She dreams of being a dancer, but everyone around her seems aware that she just isn’t cut out for that. (Frances, of course, is entirely unaware.) Frances thinks she’s poor, though she is reminded at one point that she’s still a lot more privileged than an actual poor person; but that doesn’t matter much when you’re barely scraping by in New York City. At one point, she decides to blow her remaining cash on a spontaneous weekend getaway to Paris, just because — and then sleeps through half the trip. Frances watches as her best friend drifts away in favor of a better life with a stable job and a doting, well-to-do fiance; meanwhile, Frances is a twenty-seven-year-old still stuck in that awkward post-college lurch, living paycheck to paycheck when she can even get a paycheck, which isn’t always.

In the same way that being broke is always in the back of a broke person’s mind, nearly every scene in this movie has something to do with money, but Frances Ha doesn’t strive to be topical — it’s only about post-recession America if you choose to view it that way. The film is shot in lovely, low-key black-and-white, and that, along with its ease and charm, evoke old school Woody Allen; it’s a delightful throwback while at the same time feeling entirely contemporary, which is an odd but enchanting mix. Inside Llewyn Davis and (to a lesser extent) Her also depict creative misfits struggling to find their place in a world that doesn’t seem to need them. Both are very good movies, but in the end, Frances Ha won me over because I found its down-on-her-luck outcast so very endearing — thanks in large part to co-writer Greta Gerwig’s alluring performance.

I’m not sure you’d really want to spend time in the company of grumpy, self-righteous Llewyn Davis (unless he agreed to sing for you), but how can you not want to hang out with Frances Halladay? Often praised for her warm and approachable indie naturalism, Gerwig makes Frances wholly relatable to millennials. By the end of her journey, I had the feeling that Frances and I were practically the same person — just with different hair.

8. THE BLING RING

The kids aren’t all right. That much is obvious in Sophia Coppola’s adaptation of a crazy-but-true tale of the Calabasas teenagers who easily robbed celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, and Paris Hilton for months before being caught. And in case it isn’t immediately obvious: these kids weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. It’s just that their targets were so vain and over-privileged that it never occurred to them that they could be the victims of such crimes.

This past year saw several different films about unlikely, unlucky lawbreakers, from the bodybuilders who kidnap one of their personal training clients for extortion in Pain And Gain to the foursome of bikini babe college girls who go on a crime spree in the surreal Spring Breakers. Sofia Coppola is a better storyteller than either Michael Bay or Harmony Korine, however; those films dealt more explicitly with the American dream, the obsession with staying young and hot (and hopefully rich) forever. Coppola’s focus, on the other hand, is trained on celebrity culture and social media; it may, in fact, be too savvy in how it depicts how obsessed these teens are with gossip rags and Facebook selfies. Is it too soon for a send-up of 2009 pop culture? Some audiences were underwhelmed; these are likely the same people who tweeted about how they didn’t “get” The Bling Ring before idly clicking over to Perez Hilton.

What makes The Bling Ring so fascinating is how little separation there is between the stars and those who are obsessed with them. Lindsay Lohan got in trouble for drunk driving and stealing, just as these kids do; Audrina Partridge’s fame is a byproduct of her wealth and privilege, not something she earned with talent and hard work. It’s not like the Bling Ring targeted Meryl Streep and Al Pacino — they went after the flashy, accessible stars whose whereabouts could be traced on the internet, the celebrities who leave a wake of senseless chatter and blinding flashes wherever they go. On the BluRay, there’s a special feature with Paris Hilton chiding these kids for their vanity and materialism as she takes us through a tour of her house, showing off her excessive goods. It’s hard to feel sorry for the “victims” of these crimes when they’ve barely earned this stuff themselves.

Anyone who claims to believe Spring Breakers is one of the year’s best films totally mystifies me — Korine’s film beats you over the head with repetitive scenes and banal voice-over dialogue, then James Franco arrives as a character based on a minor celebrity, imploring us to “look at his shit.” That’s fine, I guess, but I’d rather look at Paris Hilton’s shit. (Though I do give the edge to Spring Breakers’ Britney Spears sing-alongs over The Bling Ring‘s M.I.A.)

Like several of my favorite films from 2013, this one is very much of this time. In its own way, The Bling Ring is every bit as astute as The Social Network in depicting how young people live now; it’s also a lot of fucking fun to be taken “shopping” in celebrity homes, with plenty of time spent ogling the merchandise. Coppola makes us complicit in these crimes — we get off on the vicarious thrill of ransacking celebrity cribs, wishing we were there ourselves. It’s like an extra-naughty reality show, and our schadenfreude toward a certain brand of celebrity allows us not to feel any guilt. We’re voyeurs, too — but in this day and age, it’s all but impossible not to be. The Bling Ring is one of the best modern movies about celebrity, because the real stars are in the periphery. It’s actually about the people who worship stars — about us — without whom there would be no stars at all.

7. AMERICAN HUSTLE

This film is bullshit. Normally that’d be an insult, but bullshit is all American Hustle is trying to be. The original title of the script was American Bullshit, after all, and in it, everybody’s a hustler. David O. Russell collects an all-star cast of the hottest actors working right now, most of whom have worked with him before. Between them, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper have been nominated for… well, more Oscars than I care to count. (Add Robert De Niro, who makes a cameo here, and it’s definitely too many.) And surely there will be a few more nods added to the list once this year’s nominations are announced.

In addition to movies about the financial end of the American dream, 2013 has also been a big year for scorned wives. Two other movies in contention for my Top 10 were Blue Jasmine and Side Effects — movies that, on the surface, have little in common. Both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara played wives of swindlers whose lives of luxury came to a crashing halt when their hubby got busted; both women sought a particularly nasty form of revenge. And let’s not forget Naomi, the gorgeous Long Island housewife in The Wolf Of Wall Street, who could easily be American Hustle‘s Rosalyn’s BFF. Jennifer Lawrence plays the kooky spouse of Bale’s Irving Rosenfeld, a seemingly dim-witted housewife who reveals more complicated layers late in the film. Love her or hate her in this movie, Lawrence is a total scene-stealer with some of the film’s funniest lines, particularly a riff about a “science oven.” But every character is given a moment to shine — an absolute must in a film stuffed with this much big-name talent.

American Hustle has met its share of critics, to which I say, To each their own. They complain that the film is overlong and more interested in splashy dialogue and showy costumes than an overarching plot, and I don’t disagree. American Hustle is like GoodFellas in drag, with David O. Russell heating up Martin Scorsese’s leftovers in his science oven. It’s kind of funny coming in the same year that Scorsese himself released GoodFellas‘ younger, fatter cousin. It’s like Scorsese and Russell went shopping and discovered a really great thrift store together, and Scorsese was like, “You be seventies and I’ll be eighties… now what can we do with all this?”

Both films have been dubbed as comedies, yet neither really is; both are quite funny in places, and both celebrate scandal and ultimately reward their characters’ bad behavior with not-so-tragic endings. But not really. They’re satires of the American way, and while The Wolf Of Wall Street has taken the brunt of the flack, American Hustle presents even less of a downside to being a swindling douche bag. Irving Rosenfeld and Jordan Belfort think their victims are stupid losers, “bad people” who deserve to be hustled away from their money; in American Hustle, the lawbreakers and law-enforcers are equally corrupt, so why take sides? Both films leave our final judgments of these characters up to us. If you think bad guys in America are always punished for lying, cheating, stealing, and so on, then I’m sorry, but you’ve been hustled.

In the end, American Hustle is less interested in storytelling than movie-making. It’s a bunch of talented, attractive people who got together to play — and when it’s this much fun to watch, I’m totally on board with that.

6. NEBRASKA

Everyone in America dreams of being a millionaire — that goal is ingrained in our culture, even (or especially) in the most rundown town in the Midwest. And if you don’t even have to work to earn your massive fortune, all the better!

Movies like American Hustle, The Bling Ring, Pain And Gain, Spring Breakers, and so on depict amoral people stealing to advance to the good life. Nebraska‘s Woody Grant isn’t so unscrupulous, but when he gets a piece of mail informing him that he’s got a million dollars waiting for him in the Cornhusker State, he jumps at the opportunity to finally upgrade from nobody to somebody.

Woody’s an old codger who probably spent more of his life drinking than working; he’s showing signs of dementia, though he’s not yet lost every one of his marbles. He’s got a squawking spouse (June Squibb, yet another scene-stealing wife of 2013) who’s probably right to constantly complain about him, and he definitely hasn’t been the ideal father to his two grown sons. Winning a million dollars is Woody’s last chance to prove himself to all the people who’ve long since stopped paying attention — he’s got a small handful of years left, at best, and he wants to go out on a high note. Woody really only needs a fraction of a million dollars to fulfill his modest ambition to own a brand new truck, but of course, his journey to Nebraska is not actually about that — something his son David knows, too. Woody and David are embroiled in a fight for Woody’s dignity, which isn’t easy when the looney old man is only half-there most of the time.

Woody’s dreams are decidedly smaller than the lavish longings of The Bling Ring or Spring Breakers, but at the core is the same desire to “better than.” It’s just that the folks he’s trying to be better than aren’t that well-off to begin with. Nebraska is filmed in black-and-white to reflect a lack of variety and options where Woody hails from, and where he is now — a shiny new truck is the only way to introduce a little pizzazz to his existence, and when news of Woody’s supposed good fortune spread, greed roils within many of his old friends and family members, proving that no American life is too squalid to resist the siren’s call of a dollar sign. (And who would have guessed that in the year 2013, two of my year-end picks would be in black-and-white?)

Like the Coen brothers, Alexander Payne has been accused of taking a condescending attitude toward his characters, and there are a few members of Woody’s family that come off as more cartoonish than complicated. (I wouldn’t argue that they’re unrealistic, though.) This could be a problem, except Payne and screenwriter Bob Nelson imbue Woody with such depth and humanity, never once allowing us to pity him even when he’s the subject of ridicule. This is thanks in large part to Bruce Dern’s career-capping performance, a truly remarkable achievement that easily could have been overplayed. Even if early scenes play Woody’s pain more for laughs than tears, ultimately it leads to one of the most emotionally rich and satisfying payoffs of the year. It’s Payne’s best film in ages.

5. THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

From Nebraska we move on to another story about fathers and sons that received far less attention. This one isn’t about one particular father or one particular son — there are several sets of fathers, biological or otherwise, focused upon in Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines, and the scope is even wider. You could say that this is a film about all fathers and all sons.

Though there are a few plum roles for women, including Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne as mothers in duress, The Place Beyond The Pines is clearly focused on multiple generations of males in a story that spans nearly two decades. In the opening segment, we meet a stunt motorcyclist aptly named Handsome Luke (played by Handsome Ryan Gosling) who learns that a casual relationship he’s all but forgotten spawned a young son, who is now being provided for by the mother’s new beau; Luke himself doesn’t have the means to take care of mother and child, but feels compelled to try anyway.

Unfortunately, that means turning to a life of crime, a choice that has long-reaching repercussions for multiple characters in this story — some of whom he’ll never even meet. There’s a police officer named Avery (played by Bradley Cooper) who happens to be the officer on duty when one of Luke’s bank robberies goes awry. What happens that day will change each man’s life in drastic ways and continue to impact their families for years to come. The Place Beyond The Pines has a novelistic structure that may, upon first viewing, be jarring to some, focusing on different characters at different times. But as both Avery and Luke’s sons approach adulthood late in the film, we see the cyclical nature of fatherhood — and how one man’s actions can shape the destiny of his loved ones long after he’s gone. Thus a shot of Luke’s son at age 17, riding his bike down a winding road, unaware that his father once rode his motorcycle down this very same road, is one of the most poignant cinematic moments of the year, in my humble opinion.

Handsome Luke is another American in the movies this year trying to make a living he didn’t earn; his intentions are noble, but his methods are flawed. Unlike many of this year’s cinematic swindlers, he and his loved ones are punished when he tries to take a shortcut to that financially secure happy ending we all dream about. Luke never had a father; then he strikes up a vaguely paternal relationship with an auto mechanic who introduces the idea of robbing banks. Luke is trying to provide for his son, not realizing that this very decision will lead that child to grow up without him. And thus the cycle continues. Sometimes what we think is the answer to all our troubles is really where the trouble begins…

4. BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Alongside Nebraska and The Place Beyond The Pines, the third entry in the most unlikely trilogy of all time also has a father-son conflict driving the movie, though it takes a while for that to surface. Before Midnight opens with Jesse, now in his forties, dropping son Hank off at a Greek airport. It’s hard for Jesse to see Hank go, because while Jesse lives it up in France with his longtime partner Celine (they’re not married), his son must return to Jesse’s ex-wife in Chicago and grow up largely fatherless. That’s the price of true love.

Before Sunrise was a romantic fantasy about strangers meeting cute in Vienna and giving in to red-hot passion. Before Sunset was about their somewhat unlikely reunion almost a decade later, how old flames can be rekindled quickly because, perhaps, they never really burnt out in the first place. Before Midnight takes kismet out of the equation — there’s no chance meeting here. Jesse and Celine have been together for nine years now, raising adorable twin girls. They’re summering in Greece with their daughters, Jesse’s son, and friends representing several generations. But now this summer is nearly over.

As the title suggests, Before Midnight grows darker than its predecessors. Jesse has realized his dream of falling in love with a European beauty and writing novels for a living. He may not live in America anymore, but it’s a pretty perfect approximation of the American dream (minus the bitter ex-wife, of course). For Celine, though, life is not quite so dreamy — she loves her daughters and Jesse’s son, and she still loves Jesse, but she’s nowhere near the place she thought she’d be in life, and Jesse’s domestic paradise means a sacrifice of her individuality and career aspirations, which Celine is slowly growing to resent. As in the prior two films, Jesse and Celine walk-and-talk about a wide variety of topics relating to gender politics, their feelings for one another, and life itself; but then they argue and get truly nasty with one another, baring ugly truths (unlike the first two movies).

There’s one long dinner scene with multiple generations of lovers — Jesse and Celine are no longer the cute young romantics, but fall somewhere in the middle, and we catch a glimpse at how love works for varying age groups. The film’s final act is a show-stopping fight scene that perfectly encapsulates a real lovers’ spat; they bicker and make up and then bicker again. They say things they don’t mean, or maybe they really do mean them. They question whether or not their love is worth the struggle and sacrifice. In short, the honeymoon is over.

Before Midnight is the perfect movie for anyone who ever questioned two characters riding off into the sunset toward a supposed happily-ever-after — and asked, “Yeah, but then what?” Jesse and Celine were once perfect romantic foils, but no two people can sustain such harmony and bliss forever. Richard Linklater, along with his co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (who put much of themselves into these scripts), explore and challenge the idea that two people would, could, and should spend their lives together. They have just about everything they could want, yet it isn’t quite enough. They yearn for more.

When Jesse first hints that he’d be happier if Celine picked up her life and moved to America so they could be closer to Hank, she posits that this is the day that will break them apart, the beginning of the end for them. Is it? Before Midnight may or may not be the final chapter for one of our favorite on-screen couples. We watch in suspense to see whether or not these two will kiss and make up before midnight strikes and finds them separated. Linklater forces us to confront a number of tough questions, starting with: If not even these two can make it work, how is there any hope for the rest of us?

3. GRAVITY

If movies had a common thread in 2013 besides money and the American dream, they were all about survival.

Yes, okay, lots of movies from lots of years also hit on this basic theme, but this year especially. From the biggest domestic moneymaker of the year, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, to Best Actor hopefuls like Captain Phillips and All Is Lost and Dallas Buyers Club, there were so many films about people trying to get by on their own, facing obstacles large and small (mostly large, though). There’s even one called Lone Survivor.

Spoiler alert: Gravity could also be called Lone Survivor, since Sandra Bullock’s only real co-star abandons her early in the movie. Gravity wasn’t the highest-grossing film of the year, or even in the Top 5, but it’s the movie 2013 will be remembered by. It’s the buzziest event movie since James Cameron’s Avatar, with a similar emphasis on spectacle; the Best Picture race this year will echo 2009′s, when the 3D behemoth from outer space squared off against a lesser-seen but more grounded story of earthly duress, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. (Steve McQueen was never married to Alfonso Cuaron, though.) Following that formula, 12 Years A Slave is a (slightly) more likely victor, but Gravity will hold up far better than Avatar did, because for all the razzle and dazzle, it’s a poignant story about death and rebirth and survival. And, you know, trying not to float off into space.

Instead of another story about fathers and sons, Alfonso Cuaron delivers a tale about mother and daughter, though we never meet that daughter (she dies before the movie begins). Perhaps his unconventional approach to filmmaking gave Cuaron the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted with this story — how else to explain a big studio action film carried almost solely by one actress? (She is, at least, a very bankable actress.) Cuaron has again proven himself one of Hollywood’s most innovative visionaries, delivering that rare, perfect blend of art and commerce. (Inception was the most recent such film.) Gravity is a one-of-a-kind immersive experience, a rare beacon of hope in a year that delivered dud after dud in the blockbuster department otherwise. Hollywood is certainly paying attention, though it remains to be seen whether it will learn a lesson.

Unlike most of my favorites from 2013, Gravity is not really about money or the American dream, except on a meta level — it sure made a lot of money, so we can only hope that, like Ryan Stone, movies like this one will fight and beat the odds and survive the dark wasteland that normally sucks up well-intentioned gems like this. Because I’d rather float off into space and die than sit through most of the films that were released last summer. Studios should stop wasting money on big, expensive junk no one wants and spend a little less on stories people actually want to tell, the stories we want to be told.

But that’s not a free pass to go and make Gravity 2, you guys. Just… don’t go there.

2. 12 YEARS A SLAVE

Thanks in large part to Gravity, it’s been a decent year for women on the big screen — though the Best Actress race is still pretty lackluster compared to the boys’ club. It’s also a strong year for black filmmakers, with the release of buzzy dramas like Fruitvale Station (directed by Ryan Coogler) and Lee Daniels’ The Butler (directed by Lee Daniels, if you couldn’t tell). What’s going on? Movies about women and minorities? Diversity in Hollywood? Somebody pinch me!

The Butler is a massive hit, raking in over $167 million worldwide. Fruitvale Station is a more modest success (but a better film). The year’s ultimate triumph, however, could likely be Best Picture hopeful 12 Years A Slave, which has received about as unanimously positive critical response as you can get. (There will always be a handful of naysayers.) It hasn’t earned nearly as much as The Butler (around $50 million worldwide to date), but it’s already been heralded as the definitive movie on American slavery, Oscar or no. Already it has made its mark.

So here’s where it all began, more or less. We are a capitalist nation. The American dream has always piggybacked on someone else’s nightmare — in this case, Africans and their descendants who were shipped over to do the bidding of white men. More than 150 years ago, a real man named Solomon Northup was drugged, waking up to an unimaginable horror — he was now the property of a slave trader, and as property, he could be beaten, tormented, even killed without consequence. We all know all about slavery, of course, and have since we were very young — but at a distance. 12 Years A Slave puts those injustices front and center, in our faces, and leaves them there for uncomfortably long moments. We are not allowed to look away, because director Steve McQueen knows: if we could, we would.

But 12 Years A Slave is no parlor trick. It’s not supposed to be punishment. And it certainly doesn’t provide any catharsis. It’s a potent reminder. If The Place Beyond The Pines depicts how a father’s actions can have devastating effects on his son, then 12 Years A Slave is about how our founding fathers’ actions can carry over multiple centuries, creating problems we’re still dealing with as a nation. (The Butler and Fruitvale Station address such problems in different eras.) America’s first black president is in office, something that would have been unthinkable in Solomon Northup’s time, and that’s progress. Maybe someday we’ll be free of the shackles of the past, but we’re not there yet. 12 Years A Slave is only partially about how far we’ve come; it’s also about how far we have yet to go.

But I didn’t enjoy 12 Years A Slave because it was a didactic history lesson, or because it made me think about slavery in a new light. (It won’t make you think about slavery in a new way; the point is to think about it at all.) I love this movie because it’s a great story well-told. Every aspect of the filmmaking is vital and beautiful, from the propulsive score by Hans Zimmer to the astounding cinematography by Sean Bobbitt and, of course, McQueen’s distinctive directorial flourishes, decried as “too artsy” by some. For me, they’re just artsy enough. 12 Years A Slave has some of the year’s boldest scenes, some of which can be hard to watch — an extended whipping scene, and one with Solomon hanging from a noose while daily life at the plantation goes on around him indifferently. But McQueen is no sadist. 12 Years A Slave does not take the Michael Haneke approach to entertainment. There are many quietly beautiful moments; and though much of the discourse 12 Years A Slave inspires is made very obvious, there’s also a lot to think about that isn’t so blatant.

No other film this year is filled with so many magnificent performances. Lupita Nyong’o is a revelation as the unforgettable Patsey, who almost threatens to steal the movie from Solomon. (Another suffering slave woman, played by Adepero Oduye, also makes an impact.) Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, and Benedict Cumberbatch play slave owners with varying degrees of evil in their hearts; none are mere monsters, though Fassbender gets damn close. Of course, it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor who carries the movie with a largely understated performance; Solomon is an intelligent, thoughtful, and educated man who must hide all of these qualities in order to survive, but we can always read his thought process on Ejiofor’s expressive face. When first realizing his terrifying reversal of fortune, we experience his personal horror vicariously as he thinks, I’m not supposed to be here. It’s only later that he thinks: But nobody is. 

We, the audience, identify with Solomon the everyman, and thus undergo the same experience. It’s not necessarily a pleasant journey, but it is a beautiful one. Should a movie about slavery be so pretty? I don’t mind, because McQueen is so brutally honest about ugliness, too. Solomon Northup probably never imagined his story would resonate 160 years after it was first published, just as his enslavers never considered the impact their actions might have after a century or more. Slavery may be a thing of the past in America, but exploiting the weak so the wealthy can prosper? Yeah, about that…

1. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

In a year during which so many movies were about America’s relationship to wealth and power, here is the movie that is most about that — if only because it is the longest.

Martin Scorsese is not fucking around with The Wolf Of Wall Street. The man is in his seventies and chose this movie to deliver some of the most explicit scenes of his career. Here we have a candlestick poking out of a major movie star’s anus; here we have that same major movie star blowing drugs into an attractive naked woman’s rectum. So, it’s settled then: this is, in every way, a movie about assholes.

America is still hurting from the recession, even if we’re pretending it’s fine. It’s not fine. Frances Halladay can’t pay her rent, handsome motorcyclists have turned to robbing banks to provide for their families, elderly men are attempting to walk from Montana to Nebraska to claim bogus prizes — even Paris Hilton isn’t safe from criminals who want a taste of the 1%. And then here’s this jerk Jordan Belfort, wastefully wrecking his yacht, his Lamborghini, and his helicopter. What a fucking asshole.

It’s a wonder, then, that as played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jordan Belfort still comes across as so winning. Even after all that, you almost, almost, almost want to party with him. (But you’d be sure and have a DD.) The self-proclaimed “Wolf Of Wall Street” lives up to his name, with modest beginnings in penny stocks that eventually have him making nearly a million dollars a week. (Fucker.)

Jordan has a hot wife — no, yeah, duh, but I mean, extremely hot — and a ginormous house. He has a horde of followers who would all fall on their swords for him. He bangs hot ladies all over town, drops thousands of dollars on every meal, and throws the wildest parties since Jay Gatsby. (Who, coincidentally, was also portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio this year.) So, do you want to help me strangle this motherfucker or what?

If you’re one of The Wolf Of Wall Street‘s many critics, the answer is probably yes. The film has proven controversial, mostly because some people need a tidy moral literally spelled out for them at the end of the movie. (How about an end title card that reads: “The makers of this movie do not endorse drug use, prostitution, or screwing innocent people out of their hard-earned income, mmkay?”)

That is, in large part, why The Wolf Of Wall Street is my favorite movie of 2013. I tend to root for the underdog, which often means taking a hard stance in favor of divisive films. (See also my previous #1s, which include Crash, United 93, and Zero Dark Thirty.) Last year, Zero Dark Thirty was trumped by Argo — fucking Argo! — because of a stupid debate about whether or not the film endorsed torture. It didn’t. The film depicted torture, without anyone wagging their finger directly to camera and explaining, “This is bad!” Much in the same way, some are up in arms about how The Wolf Of Wall Street glorifies the illegal doings of stock brokers, because the film itself doesn’t declare a judgment. The Wolf Of Wall Street endorses such behavior the same way Taxi Driver endorses assassinations, Cape Fear endorses biting people’s faces off during sex, and The Aviator endorses dating Katherine Hepburn. Which is to say: not at all.

Don’t like The Wolf Of Wall Street because it’s an overlong, excessive mess of a movie? Fine by me. It’s not for everyone. But to condemn the film because it doesn’t condemn its characters is just madness. The story may take place in the eighties and nineties, but the film is very much about the here and now — the enormous greed of a small number of people that eventually proved toxic to every single American. How dare anyone expect Martin Scorsese to punish the people in his movie, when in real life, these people have not been punished? It would be dishonest — and though this movie is by and large about dishonesty, it is not dishonest.

The Wolf Of Wall Street gives us barely a glimpse at anyone who isn’t living the high life. We don’t meet any of Jordan Belfort’s victims — but presumably, neither does he. And we don’t need to see any of that, because look around — we see it every day, everywhere we go. The American dream has gotten out of hand, and caused a lot of damage in its wake. That’s how we live in now, and it’s silly to expect that a movie will provide catharsis when the real world has not.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is one big, crazy movie — the kind of movie many doubted Scorsese still had in him. It replaces his trademark violence with raunchy sex and quaaludes galore, but it’s the same ol’ Scorsese. God bless him. The movie is so much fun it’s almost too much fun, by design — certain scenes go on and on, but they’re magnetic. Leonardo DiCaprio gives the performance of his career (and let me remind you, it’s a hell of a career); he’s supported by solid work from Kyle Chandler, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, and plenty more, but this is DiCaprio’s show, and he owns it.

This is the movie that put the theme of the year into focus for me — and once I saw it, it was impossible to unsee how many other films dealt with these ideas. And get this: the best movie of the year is the perfect companion piece to the year’s best TV show, Breaking Bad, which also bowed out in 2013. That’s a series about a man whose greed got the better of him, costing so many people so much; both The Wolf Of Wall Street and Breaking Bad‘s best episode, “Ozymandias,” use the big bad dad grabbing his tiny tot and rushing off to the car while mom screams in agony as their climactic moment.

In its own way, The Wolf Of Wall Street is as much about the post-millennial strife we’ve faced as a nation as United 93 or Zero Dark Thirty; neither of those films sugar-coated the hard truth, and this doesn’t either. Good for you, Scorsese. Bad for us. It’s not a filmmaker’s job to punish Wall Street for its sins; it was ours. If we wanted it done, we should’ve done it ourselves. Some tried, but most of us did nothing.

Don’t ask a movie to do what you cannot. If you don’t like the world The Wolf Of Wall Street depicts, that’s too bad, because it’s the world you’re living in. This is America in 2013, exaggerated ever-so-slightly to fit the big screen. It is, unfortunately, not just a movie.

The Top 10 Films Of 2012

The Top 10 Films Of 2011

The Top 10 Films Of 2010

The Top 10 Films Of 2009

The Top 10 Films Of 2008

*

It’s the morning of the Oscar nominations, and I’m not upset.

This is weird. All the films I wanted to see nominated for Best Picture are. All the actors I hoped to see receive nominations for this year’s performances were. Compare and contrast to last year’s fatal omission of Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director, or 2011′s Oscar season, in which none of my ten favorite films were nominated for Best Picture — but Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was. This year, on the other hand, five of my own picks for Best Picture overlap with Academy’s. Three of my four favorite performances were recognized. All of the films from the Best Director nominees were in my Top 10.

What the fuck is going on here?

Yeah, it was a good year for movies, and thankfully, it’s a good year at the Oscars. It’s only natural that some of my favorite films aren’t represented as much as I may like, and you know what? I’m pretty okay with that.

Still, I think I can do the Academy a little better. So now it’s time for the really important awards — my picks for the films and performances that deserve more recognition than they got. Here are 2013′s Not-Oscars!

(As usual, I pick a winner and then list my four other “nominees” in descending order based on how much I liked them. Check out last year’s Not-Oscars here.)

BEST ACTRESS

Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue Is The Warmest Color
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha

Honorable Mentions: Brie Larson, Short Term 12; Amy Adams, American Hustle

Cate Blanchett is the favorite to win and has been ever since the release of Blue Jasmine, and deservedly so — the role of a broken, vodka-guzzling socialite grieving for her dearly departed husband and dearly departed lifestyle (not necessarily in that order) is a perfect showcase for a performer, blending comedy and tragedy expertly, and it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job with the part. It’s one of the roles she’ll be remembered for.

Meanwhile, young Adele Exarchopoulos carries Blue Is The Warmest Color, as the film’s French title The Life Of Adele suggests. The movie is about every aspect of this young girl’s life, and she eats, showers, and has sex with equal gusto in an incredibly natural performance. She’s remarkably expressive for such a young actress, and if the rumors are to be believed, she put up with quite a lot of duress thanks to the film’s director, including some very long sex scenes.

If Blue Is The Warmest Color rests almost entirely on Exarchopoulos’ shoulders, Gravity rests even moreso on Sandra Bullock’s; the screenplay lets her down with a clunky bit of dialogue or two, but that doesn’t undermine Sandy’s remarkable feat as an action heroine who’s still as capable, with a mix of strength and vulnerability, as she was in Speed almost two decades ago. One of the year’s most beautiful scenes is her Ryan Stone howling along with a Chinese stranger via radio — and despite the massive amount of visual effects, Bullock had a lot of physical work to do to master this part.

And how about indie darling Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the perfect part for her winsome indie charms in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha? She may not exactly be the millennial female Woody Allen yet, but Lena Dunham better watch her back all the same.

My 2013 winner, though, is easy — Before Midnight‘s Julie Delpy, stepping into the role of Celine for the third (and final?) time. In the past two films, Celine was a smart, thoughtful, independent woman; she’s too fully realized to be written off as a mere manic pixie dream girl, but she was in many ways the perfect woman. It was to see why Ethan Hawke’s Jesse fell for her. Before Midnight presents a new challenge for the actress — Celine is less secure, revealing a fragility and bitterness that were only hinted at in earlier incarnations. Delpy deftly shifts from the “old” Celine we (and Jesse) know and love to reveal a darker shade to the character that is still so relatable. (And she performs a large part of the third act topless, so there’s that.)

BEST ACTOR

Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years A Slave
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

Honorable Mentions: Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station; Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips

It’s by far the best year for Best Actor in recent memory, with at least ten performances that deserve Academy recognition. The biggest performance of the year has to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Wolf Of Wall Street — he’s brash and bold like we’ve never seen him before, and funnier, too. His quaalude overdose is a masterpiece of excruciating physical comedy, and he delivers some of the year’s best monologues to boot. After plenty of solid performances over the past couple decades, it’s maybe the performance that finally signals him as one of his generation’s best actors.

Then there’s Chiwetel Ejiofor, who guides us through the hell of a free man finding himself suddenly enslaved. In a big, brash drama, this is a surprisingly understated performance, since Solomon knows he can’t give away the fact that he’s smarter than his masters without suffering even worse consequences. This was the toughest category by far for me to pick a winner in, since Dern, DiCaprio, and Ejiofor were all about equal in my eyes.

Oscar Isaac has the advantage of singing beautiful folk music to win audiences over, and his voice is indeed lovely; his turn as the titular Llewyn Davis is prickly enough that we’re never allowed to feel sorry for the down-trodden musician — instead, we realize that his bad luck is a mixture of misfortune and bad behavior. Hopefully, enough people took notice of this largely unknown actor for us to see much more of him in the future.

And, of course, there’s Matthew McConaughey, in the midst of a massive career renaissance that no one saw coming, turning in unforgettable performances in a wide array of movies over the past two years. Dallas Buyers Club is the centerpiece, as he portrays a straight man afflicted with the last disease he’d ever admit to having. McConaughey lost a ton of weight in the role (and has been uncomfortably skinny-looking in a number of his other appearances over the past year), but he also resists the urge to sentimentalize Ron Woodruff as some actors may have; like Isaac, he doesn’t give a damn if he’s likable in the role or not.

But my favorite is Bruce Dern’s crazy old coot in Nebraska, because he is the movie. It’s a tribute to Dern as well as the screenplay that we can never tell just how “with it” Woody Grant is — he seems to simultaneously believe that he won his phony millions while somewhere, at the back of his mind, knowing it’s too good to be true. It’s a role that could have been cutesy or precious, but instead it’s just pitch-perfect all the way through, allowing us to laugh at, critique, and feel for Woody all at once. DiCaprio and Ejiofor hopefully still have many great performances in them, but this one feels like Dern’s crowning achievement after a long career.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years A Slave
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Joanna Scanlan, The Invisible Woman
June Squibb, Nebraska
Margot Robbie, The Wolf Of Wall Street

Honorable Mentions: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine; Sarah Paulson, 12 Years A Slave

The Jennifer Lawrence backlash is beginning. She can ask her fellow Oscar-winner from last year, Anne Hathaway, how to deal with that. Some are calling her scene-stealing performance in American Hustle the best part of the movie; some think she was just plain awful. It’s pretty obvious which side of the fence I’m on — I found every moment Lawrence was on screen a delight. Yes, it’s the sort of big, brassy, ditsy performance that award-givers love to honor — see Oscar-winners like Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny or Mira Sorino in Mighty Aphrodite, both of which were controversial picks. But there are two scenes that show Lawrence is more than just a hairdo — when Rosalyn tears up and claims that change is hard for her while, under the surface, implying that her new beau should go rough up her old one — and ohhh, lordy, that bathroom scene.

Next there’s Joanna Scanlan, who beefs up an underserved part in The Invisible Woman with her expressive face. She’s the plump, put-upon wife of Charles Dickens, who gradually realizes her famous hubby is in love with a younger, prettier woman. We’re left to guess how she feels about it until the film’s best scene, when Mrs. Dickens confronts the young woman and presents her with a birthday gift. It’s the kind of supporting performance that makes you wish the movie was all about her.

And how about June Squibb, who played Jack Nicholson’s dumpy wife in Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt a decade ago, and now shows up in a much livelier part in his Nebraska? While Will Forte plays the serious straight man and Bruce Dern touches our hearts with his senility, Squibb injects a welcome dose of energetic comedy to lighten the mood — she even flashes the grave of a deceased paramour at one point. Yeah, these may be cheap laughs in a way, but they’re still good ones.

Last in this lineup of scene-stealing wives is Margot Robbie of The Wolf Of Wall Street. Like Lawrence, she’s aided greatly by a fabulous wardrobe and a juicy script, and some may think she’s just a pretty face. But in a largely amoral film, she’s the closest thing to a sympathetic character we get, and over time we really do feel for her, particularly in her dramatic final confrontation with DiCaprio. Really, though, she’s here because she’s in what might be my favorite scene in a movie this year — yep, the “no panties” scene.

But none of these supporting actresses had quite the impact Lupita N’yongo did in 12 Years A Slave. Like them, she’s a scene-stealer, but she’s far from comic relief. Solomon Northup is such a dignified and reserved character, Steve McQueen’s film needs Patsey to be his counterpoint — and as much sympathy as we have for Solomon, it ends up being Patsey who we really feel for. We see Patsey suffer more than any other character, and Nyong’o sells every moment with fear, fury, despair, or whatever the scene calls for. It’s impossible to take your eyes off her for a moment, even when she’s being brutally whipped and you really want to look away. In a film populated by well-known actors like Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Michael Fassbender, Paul Giamatti, and Benedict Cumberbatch, the largely unknown Lupita Nyong’o gives the performance that’s burned in our brains.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years A Slave
Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12
Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines

Honorable Mentions: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips; Bradley Cooper, American Hustle

Best Supporting Actor is the weakest race this year, yet somehow the Oscars still overlooked the marvelous James Gandolfini, who passed away last year, leaving behind a legacy as Tony Soprano. Given the tough-guy roles he’s ordinarily known for, Gandolfini is an unlikely romantic comedy hero, but he sure as hell pulls it off in Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, which finds the burly actor courting Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a comedy about taking a second stab at love in middle age. The Sopranos allowed Gandolfini to show off all kinds of gifts, though menace is certainly at the forefront of our minds. So his warmth and charm in this role is a nice way to cap off his career, though it’s a shame we won’t get to see more of him in movies like this.

Meanwhile, Michael Fassbender takes a page from Tony Soprano by playing the villain of 12 Years A Slave. He’s a drunk, he’s a rapist, and he’s a slave owner — so, yeah, not a very nice guy. Edwin Epps is outsmarted by Solomon Northup because Edwin can’t fathom that a slave could be smarter than him; together with his spiteful wife (played by an equally good Sarah Paulson), these two rain down an almost unbearable level of fear and torment on their human property. Yet what makes Fassbender’s performance so special is that there’s a hint of humanity buried underneath it, so we can’t merely write off Epps as a bad guy. He’s a coward and a bully and a brute, but he’s not uncomplicated. Through Fassbender, we understand how these people justified their atrocious actions, even if by modern standards they are nowhere near justifiable anymore.

A lesser-seen and lesser-known performance comes from Keith Stanfield, the young actor who plays Marcus in Short Term 12. It’s a film filled with terrific, understated performances, but Stanfield might have the trickiest role in Marcus, an angry young teenager with no place else to go. We can sense the rage within, as well as a deep well of sadness and betrayal, but Stanfield keeps us on edge wondering if — or when — Marcus will finally snap and do someone in this movie harm. One moment, we’re crying for him, the next we’re afraid he’s done something terrible. There are many poignant moments in Short Term 12, but the unlikely tearjerker is Marcus’ haircut scene.

And then there’s Ryan Gosling, who in 2013 starred in the overblown Gangster Squad and Nicholas Winding Refn’s surprisingly underwhelming Drive follow-up Only God Forgives. At least one of his roles lived up to its potential — the motorcycle-riding bank robber Handsome Luke in The Place Beyond The Pines. Like Margot Robbie, Gosling’s performance is helped by his character’s sense of style. His clothes are a moody hipster’s wet dream, and let’s face it — this is Ryan Gosling, bleached blonde and tatted up on a motorcycle. How could he not be cool? We’ve seen Gosling play the stoic type with rage and violence bubbling just under the surface in several previous roles, so his turn in The Place Beyond The Pines isn’t exactly a revelation. But in a lackluster year for supporting males, Handsome Luke is one of the characters who stayed with me.

This year, Best Supporting Actor the only one of these categories in which my pick will likely line up with the Academy’s. That will almost surely be Jared Leto, whose turn in Dallas Buyers Club is a total transformation within and without. To play the transgender Rayon, Leto doesn’t just put on a wig and some lipstick and call it a day, as many other actors might have. We believe that he believes he’s a woman, and Let fully commits to the femininity without ever winking at the audience. Rayon is a larger-than-life character both in the movie and outside of it, so yes, this is the kind of performance that the Academy likes to reward even when it isn’t done well. In this case, it is. Dallas Buyers Club is more notable for its two towering male performances than it is as a stand-alone movie; it’s a movie about the AIDS epidemic of the eighties that quite possibly under-represents the gay end of the equation, so that point of view is almost entirely up to Leto. Fortunately for us (and him), he nails it.

BEST DIRECTOR

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years A Slave
Martin Scorsese, The Wolf Of Wall Street
Richard Linklater, Before Midnight
Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond The Pines

My five favorite directors line up exactly with my five favorite films — but not exactly in the same order. Alfonso Cuaron’s triumph with Gravity was innovative in so many ways — it was a pretty big risk that fortunately paid off. And Steve McQueen had quite a task ahead of him when he set out to make a slave epic that dealt so brutally with those horrors, which gives him the edge over an old pro like Martin Scorsese, whose bloated (but fabulous) The Wolf Of Wall Street cost a lot of money and looks like it. I have to give props to Richard Linklater, who films walk-and-talks so expertly, using incredibly long takes that must’ve been a major challenge. And Derek Cianfrance manages to lend an epic scope to The Place Beyond The Pines, a story that in other hands could feel much smaller.BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

12 Years A Slave — John Ridley
The Wolf Of Wall Street — Terrence Winter
Before Midnight — Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, & Julie Delpy
Short Term 12 — Destin Cretton
Blue Is The Warmest Color — Ghalia Lacroix and Abdellatif Kechiche

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Frances Ha — Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig
The Place Beyond The Pines — Derek Cianfrance & Ben Coccio and Darius Marder
American Hustle — David O. Russell and Eric Singer
Side Effects — Scott Z. Burns
Nebraska — Bob Nelson

Though Hollywood sure loves to make movies based on pre-existing material, for once, it was a better year for Original Screenplays than Adapted ones. I don’t necessarily like the Academy’s rules for dividing them — how is Before Midnight an adapted screenplay? What was it adapted from? — I did follow them here, because otherwise it’s just too confusing. Academy nominees Dallas Buyers Club and American Hustle, for example, are both based on real events, which doesn’t make them exactly “original,” but they also both made up a lot of the characters we see on screen. (Jared Leto’s Rayon? Not a real person.) So they’re kind of original, but kind of adapted. Whatever, they’re all pretty good.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Great Beauty
12 Years A Slave
The Wolf Of Wall Street
Gravity
Her

BEST SCORE

All Is Lost — Alexander Ebert
The Place Beyond The Pines — Mike Patton
Only God Forgives — Cliff Martinez
Gravity — Steven Price
12 Years A Slave — Hans Zimmer

BEST DRIVING

Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines

WORST DRIVING

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street

BEST FIGHT (VERBAL)

Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight

BEST FIGHT (PHYSICAL)

Ryan Gosling & Vithaya Pansringarm, Only God Forgives

BEST TWIST

Side Effects

BEST MUSICAL NUMBER

I’m So Excited

WEIRDEST MUSICAL NUMBER

Spring Breakers

BEST KISS

Jennifer Lawrence & Amy Adams, American Hustle

BEST DRUNK

Bruce Dern, Nebraska & Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

WORST DRUNK

Colin Ferrell, Saving Mr. Banks

BEST STRUGGLING ARTIST

Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Lea Seydoux, Blue Is The Warmest Color
Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12
Ernst Umhauer, In The House

BEST SCENE-STEALING WIFE

Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Margot Robbie, The Wolf Of Wall Street
June Squibb, Nebraska
Joanna Scanlan, The Invisible Woman
Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels’ The Butler

BEST HUSTLER

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Alec Baldwin, Blue Jasmine
Channing Tatum, Side Effects
Tom Hanks, Saving Mr. Banks

BEST LONER

Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Robert Redford, All Is Lost
Joaquin Phoenix, Her
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Mark Wahlberg, Lone Survivor

BIGGEST BITCH

Kristin Scott Thomas, Only God Forgives
Sarah Paulson, 12 Years A Slave
Meryl Streep, August Osage County
Julia Roberts, August Osage County
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks

BEST DOUBLE FEATURE

Blue Jasmine & Side Effects
The Wolf Of Wall Street & The Great Beauty
Frances Ha & Inside Llewyn Davis
Captain Phillips & All Is Lost
Saving Mr. Banks & Escape From Tomorrow

*

2013 ROSTER

1. The Wolf Of Wall Street
2. 12 Years A Slave
3. Gravity
4. Before Midnight
5. The Place Beyond The Pines
6. Nebraska
7. American Hustle
8. The Bling Ring
Frances Ha
10.The Great Beauty
11.Side Effects
12.Short Term 12
13.Her
14.Blue Jasmine
15.Blue Is The Warmest Color
16.The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
17.Inside Llewyn Davis
18.Drinking Buddies
19.Captain Phillips
20.All Is Lost
21.Dallas Buyers Club
22.Enough Said
23.Mud
24.Stories We Tell
25.Fruitvale Station
26.The Past
27.The East
28.The Invisible Woman
29.The Spectacular Now
30.The World’s End
31.This Is The End
32.In The House
33.Much Ado About Nothing
34.Stoker
35.Prisoners
36.I’m So Excited
37.The English Teacher
38.Disconnect
39.August Osage County
40.Lone Survivor
41.Gimme The Loot
42.The Way Way Back
43.The Call
44.The Conjuring
45.Lovelace
46.Lee Daniels’ The Butler
47.Thor: The Dark World
48.Philomena
49.Saving Mr. Banks
50.Upstream Color
51.Only God Forgives
52.Pain and Gain
53.C.O.G.
54.Iron Man 3
55.Trance
56.We’re The Millers
57.Prince Avalanche
58.White House Down
59.Identity Thief
60.The Kings Of Summer
61.Oz The Great And Powerful
62.The Great Gatsby
63.Spring Breakers
64.Jobs
65.Computer Chess
66.Parkland
67.Post Tenebras Lux
68.The Canyons
69.Gangster Squad
70.Escape From Tomorrow

*

In cinema, there are twist endings… and then there are endings that are so twisted, so gnarled, so completely screwed up they leave you sitting in the theater with your mouth hanging open puzzling over what the hell just happened until the end credits are over.

Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy has such an ending.

But let’s start at the beginning. Enemy is the second English-language film from Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, though technically it was filmed before Prisoners, which also starred Jake Gyllenhaal (and an impressive cast of other high-caliber actors, including Hugh Jackman, Viola Davis, Paul Dano, Terrence Howard, Maria Bello, and Melissa Leo). Prisoners was an enjoyable but muddled and largely incoherent thriller with some unfortunate gaping plot holes that undermined its plausibility, and a lot of storylines and characters that went literally nowhere. (The real crime: Viola Davis was totally wasted.) The fault lied in the script rather than in Villeneuve’s taut direction; it was twisty and turny in the usual ways, with a few minor surprises along the way.

With that simple, ambiguous title, Enemy sure sounds like it could be the sequel to a film called Prisoners, but besides leading man Jake Gyllenhaal and Villeneuve, the two films couldn’t be more different. Enemy is by far the smaller of the two, in terms of look and scope, with only five or six characters of significance. It certainly feels like the kind of movie a director would make before prestigious, studio-friendly fare like Prisoners; it’s quirky, murky, and deliberately confounding. A lot of people would prefer the straightforward thrills of Prisoners, but I’m more transfixed by Enemy, a film I will need to see several more times before I feel like I have a solid grasp on what it’s actually trying to say. I knew the film had a surprising ending, and so I braced for it; yet I doubt there’s a single filmgoer in the entire world who could have predicted what happens in the last scene of this movie. It’s the ultimate cinematic “What the fuck?”, and it’s delightful.In Enemy, a milquetoast history professor named Adam finds himself experiencing a nasty case of Vertigo when he rents a DVD from the local video store (thanks to a colleague’s recommendation) and discovers an extra in the film who looks exactly like him. That man turns out to be the small-time, Toronto-based actor Daniel Saint Claire, whose real name is Anthony. Adam does some light stalking to find out where Anthony lives; he calls his doppelganger’s home and speaks to his wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon), who is severely confused by the man on the phone who sounds just like her husband but claims to be a stranger. Adam doesn’t tell his girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent) anything about this, and his mother (Isabella Rossellini) isn’t very helpful. Neither Anthony nor Adam reacts to these events the way you’d think a person would.

That’s because there’s clearly something larger going on here. Villeneuve strikes up an unsettling tone right from the very beginning, when we see one of the two Jakes enter a gentlemen’s club, of sorts, featuring sexy women and tarantulas. Automatically, we know we’re in for a pretty surreal ride.

It’s difficult to say much else about the story, since Enemy is a film that must be experienced to be believed, with Hitchcockian elements that have one foot firmly rooted in classic suspense, while others feel a bit more modern (Cronenberg and Lynch may come to mind). The film’s palette is a grimy yellow, which only unnerves us further. It’s not exactly a pretty movie, though it is a visually enticing one thanks to the clever camera work. The spooky score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Juriaans is top notch. And that ending!Okay, yes, back to that. Enemy‘s final scene has already been a subject of much lively debate amongst the few who have seen it. It’s rather unforgettable, simultaneously ridiculous and terrifying, and it’s bound to leave just about anyone with more than one feeling about the finish of this film. It’s more than an M. Night Shyamalan-style “gotcha!” — it’s as if The Sixth Sense ended with the reveal that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, and then he turned into a watermelon.

As you might expect, Enemy leaves many questions unanswered. (Most of them, actually.) Are Anthony and Adam twins separated at birth? Clones? Two halves of the same man’s psyche? It’s hard not to notice that they’re both involved with beautiful, icy blondes. Adam’s mother seems to know more than she lets on, especially when she insists that he likes blueberries when we know it’s Anthony who likes blueberries. (Paired with Noah, this is the second movie in a row I saw in which berries played a significant role in the film.) Jake Gyllenhaal gives two compelling performances, establishing him further as leading man material as he matures as an actor, and Sarah Gadon is equally compelling as Helen, who finds herself drawn to her husband’s bashful double. (Melanie Laurent’s Mary doesn’t have enough screen time to make too much of an impact.)

Obviously, Enemy is not for everyone… and certainly not for the deeply arachnophobic. Many will find it impenetrable. Some may find it just too preposterous. And it’s totally fair to think that the ending is just a big “fuck you!” to the audience. But I happen to enjoy this sort of puzzle-box movie, a film that may not ever be completely solvable.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a very delicious-looking housefly I intend to have for lunch.

*

Antz and A Bug’s Life. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Infamous and Capote. Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.

It happens all the time — movies with eerily similar subject matter doubling up in the same year. As if there’s just something in the air causing different filmmakers to suddenly think alike, releasing movies that might as well be carbon copies of each other. (Though one is usually the clear superior — Dante’s Peak, take a bow; Volcano, you’re drunk, go home.)

Of course, there’s a special irony to it when the movies are about doppelgangers. Earlier this year, Jake Gyllenhaal played both a nebbishy professor and the cucumber-cool actor he discovers wearing his face in Enemy, and now Jesse Eisenberg is working double-time in Richard Ayoade’s The Double. Both movies feature the central actor as both an impotent, meek version of himself as well as a suaver, more confident twin; in both, an enigmatic blonde features prominently; in both, the doubles decide to switch places, with disastrous results; both are pretty open to interpretation as to what the hell is going on.

So which film is superior? Well, for once, these doppelgangers are equally good.

Despite surface similarities, Enemy and The Double are very different movies. Enemy takes itself very seriously, with the atmosphere of a Hitchcockian thriller. It ends not so much with a twist, but a full-on lambada. (I pretty much loved it; you can read my review here.)

The Double, on the other hand, has a surprising sense of humor. It’s very much a satire of bureaucracy, reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, with the same manic zing to its performances. But it’s also a film about perception, one in which only the protagonist finds the fact that he’s been cloned overnight off-putting. Enemy is psychological and dream-like, while The Double is heightened and surreal. Enemy requires a bit more thought to put the pieces together, and I’m not sure there’s any way to arrive at a totally definitive answer to its eight-legged puzzle; The Double doesn’t require a whole lot of mental work, because it doesn’t present its premise as a mystery. You could, perhaps, explain away The Double with “He was really dead the whole time!” or “It was all a dream!”, but that’s less interesting than accepting this madcap world at face value and going along for the ride.

Co-writer/director Richard Ayoade’s first film was the quirky Submarine, which I didn’t love; you can sense some of Submarine‘s Wes Andersonian flourishes in The Double, but they’re put to much better use. As with Wes Anderson’s movies, The Double asks you to accept a world that does not exactly look like our own, where people do not behave quite as real people do. It’s all very stylized — instead of depicting the real world, it’s a facsimile that represents certain aspects we might recognize. (The sets and technology seems to plus us somewhere between the 1940s and the 1980s, but it’s definitely not a “period piece.”) That’s quite appropriate in a movie that is very much about copies, and how much our individuality and originality mean to us. It’s a movie about being different, and a movie about being the same.

Ironically, The Double turns out to be quite unique, though Anderson and Gilliam’s influences can certainly be felt. The world of The Double is not our real world, but a copy that turns out to be sharper than the original, just as the copy of its hero manages to upstage him in just about every way imaginable.

Doppelganger movies almost always present their protagonist and antagonist as dual sides of the same person, and that’s certainly the case here. Simon James is a corporate lackey at a company that does… something. There is much discussion of reports and productivity, but they don’t service any real purpose — nobody actually does anything that produces a tangible result. (Isn’t that basically how it is in the corporate world?) Their business is just a lot of busyness — paperwork, protocol, and prattle that yield nothing whatsoever, so far as we can tell. The company’s figurehead is the elusive Colonel, who is worshipped like a deity as so many CEOs and founders are, even when we know next to nothing about them. The company advertises that it’s all about “people,” but features them all speaking in unison — that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Then, one day, a worker named James Simon shows up. He looks exactly like Simon James, but no one seems to find that disturbing except for Simon himself. James is a jerk, a womanizer, a bully, and a buffoon who doesn’t even know what they do at this company, but everyone loves him immediately. That includes Simon’s boss, Mr. Papadopoulos (played by Wallace Shawn), and the love interest Simon is too shy to speak to, a winsome copy girl named Hannah (played by Mia Wasikowska). The fact that Hannah makes copies for a living, and her name is a palindrome, fit right in with the heightened reality The Double establishes in its early scenes. It’s all very surreal.An easy reading of The Double might lead you to believe that James Simon is merely Simon James’ id — he’s the bolder, brasher version of Simon himself, and therefore he’s more successful in every way. But this Tyler Durden approach has been done before, and The Double knows it. Really, The Double is making a sly point about the perils of perception — how some people, no matter what they do, can’t help but be perceived in a certain negative light, while others skate by with little to no effort and come out smelling like roses. Having both types portrayed by the same actor only highlights how arbitrary these factors of failure and success are — kindness, intelligence, thoughtfulness, and hard work often go unappreciated while someone louder, crueler, and far less careful reaps all the rewards. The Double picks away at this cosmic injustice until Simon essentially has a psychotic break — he’s not crazy, but everyone perceives him as crazy, so he might as well be. Knowing you’re right doesn’t much matter in this world if no one else knows it.

The Double gets at this existential dilemma, along with several others. It’s not subtle, but it is graceful. We all feel like beautiful, unique snowflakes in a world that treats us like cattle. We all want to be celebrated for our individuality, while the people we want to celebrate us look right through us.

Or — maybe not all of us. There are many Simon Jameses in this world, but also a handful of James Simons. Like, you know, the Kardashians. The Double digs into that nagging feeling that we deserve adoration and success more than they do. We’re better, dammit! And if you take appearance out of the equation — since Simon and James look exactly identical — it’s hard to see why the good ones flail when the bad ones thrive, except that human nature is just sick that way. It’s enough to drive a person crazy.For all its philosophical intrigue, however, The Double is also probably the funniest film I’ve seen yet this year, with a welcome streak of absurdity. Jesse Eisenberg is the perfect man to deliver the script’s rapid-fire deadpan — which should come as no surprise after his Oscar-nominated delivery of Aaron Sorkin’s drily funny dialogue in The Social Network — and there are amusing cameos from the likes of Chris O’Dowd and Sally Hawkins, as well as a surprising appearance by the recently elusive Cathy Moriarity as a bitchy waitress. (A large majority of the cast has worked with Ayoade previously.)

Its earnest moments are surprisingly touching, including a bit of dialogue in which Simon compares himself to the wooden Pinocchio that pays off beautifully later. The Double is amusing, touching, haunting, thought-provoking, original, and surprising — a combination that’s tricky to pull off, and something I certainly didn’t expect from Richard Ayoade. So far it’s one of my favorite films of 2014, competing only with — you guessed it — its evil twin, Enemy.

Time will tell which one I rank higher. For now, all I know is they’ll make a hell of a double feature.*

They say there are no small parts, only small actors. So I guess it’s also true that there are no small movies, only small budgets.

Coherence is a movie that plays with some very big ideas — so big that you may not even notice that it was shot on a micro-budget. Most of the film takes place inside the same house (well, kind of). The cast is an ensemble of eight actors playing eight characters (again, kind of). It all centers on a dinner party featuring four couples with a few complicated relationships between them, some of which are known, some of which will be revealed. The dialogue is mostly improvised; the actors did not know what the film was about when they signed on. And though it starts off like a mumblecore-style talky relationship drama, the fact that a comet is passing by overhead eventually casts a dark pall over the wine-drinking and gabbing.

Emily Foxler plays Em (appropriately), a dancer whose pride recently cost her a starring role in the production that might have made her career. Emily and her boyfriend Kevin (Maury Sterling) show up to dine with five friends, which does not include Lauren, the outsider of the group who used to date Kevin but is now on the arm of Amir (Alex Manugian). The friends assemble at the home of Lee (Lorene Scafaria) and Mike (Nicholas Brendon of Buffy fame) who reveals to Laurie that he was on a popular TV series. No, not Buffy — it’s a show called Roswell, which may or may not be some kind of WB in-joke about the sci-fi high school series of the same name that aired during the Buffy era but did not feature Nicholas Brendon. (It actually starred Jason Behr, who played Ford on an episode of Buffy.) Also in attendance are Beth (Elizabeth Gracen), who brings along some ketamine just in case anyone needs some loosening up, and Hugh (Hugo Armstrong), whose brother warned him that something strange might happen tonight as a result of that comet.

Hugh’s brother was right.

It’s probably best not to know much more about what goes down in Coherence, but suffice to say it’s one of several movies this year in which doppelgangers play a major part. Alongside The Double and Enemy, Coherence is a bit of a mindfuck and also one of the most entertaining films of the year. Co-writer/director James Ward Byrkit knows how to make the most of his premise, unleashing a mind-bending thriller that manages to be surprisingly funny, and though nearly all of the action takes place in the same room (kind of), the story is never obviously making concessions for its budget.

It’s a little bit Twilight Zone, a pinch of Donnie Darko, the kind of storyline that would easily be at home in an episode Buffy (speaking of). It’s a lot of fun. And it deserves a wider audience than it will probably find when it opens this weekend. (There’s hope for a healthy life on VOD and streaming, one would imagine.) It offers the kind of no-pressure fun that a $200 million blockbuster just can’t.

Sometimes less is more. Sometimes smaller is better. And some movies don’t require a pre-screening dose of ketamine to fuck you up a little bit.*

Movies entertain in different ways. Many are meant as mere diversions; some aim to bemuse, fewer aim to bewitch. One typically considers independent films less ambitious than their studio-made counterparts, at least on a technical level. But that’s not always the case.

Take Boyhood for example — it’s the latest film from Richard Linklater, director of the Before Sunrise series, though its inception actually pre-dates the latest two films in that series. While there are no obvious CGI effects, expensive sets, or massive scenes with thousands of extras in Boyhood, one can hardly imagine a more ambitious cinematic undertaking than this. It’s hard to imagine a blockbuster director like the ADD-addled Michael Bay being up to the challenge. But Linklater, perhaps moreso than any other working filmmaker, has displayed a cinematic virtue so many of his peers are sorely lacking: patience.

Boyhood is the story of a boy named Mason Jr., starting at the age of five and following him into young adulthood, as he grapples with the usual trappings of growing up — fighting with his sister, adjusting to the new men in his mother’s life, experimenting with alcohol and drugs, a budding attraction to the opposite sex. Sounds pretty simple, right?

What makes it epic is the fact that we watch the actor age along with the character. Boyhood was filmed over the course of twelve years, with a handful of actors recurring in most or all of these segments — including Patricia Arquette as his mother Olivia, Ethan Hawke as his father Mason, and Lorelai Linklater (the filmmaker’s own daughter) as his sister Samantha. In lesser hands, this might be a mere gimmick; in Linklater’s hands, it’s basically a counterpoint to his triptych romance of Jesse and Celine, which has checked in with the paramours every nine years since 1995, most recently in last year’s stellar Before Midnight. In those movies, centered on characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, we’re startled by the ways that Jesse and Celine have changed in the near-decade that passes between films. Once so idealistic, we see that the trappings of the real world have worn them down, hardened them, perhaps even turned them against each other. In Boyhood, the gaps are much smaller. The story is continuous. And the effect is awesome.Many movies try and fake the passage of time with wardrobe and makeup, subbing in younger actors for older characters. Usually, scenes taking place years or even decades apart might be filmed within days of each other. Some films do a better job at hiding it than others, but we can always tell on some level that the transition is artificial. Here, it isn’t. These characters’ appearances shift slightly from year to year the way real people’s do — their weight fluctuates slightly, hair goes from long to short to long again, an errant mustache appears. Mason Jr. goes through a physically awkward prepubescent phase before the loss of his baby fat, and also an artsy emo phase, and he looks pretty scruffy for a year or two. We feel the passage of time more acutely here than in any other movie I can think of.

There are close-ups on cell phones, video games, and other pieces of technology that are outdated just a few years later. Pop culture references are authentic, rather than just what we remember. When Samantha sings Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did It Again” in an early scene, we laugh because we know the song was more current when the scene was filmed in the early 2000s. Audiences will benefit from knowing how Boyhood was shot over the course of twelve years, because somehow, it becomes funny the same way digging through a time capsule can be. What people wore, listened to, watched, played, and cared about a decade ago becomes quaint and funny years later.

Boyhood may share one of the stars of the Before Sunrise series and similarly chronicle the way that people and relationships change (and don’t change) over the course of many years, but it’s an entirely different animal than Linklater’s previous films — or any other movie, for that matter. It’s hard to even categorize Boyhood as a movie, because it was made so differently — in pieces. It’s like other filmmakers have been making pictures with the same set of crayons all these years, and here Richard Linklater comes along and invents a whole new color.Of course, we’ve watched child actors grow up on screen before. It happens frequently on TV, and throughout the Harry Potter series. Francois Truffaut followed the same young actor for many years, and the 7 Up documentary series has checked in with the same set of subjects for a remarkably long time. But it’s an entirely different experience when it’s all in the space of one movie, and when that movie places its focus on the process of growing up itself. There’s no sitcom laugh track or school of wizards to distract us here — this movie is about a boy’s life, and only that. Mason is not an extraordinary child; nothing that happens to him isn’t something thousands or millions of other youths have experienced. But because of the unique way in which it was shot, Boyhood hits a level of profound naturalism that is essentially unrivaled by any other movie.

The film’s star, Ellar Coltrane, is exceptional as Mason Jr. — which is a lucky break considering that he was cast at the age of seven. Linklater always intended to adjust the story to fit the young man that Coltrane would turn out to be. (Thankfully, that ends up being a thoughtful, sensitive emo type and not some dumbass bully.) He’s incredibly believable as an average adolescent — because, hey, he is one! — whether he’s taking a verbal lashing from a teacher at school, sharing the kind of stoner thinking that young men often think is more profound and original than it really is, or trying to navigate being “just friends” with the girl he thought was “the one.” He shows a penchant for photography; works as a busboy, eating leftover shrimp off customers’ plates; and eventually goes off to college in the film’s denouement. It may not sound like revelatory cinema, but it is.

As is bound to happen in a film of this nature, some segments are more captivating than others. When Mason is a young boy, he’s so passive that his older sister Samantha tends to dominate scenes as the more significant character. Ethan Hawke as Mason Sr. may feel overly familiar to those who know him as Jesse in the Before series; here, as there, he is a father who semi-reluctantly abandoned his children and pops in and out of their lives now with a new wife. Boyhood also includes multiple drunken assholes brought into Mason’s life by his mother, who has much worse taste in men than we might expect of a smart and sensible woman like Olivia.

None of this rings false, but the moments in which Mason contends with these stepfathers are the film’s most plotty, movie-ish moments, and they almost threaten to take the story and run away with it, so it’s a good thing Boyhood doesn’t derail in order to explore them further. Ethan Hawke serves his purpose with adequate “cool dad” charisma, but Patricia Arquette is particularly good as the mother whose struggles and emotions are always in the background of Mason’s story — until she finally vents her frustrations in her final scene. As much as the film is centered on Mason, it’s equally fascinating to watch an actress like Arquette make subtle shifts over the course of a dozen years.

As in the Before Sunrise series, these actors had a hand in writing the screenplay, which is at least partially the reason why they all inhabit their roles with such ease. There are no cuts to black or title cards between segments to indicate the passage of time, but we always notice when the shift occurs, because each segment concludes as neatly as a short film would, at just the right moment.

As does the film itself. Given that the film ends with Mason at age eighteen, it’s no spoiler to say that the final scene depicts his first day in college — the natural point to end a tale called Boyhood. So many dramas have ended with a young protagonist stepping into university life for the first time, many of them emotionally arresting — but none have quite the punch of Boyhood, because we really have just watched this boy grow up before our very eyes. We have, in a way, witnessed his whole life. And so we share in Olivia’s pride, confusion, and grief at watching him abandon the family nest and head into whatever awaits him in the real world. (If anyone out there needs to replicate the experience of sending a kid off to college, here’s the film to do it.)

It isn’t every year that I walk out of a theater and realize immediately, That was a great movie. But with Boyhood, it was just obvious. It doesn’t entertain us in the expected ways, but it reflects life back at us in such an honest way that it feels like it’s a part of us. Even with a running time that clocks in at nearly three hours, and despite the film’s relative lack of conventional narrative momentum, it is riveting all the way through and you’re likely to feel sad when it’s over. It’s thought-provoking and quietly heartbreaking, but the audience I saw it with was laughing all the way through — not because there are a lot of uproarious comedic moments, but, I believe, because we all recognized ourselves in Boyhood. Something about the way this boy lived through the past twelve years reminds us of the way we lived through them, too. We were laughing at life itself.I can’t say for sure just yet that Boyhood will be my favorite movie of 2014, but if it isn’t, I’m sure as hell looking forward to the film that will be. As of now, it’s hard to imagine a greater cinematic achievement coming out this year. Linklater has made a lot of good movies over the past few decades, but now he’s put himself in another category altogether. He’s made a truly great movie, one that I think will stand the test of time and be remembered as something special. It may be too intimate and subtle to make a major impact at the box office or the Oscars, but you never know. It’s more accessible than The Tree Of Life, the Terrence Malick film that snuck into contention in 2011 despite a lengthy sequence depicting the inception of the entire universe, a puzzling and pretentious conclusion, and a brief cameo by dinosaurs. That was a beautiful movie, but this is a better one.

The experience of watching Boyhood is like flipping through a random family’s photo album. Some experiences we recognize from our own lives, while others we can at least relate to. Birthdays, family dinners, trips to visit the grandparents, graduation. The details may very, but the overall experience is universal. Boyhood is as bittersweet as life is; people enter and exit from our lives, sometimes making them better and sometimes making them worse. A child’s star rises while a parent’s is falling. A man who starts off seeming like an aimless loser can end up having it all, while the woman who appears to have it together might end up alone, wondering where she went wrong. And the end of childhood can feel like the beginning of an amazing adventure into adulthood.

I’m not sure if Richard Linklater and Ellard Coltrane are up to spending the next twelve years documenting Mason’s Manhood. (Working title.) If not, I’m already sorry to say goodbye to this character and not witness where life takes him next. Then again, Linklater has proven willing to resurrect memorable characters from the place where most (good) filmmakers let them rest. Unlike his counterparts with much bigger budgets to play with, Linklater is actually really good at sequels. Keep your endless, mindless Transformers sequels and however many times Jason, Freddy, and Michael have come back from the dead. I’ll let Mason join Jesse and Celine amongst the characters I’m hoping to see strike back.

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