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10. You’re Next
Directed by Adam Wingard, and starring a whole crew of his mumblecore friends, “You’re Next” is arch generational commentary wrapped in the guise of a generic slasher. While reviving the laughs-and-shrieks irony so associated with “Scream,” this tale of a rich family being picked off by invaders in turn attacks the irony so associated with youth culture, wherein sincerity can no longer exist without knowing levity. Want more irony? These mumblecore folks are partly to blame for the feeling-averse zeitgeist. Call “You’re Next” their atonement.
9. American Hustle
Putting his madcap twist on the retelling of the 1970s ABSCAM operation, David O. Russell finally revives his gonzo personality and serves up a whole lotta movie, employing Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence as vessels for two of the year’s best female characters (and performances), and owning the comic tackiness of his vision. It’s all in the Lawrence character’s obsession with her fingernails’ topcoat: “It smells rotten and delicious — like flowers, but with garbage.”
8. Sightseers
As dark as they come, Ben Wheatley’s magnificently photographed comedy “Sightseers” is like “Bonnie and Clyde” with the maddening rage of the 99 percent. Following working-class couple Tina and Chris on a road trip in their caravan, the British gem quickly goes from cheeky to horrific, with Chris casually murdering various folks they come across, and linking his motives to the pent-up imbalance of England’s class system. Things really turn ugly when Tina guzzles Chris’s Kool-Aid, and becomes a deluded symbol of malcontent.
7. Lee Daniels’ The Butler
While the majority sings the praises of “12 Years a Slave,” too many have forgotten the raw and unhinged power of “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” the other 2013 epic to explore the crimes against blacks in our history unflinchingly. Spanning decades and offering multi-generational views on the civil rights movement, Daniels’s deeply personal vision has the soul and spark of a work that incites change. “12 Years” is necessary viewing, but “The Butler” is one of the greatest films ever made about the black experience in America.
6. Stories We Tell
It would have seemed that after “Away From Her” and “Take This Waltz,” Sarah Polley couldn’t top herself. And yet, with this family-tree documentary, the director proves she’s a talent of boundless grace and curiosity, turning the camera on her relatives, and somehow, never seeming a bit exploitative in the process. Polley traces her roots in a manner that remains universal no matter how personal things get, and her findings are at once shocking and life-affirming.
5. Museum Hours
Jem Cohen’s masterpiece “Museum Hours” makes art and life practically indistinguishable as it follows the daily routine of Vienna museum guard Johann (Bobby Simmons), and his platonic affair with Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara). The heartbreakingly humane bond that’s formed mirrors Johann’s — and, by extension, Cohen’s — connection to such painters as Bruegel, whose work is displayed in the museum, and who similarly found extraordinary beauty in everyday details. The film creates a synergy among director, character and art legend, further solidifying the value of kindred spirits.
4. Spring Breakers
Mock “Spring Breakers” all you want as shameless titillation, but director Harmony Korine is way ahead of you. He uses bikini-clad stars like Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens as mere bait to present a head-trippy skewering of media trends, and, eventually, the most unexpected feminist film in years. Amid the drug-addled, gun-toting excess of a misogynistic, hedonistic culture lies four girls who are never not in control of their own destinies (or bodies), and who ultimately shatter the whole MTV-bred dream by facilitating its change into a neon nightmare. Their innocence is lost, but on their terms.
3. The Great Beauty
Even if Paolo Sorrentino weren’t lavishly emulating Fellini and Orson Welles, his hyper-realistic “The Great Beauty,” a valentine to Rome and a gift to style junkies, would still leave your drool-soaked jaw on the floor. Yes, the tale of aging journalist Jep (an exquisite Toni Servillo) is somewhat familiar and indulgent, but it is an experience so articulate and formally immaculate that it is often difficult to absorb. Its swirling beauty isn’t just great, it’s beyond description.
2. Her
It’s become a cliché to remark on the current state of human connection, and how “unifying” tech advances wind up isolating us more. With his astonishingly accomplished “Her,” Spike Jonze explores the phenomenon better than anyone has, expressly because he doesn’t approach it with outright pessimism. When we meet Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), he’s already lonely and disillusioned, and when he begins a relationship with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), a disembodied operating system, his heart is both opened and led astray. This isn’t a cautionary tale, it’s a field-leveler, using a soon-as-tomorrow future to nail how we live now, and using the notion of bonding with A.I. to combat manifold stigmas. That may be scary for some, but for Jonze, it’s transcendent.
1. Laurence Anyways
Made by the preternaturally gifted 24-year-old auteur Xavier Dolan, the transgender-themed “Laurence Anyways” is set in the 1990s, but it’s an essential epic for our times. The male-to-female transition of Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) is just the hook for a story that vigorously indicts heteronormativity, maintains compassion for the status quo and treats women with enough aching adoration for three sagas. Laurence’s girlfriend, Fred (Suzanne Clément), is as much a protagonist as the title character, and their bond is one of the greatest ever committed to film. In a movie that’s gloriously bolstered by Dolan’s pop-infused, sophisticated camp, the notion of “normal” is forever upended.
Honorable Mention: “Before Midnight,” “Concussion,” “Gravity,” “I’m So Excited,” “Mother of George,” “Only God Forgives,” “Passion,” “Prince Avalanche,” “A Touch of Sin,” “The We and the I.” ■
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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