The year that was 2013 has almost run its course, so the time has
come for Team ScreenAnarchy to pool its ever-growing troupe of contributors
from the four corners of the planet, gather its collective thoughts and
pay special tribute to those films that have made a particularly strong
impact over the past twelve months.
Surprises can come in all shapes and sizes. For us at ScreenAnarchy these surprises were films we originally expected to dislike, while others were flicks that seemingly came out of nowhere to our absolute delight and awe. From neon-lit nightmares to the hours we keep in the museum, from cheap thrills to cannibal families, death-dealing judges and kid cops, here are our biggest surprises of 2013.
Todd Brown, Peter Martin, Ryland Aldrich, James Marsh, Brian Clark, Ben Umstead, Jaime Grijalba Gomez, Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Ard Vijn, Patryk Czekaj, Joshua Chaplinsky, Eric Ortiz Garcia, Niels Matthijs, Kurt Halfyard, Christopher O'Keeffe, Dustin Chang, Jim Tudor, Ben Croll, Pierce Conran, Jason Gorber, Ernesto Zelaya Miñano and Kwenton Bellette
contributed to this story.
Only God Forgives
Ben Umstead - East Coast Editor
When it comes to transgressive films I've generally appreciated Nicolas Winding Refn's attitude and approach, but never been fully in love with the offerings. Well, that changed with Only God Forgives. OGF is an abstract action film formed from the moments in-between and parallel to the violence we expect. Ruminative, haunting and surreal, I think it's his first all out masterpiece.
Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg - Contributing writer
I've always approached Refn's films as intellectual exercises in filmmaking; I did not expect to love this film, but I did with great passion.
Ernesto Zelaya Miñano - Contributing writer
Normally I despise artsy, slow-moving cryptic stuff - but it worked for this film. It's an engrossing, beautiful looking movie.
Museum Hours
Dustin Chang - Contributing writer
Kurt Halfyard - Contributing writer
Many people practically pummelled me to get into the theatre and check out Jem Cohen's Museum Hours, knowing that it would be my cup of tea. Intimate, emotional, practical and didactic in a compulsively watchable package, this is how academics should be teaching classes, with fictional marvels such as this.
Barroco
Jaime Grijalba - Contributing writer
This is the best movie I saw at BAFICI. An Argentinian film, independent, in competition, it's about a man who works at a book store and tries to make some money so he can pay the gas, that's just the top of the problems this wonderful main character must deal with. He also wants to make a photoplay and sell it to people, and to do that he steals the books from the store, using a strategy that he repeats once and once again until something really bad happens. The film is a hidden gem at this point, no one is talking about it, and it's one of the best things I've seen this year.
Big Bad Wolves
Eric Ortiz Garcia - Contributing writer
I watched this one at the Feratum Film Festival, where it played as the closing film. I heard it was great but still didn't know much about it or the directors. I ended up loving it. Few films are as unpredictable and exciting as Big Bad Wolves, plus all three main performances are superb.
Cheap Thrills
Peter Martin - Managing Editor
Alone in the back of a theater past midnight, I was galvanized by a movie I knew almost nothing about beforehand. Such moments are rare and precious.
Child Of God
Joshua Chaplinsky - Contributing writer
Spring Breakers sold me on Franco as an actor, but I was still skeptical of his skill behind the camera, especially when it came to adapting such "difficult" material. But lo and behold, McCarthy and Franco are a perfect fit. The result is a gothic character study that is raw and unflinching in its portrayal of madness.
Dredd
Christopher O'Keeffe - Contributing writer
Gloria
Brian Clark - European Editor
Never expected to love a character study of a middle-aged divorcee so much.
Kid's Police
Todd Brown - Founder and Editor
Kid's Police very likely should have been one of those one gag things that overstays its welcome in about ten minutes. It's not. It's a real movie, a damn funny one, that remains incredibly committed to its wonky premise and keeps finding new nuance and comic territory throughout.
Matterhorn
Ard Vijn - Contributing writer
My general hatred of Dutch cinema is by now well-documented, so it is with increasing incredulity that I keep being proven wrong in this respect. There are many good Dutch films doing the rounds these days, and Matterhorn was even damn close to being the best thing I saw all year.
Muscle Shoals
Jim Tudor - Contributing writer
Lips And Soul
Niels Matthijs - Contributing writer
Our Heroes Died Tonight
Ben Croll - Contributing writer
Pain And Gain
Kwenton Bellette - Contributing writer
I despise Michael Bay's films and the trailer for this also looked awful. Who knew I'd end up watching this film much more than once though. Just crazy.
Philomena
Jason Gorber - Featured critic
One of the nice things about going into these films knowing little is the ability to still be surprised - I for one had no idea it was a true story, yet it was done without the baggage that normally comes from adhering strictly to actual events. It could easily have been just crap, and yet is almost effortlessly excellent.
Ugly and Han Gan-ju
Pierce Conran - Contributing writer
I know Gangs of Wasseypur made a big splash last year but I hadn't seen it when I sat down to Ugly. I simply didn't realize that India was capable of such great genre cinema. I stand humbled and kneeling before the brilliance of Anurag Kashyap.
A few days into the Busan Film Festival I had seen or heard reports on almost every new Korean film, so I got myself a ticket for one that no one had said a word about. About halfway through Han Gong-ju the tears started to flow and they didn't abate until long after leaving the theater. Tackling a difficult subject with deft skill, this debut was, in every way, surprising.
Tim's Vermeer
Ryland Aldrich - Festivals Editor
Trap Street
Patryk Czekaj - Contributing writer
I went to see Trap Street by chance during Warsaw Film Festival and ended up loving it more than I can tell. It's a true gem of the Chinese new wave with a message as disturbing as it is accurate.
We Are What We Are
James Marsh - Asian Editor
As a big fan of Jorge Michel Grau's 2010 original, I was more than a little wary of a US remake of We Are What We Are. I was confident that Jim Mickle would make something palatable from the material, but I was unprepared for the fantastic reworking he has cooked up with writing partner Nick Damici. The changes to the original story feel organic and well-suited to the transplanted setting in New York's Catskills, while the spirit of Grau's bleak, downbeat horror remain. The result is one of the very best recent examples of a successful remake, and also one of the year's standout horror films. In its own right, Mickle's We Are What We Are is - as was also true of its predecessor - a minor masterpiece.
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lol i had the exact same with "pain and gain"
What is happening with Kid's Police? Will we get it in the States in any format? I tried looking into it a while back and there was nothing.
Man, I really hope so. There's a whole TV series of it, too, which is apparently just as good as the movie and I want to see it!
The world needs more Dredd
If you're in L.A. I've seen the DVD at the Mitsuwa market video store. Forget if it had english subtitles, but I think it did because I made note to go back and try to rent it. But yes, an official release would be nice along with an official release for Miike's Ninja Kids.
Mr. Umstead,
I have to say I'm intrigued by your thoughts on this. OGF satisfied my love for slow moving, odd, introspective cinema, but only superficially. I look to recent Romanian film and Turkey (Ceylan in particular) for this stuff. This film, above all, made me wonder if perhaps Mr. Refn, who as a filmmaker i find it impossible not to admire, may be an overgrown boy with 'artsy' pretensions. Moreover, I worry this film borders, or hell, dives straight on, into a level of gleeful misogyny. There is so much to be admired, but I have mixed feelings about it. For me, his masterwork is Valhalla.
I'd love to talk more about it.
Refn is probably an overgrown boy who happened to be a wunderkind, and so that went straight to his head. He admits to as much with his early aspirations.
The superficiality of the film, I feel, is just as strong as the spiritual elements are i.e the urban, modern, vapid life butting right up against old rituals and deeper beliefs. The detective is, in mythological terms, god, of course, and the father figure. KST is the opposing force for Gosling's stooge/pawn, who in the mythological sense is a sleepwalker figure, someone who senses, knows, but does not always understand what he is seeing, or supposed to do, even. So the film may feel superficial because it merely operates from a place of archetypes. I feel it owns that though.
Really interesting thought. I actually just put it on the background, but it's deserving of more of my attention than that.
If your feeling is that the film operates in archetypes, how does it justify it's extreme violence? The violence in the film doesn't really feel that rooted to me, and more than that, it doesn't come from a place that feels in synch with how the film operates, at lest. I can appreciate the extreme violence at the end of, say, Antichrist. It felt built into the narrative there, as it did in Bronson and Valhalla. I didn't see it here.
However, what you've been saying has inspired me to watch the film again. I do agree there is more to it than meets the eye, but I often if the violence gets in the way of that.
I'm with Liam on this one. I watched OGF two days ago, went in with zero expectation (I didn't even know what it was supposed to be about, or who was in it besides Gosling), and while I appreciated the very early Lynchian visuals and pace of the film (half the film felt like the dream/vision sequences of Twin Peaks, the other half like Blue Velvet) it all felt very unjustified and void of content, meaning, or impact. It just...was there. I won't argue that maybe you could look at the whole thing as archetypes at play, but I think that definition doesn't address the thinness of its material - archetypes are fundamentally hollow and overly broad elements.
To make a whole film with nothing but stylized archetypes could be alternately defined as making a film that hasn't been developed beyond fundamental concepts, yet making it scene-by-scene anyway. I'm sure that some will dig that, but this seems far from worthy of any "top" list of the year. I can't help but think that if anyone else had made this, it would have been marked as interesting and a director worth watching, but hardly a stellar or original debut.
EDIT: Lol, and i see OGF also made it onto the "Biggest Disappointments" list. Maybe it IS fitting to be on both, as divisive as it seems to have been.
HELLS Yeah! FINALLY some love for DREDD!
It certainly is a work that divides people!
My sense of it is that much of the violence is actually off screen or emphasized through other elements other than the image.
The film isn't very rooted, yes. It just sort of floats, but that to me makes it all the more alluring and strange. I love it since it is void of content... in some sense of that word and such.
So in regards to the plotting and development, I know for a fact Refn eliminated a lot of elements, scenes, dialog that was in the script. He paired down, distilled to the most lean, minimal essence.
All this may make more sense if I explain my feelings towards his previous works. These older films have felt largely hollow and devoid of much outside of the anger and violence, so getting to that essence with OGF, just playing in what he's best at (transgressive imagery with operatic undertones) made this one really click for me.
As for "top list" material, keep in mind these are the group lists. Our personal lists will end up looking quite different, though OGF will make it into my top 25 easily.
Jaime: keep tabs on Barroco for us. I can't find any info on rights/release dates, so obviously nothing much has happened with it yet. But I want to know when it finally does.