Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Top Films 2013

The best films of 2013 (or those I haven't been able to see before 2013), in no particular order.

Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German)

More than cinema; a Boschian fresco of the Middle Ages like you've never seen them before.

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming Liang)

The last Tsai's film sees the ultimate deconstruction of the world and the ultimate dehumanisation of the perennial Lee Kang Shen. In the course of the two-odd hours he is turning into a ghost.

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)

God exists.

Lightning: A Legend in Four Seasons (Manuela Morgaine)
Belleville Baby (Mia Engberg)

Documentary is the new fiction. Two post-doc film essays that mingle the real with the imaginary - one to create a mythology around the titular natural phenomenon, another to (re)construct a personal memory.

Concrete Night (Pirjo Honkasalo)

A coming-of-age story on the edge of the Apocalypse.

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)

Contrary to what IMDb is saying, it isn't a sci-fi - it's a space procedural. The space is not something from the future anymore, but still is scary and beautiful.

Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)

Nature is Satan's church, indeed.

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (Alain Resnais)
The Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz)


Testament of Orpheus as told by two classics. Mazes of reflections, labyrinths of time and space.

Emperor Visits the Hell (Luo Li)

The hell is across the bridge from a shopping center; petty gangsters and small bureaucrats solemnly recite the lines from a 16th century's novel. This weird device of estrangement works better than the gore of Jia Zhangke's latest A Touch of Sin.

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)

Look at my shit, ye Mighty, and despair.

Special mentions (alphabetical order): Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach), I'm the Same I'm an Other (Caroline Strubbe), Me and You (Bernardo Bertolucci), Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-Soo), Only God Forgives (Nicholas Winding Refn)

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