My Top Ten Most Anticipated Films of 2013

Welcome to the most optimistic post of the year! It's all a spiraling ball of negativity from here on out. Below are the ten films scheduled for release sometime in the next 364 days that have me standing outside at midnight in the theatre of my mind. There is a new rule being implemented this year so please pay close attention. If a film I mentioned in a previous year's list is finally making its way into theatres after any number of delays, it can't make the cut, as I hate repeating myself. Sorry The Grandmaster and To the Wonder. Without further ado, here are your ten 2014 Best Picture Oscar nominees!

10. Upstream Color

There are a few distinct camps centered around Shane Carruth's directorial debut, the mega-low-budget time-travel feature Primer. There are those who find it an impenetrable mess, those that understand it completely (I call this camp "the liars") and those that were puzzled, fascinated and invigorated by it. Count me in as a card-carrying member of Group C. Excepting some work on Rian Johnson's Looper, Upstream Color will be Carruth's first film work in nearly a decade. The film is a love story featuring two people living in an ageless organism. Seeing the film probably won't make it any clearer.

9. Frozen

I may not be obligated to see every single animated Disney film from now on but the CGI Frozen sounds promising enough. Based on the fairy tale The Snow Queen, the film stars Kristen Bell as Anna, an estranged princess who must trek across icy tundra to vanquish the wicked queen. Let's hope that this role is a winner for Bell who hasn't been able to parlay her idiosyncratic talents into anything worthwhile since Veronica Mars. The production art for the film teases a crisp, unforgiving environment and Disney has done all right by itself when adapting the works of Hans Christian Andersen in the past.

8. Queen of the Desert

Werner Herzog and Naomi Watts. Naomi Watts and Werner Herzog. Queen of the Desert is the story of the explorer Gertrude Bell, British attaché in the early 1900s. It is Herzog's first fictional film since Nicolas Cage talked to imaginary iguanas and by all accounts seems like a far more austere affair. (However, don't entirely dismiss the potential for some crazy camel shenanigans.) Sure, detractors will point out that Robert Pattinson is attempting to fill the shoes of Peter O'Toole by playing T.E. Lawrence, and Jude Law is also running around here somewhere, but just remember: Werner Herzog and Naomi Watts.

7. Her

The restlessly inventive Spike Jonze returns to the big screen with this story of a man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who falls in love with his computer's new operating system. While the premise sounds like the work of frequent Jonze collaborator Charlie Kaufman, this go-around it is borne solely from Jonze's mind. Spike has yet to top the achievement of Being John Malkovich, his feature film debut, but both of his films since then have shown potential and contain several glimpses of the genius more frequently found in his short film work. Samantha Morton, Rooney Mara and Phoenix's co-star in The Master, Amy Adams, also appear.

6. Inside Llewyn Davis

Following their Oscar-winning return with 2007's No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers went into a steady rhythm of releasing a film per year. But since 2010's enjoyable but rather thin remake of True Grit, the brothers have been silent. Come February that will change with their tale of a Greenwich Village folk singer in the early 1960s. The film is loosely based on the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk and should provide the brothers with a cast of characters crazy enough to rival The Big Lebowski and a soundtrack that might match O Brother, Where Art Thou's ubiquity.

5. Star Trek Into Darkness

Step aside Christopher Nolan and Michael Bay, J.J. Abrams is the real blockbuster auteur of our time. His last two features, Super 8 and the Star Trek reboot, were the best films of their respective summers. Now that he got the pesky introductions out of the way and created that genius parallel timeline so that the new films can go and do whatever the hell they damn well please, the real fun should begin with this Star Trek sequel. How could it not, when the villain is played by Sherlock's own Benedict Cumberbatch? Let's hope this film has more of Simon Pegg's Scotty. Bring on the lens flares.

4. The World's End

Speaking of Simon Pegg, he has finally reunited with his Spaced companions Edgar Wright and Nick Frost to complete the third and final installment of their epic Cornetto trilogy, after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Pegg and Frost play friends who come together in their forties to recreate a pub crawl they completed twenty years ago. Meanwhile, the Earth decides to bring about Armageddon. It is going to be quite a task reaching the heights of wit and hilarity of their first two collaborations but The World's End sounds just epic enough to achieve it.

3. Only Lovers Left Alive

My favorite film of 2009 was Jim Jarmusch's little seen and little loved, The Limits of Control, a glorious synthesis of themes the auteur had been pondering for roughly a decade. The Limits of Control can be seen as a cinematic culmination, a film that wipes the slate clean and leaves the director with a bold, white canvas with which to work with. His new film appears to take that freedom and run with it full throttle. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston play centuries-old vampires who reunite when Hiddleston, now a musician, becomes depressed by mankind's direction. Who's a what now?

2. The Wind is Rising

Chances are Hayao Miyazaki's new film won't reach American shores before the end of the year but I don't care, I'm throwing it on here anyway. Maybe I'll just hop on over to Tokyo one weekend and catch this. That'll show you. This new animated feature is about the life of Jiro Horikoshi, celebrated designer of World War II fighter planes. The film continues Miyazaki's obsession with flight and rumor has it some of the pilots are anthropomorhized pigs, like the star of Porco Rosso. Expect some exquisitely designed backgrounds, flawless and kinetic action scenes, and some crazy magical stuff you can't wrap your head around.

1. The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Speaking of Studio Ghibli, exactly twenty-five years ago the famed animation company released Miyazaki's masterpiece My Neighbor Totoro on the very same day as studio co-founder Isao Takahata's heartbreaking tale of two brothers struggling to survive in the ruins of World War II, the phenomenal Grave of the Fireflies. To commemorate the greatest day in Japanese cinema history, the studio will be releasing Takahata's new film about a princess borne of bamboo the same day as The Wind is Rising. How can the world be so awesome?

Cinematic Capsules: July 2012

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

The lone screwball comedy to be helmed by Alfred Hitchcock is not much more than a trifle for either genre fans or auterist critics. The film is about a harried husband and his shrew of a wife who discover that their three-year-old marriage is null and void due to a mix-up in zoning laws. Furious that he did not rectify the situation immediately, the wife kicks the husband out and quickly begins seeing other men. Meanwhile the husband pursues her with impassioned intensity (insanity?) in an effort to win her back. Capably made but only intermittently funny, Mr. and Mrs. Smith depends on its leads to get the goofy antics across and unfortunately it is only half successful. Robert Montgomery does a solid job of playing the husband. He can handle the wackier bits as well as play the straight man when required. However, Carole Lombard fizzles as the wife. She plays it all a bit too broadly, even for the genre to which she is known. This is only the second Lombard film I've seen, after Twentieth Century, my least favorite Howard Hawks film, and in both instances I found her performance to be shrill and unpleasant. Throughout Mr. and Mrs. Smith I was constantly asking myself why Montgomery would even want to reconcile this relationship. Lombard gives us no indication of her charms despite the fact that every man in the film swoons for her. Her emotional outbursts and erratic behavior are the hallmarks of a psychotic, not a lover.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Even a second viewing on a scratchy print at a discount theatre cannot diminish the power of The Cabin in the Woods. It is still easily my favorite film of the last half year. Unfortunately, the film screened once in Texas at the ass pimple end of 2011 so it will not qualify for end-of-the-year accolades. Them's the breaks. Director Drew Goddard and producer Joss Whedon have co-written the horror film to end all horror films, while simultaneously deconstructing and taking the piss out of the entire genre at the same time. Five college kids head off for a pleasurable weekend retreat to the titular location but they quickly discover that nothing is at it seems. If I say anything more it will ruin the surprises of one of the most inventive, witty, gory, and hilariously freaky films I have ever seen. The cast is a real hoot as well, and it is great to see some Whedon regulars (Amy Acker! Tom Lenk!) sprinkled throughout. The Avengers may be raking in all of the dough and finally making Joss a household name, but The Cabin in the Woods is the purer, more idiosyncratic, and satisfying work. Grr Arrgh!

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

A ruminative exploration into the internal lives of a Castilian family in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive is a poetic piece of filmmaking superbly constructed. Every shot in the film is an expertly framed composition. A series of subtle dissolves are eminently effective. At the film's heart is a revelatory performance by the sad-eyed child Ana Torrent who plays the younger daughter, a girl obsessed with befriending the spirit of Frankenstein's monster after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film. The alternately compassionate, competitive and cruel interplay between Torrent and her sister (played by Isabel Telleria) is achingly real. The Spirit of the Beehive at times feels like Fanny and Alexander starring a prepubescent Celine and Julie. The film effortlessly achieves the oft-attempted but rarely successful feat of tapping into the quiet curiosity of childhood.


La Luna (2011)

Pixar's latest animated short, currently playing theatrically in front of Brave, is a resolute charmer. The adorable story of three generations of star sweepers out on their nightly shift features some of the most stunning images the famed studio has yet released. Director Enrico Casarosa tells the simple, fantastical tale with a deft touch. The film has an old world charm which coming from Pixar feels fresh and invigorating. The shorts division is responsible for the studio's most exciting work of late, specifically when they're working on original story lines and characters as opposed to the bland brand-reinforcements starring the Toy Story or Cars creations. With prequels and sequels becoming an increasingly large part of the company's slate, the recently announced Finding Nemo 2 being the most egregious of them all, the shorts are the place to see the creativity and wonder that defined Pixar.

Into the Abyss (2011)

It is staggering to think of Werner Herzog's far-flung travels over the last decade as he continues to pursue the ecstatic truth. From the Alaskan wilderness to centuries-sealed caves in France, from Buddhist ceremonies in India to Antarctic science stations, Herzog now journeys down to death row in small town Texas with his fascinating documentary, Into the Abyss. Herzog has never claimed to be objective in his documentaries and here his anti-execution stance is firmly defined at the outset. His presence as filmmaker and interrogator is felt in every scene as he inquisitively guides his interview subjects down a series of off-beaten paths. He once again shows us that he is the master of the long take, getting onscreen subjects to do or say the most outlandish, contradictory, or beautiful things. One leaves the film, which pivots deftly from harrowing to hilarious, not with images of grisly homicide or even a better understanding of the death row experience, but animals. Always animals. The moments that linger, tantalizing and tenacious, are anecdotes from preachers, prisoners, and wardens about squirrels, monkeys, and hummingbirds, all creatures unconcerned with the plight of us foolish humans.

Straw Dogs (1971)

A Peckinpah horror film. Dustin Hoffman plays a cultured egghead, basically the antithesis of a usual Peckinpah protagonist, who moves with his wife, played by Susan George, to the English countryside where they are soon harassed by local hooligans. The film charts Hoffman's attempts to remain rational and civilized in spite of the atrocities committed against him and his wife. Peckinpah's take paints Hoffman as an ineffectual coward, who cannot stand up to the bullying taunts and does not see the extent of the damage the villains are perpetrating upon him and in particular, his wife. A sense of dread permeates the film from the very first frame and it does not let up until the typically bloody finale. Despite the contemporary setting and the foreign country, the movie is a Peckinpah flick through and through, meaning it is at once depraved, nauseating, violent, challenging, and a true work of art. Straw Dogs is a fascinating, nightmarish statement about society that one wrestles with long after the credits roll.