AMF's 2013 Year-End Recap

Top 10 Movies of the Year (in no real order)

Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen's candy-colored tragedy about the wreckage that mental illness leaves in its wake gets my nod for best film of the year, hands down. It's pretty and sprightly and utterly, holistically heartbreaking. 

Enough Said
Nicole Holofcener writes people like nobody else. These are people you know: they're your friends, your co-workers, they're the people you see every day and who you intrinsically care about -- they may not be perfect (in fact, they're usually far from it), but they're very, very real. Nothing earth-shattering happens in this movie, but it somehow leaves you excited for the adventure ahead of our protagonists, even after the credits roll. 

Moral of this movie: love is sharing your stoop

Nebraska
I have a little "thing" for movies about old people confronting their own obsolescence (don't even play the theme to Up unless you want me to start bawling). I'm not sure entirely what I was expecting from this movie, but I loved what it is -- a quiet, sometimes-frustrating meditation on what it's like to realize who your parents were before you, and who they are because of you.

American Hustle
This ballsy tour de force is one of the most self-assured crime movies I've seen in a very long time. It's exquisitely put together, yet giddily enthusiastic -- Christopher Nolan-esque precision, yet with such a dirty, sexy vibrance that you never see the surgically elegant hand behind the action. 

dude-perms and velvet and boobs, oh my!

Warm Bodies

Every end-of-year list needs one movie that may not be good, but just makes you feel good. I grinned for essentially the entire run-time of this movie, and for ages afterwards. It's a Romeo and Juliet story that, on first glance, doesn't look like much... but it gets under your skin. It's a movie to turn on while you cuddle with someone. It may not be life changing, but it's warm and sweet and oddly affecting.

Dallas Buyers Club

I almost didn't bother going to see this because, based on the trailer, it just looked schmaltzy and like a soggy change-of-heart sob story. Ads, luckily, lie. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto both rock some serious Method acting and while this is inherently a rather emotional story to tell, there are no cheap saccharine moments here.

McConaughey and Leto waiting patiently for their Oscars

Gravity
The spectacle of this movie may suffer on DVD, but the experience of seeing this on a theatre screen in 3D, was truly one of the highlights of the year. I panic-attacked multiple times (the first time being about 2 minutes in... it boded well for the next 2 hours), but the completeness of the world constructed by Cuarón is immersive and incredible.

Blue is the Warmest Color
I was conflicted about putting this on my list. It's 3 hours long but could have easily been edited down to about 2, the director is a perv (as well as essentially abusing his lead actresses), and, let's be honest: there was no need at all for that 9 minute pornographic sex scene that earned the movie its (very valid) NC-17 rating. But on the other hand, it has two of the most beautiful performances (by Léa Seyoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos) I've ever seen and the first 90ish minutes are a near-perfect depiction of what the confusion of being a teenager in love feels like.

this is a kissing movie

The World’s End
I would follow Simon Pegg and Nick Frost almost anywhere and while this didn't generate the buzz that Shaun of the Dead did, I almost think it was funnier. It is, like the rest of their oeuvre, smart, snappy and silly... and then it just jams you in the gut with legitimate emotional heft. 

Much Ado About Nothing
There's no movie I'd rather have been a part of than this. A long weekend overflowing with wine, friends and Shakespeare -- what could be better? 

everyone's had this house-party moment ... right?