Watchlist for early 2014 sorted, thanks!

 

Seen an embarrassingly low number of these.

Most of these are fab. OITNB, Veep and OB are the best obviously. Nü AHS is to be watched since it's not stopped airing yet and I haven't got around to finishing Enlightened, Elementary, Les Reventants, Mad Men, Girls or starting Masters of Sex. Oops

Thanks for all the comments! Pav you are EMBARRASSINGLY behind, sort your life out :D

 

http://imageshack.com/a/img833/1666/32hw.png

 

As I said previously, I see many more films that I do television, so this will be a top twenty. When I've made cinema lists before, I've made them by US release date (Oscar-adjacent) or, more recently, by the year in which a film received its first theatrical release in any country. However, neither of those feel complete before the onslaught of awards bait that the UK isn't gifted until January and February, so this EXCLUSIVE list has been compiled according to UK release dates. Any film released in the UK in 2013 is eligible for the list.

 

I ranked all of the eligible films I'd seen, which is just over one hundred. Of course, there's a list about half as long of things I haven't seen - I am only one man with a limited budget. Some of the films that, sight unseen, might crack a later version of this list include The Act of Killing, Ain't Them Bodies Saints, American Hustle, The Broken Circle Breakdown, Child's Pose, Cloud Atlas, The Great Beauty, How to Survive a Plague, Much Ado About Nothing, Mud, Museum Hours, The Selfish Giant, Something in the Air, Stories We Tell, Upstream Colour and What Richard Did.

 

The only film I'll reveal that didn't make the top twenty (it came in at #33) is the film featured in the banner, The Place Beyond the Pines. I'm going for a theme with my category headers, you see. Otherwise, you'll have to speculate on what might have missed out and what was good enough, in what was a surprisingly robust year for cinema.

http://imageshack.com/a/img40/7742/bpr8.png

It was my most anticipated film of the year. It was my most anticipated film of last year, for that matter. So it was perhaps inevitable that Gravity was always going to disappoint at least slightly, with all the expectations I'd heaped upon it. The marriage of technological genius to narrative impact wasn't as finely tuned and revolutionary as it was in Cuaron's previous film, the masterful Children of Men - while this thing is impeccably crafted and dazzling to look at, I was left slightly wanting with the simple barrage of the plot and especially the awkward metaphysical aspects. It felt too cautious - either tell us nothing about this woman and thrust us in with her visceral experience, or immerse us deeper into her psyche. But as I said, it's one of the technical feats of the year, the action is thoroughly gripping, and it looked simply gorgeous on an IMAX screen.

I haven't seen many movies this year, so I won't be able to say much about your choices, but there is a ton I so wanna see Gravity being one.

I hope Don Jon makes it though :kink:

http://imageshack.com/a/img707/5105/9zlm.png

Harmony Korine makes films about horrible people, but I'm not sure he's ever surrounded them by such beauty as he does here. The things they do and the places they go are almost uniformly ugly, whether overflowing with naked bodies, cascading drink or a plethora of guns, but the neon brightness of their lives has the intoxicating allure of the most artificial toxicities of our world. Korine shows you the manner in which you'd likely react, as some of the girls quickly become disillusioned with their new lifestyle, yet you, watching in the audience, are still intrigued by the colour, the shine, the glamour of the thing.

http://imageshack.com/a/img69/7706/skz9.png

Hirokazu Koreeda's charming film delicately explores a family separated by divorce - one brother lives with the mother in one city, the other with the father in another city. When the younger brother hears that two bullet trains passing can generate enough energy to grant wishes, he invites some schoolfriends to journey with him, and his brother does the same. I Wish rings with the feel of boyish quest movies like Stand by Me and The Goonies, but where Koreeda betters his Stateside influences, though, is in his generous characterizations of the adult characters, who lack the intimacy we're granted with the vibrant kids but feel alive with both warmth and foibles. I Wish is more about the journey than the outcome, and it's a heartwarming, vibrant trip.

so ridiculously surprised that gravity isn't in ur top 10. and spring breakers above it!!!! (although that should be top 5 too so BOO)

*top 20

 

 

I haven't seen many movies this year, so I won't be able to say much about your choices, but there is a ton I so wanna see Gravity being one.

I hope Don Jon makes it though :kink:

 

No worries, I'm glad you're reading! And, er... um...

 

so ridiculously surprised that gravity isn't in ur top 10. and spring breakers above it!!!! (although that should be top 5 too so BOO)

 

I'm sure I told you about my reservations there though? And this is still 4 star territory! I like movies!!

*top 20

whit

http://imageshack.com/a/img811/9613/qbnr.png

Good horror movies don't seem to come along that often any more, so for one to crack my top twenty suggests it must be something special. In fact, what The Conjuring is above all is simply effective - it uses fairly old-fashioned techniques and ideas, but finds unusual, refreshing and unexpected ways to make them newly frightening. It helps that they've gathered such a talented, committed cast, who treat the narrative with the utmost seriousness and have the chops to carry it off. Oh, and if they make a sequel about the doll, I won't be seeing it because I prefer to stay alive. kthanxbai

http://imageshack.com/a/img27/4145/wcej.png

Described by its director as "Poland's first LGBT film", Floating Skyscrapers' narrative isn't unfamiliar - young man with girlfriend uses time at the gym to hook up with men, but his life starts to fall apart when he falls in love with a guy he meets at a party - but it's beautifully made, achingly acted, incredibly sexy and really feels like it is moving the ground of the nation. It's far from a happy story, but the filmmaking is exquisite and brings an eerie, haunting otherworldliness to a narrative Western audiences need to recognise is far from irrelevant.

Ooh that looks interesting. Most gay films seem to be quite clichéd and TRITE but I trust your judgement and guessing from its #16 position that it's not. p.s., Poland is hardly eastern! #eu4ever.

Ooh that looks interesting. Most gay films seem to be quite clichéd and TRITE but I trust your judgement and guessing from its #16 position that it's not. p.s., Poland is hardly eastern! #eu4ever.

 

Eastern EUROPE - semantics. You know what I mean.

 

As I say, the storyline is very familiar, but it's so beautifully made that it doesn't feel tired.

http://imageshack.com/a/img801/2240/tb6s.png

A story tragically pre-ordained from the film's prologue, after which we rewind to happier times in the life of Murielle (Emilie Dequenne) and Mounir (Tahar Rahim), a young couple who marry and have four children, but the watchful eye Mounir's brother-in-law, boss and surrogate father André (Niels Arestrup) and the pressures of family life suffocate Murielle to the extent that she feels there's no other option than to murder her children. So, this is far from a heartwarming film, but it's an exquisitely made drama that casts no judgement across the events it presents (which are based on a true story), and bolstered by one of the year's finest performances from Dequenne, an astonishing feat of both physical and emotional commitment.

http://imageshack.com/a/img27/7140/1dzg.png

International auteurs haven't always settled into Hollywood well, but Chan-wook Park's American debut is as delectably macabre as his previous work. Akin to the delicate beauty of something like Lady Vengeance, Stoker stars the fittingly aloof Mia Wasikowska who becomes suspicious of and infatuated with her mysterious, handsome Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) - Hitchcock reference! - as does her unstable mother (Nicole Kidman). A twisted, unsettling portrait from the pen of Wentworth Miller, Stoker has a black heart, so best let it twist its knife into your back.

http://imageshack.com/a/img855/2298/hwi0.png

The finest surprise of the year. Me and a friend try and use our Cineworld Unlimited cards together once a week, and when we chanced on Byzantium, which from vague description sounded akin to a low-rent Twilight with better talent involved, we weren't expecting much. But this was an exquisite, melancholy rewrite of the vampire condition, returning it to an earthier, darker world. Using a run down coastal resort as its lank setting, Neil Jordan crafts a vampire tale steeped in tragic history and tragic present.

Ooh Stoker! That one was vv good.

http://imageshack.com/a/img89/3589/thz1.png

Francois Ozon's finest hour yet is this tricksy little writers' game, where a student (an eerily alluring Ernst Umhauer) writes his French homework about the bourgeois family of his best friend, and his teacher (Fabrice Luchini) becomes increasingly fascinated by the increasingly transgressive nature of the stories. Ozon's puzzle of a film draws you in along with the teacher, as he encourages his student to improve his narrative, but fails to notice the tricks being played on him and failing to pay attention to his own home life. Witty, intelligent and menacing, Ozon's film is a deft mix of social commentary and a treatise on the nature of storytelling.