“The year 2013 has been an amazing one for movies, though maybe every year is an amazing year for movies if one is ready to be amazed by movies.” So begins Richard Brody‘s excellent overview of 2013 in the New Yorker. “It’s also a particularly apt year to make a list of the best films. Making a list is not merely a numerical act but also a polemical one, and the best of this year’s films are polemical in their assertion of the singularity of cinema, as well as of the art form’s opposition to the disposable images of television.” And a list follows, of course. Tied for #1 are Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder.
Inside Llewyn Davis burrowed its way into Dana Stevens‘s dreams, but Gravity‘s dissipated, failing “to take up permanent residence inside my skull.” So the Coens are on her alphabetical list at Slate, but Alfonso Cuarón is not.
But both New York Post film critics, Kyle Smith and Lou Lumenick, have Gravity in the top slot on their lists.
#1 on Little White Lies‘ top ten: Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color.
Umpteen Cineuropa writers and editors each pick their top five European films of the year.
The Guardian‘s top ten countdown carries on today, with Xan Brooks writing up #9, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish.
The American Film Institute has released its annual unranked movies and television top tens.
Indiewire inaugurates its Awards Season Spotlight, video interviews with “16 of this year’s best actors and directors.” And they begin with Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing, #1 on Eric Kohn‘s list of the year’s top ten documentaries.
Also at Indiewire: David Thomson revisited the “Top 5 Moments that Made the Movies in 2013.”
At the Dissolve, Tasha Robinson looks back on the year in animation.
The Keyframe list of the day: Glenn Heath Jr. on the “Ten Best Shots of the Year.”
Meantime, Slant lists the “Best TV Shows of 2013.” Top album lists: Magnet (25) and Paste (50). Dan Wagstaff posts his top 50 book covers.
AWARDS
“Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave had just as many fans in the Boston Online Film Critics Association as they did the city’s non-online group,” notes Peter Knegt, who’s got the list of winners at Indiewire.
NOT 2013
Some of the most fun lists at the end of each year have little or nothing to do with that particular year. Steven Soderbergh, for example, has just posted his 2012 media diary. And Dieter Kosslick, director of the Berlinale, presents his top ten of all time. His #1: William Wyler‘s Ben-Hur (1959).
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