Perceptive truths revealed in college comedy

At Middleton isn't really about college. It's about a parent's perception of college, then funneled into fantasy and dreams, then boiled back to reality. It's a complicated formula, but one that is well worth all the chemistry.

The movie is about heart surgeon George and upscale furniture store owner Edith. They're married, but not to each other. They're taking their children — George's son Conrad and Edith's daughter Audrey — to Middleton University for a guided tour of the campus. They meet in the parking lot when George, nerdy and obsessive — “He probably irons his underwear,” Edith says — decides to be that guy who must back into his parking space. Edith steals the spot, sparking a lovable little feud.

Their tour group is led by Justin, who has witty little wisecracks for everything including how the school statue was stolen, where the bathrooms in the library are located ("Ironically, just past the Ps.") and a rather sinister joke about campus rape. This actor is playing this role like his career depends on it. I hope he lands another movie.

As the tour progresses, George and Edith, still in their catty feud, are separated from the group. As they bicker and trade barbs, they come to appreciate their similar predicaments: they’re both without their spouses touring a college with children who mostly hate them. The rest plays like a movie-length version of a Meet Cute, a phrase Roger Ebert pioneered and championed, a phrase that describes that charming set of circumstances that brings adorable couples together.

At Middleton works because the dialogue is snappy and smart — and brutally honest — and George and Edith are played by a bowtied Andy Gracia and a free-wheeling Vera Farmiga, both of whom can retire from romantic comedies now that they they've nailed this one. The people they play are mostly dopey and written as if they were on a Disney sitcom, but by the end of the movie I was cherishing them.

The movie follows them around Middleton as they skip from adventure to adventure, including when they steal a pair of bikes, break into French film classes, smoke pot in a dorm and bare their personal wounds in heartbreaking sequences that are so unique I found myself wondering how they ended up in this small disposable movie of all places. It's like finding the Hope Diamond at the Walmart jewelry counter.

Some of it is silly and fun: they sneak into a music classroom and play a dazzlingly manic version of “Chopsticks.” Other scenes are brutally honest: after infiltrating an acting class they're asked to perform an improvisational husband-and-wife scene. As they role play the scenario, they project their own spouses onto each other. And for the first time in maybe their whole lives, these two people are honest with themselves about love, relationships and marriage. It's one of the finest scenes of the new year, and it certainly would have ranked high even if At Middleton had opened in the frenzy of awards season last year. 

Some of the acting is rather awful, and college is portrayed as if the screenwriters had never actually been to one — at one point a kid wearing a football helmet on a unicycle rides past. They do manage to get Peter Riegert, an Animal House alumni, in there as the campus radio DJ. Mostly, though, college is shown as a fantasy, a place teens go to escape their parents, a place parents regretfully send their teens to grow up.

As the college-bound picture progresses it becomes abundantly clear that this isn't just a romantic comedy, but also a family drama as the two parents begin to contemplate their lives without their children in the home or, as Edith sees it, to be alone with her husband after 18 years, which terrifies her. The kids, played by Spencer Lofranco and Taissa Farmiga (Vera’s youngest sister), aren’t doing their parents any favors by rubbing salt in their expanding wounds. At one point, fed up, Edith turns to another parent and shrieks: “You want to know about Middleton? It doesn’t include you.” All George sees is flashes of parenting memories: “Sleepovers, soccer games, slamming doors. Where did the last 17 years go?”

At Middleton is a gloriously mediocre movie wrapped around some very perceptive ideas about parenting and love. It plays fast and loose with its mid-life quirkiness, and some of the neurotic banter will have you looking for Woody Allen cameos, but the film is filled with kernels of truth. And those truths resonate with surprising clarity. That's all I ask from my movies, and this one goes above and beyond.

Hudgens excels in wish-washy drama

Gimme Shelter has noble intentions that get lost in all the thematic clutter.

It’s a message movie with so many conflicting messages that its core feels hallow and quiet, like the eye of a hurricane. The ultimate victim here is Vanessa Hudgens, who turns in a performance that shows her acting has depth, or at least the potential for it. The former Disney star has given interesting performances before, including in last year’s bombastic Spring Breakers, a movie that she didn’t so much act in, but rather desperately clung to as it rocketed away to another galaxy.

Hudgens plays Agnes, an edgy teen with five facial piercings living in troublesome conditions with her drug-addicted mother, June (Rosario Dawson). In the first scene, Agnes has had enough and flees in a cab ride she can’t afford. She eventually ends up at the home of her father (Brendan Fraser), whom she has never met except in a letter he wrote to her before she was born. He has a family and significant wealth — “Real estate?” Agnes asks; “No, Wall Street,” he tells her. During dinner Agnes throws up unexpectedly, which is secret movie code for cancer or pregnancy. For Agnes it’s pregnancy.

The stepmother, who resents her existence, offers to take her to get an abortion, but Agnes can’t go through with it so she ditches the procedure and starts living on the streets and sleeping in parked cars. The movie mostly wanders with Agnes, who aimlessly bounces from one place to another. Eventually she ends up at a shelter for young pregnant mothers, where the other girls reluctantly accept her as one of their own.

Gimme Shelter plays like a Republican fever dream: minorities eating up all the welfare, abortion not being a valid solution, the Wall Street executive and his form of trickle-down economics, the public sector (not big government) and its role in society’s problems, and a rather prominent Ronald Reagan namedrop. The whole thing smacks of GOP ideology. The movie is probably non-partisan at its core, but I couldn’t help but think of Rush Limbaugh giddily smiling at all the plot points.

Mostly though, Gimme Shelter seems confused about what it actually is. I wasn’t sure if this was a commentary on single mothers, absent fathers, druggie mothers, the sad state of teen shelters, or some sort of Frankenstein mish-mash of all of it. And then, in the credits, photos of the real characters are shown next to the actors playing them suggesting this is a bio-pic, but of who: Agnes, the Wall Street father, the shelter worker? The movie mostly focuses on Agnes, but it can’t seem to agree on what’s best for her.

The movie mixes its messages because no one is shown in a sympathetic light. Fraser’s father figure, wearing the most Donald Trump of hairstyles, flip flops several times. One moment he’s an arrogant jerk and the next he’s lavishing gifts on his daughter and his first grandbaby. The shelter worker (played by Ann Dowd) is even more perplexing: at times she seems to have a heart of gold, and then she crashes churches to use her shelter girls to beg for money. Even Agnes seems confused, especially in her final choices, which are beyond aggravating. Without giving too much away, let me say she takes permanent advantage of a temporary program.

The only two characters who exhibit any consistency are a kind-hearted pastor played by James Earl Jones and the despicable mother. June, whose yellow teeth could serve as the inspiration for all those old “yo momma” dentistry jokes, is one vile monster. Two women sitting behind me at my screening seemed to hiss every time she appeared on the screen. Late in the movie I was pondering where the nearest portable defibrillator might be when June shows up with a razor in her mouth — the two women survived, albeit thoroughly violated by Dawson's fiery turn as an awful mother.

Hudgens deserves some recognition for her engrossing, if also uneven, performance. She plays Agnes as a scrappy little fighter conflicted by her past and her increasingly sorrowful plight. I liked the way Hudgens refused to glamourize the role; Agnes is the ugly duckling right until the end. It’s not going to be her greatest acting job, but hopefully it will be the first in a string of dramatic roles that mark her presence as a serious actress.

If only Gimme Shelter had a clearer message. By the end of the movie, all I had gleaned was teen pregnancy was good and bad, shelters were confining and liberating, estranged fathers were absent and present, and charity was a despicable handout and a gracious necessity. The movie needs to commit to something. Anything.

Editing aside, Jack Ryan reboot has legs

Someone call Hoarders, Chris Pine has a problem.

The guy who took over James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise, is now Jack Ryan, Tom Clancy’s most famous creation, a CIA analyst living in a world fraught with geo-political terror. Two franchises isn’t really that much to get worked up about, but if he’s the next Han Solo or James Bond or the Little Tramp then we’ll have to light the Hoarders beacon.

Of course, Pine is not the first person to tackle the late author’s most resilient character. Alec Baldwin played him in The Hunt For Red October, Harrison Ford took over for Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and then Ben Affleck — another potentially obsessive franchise collector — played the CIA analyst in The Sum of All Fears. If you recall, that last movie wasn’t received so well: seven months after 9/11 it “entertained” viewers with a nuclear detonation at the Super Bowl. Classy.

Anyway, here we with Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Pine, who plays a rebooted version of the mild-mannered spy. After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he’s horribly injured in a helicopter crash and ambush, Ryan finds himself at Walter Reed Medical Center learning how to walk again and taking mini-meetings with Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), a CIA officer who eventually recruits Ryan into his fold of spies. His first assignment after getting his legs back is to infiltrate a Wall Street bank to trace shady accounts. And this being Wall Street, there are plenty.

One of them leads to a global conspiracy to undermine the American dollar, a plot that will be kicked off with a massive terrorist attack. It’s a believable scheme, but one that seems more likely to happen from JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs or any of the other crooked financial institutions in Lower Manhattan than any foreign power. Maybe that’s in the sequel, Jack Ryan: Securities Exchange Warrior.

I must admit, this movie’s chances of success looked less and less likely after it was announced it wasn’t opening in December 2013 and instead opening in January 2014, in the dregs of the new year, where most of the studios dump their stale scraps. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, though, is a plucky little spy thriller. It’s not quite up there with the much superior Harrison Ford movies, but it holds its own as the spunky reboot.

The movie’s central plot opens with a bathroom assassination attempt, and then a series of meetings with the film’s ultimate villain, Russian businessman Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh, who also directed the picture), a bad guy right of Rambo III. Yes, the movie sidesteps many real global issues — like terror in the Middle East and its overused catalogs of stereotyped villains — to basically re-fight the Cold War, this time with terrorism and currency manipulation. But it’s all given a fresh spin here, as Jack bats accusations back and forth with Cherevin, who apparently only leaves his well-guarded office for plot purposes.

Keira Knightley shows up at one point as Ryan’s girlfriend. She thinks she’s being cheated on. “No, of course not. I’m in the CIA,” Ryan says. She giggles like a schoolgirl. Later in the movie, poor Keira is escorted from a restaurant, rescued on the street, kidnapped, and then rescued again. If she were any less helpless, she would be a store mannequin.

The movie has a distinctly 24 and Jack Bauer vibe. The gadgets are ridiculously simple. A computer hacking module doesn’t even need a computer; just plug it into the wall and it uses the electrical infrastructure. A scene on a CIA airplane condenses six months of espionage and intelligence gathering into 20 minutes of keyboard mashing. Ryan pounces from monitor to monitor cross referencing his clues until one of the computer spits out the final answer: “The terrorist event will take place …” If this plane existed in Zero Dark Thirty, Bin Laden could have been killed in the womb.

Pine is a totally acceptable action star. He’s just such a safe choice — the vanilla of ice creams — that his casting is almost boring. It’s not a bad performance, it’s just bland. I did like Knightley, though, who turns off her British accent, which sends her into some kind of weird uncanny valley of artificiality. And Costner, make fun of his failures all you want, the guy is routinely spectacular in almost everything he touches, including here as he is snipes security guards from a Russian rooftop.

There is much to like in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, and some to shrug at. And then there is the editing. All of the action, and even some of the snappier dialogue sequences, are edited in the Bourne style of handheld, quick-cut, super close-up messiness that many action movies have adopted. It’s just awful, awful, awful. Not only is it difficult to tell who is shooting who, or who is punching what, but the effect robs the film of its naturally kinetic pace and swaps in this manic, ADD version of cinematography and editing. It’s beyond ugly. And it needs to stop. Listen, not everything needs to be Lawrence of Arabia here, but if the editing of the movie moves faster than my eyes can focus, that’s a terrible and unforgivable problem.

That being said, I think there might be some real potential for this new franchise, assuming they don’t dump Pine like they did Affleck after Sum of All Fears. Judging by the quality of this one, I’d be interested in another, assuming that Pine can handle two franchises at once.

Ride Along has some serious Hart

Through the haze of cliché and absurdity that is Ride Along, comes an endearing performance by Kevin Hart, an actor I’m growing increasingly fond of with each new movie.

Hart, who stands just a smidge over 5 feet — a physical characteristic that plays right into his shtick of misplaced cockiness and faux swagger — is not a terrific actor. Nor is he the funniest or the most versatile. But he’s likable, and that quality goes a long way to smooth out some of the other wrinkles.

Hart takes this likability and laminates it to the soul of Ben Barber, a hapless geek with a big heart and quick wit. Ben is dating Angela (Tika Sumpter), who is a whole head taller than him, but nevermind that — they’re so cute together that their height difference is a testament to their oddball chemistry. Before he can pop the big question to her, Ben feels obligated to ask her brother for permission first. The brother, James (Ice Cube), a hard-boiled police detective on a tough organized crime beat, wants nothing to do with the “pipsqueak,” so he hatches a plan to get Ben on a police ride along, where he’ll prove to him he’s not man enough to marry his sister.

James rigs the ride along from the beginning, including their first call to stop a biker gang from parking in front of a business. Ben strides up to the bikers and makes a valiant effort, but the deck is stacked against him. Some of these scenarios are tirelessly rote; think of every Kevin James performance and reduce the stupidity by a fifth. I did like a bit in the police station, where James makes Ben fill out a release form — “This says that if you take a blow to the chest, get stuck by a Hep-C needle or eat a bullet from the stress that the department is not liable for your dumb ass.” Ice Cube, ironically playing against his miscreant gangbanger Doughboy in Boyz N the Hood, is a reliable comedy force, but not an exceptional one. I did get a laugh when he said late in the movie, “It was a good day,” a call back to his biggest music hit.

The movie is mostly about James and Ben coming to trust and rely on each other, if not for their common interest, Angela, then for their survival on the mean streets. But the film introduces a plot point at the beginning that actually has a worthwhile payoff: James is tracking an elusive criminal mastermind named Omar, a man no one has actually seen. This, of course, leads to a scene later when Ben has to pretend to be Omar to get James out of a deadly trap. And then the real kingpin shows up — I’ll let you discover who plays Omar.

Mostly, though, the movie serves as vehicle for Hart, who frequently feigns a wacky tough-guy persona to hype up his own sense of bravery, which usually ends with him falling down or taking a bullet to the shin. He has this curious habit of making rubbery faces as he mimes profound exasperation, like he smelled something foul. His humor is rooted in too much slapstick — think of the black-and-white “before” scenes in TV infomercials — but it’s also occasionally witty and smart. I have no excuse for the film’s overreliance on Ben’s video game that he plays early in the movie. It serves as the backbone to many of the jokes, including one where he wanders through a gunfight looking for ammo on the ground because that’s what happens in his video game. It’s one of the dopier Mall Cop-like moments, but it comes and goes fairly quickly.

By no means is Ride Along the movie you should be seeing this weekend. It’s a forgettable comedy filled with many disposable performances and one rather silly one. If you do happen to catch it, you’re likely to come out thinking what I did: “Kevin Hart just made a mediocre movie sorta charming.”

Lone Survivor: Fire on the Mountain

How does a director go from Battleship, one of the most reviled military thrillers of recent memory, to Lone Survivor, a very personal movie about real American soldiers who fought and died in Afghanistan?

For Peter Berg, the director of both, the answer is this: very carefully.

If you're familiar with Berg and his directing style — picture manic swearing screamed from a belligerent child strapped to the front of a battering ram — then you'll know why his careful handling of Marcus Luttrell's 2007 book comes as a surprise to me. Berg was cast in the shadow of more technical directors (James Cameron), more endearing ones (Ron Howard) and more bombastic ones (Michael Bay), and aside from the poignant Friday Night Lights, his catalog is filled with dud (The Rundown) after dud (Hancock) after dud (The Kingdom). Somehow, though, the actor-director pulls this one together with the kind of skill and wizardry of some of Hollywood's best. 

Lone Survivor strikes the right note right out the gate. It opens on documentary footage of Navy SEALs going through their BUD/S training. If you'll recall Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane, BUD/S, or Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, is the hellacious training that Demi Moore's character suffers through to prove herself. In this footage, though, we're not seeing actors, but real faces. They beam with potential. These faces will return; more on that later.

The film picks up with Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch) assembling his SEAL team — Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and Matt Axelson (Ben Foster) — to get choppered into a valley deep in Afghanistan to pour some mayhem down on a terrorist target. These are some bad mo-fos, with their beards and their swagger. To quote Zero Dark Thirty: "… you guys with your dip and Velcro and all your gear bullshit." A fantastic early sequence has one of the "rootin' tootin' shootin' paratroopin'" newbies reciting a SEAL poem that is as charming as it is vulgar.

Musically held together not by pop music or blaring rock 'n' roll, Lone Survivor is scored in part by post-rock instrumentalist outfit Explosions in the Sky, and the band's floaty free-form guitar concepts hypnotize the early sequences into a cerebral meditation on service and the cohesion that exists with these elite warriors. By the time the four SEALs are initiating the beginning phases of Operation Red Wing, we're pretty much ready for that "everything is going to be OK" illusion to be shattered. And it certainly does when the soldiers are faced with a moral dilemma that they pass with flying colors, even if it means their lives are forfeit. 

What happens next is the least interesting part of the movie, but one that will likely thrill most action junkies: the four SEALs are boxed into a guns-blazing battle with dozens of enemy fighters. The gunplay is intense and violent, much of it to due to the action's stark presentation and the realistic weaponry. Guns have powerful calls, and bullets have devastating responses. (But the RPGs seem to have no negative repercussions, even as they burst next to exposed faces.) With superior training and firepower, the four soldiers push the enemy back with extreme precision. And even as bullets skid past (and through) them, they shake it off and hold their corners. Remember when Jesse Ventura said he "ain't got time to bleed" in Predator? That was a paper cut compared to these wounds, including one that is gaping so wide that medical treatment involves packing it with soil. At one point, the SEALs are backed up against a cliff, and they make a choice that requires a level of commitment that is beyond comprehension — they jump off. Their bodies ragdoll down the rock face, tumbling over boulders and through trees. The sequence is so effective you're better off watching it from behind your fingers. 

The four cast members are often hidden behind their beards and rifle scopes, but they depict their subjects with honor and valor, neither deifying their bravery or downplaying their heroism. They're played like average guys, guys you'd want to get a drink with and watch a football game with. They were doing their jobs partly for their country, but mostly for each other; Uncle Sam is an idea, but Marcus, Mike, Danny and Axe are real people stuck in the shit together. I only hope that audiences recognize these guys as brothers before action heroes. 

That being said, Lone Survivor is a competent and agile movie that does justice to its four central heroes. And best of all, Berg ends the movie the way he started it — with the faces of the real SEALs. It's the most important part of the picture, and I'm glad Berg lets the images linger on the screen. We need to see those faces, and remember them.

Acting juggernauts club it out in Osage County

August: Osage County is a dusty, wind-swept void of dark comedy.

It’s about incest, affairs, death, suicide, emotional assault, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and one scene of an adult trying to possibly exploit a minor. It’s a dark comedy with every shade of dark, and thick curtains on all the windows. But right there in the middle of it is a scene I never thought I would ever see: one beloved Academy Award winner telling another beloved Academy Award winner to eat the catfish on her dinner plate. “Eat it, you fucker” she hisses. These demands, delivered like salvos of mortar fire, are said with so much disdain that a fork plunged through a major artery might actually be a step down.

The scene is made all the better by the stars of it: Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. Julia is the one doing all the cursing, and wow is it ever glorious. If Erin Brockovich was her warm-up then August: Osage County is her showing off with a marathon of f-words and other vulgarities. At one point she riffs on the word “vagina,” coming up with a lovely array of colorful synonyms for her mother’s lady parts. On the receiving end of the catfish scene is Streep, here playing a pill-popping widow whose cruel reign over her family has created an avalanche of resentment and pain. Streep, a lovely actress who will no doubt get many acting nominations for this remarkable performance, has been cursed at like this before — albeit never in public or on camera — by every actress bumped out of a nomination list by the famous star. Only Julia has done it on camera for everyone else to witness.

And, real quickly, speaking of catfish, this is the second time the bottom-feeding whiskered fish has featured prominently in a movie in the last year. The first time was in that wacky piece of abstract sex-art in Ridley Scott’s The Counselor. And now here. Both scenes are completely bonkers, but for very different reasons.

August: Osage County is based on the play by Tracy Letts. It begins with Sam Shepard speaking his Hemingway-like lines with a touch of whiskey-infused poetry. He’s talking to the newly hired maid, who serves as the only constant in this mangled tale of family. By the next day, he turns up dead in a lake — suicide. As his family converges in on his homestead for the funeral, his three daughters — foul-mouthed Barbara (Roberts), cousin-loving Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) and floozie Karen (Juliette Lewis) — must wrangle with their mother, Violet (Streep), who isn’t too heartbroken by her husband’s death. She pops some pills, dons a wig and then claws into her children, some of whom deserve it. She uses her mouth as a weapon, sniping at every failure of her children, be it minor (divorce) or major (incest). The irony is not lost earlier when we find out she has cancer. Mouth cancer.

This is some of the finest acting you will see on the silver screen. A rather big deal has been made about Streep’s career, how she gets nominated simply because “she’s Meryl.” That all may be true with certain performances (Iron Lady comes to mind), but it can’t be said here, where she outdoes herself with this vile and wicked mother and her conniving perspective on life. Streep’s craft and her dedication to it are unquestionable as she blurts and spurts vindictive rhetoric at her kin. Then there’s Julia Roberts, a force all her own. she pokes holes in the name "America's sweetheart," but not many.

The minor performances will be stampeded over to congratulate the two powerhouses, but the smaller roles deserve recognition too, including Julianne Nicholson as Violet’s most naïve and optimistic daughter, Chris Cooper as a straight-shootin’ brother-in-law, character actress Margo Martindale as a controlling aunt and Misty Upham as the maid, who remarkably doesn’t walk out of the job 10 minutes into this madness. The cast is so big that I haven’t even yet spoken about Ewan McGregor, Dermot Mulroney or Benedict Cumberbatch — all three play pawns in this devious game of "blame mother" chess.

August: Osage County does not contain the most remarkable plot, nor does it contain the most riveting dialogue. Some viewers will find its pacing slow, and its story lacking. That's alright, though, because the reason you're going to see it — to watch two acting juggernauts duke it out in an all-out verbal warfare — is plenty enough already.

Top 12 films of an altogether awesome 2013

I must concur with a great number of movie writers: 2013 was a fantastic year for film. So fantastic that I considered doing a top 20 list just to fit everything in. Instead I’ve cut to 12 films, with a bunch of honorable mentions and genre-specific honors that deserve recognition — yes, even a horror movie proved itself worthy of consideration this year.

I mulled doing a worst list, but it would read like every other worst list, with The Lone Ranger leading the pack. It was awful, awful, awful. But one that was actually worse was Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain, which made Keystone Cops out of convicted killers and victim dismemberers (laugh track here). It was the lowest point in movies this year. So without saying their names any more, I’ll move on.

Here is my list of best films. It was not hard to make, but it was hard to cut. The top four or five were established many months ago and never moved. The others drifted up and down, on and off, and generally all around before settling where they did. Lists are generally annoying endeavors, so I sympathize with readers who avoid them. My list resembles other lists, which is one of the flaw of year-end lists — they all tend to look alike. Ultimately, though, I make my list, if nothing more, than to serve as a time capsule to my tastes of 2013. Maybe that’s selfish, but isn’t that why people read lists, to find out how someone else’s list compares to their own?

In any case, here’s mine.

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1. The Spectacular Now

Teens are a nebulous subject, which is why so many films get so perilously lost when the setting involves a high school. James Ponsoldt’s breathtaking character drama The Spectacular Now understands teens on an intimate soul-deep level. It nurtures them, caresses their feelings, gives them freedom to wander, and allows them to live as natural, awkward beings. It’s a beautiful film made all the better by Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, who play the star-crossed teens — he’s popular and charismatic, she’s delicate and optimistic. They lift each other up and drag each other down in Ponsoldt’s humanistic script. After a horrendous summer of high-octane garbage, I knew I had seen my favorite movie of the year after falling in love with the film’s careful honesty and superb performances. I wasn’t the only one who loved it: The Spectacular Now was Roger Ebert’s final four-star review; it published on his site after he died.

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2. 12 Years a Slave

Viewers should experience two emotions watching Steve McQueen’s absolutely vital piece of American history, 12 Years a Slave: shame and hope. Shame that our country was founded amid a belief as abhorrent as slavery, and hope in the people who fought to stay alive within it. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free-born American citizen who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He encounters some good souls (Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt) and some truly awful ones (Michael Fassbender). McQueen’s camera lingers on torture and abuse long enough to repulse you, but short enough to give the film its central core of hope. Ejiofor is stunning, as is Fassbender, who plays a despicably vile slave owner. One of the hidden gems in the movie, though, is Lupita Nyong’o, who plays a woman drained of all her hope and filled with sorrow. This is an important film that needs to not be seen, but witnessed.

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3. Gravity

Alfonso Cuarón reinvented the science fiction thriller with an unlikely ally — science. Neil deGrasse Tyson lovingly picked it apart, but Gravity is still light years ahead of many of its peers. Using realistic sound effects (none) and hyper-realistic gravity physics, Cuarón managed to bring us a convincing space drama, about two astronauts left marooned in a low orbit after space debris shreds the space shuttle, then the International Space Station and then a Chinese station. The situation grows very dire as man-made meteorites continuously blast through their escape plan. The film features one of my favorite images of any film of the year: Sandra Bullock, in silhouette, hurtling off into the Milky Way with only her helmet lights skipping through the cosmos.

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4. Her

Spike Jonze has always been a creative force, but with Her he enters another realm completely. His film, which he also wrote, is about a man who falls in love with the voice in his phone’s operating system. And wow, what a voice — sexy, a little coarse and deep, but altogether filled with compassion. The voice is played by Scarlett Johansson; the man by Joaquin Phoenix. Together they wander the film’s sci-fi-tinted cityscape exploring their love and limitations. The movie is less a commentary on the Internet and technology than it is on love and all the funny things we do to find it, flourish in it, and keep it. And considering all the ways this could have ended, Jonze finds a perfectly believable way to find some closure. It’s heartbreaking, no doubt, but it’s appropriate in every way.

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5. The Place Beyond the Pines

In a triptych of stories, The Place Beyond the Pines gives us three figures locked in dangerous cycles, each of which ends in a different way: one in defeat, one in victory and one in forgiveness. The movie, by Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance, is one of the most rewarding experiences of the year. Ryan Gosling plays a motorcycle daredevil who turns to bank robbing, Bradly Cooper plays the cop who responds to a fateful call, and Chronicles' Dane DeHaan plays a troubled kid with a missing father. The stories interlock in fairly straightforward and realistic ways, but they are all emotionally complex with each story cascading its outcomes down onto the next. In the end, sometimes the sins of the father are visited on the son, and sometimes the cycle is broken. 

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6. Nebraska

Oh Bruce Dern, where have you been all these years? Dern plays a guy so convinced he's won a scam direct mail contest that he's going to walk his winning letter from Montana to Nebraska. His son, played by a surprisingly skilled Will Forte, takes pity on the crotchety old man and agrees to drive him on what will become a fantastic road movie about rediscovering your roots. The film is witty and smart, and terrifyingly honest about getting old and a little delirious. June Squibb has a performance as Dern's wife, and she steals the show in every scene including the one that will make her famous: "You all can go fuck yourselves," she tells her various cousins and in-laws. The movie is directed by Descendants helmer Alexander Payne, further cementing his role as America's premier maker of hilarious dysfunctional family dramas. 

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7. The Wolf of Wall Street

In 50 years, when American college professors are teaching students about banking regulation and their former state of criminality, they will show students Wolf of Wall Street and tell them, "See the way it was. This is why banking is so regulated today." Martin Scorsese directs Leonardo DiCaprio in a riotous free-for-all about excess — women, drugs and money, money, money. The film certainly glorifies DiCaprio's antics, but only a madman would look upon them and think, "Hey, this is something I might want to try." Wolf of Wall Street, with its manic editing and narrative structure, is a red-hot indictment on the white-collar crime that infects every bank in America. Scorsese, here in top form, uses every tool in his toolbox, as does DiCaprio, who really outdoes himself with his over-the-top-ridiculous performance.  

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8. Prisoners

Crime thrillers rarely surprise me anymore; they're too predictable. Prisoners, though, by director Denis Villeneuve, shocked me with its freshness and its macabre twists. Hugh Jackman stars as a father whose daughter is abducted, probably by a mentally deficient young man who cruises town in a creepy RV. The police can't act because there is no proof, so Hugh's character kidnaps the boy to torture the information out of him. The film's grisly twist — the victim's father becomes the kidnapper — is just one of many diabolical plot developments in this brainy and moody thriller that also stars Terrence Howard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and Melissa Leo.

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9. Spring Breakers

The Spectacular Now features teens with hopes and dreams. Spring Breakers features teens with none. Both are accurate movies. Spring Breakers takes place in one of those beach cities overrun by college kids for spring break. We follow four young women as they hypnotically drink their way through their vacation. And when they run out of money they steal. The shots of them in jail in their bikinis is an image worth way more than a thousand words. Later they hook up with Alien (James Franco), a whacked-out drug dealer and rapper, who can see potential in his new muses. The film, deftly shot by Harmony Korine, is a spastic dubstep-scored manifesto of sex, alcohol and "spring break forever." Really, though, it's about nihilism and the wasted potential of young people; a DayGlo hyper-ballad of teens giving the middle finger to the establishment. The hedonistic orgy of color and feminism is subversive pop-art of the strangest, most poetically bankrupt variety. And I loved every sonic second of it.

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10. Upstream Color

I've seen Shane Carruth's time-traveling basement epic Primer about a dozen times and still don't get all of it. It's a labyrinth of dead ends and alternative timelines, but it's an utterly captivating brand of DIY sci-fi. Here Carruth is again with something more cerebral and poetic — so poetic that early reviews compared it to Terrence Malick. Upstream Color is easy to explain, but nearly impossible to understand. It begins with a thief using a tiny worm to poison a woman into a hypnosis-like coma, in which she can accept commands without question. The thief has her transcribe a book, drink copious amounts of water, make paper chains and, eventually, empty her bank account. After it's over, the woman wakes up with gaps in her memory. She ends up meeting another victim, and they begin to share memories with each other, and also with pigs that now contain the parasites they once did. There's also another character: the Sampler, who runs the pig farm, records sounds out in nature and somehow has access to memories that don't belong to him. It's all very confusing, but also completely transfixing, with the hypnotic shots of ambushed memories and shared visions serving as film's only hiding places for clues. I've seen it twice and I still have only scratched the surface of its many secrets, but Upstream Color is a fascinatingly dense tale of mind manipulation.

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11. August: Osage County

Few movies have better acting than August: Osage County, a movie that features a turbulent descent into 40 years of resentment and pain. The play-turned-movie is about a father's death and how his children return home to bury him and deal with their mother, a pill-popping microburst of disappointment. The mother is played by Meryl Streep and she will surely get an Academy Award nomination for this performance. Now, that kind of proclamation is hardly prophetic for Streep, one of the most honored actresses in the history of the cinema, but this nomination would be appropriate, and not just because, "It's Meryl." She howls and yammers, slithers and burps, and she attacks her children for their continued failures. Julia Roberts has a fascinating role that allows her to yell some rather stupendous F words, some of them at Streep, which is worth the price of a ticket right there.

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12. The Act of Killing

In 1965, a failed communist rebellion created a state-sponsored genocide in Indonesia. The killers would hack, shoot, burn and bomb their supposedly communist victims. One killer would wrap wire around their necks and yank until they were dead. We know this because the killer himself re-enacts the murders, often with a wry little smile. Director Joshua Oppenheimer pointed his camera at other killers and they also smiled with pride at the people they murdered. It's a perverse thing to admit, but it happens over and over again in The Act of Killing, a documentary that serves as an admission of guilt for an entire country. Today in Indonesia, the so called "gangsters" are recognized as national heroes. One of them, the choker from above, spends the whole movie chuckling like an idiot about the people he killed. At one point he shows his grandchildren why he's so famous. And finally, he stands where the murders took place and dry heaves over his crimes. By now it's too late; his secret is out. I watched this movie in stunned disbelief, and it's never really left me. 

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Honorable Mention, Science Fiction — Oblivion

Joseph Kosinski's splendid science fiction adventure about cloning, an alien race, Earth's destruction and Apple-designed flying space pods was a stand-out from early 2013. Held together with incredible photography, dazzling special effects and M83's electric shoegaze, Oblivion wasn't the smartest science fiction of the year, but it was another sign that Kosinski, after his zippy Tron Legacy, was well on his way to becoming an established director. The movie did give us one of the most unintentionally funny visuals: Tom Cruise's sperm-shaped flight pod entering the polished space vagina of an orbiting alien mothership. And say what you will about Tom Cruise, he continuously delivers strong performances, especially in ambitious sci-fi films.

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Honorable Mention, Animation — Monster’s University

After Frozen came out Monsters University dropped off many critics' maps. While Frozen is a wonderful Disney movie, one with some progressive new story themes that are welcome to Disney's animated legacy, my heart is still with Pixar's prequel to Monsters Inc. Mike and Sully are back, this time as they meet in college, fight over their respective careers, eventually team up and take on a vindictive dean. The Greek games are fun, especially that race with the toxic spikeballs, and so are the new characters, including that rolly-polly Art. I found the film to be a worthy addition to the Pixar family because it added more to the story: Mike, the green volleyball with one eye, is taught a valuable lesson about teamwork. In a world that puts emphasis on the high scorers, and not the people who assist the high scorers, Mike is given a behind-the-scenes job that is just as important as being the hero. It was a small, but valuable, twist that I appreciated immensely.

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Honorable Mention, Biopic — Fruitvale Station

Oscar Grant was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong cop. That makes it sound like his own fault and, well, that's how the cop probably saw it — "guilty of being black" is a real phenomenon with police officers, just look at the demographic breakdown of New York City's stop and frisk program. Oscar was on a BART train on New Year's Day when he was hauled off, laid on the ground, handcuffed and then shot at point-blank range in the back. He later died of his wound. The cop may have meant to fire his tazer, but drew his gun. We'll never know what was in his heart, although the videos and subsequent trials certainly paint differing pictures. The film, named after the station Oscar was shot in, follows Oscar Grant on his last day of life. He had some issues he was working through, but he was ready to move past them with his girlfriend, his daughter and his loving family, who were always in his corner. Ryan Coogler's debut is a powerful piece of film, and it's held together by the very talented Michael B. Jordan, who is quickly becoming a force all his own. 

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Honorable Mention, Costume Drama — American Hustle

David O. Russell's wildly intriguing film about criminals hunting criminals with the FBI at their side is a joy to behold. The hair, the costumes, the settings, the music … here is a fully realized 1970s wonderland, where crime and corruption meet in a dizzying display of double crosses and manipulation. Framed around the ABSCAM case that netted several high-ranking elected officials for bribery, American Hustle mostly focuses on the criminals who arranged the sting. One of them is a fat loser with a bad combover (Christian Bale) and the other is a conniving femme fatale with a plunging neckline (Amy Adams). Then there's Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro, rounding out a stellar all-star cast. The movie is a tad too long, but it rarely leaves the groove it cuts on its rock-n-roll journey through the garish ’70s.

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Honorable Mention, Fantasy — Riddick

When I left the Riddick screening, a fanboy was griping that there wasn't enough "action and killing." That's precisely why I loved this dopey action movie. Well, that and also because it looked nothing like the previous Riddick movie. The movie begins with Vin Diesel's muscly hero getting stranded on a planet all by himself with no guns or foes. It had me hooked at this point. He spends the first 40 minutes or so trying to survive the elements, the hyena-wolves, the centipede-scorpion bugs and other surprises of the planet's harsh ecosystem. And then, when bounty hunters show up to claim their prize, he takes them all hostage until he gets his way. Diesel is a lovable action hero, if only because that grumbly voice allows for so little range, which makes everything he says sound the same, from deadly threats to off-the-wall quips. Riddick still finds time for wanton violence, but the fact that the plot is so very different than everything that came before it is worthy of mention and appreciation.

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Honorable Mention, Horror — Evil Dead

Just when you think Evil Dead has maxed out, when the violence and mayhem couldn't possibly get worse, it's right then that the movie kicks into a hidden gear and crashes through the bloody ceiling. The result: raining freakin' blood. Yes, Sam Raimi's version is a horror classic, but this remake proves that sometimes to honor the original, a remake must top it again and again and again. Needles in eyes, hammers to knees, nail guns shot through faces, chainsaws, rape trees, possessed sisters, skin-wrapped books, point-blank shotgun blasts, turkey carvers … oh this movie unleashes some shit. I like over-the-top movies, and Evil Dead clears the top, circles the block and returns to give you the finger. 

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Honorable Mention, Indie Darling — Prince Avalanche

David Gordon Green left indie character dramas many years ago to do stupid James Franco comedies. He was sorely missed. He returned to the fold here with Prince Avalanche, about two workers doing road maintenance through an area destroyed by wildfire. They dig holes for signs, paint the road lines and apply the lane nipples (that's not what they're called?). They also bicker and fight, and then contemplate their lives and what's happening back home. The movie stars Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch, who play their roles with a touch of irony and nostalgia for the 1980s, the time period the movie is set. By the end of the movie, you realize the movie had more going on than you anticipated — are they dead, or is everyone else? Prince Avalanche won some early accolades, but then disappeared. I didn't want to forget it; it was a charming study on isolation and road nipples.

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Honorable Mention, Tom Hanks — Captain Phillips

Tom Hanks, the male Meryl Streep, does not need any new awards, although he certainly deserves them with each new movie, all of them delightful precisely because Tom Hanks is in them. Anyway, I wanted to honor Tom Hanks (yet again), but this time for a side of him that we haven't yet seen. He plays Captain Phillips in Paul Greengrass's high-seas boat drama about pirates and a hostage negotiation. The movie is quite good, but I really want to focus on Hanks' last scene. He's aboard a Navy vessel being treated for the days-long ordeal he just went through. And then Hanks, as Captain Phillips, just loses it. Complete breakdown. It's clearly post-traumatic stress disorder, and it's terrifying. Hanks whimpers and sobs, his eyes are spinning, his hands trembling. We've seen Hanks act the hell out of some roles, but I've never seen him like this. Never. Not once. The guy is good.

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Honorable Mention, WTF?!?!? — The Counselor

Oh did I ever hate-love this bizarre Ridley Scott movie. It's written by novelist Cormac McCarthy precisely the way you would expect Cormac McCarthy to have written a movie. "What the fuck did you expect?" is what he would tell you if you ever could interrogate him about this WTF-worthy crime thriller. The movie — so esoteric, so existential, so elegantly perverse — is about a man becoming a criminal, but it's not that easy. All of the dialogue is spoken in obtuse metaphor. Some of it is easy to figure out; other parts are so literary and complex that most moviegoers are unlikely to understand what's happening. The speeches, and there are many of them, are brilliantly written and performed, but without anything linking them to the rest of the story they become painful exercises in "Wait, what?" It also features one of the strangest and least erotic sex scenes of the year, if not the decade. "Catfish" is all the character who experiences it can say. It's all I can say to end the year. "Catfish."