The easy question to ask is: “why do a list at all when you already have an awards slate on your site?” It’s a good question and I finally may have formulated the best response to it yet. Basically, it’s a less comparative discussion on each film that you feel marked the year for you. In writing a list you discuss each film and a only every few numbers or so get bogged down in discussing placement.

Let us conclude with 10 to 1…

10. It’s All So Quiet

As you’ve noted both by my quoting and hyperlinking a vast majority of the films in the top 30 have been written about. However, this title was one one that garnered not one but two write-ups immediately. It did so, in part, because I did want to analyze it some, but split because that part was spoilery and I thought it best for those who haven’t seen it to read a spoiler-free review. Here’s that one:

It’s All So Quiet is a film that sets you up from its pace virtually from the start. The opening titles roll for two-and-a-half minutes on a shot of wheat, with farmland and sunlight behind it. From this you should be prepared for a fairly deliberately paced film. If you’re not you’ll surely get the hint from the next few scenes where the protagonist Helmer (Jeroen Willems) first moves his bedridden father and then sets him up upstairs with a new bed in the living room.

However, as deliberate as the pace is the subtext of the film is fairly clear throughout and thanks to the actors most of their thought processes communicate their sentiments where words do not.

Helmer’s deciding to move his father upstairs is just the first upheaval in this film. The next that will occur is that a new, young farmhand Henk (Martijn Lakemeier) comes to work and live there and throws things into further disarray.

The cinematography in this film is magnificent. The cast proves time and again that so little of film acting is about the spoken word but rather playing the frame and physicality; dialogue-free Willems and Lakemeier share one of the most poignant and moving scenes I’ve watched this year.

As the story progresses, despite its lack of blunt commentary on the fact you soon will see what the film is about and the tale of repressed desire and unrequited love woven so skillfully by Nanouk Leopold here is one of the best of its rare breed that I’ve seen.

9. Class Enemy

I’d love it if there was an Academy Award submitted film every year that I can champion vehemently until I’m blue in the face, however, I know how fortunate I’ve been to have one two years running. Here are two excerpts from my review:

Class Enemy, which is Slovenia’s official selection for Best Foreign Language film, tells a tale of a high school class that singles out its new German teacher (Played by Igor Samobor) as the party responsible for their classmate’s suicide (Sabina played by Dasa Cupevski). The film picks up right as their favorite teacher, whom Robert (Samobor) is replacing, is going out on maternity leave and follows the back-and-forth struggle between the three main factions (teacher, students and administration) throughout the school year consistently adding layers to the characters, and conflicts.

Class Enemy, when all is said and done, is basically everything you want out of a dramatic piece. It tackles difficult dramatic questions and does not shy away from exploration without concrete answers, but instead knows that better films usually take the journey well; exploring and changing their characters along the way, and more importantly, it understands that the best dramas aren’t about victors or where they audience sides, but how much we enjoy watching them engage in battle.

8. Frozen

From the moment Frozen begins where you could construe it as visual allusions either to Dumbo or Snow White I knew it was going to be something special. And, as I cited at the BAM Awards:

“Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” induces chills and nearly brought me to tears something less than five minutes into the film, which is a nearly impossible task, and part of what makes it so memorable.

The animation is incredibly dynamic and the tale have some truly great turns. Most of the songs do work at progressing the story and are incredibly catchy, but perhaps what works best is the New Age approach to the story where it’s really more about sisters than finding a savior-husband. Disney really hit on something here, especially when you add to that the Olaf factor. It’s great, great stuff.

7. The Giants

My review really says it all here, it’s one of my better ones this past year. This film I believe still streams on Netflix and is available on DVD.

If there’s a trope, or worse yet a cliché, you can name in a coming-of-age film it’s very likely that The Giants sets you up to expect it and then subverts it. That is not to say you should approach this film with a checklist, but there are many times wherein either salvation or damnation threatens these characters, but what you see instead is maturation and survival. Brothers, Zak and Seth, along with their friend Danny are isolated both by circumstance and by choice. The adult world is an invasive burden on their existence but one they are ultimately forced to cope with by themselves.

The film has opportunities to embrace conventions either of dystopian coming-of-age stories, like Kids, or more utopian ones where despite all the travails the characters go through there’s a classical Hollywood ending. This film takes the road less traveled as often as possible when faced with a plot point that can be seen as fairly common and that choices pays off over and over again.

With parents that are perpetually absent without true explanation, it’s a tale essentially of individuation rather than any of the other pitfalls of growing up. There’s definitely no love interest in the tale, and, without station too much, if there is even any true commentary on sexuality is left ambiguous.

The restraint and certainty that the film has in the handling of its plot, edit and musical selections is matched by the young cast. This especially applies to Zacherie Chasseriaud shows the poise and control of a veteran from first scene when he deals with his mother’s absence and nearly cries, but doesn’t, through to the end.

Bouli Lanners does not seem to be going for either extreme of the emotional spectrum with this tale, but rather and accurate portrayal of kids in circumstances out of the ordinary forced to grow up. They are neither idealized through nostalgia or auteristic proclivity nor are they “gritty” just for the sake of it. Elements that could be used for shock value in less-skilled hands here are what they are, meaning part of their existence and are there without commentary. The Giants is a highly effective, well-crafted tale deserving of a larger audience.

6. Time of My Life

This was definitely the tear-jerker of the year for me and seemingly a staple pre-requisite of being on this list. It was well-represented and discussed at the BAM Awards. My initial reaction can be found below:

This is the kind of film that faces and overcomes the danger of falling into an issue-film trap of being overly-involved in stump-speeching, soap-boxing and campaigning. When your film purports to highlight seminal case in the instituting of euthanasia laws in a country both that, and an eventual death, become inevitable.

However, what Time of My Life does so well is tell the personal narrative first and foremost and then fold in the issue film as the tale progresses. Yes, there are many issue films that will have circumstances dictate their cause, but what you also get here is a film whose emotional impact is withheld until later.

That is not to say this film doesn’t pack an emotional wallop, it most certainly does, and quite a big one. What it does do is postpone the big hit. The story travels through time and each of the early, fairly short sequences have their own tenor and know when they should end. What it builds is a more rounded, bittersweet emotion not overly-concerned in melancholy, not consciously pulling at heartstrings until the very end. When it does attempt to play them it does so very successfully.

Time of My Life features brilliant performances throughout, and some really smart, great writing; especially as it draws towards its conclusion and a crushingly beautiful emotional climax. If you know what you’re signing up for, it’s a tremendously moving and rewarding experience.

5. Stoker

This film came as a great surprise please check it out:

This is one of those films that grabs you from the first frame and scarcely ceases long enough to let go. It’s the kind of film that peels back layers of mystery and intrigue, slowly at first, but, then it escalates them until you find yourself in a delirious whirl of rapt tension and drama. All the while, as it slowly sets the foundation of the most basic facts, it’s setting up reveals of more precisely sinister revelations of motivation and past incidents.

The film is technically constructed to match this narrative drive employing montages, cross-cutting sequences, frames and L-cuts (cuts where audio lingers after a scene, or starts before an accompanying visual) to link what are at first seemingly disconnected events.

Stoker builds mystery regarding enough elements of its story, while keeping things simple, such that it easily achieves misdirection from one unanswered riddle to another. Thus, answers you had half-formed are forgotten briefly as you puzzle something else and when you’re confronted with confirmation of a fact it lands with the desired impact, whether you intuited the information or not.

Practically everything regarding Stoker is precise and stylized to the utmost for impact, yet scarcely ever feels forced when you consider all the pieces in the whole. It’s a mesmerizing portrait that is sure to rank among the best of the year.

4. Disconnect

Disconnect got lost in the shuffle I believe, even in terms of indie releases, and in terms of this site. I didn’t write about it after I had seen it because it was a theatrical release I saw and I had gotten sidetracked. I barely had a chance to mention it during the BAMs though it did have some nominations and was close to a few more.

Disconnect rather clearly examines the influence of technology, and being connected on our daily lives. It tells three stories all of which dovetail into one another, but because the characters have issues connecting, so do the tales completely by design. This is very tense dramatic tale with a great climax, in a rarity it also employs effective use of slow motion. The cast which was honored with a nomination is great, and since they divide so much time among themselves that’s a good thing. This film tells a tragic tale, which while it does build-in suspense mechanisms towards the end avoids simple resolutions to it fundamental conflicts, and is well worth seeing.

3. Broken

I’ve been banging the drum for this film all year. See it. It’s already on DVD. Do yourself a favor.

It’s an intricately told and layered tale that with many narrative threads, characters crossing paths, that could get trite, but is instead invigorating and riveting.

There are frames within the film and excellent persistent use of cross-cutting that acutely accesses the proper emotional tenor that is sought, which finds the commonality in these characters so frequently at odds. In certain ways, it’s like an externalized version of We Need to Talk About Kevin, in terms of the way it’s cut together and how the actors have to truly use the edit to great affect.

It’s what I like to term a “collision course narrative,” which is a tale wherein there’s a suspenseful foreboding to the meeting of certain events that you feel, and it’s perhaps the best example of such I’ve seen. It’s also a film that starts strong and never really lets go.

Membership in the Film Club means I’m watching it a few months ahead of most people, therefore you have ample time to heed my advice: watch Broken, it is an absolutely exquisite piece of cinema.

2. Blue Jasmine

I liked Midnight in Paris and all, but I loved Blue Jasmine. It made Woody Allen the easy choice for Best Original Screenplay and a Lifetime Achievement Award.

For a filmmaker such as Woody Allen who on many occasions has been accused of using his films as therapy and being un-cinematic this film is a rebuttal. For myself, as a long-time devotee, it’s wondrous not only to see him work a story that again employs a wonderful editorial language that is quickly-learned and never off; but also such a non-judgmental character study. It’s a film of revelation rather than reparation. It has its humor, too, but is perhaps the most searing, honest drama he’s committed to the screen since Husbands and Wives. The casting, as well as the cast, is flawless; but it’s really Cate Blanchett who makes this film work. She’s as powerful, if not more so, in her character’s detached, pained moments as she is in the “big” ones, which is what makes her turn so immaculate. It’s a performance that towers not only due to the sparsity of great roles afforded women in the American cinema lately, but because of how titanic an effort it is on its own.

Engaging and enthralling from the first frame this film of a life shattered, whether by design or not, may be his most Bergmanesque, and is truly one of the year’s best.

1. Ender’s Game

In my writings on this film so far I have talked about the book a bit. I really only tried to mention in it in terms of giving my frame of reference, and discussing interpretations of character and vision. Make no mistake about it, I chose Ender’s Game as my favorite movie of the year because it’s my favorite movie of the year and not just because it’s based on a book I enjoyed. It was the cinematic elements put in place to tell a story I knew well that made it work. Below are some movie-only comments from it’s many BAM wins:

On the film as Best Picture:

So overwhelmed was I that even if I didn’t want to see it again, it was almost mandatory due to the fact that I had to see if it stood up. A second viewing brought very little degradation to my opinion of it- minimal in fact. Sure, the IMAX experience is better, but that was always a given. I ended up seeing it a third time, and was actually a bit disappointed it was out of local theaters before having a chance to see it yet again; so that really sealed it.

The bottom line is: the temptation always exists to place a spectacle atop a Best Of List. However, this is the rare spectacle with brains, a conscience where not only stratagems but ethics are debated (and well-debated on both sides of the arguments in question), it’s unafraid to get in a protagonist’s head-space in such a way that’s less than the high concept hook. The acting is great all around. The film pulls you into a world quickly and builds upon it as things progress; further and further entrenching you. It’s always a gamble, especially now, to bankroll something that aims at something a bit more than spaceships, action sequences and explosions; it’s a bit risky but the gamble paid of here big time.

On Gavin Hood, Best Director:

and this rendition of Ender’s Game immediately ends those worries by throwing me directly into the film. It’s funny that when I was trying to think of an angle for this write-up I naturally thought that this foreword may prove useful but I had no idea how accurately his connection would be conveyed and how well I believe it played out onscreen.

On Asa Butterfield, Best Performance by a Young Actor in a Leading Role:

I didn’t believe there was someone who could play Ender. I don’t think there was an actor in the landscape at the time that could’ve captured the aggressive nature (which was a bit of a revelation coming from Butterfield) and the empathy required to play him and do so equally well. In short, it was kind of like the role of David in A.I. had there not been a Haley Joel Osment Spielberg likely would’ve waited to make it, and if there had not been an Asa Butterfield Ender’s Game was better off waiting also.

On the Art Direction:

The world that took the most building, and was also the most well-built, is that of Ender’s Game. There’s the fairly mundane, though a bit futuristic start followed by the space station and later and alien planet and a few more intermediary locales in each which take a bit of a different approach each. There’s not just one world but a few worlds in need of creating in this film, and all come to life equally well.

On the Score:

The deciding factor was that during my first viewing of Ender’s Game I thought to myself three or four times “Wow, this score is amazing” and even before the awards announcement I had to download it from iTunes. All of these scores, however, do have a different quality to them and are still searchable on Spotify if you’re so inclined.

The easy question to ask is: “why do a list at all when you already have an awards slate on your site?” It’s a good question and I finally may have formulated the best response to it yet. Basically, it’s a less comparative discussion on each film that you feel marked the year for you. In writing a list you discuss each film and a only every few numbers or so get bogged down in discussing placement.

Let us continue with 15 to 11…

15. Museum Hours

One of my most vivid childhood memories was seeing a man in the American Museum of Natural History sketching from a diorama, I believe of an Native American village. It was a sight that so marked with fascination that I even included it in my first “About the Author” that I wrote for a book made in a Writer’s Workshop class. I say this by way of introduction to the notion that museums and how people behave within them have always fascinated me.

This is a tale that is very much about both of those things.

This is a film that is most effective in how it examines its two characters in passing glances, much like museum exhibits themselves. That may sound as if it’s sophistry but I think if you were to apply that thesis to the whole of the way the film is constructed, the tales that are being told, you’ll see it holds.

The film is ostensibly about a woman (Mary Margaret O’Hara) who heads to Vienna at her cousin’s side while she is sick. With much time to herself to wander a strange city she spends much time at the art museum and befriends one of the guards there (Bobby Sommer). After he helps her, they become friendly. In the film you see: snatches of their conversations where they talk about their lives, shots of paintings and other exhibits and there’s one extended scene of a tour guide (Ela Piplits) espousing her theories on the works of Bruegel. Her dialogue is key to reading the film, in my estimation.

This is not to say that the film is a difficult one to follow. It’s quite a straightforward one. However, it’s connecting these disparate threads through that notion that give it a greater significance and unity. Leaving those pieces apart it can seem a fine, albeit disjointed effort. When one considers that we look at art and try to interpret the artists, that we speak to others and try to interpret them and that we tell our tales and try to interpret ourselves; but can only so in small strokes, in passing glances, within the short amount of time that “museum hours” encompass, then the whole of this work comes together much more strongly. It’s not a film about Bobby, who is Austrian, or Anne, who is Canadian, or Pieter Bruegel who was a Dutch master, but rather about all of us and our journey to understand and be understood, to empathize and to have empathy shown toward us.

14. Three Worlds

Great dramas usually a born of great situations and very often great situations are created much the same way the road to hell is paved.

What you get in Three Worlds is a very compelling situation (a witness to a hit-and-run unwittingly becomes a liaison between the victim’s wife and the culprit) handled in a fairly unconventional way. What this film could turn into is one of histrionics that quickly spirals into things hard to believe or identify with. What instead it chooses to do is be a morality play. As it examines how the incident affects three characters, the push-and-pull, the ebb and flow of each turn of events puts the characters in places they did not expect to be. It’s not as if each decision in the film does not lead to a domino effect, it’s the path that the dominoes take that makes it most enjoyable to watch.

No character in this film is simplistic or one-dimensional, neither entirely altruistic or calculated. This allows for, and requires, much greatness from each of the principal actors and they do bring that. Raphaël Personnaz make me think of what a young Jean-Pierre Leaud would have brought to this film in a different time. Clotilde Hesme’s performance as a woman whose desire to help people, and her inclination to see the good in them, gets the best of her is pitch perfect. Arta Dobroshi, who has perhaps the most demanding tasks assigned her plays conflicting emotions and philosophies such that you always understand her and sympathize with her position.

Three Worlds reveals its characters throughout while still telling a very compelling tale and is worth looking out for.

13. The Broken Circle Breakdown

There are a few instances of films growing a bit in hindsight one this list. This film didn’t have a great leap to make to land here but it did. Just recently I found myself citing an incident from it. This means it may be one two films this year to definitely have an element of it becoming part of my personal vernacular, that and I’ve already listened to the soundtrack a few times.

There has been the occasional resurgence of bluegrass music into popular culture via cinema over the past decade or so. Many of those instances, while they are films where I’ve heard the music, they are movies I did not happen to see.

Perhaps what’s most interesting here is that The Broken Circle Breakdown is a film that’s not even ostensibly about the music. The music is there, it plays a role, it functions as a part of the characters, it underscores the emotions of the story (usually counter-intuitively) but it’s only a musical quantitatively. The film is a fractured chronology of a couple’s relationship. It begins in a present where their six-year-old is battling cancer. The film then backtracks, and goes back and forth to tell the story of these two and where they head as new challenges face them.

The toe-tapping heart of the film is its pair portrayed by Veerle Baetens and Johan Heldenbergh. Through their earnest performances, and the music, you’re left on a tightrope walking through the end of this sad tail without spinning completely into despair yet completely absorbed within it.

12. The Hunt

This was a film that was a long time coming in terms of my being able to view it. I knew of it last year and didn’t really get a chance to see it near year’s end. Following A Royal Affair Mad Mikkelsen’s name being involved in a project started to mean a great deal more to me. However, I was also drawn to this film by its conflict.

Mad Mikkelsen plays a kindergarten teach who has been falsely accused via misunderstanding (when you watch you’ll quickly see how) of molesting a student. That’s established early on. There’s not cat-and-mouse mystery about that much because that’s not the point. The film’s really about the snowball effect of a misunderstood notion being repeated, how assumptions are made, hysteria spreads and a witch-hunt begins, and how it affects all those involved.

Mikkelsen turns in a marvelous performance (not that he’s alone in that regard) and the film ends on the right note, as opposed to one that might feel untrue. It’s chillingly, unnervingly realistic portrait of how such a thing can escalate, even without any basis in fact, and takes a naturalistic progression.

11. Iron Man 3

Yes, this is the most divisive Iron Man of the series, and sure, one can say it’s easy to put one of the top grossing films of all-time on your list, but if you’re lobbing that complaint you’re really not reading this list very carefully.

There are a number of things this Iron Man does amazingly well not the least of which is that it’s a showcase of Marvel bringing in writers and directors, in this case writer/director Shane Black, and allowing them their spin on the characters and story. Sure, there is a universe-building roadmap but there is room for voices here just as there are in the books.

If you went in vaguely familiar with the name Shane Black and then were to find out he was one of the writers of Monster Squad certainly you’d think to yourself “Duh,” much as I did. The humor, the ability to write a young supporting character like Harley so well and cast him properly (Ty Simpkins), the ability to take icons and see them in a new light are all things he demonstrated an ability to do back then.

It was a hard decision to keep this film out of the Adapted Screenplay nominees for all those reasons, regardless from the opening credits this one of the most fun viewing experiences I had all year, and also one of the funniest- and one I revisited frequently. It’s another risk-taking sequel that was not bereft of commentary either.

The list concludes with the top 10 tomorrow, after the announcement of the BAM Award Winners. See the nominees here.

Encore screenings are in plain text.
Films I’ve seen for the first time are in Italics .
Films that are new releases, or otherwise BAM eligible and are in Italics and Bold

Short films will be included on this list in their own section with their own numbers assigned to them.

Features

1. 47 Ronin (2013)
2. Iron Man 3
3. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
4. Sister