It’s all over for another year, and I don’t mean the Academy
Awards. (Well, that too, but then we all knew that was over, yes?) The final tallies for the 2013 Muriel Awards have been published by Muriel proprietors Paul Clark and Steve Carlson, and as
usual the winners span a broad spectrum of the year’s cinema and a healthy
selection of writing about it as well.
With that in mind, I’m now proud to present here each Muriel category
with a sampling of the writing submitted for the winning film and a link to the
full piece, along with my gratitude to Paul and Steve for once again being
allowed to take part in what has become one of the activities of the year that
I most look forward to diving into. Cheers, gents, and here’s to Muriels 2014,
which is only a few months away!
“What’s completely nuts and
kind of amazing is how Franco’s character morphs into becoming the emotional
center of the film. Spring
Breakers continually blurs
the line between celebrating its excess and serving as a cautionary tale about
falling under its spell. Director Harmony Korine invites his audience to
participate in the glorification of spraaaang break but also provides an
opportunity to harshly view its ridiculous, seamy underbelly.As Alien, Franco
embodies it all.” (Patrick Williamson)
“Perhaps it's sentimental,
but there is nonetheless an ever-presented specter haunting audiences who saw
her in the film and then on the red carpet: “What monster could do those
horrible things to someone so beautiful?” The true horror is that the monsters
that did those things didn't discriminate based on beauty or lack thereof, and
those monsters were us. But the thing that makes Lupita Nyong'o such a glory to
behold as a star is that her presence is not a rebuke.” (Danny Bowes)
“Federico Fellini’s 8½ is one of those films that is so
monumental and so influential that it’s hard to say anything new about it. Like Citizen Kane, it’s been so
canonized that perhaps new viewers can’t help but be disappointed as they go in
with the peak of expectations. For others, perhaps 8½ is like an ubiquitous classic rock
song that they wish would go away to make room for others. Personally though, I
find 8½ amazingly fresh each time I revisit
it.” (George Wu)
“Those expecting an earnest
documentary approach to the cultural climate informing Inside Llewyn Davis,
one which precisely lays out the scene and the means by which we are to
understand it from a historical perspective, will inevitably be put off by the
Coens’ typically perverse challenge to understand a landmark moment in musical
history from the point of view of a fly on the wall. We are, after all, inside
Llewyn Davis, a place where music has lost its meaning as a social tool, as a
means of reciprocal human connection, or as anything other than the nearly
abstract expression of pure talent and the desire to be recognized. (In this
regard, it ought to have resonated more fully than it apparently did in the age
of American Idol and instant, disposable fame.)” (Dennis Cozzalio)
“Films which navigate their
way across large periods of time habitually feature characters whose
development feels stilted; there is a lack of naturalism which too often
truncates all of the moments most essential to bringing a character to life.
Exarchopoulos brilliantly sidesteps this typical pratfall, managing to age from
combustible teenager to resolved young woman, capturing both the histrionics
and subtleties of this most difficult transitional period with equal aplomb.
Whether she is grappling with the moral erosion that comes with an
understanding of the power she holds over another’s individual’s happiness or
fighting off the near suffocation she feels when she sees herself losing
something she doesn’t think she can survive losing, Exarchopoulos is utterly
transfixing.” (Luke Gorham)
“Allow me then to make the
case that Die Hard,
isolated from the four increasingly wearying sequels it spawned, is the finest action
film of the 1980’s, which would then place it high in the running for the
greatest action film of all time. Crafted with a watchmaker’s precision (there
is literally not a single wasted camera move or extraneous line of dialogue)
and a modest budget that subsequent installments would blow to smithereens, the
original Die Hard remains, in spite of its reputation, a
reluctantly violent and, dare I say thoughtful, entry into the action genre. If
you truly love these kinds of films, this as high a watermark as they come.” (Andrew Dignan)
“The Wolf of
Wall Street is one of
Schoonmaker's finest collaborations with Scorsese, though her contributions can
be easily overlooked or forgotten in this exasperating film. A moment in the
first hour of the film, exemplifying the deftness of Schoonmaker's hand, occurs
right before a raucous Long Island beachfront party: a man (never seen in the
film or after) lifts his head from a pool of water, which is then interrupted
with a few brief moments of green lightning bolts from Portrait of Jennie before cutting to a rather traditional
shot of an overhead helicopter shot of said party; what this brief jolt of
energy does is remind us how, in cinema, tangential and (at first blush)
inconsequential moments build anticipation.” (Michael Lieberman)
Best Body of Work
“At some point, I have to
imagine he had a conversation with either his agent, his wife or himself (maybe
all three) that redirected a career largely wasted on rom-com throwaways (Fool’s
Gold,Failure to Launch) and misfired attempts at prestige pieces (A
Time to Kill, We Are
Marshall) in favor of a string of much stranger, more challenging roles
that started with 2012’s Magic
Mike. Something about the way he played Dallas, the King Dick owner of a
male strip club, made us look at middle-age McConaughey differently. He was
still the handsome hardbody with Southern Charm but the experience you saw
written on his face and translated in his demeanor made him seem sketchy, even
unstable. He was still a guy women would go home with but they might not go
bragging about it to their friends anymore.” (Bryan Whitefield)
“The visual touchstone for
the film, set in the early ‘60s Greenwich Village folk scene, is the cover of
"The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan," and indeed the bulk of Llewyn Davis evokes a world extending past the
borders of that famous shot of Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo huddling
against the cold on a slushy New York street. Through Delbonnel’s lens, this
world is soft and slightly dreamlike, suggesting our collective memory of a
time and a scene we never actually experienced.” (Scott Von Doviak)
“(Ellen) Lewis has cast
all of Scorsese’s features since 1988’s New
York Stories. Think of all the great faces, unforgettable mugs and
breakthrough character actors the two have given us since. Scorsese’s
predilections tend toward tough guys, but the films expose masculine frailties
masked by machismo. In light of this, it is illustrative that the first person
to begin visualizing his films, the casting director, and the last person to
shape them, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, are both women.” (Kevin Cecil)
“The Act of
Killing becomes a
vivid examination of the act of killing, a surreal, multi-layered study of
depravity and cruelty that tests viewers’ notions of the nature of evil and the
capacity for it to flourish in “normal” people. It is through this lens that
Oppenheimer’s thesis becomes disturbing at an even deeper level. It’s one thing
to see a murderer boast and joke about killing in that they remain safely
alien; it’s a much different, much more intimate experience to see a murderer
ultimately feel guilt and shame, and when Anwar dry heaves and questions his
past deeds near the end of the film, he becomes that much more fully human,
that much closer to you and me.” (Daniel Getahun)
“There have been countless
movies about falling in love, but only a handful about being in the thick of
it, and Before Midnight may be the best. Linklater, Delpy and
Hawke perfectly capture the familiarity and ease a longtime couple develops,
the shorthand of the shared narrative of their lives, the fine line between playful
banter and provocative jabs at unresolved issues, and the way a tender moment
can turn into a full-blown argument in moments because of one misstep.” (Andrew Bemis)
“Lars Von Trier is a cruel
filmmaker. In an oeuvre filled with inhumane acts and painful sacrifices, Dogville (a film I consider, in no small words,
an unassailable masterpiece) may be his cruelest barb – a hunting knife in the
gut, slowly plunged in and then messily and violently twisted for what seems
forever.” (Steve Carlson)
“Scorsese’s film as a whole
suggests that our so-called captains of industry, the much-vaunted “job creators”
who drive our economy, are often no more than insatiable ego-driven fratboys.
Belfort and Azoff wrestling with each other in slo-mo on a kitchen floor is the
true face of the 1%." (Jeffrey McMahon)
“Borrowing shots from
Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, Scorsese puts Belfort and his crew of
morlocks on the same moral level as those who burn innocent young girls at the
stake. Then, just in case you missed the point, he has them enthusiastically do
the chant from Freaks. Not
only are the brokers in Wall Street subhuman, they are gleefully subhuman - an
argument advanced in the form of cinematic references.” (Bryce Wilson)
“That's where Sorrentino's
relatively callow interest lies: through deductive experience, Titta eventually
realizes what he wants and why he wants it. Meaning: his daydream romance with
Sofia (Olivia Magnani, Anna's granddaughter) teaches him that he wants to die a
heroic death. So the film's title is, realistically, a feint. Titta's love for
Sofia is so sublimated that she's only ever an idea to him. That chilly
attitude is a uniquely Sorrentinian tic. He refuses to sentimentalize romance.
Instead, he prefers romantics that don't care for material, earthy love.” (Simon Abrams on Les Consequences de L'amour, plus Danny Bowes, Jim Emerson and, Andrew Bemis)
“Exarchopoulos has admitted
she had to 'lose herself' in the role - if losing oneself creates an
indelible, artistic performance such as this, lose away, ladies. Lose
away." (Matthew Lotti)
“(I)nstead of grand
movements, (Paul) Eenhorn creates a cheery disposition using his face, the kind of face
that looks like he’s been working in movies for four decades without you ever
noticing him. To bolster this tension, Eenhoorn uses something else: the pause.
We learn less from what he is doing than how he reacts - witness the slight
changes in his eyes as his friend explains his predicament or the spaces and
careful choices of when to speak while on the phone with his daughter. His is a
quiet confidence he uses to stay level during any moment where things could go
south.” (Peter Labuza on This is Martin Bonner, plus Darren Hughes, Matthew Lotti, Dennis Cozzalio and Daniel Cook Johnson)
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“But survival is life,
after all, and via the conduit of Ejiofor's performance, Solomon exists with a
vibrancy and immediacy that strikes the audience as sharply as a whip across
the spine. Solomon's thoughts may be confined, but Ejiofor opens the man's soul
and proceeds to give us a guided and enlightening tour. His eyes become our
eyes, his consciousness, our conscience. Ejiofor's performance is so expansive,
so deep, that an audience not only experiences the visceral horror of his
external condition, but empathizes with the internal agony of his tortured
psyche. It is a wonderful and terrible thing to behold.” (Donald Carder)
“Though Wong has Gong Er
articulate some of this verbally in her final scenes with Ip Man, really, all
one needs to see is Zhang Ziyi’s hauntingly weary expression to feel that sense
of undying regret in your bones. That face, previously so full of curiosity and
purpose, now looks fatigued, hollowed out, soulless. For all the high-flying
fireworks of its major action set pieces and extravagant visual beauties on
display, the most purely, directly affecting images in all of The
Grandmaster turn out to be simple close-ups of Zhang Ziyi
contemplating the life she could have lived - the fuller life she will never
have." (Jason Alley, Kenji Fujishima, Kevin Cecil, Sam Juliano, Paul Clark, Steve Carlson)
“…what most impressed me
about In
a World… is the calculation on Bell's part to essentially
write herself a role that showed off her unique vocal talents in a way that
felt essential to the story. In a sense, this is one of the best acting reels
ever made. Like all great independent films, Bell started with an inventory of
what she had freely available to her and made a film that maximized it. And in
doing so, she not only announced herself as a writer/director to watch, but
also an actor with range far beyond…well…several Ashton Kutcher movies I've
never seen. If she never acts again, she's got a career as a director. If she
never directs again, she just got herself a lot more acting gigs." (Jason Shawhan, Andrew Dignan, Glenn Heath, Lucas McNelly, Phil Dyess-Nugent)
“Such was my delight in Blancanieves that
I saw it in the theater twice in the span of four days. I don't remember the
last time I did that. This is a film that ran a needle-fine wire into the
pleasure center of my brain. It's a film that plays like a lost Tod Browning
film, rediscovered and restored by Pedro Almodovar. I hardly know how to convey
how much I loved it.” (Christianne Benedict)
"Somewhere between a
Rabelaisian paean to Earthly pleasures and a serious inquiry into the folly of
man’s desire for knowledge, Alexander Sokurov’s Faust is
quite unlike any other cinematic event I encountered in 2013. The film, which
adapts Goethe’s masterwork, sees no difference between its high aspirations and
its low humor - an opening CGI shot sets up an epic mythology, only to end with
a blurry shot of a cadaver's flaccid penis. The film waltzes through a maze of
life’s lowly pleasures (a bath of virgins, a drunken pub, mockery at a
funeral), all in the hopes of finding what will cause man to betray his
intellect.” (Peter Labuza)
“Night Across
the Street is necessarily the work of an older artist.
Compare it with an earlier Ruiz film, like City of Pirates,
and you'll see that memories, myths, and real people are no longer competing
with each other for validity. There's no struggle here, just an impassioned
sigh about how necessarily confusing and exciting the passage of time can be at
the end of life.” (Simon Abrams)
“Side Effects,
Steven Soderbergh’s homage to the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock — billed as the
auteur’s final theatrical film — is a good, old-fashioned Hollywood
entertainment with thoughtful undercurrents. In fact, even labeling this an
homage seems like a slight, as it’s truly an original and wholly new product.
Soderbergh marries Hitchcockian techniques with the hyper-digital aesthetic of
his late period to craft a film that’s about elemental fears in modern society.
Killer birds and shower-stabbings scared us yesterday, so Soderbergh and
screenwriter Scott Z. Burns must invoke a phobia more specific to contemporary
Americans: the potentially dangerous consequences of an over-medicated populace.”
(Danny Baldwin)
“The monkey on the back of
Sheri Moon Zombie’s Heidi LaRoc (a/k/a Adelheid Elizabeth Hawthorne, rejector
of patrician custom and mores), driving her headlong into the abyss, is either
an ancient plan of infernal vengeance set forth by a cult slaughtered by an
overzealous witchfinder, or a recursive inability to get out from under a crack
habit; either way, you lose. It’s as schematic as the cruelest of Haneke/Von
Trier scenarios, but there’s so much more here - a leap beyond the sleazy
rednecks, roadhouses splattered red, and grungy shocks that lurked around every
corner in Zombie’s previous works. It has the sensibility of a Hammer classic
but with the sense of geographic terror that Kubrick excelled at and the
Russellian freakout as well. But the voice at the center is distinctively
Zombie's - and it aches.” (Jason Shawhan on The Lords of Salem)
"That Claire Denis
had made a film noir came as little surprise. Denis is a
classic auteur in the sense that, throughout her 25-year career, her visual
style and thematic preoccupations have remained remarkably consistent,
regardless of subject or genre… However, the pitch darkness of Bastards, its near-total nihilism and its treatment of
sexual violence, caught many critics and viewers off guard. Reviews were mixed
coming out of Cannes, where it premiered in Un Certain Regard, and even Denis’s
strongest advocates (I’d include myself among them) have been slower than usual
to fully embrace it. Bastards is indeed a hard film to love. It’s
wicked, painful, and soul-sick. It’s also the best new release I saw in 2013.”
(Darren Hughes)
“Miyazaki has been accused
of whitewashing Japan's aggression, when nothing could be further from the
truth. In fact, he sees a country increasingly prone to that exact behavior, to
ignoring its own history in favor of a more reactionary traditionalism. As Horikoshi
single-mindedly realizes his wish, either deliberately blind to or innocently
ignorant of its consequences, Miyazaki draws a parallel with what he sees as
his country's increasingly selective recontextualization of its history to
serve an uncertain future. The Wind Rises isn't
an ode to a perfect dream or a lionization of its dreamer, it's a gentle
warning from a man who knows what it's like to give up his dreams to the world."
(Matt Lynch)
“It's impossible to
write about Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine without referring to A
Streetcar Named Desire. Both
works are about fragile, refined women who find themselves displaced and
dependent upon the kindness of strangers following scandal and subsequent
nervous breakdowns... What distinguishes Blue Jasmine as an original work, however, is
Allen's skillful blending of flashbacks into the main narrative, providing
contrasts between Jasmine's charmed former life and the harsh reality of her
present life in which she's forced to re-invent herself.” (Kevin Dufresne)
“The
characters in Alexander Payne’s films have lived. No other working filmmaker
populates his films with so many individuals that give the impression of depth,
the look of one who really is the sum of all of their experiences, for better
or worse. And few characters in any movie seem to have lived as much as Woody
Grant (Bruce Dern)…” (James Frazier on Nebraska)
“Sheridan
and Lofland anchor the movie in a believable friendship of two teenage boys,
balanced between the kind of good-natured putdowns that can mask insecurity
about masculinity (the first exchange between the two: “What the shit?” “Suck
it.”) and a genuine, heartfelt love. They’re right at the age when the bond
between male friends starts to become less important than potential bonds with
members of the opposite sex, and while Neckbone has a coldly pragmatic view of
that prospect, speaking matter-of-factly about his uncle’s “doin’ it music” and
inquiring about the quality of the breasts on Ellis’ object of affection, Ellis
is an unabashed romantic. He views the doomed love story between the volatile
Mud and his equally unstable girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) as a grand
romance to be emulated and encouraged, no matter what the consequences.” (Josh
Bell on Mud)
“Everything
is finite in Frances Ha,
whether it's a montage-length Christmas back home or an especially low period
Frances spends in a dorm at her alma mater. Everything contributes to her
gradual maturation, which builds over the film's concise 86 minutes, yet never
results in any sudden realizations, because this isn't that kind of movie.
Instead of being vocalized, Frances' many regrets and rare moments of grace
register on Gerwig's body: in her creased brow, strained laugh, and set of
gawky mannerisms. The movie can stand to be cut so economically because its
star's body language is so dense with subtext.” (Andreas Stoehr)
"The title of
Terrence Malick’s stunning To the Wonder acts as both metaphor and call to
action. It reveals what the film is about, what Malick wants to do, and what
Malick wants his audience to do. In this last respect, the title differs from
that of his last film, The Tree of Life.
Where that title is self-contained and iconic, To
the Wonder is aspirational; it describes a journey and a
goal. This difference helps to explain why To the Wonder,
while of a piece with The Tree of Life,
is more than just the earlier film’s leftovers. It’s less cosmic, more earthbound.”
(Matt Noller)
“From the brilliantly
cross-cut opening, Drug War hits the ground running: The film
opens with a series of suspicious faces on a busy expressway. We know right
away that some of these are cops, and some of these are criminals. Figuring out
who is who is just part of the game, and the next 3 to 4 days of mayhem that
unfolds details an obsessed detective and his attempts to coerce a captured
drug lord into assisting with an ever-expanding sting operation. The amount of
flip-flopping and psychological power plays that ensue are enough to make even
the most attentive viewer crave a second screening… You can bet that somewhere
Robert Aldrich and Don Siegel are chomping cigars and high-fiving over this
one." (Adam Lemke)
“(The Great) Beauty pulls
off the amazing hat trick of being the most lively, vivacious, downright fun
movie about the inevitability of death ever made. It begins with a Japanese
tourist croaking during a snapshot-taking spree. But before you get doused with
the morbidity of it all, the movie then cuts to an insane rooftop birthday
party – the writer’s birthday party, by the way – that could wake the dead.”
(Craig Lindsey)
“An existential puzzle
that’s genuinely romantic and get-under-your-skin horrific, the film touches on
the fragility of memory and identity, the perils of the material world and the
unspoken traumas that connect us. The rhythms and organic chemistry that
develop between Carruth and Seimetz give this mindfuck a warm human heart”
(Melissa Starker on Upstream Color)
“Abbas Kiarostami is a
master filmmaker, using every single camera choice to maximum effect and
dangling the possibilities of character perspective in front of us like catnip.”
(Catherine Stebbins on Like Someone In Love)
“This is both a $100
million experimental film and cinematic narrative boiled down to its essence,
drawing the viewer into the skin of one person struggling to struggling just to
stay alive. In lesser hands, dependence on so much technology, in an
environment as fully, artificially constructed as this one, would mainly serve
to get in between the director and the people he’s putting onscreen. Cuaron
seems as totally in control and as intimately connected to his lead actress as
Max Ophuls tracking Danielle Darrieux through a ballroom.” (Phil
Dyess-Nugent on Gravity)
“In a profound way this is
a story about the power of movies. The allure of being in one causes these war
criminals to open up about what they did, to call attention to it. The act of
filming one forces them to face the horror of their actions, to admit the lies
that they'd been telling all these years, to unmask themselves as savages in
front of their own families (who they are clueless enough to have playing
victims in many scenes). While their movie clumsily tries to glorify their
activities (there's even a musical dream sequence where a victim pins a medal
on his killer, Anwar Congo, as thanks for sending him to Heaven), Oppenheimer's
documentary reveals these monsters as merely, pathetically, human.”
(Vern on The Act of Killing)
“I knew that 12
Years a Slave was the best movie I would see in 2013 almost
immediately. And this is saying a lot, since 2013 was a very, VERY good year.
What is interesting to me is that it is such a powerful film, and so
overwhelming, that only after this third viewing could I even begin to focus on
small details and individual elements. The first two times I watched it,
practically all I could feel when it was over was shell shock, both at the
depth of the experience and my extreme admiration for everything about it.”
(Jason Alley)
“There are so many ways to
look at the movie. Watch how Llewyn uses his music as a tool: a weapon, a
shield, a challenge, a payment, a bribe, a gift, a meal ticket, a proof of
authenticity, an apology... You could see it as a kind of Raging
Bull with an acoustic musician instead of a boxer, a
man so steeped in pride and self-loathing that his life has become an effort to
build a monument to his own iconoclasm and unlovability, cloaked in a form of
non-careerist ideological purity. And then there’s the cat…” (Jim
Emerson on Inside Llewyn Davis)
“The joy it has provoked
in the people who like it and the irksome hate that it manages to stir in those
who don’t mark it as a film outside of indifference - this is meant to bring
forth strong feelings either way. As the first movie written solely by Spike
Jonze, it shows how his visual flair, familiar from his previous short films,
music videos and feature-length films, also translates to the written word as a
kind of delicate ambition, as in the delicacy of an object that appears plain
but caries with it a beautiful and ineffable inner light.” (Jaime Grijalba on Her)
“So much has been
written online about The Wolf of Wall Street that trying to follow the talented
likes of Richard Brody, Glenn Kenny, and Nick Pinkerton in 150 words feels akin
to being the guy who has to give a speech after Jordan Belfort at Stratton
Oakmont. Still, consider the plea of this penny stock of a blurb: this is
Scorsese's greatest in nearly twenty-five years, from Leonardo DiCaprio's
career-best work to the masterful way the pitch-black satire both entertains us
and makes us hurt. Far too much has been made of alleged glorification of the
leading character by refusing to show the victims. Seeing as how the victims
weren't present in his life, I'm not sure why anyone would expect them to be
present in his film. Besides, does anyone expect a simply-sold message from an
artist the likes of Scorsese?” (Russell Hainline)
“Another expansion made
here allows for the setting of the film to become its own kind of character.
While the Vienna of Sunrise and the twilight-hued Paris of Sunset had
a presence in those films, Greece is an integral part of Midnight in
ways both sardonic (there are several jokes made about the country and how its
histories of tragedy render it a dubious vacation spot) and existential (this
story had to be told away from both Jesse and Céline’s home, to better catalyze
the moment when they each must decide where to return). Even more so than with
the real-time gambit of Sunrise, this
is a film that truly embraces European arthouse aesthetics, from the loving
homage to Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray to the perhaps-coincidental
similarity to recent years’ other European cross-cultural walk-and-talk essay
on relationship dynamics. And with a sharp understanding of his film’s grammar,
Linklater ensures that his landscape comments on his characters as much they do
on the landscape.” (Sam C. Mac)
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