Goodbye 2013!

GOODBYE 2013!
A look back at a great year of film

Once again, another year has dissolved into the ether of time and we say goodbye to 2013, for my money the best year in film for nearly a decade. Yes, there have been a fair few clunkers and even a couple of what I like to call cinematic car crashes, but for the most part, last year featured some of the best films I have seen in a very long time and I just hope that 2014 will be just as exciting and innovative.

Lets start with the bad and get that out of the way because there was certainly a lot of it about in 2013. Starting the year off we had 'Movie 43', an astronomically unfunny comedy that would make a laughing stock out of some of the biggest names in Hollywood including Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Gerard Butler, Kate Bosworth, Chloe Grace Moretz and Emma Stone. Featuring jokes about incest, rape, bestiality and race, 'Movie 43' would not only turn out to be the worst comedy I have ever seen, but without a doubt, the worst movie that I have ever seen period. Speaking of Gerard Butler, January also gave us 'Playing For Keeps', an utterly charmless waste of celluloid that would turn women into ogling, horny sex freaks and men into bigamists and lackadaisical twits. Added to this 'V/H/S', 'Hors Satan', and 'Hollow', January seemed to portend yet another bad year for cinema.

However, my pessimism would soon die down thanks to an incredible run of stunning movies beginning with 'The Impossible', possibly the most emotional movie of 2013 and was for a very long time, my favourite also. With incredible performances from Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts and careful and respectful direction from J.A Bayona, 'The Impossible' was a heart racing, heart rendering and deeply moving portrayal of one of the worst natural disasters in recent human history. The movie would set a benchmark for the year and thankfully I wasn't disappointed. In January alone we had 'Zero Dark Thirty', 'American Mary', 'Les Miserables', 'What Richard Did', 'Everyday' and 'The Sessions', all of these have been in top 10 films of the year at some point and a large majority of them have stayed the course and cemented their place in the final countdown twelve months later. Rather than appearing to be a bad start to 2013, January would foreshadow everything that was to follow and my God, what a foreshadowing it was. 

From drama to comedy, horror to action, 2013 would continue to surpass my expectations and provide some cracking moments of cinema gold. From Alan strutting down the corridors of North Norfolk Digital in 'Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa' to Vera Farmiga finding a bloodied noose in 'The Conjuring', from Sandra Bullock finding herself stranded in the dark void of space in 'Gravity' to a deadly infection raging through the a small Maryland town in 'The Bay', the last 12 months have given us some of most heart racing, awe inspiring and most memorable moments in recent cinema history and I have loved every minute of it. 

However as is the case, where there is good there has to be bad, but no matter how bad a film was in 2013, I took comfort in the fact that they were not as bone crushingly terrible as 'Movie 43', but there was some quite awful pictures notwithstanding. Comedy certainly seems to have been the genre that let 2013 down with a great deal of so called funny movies failing to provide any sort of joke or jape whatsoever. Instead they would resort to puerile innuendos and not so subtle stereotyping. 'The Hangover Part III', 'Grown Ups 2', 'Bad Grandpa', 'Baggage Claim', 'I Give It A Year', 'Identity Thief', 'This Is The End', 'We're The Millers' and 'The Guilt Trip' would all fall into this category and each one would slowly destroy a part of my soul like a horcrux.

A bad movie is one thing, but it when a movie really disappoints that it becomes a truly awful one. I had such high hopes for Zack Snyder's 'Man Of Steel', but alas an overuse of special effects and some major ethical issues turned the film into one of the absolute worst for me. Not because the acting is bad or the script is particularly poor but because I really, really was looking forward to seeing it and my expectations were so much higher than usual. The same goes for 'Kick Ass 2', a terrible sequel to a brilliant original. In fact sequels warranted some of the harshest reviews I gave this year and films such as 'Monsters University', 'Insidious : Chapter 2', 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2', 'A Good Day To Die Hard' and 'The Smurfs 2' all failed to live up to their interesting and much superior predecessors.

As is the case with most years, it is in the documentary and the world cinema genres where cinema really shone in 2013. Telling us incredible stories and showing us things we had never imagined, documentaries gave 2013 a very cerebral and sometimes heartbreaking edge. Films such as the unforgettable 'Mea Maxima Culpa : Silence In The House Of God' would shake me to my core and 'How To Survive A Plague' gave me an experience I will never ever forget. Other great documentaries include the traumatising 'Blackfish', the psychedelic 'Leviathan' and the nostalgic 'The Spirit Of '45'. 

However amongst the brilliance of film and the ingenuity of storytelling on display, 2013 would also bring the deaths of some of the most important and influential figures in film. For me the most heartbreaking was the tragic death of the great film critic Roger Ebert; a man who was the biggest influence on me in my formative years and would convince me that a career in film criticism is what I should persue. Despite the fact that he had not said a word in nearly 6 years due to cancer, I still read his reviews every week and was an avid twitter follower of his. I am utterly devastated that he is gone but watching past episodes of Siskel & Ebert, I know in my heart that he lived his life exactly the way he wanted to and his dedication to his job and more importantly, his love of film showed me just why doing this is one of the most rewarding things I could ever do my time.

 

Other high profile deaths have sadly included such wonderful directors as David R. Ellis ('Final Destination 2'), Michael Winner ('The Sentinel') and Jess Franco ('Bloody Moon'), astonishing actors such as the magisterial Peter O' Toole ('Lawrence Of Arabia'), Richard Griffiths ('Withnail & I'), James Gandolfini ('In The Loop'), Mel Smith ('Not The Nine O' Clock News'), Dennis Farina ('Midnight Run') and Ed Lauter ('Mulholland Drive') and those who worked behind the scenes to make motion picture magic such as Ray Harryhausen ('Clash Of The Titans'), Stuart Freeborn ('Superman') and Gilbert Taylor ('Dr. Strangelove'). You will all be missed by me personally and  by the millions of fans around the world.

Next week, I will be revealing what my favourite and least favourite movies of 2013. Normally, these lists are quite easy to do, but not this year. There has been so much brilliant pieces of art unveiled to us this year that I feel bad for leaving out so many worthy movies. However, I have done what I need to do and I will be revealing both countdowns this time next week. In the mean time, thank you to all who have read my reviews, have a fantastic 2014 and I hope that you will continue reading my posts in the future.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!