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Best of 2013: #1. Stranger by the Lake
#1. Stranger by the Lake (L'inconnu du lac), d. Alain Guiraudie, FranceI think it’s usually a good idea to announce your biases upfront. One of my leanings happens to be toward queer cinema. Despite...
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Best of 2013: #2. Blue Is the Warmest Color
#2. Blue Is the Warmest Color (La vie d'Adèle - chapitres 1 et 2). d. Abdellatif Kechiche. France/Belgium/Spain.Chances are you’ve heard some of the controversy surrounding Blue Is the Warmest Color,...
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Best of 2013: #3. Top of the Lake
#3. Top of the Lake. d. Jane Campion, Garth Davis. UK/New Zealand/Australia.With equal parts Prime Suspect and Twin Peaks, Jane Campion and Garth Davis’ Top of the Lake revitalizes the television...
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Best of 2013: #4. Bastards
#4. Bastards (Les salauds). d. Claire Denis. France/Germany.While there are a number of trends and themes running through this list, the thing that truly unifies at least the top 7 was their ability to...
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Best of 2013: #5. Spring Breakers
#5. Spring Breakers. d. Harmony Korine. USA.Unmoved and unamused by director Harmony Korine’s previous efforts, I found myself taken by massive surprise with Spring Breakers. More than any other film...
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Best of 2013: #6. Turning
#6. Turning. d. Charles Atlas. Denmark/USA.Charles Atlas’ Turning is a three-in-one triumph: a concert film, consisting of footage from a 2006 European tour that Charles Atlas and Antony Hegarty...
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Best of 2013: #7. Blue Jasmine
#7. Blue Jasmine. Woody Allen. USA.After nearly giving up on Woody Allen after suffering through the infuriatingly awful Midnight in Paris, Blue Jasmine takes the director away from bubbly-ol’ Europe...
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Best of 2013: #8. The Conjuring
#8. The Conjuring. d. James Wan. USA.Whether planned or not, my best of the year lists always end up encompassing at least one major Hollywood effort, and this year, that distinction goes to this...
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Best of 2013: #9: Blackfish
#9. Blackfish. d. Gabriela Cowperthwaite. USA.Who would have thought that such an upsetting topic (the exploitation of killer whales) would make for such an entertaining documentary? Blackfish does an...
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Best of 2013: #10. In the House
#10. In the House (Dans la maison). François Ozon. France.Following the international success of his first English-language feature, Swimming Pool, François Ozon’s output has been a curious mix of...
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Without further ado, the Best Films of 2013
After a few delays, I’ve finally published my Top 10 for 2013. There are a number of themes running through the list: queers, lakes, explicit sex, hauntings, teachers, French cinema, among others. I...
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Best of 2013: 14 Singles
I don’t always have a lot to say regarding the music of a given year, so typically when putting together something for a Best of the Year post, I just throw a number of songs together that meant...
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J-C Superstar: A Review of Antony Hickling's Little Gay Boy Triptych
Little Gay Boy2013, FranceAntony HicklingFilms like Antony Hickling's Little Gay Boy aren't the sort you come across a lot these days. Technically an assembly of Hickling's short film trilogy...
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The Two Worst Films of 2014
My therapist and I agreed that not dwelling on the negative (as I have been known to do) might be a fun new thing for me to try, so I'm not going to bother making a list of every crappy movie I sat...
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Best of 2014: #2. Force majeure
#2. Force majeure (Turist). Ruben Östlund. Sweden/France/Norway.Set entirely on an isolated tourist ski resort somewhere in the French Alps, Force majeure examines the psychological ramifications that...
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Best of 2014: #3. Ida
#3. Ida. Paweł Pawlikowski. Poland/Denmark/France/UK.As many of you know, I have a Tumblr extension of this blog which features hundreds of movie screencaps I've made over the years. Not to go too deep...
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Best of 2014: #4. Xenia
#4. Xenia. Panos H. Koutras. Greece/France/Belgium.There are a lot of films out there that are hard to sell others on. The most common type of film that I have difficulty conveying my enthusiasm for is...
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Best of 2014: #5. Misunderstood
#5. Misunderstood (Incompresa). Asia Argento. Italy/France.In her third outing as director, Asia Argento physically takes herself out of frame (after assuming the lead roles in both Scarlet Diva and...
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Best of 2014: #6. Abuse of Weakness
#6. Abuse of Weakness (Abus de faiblesse). Catherine Breillat. France/Germany/Belgium.Perhaps still best known for their brilliant, unsettling portrayals of dark sexuality, writer/director Catherine...
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Best of 2014: #7. Maps to the Stars
#7. Maps to the Stars. David Cronenberg. Canada/Germany/USA/France.It only takes a few minutes into David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars to realize why John Waters named this his favorite film of 2014....
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