We watched, we picked out our favourites, we hoped, but Awards Season has come and gone once again and left us reeling in excited discussion and three thousand different reaction gifs of Leonardo Di Caprio’s face not winning an Oscar (still rooting for you, buddy). Whether you watch for the fashion, the red carpet mishaps, the tongue in cheek sketches, or don’t watch at all because award shows promote unhealthy and idolatrous bull crap, there’s no denying that award season does have some effect on the casual forms of entertainment we choose to distract ourselves with, even if it’s just a blip at the beginning of the calendar year. Often so caught up in the spectacle of the shows themselves, we forget that the primary reason award shows are held is to identify and reward films that proved to be deserving of merit and recognition throughout the year. In my humble opinion, here are five 2013 films I felt were more than a little unjustly overlooked this season.
5. Pacific Rim
I can already hear the resounding chorus of groans emerging from an imaginary audience. Yes, the giant robot/monster movie, not exactly a great start to make my case for "overlooked’ but bear with me for a moment. While Guillermo Del Toro’s blockbuster certainly didn’t underperform financially (It made $37 million it’s opening weekend and grossed well over $1 billion, in case you were wondering), its largely been met with an air of snobbish disdain because of course the masses flocked to see the monsters and giant robots smashing into each other! This unwarranted mentality seems to be perpetrating that your sense of judgment must be clouded for finding merit and enjoyment out of a movie simply because itwas fun. For all intents and purposes, Pacific Rim should be about a standard white American underdog hero who saves the day purely by the unspeakable reaches of his masculinity. It should be, but it isn’t. Instead one of the primary working concepts of the film is that things aren’t going to work out unless people work together, and they do: putting aside the fact that the Jaegers (the titanic sized robots) require two pilots in order to function, it brings together a diverse multinational cast of individuals whose task it is to sort out the world from problems they did not create (a theme that resonated audibly well with pissed off millennials). We are also treated to detailed, despite brief, characters with complex emotions, motives and directions, and of course a dose of Del Toro’s widely imaginative penchant for world building, regardless of its limited space. On the good side of "not your average kaiju movie’, Pacific Rim was well worth the honorable mention.
4. Don Jon.
Perhaps my most controversial choice, concerning content, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut brings out into the light the subject of pornography without a hint of immodesty. Choosing to satirize (and actively criticize) the bombardment of overly sexualized imagery we are exposed to on a regular basis, the film introduces us to Jon Martello Jr., a man who obsessively objectifies every facet of his life to the point where everything is a routine. The film uses repetition to communicate how droll and robotic Jon’s life seems when examined objectively, a fact that seems apparent to Jon himself, as he rattles a list of things he believes are important to him like he’s reading off of a drilling manual, but is only able to garner some sort of gratification from his life through watching porn. Highlighting the total disillusionment that men have with women, and reciprocally that women have with men, Don Jon is not afraid to point out that a fantastical objectification of your desires does not match up with real life, and ultimately doing your best to achieve the warped version of the ideal you’ve built up for yourself doesn’t lead to a constant or genuine happiness. Moving on to becoming slightly more conventional in its theme towards the end, Jon’s story reaffirms the value of building healthy friendships and relationships and the importance of losing yourself in another person rather than material objects. Despite being a somewhat tired subject to unearth, Don Jon was a pleasant reminder that the journey of reaffirming what’s really important to you is still a valid lesson.
3. The Place
Beyond the Pines. A quiet and bleak crime drama that escaped the notice of most of the mainstream media last year, director Derek Cianfrance’s fourth film and second collaboration with Ryan Gosling. Perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, it remains an intelligent and thought provoking picture about crime and social status. With vastly different characters all intersecting with each other at some point, in a timeline spanning 15 years, the decision to not adopt a single person narrative may feel confusing and fractured at points, but is instrumental to bringing the thematic backgrounds Cianfrance obviously had in mind while making the film. Although it may be seen as a story about fathers, sons and legacy if you squint, The Place Beyond the Pines forces us to critically examine the divide between poverty and luxury and the subsequent rise of crime out of both scenarios. It categorically refuses to glamorize any of its characters in any way, showing us the side of crime that stems from poverty and desperation and how the struggle of rising above the limitations of your station is not always possible, especially when your adversary is a social system that could not care less about you. Coupled with Sean Bobbit’s stunning cinematographybringing Schenectady, New York, to life for us, it remains poignantly relevant to the world we live in today.
2. Rush.
Before the complete notion of writing this article had fully formed in my brain, I knew that Rush would be on the list and it took an enormous amount of self-control on my extreme bias to not just automatically place it in the number one spot. Ron Howard’s biopic provides you exactly what it promises in the title, an invigorating rush of sight, sound and narrative, and a highly enjoyable one at that. It details the infamous rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda and their cut throat endeavors to out-best each other in the 1976 Grand Prix, however instead of predictably typecasting either into the traditional roles of hero and villain, we are offered windows into the worlds of both men and their different attitudes towards racing. The film splits its attention almost equally between Lauda and Hunt and you’ll find yourself growing to like both of them as you get to know both their good and obnoxiously bad qualities. Chris Hemsworth loans his physicality and effortless charm to accurately bring James Hunt and his rock star lifestyle to life once again, however the real treasure to be found is Daniel Brühl’s performance as Niki Lauda, embodying the man’s relentless need for perfection, his difficulty with being socially likable, as well as sporting a spot on Austrian accent, truly makes him the star of the picture. With the vintage 1970’s aesthetic, the monstrous, death trap formula one cars of the age, and truly exhilarating race scenes, Rush was definitely one of my favourite films this year.
1. Stoker
Written by Wentworth Miller (of Prison Break fame) and director Park Chan-wook’s first English language feature, Stoker has all the makings of a perfectly framed modern gothic story, and its tone may be wholly described in one word — eerie. The title itself is a clever play on words, alluding to classic gothic novelist Bram Stoker, but "stoker’ in context of a noun is defined as one who fuels the fire, an underlying motif in the progression of events in the film. Although set in the present day, the far off setting, as well as antiquated aesthetic of the Stoker household emphasizes further still its gothic tones as well as allowing for the perfect opportunity to showcase protagonist India Stoker’s hypersensitivity to the world around her in a visual manner. While its Hitchcockian influences are obvious, Stoker remains fresh in the manner in which it presents itself to us partly because of the highly visual narrative one comes to expect of Chan-wook’s films, and undeniably through the electric performances of the main cast. Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman are the triad that bring the Stoker family to life and demand our attention in the repressed and withdrawn India, mysterious and charming Uncle Charlie, and the distant and glacial Evelyn. Deception, manipulation, sexual repression and family ties are all thematically at the heart of this complex but immensely gratifying story. There is a lingering uneasiness, like something supernatural is constantly about to happen, but doesn’t, which brings forward most brilliantly the concept that the most sinister thing you’re likely to encounter isn’t a supernatural entity at all, but human beings themselves.