I thought I could glide into 2014 without discussing my Indiewire year-end critics poll but if even Michael Corleone couldn’t step out, I sure was some kind of chippie to think I could. (Yep, I’m equating film criticism with Cosa Nostra.) Herein lie my top ten films of 2013—a tremendous year for cinema, and one whose finest projects directly descend from the best of 2004, the last time film was this good.  (Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees, Rois et Reine, Head-On, even The Incredibles).

10. Enough Said

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener has always made full-frontal honesty both her charm and weapon but this exploration of middle-aged dating feels wonderfully truthful even for her. Credit is partly due to Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini (in one of his final performances) who work against type to achieve a sweet, slow melancholy rarely achieved on American screens. If the ending doesn’t entirely satisfy, that’s only in contrast to how well this ensemble otherwise pulls off a premise that could have been more Three’s Company than Billy Wilder in less able hands.

9. The Immigrant

This story of a 1920s brothel in NYC’s Lower East Side costars Oscar winners Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard, boasts a rich, painterly cinematography, is directed by the terrific James Gray (Two Lovers, We Own the Night), and burrows deeper into the intersection of the American dream, sex, and financial survival than few before it. So why didn’t this film hit movie theaters? Possibly because US distributors didn’t trust audiences would buy nookie served up with this level of moral complexity. When it crosses your path, prove them wrong.

8. Short Term 12

Starring the uncanny Brie Larson as a 20something supervising a fostercare facility for at-risk teens, this is a hopeful film about seemingly hopeless lives. Its sometimes too-tidy plot is trumped by a powerful emotional truth: that even the worst traumas can be trumped by our ability to heal, possibly the most urgent biological impulse of all injured beings. Carefully drawn and edited, it introduces desperate stories that already seem permanently written, and then reminds us revisions are always possible.

7. Concussion

The snarky synopsis would be “a lesbian Belle D’Jour,” and this gorgeously shot indie about a bored housewife (Deadwood’s Robin Weigert) who works as a prostitute while her wife is off making the big bucks does directly echo Luis Buñuel’s 1967 Catherine Deneuve vehicle. But it is also a hypnotically singular (and sensuous) investigation of how traditional romantic mores may no longer suit anyone though they’ve become increasingly available to everyone.

6. Gravity

Now this is a movie! Director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También) makes use of the possibilities of 3D filmmaking like no one before—or likely after—without sacrificing any of his sweeping soulfulness in this (often literally) breathless account of a medical engineer (Sandra Bullock) struggling on her first space mission to return to Earth after her ship and shipmates are destroyed. Continue Reading →