Number 3 is the latest collaboration from two Hollywood heavyweights. Together they make one hell of an entertaining film.
3. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
After seeing this movie, I’m finding that apparently many people are being misled by this film’s trailer. It seems like they’re thinking that this movie is glorifying the actions of the characters portrayed in this movie. But let me ask… are we talking about the same movie because I didn’t see that with this movie. They do establish that the main characters are, for lack of a better term, scumbags. I mean, the main character is consumed with greed a la Gordon Gekko from ‘Wall Street’, is a drug addict, and at one point hits his wife and tries to take off with their child a la Walter White from ‘Breaking Bad’. I don’t see how this film is supposed to glorify him after scenes like that. In reality, it’s just a very entertaining story of Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall as a major player in the business of Wall Street. I mean, this is directed by Martin Scorcese, one of the greatest directors of all time, so of course this film would end up being one of the best films of the year. As my friend Matt will argue, Scorcese has never made a bad film and while I haven’t seen a lot of his films, I’m beginning to agree with that statement.
The film may be three hours long, but it is never boring. It’s also ‘riotously funny’; a term that was applied to another film’s Rotten Tomatoes consensus, ‘American Hustle’, but in my opinion is more fitting for this one. There is one scene in particular around the midway point of the film where Belfort is trying to get home after some old Quaaludes that he ingested finally start to kick in was probably the most I’ve ever laughed in any film ever. That gives you an idea of how funny this movie is. It gets really crazy at times in this movie and yet it just goes with it. It’s incredibly entertaining, well-acted all around from DiCaprio (obviously) to the main supporting cast to bit roles from guys like Matthew McConaughey who is only in the movie briefly but is a total scene-stealer. The bottom line is simple; Go see this movie right now! It is easily one of the most entertaining films of the year.
Number 2… is the film that I predict will win the Oscar… in fact, I’d say it will be a genuine shock if it doesn’t win.
2. 12 YEARS A SLAVE
Like I said, this is a list of my ‘Favorite’ films of the year, not ‘Best’. If it was ‘Best’, then this would be number 1, no doubt about it. I mean this film is one in a million. And here’s the big thing about this movie… it’s quite difficult to watch. My friend Matt came up with a good alternate title for the film, ‘White Guilt: The Movie’, and I agree 100%. I guarantee that you people will be feeling that emotion while watching this film. It’s one that doesn’t let up in its brutality and is both highly intense and emotional. It also doesn’t skimp on anything. The thing about movies that are focused around slavery is that most of them will not show everything that happened during that period of time before the act was outlawed. This film doesn’t do that. This is slavery uncensored and we see the full effect of what life was like for African Americans back in the day. Slavery could corrupt anyone; there were no doubt slave owners like the vicious and cruel Edwin Epps, but then you have Solomon Northup’s other slave owner, preacher William Ford. Compared to Epps, Ford is a nice man who stays on good terms with his slaves… but don’t forget, he is still a slave owner!!! Even the nicest people in the world at that time could be slave owners. That’s how corrupt and vile this practice was.
This film is full of great performances from its cast. In the role of Solomon, Chiwetel Ejiofor gives one of the strongest performances of the year, saying very little but getting across so much emotion at the same time just through his facial expressions. His character realized the situation that he was in; he couldn’t tell anyone that he was actually once a free man because no one would listen to him and he would probably be killed because of it. Michael Fassbender is equally terrific in the role of Edwin Epps. Fassbender just gets into the role of the cruel slave owner and it’ll be a travesty if he’s not nominated for Best Supporting Actor just like Leonardo DiCaprio was snubbed of a nomination in that same category last year. But the whole cast is great; Benedict Cumberbatch as William Ford, newcomer Lupita Nyong’o as one of Solomon’s fellow slaves (and I’m also going to say; a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actress), and Brad Pitt in a small role as a friendly carpenter, among many others. I will be very surprised if this film doesn’t win Best Picture at this year’s Oscars because based on the current odds, this will be the film that wins it.
So here it is… my Number 1 film of 2013. This one actually did serve as my favorite film of the year for quite a while (at least half a year). However, these last few months of the year had a slew of terrific movies, so for a while, I was unsure what my favorite film of the year was by that point. In the end, though, it came right back to this film, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite films of all time. It’s one that, going in, I honestly did not have very high expectations for, mainly because of the prestigious pedigree it’s working off of, but the end I think that was why it exceeded my expectations; a film that came out in March of all times.
1. OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
That title gives you an idea of why I was hesitant about this movie at first. Here we have a prequel to L. Frank Baum’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and while it’s not technically the official prequel, in a few ways it can be considered to be a prequel to 1939’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’, one of the most beloved films of all time. But for the record, it’s not supposed to be; this is Disney, not MGM, and there were a few elements from the original film that they couldn’t use, like the ruby slippers or even the chin mole of the Wicked Witch. Sure, in the end, ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’ is probably not as good as the 1939 classic but it doesn’t have to be. It’s its own thing and it shouldn’t be compared to the original because it’s not trying to be it. This film really caught me by surprise in how much I loved it and there are numerous reasons as to why this ended up being my favorite film of the year, aside from a few obvious reasons. This is only one of two films I saw twice in theaters this year, the other being ‘Gatsby’.
Let’s get those obvious reasons out of the way. The film is just beautiful; it has some of the best CGI in any film this year. The world of Oz is just a visual sight for the eyes and as far as Disney’s past big-budget March releases are concerned; this is the best of the bunch in terms of the visuals. The other two I’m mentioning specifically are 2010’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’, which did have a very unique visual look but was overall too dark, and 2012’s ‘John Carter’, which despite having a budget of over $200 million, was shot in the desert. This film has a terrific visual look and production design and is also one of the few movies that I will actually recommend seeing in 3-D. The 3-D is not in your face like some movies are or badly post-converted into the format like most movies are; it helps emphasize the terrific visuals.
But there’s more to this movie than just its great visuals. The writing is also really good, even though the story itself may not have that many surprises to it. It may be a prequel, but it doesn’t suffer from ‘prequelitis’; any references to ‘Wizard of Oz’ are very subtle and well-handled. It’s not like someone just goes up to a person and says, ‘look there’s the Yellow Brick Road’ or ‘hey, is that the Cowardly Lion?’ It’s not like that at all. The main character arc for Oscar Diggs, the man who would eventually become the Wizard of Oz, is also really well-done. Starting off as a womanizing con-man, Oscar eventually changes his ways to become the savior of Oz from evil, even if he’s not exactly the Wizard that the people of Oz were expecting.
But another good thing about the writing is that the movie itself is not mean-spirited. They could have just gone and done a story where the goal of the main characters was to kill all of the bad guys, but thankfully they don’t go that route here. Around the midpoint of the film, Oscar learns from Glinda that the people of Oz are forbidden to kill, which makes things rather problematic for his plan to defeat the Wicked Witches. Is it cheesy? Maybe, but at least the film has good morals. This is just a really pleasant movie, and considering some of the darker films that come out every year, it’s always nice to see a movie like this that is not mean-spirited and yet doesn’t talk down to kids at the same time. It does get dark at times, but in the same way that the original got dark; more through frightening imagery (like those flying baboons, which I think are scarier here than the ones in the original), not just to be dark. Going back to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ again, there’s one scene where Alice gets across a river that is full of decapitated heads… you know, for kids!
The film has an excellent cast, although I will say that one of them falls a little flat at the halfway point. That cast member in question is Mila Kunis, who plays the witch Theodora. She did a really good job in the first half of the movie as the naïve witch who prematurely falls in love with the Wizard, who doesn’t really love her back; he’s just doing his ‘womanizing’ act. This ends up breaking her heart and her sister Evanora has her turned into the Wicked Witch of the West… yes, that Wicked Witch. She’s not terrible in the part, but she’s no Margaret Hamilton either. For one thing, she screams pretty much all of her lines as the witch and that does get annoying after a while. But I don’t really blame her here. Honestly, I think they introduced the Wicked Witch way too early here. I know that the character was undoubtedly going to appear, but we didn’t need two villains, especially when the other one, Evanora, is a really good villain. Rachel Weisz is a scene-stealer in this movie and is clearly having fun in the role. They should have just had Theodora turned into the Wicked Witch right at the end of the film to set things up for a sequel. I’m not too big on the idea to have her turned halfway through the film.
But the big standout of this cast is Michelle Williams as Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. In fact, I’d say this film had the best interpretation of the character in any ‘Wizard of Oz’ movie; yes, even more so than the 1939 film. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing Billie Burke’s performance from the original. It was still a really good performance, but the writing for the character was a little flat. She didn’t appear in the movie that much and she was just too ‘overly good’. This Glinda is still the ‘good’ witch, as her name obviously suggests, but even she has her limits. She immediately knows that Oscar is not the Wizard just through his actions alone and yet she still sees the good in him even when he doesn’t. She is also far more proactive in this film than the Glinda from the 1939 film, who only made brief appearances here and there. Overall, this Glinda is just the superior interpretation of the character and Williams brings the right amount of charm and kindness for the role while also giving her a very down-to-earth personality at the same time.
James Franco also does a very good job as the Wizard. I’ll admit that I would have been very interesting to see how Robert Downey Jr. (who was originally considered for the part) would’ve done in the role, but Franco manages to defy all expectations about him; it helps that he has a good character arc to work with and even when he’s acting like the womanizing con-man that he starts out as, he’s still rather charming. Like ‘The Wizard of Oz’, this film also has some really memorable supporting characters. Zach Braff plays the only ‘good’ flying monkey, Finley, and gets a lot of the best lines (“I see, because I’m a monkey, I must love bananas… that is a vicious stereotype,” “You don’t like bananas?” “Of course I like bananas, I’m a monkey, don’t be ridiculous. I just don’t like it when you say it.”). Joey King plays China Girl, a young girl made entirely out of china who loses her entire family in an attack on their village and joins Oscar and Finley on their journey. She’s pretty much the ‘Dorothy’ character of this film, giving the film an even greater human element even though she’s made of china.
So that’s ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’, my favorite film of 2013. Sure, it may not be as good as the original, but that’s one of the toughest acts to follow if you ask me because we all know how much of a classic that film is. But this film manages to be a great modern-day accompaniment to that film. That’s part of the reason why I liked ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ so much. Sure, it will never top ‘Wrath of Khan’, but it’s a nice modern update on the story and the same can be said with this movie. It’s probably the best Oz film that has ever come out since the 1939 classic and bear in mind that there have been a lot of films that have come out before and after the one we all know and love.
And those are my Top 12 Favorite Films of 2013. Thanks for reading.
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