Items25The creator’s order
  1. 112 Years a Slave (2013)12 Years a Slave (2013) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased 18 Oct 2013Steve McQueen makes the duration of an action as consequential as what happens within it. Chiwetel Ejiofor's attention and restraint give the historical account a continuing human centre. The film earns its position through controlled images and performances that refuse to make survival a simple…0
  2. 2Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased 18 Oct 2013The Coens make a musician's repeated search for somewhere to sleep inseparable from his difficult relationship with his own work. Oscar Isaac gives the songs an immediacy that survives the surrounding comic failures. Its wintry rhythm is rewarding because artistic commitment and self-sabotage…0
  3. 3Her (2013)Her (2013) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased 18 Dec 2013Spike Jonze makes an artificial voice feel present through the changing rhythms of ordinary conversation. Joaquin Phoenix gives the apparent science-fiction premise an awkward emotional life. The film's strongest ideas concern what attention and intimacy require, with the imagined technology…0
  4. 4Under the Skin (2014)Under the Skin (2014) 6.3/10 on IMDbReleased 14 Mar 2014Jonathan Glazer makes familiar roads and faces look newly strange by refusing the viewer a settled human perspective. Scarlett Johansson's controlled physical presence is central to that estrangement. Its 2013 Venice premiere places it here before the 2014 release, with sound and image carrying…0
  5. 5Before Midnight (2013)Before Midnight (2013) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased 5 Apr 2013Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy make the couple's fluent conversation capable of changing from pleasure to injury without warning. Richard Linklater gives the long exchanges room to expose accumulated habits. Prior knowledge of the earlier films deepens the experience, but the central achievement is…0
  6. 6The Great Beauty (2013)The Great Beauty (2013) 7.7/10 on IMDbReleased 21 May 2013Paolo Sorrentino lets Rome's seductive surfaces compete with the central man's diminishing capacity to be impressed. Toni Servillo makes cultivated amusement feel like a demanding public role. The film is most rewarding where visual excess reveals an appetite that elegant conversation cannot quite…0
  7. 7The Wind Rises (2013)The Wind Rises (2013) 7.8/10 on IMDbReleased 20 Jul 2013Hayao Miyazaki gives the act of designing a machine a persuasive beauty while allowing its historical consequences to remain troubling. The drawn movement makes work and imagination tangible. Its unusual strength is the unresolved distance between a person's devotion to craft and what that craft…0
  8. 8The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased 23 Nov 2013Isao Takahata lets the drawn line become freer or more constrained as the young woman's life changes. The animation's apparent simplicity makes sudden movement emotionally overwhelming. The Japanese 2013 release belongs here, with the folk tale transformed into an unusually vivid account of desire…0
  9. 9Ida (2013)Ida (2013) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased 25 Oct 2013Pawel Pawlikowski's monochrome compositions leave space above the figures that can feel both spiritual and oppressive. Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza give the journey contrasting rhythms of attention. The short film gains weight through what its encounters cannot make easy to explain about…0
  10. 10Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) 7.6/10 on IMDbReleased 9 Oct 2013Adèle Exarchopoulos makes the changing textures of attraction and heartbreak visible through appetite, concentration and physical uncertainty. The intimate scale gives ordinary encounters unusual emotional force. It is demanding adult viewing with extended explicit sex, and the strength of the…0