8) Evil Dead (2013)

I was not happy at all when I heard Evil Dead was being remade, so my low expectations may have contributed to this film making my top 10. The original trilogy is one of my favorite horror series and I thought that there was no way a remake could do it justice. But the new Evil Dead didn’t really end up being much of a remake at all. While the basic concept remained similar, the characters and plot were changed completely. By advertising itself as a remake, Evil Dead allows for the audience to be surprised when it doesn’t play out anything like the original. It feels more like a sequel or spin off.

The central story revolves around Mia, a heroin addicted heroine trying to kick her habit. Her brother and 3 friends accompany her to a cabin in the woods to support her attempt to quit using. The heroin addiction turns out to be a clever plot device, as it creates a reason for the group to want to stay at the cabin. When Mia becomes possessed and starts acting crazy, all of her friends blame it on the withdrawal and try to keep her from leaving for as long as possible.

Jane Levy’s performance as Mia is the only one that really stands out. Her descent into possession is portrayed very believably, and her transition from being terrified to being terrifying is quite remarkable. In a scene where she allows herself to be scolded by the hot water in the shower there is a vacant look about her that is guaranteed to give most viewers chilled. Once she becomes fully possessed her voice and line delivery conjure shivers. Shiloh Fernandez who plays Jane’s brother, Milo, also put forth a sympathetic performance, but as his character never has to undergo any form of transformation, he is not given the same opportunities to show his acting range.

One of the most admirable qualities of Evil Dead, was the choice to use mostly practical effects. This is easily the goriest movie to be released in the past decade, and the gore is finally real for a change! Well it’s not technically real, but it’s not animated. CGI has been favored in most horror movies recently, as it less expensive than creating the mechanisms and doing the makeup to create real gore and effects. While the creators admit to using some CGI for touch-ups, they claim that all of the gore was first created practically. It definitely pays off, as the blood and guts in this film are absolutely disgusting in the best kind of way. Practical effects are coming very close to being eliminated by CGI, so it is extremely refreshing to see a movie use them just as freely as it’s predecessors did over 30 years ago.

It has been rumored that this film is the first of a new series that will eventually tie back into the originals. If this is true, I’m beyond excited to see what the creators will do with it. I can only hope they can keep the same originality they put into Evil Dead going for a few more films. This reboot may have been the start of one of the goriest and most creative series in modern horror.

9) Inside Llewyn Davis

As the title suggests, Inside Llewyn Davis is a character study more than anything else. But the film also serves as a study of a certain time and place: Greenwich Village during the early 1960’s. The folk scene of this era is explored through the title character and his attempt to survive as a solo musician in the aftermath of his musical partner’s suicide.

It is the soundtrack of the film that made it one of my favorites of the year. It is compiled of covers of old folk songs I’d never head of until viewing the movie. As a matter of fact, I assumed it was all original music until I heard that it was ineligible for Academy Award nominations. The choice to use covers is a bold one, but it pays off, as it brings new life to music that may be in danger of being forgotten. It is easily the year’s best soundtrack and possibly one of the best, period. The tunes are catchy and show off the surprising vocal talents of lead actor, Oscar Isaacs, as well as numerous other actors and musicians. The melodies also draw attention to where the popularized folk-rock genre stemmed from and received it’s roots.

Despite the fact he is clearly the protagonist of the film, Llewyn Davis is certainly not an easy character to like. He is extremely self involved, he constantly takes advantage of his friends, and he blatantly makes choices to do the wrong thing despite his clear recognition of what is right and wrong. His flaws make him feel very real and he has just enough redeeming moments to make him watchable. His eyes constantly seem to be hiding a deep sadness and the subtext of his dialogue often conveys a hatred toward everything, including himself.  Every time you hear him sing, the fact he is kind of an asshole is immediately forgiven. Llewyn is a very well thought out character, and it is clear that the Coens wanted his morality to be blurry. It seems that they wanted to create the challenge of getting their audience to identify with a selfish, and sometimes downright mean person, and in my case, they succeeded.

Llewyn’s character also doesn’t have much of a development arc, and neither does the plot of the film. Llewyn doesn’t seem to learn much of a lesson and his place in the world changes so little from the beginning to the end of film, that it’s actually pretty easy to get the timeline confused. Joel Coen has admitted that the movie lacks plot saying “”the film doesn’t really have a plot. That concerned us at one point; that’s why we threw the cat in.” Really it seems that the point of the film was to examine the life of a struggling musician, and because he is stuck in life, the plot is also stuck in movement.

The title character seems to be completely homeless and crashes with whichever friends will allow him into their home on any given night. He rides  to Chicago with other bumbling artistic types solely to audition for a man he’s never met, which seems like an absurd impossibility during this day and age, but feels very legitimate given the time and place of the film. The world that Llewyn lives in seems cruel and soul crushing for an up and coming singer, which may be why his unpleasant demeanor is somewhat forgivable. He refuses to give up on the idea that he could be somebody, and it is partially his self absorption that allows him to do this.

The cat Joel Coen mentioned is an interesting element, though I’m not sure how much it contributed to the plot. Llewyn allows the cat to escape from a friends apartment in the beginning of the film, and it is then lost and found several times throughout the movie. The identity of the cat is confused several times and Llewyn makes many questionable decisions regarding the animal. It seems that the cat contributes more to the discovery of Llewyn’s character than it does to the plot. Llewyn’s attitude towards the feline and his choices concerning it reveal a lot about who he is.

Oscar Isaacs performance as Llewyn is extremely memorable and may likely put him on the path to become a renowned actor. The character he creates has more depth than any other I’ve seen on screen this past year. This is also in part due to the writing of the Coens. It is rare that I finish a movie and feel like I know the main character, and that is absolutely the case with Llewyn Davis. Whether you like him not, you get to know him, which is a huge accomplishment on the acting and filmmaking end.

There are some other solid performances put forth in the film. Notably, John Goodman as the heroine addicted jazz musician with whom Llewyn travels to Chicago with. Goodman’s character is arrogant and abrasive, but funny. His conversations and criticisms of Llewyn serve as some of the more comical moments of the movie. Justin Timberlake also gives a talented performance as a naive and kind folk musician. It is quite a pleasant turn to hear Timberlake’s vocal talents show through folk songs, rather than the pop that has become his staple. Most of the secondary characters all feel like people simply passing through Llewyn’s periphery, none of them are given very much screen time compared to Isaacs, making it clear that this film is meant to be a look at Llewyn’s life .

Inside Llewyn Davis sets out to make a fictional character feel real, by putting him in a real time and place. The film uses memorable folk tunes, an atmospheric setting, and detailed character writing to succeed in doing this. This film will likely hold it’s own as a classic piece of cinema as well as stand as a study of the folk scene during the 60’s for years to come.

10) John Dies At the End

This film did the Sundance circuit in 2012 but didn’t get Theatrical release until early 2013, so I’m going to go ahead and say it counts.

John Dies at the End is a trippy horror comedy about two skeptic paranormal investigators who take a hallucinogenic drug called Soy Sauce, that reveals the secrets of the universe to them.
The film starts out a bit like a buddy comedy, with Dave (Chase Williamson) assuming the role of the uptight hipster, while John(Rob Mayes) takes on the persona of a carefree bro type. John  discovers the Soy Sauce at a party and takes it, and of course Dave is burdened with the task of saving his best friend from the possibly fatal effects. Both roles are played well, but the actors stick to the stereotypes they are written into.  It is the clever conditions and situations the drug creates that allow this film to break out of it’s mold.

Once the title character starts tripping, anything is possible . This is a movie where a doorknob can turn into a penis, and that’s ok. It is also acceptable for a man’s mustache to fly off of his face and for a monster to manifest itself from freezer meat. It is the absurdity of the film that makes it unique. The events that occur in the movie are so strange and weird, that they are actually very funny in an odd way. Don Coscarelli, director of Phantasm and Bubba-Ho-Tep, creates a surreal and nightmarish atmosphere that is equal parts eerie and hilarious.

The plot of John Dies is a bit all over the place so it is kind of hard to explain. The story is told from Dave’s perspective, as he recounts the story of John and the Soy Sauce to a journalist. After John takes the drug, he perceives time differently and becomes perceptive to beings from another universe. John is the only survivor who took the drug and he becomes the target of a police investigation. John and Dave also become involved in a Fringe-like plot to destroy a monster from another dimension that poses a threat to the known universe.

The film does not take itself very seriously and plays for laughs more than depth. There are plenty of questions left unanswered, but considering how many are posed, John Dies wraps itself up into a pretty satisfying and funny conclusion. The movie as a whole probably could have been more insightful, or at least made a little more sense, but it’s so much fun to watch that the viewer barely notices that they’ve been exposed to deep questions about what is real and the state of the universe.

Let’s talk about movies

It has recently occurred to me that a large percentage of my friendships have been sparked by conversations about movies. Discussing movies with people is probably my favorite thing to do. Since the Oscars are in a week, it seem like a pretty good time to start some film conversations. So I’ve come up with my top ten movies of 2013 and I’m going to write a review of each of them in the upcoming week, but I want to know what everyone else’s favorites were too. So people should comment and share your opinions and stuff. Feel free to disagree and argue with me, and I’ll do the same for you.

I’ve learned that I enjoy talking about movies just as much as, possibly more than, watching them. Good movies attempt to convey ideas and make people think, great movies are the ones that succeed in doing so to the point where these ideas are then discussed by the viewers. Film can make people talk to each other about the way they think and feel about topics ranging from personal relationships to the way the universe works.

When I meet someone, it doesn’t take long for me to ask them what their favorite movies are. It may seem like a shallow question to some, but it’s pretty amazing what you can learn about people from a good answer to this question. Obviously, if you tell me your favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine and nothing more, there’s not much to be learned. But if you tell me why you like Eternal Sunshine, what it is about the movie that appeals to you, how it’s themes and messages affected you, then I will start to get to know you a little bit.I’m not trying to say there’s no more to people than the movies they like, but discussing film is a great way to discover shared interests and to learn what you have in common with others.

I have a habit of digging into movie message boards on IMDB and other movie websites to find alternate interpretations to films from my own. Especially when a movie ends and I still have no idea what the hell happened. Mulholland Drive being a prime example. After I watched that movie I spent hours searching the web for an explanation for what happened during the last half hour, and what I found ranged from angry posts about how the movie was nonsensical bullshit to seriously intricate and well thought out theories about the film. Really, the ending of that movie is completely opened to interpretation and it’s anyone’s guess as to what happened, I’m not even sure if David Lynch knows.  The amazing thing about the film is the discussion created by it’s ambiguity. Because there are so many blanks for the viewer to fill in, discussing it with others creates an opportunity to learn how they think.

Great bonds can be formed through in depth conversations about movies. If you dig deep and talk openly it is possible to find someone, even multiple people, that share your opinions and views. You can find out if someone thinks like you think. Really there are a lot of ways to do this besides talking about movies, that’s just my method of choice, and I think it’s a lot of fun. So let’s talk about movies people.