Because movie awards season falls where it does (December-February), the films crowned as the "best of the year" are more often than not the ones that were released in the final months of any given year. Anything released prior to September often gets forgotten or (at best) a token surprise nomination or two. Which is a shame, because every year there are masterful films released in the "less prestigious" first six months of the year. And this year is no different. The following are the five films that I enjoyed most during the first half of 2013:
1) Before Midnight: The third entry into Richard Linklater's exquisite "Before" series, which began with Before Sunrise (1995) and continued with Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight drops in on a few hours of the lives of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) as they negotiate the challenges of commitment, family, and the pangs of time lost, regretted, wished for and not-yet-had. Beautifully written and acted, deeply emotional and constantly thought-provoking, Midnight is as smart and soul-enriching a film as you're likely to see this summer. (more)
2) To the Wonder: Ben Affleck--hardly masking his less-than-pleased assessment of the final product of Terrence Malick's latest film--said that To the Wonder "makes TheTree of Life look like Transformers.” There is some truth to this. Wonder, smaller-scale and relatively mundane in comparison to the universe-spanning scope of Life, is nevertheless a more challenging film--arguably Malick pushing his maverick sensibilities to the audience's outer thresholds of tolerance. And yet given the time (and the requisite multiple viewings) and a willingness to give oneself to Malick's way of seeing, this is a film with immense power to move, provoke, and stir up thankfulness for the "Love that loves us". (more)
3) Frances Ha: Noah Baumbach's black & white, Brooklyn-set film is much more than the depressive hipster navel gazing we've come to expect from him. It's actually a vibrant, often hilarious and deeply perceptive portrait of a twentysomething liberal arts grad (the excellent Greta Gerwig) going through a quarterlife crisis. Something of an ode to the French New Wave, the stylish film possesses a lightness of being and existential astuteness that is regrettably rare in contemporary indie filmmaking. (more)
4) Stories We Tell: One of the best documentaries I've seen in a long time, Stories We Tell is a very personal exploration of director Sarah Polley's family. It's a film about family, legacy, generational ghosts, the passage of time, and ultimately truth and narrative itself: how the stories we tell do and do not illuminate the "reality" of what actually happened in a certain place or time. It's a fascinating re-invention of the documentary genre that is as gut-wrenching as it is thought-provoking.
5) The Bling Ring: Sofia Coppola's latest continues in the vein of her previous films, examining things like celebrity, materialism, partying, and "the ineffable sublime," mostly through the lens of the female adolescent experience. The film's ripped-from-the-headlines true story of celeb-obsessed teens turned Hollywood Hills burglars is the jumping off point for a meditation on consumerism, social media and what Douglas Rushkoff calls "present shock"--the woozy vertigo that accompanies our cultural collapse of narrativity and obsession with (and ironic distance from) the moment. For more on that, and tying it back nicelyto Before Midnight, see this article.
Honorable Mention: Mud, The Place Beyond the Pines, Much Ado About Nothing, 56 Up, Kon-tiki