“The Martian” is Everything You Want it to Be

An astronaut in the third manned mission to Mars becomes stranded during a storm. Believing him dead, his crew aborts their mission, abandons the planet, and launches back toward Earth. A botanist by trade and trapped in a harsh climate, the stranded Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has to figure out how to collect water, grow plants in unfriendly soil, and survive the harsh temperatures of Mars.

All the while, NASA must figure out how to help him, communicate, and (perhaps most interestingly) navigate the needs of a rescue mission through a politically aggressive media.

At the center of the story, Damon balances desperation with a sort of positive, confident, self-deprecating attitude, as if playing Chris Pratt with a dramatic range. It’s a superb display of trying to remain mentally healthy and positive in what would otherwise be a depressing and hopeless survival situation. Even if the focus of the film isn’t on big moments of acting, Damon textures the role with a great deal of nuance. The film doesn’t use elongated, weepy moments as a crutch. Watney loses his cool, enjoys success and failure, and struggles to remain stable at points, but this isn’t “Cast Away.” Damon is excellent, but his emotional state isn’t the focus here; his actions are. In this way, he carries the film’s momentum on his shoulders.

Damon is something special in the film, but he’s not the only one. As his mission commander Melissa Lewis, Jessica Chastain (“Interstellar”) continues conveying entire character histories with just a glance. Her ability to be an emotionally open book and a consummate professional all at once is recognizable to audiences because most of us struggle with that balance in our daily lives. Even if Lewis gets a fraction of the screen time Watney does, everything about her is humanity at its best and most responsible. Few actors could command so much loyalty in the space of a handful of scenes.

On the ground, NASA is in the hands of administrators played by Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Kristen Wiig. Decisions range from assembling another supply mission to keep Watney fed, to whether to tell the crew who left him that he remains alive. Surprisingly, these decisions hold as much intensity as Watney’s unique struggle. Balancing the practical with the political on Earth becomes as life-or-death for Watney as things like food and water.

There’s an incredible translation of science happening in the film. Watney relies on his scientific know-how, on knowledge of botany, chemistry, electronics, and astrophysics that are masterfully translated for the audience. Complex ideas are skillfully communicated in simple, practical ways.

This plays into one of the most remarkable things about “The Martian.” It is by far the least “Ridley Scott” of director Ridley Scott’s movies. After a string of films that’s gone from “Prometheus” to “The Counselor” to “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” each one more trapped inside of its own style than the last, it’s refreshing to know Scott can still just tell a story. “The Martian” isn’t subject to strange visual experiments or odd editing. If anything, its visual storytelling errs on the side of safe. That works for a film like this. The story is so compelling, the actors so commanding, too much extra style might have ultimately become too distracting. Scott instead relies on techniques he’s often avoided in his career: rapid jump-cut editing, voice-over, point-of-view shots, fast-motion, and a relatively still camera.

The easiest comparison in subject matter would be the most recent stranded-in-space film, “Gravity.” These are two very different movies, however. “Gravity” envelops viewers in a visceral experience reminiscent of horror movies. “The Martian” offers a very different kind of intensity. It evokes something less existential and more practical. If anything, “The Martian” takes on a very matter-of-fact tone that resembles one of the most realistic portrayals of space disaster, “Apollo 13.”

One extra note: Ridley Scott has become one of the premier directors of 3D. As many other problems as “Prometheus” and “Exodus” had, their 3D was downright sumptuous. “The Martian” is no different, and its otherworldly setting offers up a lot of opportunities both before and beyond the screen. Flying dust, bits of debris, and a looming spaceship all feature. So do vast Martian canyons and valleys, calling upon the haunting beauty and loneliness of being stranded in a strange wilderness. His 3D is exceptionally detailed and makes tremendous use of the foreground. Nausea’s not a problem because there’s not a ton of fast movement, but if you get headaches, that’s from the foreground detail. In this case, sit a little further back in the theater, so that you’re at least the height of the middle of the screen. Of course, the film will play exceptionally in 2D as well without losing its beauty.

There’s language, brief rear nudity, and a scene of injury, but it’s very safe for children and I’d highly encourage it as a family film that can help spur discussions about science and space.

Does it Pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test?

This section uses the Bechdel-Wallace Test as a foundation to discuss the representation of women in film.

1. Does “The Martian” have more than one woman in it?

Yes. Jessica Chastain plays Mission Commander Melissa Lewis. Kate Mara plays astronaut Beth Johanssen. Kristen Wiig plays NASA Public Affairs Officer Annie Montrose. Mackenzie Davis plays specialist Mindy Park.

2. Do they talk to each other?

Yes.

3. About something other than a man?

Yes. There are points when it could be read either way – in talking about rescuing Watney, are they talking about him or are they talking about a rescue operation? Either way, there are other things discussed outside of this.

In space, women seem to be in charge, and I detailed just how well Jessica Chastain delivers her role as the mission commander. It’s also worth noting that – after Chastain’s Lewis – Kate Mara’s Johanssen seems to have the most agency within the crew.

On the ground, it’s a different story. Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Sean Bean exert more power and enjoy more agency in their characters than Kristen Wiig and Mackenzie Davis do. Wiig and Davis play characters whose jobs involve being answerable to these men (well, at least to Daniels and Ejiofor).

It’s therefore a mixed bag, and because the focus of half the story is on Watney alone, it makes the film difficult to judge along these lines. In other words, it features three storylines, in order of screen time given to them:

• Watney surviving alone on Mars, which does not pass the Bechdel Test for obvious reasons.
• A male-driven corporate structure in NASA, which briefly passes at least the first two questions of the Bechdel-Wallace Test, but not really their spirit.
• A kick-ass group of astronauts powered by two strong, intelligent, and decisive women leaders and role models that passes both the rule and spirit of the Bechdel-Wallace Test, including an incredibly heroic leader in Chastain’s Lewis.

The only other thing I’ll note is that I appreciate how much Chastain’s performance gives us someone who can lead without being emotionally closed off. The unfortunate perception among many is that women cannot share emotion in the way a man can and still be trusted to lead; a woman leader has to be cold in order for many to think she’s qualified. It’s bullshit, of course, but it’s also a perception that many women have to at least acknowledge and be aware of when taking on leadership positions in the U.S. I appreciate that Chastain threw that on its head. She delivers an engaging, inspiring, emotionally forthright leader who commands not through coldness and aloofness, but through collaboration, communication, and a refined and experienced sense of moral, logical, and emotional judgment.

On another note, I have read some accusations of race-bending many of the roles. I have not read the book, so I cannot speak to this. “The Martian” does feature people of color more than most films, but that’s not necessarily saying much. For NASA especially, it does seem heavy on white characters. I don’t know how accurately this lines up with its source material.

Yes, we do get Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, and Michael Pena in very positive roles and positions of responsibility, but that’s still merely 3 of the top 12 actors billed.

Where did we get our awesome images? The feature image comes from Collider’s review. The top and bottom images (both with Jessica Chastain) come from Collider’s interview with Chastain.

The Best 3-D of 2014

by Vanessa Tottle & Gabriel Valdez

Making movies in 3-D is still more of a science than an art. Most films get the basics done and nothing more: create a few planes of depth for characters to exist on; poke the audience in the eye with something during an action scene; and if you’re post-converting, blur the detail out of anything in the background in a horrific attempt to emulate depth-of-field.

The best 3-D is native, meaning it’s filmed as 3-D instead of being filmed in 2-D and converted later. Native 3-D retains detail and movement qualities that post-converted 3-D does not. When offered a post-converted 3-D film, the 2-D version may actually be more visually impressive.

When we talk about the best 3-D of 2014, we are talking about the visual fidelity – how realistic it looks – but we’re also talking about its artistic use. How much does it contribute to the story and the visuals. 3-D is still new enough that no one’s yet to establish its visual language. There are very few “new shots” that only 3-D can accomplish, and there’s no one pushing 3-D visual language the way Orson Welles once pushed deep focus cinematography.

Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity did this in 2013 by fusing its 3-D, visual effects, and POV sequences together, but this had more to do with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s already established language of the edited long take than with anything extraordinarily new.

Martin Scorsese is the director who’s come closest to writing new cinematographic language using 3-D. In 2011’s Hugo, he treats his scenes as if they’re taking place in dioramas. He resurrects long-forgotten silent film techniques and develops 3-D analogues, most notably replacing the vignette (when characters’ faces are overlit and the corners of the frame darkened) with a 3-D protrusion (when characters’ faces lean unnaturally close to the viewer and the corners of the frame are softened).

Unfortunately, there’s nothing in 2014 that comes close to these two examples. The best 3-D belongs to one film alone, but there are three that stand out:

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

Animation can take advantage of 3-D in two ways. Firstly, it’s easier to convert and play around with on a computer, since the animation isn’t live action. Adjustments can be made to the actors themselves in order to take advantage of 3-D, before a scene is even finalized. Secondly, the audience is already practicing a visual suspension of disbelief because they’re watching a stylized cartoon. Animations need to do more than just use 3-D to add depth then, and How to Train Your Dragon 2 creates some iconic and mythological moments. That half the film takes place flying through the sky certainly doesn’t hurt 3-D’s ability to play off of our depth perception and kneejerk panic reaction when we’re suddenly dropping through clouds.

(Read Gabe’s review)

EDGE OF TOMORROW

Edge of Tomorrow, also known as Live. Die. Repeat., makes excellent use of 3-D, especially in its action scenes. It uses all the gimmicky tricks – throwing dirt in your face during a battle scene, having objects speed toward you – but this all plays into the movie’s throwback sense of what action should be. The techniques aren’t abused and there’s enough creative use of 3-D, especially in terms of background and edge-of-frame action, to not have to rely on gimmicks.

(Read Gabe’s review)

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Here’s your winner. There’s only one film that really did something brand new with 3-D this year, and that’s Exodus: Gods and Kings. The movie itself is taxing, overlong, and ultimately pointless, but the 3-D is sumptuous. As Moses treads through the desert, sand kicks up and – rather than flying in your face – it shimmers in the evening sun as it drifts back down to the ground. The waters of the Red Sea glitter along the horizon. As the shadow of death falls across Egypt, it travels at unavoidable speed, yet the vastness of the landscape means it still takes its time. This creates a truly visual sense of creeping, impending doom while still giving it the feeling of weight and force.

Whatever other mistakes Ridley Scott made in directing Exodus – and there are many – the 3-D is a resounding success. He uses it to create gorgeous details, especially in the foreground, where filmmakers are often too nervous to place much 3-D.

There are more traditional uses of 3-D in the film, too: crocodiles eating people, teeming hordes of insects and frogs, rock slides, the kind of pomp we’d expect. This is all done well, but it’s really how the 3-D is used in the film’s most quiet and transitional moments that evokes a sense of place and makes us wish the whole film had been about the people and the setting instead of the mythology and the melodrama.

(Read Gabe’s review)

It’s admittedly thin pickings for truly exceptional 3-D this year. The technique isn’t always as solid a selling point at the box office as producers anticipate. As we’ve seen with Interstellar, some major directors just don’t want to accommodate it. Until a pioneering director really starts to create a visual language unique to 3-D, the popularity of the technique will continue to ebb and flow without really taking hold.

Enough viewers also become uncomfortable, nauseous, or develop headaches because of 3-D, that it will take a major technological leap before it threatens to become our primary way of watching movies. If you do experience a negative physical reaction to 3-D, listen to your body. 3-D tricks your brain into interpreting depth on what is still a 2-D surface. People are built differently, and not everyone’s brain is built to cope with 3-D. In very rare cases, it can have adverse effects. If you don’t like 3-D, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s still a rudimentary technique at this stage, and rudimentary techniques are rarely suited to all.

In the lead-up to the Oscars, we’ve named several other Best of 2014 Awards. These include:

The Best Diversity of 2014

The Best Original Score of 2014

The Best Soundtrack of 2014

The Most Thankless Role of 2014

Wednesday Collective…Blue is the Warmest Color – Gravity – Thor: The Dark World

I figure it’s time for another regular series. Tuesday is the day that new movies come out on DVD and Blu-ray, and Wednesday is the day we remember that. Maybe it’s because that’s when the week’s work-to-enjoyment ratio starts flipping in our favor. If you have to work the weekend, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe reading about the Soviet calendar will make you feel better.

Every week, I’ll collect the best articles from here and others on this week’s new releases for home viewing. A link for each excerpt takes you to the full article…click away, and bring the internet a little closer together!

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Blue is the Warmest Color

If Blue is the Warmest Color didn’t dominate the international festival circuit, it at least took over the media coming out of it. The NC-17 film about two women who fall in love took the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and, for the first time, the award was also given not just to the director, but to the film’s two actors.

Over at Camera Obscura, film theorist Alessia Palanti felt strongly about it, too: “Kechiche’s genius is that he deceivingly gives the audience the answer to the, by now, nauseatingly predictable question: ‘What do women do in bed?’ It is as if the Cannes award justified this kind of fetishism. And I ask myself if anyone stopped to consider their source: a heterosexual male director. If sexual explicitness is what credits the film’s ‘daring’ and (by god), ‘revolutionary’ quality (i.e. standing as a new mascot for LGBT, and specifically the ‘L’ community), then the notion of daring and revolutionary have been lost. It offends truly courageous cinematic endeavors…”

BRILLIANT, BUT DOES IT CONNECT?
Gravity

It almost never happens that a science-fiction movie stands a good shot at winning Best Picture. If you’re still wondering why Gravity, the story of an astronaut stranded in orbit, is one of the few, you’re in luck – nearly everyone wrote about it.

Blu-ray Downlow has a thorough write-up on the – you guessed it – Blu-ray release: “None of this sounds terribly different from any number of the other space films that have come out of Hollywood in the past, but Alfonso Cuaron’s direction and Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography take the film into uncharted territory. The film’s aesthetics bring to mind Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the story itself is more digestible to a mainstream audience.”

Erin Snyder at The Middle Room offered a unique take, comparing Gravity to a ride as much as a movie. “It’s definitely pushing boundaries. This has elements from video games, amusement park rides, and – yes – films. As such, it doesn’t deliver everything we’re used to getting from a movie, but instead gives us something a bit different.” He added, “There’s very little here that would survive being viewed at home.” The previews on my laptop still make me catch my breath, so I might be in the minority on that one.

Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys) are a pair of Australian bloggers who each raved about it, but did have issues with the story itself. “This is dazzling filmmaking and a journey you can’t afford to miss,” wrote Jordan. “However, whilst it is impossible to fault it on a production level…there is one area in which it is unfortunately left wanting: lasting emotional connection.” Eddie was more forgiving: “It could be any range of things from script conveniences through to some misguided character driven scenes, but really these are slight missteps in a movie universe that is totally and enthrallingly enjoyable for every last minute of its running time.”

I felt more connected to it and enjoyed it beyond the thrill ride level. “I can’t remember rooting for a character so hard, not just wanting but needing Bullock’s Stone to make it through. It’s not because she’s special or heroic. She is certainly those things, but it’s because she responds so very much like the rest of us. Her impossible tasks may happen in space, but her hopelessness and frustration feel just like yours and mine.”

SHARING THE SAME QUALITIES AS A LAVA LAMP
Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World, Marvel’s 8th movie in their Avengers universe, also comes out on home release today. Coincidentally, it’s the 8th time the Earth must be saved in as many movies.

The Middle Room’s Erin Snyder succinctly summed up something many of us are feeling. “I was about ready to write this one off when a funny thing happened. About forty minutes in, Loki stole the whole damn movie.”

I was similarly frustrated by the film. Funny enough, I couldn’t help but compare it to a B-movie Erin had introduced me to years earlier. “There’s a scene in Hudson Hawk, a 1991 action parody starring Bruce Willis, in which the hero leaps off a building. He survives by crashing through a roof and falling directly into the next scene. Everything continues without missing a beat. This is how Thor: The Dark World is written.”

What’s This? What’s This? There’s Color Everywhere

I’ve been reconnecting with my love for Scandinavian pop this week, so the inaugural Music Video of the Week is “The Drummer” by Niki and the Dove.

The Movies We Loved in 2013 – By Friends of the Blog

My goal as a critic is to write pieces that are both functional and artistic, that translate not only a film’s meaning but that have their own as well. A big part of what’s shaped my view on movies are the people I’ve made films with and spoken to about film over the years, so I asked friends whose work and perspectives on movies I admire the most – What was your best film of 2013? I was pleased with how many responded and even more pleased – and moved – by their eloquent and personal responses. Please enjoy:

The World’s End
by Chris Braak

Above and beyond how much I enjoy Edgar Wright as one of the most energetic and playful stylists working right now – in particular, the way he uses every corner of the screen, every incidental movement, in a way that is somehow intricate without being overloaded or over-composed – The World’s End is a brilliantly subversive reversal of a done-to-death science-fiction trope. One of the advantages of satire is that it doesn’t have to pretend to have answers, so The World’s End can quite comfortably take a completely ambivalent approach, simultaneously exposing the moral poverty of cultural interventionism and the nihilistic self-destruction that’s at the heart of much of our cultural sense of rebellion.

What makes it especially brilliant is how neatly and painfully it dovetails with addiction intervention, in a way that’s simultaneously cruel and critical and deeply passionate.

Chris Braak is a playwright and novelist who writes about storytelling and movies over at Threat Quality Press. He and I often disagree, which is exceptionally frustrating because he’s often right.

Gravity
by Vanessa Tottle

Being in the field sucks. It’s supposed to be full of natural romance like I’m John Muir seeing Yosemite for the first time, but camping by the firelight with the same people day in and day out gets passive-aggressive real quick. We imagine making discoveries and naming them after each other, but a month’s dig is more likely to leave me coming away with a broken ankle or hookworm. That and too much time alone to think and miss, and I’m not good at being alone with my own brain.

You see, I had to survive once. It wasn’t in the wilderness or on a dig. It was my family, growing up. Gravity is about a woman being stranded with no outlet. No matter what she does, there’s a force she doesn’t understand out to get her. She has little, but even this is taken away from her regularly. It’s not personal; it’s the way of this big, vast universe she doesn’t understand. That was my childhood. And when this woman is ready to give up, a voice on a radio is what brings her out of her stupor. She hears it by pure chance, in a language she doesn’t understand, and it’s enough to keep her from giving up. When I realized there was another voice out there, nothing was going to stop me from finding more.

Sandra Bullock didn’t play a stranded astronaut. She played me, shoving a dresser against the door when I heard raised voices and wondering why the universe hated me so much. Then she heard a voice that cared and, even if it couldn’t understand, it was enough nourishment for her soul to make her press on. That’s what sci-fi is about, right? A source of hope. Getting better. As a species, as an individual. Now when I break a bone, I’m thankful I’m the cause of it, and it’s because I heard enough voices along the way that I’m doing something I never thought I could, thank you very much.

Vanessa Tottle is completing the approximately 1,000 years of education it takes to become a paleontologist. When she’s not digging up bits of bone in barren landscapes, she’s kind enough to be my primary screenplay editor.

The Act of Killing
by Kevan Tucker

Though 2013 was one of the best years for film in recent memory, The Act of Killing is in a league of its own. It is an exploration of evil unlike anything that’s been made before and could only have been made in the medium of film. It allows us to watch as people who committed genocide take pride in, compartmentalize and regret their actions. We would like to believe that horrifying acts are done by monsters, but The Act of Killing‘s depiction of evil is more terrifying because it is so human. The subjects of the film are as bizarre, funny and relatable as they are horrifying. It shows how their actions actually rest, however uncomfortably, on the normal scale of human emotion.

The Act of Killing is also a testament to the power of art, particularly film. Not only is it a documentary that has created real political change but it is a study of the psychological process of making movies. In trying to recreate their experiences of committing genocide on camera, we get to see these killers-turned-directors unintentionally reveal themselves through each decision of how to tell their stories. As any filmmaker or artist knows, each detail and choice you make is a reflection of your thoughts, perceptions and prejudices. And examining each of those choices forces you to see them in new lights and through different points of view. Throughout The Act of Killing, we see these men’s perceptions of the past change – or stubbornly remain the same – as they present their stories to us. And their bizarre recreations of reality bring us far closer to truth than we would be able to get any other way. It is one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever witnessed, one of the best movies ever made and should be mandatory viewing for anyone interested in history, psychology or film.

Kevan Tucker is the director of the searing, coming-of-age film The Unidentified and the comedy web series Compulsive Love.

Upstream Color
by Alessia Palanti

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, and time is the ontological backdrop of Shane Carruth’s masterwork Upstream Color. The film is a haunting, psychotropic experience. It combs through identity and memory, its gaps and fillings and their reciprocal definitions, only to arrive at their quintessential knottiness. Within the narrative, characters are hypnotized by a mysterious worm: the central element of an unidentifiable experiment that jeopardizes and interrogates identity. Simultaneously, the audience in the theatre is hypnotized by the Deleuzian spirals, where distinctions are the “things in themselves” and undermine the notion of anything existing prior to differences. In other words, the film traverses an elemental spectrum, where Carruth so closely zooms in on nuances that the difference between any one object – or idea, for that matter – is forgotten. And, as memory is key to the film (time, that is, in its personal articulations), Upstream tests on the audience a similar experiment undergone by its characters.

While the film may be reminiscent of the styles of Terrence Malick, David Lynch, and Wim Wenders, Carruth really stands alone. With his previous film, Primer (2005), he cemented his scientific cinematic inclinations, where the viewer is merely a fly on the wall of two friends testing the possibilities and dangers of a time machine apparatus. If you are a metaphysical scientist watching the film, you are in luck; if not, the dialogue is an overwhelming but intriguing mass of jargon. Upstream extends the metaphysics inborn in the director’s thematic choices, but braids them with mesmerizing aesthetics, and – although disjointed – a philosophically anchored narrative.

The film’s complex and enigmatic nature demands multiple viewings. It is a 96-minute vortex of synaesthetic enrapture. And if it leaves your blood shaky and your mind dizzy with questions whose answers you both urgently require and urgently reject, it has, indeed, done its work.

Alessia Palanti knows more about film than anyone else I know (don’t tell her I said that), and is no slouch at classical European lit either. She writes about film theory in independent and foreign-language cinema at Camera Obscura.

12 Years a Slave
by Tim O’Neill

My favorite film of 2013 was 12 Years a Slave, the kind of daring, high profile film that only gets made once in a decade. Steve McQueen’s direction is impervious to melodrama, a crowning feat in and of itself considering the subject matter. The resulting matter-of-fact narrative forces the audience to find it’s own meaning, or lack thereof, buried within the layer of broken characters. Single shots tell complete stories as those characters shift within the ambiguous landscape of survival, submission and sacrifice. Solomon Northup wants to escape back to his family, and for a while I thought he might, but ultimately he must accept the painful fact that he cannot succeed by strength or cunning, only by patience. As the credits rolled, I found myself yearning for a catharsis that was not there, filled with the unsettling feeling that perhaps not all stories, even those about universal cruelty, can be reduced to good guys and bad guys. Rarely has a movie this boldly restrained garnered the attention it so richly deserved.

Tim O’Neill is an editor whose credits range from The Unidentified to the TV documentary Tracker and Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers. And he’s just getting started.

The Counselor
by Shay Fevre

Before I saw The Counselor, one of the smartest people I know described it to me as “frustrating, sick, and unbelievable.” Once I saw it, I decided I agreed with the first two. In the movie industry, it’s very easy to be financially and physically taken advantage of. I act in some risque movies, but I know what choices cross a line. It’s a different line for everybody, but the moment I cross it, I stop feeling at home in my own skin. I quit for a few years because I just had enough. A lot of actresses – A LOT – cross that line for promises of later opportunity. It’s easy to say they were stupid, or senseless, or ignorant, and that people who act desperately are poor and insane and beg and commit crime, right? But those aren’t the people who choose or ask someone else to choose something they normally wouldn’t allow.

In my world, the most valuable commodity is a certain lifestyle. The currency you trade to reach it is self-worth. The chronic, impulse buyers are the ones who have tasted success. It doesn’t matter to them if they’re lifestyle is great – they have a chemical reaction in their brain telling them MORE of that lifestyle will fill a hole that’s created because they already traded so much of themselves away. I think The Counselor is one of the few movies I saw in 2013 that makes much sense of both sides of the equation, and portrays what someone psychologically loses when they realize they can’t go back to how they once were.

Shay Fevre is an actress and model who escapes L.A. as often as possible. She once beat an abusive director up with her shoe. She’s launching her own production company in the coming year.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
by Russ Schwartz

I’m pretty sure that my favorite movie of 2013 is 12 Years a Slave; the only problem is, I haven’t seen it yet. I just didn’t see many movies this year. Until I see it, my favorite movie of 2013 is The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Not because it’s any kind of Great Movie – I mean, I saw Gravity and that was better – but because it somehow escaped its boring, smug, annoying predecessor to become a surprising and exciting fantasy picture that made me want more. I hated the first one for letting you know what it was going to do and then finding ways to drag it out, like one of those sports or rags-to-riches movies where you spend hours of your life waiting for some urchin in hardship to get discovered or make the team or some other bullsh*t, but with kids murdering each other.

But Catching Fire – man, somehow they made it a treat to see Katniss and Peeta forced to think, to deal, to plan! Who knew (apart from those who read the books)? The sequel doesn’t telegraph its structure, giving it an immediacy that made me connect with characters I didn’t give a crap about the first time around. In my favorite sequence, the combatants band together in a show of bad sportsmanship and spin to protest the games themselves, one-upping each other to find ways to beg the audience for their lives. This is the movie where cunning, heart, and imagination enter the series; suddenly, the world of Panem and its heroes matter.

Russ Schwartz is an actor, playwright, and producer who co-founded The Penny Seats Theatre Company in Ann Arbor, MI.

Her
by Keith Ward

Spike Jonze’s fourth feature Her might not be the best movie of 2013, but it was certainly the one that fascinated me the most. Science fiction is at its best when it serves as a critique of the era it was created in. Set at some unspecified date in the future, technology has exacerbated mankind’s introverted tendencies to the point where damn near everybody is constantly plugged into their devices. Our quiet protagonist Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) even feels the need to buy a digital companion. Scarlett Johansson plays Samantha, in what is my favorite performance of the year. Sam is an operating system: a sentient computerized life-form designed to not only fulfill the needs of the person who purchases her, but to evolve intellectually and emotionally in her own right.

Johansson, an actor and model admired for her physical appearance as much as her acting ability, brings her character to life entirely through her vocal performance. Samantha has no body, so we only get to really know and care for her through her voice. The romance that she forms with Theodore feels very much like the equivalent of a long-distance relationship. This all-too common modern phenomenon has never been so uniquely portrayed. There’s only so much that you can do through phone conversations, texting, cyber sex and other conceits of social media to keep the passion alive. Affairs of the heart require some physical contact, regardless of how cerebral and self-possessed the participants are.

Keith Ward works as a Patient Care Advocate by day, actor by night. He’s playing the lead in the upcoming feature Beyond Hello.

Her
by J.P. Hitesman

Without a doubt, the year-end release of Her catapulted its way to the top of my best of 2013 list. I am always the most impacted by stories that explore subjects rooted in humanity, and this film fit that bill in a creative and unpredictable way. It also offered an elegant simplicity with its small cast, taut storyline and emotionally affecting performances. Joaquin Phoenix, starring as the sensitive main character, Theodore, continues to impress with his career revitalization just a year after going to opposite extremes with The Master. Amy Adams (who co-starred with Phoenix in both) exudes a warm versatility that ought to have been more recognized as the film was released practically in tandem with American Hustle. Rooney Mara continues a run of sharp and committed performances. Olivia Wilde appears briefly in a key sequence but seemed better used here than in any larger role I have seen her perform. And Scarlett Johansson ties the film together in a unique way with her voice-only role, which was recorded after principal filming had been completed – with another actress in that part. She maintained a unique and original structure to the story, while playing with the audience’s (possible) expectations of her physical on-screen persona. But I most recall the story of the film, and am considering seeing it again just for that, as it plays with the necessities and wonderment and confusion of our modern age in such a thoughtful way that it’s impossible not to be affected by the humanity, honesty, and emotional realism of Theodore and the women in his life.

J.P. Hitesman is the Renaissance Man of any theatre or stage he steps on. He blogs about theatre and film at TheatricalBuddhaMan.

The Great Gatsby
by Jessica Greenberg

The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrmann has a beautiful production design that appeals to my theatre design sensibilities. Luhrmann has a theatricality to his aesthetic in both design and performance that I’ve also enjoyed in his other films, like Moulin Rouge or Romeo & Juliet. I love the way The Great Gatsby blends iconic 1920’s scenic, costume and lighting elements with a present day editing style and soundtrack.

Jessica Greenberg is a lighting designer and Assistant Professor of Theatre Design at Weber State University. View the impressive scope of her work here.

The Wolverine
by Erin Snyder

I think this is the first time my pick for best of the year is the sequel to something I called the worst movie of its year. But The Wolverine managed to bury the bad memories of sitting through 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and even redeemed elements of X-Men 3. If you saw The Wolverine and are baffled as to how anyone could claim it was the best movie of 2013, it’s probably because we’re talking about different films. As much as I enjoyed the theatrical cut, I’d never seriously call it the best of the year. The unrated Extended Edition, on the other hand, is the hard-R Wolverine movie that comic book geeks have always wanted. Even the theatrical version delivered the best version of Logan we’ve seen in live-action to date, then overshadowed him with two female characters more interesting and – in some ways – more badass than him. But if you’re a geek and you’ve only seen the PG-13 version, you owe it to yourself to track down the extended edition. In addition to the violence, you’re missing out on a great deal of character development and far superior pacing. But let’s not understate the significance of that violence: this is a Wolverine movie we’re talking about.

Erin Snyder writes The Middle Room, focusing on sci-fi and fantasy movies, and co-writes with his wife a seasonal favorite of mine, the irreverent and addictive Mainlining Christmas.

A few others didn’t get the chance to write something or are still writing it, but named their best films. Writer Bryan DeGuire chose Inside Llewyn Davis, documentary filmmaker Amy Grumbling chose The Act of Killing, musician Azeem Khan chose Fruitvale Station, and graphic artist Eden O’Nuallain chose Side Effects.

My own choice for the best film of 2013 is The Place Beyond the Pines, which I write about in my previous post.

The Best Film of 2013 — “The Place Beyond the Pines”

The books that meant the most to me as a kid were the ones where, once I put them down, I’d feel a sadness at having left their characters behind. I remember closing White Fang and feeling a sadness I’d never felt before. I can’t remember how young I was, but it was profound to miss a dog who didn’t even exist. Little did I know I was practicing for the first time one of the most defining feelings of a person’s life.

The Place Beyond the Pines is a film that meanders like an 800-page novel, with the details of entire generations of lives laid bare. Its first act concerns motorcycle stuntman Luke (Ryan Gosling). He performs in a traveling carnival, but settles down when he discovers one of his girls in port, Romina (Eva Mendes), has a baby son. It’s his, and even though Romina is in a relationship with someone else, Luke wants to be a part of his child’s life. Luke has no prospects, however, and is talked into taking advantage of his unique skills by robbing banks.

The second act follows rookie cop Avery (Bradley Cooper). You can imagine how he and Luke encounter each other. Like Luke, Avery has a baby son. Avery comes from privilege, however, and even if he lacks the foresight, his father Al (Harris Yulan) will make sure that Avery’s track takes him into politics. To reveal too much about Avery’s plot would be to spoil some hard, left turns the film takes.

The third act follows Luke’s and Avery’s sons, 15 years later. Of how they meet or what transpires afterward, I won’t say anything else. The results are a mix of tragedy and hope.

The Place Beyond the Pines is about the cycle of violence, the reality that drives the hopeless toward crime and the privileged to idolize it. It’s about the inevitable corruption that growing older has on the ideals of our younger selves and it’s about those beautiful moments that stay in our hearts forever, that let us survive the worst that life comes to throw at us. It’s about forgiveness, vengeance, struggle and honesty. It’s about the first time we share something special with a loved one, intending to repeat it for the rest of our lives and never getting to. It’s about how quickly we leave our dreams behind for what’s practical or what others expect of us. It’s about more than any single movie I may have ever seen before. How it fits its story into two hours and 20 minutes is beyond me.

2013 was awash in impossible movies – the relentlessness and importance of 12 Years a Slave, the technical splendor and intensity of Gravity, the outsized antics of American Hustle, the absurdity of Spring Breakers. No film may be more impossible than The Place Beyond the Pines, however. It has no camera tricks you haven’t seen before and it isn’t outlandish in any way. Its characters aren’t nearly as likeable as those other films’. Instead, writer-director Derek Cianfrance tells a human story, and weaves it together with another human story and another and another into something that, once the credits roll, makes you yearn for just one more moment to watch those characters exist.

When the movie was done, and I got up to pull the DVD, it was 1:30 a.m., it was snowing outside, and I could do nothing more than lean back against the wall and miss those characters a long moment. I’d spent the week caring for a very sick pet whom I hope is on the mend, and putting things in place for projects I’d like to do later in the year, once New England thaws out. It had been the latest of many stressful weeks, but I was reminded that the week of stress is just one of many things that shapes us. We have a habit of looking at photographs of times past, of a day at the beach with an ex, of a grandmother you never got to know, of cheesy family vacation photos when everyone was wearing 90s haircuts, and we do it to yearn, to repeat in our minds the echo of a moment we can never repeat, or to play out in our minds the possibilities of paths not taken.

The Place Beyond the Pines, when all is said and done, has much the same effect. We look at its characters at the end, and we know where those paths went, how they got to the place they are, and we understand so deeply that feeling of nostalgia, of contemplation, of playing pretend with an echo in our heads. This is what The Place Beyond the Pines is, beyond a crime thriller and a chase scene and domestic drama and love story. It’s that moment of closing a book, of looking at a photo. It is regret and acceptance and the strange feeling of possibility into which they somehow translate. This is a brave, unprecedented narrative, by turns exciting, cold, languorous, intense, heated, inscrutable, and heartbreaking. This is lives trapped in amber. This is the film of the year.

On DVD: Tom Hanks’ Crowning Performance in “Captain Phillips”

In 2009, off the coast of Somalia, the MV Maersk Alabama became the first American ship boarded by pirates in over 200 years. After an unsuccessful hijacking attempt, the pirates escaped on the ship’s self-contained lifeboat with Captain Richard Phillips, who they then attempted to ransom off to the U.S. Navy.

If you’re familiar with director Paul Greengrass’s other films of the past decade – United 93, the final two Bourne movies starring Matt Damon, and the underrated Green Zone – you should know some of what to expect from Captain Phillips. The action plays out moment-to-moment in intensely kinetic sequences where the camera frenzies over the scene and makes you feel like a silent, if dizzy, fly on the wall. It’s surprisingly effective when the hijackers chase and board the ship, but the real strength of feeling like we’re right there in the room comes when things are relatively calm. We’re allowed to spy on characters taking stock of their situation.

Early on, when Phillips (Tom Hanks) arrives at the port from which the Alabama is departing, we’re shown thousands upon thousands of shipping containers being moved from dock to dock. For most directors, this would warrant an establishing shot showing the impressive scale of the dock before quickly settling in on Hanks. For Greengrass, it’s an opportunity to show both how intimidating the port is and how functional Phillips is within it. He energetically films the controlled chaos of the port and plays up its belittling size, but he also finds the rusted, used, scraped bits and makes sure we see these, too. It all reflects Phillips himself, a very intelligent, competent captain with a brash, nose-to-the-grindstone personality.

First-time actor Barkhad Abdi plays Muse, the captain of Phillips’s captors, and his Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor was spot on. First of all, he holds the movie just as much as Hanks does. Secondly, when watching a movie like this, it’s very easy to adopt a mentality of us vs. them and ignore that Muse becomes a pirate because he can’t be a fisherman – developed countries have fished his ocean clean. Muse captures ships under the threat of execution if he refuses. Even when his bosses make $6 million from a ransom, Muse sees none of it and remains living in squalor. It’s easy to see Hanks as a likeable actor playing a workaday hero. Unfortunately, it’s even easier to see someone speaking a different language playing a villain and react in terror. The Oscar nomination goes far in reminding us that those villains are played by actors just as likeable as Hanks.

Another nice touch is the treatment of the Navy SEAL team. There’s no trumped-up Hollywood resentment between Captain Frank Castellano, whose U.S.S. Bainbridge was the first to reach the lifeboat, and the leader of the SEAL team who later takes command of the situation. Castellano does his job to the best of his ability and then moves into a support role. There’s no arguing about the best course of action as in a Name-Your-Tom-Clancy film – people just do their jobs.

One of the best shots of the film occurs directly after the mission is completed. Their rifles packed up, the SEAL team simply leaves the deck. There is no one-liner or self-congratulation after shooting someone, whether deserved or not. They do what anyone does after a difficult job: they go home. That realism and accessibility makes them feel more heroic than any amount of patriotic fist-pumping could achieve.

When Captain Phillips arrived in theaters, it was a week after Gravity had fused groundbreaking camera techniques with incredible special effects, acting rehearsed at obsessive-compulsive levels, and swelling, orchestral music. It was an unreal experience polished to perfection. Captain Phillips shows us what can be done with quick edits, real sets, and improvised acting. This is the best performance Hanks has given in years, maybe in his career. There is zero separation between character and actor, and the final scene is the most raw, honest performance I’ve seen on film in a long, long time. Both films show that two artists can create the same feeling using completely different techniques, but also that two great artists can create a thousand different feelings using only one.

Captain Phillips is rated PG-13 for its intensity, some violence, and for substance use.