My Seven Favorite Films of 2013

This post is also known as “The 2013 Golden Teddy Awards for Most Excellence in Film, Part 1.”

I don’t think the 2013 was much of a year for movies, since I spent a long, long time to find ten that I could unreservedly say I loved. And in the end I chose seven because the other three slots kept getting filled with movies that I had problems with even if I liked them. Most of those movies I liked because of one or two performances, or a performance and a script, or just the direction, and so on, but there were other things that bugged me a little too much. These seven are films for which everything comes together for me and I’ve found myself saying, “Oh, you have to see that.Continue…

No way. Way.

The-Way-Way-Back-imageLast year, when Nat Faxon and Jim Rash accepted the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay with Alexander Payner for The Descendants, a bunch of people watching the show said, “Wait, those guys?” Faxon is a dopey-faced blond who has appeared in countless TV sitcoms and B-movies, and bald and awkward Rash plays the hapless Dean Pelton in the cult NBC comedy Community. They weren’t just hammy bit actors, it seems; they could also write. Either that, or they were just edited by the great Payne. Now that their first feature, written and directed only by them, is out and it’s clear Faxon and Rash are not accidental Oscar winners. The Way, Way Back, a coming-of-age comedy set in a summer beach town and its local water park, is one of the best movies of the year: funny, moving, a crowd-pleasing anecdote to the bombastic action films dominating the theaters this summer. Continue…