Free State of Jones

Don't believe what you've heard.

Interstellar, Diplomacy

Interstellar

Diplomacy





Watching "Interstellar" is like sitting through a seminar in astrophysics at the Maharishi University.

The Top Ten Films of 2013: #4

#4

Dallas Buyers Club

Matthew McConaughey continues to reaffirm his status as the best working actor in Hollywood, filling in the gaps in Craig Borten's and Melisa Wallack's fairly thin script for "Dallas Buyers Club," about Ron Woodroof, a homophobic electrician diagnosed with HIV after blacking out on the job.

Mud

I haven’t seen a coming-of-age adventure story quite like “Mud” maybe since “Stand By Me” almost three decades ago. Though set in the present, “Mud” has that film’s timeless quality, like a lived experience remembered with precision and powerfully felt.

The Best Films of 2012: #1

I'm delighted to note that all of my top six films are both artistically meritorious and a lot of fun, each with a great deal of humor. That's certainly true of my choice for the best film of 2012.

It's William Friedkin's "Killer Joe," a loaded gun of a movie that fires itself straight into the collective American conscious, with a final sequence so iconic and indelible it instantly enters the pantheon of great moments in cinema. It's the kind of picture that - had its NC-17 rating not kept it from a wider audience - all of America might have been talking about (the kind Time used to run cover stories on).



Working from a screenplay by Tony-winning playwright Tracy Letts ("August: Osage County"), Friedkin - who also topped my 1985 list with the all-time great "To Live and Die in L.A." - constructs his picture primarily as a series of elaborate set pieces, each of which lasts 20 to 30 minutes. By the end of the first, I knew I was on "Killer Joe's" wavelength. This establishing sequence introduces Chris (Emile Hirsch), a small-time Texas coke dealer who's into some bad men for 6 G's and whose mom, with whom he's been living, just found and stole all his blow.



His cute little ass on the line, Chris hightails it to the trailer park where his laconic, resigned, dim-bulb dad Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and va-va-voom stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon) maintain custody of his younger sister, Dottie (Juno Temple). Dottie's ethereal and otherworldly and not quite right in the head - she sees everything, including visions - but understands more than you might think. Chris gets nowhere with Ansel ("I've never had a thousand dollars in my whole life"), and, desperate for quick cash, hits on a murder-for-hire plot aimed at the $50,000 insurance policy on his mom's life.



In one of the first signs the movie is seriously fucked up, Ansel and Sharla quickly agree to the plan and turn their attention to divvying up the booty. They intend to keep it from Dottie, but needn't bother. "I heard you talking about killing Momma," she walks out of her room and intones. "I think it's a good idea." With that, they make the call to "Killer" Joe Cooper, a Dallas police detective who "does a little business on the side."



Killer Joe is one of the great, mythic characters in recent film, a man of menace both overt and under-the-surface, who in his tight blue shirt, black cowboy hat, and leather cop paraphernalia insists on gentlemanly conduct and language even while effecting acts of inhuman brutality. As Joe, Matthew McConaughey gives the defining performance of his career, the capstone of a marvelous movie year that also included good work in "Bernie" and "Magic Mike."



Letts' screenplay surely deserves the Academy Award. At times it's almost painfully witty. Even the insults exchanged among Chris, Ansel, Sharla and Joe - tossed off matter-of-factly rather than with evident malice - had me sitting up in bed at night laughing. (Think how simple and elegant a put-down it is when Chris tells Ansel, "Dad, you can't tell time.") Hirsch makes a highly likable lead, often bug-eyed at what's happening around him. Gershon and especially Church richly deserve Oscar nominations. Church's Ansel is a weak-willed man to begin with, happy - almost relieved - to concede his husbandly duties to Joe.



I walked out of the theater so juiced I wanted to walk right back in and see it again. Alive with the thrilling sensation of the new, "Killer Joe" - along with "Django Unchained" (and at this level we're truly splitting hairs) - is one that film lovers will still be talking about a decade from now.

The Best Films of 2012: #6

I'm always excited to see Richard Linklater's name attached to a new film. I know I'll never see the same thing twice from this protean director, who's had his share of dogs (such as the experimental film adaptation of the play "Tape") but has also made my top-ten list three times: with 2001's "Waking Life," 2004's "Before Sunset," and this year's "Bernie," the true-life story of Bernie Tiede, a beloved assistant funeral director in Carthage, Texas.

The Paperboy, The Oranges

The Paperboy

The Oranges

Both have been trashed by critics, but I'm going to recommend "The Paperboy" and "The Oranges," two films with nothing in common but a strong sense of self. They know exactly what they mean to do, and do it.

Killer Joe

You won’t soon forget “Killer Joe.” It’s a loaded gun of a movie that fires itself straight into the collective American conscious, with a final scene as iconic and indelible as Glenn Close resurrecting from a bathtub in “Fatal Attraction” or Javier Bardem asking a store clerk to call a coin flip for his life in “No Country for Old Men.” In August 2012 in America, either you’ve seen “Killer Joe” or you haven’t, and if you have, you’re talking about it.

Magic Mike

Some movies must be seen in first run, at a theater full of screaming women (or men, as the case may be). Such is the case with Steven Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike,” which would be much drearier to watch alone at home.

Headhunters, Bernie, Sound of my Voice, Elles, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Headhunters

Bernie

Sound of my Voice

Elles

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

A good weekend at the multiplex began with the well-made Norwegian thriller "Headhunters." It's over-the-top fun with a few memorable scenes, though the story itself doesn't stand up to strict scrutiny.