Overstreet’s Favorite Films: 2013

It’s time to publish my list of the movies that inspired, impressed, and moved me most in 2013.

Annual Disclaimer: Notice, I didn’t say “the best films of 2012.” Nobody, not even the most experienced and devoted film scholar, can claim to report that. We experience, interpret, and remember art as individuals with particular strengths, weaknesses, memories, loves, and fears. When we share what moves, inspires, challenges, discomforts, and offends us, we reveal a lot about ourselves. I share this list so you know what meant the most to me in 2013. And if you want to understand why these films made an impression… well, that’s why I write reviews.

There are a lot of important films I have yet to see.

The first list is the World Premieres Edition: Films that played anywhere in the world for the first time in 2013.

The second list is the American Release Edition: This list includes only films that had their first commercial releases in the U.S. in 2013.

One more thing: If you want to understand the color-coding of the titles, as well as what this list really represents, read my introduction to the Looking Closer Favorite Films lists.

So, here they are: The films that inspired, moved, challenged, and intrigued me in 2012.

Red = Treasures, Purple = Favorites, Blue = Achievements, Gray = Decent/Noteworthy, Green = Unseen or Undecided

2013

FAVORITE FILMS: WORLD PREMIERES

(Movies that played for audiences for the first time in 2013, festivals and foreign countries included, according to IMDB.)

This Is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton)
Her (Spike Jonze)
The World’s End (Edgar Wright)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
The Kings of Summer (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)
Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass)
All is Lost (J. C. Chandor)
The Counselor (Ridley Scott)
Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
American Hustle (David O. Russell)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence)
The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann)
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (Adam McKay)
Stoker (Chan-wook Park)
The Way, Way Back (Nat Faxon, Jim Rash)
20 Feet from Stardom (Morgan Neville)
Monsters University (Dan Scanlon)
Byzantium (Neil Jordan)
The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski)
The Grandmaster (Kar Wai Wong)
Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green)
The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt)
Closure (Bryan Tucker)
Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve)
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery)
Warm Bodies (Jonathan Levine)

FAVORITE FILMS: AMERICAN RELEASES

This Is Martin Bonner
Museum Hours
Before Midnight
Upstream Color
Leviathan
Like Someone in Love
The Wolf of Wall Street
Short Term 12
Her
The World’s End
The Act of Killing
Frances Ha
To the Wonder
Stories We Tell
12 Years a Slave
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Kings of Summer
A Hijacking
Captain Phillips
The Counselor
The Great Beauty
Wrestling for Jesus: The Tale of T-Money*
All is Lost
Wolf Children
Mud
Fill the Void
Lore
Computer Chess
American Hustle
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The Great Gatsby
Stoker
The Way, Way Back
20 Feet from Stardom
Much Ado About Nothing
From Up on Poppy Hill 2011
Monsters University
Byzantium
The Lone Ranger
The Grandmaster
Prince Avalanche
The Spectacular Now
Prisoners
Philomena
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Warm Bodies

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