{"id":2980,"date":"2014-02-04T13:47:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdcthereporter.com\/?p=2980"},"modified":"2015-12-14T13:52:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T18:52:47","slug":"year-end-report-kai-saccos-favorite-films-of-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mdcthereporter.com\/staging\/8357\/year-end-report-kai-saccos-favorite-films-of-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Year-End Report: Kai Sacco\u2019s Favorite Films of 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#10:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>TO THE WONDER<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smaller in scale to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Tree of Life<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s universal expanses, but more ambitious in intimacy, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To the Wonder <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is Terrence Malick at his most vulnerable. With each effort he burrows deeper and deeper into his subconscious, the next story more personal than the last, the marks of a man desperate to get ahold of his memories before they disappear. His obsession with capturing the fragility of life isn\u2019t a sad one. Malick celebrates mortality instead of fearing it and that\u2019s what makes his filmmaking so cathartic. Empty rooms illuminated by the morning sun tell of a house once lived in, a passion once shared; herds of horses and buffalo roaming the plains advise us that harmony is obtained through our acceptance of the universe; a newly built church and the lonely priest that wanders through its aisles paint a sorrowful portrait of a man falling out of faith with his partner, his creator. In all of this, Malick asks us to watch rather than listen. His ability to adapt emotions into moving images is blindingly beautiful and unbelievably surreal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#9:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just when you thought Derek Cianfrance couldn\u2019t make a bleaker film than his 2010 take on contemporary love, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blue Valentine<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, he hits you with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Place Beyond the Pines<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, an uncomfortably dark parable where hope is but a word and despair, a reality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As with Refn\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only God Forgives <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and Korine\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Spring Breakers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Cianfrance situates his characters in a kind of purgatory that\u2019s littered with individuals who will not be granted exit until they acknowledge their own inhumanity. It\u2019s an interesting through-line that Cianfrance lingers on a lot more actively than Korine does in his film. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Breakers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is more of an abstraction, whereas <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pines<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is almost always deafeningly brutal in its realistic sensibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many complained that the movie suffered from its lengthy runtime; I say that it (barely) suffers from not being long enough. At 140-minutes\u2014roughly 135 without credits\u2014each of the film\u2019s three stories are given about 45 minutes each, when it should have been at least an hour. Imagine <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pines <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as an epic, three-part (an hour respectively) miniseries on HBO. Whoa.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If not for the strong leads in Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and Bradley Cooper (who carry the heavy lifting in the first two acts) the three-part format of the story could have turned out to be an unmoving experiment. Alas, that\u2019s not the case. I have an immense level of admiration for Cianfrance in even attempting to pull something like this off as a movie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#8:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>SIDE EFFECTS<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Side Effects <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">found a fifth slot residency in my <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Midyear Report<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Here\u2019s what I said:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018To take a line from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Game of Thrones<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cyou know nothing\u201d if you truly believe that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Side Effects<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will be Steven Soderbergh\u2019s last cinematic foray but if it is, it\u2019s a damn good one. I had minor issues with the loopiness of the third act, but after a second viewing I began to realize that the movie doesn\u2019t take itself too seriously, so I shouldn\u2019t either.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The characters are all a different shade of wacky and the looming storm they\u2019re involved in echoes that to an insane degree; what really makes the movie work is how subtle it manages to be amidst the utter chaos. Little details such as the way a character\u2019s reflection in a mirror hints at their mental instability, or the use of claustrophobic framing to signify psychological captivity, adds a certain level of richness to the narrative that puts Soderbergh\u2019s superior talents as a cinematographer and director on the highest of pedestals.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I watched <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Side Effects<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for a third time before putting this list together and it grew on me even more. I feel about the same way I did six months ago, with the exception of the \u2018minor issues\u2019 I had with the third act. Those have subsided proving to me this is a film whose merits grow with each additional viewing. (Soderbergh\u2019s work has a tendency to do that). I deeply regretted excluding <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magic Mike <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">from my 2012 year end list\u2014I\u2019m not allowing that to happen again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>#7:<\/em> <\/strong><b><i>AT ANY PRICE<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A two-trillion-dollar market lies in the golden fields of Iowa, a world unknown to most where \u2018traders are betting on corn like it\u2019s the new gold,\u2019 says one character in writer-director Ramin Bahrani\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At Any Price<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. With their backstabbing and under-the-table dealings, the farmers in this region are what you would call, \u201cThe Wolves of the Corn Belt.\u201d Expand or die. Get big or get out. Unlike Martin Scorsese\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wolf of Wall Street <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which hides the victims of its characters\u2019 wrongdoings, asking the audience to perform the finger-wagging, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At Any Price<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> places them front-and-center detailing the outer consequences of victory no matter the cost.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018One moment defines your life, one decision becomes your legacy,\u2019 the trailer for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Place Beyond the Pines<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> muses, another excellent, previously mentioned narrative of cause and effect. Where that movie opens into change and then deals with it, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At Any Price <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">builds toward change and ends on it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bahrani tells his story by using the multi-generational ownership of farmland and the agricultural warfare that goes with it as backdrop. He centers on shrewd, cropping powerhouse, Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid), and son, Dean Whipple (Zac Efron), a stock car racing prodigy with NASCAR in his sights, not the family business. He resents his father, seeing a man whose present in body not soul. Henry\u2019s not the man Dean needs him to be and he\u2019s certainly not the father he wants him to be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quaid gives a performance of such assuredness that you can\u2019t imagine the movie working without him. Through his character\u2019s unremitting grin and eternal optimism is a darkly humorous insincerity that Bahrani plays with throughout the entire course of the film. \u2018Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,\u2019 Henry says to a client while holding an open cooler full of Butterfingers and Twix candy bars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my review of the film, I say, \u2018<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At Any Price<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a movie that gets better as it moves along and that\u2019s especially true when it takes a wild turn into some fairly bleak territory during the third act. The weight of a thousand bad decisions force the characters into dramatically altering their life\u2019s path and you can feel that gravity by the time the credits roll. There isn\u2019t much hope for them, and Bahrani isn\u2019t concerned with tying up the story with a pretty bow and sending everyone home happy.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#6:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>ONLY GOD FORGIVES<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ugly. Unwatchable. Pointless. Stupid. Crackpot porno kitsch. Pretentious pseudo-intellectual claptrap. Pseudo-stylistic rubbish. Stomach-churning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pick out any word or phrase with a negative connotation attached to it and there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019s already been used to describe <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only God Forgives<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Starting at its May 2013 premiere at Cannes, and leading up to its July release that year, reactions to Nicolas Winding Refn\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drive <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">follow-up spawned such strong factions of \u201clove it\u201d and \u201chate it\u201d commentaries that it shattered the glass ceiling of divisive filmmaking. Enjoyed <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drive<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, did you? Well that doesn\u2019t matter because this is a completely different animal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here, Refn places Ryan Gosling in the shoes of Julian, a stoic expatriate whose Bangkok kickboxing club serves as cover for a drug-smuggling operation. The offing of his psychopathic brother for brutally murdering a 16-year-old prostitute causes him to face a lifetime of anger and guilt. He begins to question his role in the world\u2014the existential crisis where personal existence is devalued by the self. Julian\u2019s pessimism is clearly old belief but only now does he acknowledge it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Matthew McConaughey\u2019s Rust Cohle in the HBO crime show, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">True Detective<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, expressed the following sentiment that Julian would likely share if more communicable:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018I think human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware\u2014nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We\u2019re creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self\u2014a secretion of sensory experience and feeling programmed with total assurance that we are each \u201csomebody,\u201d when, in fact, everybody\u2019s nobody.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cohle goes on to explain that it\u2019s that very programming which causes us to obsessively seek out answers to an existence that is likely meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before even meeting him, Julian is plagued by visions of an ex-cop named Chang: a wakizashi-wielding \u201cAngel of Vengeance\u201d\u2014a god dressed in devil\u2019s clothing\u2014who is able to command an entire room of people by his presence alone. He marches around the seedy streets of the Bangkok underground (Julian\u2019s purgatory) with his police force of disciples, slashing away at the cancerous cells that threaten to prevent his city\u2019s inhabitants from having a future. He is the Almighty Father around these parts and his sword is what turns the disobedient into the obedient. Driven by instinct, Julian seeks out this seemingly mythological man without really knowing why. Reclamation of body and soul is needed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In its patient direction, refusal of structured writing, fragrant cinematography and ethereal score, the neon-soaked bloodbath that is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only God Forgives <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">feels like a therapy session of Refn\u2019s not meant to be seen by the public. This is punk-rock cinema and I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#5:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>SPRING BREAKERS<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">James Franco\u2019s ardent rapper, Alien, is the Oz of Pinellas County; the Wizard of West Florida\u2019s pristine beaches; a magician whose illusions have become him. His tricks and promise of a great show attract all from far and wide. He is the ruler of the land, the king of the weeklong fiasco known as \u201cspring break\u201d where white sunglasses, cargo shorts, frat boys, promiscuous girls, pick-up trucks and sexual objectification litter the sand and pollute the sea. But as Meredith Vickers tells her dying father who seeks immortality in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prometheus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u2018A king has his reign and then he dies. It\u2019s inevitable.\u2019 But finality is a mistruth. There\u2019s always another watching the throne. The show must go on and the filth must continue permeating our society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to talk about a great piece of modern-day expressionism, look no further than Harmony Korine\u2019s neon-bacchanalian nightmare, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Spring Breakers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where an entire culture is swallowed up and spat out. T &amp; A, booze and drugs, cash and guns: Korine takes familiar tangibles and creates a terrifying and surreal focus on that sans-souci period of adventurous filth, where high school and college kids gather for a week of unfiltered debauchery. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Spring Breakers <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is gorgeous, brutal, funny, masterfully directed, and impossible to forget, and features an insanely committed Franco whose character possesses him completely. \u2018My real name\u2019s Al, but truth be told, I ain\u2019t from this planet, y\u2019all.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#4:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>BEFORE MIDNIGHT<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s interesting and rather brilliant how Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy found ways to progress a story over the course of three films that largely consist of long passages of dialogue where the various fragments of the human construct are dissected in an attempt to find meaning behind existence itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before Sunrise<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (1995) examined the fleeting moments of everyday life and how a thousand connections can strengthen one; <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before Sunset<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2004) asked if love could truly prevail over the realities of life; and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before Midnight <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(2013) explores the notion that an unyielding relationship isn\u2019t founded on the love of one but the love of life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Midnight<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is inarguably the coldest and most detached of the three: raw in its honesty and brutal in its affections\u2014a filmic ice bath. The seemingly unreserved prospects of the future that Jesse and Celine held onto so passionately in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sunrise<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are all but gone and have been replaced with percolating disdain, unattractive accusations and the acknowledgment of monogamy as a hopeless practice. The film is a perfect portrayal of mid-life tedium, the moment where the constant motion of the world around you comes to a deafening halt and the answer on how to move forward is a blueprint of layered perplexities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s deep conversation amongst fans of the trilogy as to what order a newcomer to the series should see them in. The idea is that the first one you watch should be in accordance to your age since all three films cover different stages of adulthood. I say forget that and watch them in sequential order. Not because I have ataxophobia, but because I believe these films should be viewed as a complete study, rather than individual studies, of how life is able to gradually lose its color.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#3:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>RUSH<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018When a man stops wanting a man stops living,\u2019 says the quote that defines a large portion of 2013\u2019s filmography. Like Julian in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only God Forgives <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">who seeks humanity in the unknown, racers James Hunt and Niki Lauda in Ron Howard\u2019s return to glory, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rush<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, use their Formula One cars to greet death and chase life; their destination is the same but the journey different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Englishman Hunt (played by an awesome Chris Hemsworth) drives without fear, constantly challenging the wisdom of victory at any price. Austrian Lauda (played by an incredible Daniel Br\u00fchl) is the opposite, a cautious and calculated individual who respects death and all of its might. Enemies they were not. Two individuals that needed one another to live, they were.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peter Morgan\u2019s screenplay is lean and efficient, giving adequate time to both Hemsworth and Br\u00fchl\u2019s characters between the action, while not allowing the film to overstay its welcome; Anthony Dod Mantle\u2019s cinematography is so rich in color and vibrant in energy that you can practically smell the paint on the cars and feel the heat on the asphalt; Hans Zimmer\u2019s score is Zimmer all the way through but there\u2019s a certain aggressiveness present that\u2019s new to his notes; and Ron Howard\u2019s direction is the most lively it\u2019s been since 2001\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Beautiful Mind<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. You can feel his eagerness to tell this story in each and every shot constructed with all the perfectionism of Niki Lauda. This is a Hollywood film done absolutely right\u2014a film that may in fact be perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#2:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>THE HUNT<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I first saw <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hunt <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">last March at the Miami International Film Festival, I wasn\u2019t prepared for the complete and utter evisceration of emotions I\u2019d been handed. I\u2019d forgotten that it competed at Cannes 2012 and wasn\u2019t even aware of its central premise (purposely, though, as a close friend told me it was best to walk into the movie knowing as little as possible). When those end credits rolled I was affected in a way I hadn\u2019t been in years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The movie is based around the baffling notion that children never lie. In the film, a kindergarten teacher (played by a powerhouse Mads Mikkelsen) is accused of showing his genitals and making sexual advances toward a young five or six-year-old girl. It\u2019s not about whether or not he\u2019s guilty (it\u2019s made known to the audience from the start that the accusations are false) but rather, how the town handles the situation. What the people do to Lucas in their neighborly Danish community is nothing short of a modern-day witch-hunt: hysteria replaces logic and friends become enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my review, I say, \u2018Mikkelsen usually plays characters that contain various shades of ugly (Le Chiffre in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Casino Royale<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and One Eye in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valhalla Rising<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), so it\u2019s nice to see him play a genuinely honest individual for once. The varied emotional level of vocal inflections and subtle facial expressions he brings to Lucas is what really makes the film work so well. You feel his confusion, angst, pain and the uncertainty of his vindication. (The jury at Cannes 2012 certainly thought so too as Mikkelsen went on to win Best Actor at the festival.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Out of European hands, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hunt<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> could have easily fell victim to the over-melodramatics and heavy-handedness that are commonly stock with these types of films; none of that is present here. What Vinterberg does is much more calculated: he compliments the gravity of the situation with escalating madness, sure-footing and a need to treat the characters as his own Gustave Le Bon-pawns of social psychology. It\u2019s likely one of the most maddening films you\u2019ll see all year but also one of the most engrossing.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#1:<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><b><i>OBLIVION<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018There\u2019s nothing more powerful in a director\u2019s arsenal than a strategically placed song,\u2019 Will Ferrell once said. That couldn\u2019t be truer with Joseph Kosinki\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oblivion<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where Anthony Gonzalez of M83 and Joseph Trapanese fashion a score of blinding grandness and intoxicating romanticism. My imagination was captured as soon as the film started with the piece <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jack\u2019s Dream<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> lulling into a world of nostalgic drama as the animated Universal logo gracefully entered the screen. The music works so well because Kosinski already had the euphoric sounds of M83 in mind before penning the screenplay. \u2018I went back and I found my first treatment for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oblivion<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from 2005 and it had listed in the treatment a soundtrack of M83,\u2019 he said in an interview.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oblivion <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is in complete surrender to its score but in the best possible way. This is a film that\u2019s narratively and sonically driven. Swooping aerial shots of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle between hulking, marooned tankers, gorgeously eerie sequences of the aptly named Bubble Ship navigating between the caverns of a desolate New York City, and the majesty of a home nestled in the clouds, are but a few of the moments that inspire a frenzied level of unbound wonderment thanks to Gonzalez and Trapanese\u2019s soaring and hopeful sounds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kosinki\u2019s film entranced me in a way that helped remind me why I fell in love with these particular types of epics in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the opening of Alexander Huls incredible piece on RogerEbert.com about the \u2018<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/balder-and-dash\/childs-play-the-degeneration-of-blockbusters\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">degeneration of blockbusters<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u2019 he says, \u2018Blockbusters have never a particular source of maturity or sophistication. That\u2019s been mostly by design, given that they\u2019ve always traded in trying to capture something of our inner child\u2019s fantasy and awe. It\u2019s why we\u2019re often prone to framing the success and failure of big-budget spectacles in those terms: \u2018<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pacific Rim <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was great and made me feel like a kid again\u2019 vs. \u2018<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Transformers <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was awful and only a kid would like it.\u2019 But thanks to a growing emphasis on mass-destruction in recent years, blockbusters have started to feel like they\u2019re not so much facilitating child-like states as they are regressing into them.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oblivion <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is excluded from this group. It never feels forced; it never feels like it\u2019s in a rush; and it never feels like its director is only interested in satiating his own wants and needs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Towering robots versus giant monsters, and superheroes saving the day didn\u2019t make me feel like a kid again this year: a flawed, but elegantly crafted, piece of science fiction with heart, a youthful exuberance and desire to amaze did. Sometimes, it takes a story like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oblivion<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that looks toward the past to remind us why we were so excited about the future as a child.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>#10: TO THE WONDER Smaller in scale to The Tree of Life\u2019s universal expanses, but more ambitious in intimacy, To the Wonder is Terrence Malick at his most vulnerable. With each effort he burrows deeper and deeper into his subconscious, the next story more personal than the last, the marks of a man desperate to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ae"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Year-End Report: Kai Sacco\u2019s Favorite Films of 2013 - The Reporter: The Student Newspaper at Miami Dade College<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mdcthereporter.com\/year-end-report-kai-saccos-favorite-films-of-2013\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Year-End Report: Kai Sacco\u2019s Favorite Films of 2013 - The Reporter: The Student Newspaper at Miami Dade College\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"#10: TO THE WONDER Smaller in scale to The Tree of Life\u2019s universal expanses, but more ambitious in intimacy, To the Wonder is Terrence Malick at his most vulnerable. 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