Anybody can throw together a list of sports movies like Rocky, Field of Dreams, and Hoosiers, but such a list overlooks several sports movies not centered around the bigger marquee sports. Here’s what you won’t see on this list: football, baseball, basketball, boxing, golf, tennis, hockey, soccer, or auto-racing. What does that leave, you ask? A pretty darn good top ten of alternative sports movies.
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What the hell is Gangster Squad doing on this set? The 2013 film wastes a talented cast on this idiotic take on a 50s cop (Josh Brolin) attempting to take down Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). What a piece of shit. The rest of this collection is actually quite good, making you wonder who decided to try and polish this turd by putting in in their company.
Ben Affleck‘s The Town is the second-weakest entry in the set, but the look at Boston bank robbers is at least occasionally compelling. While flawed, 2001’s Training Day is worth a look for the performances of Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke as the older detective introduces his new partner to his world.
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5 Film Collection: Gangsters Read More »
Personal journeys, isolation, the style of the 60’s and 70’s, self-destructive acts and debauchery, troubled romance, rivalries, and overcoming hardships – these were the major themes of the films that composed my list of the Top Movies of 2013. It turned out to be a strong year in movies as several films I thoroughly enjoyed failed to make this list. Rather than doing honorable mentions, I decided to stretch the list from 10 to 13 allowing me to include three more films I wanted to discuss but weren’t otherwise going to earn a mention on a list of the Top 10 Movies of 2013. Here then are the The Top 13 Movies of 2013.
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Based on Jordan Belfort‘s own accounts, The Wolf of Wall Street stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an aspiring stockbroker whose discovery of penny stocks, and how they could be used to earn a broker far more profit than an investor, led to his meteoric rise and eventual downfall. Reuniting with DiCaprio and choosing The Sopranos‘ Terence Winter to adapt Belfort’s book, director Martin Scorsese‘s three-hour comedy highlights the absurdity and tragedy of Belfort’s life on Wall Street while making a pretty strong argument for the entire industry’s inherently-flawed nature which only feeds on humanity’s worst impulses.
Three hours is too long for a comedy, any comedy, but I’ll give credit to Winter and Scorsese for producing the funniest movie I saw all year. Part of this is due to the nature of the story and how Scorsese chooses to frame it for maximum effect and part is in the casting. Jonah Hill (as Belfort’s best-friend and partner) and Matthew McConaughey (in the far smaller role of Belfort’s mentor) both provide bizarre, but also often hilarious, moments.
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2011 was a year centered firmly on both endings and beginnings, returns to greatness, nostalgic looks back, and terrifying looks forward. The year gave us stories centered on stars and filmakers of the past, the first silent film of the new millennium, and treatises on life, death, mental illness, and the end of the world.
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The 11 Best Films of 2011 Read More »
