The best of 2013

By Jake Coyle

AP Film Writer

111“12 Years a Slave”: Steve McQueen’s masterful adaptation of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir is simply a powerhouse. McQueen, I suspect, will never make a comedy; his three movies (“Shame,” “Hunger”) reveal him a harsh storyteller, drawn down dark rabbit holes. But his lack of sentimentality gives “12 Years a Slave” its clarity: a long overdue correction to cinema’s reluctant treatment of slavery. As Northup, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s soulful eyes carry us through a nightmare odyssey of America’s past.

2“Mud”: From the plantations of mid-19th century Louisiana, we travel up river to contemporary Arkansas in Jeff Nichols’ Twain-esque tale of boyhood on the Mississippi. With the wise-beyond-his-years Tye Sheridan as the 14-year-old Ellis, “Mud” is a full-hearted American fable.

3“Frances Ha”: Full disclosure: I’m in love with Greta Gerwig. That bias notwithstanding, Noah Baumbach’s latest — co-written by and starring Gerwig — is a lovely ode to its title character (who has much in common with Gerwig, herself). Frances is an idiosyncratic 27-year-old finding her place in New York; where the “Ha” comes from is answered in the film’s sweet final moment.

4“Inside Llewyn Davis”: Like Frances, Llewyn is a striving Manhattanite without an apartment or a steady job. But he’s much angrier about it. The Coen brothers’ melancholy story of a bitter, unfortunate folk singer is a wry commentary on the cruelness of fate, and melody born out of disharmony.

5“The Hunt”: In the most haunting film of the year, the weak binds of a seemingly close-knit Danish community disintegrate when a kindergarten teacher (Mads Mikkelsen) is unjustly accused of sexually assaulting a child.

6“The Great Beauty”: Fellini looms large in Paolo Sorrentino’s portrait of Rome in decadent decay. Sorrentino is an exquisite stylist (the opening minutes of his “Il Divo” are pure, blistering cinema), and “The Great Beauty” is manic and overstuffed. But it’s bursting with life. (Literally. It’s got a giraffe.)

7“Gravity”: So simple you could make the case that Alfonso Cuaron’s 3-D spectacle is a bit banal. But, man, is it something to look at. The movie won’t be remembered for its thin story, but at a time when television’s rise is much discussed, “Gravity” reinvigorated the big screen experience.

8“Blue Is the Warmest Color”: Several films this year were fascinating snapshots of lives in motion. The powerful, simply told Bill Moyers’ documentary “Two American Families” kept up with two struggling middle-class families for 20 years. And Richard Linklater has covered two decades in the lives of a Paris woman (Julie Delpy) and American writer (Ethan Hawke) in his day-in-a-life series, culminating in “Before Midnight.” But Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or-winner (also called “The Life of Adele: Chapters 1&2”) is the most memorable for its extreme closeness in portraying a teenager’s awakening to herself and the world. Adele Exarchopoulus’ performance is staggeringly open. The irony is that the infamous sex scenes in this flawed but arresting coming-of-age tale are easily the most artificial parts in it.

9“This Is the End”: The jokes just come and come. Nobody had a better time making a movie this year than Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and it’s written all over their self-parodying apocalypse comedy.

2Also: “Her,” “Nebraska,” “Rush,” “A Band Called Death,” “Elysium,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Captain Phillips,” “Upstream Color,” “Enough Said,” “Blue Jasmine”