By and large, 2013 has been a middling year for cinema. The first four months of the year offered exceptionally little in the way of truly interesting or compelling commercially-released content, instead delivering a long string of uninspired, unengaging material that, while rarely awful, only occasionally piqued my interest. I found myself skipping a lot more films than I normally would, in part because I was busy working on other projects, and in part because what Hollywood had to offer seemed almost aggressively dull.
Since May, though, the year seems to have turned a corner, and while the number of new films I outright ‘love’ remains limited, there have been a healthy number of movies I like, sometimes very much. And even in the midst of those early months of tedium, there were some real gems, often unexpected, that are absolutely worth mentioning.
Now that we have entered July and passed the halfway point of the year, it seems appropriate to reflect, as I did last summer, on the Top 10 Films of 2013 So Far. This was a much easier exercise to undertake in 2012, where I opened my mid-year Top 10 list by declaring 2012 “a fantastic year for movies,” and explaining that “never has my job been so enjoyable as it has been over the past six months.” That is not true this time around, but there are definitely 10 films I feel comfortable putting on this list, with a small number of honorable mentions to boot.
As always with this sort of list, some basic rules apply: I have to have actually seen the films in question, meaning that although there are several movies I have been kicking myself for missing (Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha comes immediately to mind, for instance), I obviously cannot include them on this list. I apologize if the countdown seems incomplete without them. This only reflects my personal experiences with the films of 2013, and is based in my own personal tastes. If you disagree, more power to you – please share your thoughts in the comments, but be polite, both to me and, more importantly, your fellow commenters.
Other than that, enjoy this list, and look forward to the ‘Worst of 2013’ equivalent later this week…
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