Jonathan R. Lack’s 20 Next-Best Films Of 2013

I had had extreme, visceral reactions to several films in 2013, sudden outbursts of emotion prompted by the brilliance of the art or my depth of connection with the piece. Captain Phillips was different, however. Director Paul Greengrass has become so absurdly good at crafting cinematic tension, and here finds such a deep and complex thematic gear in which that tension operates, that my own visceral reaction to the film – feeling physically tense, literally moving to the edge of my seat, finding myself pausing for increasingly long durations between breaths – lasted from about the 45-minute mark all the way on to the end, at which point I felt nearly as broken and conflicted as the title character. Leads Barkhad Abdi and Tom Hanks are both terrific, with the film’s terrifying final moments probably representing the best work Hanks has ever done (and that is no small praise). Captain Phillips, both the performance and the film, are an absolute revelation.

Captain Phillips is still playing in select theatres, and will arrive on DVD and Blu-Ray January 21^st.

Jean Marc-Vallée doesn’t do anything particularly special in telling the story of Ron Woodroof, a homophobic rodeo cowboy who contracts AIDS and survives by smuggling and selling effective, but non-FDA approved, anti-viral medications, but the tale itself is so immensely compelling that he really doesn’t need to.

Woodroof’s story concerns a piece of history America has tried very hard to keep hidden – that much of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s was due to rampant Government obstructionism and medical incompetence – and the film is able to channel it through several fascinating characters, none more so than Woodroof himself, whose journey from homophobe to hero is convincing and touching.

Matthew McConaughey has never been better than he is here, and both he and the endlessly praised Jared Leto are great not just because of the physical commitment of their performances, but because in the midst of work that could so easily come across as gimmicky, they remember to build human, three-dimensional characters. I think Jennifer Garner is a pretty enormous weak link – she has never struck me as a hugely capable actress to begin with, but she’s asked to do more than she’s capable of here – but that only mars the film to a small extent. Dallas Buyers Club is a winner, and will serve as an effective teaching tool for some of the major problems of the AIDS epidemic for generations to come.

Dallas Buyers Club is now playing in theatres. 

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