7. Beasts of the Southern Wild
Tiny, unstoppable Quvenzhané Wallis tears through this awards-season dark horse,
a plaintive, magical exploration of life on the fringes, and of the places where love and
fear sit too closely together. Unsentimental, kind and dark, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts mixes
the realistic and the magical without romanticizing anything. Poverty, authority, danger
and freedom clash and meld, shaping the world for little Hushpuppy, her troubled father,
the people in their tight-knit bayou community, and the rest of us, out here in the equally
broken world of concrete fl oors and good intentions.
TOP 10
BY R I C K L E VI N
1. Sound of My Voice
Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling has been reincarnated in the person of a
talented and gorgeous 29-year-old writer/actor Brit Marling, who this year con-
tinued to play the risky M. Night Shyamalan card — and play it to perfection
— in a quiet, lyrical and haunting fi lm about a cult that may or may not be led
by a time-traveler from the future, played with fi lm-noir intensity by Marling
herself. Expertly paced by director Zal Batmanglij, who along with Marling
co-wrote the script, this movie tackles huge, existential, X-Files-type questions
with an ominous whisper that, by the end, turns into a silent scream capable of
rocking the foundations of belief.
8. Your Sister’s Sister
Lynn Shelton’s masterful comedy makes it look easy — what more do you need than
three fantastic actors, bantering in a cozy, well-appointed cabin in the woods? But there
are layers to Your Sister’s Sister, which takes a rom-com premise and twists it into some-
thing thoughtful and bittersweet, a fi lm that’s far more interested in how people get to
emotional places with each other than what they do once they’ve arrived. Mark Duplass
plays another slightly off-kilter fellow and makes it look fresh; Emily Blunt is fragile and
brash at once, and never better; and Rosemarie DeWitt, all dimpled prickly smiles and
sharp glances, is so good.
2. Martha Mary May Marlene
9. The Avengers/Cabin in the Woods
The Avengers was far greater than the sum of its parts — a fat handful of superhero
fl icks, none of which sustained the zing of the fi rst Iron Man. But Joss Whedon, with
his expertise leading excellent ensembles, pulled something pretty smart and altogether
entertaining out of the place where Iron Man’s attitude, Thor’s campiness, Hulk’s rage
and Captain America’s wholesomeness meet. As for Cabin in the Woods — directed by
Whedon collaborator Drew Goddard and written by Goddard and Whedon — it’s a clever,
self-aware mashup of Whedon’s types and hangups that makes fun of itself even as it builds
to a bloody, creepy climax based on the notion that terror creates its own mythology.
10. The Sessions
It was this or Rust and Bone for the tenth slot — two fi lms that sounded atrocious when
summarized but turned out to be intelligent, thoughtful and unapologetically affecting.
While Marion Cotillard and Matthias Shoenaerts were silent and physical in Rust and
Bone, in The Sessions, John Hawkes (as quadriplegic Mark O’Brien) and an unexpectedly
wise, vulnerable Helen Hunt talked their way through sex — slowly, carefully, delicately.
This is not the movie sex we expect, or are accustomed to, and its honesty feels almost
transgressive.
14
February 21, 2013 • eugeneweekly.com
Of course, any top-ten list would be incomplete did it not include at least one
John Hawkes-acted fi lm, and contra all the sex-lib ballyhoo, this psychological
thriller about the personal ravages of cult immersion (eek, a theme!) provided
Hawkes his juiciest, creepiest and best role of the year. Writer/director Sean
Durkin — working with a crackerjack cast that also included Sarah Paulson,
Elizabeth Olsen and Hugh Dancy — keeps a tight rein on the pace, the better to
evoke the simmering violence and convoluted (but sometimes aces-on) asocial
brain-fuck of millennial cults.
3. Cabin in the Woods
As devotees of horror know, a passion for scary movies is rather a losing
proposition. For every quality offering like Rosemary’s Baby, one has to wade
through hundreds of schlock slasher fl icks. This is why Cabin in the Woods,
co-written by Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard, is such a triumph: Not
only does this rich, creepy meta-movie turn the entire horror genre on its head,
but it does so in a way that is downright scary and hilarious. Cabin in the Woods
turns cliché into strength, and this story of fi ve kids in the woods rides a wave of
clever, creepy, exhilarating inversions right up to the doomsday fi nale.