Yesterday I gave you my expert take on the weirdest movies of 2013; today, I’ll be giving you my opinions of the best movies of the year, without regard to genre. This year, there’s only one title which overlaps both lists, although I imagine the average popcorn-chomper would find the top two entries on this “mainstream” list to be far too weird for their tastes. Without further ado, here’s your countdown of my top movies of 2013:

10. Drug War: The days of John Woo, Jackie Chan and the Hong Kong New Wave of the 80s and 90s already seem like a part of the distant past. Although many of the luminaries of that movement dispersed to Hollywood or Australia after the Chinese took over the town in 1997, one director who chose not to flee for greener pastures was Johnnie To. He has continued to churn out action-oriented gangster films. At bottom his latest epic Drug War is nothing fancy, but it is a superior police procedural with thrilling action scenes that remind us of the salad days of HK past. Plus, it is one of the few movies to explain why deaf-mutes make the best footsoldiers in your drug army.

9. Before Midnight: If you like actors’ showcases and relationship talk sprinkled with references to myth and philosophy, have I got the film for you! Richard Linklater returns, along with stars Julie Delphy and Ethan Hawke, for the third peek in 18 years at the relationship between Jesse (now a successful novelist) and headstrong Celine. Urbane and blisteringly painful at times.

8. Spring Breakers: Harmony Korine‘s lightly experimental take on today’s nihilistic youth hearkens back (in spirit) to his 1995 screenplay for Kids. In our rundown of the weirdest movies of , I wrote that “critics who had previously loathed Korine’s grungy, transgressive works tended to view this 2013more satirical fare favorably, while the Trash Humpers set was largely unimpressed.” I confess that I am in the camp that treats this more polished work with a kinder pen. I think that the key to this movie’s success is that Korine has finally accepted that he is at heart an exploitation filmmaker working with an arthouse toolkit, rather than the other way around. James Franco should, but won’t, win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.

7. Mud: Part of a big year for Matthew McConaughey (who also impressed as the homophobic AIDS activist in Dallas Buyers Club), this film casts him as Mud, a romantic miscreant hiding out on an uninhabited island. When an adolescent boy finds Mud and decides to help him reconcile with his lost love, will the impractical loser be able to live up to the kid’s idealism? Accomplished storytelling that weaves in multiple subplots and minor characters, blending drama, romance and adventure with a coming-of-age message that’s neither too bitter nor too sweet. Easy to recommend.

6. 12 Years a Slave: Adapted from the memoirs of Solomon Northrup, a 19th century African-American who was born a free man in New York but kidnapped and sold into slavery, 12 Years is likely to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and I won’t complain. It features fine acting by Michael Fassbender as a ruthless plantation owner, Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o as a much-abused “favorite” slave, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the noble Northrop. It’s a very good movie that falls short of being great, but it earns bonus points for being the best theatrical film ever made about American slavery. The lack of other quality movies exploring this inherently dramatic historical outrage is frankly bizarre, and it’s equally strange that it fell to a British director to make the (so far) definitive film about the topic.

5. All Is Lost: Survival movies were a major theme of 2013, and J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost was the purest of them all. Robert Redford stars as a man Continue reading TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2013: THE MAINSTREAM EDITION →

The air is crisp, and your breath hangs in front of you in clouds. Or, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, the air is balmy, and sweat drips into your eyes. You’re wondering whether you still have that herbal hangover remedy recipe that you used last year (was it ginseng and ma huang, or gingko and milk thistle?) You’re trying to remember the words to “Auld Lang Syne” and deciding precisely which acquaintances you’ll be forgetting in the upcoming year. And you’re rushing to the Internet to see what the experts have declared to be the ten blankiest blanks of the annum just past.

Yes, it’s that season again, the time critics look forward to all year—time to grind out another year’s end best of list to fill up a few inches of real estate on your readers’ web browsers . In weird movie terms, 2013 was a very mixed year. On the one hand, there’s no obvious consensus weird classic (like 2012’s Holy Motors) jumping out at you from this year’s lineup. But what 2013 lacked in depth it made up in breadth. We weren’t scraping to come up with ten truly weird contestants this year; instead, we were reluctantly leaving off stuff like the juvenile-delinquents-from-outer-space musical The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, which would have been a shoo-in in 2012. This year the movies at the bottom of our rankings give the ones at the top a run for their money. It may ultimately be quantity over quality, but it did make it easier to pick out something challenging from the “new releases” section to watch on a Saturday night, which makes 2013 a successful year in our book. So now, in random order—the weirdest of orders—here’s our survey of the strangest of the strange from the past year.

4. Upstream Color: A Thief infects a woman with a will-sapping worm and empties her bank account; she’s eventually psychically linked to a pig, but fortunately meets a man whose gone through the same experience. Their pigs also fall in love. Solving the question of what literally happens in Upstream Color is only the beginning of the riddle of Shane Carruth‘s bewildering followup to his confusing but logically rigorous time travel film Primer.

8. Antiviral: This queasy mixture of satire and body horror starts from the premise that in the future, people will pay good money to become infected with viruses that have recently been coursing through the bloodstream of their favorite celebrities. Director Brandon Cronenberg promises to carry on the disreputable work of his sire, David.

10. The ABCs of Death: Averaging four-and-a-half minutes per letter of the alphabet, this twenty-six short film primer on death contains three extremely weird entries (two of them from Japan, natch), along with a host of blander moments. Uneven by nature, with lots of senseless gore and “toilet horror,” but watch for the deadly masturbation contests, Nazi furries, zombie clowns, and the Asian Dr. Strangelove. Noboru Iguchi‘s “F is for Fart” is an apocalypse of bad taste guaranteed to have the average viewer scurrying for the exit, hitting the eject button, or aborting the download (check all that apply).

1. John Dies at the End: Two slackers take the drug “Soy Sauce” which allows them to see an upcoming invasion by inter-dimensional cockroaches and eventually travel to an alternate universe to save the world. John dies, or does he? Many fans of the witty original novel hated this adaptation; fortunately for us, we don’t read books, and so we loved every confusing-as-hell minute of this messed-up mish-mashterpiece of a movie.

6. The Rambler: Absurdly cool Dermot Mulroney keeps his shades and cowboy hat on at all times as he rambles through a weird West full of Continue reading TOP 10 WEIRDEST MOVIES OF 2013 →

Sure, this site focuses on weird films, but that’s not all we watch. We love movies. How will we understand what lies at the extremes if we don’t keep a finger on the pulse of “normal” cinema? Great craftsmanship is great craftsmanship, and if every movie was made to push boundaries, things would get boring pretty fast. With that in mind, we hereby release our list of the best movies of 2012, regardless of genre and irrespective of conventionality. You may notice that three of these films also made our Weirdest Movies of 2012 list, but in a different order than they appear here; that’s because this list is based strictly on the quality of filmmaking without regard to any consideration of weirdness. With that prologue out of the way, let’s dive right into it, starting with #10:

10. Seven Psychopaths – Playwright-turned-director Martin McDonagh‘s second feature film (after In Bruges) sports a hip, manly cast (Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits) and brisk violence, mixed with an intricate script that sometimes threatens to go into meta-movie territory (Farrel’s character is working on a screenplay entitled Seven Psychopaths). This quirky caper comedy involving dognapping and serial killers is reminiescent of classic Quentin Tarantino and will be remembered for a couple of exchanges that became immediate classics, including a bit where an unimpressed Walken is held up at gunpoint that caps off an impressive highlight reel for the beloved character actor.

9. The Dark Knight Rises – It’s not the revelation that The Dark Knight was, but it’s a fitting end to a trilogy that brought arthouse sensibilities to comic book characters without sacrificing action. Christopher Nolan may be the only director capable of making superhero movies for adults, complete with complicated plots and character development. His Dark Knight will be missed.

8. Lincoln  – The title implies that this will be a biopic covering the life of the 16th president, but the movie actually focuses very narrowly on a single political subject: Lincoln’s efforts to get the 13th Amendment banning slavery passed. The “Honest Abe” depicted here walks an ethical tightrope as he tries to swing reluctant Democrats to support the controversial legislation, resorting to bribery, misdirection and political threats. Stephen Spielberg manages to keep the dry subject matter engaging, helped along greatly by an able (hee hee) performance from Daniel Day-Lewis as the Great Emancipator, supported by Sally Fields as Mary Todd and Tommy Lee Jones as obnoxiously idealistic Radial Republican Thaddeus Stevens. It’s pure Oscar bait, but it’s good Oscar bait. It’s got gravitas out the butt.

7. Argo – Solid thriller from director Ben Affleck detailing the real-life tale of six U.S. diplomats who, aided by a CIA operative, escaped Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis by pretending to be a movie crew scouting locations for a fake sci-fi extravaganza. John Goodman and Alan Arkin supply welcome comic relief as a pair of Hollywood insiders who help agent Affleck implement the crazy scheme. After sitting through the tense final half hour, you’ll never complain you had a tough time going through airport security again.

6. Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! – We weren’t kidding about naming this loose remake of the surrealist epic The Holy Mountain composed entirely out of dog footage clipped from Hollywood movies, instructional DVDs and public access programs our Weirdest Movie of 2012, and we’re not kidding when we say it should be counted among the best movies of any sort released this year. It’s cutting edge, utterly original and, if nothing else, it’s the year’s funniest comedy, with triple the laughs per minute of a big budget misfire like 21 Jump Street (a movie made for people whose sense of humor peaked in high school). It’s not “mainstream,” but it stands up on its own four paws against the best fluff the mainstream film Continue reading TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2012 – THE MAINSTREAM EDITION →