Hollywood’s attempts at Oscar-worthy filmmaking occasionally stumble over good intentions and overheated messages. This year, the film industry buckled down to focus on smart storytelling, patriotism and the delicacies of romance in a way that made 2013 a banner year for films.
1. American Hustle: The Fighter. Silver Linings Playbook. And now American Hustle. Director David O’Russell, once best known for his spat with Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees, is on a streak unlike any in recent memory. Pinpoint period recreations are just the beginning of this Abscam-based tale, one that doesn’t bury itself in partisanship but sticks to grand storytelling and bravura turns across the board.
2. Captain Phillips: Tom Hanks reminds us he’s both the best Everyman Hollywood can offer and knows how to align himself with the industry’s best directors. It helps that this ripped from reality thriller doesn’t chart a politically correct course that minimizes the barbarism of the bad guys. Instead, we get riveting sequences, a flawed but fascinating hero and arguably the best five minutes of Hanks’s career to wrap the saga. The movie’s stealth pro-gun message is an added bonus as is its treatment of the military members who helped bring about the true story’s happy ending.
3. Lone Survivor: Hollywood didn’t want to make it, in part because its pro-Navy SEALs focus might rub foreign audiences the wrong way. Director Peter Berg, licking his wounds from the formulaic Battleship, knew he had to make the movie to honor the real-life fallen SEALs. Berg’s passion pays off handsomely with this gritty tribute to our military heroes. It’s more than just a patriotic retelling of a mission gone awry. It compares the men and women of the U.S. military to the Taliban, a group which eschews culture in favor of death and destruction. The haunting end credits sequence alone earns the film a spot on this list.
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