The Speakeasies (or The Year in Movies according to Yours Truly) 2017

In which yours truly does the nominating, voting, and presenting.

There's also a Best of 2017 List at the end. 

Best of 2016 (so far)

Twenty Years of Oscar: Achievement in Directing

At some point in the late 1990s, probably around '97/'98, I began to realize that there was this job called film director and that it was these creative geniuses that drove the storytelling aspect of movies. Steven Spielberg was my first love. I wanted so much to see all of his movies. I began to learn about filmmaking through him and his love of it. I read about him constantly. "Saving Private Ryan" came to theaters. I went...twice. I was blown away by its power, its greatness.

I got into some Scorsese, "Goodfellas and "Casino." Then, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." I became obsessed with the camera. I began to see the differences in directors' various styles.

I began to understand what made a "Best Director" for the first time.

All of the movies mentioned below are Oscar choices that I just fully agree with. Most of these are for "groundbreaking," even controversial films. All of them are visually masterful pieces of cinema from truly visionary filmmakers.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Actor in a Leading Role

I want to go ahead and get something out of the way: I love Tom Hanks. Now, he didn't make this list because I'm in constant struggle about "Forrest Gump" and whether it's actually a great movie or not. I haven't seen it in years, and I fear it may not be as powerful as I once considered it to be. Also, while his win as Gump was deserved, I am still bitter about his loss in 1998 to that Italian Jumping Bean guy. If Hanks had won for "Saving Private Ryan," he would be on this list.

Anyway, we've reached Day Three in my "Twenty Years of Oscar" extravaganza. Best Actor...it's a biggie. And it is so often one of the tightest races each year. Some are runaways, including most of the picks you'll find below, but it always finds itself a hot topic this time a year. This year, especially. Can't wait 'til Sunday.

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winning Movies

Oscar is in the air. "The mood is tense!"...sort of. This week's edition of the Wandering through the Shelves Thursay Movie Picks Meme is all about "the big enchilada, ya dig?" You know, Best Picture, the last one of the night. But Oscar gives out more than one "Best Picture." Yeah, to spread it around, there's a category for Best Foreign Language Film and one for Best Animated Feature. Since it's an option and I'm doing another Best Picture post this weekend, I've decided to go ahead and spread it around myself. I'm giving you a favorite from each of the aforementioned Oscar categories, in order.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Screenplay

So, OK. Anyone who knows Oscar knows about "The Big Five," which are Writing, Directing, Actress, Actor, and Picture. Only a few films have won them all in the same year: "It Happened One Night" (1934), "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). Most recently, "American Beauty" (1999) got close, winning four of the five. Annette Bening got beat out for Best Actress.

Anyway, this is the first in a series of posts that will contain "Top Five" lists on the "Big Five Academy Awards" categories. We start...with writing.

The Academy Award for Writing...there are two. One for an Original work, conceived for the screen alone. The second for an Adaptation, something not initially thought of as a movie.

Since 1994, there have been some absolutely groundbreaking scripts written, several of which have actually changed movies for the better forever. Those are the ones I tried to capture here. Surely, there are many more than ten great scripts in the past twenty years, but these are the ones that meant something to me, and, from my perspective, movies, in general.

Twenty Years of Oscar: If Speaks Picked Best Picture, Part II

I left the last post with a question: What does that say about me? The fact that I only agree with two of the ten Best Picture winners from 1994-2003. I think that's about like everybody else. The movie Oscar picks is not always the one that stands the test of time.

So, we continue...

Twenty Years of Oscar: If Speaks Picked Best Picture, Part I

Each year, we get a list of movies deemed by Hollywood to be the best of the year. For most of my life, this was a short list of five films.

A few years ago, Oscar decided to stop being so elitist and allow up to ten Best Picture nominees. I say do ten if you can do ten. Alas, we've gotten random numbers recently. Nine one year. Eight this year.

For the 1995 show, celebrating the year in movies 1994, I was ten years old. It was the first Oscar telecast I remember watching. It was also the first year I remember actually seeing a movie I loved in the theater win the Best Picture Oscar. I was hooked. The movie was Robert Zemeckis' "Forrest Gump."

I've decided to do a series of posts this week dedicated to the past twenty years of Oscar. There will be posts on what I would've picked, ranked lists of winners I liked in certain categories. General Oscar worship-type stuff. It must be done. The Academy Awards, especially the Best Picture award, is what got me into movies. And you'll find this post and the others to be quite autobiographical.

Speaks' Predictions: The 87th Academy Awards

With the 87th Academy Awards telecast just one week away, I thought I'd go ahead and get out my rundown of most of the categories.

This year marks my twentieth go round with the Oscars. The first one I remember aired in 1995, for the year in movies, 1994. "Pulp Fiction" and "Forrest Gump," two movies that I still cherish to this day. Of course, I never saw "Pulp Fiction" until years later. At ten, my Mom wasn't ready to let me watch something quite that violent. But, man, do I remember that show. David Letterman hosted. The famous "Uma"/"Oprah" bit and whatnot. Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar for the second time in two years.

I became obsessed with movie montages. In fact, when I think about the Academy Awards telecast, that's what I see. A movie montage of movie montages, laughs, nice dresses and tuxes, good times. This year's ceremony is poised to be a winner with Neil Patrick Harris at the helm.

I feel like, really there's not a lot missing here. I think Ava DuVernay could easily have been nominated for Best Director in the place of Bennett Miller, and, having recently re-watched "The Grand Budapest Hotel," which leads (tied with "Birdman") the pack with 9 nominations, I have just one question: Where is Ralph Fiennes? Anyway, I'm excited to see who ends up winning big.

Thursday Movie Picks: Unrequited Love

I'm going with flights of whimsy this week, peeps. Fun and happy stuff, for the most part.

Unrequited love, as a topic, is near and dear to me. I'm pretty sure we've all felt it. I certainly have. It hurts, but it doesn't have to be a sad and sappy thing. Since I equate this topic with youth, that's where I'm going with it.

I feel I'm sensing a trend with the topics over at Wandering through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks here in the last few weeks. Oh, yes. Valentine's Day is nigh.

Thursday Movie Picks: Romantic Comedies

Love is in the air again for this week's installment of Wandering through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks.

The "Romantic Comedies" -- When done right, they can become your favorite movies. The sad thing is that so many aren't done right. It's a genre that can easily become cheesy and predictable. The best ones have to find the right blend of truth, charm, a touch of drama, and real human comedy. Care must be given to how a romantic comedy ends. Too much perfection is cheap. Too little is devastating.

I feel I've picked a few this week that find the right blend of those aspects. They are true and charming, dramatic and comedic. They are perfect movies.

Thursday Movie Picks: Married Couples Movies

"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv."
- The Impressive Clergyman, The Princess Bride

I have been married now for fifteen months. It still amazes me sometimes. I mean, I've been with my now wife, Amanda, for almost five years total, but I look at her sometimes, and I'm like I can't believe I'm somebody's husband.

I love the theme this week. Suggested by Wendell from Dell on Movies for Wandering through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks Meme, this is an exciting one to tackle. And a bit troubling. I couldn't decide how to mix-up my nearly ten original ideas. Which three should I go with? I decided on three vastly different movies that all feature a marriage as their driving force. All three of these marriages range from rocky, to say the least, all the way to downright scary.

When I Was Thirty: The Ocean's Trilogy

Steven Soderbergh baffles me. He's one of those filmmakers who just doesn't seem to stick with anything. And most of his work has just seemed off-putting to me. I've just never seeked his work out. Of his roughly 25 feature films, starting with 1989's Sex, Lies, and Videotape, I've only seen 7, including the only thing he ever truly stuck with in the comedy-caper colossus of cool known as Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and Ocean's Thirteen.

What's funny is that the other four of his films I have seen (Behind the Candelabra, The Informant!, Traffic, and Out of Sight) are all what I would consider favorite movies. So, if you are a Soderbergh fan and are reading this, please recommend some sort of place to start with the rest of his films. I can't seem to figure the guy out, but I am willing to see all of his movies.

If my last entry in this series (for those of you who aren't familiar with this series, click here) on The Bourne Trilogy was all about badassness, then this entry on Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Trilogy is all about cool. Just straight up good-looking, sexy, funny, entertaining, COOL.

Thursday Movie Picks: Musicals

There are only three musicals, excluding Disney movies, I've actually enjoyed enough to see twice. That's what you'll find here this week in yet another fun entry in Wandering through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks.

I've also decided to go with musicals in the traditional sense. No movies that feature music as a theme or movies about music or musicians. There are plenty of those I love, one of which will get an honorable mention, but I'm going musicals in the classical sense, sort of.

Buzz-worthy: My Top Five Movies of 2013

Five
by Kevin Powers

Random summer movie days "make the world come alive," to quote my old drinking buddy Zeb. Anything worth doing makes the "world come alive." The best movies to see on a hot summer day, for me, are not the billion-dollar action blockbuster superhero extravaganzas...no, not for me. For me, it's the comedies.

No all-out comedy was better in 2013 than the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg end of the world spectacular featuring some of the greatest cameos in cameo history known as...

#5

Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen

Screenplay by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg; Screen Story by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, based on the short film "Seth and Jay vs. The Apocalypse" by Jason Stone

Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson


The best part is that they play themselves. These crazy, odd versions of themselves. Don't they always anyway? That's what's so great about these guys. At some point in the past 10 years, the various casts of Judd Apatow's short-lived TV series (Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared) got involved with some North Carolina film school characters, including the likes of writer/directors Jody Hill and David Gordon Green as well as the actor Danny McBride and all became best friends. Two worlds unite:  dirty jokes meet dark comedy. With that formula, you end up with zany stoner comedies like Pineapple Express and strange, very dark comic fare like Observe and Report. Added to all that, just about every major comedy of the last 10 years can be degreed back to one of the guys in this movie. Think about it. Eat your heart out, Kevin Bacon. The new pawn in that game is James Franco, maybe even Jonah Hill.

This is the End is the most original comedy these guys have done amidst a long list of original comedies. They push the envelope on bad taste, homophobic/erotic dude relationships, odd violence, drug use, and just plain meanness. Picture a scene where Danny McBride, playing himself, wakes up the next morning in Franco's house not realizing the world has essentially ended. He smokes most of the weed, cooks all the food, and drains all the water. Then, he makes fun of James Franco, also playing himself, to the point that its just plain mean. McBride is really the one they don't like. Or is it Jonah? Or is it Jay? Or is it Seth? Or is it Craig? Or is it Michael Cera? Yeah, he's the real jackass.

At the center of This is the End, though, is the relationship between Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel (once cast-mates on the short-lived Fox series Undeclared). Jay is in LA for a visit. He hopes the two buddies will just chill and not get into much. Before you know it, Seth has Jay going to a lavish party at James Franco's mansion. Jay is uncomfortable, doesn't like these guys, is more of the odd man out as he doesn't live the "Hollywood life." Michael Cera shows up, as one of the at least a dozen cameos in the first 30 minutes of the movie, does blow off some chicks, and then rays of light start pulling people out of the sky. The world is ending.

Back at Franco's, it is survival mode. Lock up, take stock of the inventory, figure out what to do. There is demon possession, talk of possible attempted rape (much to Hermione's chagrin), jealous rages, axes and firearms, pee and fart jokes, blood spatters, discussions of religion, Craig Robinson's shrill scream, apocalypse, post-apocalypse, and a bright white backstreet version of heaven.

This is the one of the strangest movies I've ever seen (if my review is some indication). I can't and won't describe its plot (or lack thereof). What I will do is tell you that the crew of comics that made this movie are some of the most creative people of my generation. I have enjoyed growing up with these guys. I recommend just about any of the movies involving any of these actors despite the fact that I just can't keep up with Franco. To digress (and give some perspective), James Franco was featured in 14 movies in 2013 while directing two adaptations of William Faulkner novels (As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury) and one of Cormac McCarthy's (Child of God). Having given you that, I can't help but list this movie in my top five. These guys have gotten to a place where they can do anything they want, and I thank all that is good in the world for that. I couldn't get the smile off my face when I left this movie. It was as if I woke up and rocked it with McBride and then called Franco a "queer" and grabbed a weapon and defended myself against the demons.

I'm listening to Mozart right now, by the way.

Buzz-worthy: My Top Five Movies of 2013

Four
by Kevin Powers

New Year's Eve, 2013, Downtown Knoxville

We decided to see the first show of the day...the early matinee.

Breakfast at Pete's. Delicious. Expectations were high.

The first 5 minutes of my number four pick features more obscenity and depravity, and comedy, than just about any movie I saw all year (save my #5 pick, discussion forthcoming). Then, it continues for another 174 minutes.

#4

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Screenplay by Terrence Winter, based on the memoir by Jordan Belfort

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler



No doubt by now you've heard of the epic three-hour debauchery fest that is Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. It is the longest movie Scorsese has ever made. And, so I've heard, was trimmed even further from its first cut of nearly 4 hours. I could've done the four with this movie and these characters. They are horrible, greedy, drug-and-sex-addicted, multi-multi-millionaires. I loved every second of it. I have to shout out to rogerebert.com editor-in-chief Matt Zoller Seitz and quote from his review, "Imagine the last thirty minutes of Goodfellas stretched out to three hours. That's the pace of this movie, and the feel of it. It's one damned thing after another..."

Real-life, high-society low-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort has written two memoirs now about his years of cheating and swindling and doing blow and hookers and Quaaludes and making more money than one could possibly even fathom. As played by Leonardo DiCaprio (in one of his best performances), he is all of those things and more. Leo (almost 40) is as fresh and youthful in this movie as if he was playing the character at 25. He jumps through the screen and into your face. In usual Scorsese style, a good portion of the movie is narrated by Leo in voiceover, setting up the feel that this is something that actually happened and most likely really did. And further credit to Scorsese and screenwriter, Terrence Winter (HBO's The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire) for not selling out at all. Excuse the girly exclamation point but this movie is filthy and shocking and unexpected and, most of all, hilarious!

Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) starts out as a fresh-faced Queens newlywed looking to make it rich, the right way, on Wall Street. He is immediately taken under the tutelage of Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey, in one hilarious scene). But his mark in the legit stock world fades quickly. After losing his job in the crash of '87, he finds his way into a small Long Island "penny-stock" firm and pretty much takes it over. Thus begins his years of slinging crap stocks for big money and 50% commissions. One day, while eating lunch at a local diner, an odd, horribly dressed, overweight, bespectacled local named Donnie Azoff (the unbelievable Jonah Hill), strikes up a conversation about the ridiculous car Jordan has in the parking lot. As soon as the astronomical amount of money he asked Jordan about gets in the air, it's over. Donnie will become Jordan's right-hand man. They starts up a firm of their own, give it a old-school name, Stratton Oakmont, and assemble a gaggle of the most ill-qualified characters possible as their associates. Together, this odd league of greedy gentlemen will expand and grow and work together over the next several years ripping people off, lining their pockets, and not feeling the least bit bad about about it.

Added to the mix is Jordan's introduction to "The Duchess of Bay Ridge (Brooklyn)" Naomi LaPaglia (the absolutely stunning Margot Robbie). He will, of course, pine for, court, and eventually do cocaine off her breasts before leaving his wife for her. And, man, is she worth it. Their relationship plays out like (another Goodfellas comparison) Henry and Karen Hill on crack then speed then 'ludes times infinity. Margot Robbie delivered the best Fran Drescher accent since Fran Drescher. Her performance was worth an Oscar nod as well in my opinion. I expect big things from her. She owns the screen.

There are scenes in this movie that are just so unbelievable they have to have happened. It is just crazy on top of nuts on top of ridiculous and you know its real. It contains perhaps the greatest, and probably only, Quaalude-enhanced telephone conversation in the history of cinema. And what follows that scene is just plain epic and is what I believe wins Leo his first Oscar. I am almost certain on this one. I laughed and laughed and laughed and loved it and believed it.

Of course, like all great rags-to-riches stories, the man eventually has to kill your buzz a bit. In this case, the man is FBI agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler). His introduction to the film gives you the answers to the most basic questions of this film, of the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort. Is this sort of greed ever worth it? How can people live such a life? How do they deny the horrible things they're doing to themselves and others? How can people live in such excess? How can a man be so selfish? So cocky? So ambitious? These are the questions of nearly all of Scorsese's movies. They are all about men who are swallowed up by their own crazy and/or greed and/or ambition. Travis Bickle. Jake LaMotta. Henry Hill. Ace Rothstein. Howard Hughes. Colin Sullivan and Billy Costigan. And, now, Jordan Belfort. This is a Scorsese movie at the grandest level. It follows his delightful family film Hugo. The Wolf of Wall Street is the opposite of a delightful family movie. It is a hard, often crazy, often hilarious story of a supremely flawed man. Yet, for all of Jordan Belfort's faults, I couldn't help but leave the theater with the urge to pound my chest, belt out a war chant, and steal some rich guy's money.

Buzz-worthy: My Top Five Movies of 2013

Three
by Kevin Powers

Living near Knoxville has its ups and downs. One major up is Regal Entertainment Group's Downtown West...pretty much the only place to see a movie that's on the more artsy side. I've been going there for years, and I love it. Props to the people of Knoxville for keeping this thing alive.

My wife and I went to Downtown West to see my number three favorite of the year.

It opens with the seldom used, but incredible, Bruce Dern, disheveled, bearded, ambling down an Interstate in broad daylight. I chuckled, then laughed, then laughed some more. My wife joined in. We laughed the whole time. It was 10:30 PM EST. We were the only ones there.

#3

Directed by Alexander Payne

Written by Bob Nelson

Starring Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, and Bob Odenkirk




Alexander Payne has been one of my favorite directors since I realized that, when Sideways (2004) came out, he had directed my favorite movie from my high school days...Election (1999). If you haven't seen Election or Sideways or The Descendants (2011), then shame on you. Get started now! You can even start with Nebraska because, really, of all Payne's films, this one is the one that truly should be seen on the big screen. It is shot in widescreen black and white, though set in roughly present-day, and there are some just beautifully simple images in this movie that are best captured on a giant screen.

It is sometimes argued that Payne is poking fun at his characters. They are always flawed and do unexpected things and are just so incredibly normal that you feel like some movie guy is just trying to get you to feel sorry for regular everyday people. As my wife and I discussed after we left the movie, that idea couldn't be more wrong. Alexander Payne loves these people. And the characters in Nebraska are just plain interesting and, in an odd way, lovable.

Nebraska, which is the first movie Payne has directed that he did not have a hand in writing, is the very simple story of an old Billings, Montana, man named Woody Grant (Dern). He is a man on a quest. A quest to claim his million dollar prize from a Publishers Clearing House-type marketing scam. His son, David (SNL's Will Forte), at first tries to convince him that going to Lincoln, Nebraska, is silly and unnecessary. His mother Kate (the incredible June Squibb) and older brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk) agree. He is too old, slightly demented, an alcoholic, and he can no longer drive. Going through a rough-patch himself, David finally agrees to drive the old man to Nebraska, thinking why not give the man one last thing? Maybe they can even see some sights and visit the family, who happen to live in a small Nebraska town. The father and son get sidetracked by mishap after mishap, cold beers, accidents, unruly, greedy, quiet, and/or quite crazy old friends and brothers and sisters-in-law and aunts and uncles and cousins. It is so real and funny.

This is the most visually beautiful movie Payne has directed. The widescreen black and white cinematography by Phedon Papamichael is brilliant. And Payne's ability to evoke just the right reactions and facial expressions from his actors has never been better. The screenwriter (Bob Nelson) finds just the right line between drama and comedy. Some of the mother character, Kate's, dialogue is the funniest in any movie this year. June Squibb is one of those actresses that you've seen but don't really know. She is incredible, and this movie is worth seeing just for some of her foul-mouthed escapades.

There are moments in this film of such stark truth and clarity that it cuts right to the core of you. That is found mostly through the eyes of the son, David, who just wants to know his father, a distant drunk who never spoke about his feelings or thoughts and who will never apologize for anything. Woody just wants to collect his prize. David just wants to help. The unexpected sweetness of the movie's later scenes are so satisfying, though, and my wife and I just couldn't get over how nice this movie is. I felt as buzzed when I left as if I had just knocked back a couple of quiet Coors, or Budweiser, long-necks with Woody and David, or even my own Dad, and didn't speak about the past, though it is, was, and will always be there. 

Buzz-worthy: My Top Five Movies of 2013

Two
by Kevin Powers

I struggled to decide on my number two pick for the best five movies of 2013. Then, I realized that the next biggest high I felt upon leaving a theater happened two days before Christmas.

The film in question combines Jennifer Lawrence with Paul McCartney and Wings' "Live and Let Die."

The End.

I mean, come on!? I thought something else could go in this spot? For me, you just can't compete with that.

#2

Directed by David O. Russell


Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell

Starring, well, you know...





At the SAG Awards the other night, Bradley Cooper, upon accepting the Actor for Cast in a Motion Picture, made very clear the notion that David O. Russell is an "actor's director." And anytime you leave a David O. Russell movie, you know that to be true. The performances in his movies, especially his last three (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, and now American Hustle), are what makes them good. This is what makes his movies so universally likeable. He employs good actors and gets them, by any means necessary, to the tops of their games.

Ah, Jennifer Lawrence. Is there anyone in movies right now so wonderful? I read a silly snippet recently about American Hustle that claimed she would be, and I'm paraphrasing here, interesting reading a newspaper. I agree. She's barely 23 years old and already a Best Actress Oscar winner showing no signs of slowing down. She does not disappoint in this movie, and I believe she may well take home the big prize for Supporting Actress, although 12 Years a Slave's Lupita Nyong'o is picking up some steam and June Squibb (Nebraska) is unreal great. But, I digress.

American Hustle is the story of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), a small-time con-man, who meets his match in Syndey Prosser (Amy Adams) as a lover, fellow Jazz fan, and natural con artist. Meanwhile, his wife Rosalyn (Lawrence) stays at home with their young son and takes bored housewife to places nobody has ever seen. Then there's also the ambitious, rambunctious, perm-wearing FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, in the best work he's ever done) bent on using Rosenfeld and Prosser to take down politicians, including Camden, NJ, Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), as they accept bribes for an operation to rebuild Atlantic City. Of course, this is all based on a true story known as the Abscam scandal.

To try and describe this movie would be nothing short of impossible. It's a con game inside of a con game with plot twists you don't see coming. The Scorsese-esque shifting voiceover narration is as good as in any Scorsese movie. The soundtrack has everything from ELO to Wings to Tom Jones and Duke Ellington. The costume design and hairstyles will be remembered for years to come. And now, for the second year in a row, David O. Russell has managed to lead four actors to Oscar nominations in each acting category. They all deserve it. There is a scene towards the third act, with all the actors together, when you see in each one of them the downward spiral that has befallen them all without them all even being aware of it. There are looks on faces, a camera that glides around the dark, smoky ballroom. And you know you are watching one of the best movies of the year.

When I left the theater after this movie, there was something that felt like disappointment. Like it wasn't everything I thought it was. But as the night went on and turned to morning, I realized that I missed it. I wanted to be back there in a polyester suit with a can of hair spray and a hunger for success.

Buzz-worthy: My Top Five Movies of 2013

One
by Kevin Powers

I didn't see many movies this year. Each year, it seems, real life gets in the way of my true passion, my life-hobby. Not that I'm complaining. I've had a busy year. Teaching middle school and directing middle school athletic events. Getting married to my best friend and true movie companion. Dealing, or avoiding dealing, with my broken-down truck.

Since Thanksgiving, I have been on a movie-watching rampage. Devouring as many as possible to make up for lost time as well as getting out to the year-end award season movies, none of which have disappointed, except maybe the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis.

For this year's list, I shall start at the top and work my way down. All of these movies contain characters, who like to have a buzz (whether from drugs or booze or sex or power or greed or love). And all of these movies left me with a buzz. That is how I know I've seen a good one, when the feelings I left with won't leave me.

I start at the top (#1) mostly because I saw the best movie of the year just last night. I feel this flick in my gut, in my heart, in every emotional sense that I have. It is a true and beautiful movie, if imperfect. But, well, isn't life?

#1

Directed by James Ponsoldt

Screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, based on the novel by Tim Tharp

Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kyle Chandler

"Hummingbird"

Suppose I say summer,
Write the word "hummingbird,"
Put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

- Raymond Carver

If you know me, I mean really know me, you know that I'm a sucker for young love stories. There is something still, to me, so mystifying about young love. Maybe because I struggled with it myself, or because I longed for it so deeply. It is true and it is real and it is everlasting. The Spectacular Now is one of those love stories. I haven't been so deeply moved by a movie since last year's Beasts of the Southern Wild. And I haven't been moved so deeply by a love story since 2009's 500 Days of Summer (which happens to have been written by the same team that adapted this movie). I will instantly add this movie into the canon with Say Anything, Moonlight Mile, All the Real Girls, 500 Days of Summer, Snow Angels, Terri, and Moonrise Kingdom. All of which highlight that first real love and what it means.

Miles Teller plays Sutter, a recently dumped, hard-drinking high school senior, who ends up passed-out drunk on the lawn of a classmate he never knew named Aimee (the incredibly charming Shailene Woodley). And so begins their relationship. Two kids, with similar backgrounds, who just "really like" each other. He, like most boys his age, wants to live for right now, while the girls, including Aimee, want a future. His drinking and daddy issues have hindered any past relationship for him, while Aimee is experiencing her first. Still, they find perfection in each other. You sense, throughout this movie, that their love might fade. That Sutter will mess it up. That Aimee will be hurt. I credit director James Ponsoldt with evoking this feeling. I wanted it to work. I still do.

I won't destroy your viewing of this movie with any important plot details. I will say that these actors might as well be you, your best friends, your family. I will also say that there are three scenes in this movie that are acted and directed so perfectly you want to hug anyone near you. All of these scenes feature Miles Teller's ability to display emotion on his face. No words need be spoken. You know, without words, the moment he falls for Aimee. You know, without words, the happiness they feel the first time they make love. You know, without words, the heartbreak this young man has endured with a controlling mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), without a father (Kyle Chandler, in one show-stealing scene), and without any ability to control his growing drinking problem.

While the ending of this movie is perfectly ambiguous, again without words, I look to the future of Sutter and Aimee. I am reminded of Raymond Chandler's poem "Hummingbird," which tells simply of first love, love that sticks forever. No matter how it ends for these two young lovers. We know that their love was real and true and will be remembered always throughout many springs and summers to come, a remembrance of those long, warm last days of high school, of prom, of driving around, of youth.

Note: This movie is Rated-R. And deserves it (for language and a sex scene). However, I want every single high school student in America to watch this movie, especially the boys. I would also like to direct you to Roger Ebert's brilliant review of the film, which was one of his last. I am so glad Roger got to see this movie. You can read it here.

****Addition****

I want to add that since my initial post on the masterful young adult drama The Spectacular Now, I have continually felt affected. I have also since read the novel of the same name by National Book Award Finalist Tim Tharp (published in 2008). Having read the book and re-watched the movie, I can now add something very important that I was blinded from on first viewing/reacting. That is that this story is utterly and beautifully heartbreaking. It is, now that I see it more clearly, not only just a story of young love but also a story about pain and loss and growing up and painful truths about adulthood and, really, above all...addiction (alcoholism, in this case). This further strengthens my love for this film. It will never leave me. I just know it. This also further strengthens my call for all high school seniors to watch this movie before heading into the great wide open. I am forever grateful for this movie. I wish it had been around earlier in my life.

- Kevin Powers, 2/4/14

"And the Winners are...": Part III (5-1)

Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Ed Norton, and Bruce Willis in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.

So here are my top five favorite movies from 2012. They are stories of love and loss and success and failure and are all told with some brand of beauty and simplicity and detail and truth.  I loved every single one of these movies. 

5. Wanderlust (Directed by David Wain; Starring Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux)

Years ago now, I saw probably one of the best comedies I've ever seen. Still to this day, I think about it all the time and try to watch it here and there. It got me through my first year of teaching. I would literally watch it three or four times a week just to keep my head about me and give me an escape. That movie is Wet Hot American Summer. Since then, David Wain, Michael Showalter and Co. have continued to make really solid comedies, including the hit Role Models. This one, the latest, ranks right up there with the best comedies of recent years. In Wanderlust, Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston play a stuffy New York couple, who, due to a downward spiral of unfortunate events, find themselves on the road out of the city, looking to start over somehow. They land in a Georgia hippie commune where free love abounds and an organic lifestyle becomes the spark to reignite this couple's marriage in many more ways than one. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that this movie contains a monologue by Paul Rudd that is the absolute funniest thing I've seen in a comedy since the stun-gun scene in The Hangover. 

4. Life of Pi (Directed by Ang Lee; Starring Suraj Sharma)

A quote from, and nod to, Mr. Roger Ebert, the best film critic there ever was: "Ang Lee's Life of Pi is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to 'life.'" I can't say it better, and I whole-heartedly agree. This is a stunningly beautiful masterpiece that unfolds as a story-within-a-story, touching on love and faith and hope and survival and the simple magic of storytelling itself. An Indian boy named Pi ends up on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker and does his absolute best to survive, while selflessly caring for a dangerous, wild animal. I felt alive during and after this movie. It is unbelievable.

It is also the only 3D experience I have in which the 3D glasses never got in the way and actually enhanced the movie. 

3. Moonrise Kingdom (Directed by Wes Anderson: Starring Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, and Bob Balaban)

Moonrise Kingdom is the third great movie Wes Anderson has made. The other two are, of course, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. It tells the story of 12-year-olds in love on a small New England island town called New Penzance. Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Heyward) had met the year previous during a town school pageant. He, an orphaned Khaki scout, and she, an avid reader playing a raven in the play. We see this in flashback as they correspond and plan to meet and run away together. When they finally do, it is the most fresh and magical romance I've seen on screen in a long while.

It is incredibly ridiculous and funny as well. The cast of characters rivals The Royal Tenenbaums. Bruce Willis as Police Captain Sharp, tasked with leading the search party for the missing; Bill Murray and Frances McDormand as Mr. And Mrs. Bishop, Suzy's absent-in-plain-sight, attorney parents; Ed Norton as Scout Master Ward, the man guilted and motivated by his loss of a scout; Jason Schwartzman (in a brilliant cameo) as Cousin Ben, a Scout Master from a neighboring troop, who also officiates weddings; and Bob Balaban as the coolest movie Narrator of all-time. Anderson is able to use all his tricks and fill all the frames with his idiosyncratic details while, this time, maintaining a sweet, honest coming-of-age love story. It contains the truest young love scene since last years Terri. I couldn't believe I was seeing it. 

2. Beasts of the Southern Wild (Directed by Behn Zeitlin; Starring Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly, and Lowell Landes)

Shortly after the credits had rolled and I had wiped the tears from my sobbing eyes, I read a few reviews on IMDB. One guy went on and on about how this movie glorified child abuse and alcoholism and blah-blah-blah. All I could think was: Man, did that guy miss the point or what!? Behn Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild is unlike anything I've ever seen at the movies. It plays like a shared dream between Terrence Malick and Maurice Sendak set in the Louisiana bayou. It is a sight to behold. Quvenzhane Wallis, at six-years-old, does more than any adult actor could ever dream of. The carries this brilliant labor of love on her shoulders and never misses a beat. The story is one of poor bayou people, who choose to live in a very dangerous swamp land they dub "The Bathtub." There is a storm coming, a flood looming, and these people, including Hush Puppy (Wallis) and her Daddy (Dwight Henry), choose to live a simple life. The trouble is that everything seems bent to destroy Hush Puppy's life. Her Daddy is sick and a bad alcoholic, her home is on the brink of being washed way, and a prehistoric beast just may be out there coming with the storm. Every minute of this movie offers something to think about and admire, and the last five touched me more than any new movie I've seen in years. 

1. Silver Linings Playbook (Directed by David O. Russell; Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver, and Chris Tucker)

If the last five minutes of this movie had been as true and powerful as that of my number two selection, I would rank Silver Linings Playbook with the finest movies ever made. There seems to be a large amount of criticism of the formulaic ending of this film. I, in no way, want that to deter you, and, honestly, I have no problem with it whatsoever. I laughed during this movie and felt things and related to the characters and felt like I knew them. That's what makes a great movie to me. Bradley Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a Philadelphia man just released from a mental health facility. He has horrible anger issues and panic attacks. He lost his job, his wife, his life, and now sees a chance to start over. He meets a young widow named Tiffany (the beautiful Jennifer Lawrence) and begins a friendship that is so odd and touching and wonderful that the supposed mis-steps in the end make no matter. I just love so many things about this film: the acting is top-notch (see all the Oscar nominations), the characters watch and love professional football, there is dancing, foul language, love, truth, fiction, regret, Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack, and a happy ending. I felt happy at the end. Isn't that what you're supposed to feel? Aren't "Hollywood endings" "OK" is what comes before is so entertaining and perfect? I think so, and this is, ultimately, the reason that Silver Linings Playbook is the best movie of 2012. 

Best Actor nominee Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook