As we prepare for another year of film, Entertainment Writer Will Kallenborn shares his top picks for 2013:
10. Only God Forgives,
Arguably the most divisive film of the year, Only God Forgives suffers from a perceived association with the director’s previous film with actor-collaborator Ryan Gosling, Drive. Both films have a similar quietness and distance, yet the two films are incredibly different. Here, Nicolas Winding Refn provides us with a brutal and unflinching look deep into the squalid underbelly of Thailand. Dedicated to Alejandro Jodorowsky deserving of the association, the movie plays out like a furious fever dream. Revenge is a black hole from which there is no forgiveness.
9. The Great Beauty
Rhis movie recently won the golden globe for best foreign film and stands a real chance at winning an Oscar in the same category. The story of an aging Roman writer and socialite wandering the city and redefining his life’s experiences takes on the classic Italian neorealism style in order to challenge a different generation.
8. Leviathan
The most unique movie I saw this year, Leviathan is documentary that takes place on a fishing boat in the North Atlantic. Not necessarily about anything, this film is a visceral experience that combines sight and sound into a memorable event that passes over you like a cold ocean wave.
7. Francés Ha
We live in an age where anyone with an iPhone can, and will, make a film about their youth and lingering adolescent confusion, so it’s nice to see a professional attempt on the genre. Francés Ha takes queues from both the French New Wave and the more contemporary Mumblecore films in order to tell the story of a New York twenty something who’s distance and awkwardness is surprisingly relatable.
6. Stoker
This film marked famous South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s first movie in the English language. Possibly for this reason, Stoker has a bizarre, almost alien feel. This could not be more appropriate for the film, a psychological horror story about love and incest. Stoker was a porcelain nightmare, a genuinely creepy movie that was equal parts beautiful and horrific.   
5. Gravity
This is the first movie to convince me that 3D was necessary, or in any way beneficial, to the viewing experience. Gravity was a shot of adrenaline; I left the theatre with my legs actually shaking.  Director Alfonso Cuarón invented an entirely new method of creating cinema, and in doing so breached the gap between art-house and the million-dollar blockbuster.
4. Mud
Matthew McConaughey is masterful in eponymous role of this film. He takes on the role of teacher and spiritual leader to two young boys in rural Arkansas. Mud is a sinner, and sin is the subject of conversation here. The film is masterful in the way that it balances themes of childhood and growing up with deeply symbolic religious undertones. Childhood is Eden, and though religion abounds, god is nowhere to be found. Here be serpents.
3. Blue is the Warmest Color
It is the important that art addresses the entire spectrum of human existence. It is a step in the right direction that movies like this are being made, but it is absolutely wonderful that Abdellatif Kechine’s Palme d’Or winning Blue is the Warmest Color addresses itself not as a “lesbian movie” but as a film about the human experience. The film tackles love and intimacy in a loving and intimate way without allowing itself to be shoehorned into any stereotypes. A universal film about a specific individual, Adèle Exarchopoulos’ fantastic performance teaches us about love and art in a passionate way.
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
With their 16^th feature film, the Coen brothers’ auteur voice has been clearly established at this point. But, Inside Llewyn Davis feels like a movie that speaks to the heart of what they believe. Every artist has a voice but it is only a select few that get to spread their message to the world at large. This is their love letter to all the forgotten voices, and all those who had to sacrifice art for life. The film is melancholy and piercing, the Coen’s revive folk singer-songwriter Dave Van Ronk as the passionate and frustrated Llewyn Davis as he faces the onslaught of an unforgiving world.
1. Upstream Color
When I watch a movie, above all else I want it to show me something I have never seen before. I always want to be challenged, to have my horizons expanded and my opinions changed. That’s why it was ultimately a simple process to pick my favorite film of the year. The second feature from writer, director, actor, composer, producer and all around Renaissance man Shane Carruth, Upstream Color refuses to be placed in the same category as any other film.  With this movie and Carruth’s 2004 surprise hit Primer, Carruth shows that the greatest sin a movie can commit is talking down to its audience. There’s no spoon-feeding to be found in this multi-layered introspective masterpiece. This movie stuck with me like glue. Days after the first viewing I found myself pondering what happened over and over. Several viewings later I still don’t know if I can describe the whole experience, and that is a very good thing.