3. “What’s the matter with nostalgia?” asks an aging poet in this masterpiece of divine decadence.
“It’s the only thing left for those of us who have no faith in the future.” Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino,
whose Il Divo blended political bio-pic and Ovidian satire, views modern Rome in all its excess through the
jaded eyes of “the king of the socialites,” journalist Jep Gambardella (Il Divo’s Toni Servillo) — and, further
back, more than a half-century, to the Eternal City as seen by Federico Fellini in La Dolce Vita. This
profligately cinematic achievement shows an affection for nearly all of its outsize characters, and a
melancholy that the flaming creatures of Jep’s acquaintance will soon burn out. Giving even the cynics a faith
in the vibrancy of movies, The Great Beauty is the year’s grandest, most exhilarating film that takes place on
Earth.
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4. Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence
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7. Planes, trains and automobiles collide spectacularly in the fourth Fast & Furious movie to be directed by Justin
Lin and written by Chris Morgan. In a reunion of Vin Diesel, the late Paul Walker, their gang and girlfriends and
DEA agent Dwayne Johnson, Furious 6 vrooms from Tenerife to Moscow to London, with astounding stunts in
each location, and hitches a ride on a military cargo plane for the final brawl. Where Fast Five heralded the New
Hollywood’s exaltation of sensational action over subtle character, Furious 6 revs everything up, purifies and
improves it to a level even cooler and more aerodynamically delirious than its predecessor, if such a thing is
even mathematically possible. This adrenaline-stoking series is addictive, for its chases, crashes, crushes —
and for its poetic limning of the closest camaraderie many men can ever know: with their cars. Owning one,
some auto-holic says, is like a marriage. “Yeah,” another guy replies, “but when you break up they don’t take
half your shit.”
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9. In 1965, the thug Anwar Congo was hired by the Indonesian government to stamp out the threat of
Communism; he and his fellow gangsters formed paramilitary squads that tortured and killed thousands
of innocents. Nearly a half-century later, Anwar and many of his colleagues are still around, still
protected by the politicians in charge, and ready to reenact their atrocities.
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10. 12 Years a Slave is a 2013 British-American epic historical drama film and an adaptation of
the by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free negro who was kidnapped in Washington,
D1853 memoir of the same name.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery. He worked on plantations in the
state of Louisiana for twelve years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northup's
memoir, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the
account and concluded it to be accurate.
This third feature film directed by Steve McQueen was written by John Ridley. Chiwetel
Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup and has been widely praised for his work. Principal photography
took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13, 2012, on a production budget of
$20 million. The locations used were four historic antebellum plantations: Felicity, Magnolia,
Bocage, and Destrehan. Of the four, Magnolia is closest in proximity to the actual plantation where
Northup was held.
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