Here are my favorites in roughly preferential order (I am updating frequently as I remember earlier omissions):
1. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang)
2. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang-ke)
3. Norte (The End of History) (Lav Diaz)
4. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
5. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
6. Drug War (Johnnie To)
7. Bastards (Claire Denis)
8. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
10. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
11. Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)
12. Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
14. At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman)
15. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
17. Paradise: Hope (Ulrich Seidl)
18. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)
19. The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-Wai)
20. Jealousy (Philippe Garrel)
Runners-up: Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, Nebraska (Alexander Payne), Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen), Her (Spike Jonze), The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt), Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen), Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch), Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-Soo), Ilo Ilo (Anthony Chen), Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley), The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer), Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener), The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola), This Is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan), Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan), and Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche).
Two outstanding shorts from the New York Film Festival:
Redemption (Miguel Gomes)
The King's Body (João Pedro Rodrigues)
Two great made-for-TV movies or miniseries:
Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh)
Top of the Lake (Jane Campion)
And some of the best revival films seen in 2013:
u
Mauvais Sang (Leos Carax)
Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka)
Batang West Side (Lav Diaz)
Many outstanding Chinese documentaries or semi-documentaries at MoMA, including:
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Wang Bing), Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin), Old Dog (Pima Tseden),
24 City (Jia Zhangke), and Disorder (Huang Weikai)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles at Anthology Film Archives)
Sylvia Scarlett, A Life of Her Own and The Actress (George Cukor at Walter Reade Theater)
Slightly Scarlet, Rendezvous with Annie and While Paris Sleeps (Allan Dwan at MoMA)
Germany Year Ninety Nine Zero, France/Tour/Detour/Deux/Enfants, various Godard trailers and
shorts (Jean-Luc Godard: The Spirit of the Forms at Film Society of Lincoln Center)
Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy at Film Forum)
Far from Vietnam (Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, William Klein et al.) (MoMA)
All I Desire (Douglas Sirk) and Forty Guns (Sam Fuller) (Barbara Stanwyck at Film Forum)
Tokyo Twilight and A Hen in the Wind (Yasujiro Ozu at Film Forum)
Equinox Flower (Ozu and His Afterlives at Walter Reade Theater)
Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky at BAM)
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky at Film Forum)
Chocolat and Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis at MOMI)
The State I'm In (Christian Petzold) and Longing (Valeska Grisebach) (Berlin School at MoMA)
Sans Lendemain (Max Ophuls) and Only Yesterday (John M. Stahl) (Views from the Avant-Garde)
The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray) (NYFF Retrospectives)
2013 was a great year for films new and old, and 2014 (with new films from Wes Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lisandro Alonso, Alain Resnais, Manoel de Oliveira and many others expected) should be as well.
Film Forum will have complete Hitchcock and Truffaut retrospectives beginning in February, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center has the films of Alain Guiraudie at the end of January. The Museum of the Moving Image begins its third edition of First Look on January 10. Film Comment Selects promises a rare Raul Ruiz, and that festival is followed by Rendez-vous with French Cinema and New Directors/New Films, as the annual New York cinephile cycle begins anew. I can't wait.
