Thirteen
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Movie Reviews of Thirteen
Movie Review: Real life painted dirty and black...
Summary: 5 Stars
When you think of the worst parts of your adolescence, the point in time when everything fell apart...you think of `thirteen'...one of the most disturbingly real films I've ever seen. Written by Nikki Reed, who co-stars in the film, this film covers so well the transition of troubled youth. The film is about Tracy Freeman (Evan Rachel Wood), a thirteen year old girl who isn't living in the best of circumstances. Her father is never around, her mother Melanie (Holly Hunter) is a recovering alcoholic who just asked her ex-junkie boyfriend Brady (Jeremy Sisto) to move back in. Tracy finds her means of escape by smoking and cutting, but it isn't until she meets the rebellious Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed) that she finds plenty of other means to release her inner frustration.
Upon returning to school Tracy is thrust into a life she didn't expect. She realizes that she doesn't fit in and wants to, especially when she sees that the boys pay her no attention, but instead are gawking at the `prettiest girl in school' Evie. She befriends Evie, who quickly engulfs Tracy in her world of drinking, drugs and sex. As her attitude and rebellious habits rage havoc on her home life her mother starts to take maters into her own hands with less than positive results. Her efforts continue to create more problems as Tracy bucks her authority, at times even using Evie against her mother.
This film isn't shy about exposing the secret lives of teenagers. In all it's brutality it shows how fast and how deep these girls fall into a world they can't handle. There are plenty of times you can read all over Tracy's face the fact that she's scared, nervous that she's going too far. But when she's scared she just looks at Evie, and follows suit. You can see the power of peer pressure, the power that self image and the constant criticism of your friends and even those who are just observers can have on you. Tracy makes changes to finally fit in, to finally feel accepted. She doesn't feel that acceptance anywhere else. She has a father who doesn't love her enough to keep his dates to see her, a mother who cares so much but is unable to show it the ways Tracy would like.
Evie is another story altogether. She has a mother who isn't around and a father who isn't around and a guardian, her cousin Brooke (Deborah Kara Unger), who doesn't care enough to enforce any rules or guidelines and just lets Evie roam as she wants. Evie is reaching for love from anyone, so much so that she reaches to the wrong people. When she enters Tracy's life she is immediately drawn to Melanie, the loving mother she never had. You can see the difference in the two girls, Tracy being the girl who takes for granted the love she has and Evie being the girl that longs to have that kind of love.
Melanie to me is the most interesting character, for she's not the perfect mother but she tries, she struggles to make the right decisions and she beats herself up for the wrong ones she makes. She's selfless and devoted yet she always seems to come up short in the eyes of her daughter. Holly Hunter does and extraordinary job of playing the tortured mother, battling with her demons both self inflicted and those brought on by the ones around her.
`thirteen' is a brilliant film, brutal in it's deliverance which adds to the authenticity and believability, never sugar coating the truth but exposing everything leaving nothing to the imagination. The performances by the entire cast are amazing, Wood, Hunter and Reed bringing grit and truism to this modern day masterpiece. Woods performance in particular is pure brilliance, transitioning from a sweet and innocent girl suffering from naivety to a cruel and heartless girl suffering from naivety almost effortlessly. This film will startle you but hopefully it will open your eyes to the problems and issues that really do exist and help us take notice of the dangers facing our youths. Disheartening and beautifully done, Reed has proven to be a convincing writer and actress, and Catherine Hardwicke handles this film with the proper balance of care and caution delivering one of the most powerfully moving movie experiences to come along in recent years.
Movie Review: Tragic, heartbreaking and strong, a film that dares to be heard and deserves to be applauded...
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I watched `thirteen' I was stunned at how brutally honest a film it was. It's so easy for Hollywood to sugar-coat reality to make it accessible but here that is far from the case. In it's honesty though it never crosses the line in becoming so overtly dramatic and edgy that it comes across forced and in other words Hollywoodized. `thirteen' stays true and relatable and effortlessly absorbing. While watching the film I found my heart invested in the story, in the characters and in their eventuality. I really cared for everyone involved in different ways and for different reasons. The cast, I should immediately point out, is so brilliant here that they really help keep this film true to form and each actress adds layers of honesty to her performance.
Evan Rachel Wood blew me away with her performance as Tracy Freeman. Tracy is your average thirteen year old girl. She's awkward around boys, teased at school, distant from the popular girls, estranged from her parents, longing to be accepted by her peers as well as her father. Her whole life seems a waste. Her mother Melanie is a recovering alcoholic who damages her family with her choice of male companions but who is genuinely trying to make things good again for her children. Tracy's father is never around to lend a hand in the matter and can't seem to find the time in his schedule to give his daughter the attention she needs. In order to vent her frustration and find some control Tracy resorts to smoking and cutting.
Tracy them meets Evie Zamora, the popular girl in school. She's overly sexual, malicious and dangerous and these qualities immediately draw Tracy in. She begins to conform to Evie's standards and a shift begins to take place in Tracy's attitude and her actions. Melanie, the maternal instinct kicking in, spots this change early on but is unable to take evasive action. Evie's family life is tragic as well. Her parents are no where to be seen and her cousin who acts as her guardian is so uninvolved and lenient with Evie that her behavior, as drastic and outlandish as it is, is welcomed, even encouraged. Melanie sees this and feels almost guilted into accepting this girl, a girl who gets no real love and attention elsewhere. While Tracy distances herself further from her mother, Evie uses this opportunity to attach herself, reaching out to that motherly concern, love and guidance she's lacked all her life.
The film spirals down to a breathtaking ending that resolves much and brings to the fore true intentions. It's beautifully scripted by director Catherine Hardwicke and co-star Nikki Reed, who plays Evie. Reed is tragic as Evie, really captures the essence of this girl lost in the shuffle and her breakdown in the end of this film is beautifully captured in all its raw reality. Her character finally emerges in truth and honesty before everyone's eyes and as her exposure is made clear the sheer brilliance of her performance is made manifest as well. Holly Hunter well deserved her Oscar nomination. Her portrayal of Melanie is sincere and heartbreaking. But no one here deserves more praise than Evan Rachel Wood who devours her role and delivers such tempered and controlled emotions, delivering believability and honesty in each brilliantly calculated move. Watching her character transform in each scene is effortless and captivating.
`thirteen' may be hard to stomach sometimes, especially if you're a parent, and even more so if you are a parent of a young daughter. As much as it may remain difficult I feel it's also very important that you force yourself through it. It exposes quite well the dangers surrounding young girls today, from the desires and pressures to conform to your peers and the enticing effects of drugs, alcohol and sex, vices that are becoming more and more accessible to kids of younger and younger ages. Directed with equal measures grit and concern, `thirteen' is a landmark film that sheds a much needed light on the dangers of adolescence and is one of the more moving and socially important films of the past decade. By far the greatest film of 2003.
Movie Review: A masterpiece -- 'Raging Bull' for teenage girls
Summary: 5 Stars
I love movies like this, movies that seem to have been created to spite the box office revenues on which the film industry depends for survival. It isn't fun, doesn't beg for a sequel, isn't appropriate for children, isn't based on a book or TV show, doesn't have any big-name stars (unless Holly Hunter counts), has no explosions or car chases. This is film for the sake of things other than box office, a brilliant exercise in scriptwriting and dramatic acting, a warm welcome to the talended Nikki Reed, and a great resum' builder for rising force Evan Rachel Wood, who has previously appeared in a fair number of Hollywood films but this time gets the key to the city in return for her efforts.
'Thirteen' plays like a cautionary tale for parents who feel it's too early to worry about what their teens and "tweens" are getting into, and for young people who think their extracurricular activities are unendingly harmless and endearing. It is about how the very act of caring about a child makes a parent un-cool in that child's eyes, how slippery is the slope from getting your first thong to being called a four-letter name by an older woman who's seen your type before and wasn't impressed, and how you can lie down and sleep next to someone who loves you but, eventually, you must wake up and deal with who you are and what you've made of your life.
There's another movie here, too, one that takes shape within camera angles and set pieces. My favorite comes when Tracy and Evie hang out with some young gentlemen who work on a road crew. The play among lawn sprinklers at night, and the camera shows them backlit, almost in silhouette. The differences among the actors' bodies come across so clearly that I was reminded of the filmstrips on puberty that I saw in grade school. ("Johnny grew four inches over the summer, and his voice is starting to deepen.") Many of the indoor scenes have an almost documentary feel, as if a camera team were haphazardly filming a real family during a particularly nasty patch. It is a credit to the actors that watching them in some scenes is like seeing an ugly incident unfold among strangers, where you wish the entire time that you were someplace else but can't stop watching.
Something must be said about Evan Rachel Wood. I think she's the best actor I've ever seen in TV or movies. Think about how bold that statement is. I'm not comparing her to Hilary Duff, Kirsten Dunst, Jena Malone, and Mischa Barton. I'm comparing her with Marlon Brando, Kevin Spacey, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Katherine Hepburn, Jodie Foster and on and on and on, and I'm saying that Evan does things that I've never seen any other actor do. There is a timeless virtuosity to her best work, something that seems effortless yet conveys the "fully-baked" version of her characters' emotions -- not as we've seen them acted on the screen by others, but as we've felt them ourselves. It seems ridiculous to say that the eighteen-year-old American girl who starred in 'Down Will Come Baby' is the greatest film and television actor of all time, and I'm trying really hard to think of one actor who is legitimately better, but I can't come up with anyone. I treasure each powerful performance I've seen in the movies -- Sean Penn in 'Mystic River,' Nicholas Cage and Elisabeth Shue in 'Leaving Las Vegas,' Marlon Brando in 'Last Tango in Paris' -- but to be so good over and over again is truly remarkable. Wood brought me to tears in 'Thirteen,' and she did it at least four times in 'Once and Again.' She almost had me crying in that stupid Green Day video. I can't say enough about how awesome she is. For those who don't know of her, this film is a great introduction; her performance here is emotionally devastating and as powerful as anything I have ever seen.
For those who don't care who Evan Rachel Wood is, 'Thirteen' is a great film on its own merits.
Movie Review: Every parent's nightmare about how good girls go bad
Summary: 5 Stars
Evan Rachel Wood continues to make her bid to be the Jodie Foster of her generation in "Thirteen," a harrowing film about a good little girl gone horribly bad. Wood is Tracy, a seventh grader who lives with her single mom (Holly Hunter), a hairdresser who works out of the home. Tracy dreams of being cool, just like Evie (Nikki Reed), and when the opportunity comes to ingratiate herself with the cool girls, Tracy takes it and quickly moves from shoplifting, low-rise jeans and hoochie tops to drugs, body piercings, bad boys, oral sex, and worse. Evie even moves into Tracy's home, and it becomes clear that this is a troubled girl who has made shoplifting, drugs, and sex part of her daily routine. The script for "Thirteen" was written in six days by director Catherine Hardwicke and Nikki Reed. Hardwicke had dated Reed's divorced dad and having known Nikki since she was a little girl was distressed when the kid turned 13 and starting having problems (problems like what happens to Tracy in this film). Hardwicke suggested Nikki keep a journal and intervened in the young girl's life, taking her to museums and exposing her to the larger world. However, it was Nikki's journey through the dark side that serves as the basis for this film.
The result is a story that retains its rawness even as we are mesmerized by the performances of the three female leads. For every "cool" scene, such as when Evie dressed for a date by taking off her skirt, moving her tank top down as a skirt and adding a new blouse, there are scenes that no kid is going to want to emulate, as when Tracy starts cutting herself. Meanwhile, her mother, a recovering alcoholic, finds herself helpless to do anything about her daughter's death spiral once she finally notices the radical changes that Tracy has undergone. It is not that Melanie does not care, but that she is powerless. Having been abandoned by her husband, Melanie finds her daughter has no use for her either.
The big question with "Thirteen" is whether young teenage girls who get to watch this deservedly R-rated film would understand that it was a warning or whether they would just filter the horror story through the prism of their adolescent notions of coolness. Hardwicke follows Tracy's descent but never buys into the idea it is a good thing. This is made clear by the opening scene where the two girls, while doing drugs, have made their faces numb so that they do not feel anything and starting hitting each other in the face, laughing hysterically all the time. The point of the opening scene is clear: Tracy does not know what she is doing to herself.
Hardwicke won the Director's Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Hunter is up for an Oscar, and Wood was nominated for a Golden Globe. "Entertainment Weekly" argued that Wood should receive serious consideration to become the youngest nominee the Best Actress Oscar in history and surprisingly that indeed happen this year, except that the nomination went to Keisha Castle-Hughes for "Whale Rider." Special mention should be made of Jeremy Sisto's performance as Brady, Melanie's boyfriend and another recovering alcoholic, who manages to play a pivotal role in the climax by providing the push Melanie needs to finally deal with Tracy. The "bad boyfriend" is a stereotypical role in so many films, that it is a shock to see one be different in such a subtle way.
"Thirteen" is a brutally honest film, the sort that you might never see again because once was enough, thank you very much. The emotional conclusion is powerful, but I would not say it qualifies as being truly cathartic. If there is a lesson here for parents it would simply be that when your children undergo radical transformations, of any type and in any direction, pay attention, because it could be too late sooner than you think.
Movie Review: They're not little girls anymore
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're a little like me and saw Evan Rachel Wood in 'Simone', and maybe two 'Once and Again' episodes, and then later in Ron's Howard's 'The Missing', and you wonder where she got so grown up you will find the answers in 'Thirteen'.
'Thirteen' is a movie I have wanting to see ever since I first heard about it on a group dedicated to Evan's films on Yahoo! Evan-Rachel-Wood@yahoogroups.com, which I first joined when I heard she was part of 'The Missing' cast. I first thought 'Thirteen' was a movie already out on DVD. Then I found it hadn't been released in Australia at the cinemas.
When it was released at the cinemas in Australia it was only at
selected cinemas. One that wasn't exactly five minutes away but a
cinema I always tried to get to each week. Finally I got to one of the cinemas it was playing at, and found it had just finished being
shown at that cinema. Instead my twin brother Stephen and I went and saw 'Monster'. That was an excellent movie. I'm glad I saw it. So I waited for 'Thirteen' on DVD.
This movie was shot in twenty seven days, and on a cheap budget. All but two of the shots are hand held. Steven Spielberg's film 'Catch Me If You Can', was also shot in twenty seven days.
One of the images I thought was so effective is of Evan and Nikki
Reed sticking their tongues out showing off their tongue rings. I
really like it to try and sell this movie.
The music is also great. Some tracks I enjoy on the CD and in the
film, in no special order are Katy Rose - 'Lemon', Clinic - 'The
Equaliser', Liz Phair 'Head Underwater'. Mark Mothersbaugh - Score -'The Shoot Out', Mark Mothersbaugh ''Hit Me' and Folk Implosion - 'Make It With The Best'.
I also love the dull colour pallet in some of the scenes. It is
really appropriate. Another film I really love with a slightly blue tinge colour to it is 'Crazy/Beautiful' with Kirsten Dunst. Another with a blue colour change is 'Underworld'. I think colour changes infilm will continue to make films that little bit different then therest and more interesting. 'Man On Fire' is another with film colour issues. Although I didn't like that film so much.
'Thirteen's tagline 'They're not little girls anymore' is great. I also think 'Filmink's comment "...an emotional firebomb..." Totally compelling" is exactly right.
'Thirteen' is rated MA 15+ for adult themes, drug use.
This is not always an easy movie to watch. When Evan's character
Tracy cuts her wrists on several occasions during the film I think Evan was just so brave to do this movie. Evan is a great girl I imagine, and it is hard to watch someone inflict what would be excruciating pain on themselves. I'm glad the tongue rings and bellybutton rings were not real. More painful procedures I'm sure. I'd never want a tongue ring or want to slit my wrists. I don't know how Evan did those scenes.
I like how it ends because her troubles are only just starting. She has a long way to go yet. It's a little sad at the same time.
Spoiling one's body, and having to deal with major issues so young. I wouldn't want a sequel to this movie but if there was one maybe it could be 'Fourteen'.
I wouldn't want to be Thirteen again. That's for sure, even though my year was quite good it's still hard for anyone.
I am really glad I own this film. It seems very real to me. In a
strange way it is now one of my favorite movies. I like to watch
teenage related films, and new up-and-comers. I never really used to.It has just evolved. I think teenage films would make for an interesting article one day. 'Mean Girls' is another favorite movie of mine recently. But when it comes to Evan 'Thirteen' will remain a favorite along with 'The Missing'.