MY TOP TEN MOVIES OF THE YEAR – 2014 Edition
If you’re reading this, I also want to say I’M SORRY if you get offended or
irritated because I don’t have as much of an appreciation as you for one or
more of the movies mentioned below. Please believe me when I say putting this
together is something I like doing and wanted to do, but, this year, it was
almost unfathomably difficult. Why? Well, for one, I can find something to
appreciate in almost any movie (as much as I analyze movies, you may have
noticed I’m not that hard of a grader). For another, there were just so many good movies this past year! Yeah,
the usual glut of summer blockbusters didn’t impress me as much as I hoped it
might, but, since about mid-October, I’ve seen one legitimately great movie
after another. Suffice to say, I was deeply impressed by, and would gladly
vouch for, any of the movies listed below, regardless of ‘rank’. In fact,
ranking them like this is a silly thing, because, as I found out when I set my
mind to try to rank them, it’s more
than a little difficult to compare a longer, slower, more meditative and
dramatic type of movie (that might have a lot of real-life implications and a
lot of touching material to analyze), with a more straightforward, entertaining
action film with tons of appeal that just thrills the heck out of you. Yeah, it
was hard, so hard that the idea of putting this list together and trying to
rank these movies often put me in a place where I experienced something rather
like this:
“AGONYYYY
That can cut like a
kniiiiife!”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Guardians of the
GalaxyFoxcatcher
American Sniper
Interstellar
‘Honorable mentions’ is putting it mildly. It was quite
tempting to simply have six movies tied for tenth. In fact, there was a twinge
of anguish in the back of my head with every new movie I saw that really
impressed and touched me, because I knew it meant there was less and less room
at the top. And the sucky thing is, I bet I could watch any of these four
movies again and, at any given time, think to myself “Man, there is no movie I would rather be watching
right now.”
From the rollicking entertainment of Guardians, the epic tragedy of Foxcatcher,
the unbelievable tension and stirring drama of Sniper and the straight-up rush of Interstellar, these were all great movies, and, as said before,
ones I would gladly watch again.
THE TOP TEN
10. BOYHOOD* (tied
with Captain America: The Winter Soldier)
The only reason Boyhood
is ranked this low is because it was so
stinkin long. At two hours and forty-five minutes, it was an endurance test, even for a movie as quietly-compelling and
touchingly-relatable as this. If you haven’t heard, this movie was filmed by
director Richard Linklater and the four main actors (Ellar Coltrane, Ethan
Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter) in 39
days over the course of twelve years, from 2002-2013, in order to capture the
growth of the main character, Mason (Coltrane), as he grew from age 6 to 18.
Fully intent on capturing snippets of everyday life, the movie’s matter-of-factness
took some getting used to, but it was absolutely riveting in its best moments,
contemplating things like domestic scuffles, a broken home, first love, first
heartbreak, and the poignant endings and beginnings that come with a life milestone
like graduation. It’s going to win a couple big Oscars and it’ll deserve them
all, in my opinion. It was long, but I’d watch it again.
10. CAPTAIN AMERICA:
THE WINTER SOLDIER*
I’m not a comic book fan, per se, so I’ve grown a little
weary of the avalanche of comic book-based movies that have come out in recent
years. I go see them because they’re popular, of course—I tend to get my hopes
up, only to be disappointed by some of the sillier humor, more clichéd plot
‘twists’ and more hackneyed last-second escapes common to the genre. I’ve
walked out of several recent Marvel movies (Iron
Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, The Amazing Spiderman) contemplating whether
it’s worth ever seeing another Marvel movie, since they all seem to follow the
same general template. So it means a lot when I say that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the first Marvel movie in a
while that not only surpassed my expectations, but made me legitimately excited
for “the next one”. Of course, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers is one of the more relatable
Marvel heroes, and the movie explored relevant themes like national security,
secret surveillance, conspiracy theories, and even veterans struggling to
integrate themselves back into society after serving in the Middle East. Plus,
the Captain’s relationship with The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) gave this
movie a more genuine emotional pulse than most Marvel movies can hope for. But
this wasn’t some artsy-fartsy film—the action here was top-notch, including the
rare modern-day extended fistfight that wasn’t marred by unnecessary shaky-cam
(Cap and The Soldier had some EPIC mano-a-manos). Plus there was a great
supporting cast (Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Robert
Redford, Frank Grillo, etc…). Yeah, this was straight-up entertainment at its
best.
9. BIRDMAN (or the
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
I remember the first time I saw the trailer for Birdman—it looked like about four
different movies. There’s a reason, as this whirling dervish of a flick veers
from domestic drama to absurdist comedy to outright fantasy, testing a viewer’s
patience and concentration. But the fast and furious dialogue, quietly-epic
tracking shots, occasional big laughs, and superb cast made it worth it. Every
actor in this group—Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Zach
Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough—was impressive, and
could have been even more so if the movie didn’t want to be all ‘weird’ and
‘different’. But, ultimately, this story of a formerly-popular movie star (best
known for playing a popular superhero, Birdman) trying to make a comeback in a
big Broadway drama opposite a raging dingus (Norton) and a clutch of needy
women (Watts, Riseborough) was great when it needed to be. And the ending is
one sure to be debated (what actually happened!?!).
8. WILD
Like 127 Hours or Into this Wild, this was an intimate
study of a real person who sought to find himself or herself out in nature. In
this case, it was Cheryl Strayed, a lonely divorcee and recovering junkie who,
in 1995, hiked 1,100 miles of the Pacific Northwest Trail, from Mexico to
Canada, because she just needed to accomplish something. Along the way, she
grew stronger, made some new friends, and learned to cope with the crushing,
unexpected death of her mother, which had happened just months before. With
Reese Witherspoon in her best role in ages, this was another quiet, poignant
movie about love and loss and learning to appreciate the little things.
7. THE THEORY OF
EVERYTHING
This wrenching true story flick chronicled the unlikely
romance and lengthy marriage of Jane and Stephen Hawking. When they met, she
was way out of his league, but she admired his depth and sincerity, they became
inseparable, and she refused to leave him even when he got a horrible diagnosis—Lou
Gehrig’s disease. It was said he would die within 2 years, but, as you know,
the physicist is still alive today. Brought to life with expression and feeling
by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, this movie really made me ponder what it
means to truly love someone. If you really
love someone, you will do _____ for them… And that’s probably an open-ended
sentence. Jane’s self-sacrifice in caring for her brilliant but almost helpless
husband was touching, as was the question of whether or not it was right for
her to crave affection and physical love when her husband was unable to provide
it, or for him to develop an interest in another woman when Jane gave him so
much. Great acting, whirlwind romance, multiple tearjerker scenes and hard
questions/talking points galore—consider this a prime date movie for serious
couples.
6. EDGE OF TOMORROW
Let’s get this out of the way
first: if you aren’t a Tom Cruise fan, you probably won’t enjoy this movie,
because it’s all about him. But if you don’t mind him, check out this Groundhog Day-meets-Starship Troopers sci-fi action flick that hit it out of the park
where most of the summer’s bigger, sexier movies (X-Men, Spiderman, Godzilla, Transformers) struggled—it was freakin’
entertaining, but it also made you think and gave you something to invest in. When
a cocksure-but-cowardly military officer has a close encounter with an advanced
member of an alien race, its DNA-from-another-dimension throws him into a time
warp where he relives the day of a major humans-vs-aliens battle again and
again. Eventually, he realizes he must use this increasing knowledge to find a
way to defeat the aliens before they wreak further havoc on humanity. But the
cost of seeing so much death, over and over, is high. Co-starring Emily Blunt
(the Baker’s Wife from Into The Woods)
as a badass army chick he teams up with to defeat the aliens once and for all, Tomorrow was such an engaging, exciting
movie that I was completely swept away.
5. THE IMITATION GAME
In a nutshell, Imitation Game was the best of the
year’s clear-cut Oscar-bait dramas for a simple reason: it knew how to be deep
and thought-provoking and legitimately
entertaining. Best Actor nominee Benedict Cumberbatch was perfectly cast as
brilliant but socially-awkward mathematician Alan Turing, a real-life figure
who served the British government/military while England was getting hammered
by Germany in WWII. Turing helped crack the complex, specialized morse code the
Nazis used to communicate over the radio without giving their plans away—it
allowed England and the other allies to anticipate the worst attacks, and meet
them. But despite this breakthrough, Turing was looked down upon for being a
homosexual at a time when it was illegal by British law. And part of his social
awkwardness came from the cruel twist of fate that befell his first love. With
rapid-fire dialogue, endearing character development and moments of deep, deep
emotion, Game was a great,
well-rounded movie.
4. DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
I really do think this one should
have been called Rise and the earlier
one should have been called Dawn, but
whatever—this was a deep, engaging adventure story highlighted by magnificent
special effects. One of the most invaluable, irreplaceable people in the movie
industry—motion capture wizard Andy Serkis (aka Gollum)—does it again as
Caesar, a smart, talking chimp who leads his tribe of advanced apes with wisdom
and grace in a post-apocalyptic world. When the apes unexpectedly come into
contact with a band of human survivors (led by Jason Clarke’s compassionate
explorer and Gary Oldman’s fierce military leader), both sides struggle over
whether or not to better their own race’s chances by trying annihilate the
other. But the die are really cast by Koba, one of Caesar’s right-hand apes
(voiced and given movement by Toby Kebbell), a malicious, bitter chimp who was
a human test subject and wants revenge. This story would be perfectly
interesting if both sides were people, but the fact that one side are apes with
very humane movements and personalities, but were, in fact, apes, just made it that much more
exciting. And that scene of apes riding horses while wielding machine guns as
they stormed the humans’ encampment? Freakin’ awesome. Yeah, this was a good
one.
3. NIGHTCRAWLER
When I watched Nightcrawler, there were times when I
thought “this is almost the perfect movie”. It turned out I didn’t quite agree with the note on which it
ended, but, overall, this was one of the year’s most mesmerizing and
unforgettable films. Jake Gyllenhaal (sadly snubbed in the Oscars’ Best Actor
category) was almost unrecognizable as gaunt, ambitious creeper Lou Bloom, who
stumbles upon the L.A. crime ‘nightcrawling’ scene and decides he wants in. How
do you get in? By getting to the scene of serious incidents (car wrecks, fires,
shootings, break-ins) and filming the intimate, sometimes gory details, and
selling it to the highest bidder amongst local news stations who want higher ratings
(“If it bleeds, it leads!” a fellow nightcrawler proclaims). Lou takes to this
‘profession’ like a duck to water, and becomes a hot commodity amongst the
local stations with his ability to get the shots no one else can (partly
because he’s willing to manipulate or stage scenes to his liking). Lou’s
decision to get more dirt on a particularly-horrific series of murders leads
him to stage the most audacious crime yet, and it takes Nightcrawler from an edgy procedural to the year’s single most
electrifying and scintillating action sequence (trust me, you’ll know it when
you see it). Co-starring Rene Russo as an ambitious news station director Lou
blackmails into sleeping with him, Nightcrawler
was a dark but brilliant film.
2. GONE GIRL
You’d be hard-pressed to find a
movie that better exemplifies the phrase “crazy good”. I remember leaving the
theater after Gone Girl raving,
saying over and over, “that was awesome…that
was nuts—that was CRAZY!” Adapted from Gillian Flynn’s
novel of the same name (she also wrote the movie’s screenplay), this long,
topsy-turvy film takes a look at the deepest, darkest secrets of one particular
couple’s stormy marriage. When the woman (Rosamund Pike), goes missing, leaving
signs of a violent struggle, the police immediately suspect her overly-calm,
slightly-arrogant husband (Ben Affleck) of murder. It doesn’t help his case
when they find his wife’s journal, in which she wrote of her husband: “this man
may kill me.” But when an old flame of his wife’s ends up dead, it becomes
clear things are not what they seem. Boy, aren’t they…Gone Girl is a spellbinding, eye-popping, edge-of-your-seat
thriller that will leave you in disbelief. It was only recently edged out of my
#1 spot for the year, but it remains one of the year’s most dynamic and
memorable movies. It also remains the
absolute last movie you should ever watch on a first date; shoot, make
that any date in general, even if you think you really, really trust the person.
Directed by noted auteur David Fincher (The
Social Network, Benjamin Button, Se7en, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo),
this is an epic white-knuckle thriller I’m half-looking forward to seeing
again, and half-dreading. Yeah, it’s like that.
Yeah, it was hard to top Gone Girl, but this last movie just hit
me in the sweet spot. That movie?
WHIPLASH (#1)
Now this is how you write a good movie—put two sterling performers in
the roles of a pair of men who admire and
despise each other, ratchet up the tension and adrenaline to almost
unbearable levels, add a killer musical score, and fill the last third of the
movie with a jaw-dropping, gut-wrenching game of F*** You. Oh yeah, and end it
with one of the most maddening cliffhangers imaginable. It’s true, part of
writer/director Damian Chazelle’s genius is that beauty of a cliffhanger—it
makes Whiplash about ten times more brilliant
and haunting, but it also can frustrate the mess out of you, because, if you’re
like me, you want to know What the Hell Happened Next! Seriously—I haven’t
loved a movie this much, and yet so badly wanted more, in years.
Yeah, Whiplash got me good. It stars upcoming sensation Miles Teller as
an ambitious younger dummer who gains admission to an exclusive musical academy
in Manhattan, where he strives to get his big break by catching the eye and ear
of the school’s renowned jazz instructor. Catch the eye and ear he does, but it
turns out the instructor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons of the old Spiderman trilogy and the Farmers
Insurance commercials), is, behind closed doors, a tyrannical slave driver, a
relentless, bullying monster who considers neither verbal nor physical abuse
out of the question when it comes to getting the best out of his budding
musicians. The musicians, thus, are tense and terrified, practicing obsessively
to unhealthy levels and proving quick to turn on each other if anyone even
slightly messes up. Teller’s drummer, Andrew, in particular, becomes so
hellbent on impressing the instructor that he dumps his girlfriend and starts
lying to his father in order to focus exclusively on drumming. Yet impressing Fletcher
proves a Herculean task, and Andrew starts to crack. He becomes rude and sour
and starts to lose his own humanity. And impressing Fletcher may not, at the
end of it all, even be possible. And it may not be worth it.
Headed by a pair of phenomenal
performances (Teller was great, and Simmons is on his way to an Oscar), Whiplash was so intense my legs were
numb within minutes; by the high-flying, magnificent whopper of an ending, I
was practically begging for mercy. The script (by director Damian Chazelle) is raw
and brilliant, the drum solos are incredible, and the clash of wits and wills at
the center is something I would long like to analyze (if you can’t tell). Just what went on to happen between these two
after that final scene, I really want
to know. Someone needs to see Whiplash so
we can talk about it. That would be quite the conversation.
If you’ve gotten this far, thanks
for reading. :)
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