- Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance The movies have been around for so long that it can sometimes seem like everything that could be done with the medium has been done in one way or another. There are many things in Alejandro G. Inarittu’s Birdman that, on their own, have been used before, often in more extraordinary ways. This is not the first time an original score has consisted of merely one long drum solo, and multiple other movies have been presented as a single camera take (something Birdman only pretends to do anyway, using computer editing to hide the breaks between several long takes). On their own, most of the elements that make up the experience of this movie would seem like gimmicks, but as a whole they have brought about a film-going experience that is like few I’ve witnessed. The story is very simple, a former movie star is trying to make a serious comeback on Broadway, but made provoking by the dark and even crass humor of the screenplay and the dreamlike manner in which we go in and out of our protagonist’s broken-down mind. Michael Keaton’s starring performance, alongside his co-stars Edward Norton and Emma Stone, is superb and appropriate, considering these three are essentially playing stereotypes of themselves. For someone like me who revels in the mind-bending, senses-twisting, rule-ignoring style of moviemaking, nothing was more fun to watch in 2014 than Birdman.
- Boyhood If Birdman was the most fun movie to watch in 2014, than Boyhood was the most profound (It was extremely difficult actually picking which one would be on top, and though I went with my gut, I pretty much consider the two equals.). Once again, one of the chief conversation topics of the movie is a filming process that sounds gimmicky, and would have been if used for the sole sake of featuring the gimmick. Boyhood, which was written and directed by Richard Linklater, was filmed a couple scenes at a time over the course of twelve years, following the average life of a young boy who slowly grows into adulthood. Ellar Coltrane is the new actor who played the boy for twelve years, aging naturally before our eyes, and his parents were Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, two very special performances. It is astonishing to watch as Coltrane grows from wide-eyed to awkward to comfortable; he never seems like he’s acting, with each new age progressing seamlessly. Similarly effective is the transformation of the experienced actors, as they visibly grow tired and complacent. The screenplay is a miraculous achievement, easily the most real and natural-sounding of Linklater’s work, which he usually prefers to sound more philosophical. The filming technique allowed for something equally miraculous. As the movie captures the essence of everyone’s childhood, it is one of those rare films that can actually mean something to every person who watches it. As the characters grew fictionally, so did the actors, and so did we.
- Gone Girl I love a good story, and the novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn tells one heck of a story, and David Fincher’s film version is one heck of a movie. I think what makes Gone Girl so great is the fact that it is a movie that pretty much requires the participation of the viewer. In a typical mystery, the viewer can remain passive because there are formulas for these things to which most moviegoers (or book readers, for that matter) have been long accustomed. We are introduced to characters, then to a problem that is the catalyst for a series of discoveries that ultimately lead to the solution, one that can usually be predicted by any audience member who stayed awake during the screening. In Gone Girl, everything you expect to happen has happened before the movie is half over, and where it goes from there is so surprising and twisted (both narratively and aesthetically) that passiveness is impossible. It is the sort of movie that simply has to be seen at least twice, because you’re point of view during the first watch was probably all wrong. Without going into details about the plot, let me say that the two leads were perfect for the movie, Ben Affleck because his common persona really helps make his character harder to read and Rosamund Pike because she is so good it’s literally insane.
- Under the Skin Now, if Birdman was mind-bending, senses-twisting, and rule-ignoring, then Under the Skin must just plain be inhuman. Watching it, it certainly feels like hacking into the mind of something alien, like seeing the world through the eyes of a being that has no real idea of what the world is like. This is the actual premise of Under the Skin, the story of an outer space being who has come to Earth to harvest its inhabitants for unspecified reasons. The creature takes the form of Scarlett Johansson who is creepily convincing as the alien who must destroy humans, yet who wants to experience human life for itself. The movie was directed by Jonathan Glazer and this is probably the only time you will ever hear me use the word Kubrickian to describe anything, but I use it here in all sincerity, perhaps the biggest compliment I can give. From the moment the film begins we are, without warning, sunk into and stuck in a cinematic place that is unprecedented in its hypnotic otherworldliness. A lot of the credit for the effect must be attributed to photographer Daniel Landin and to the composer of the truly disturbing score Mica Levi. If you have the patience to accept the disjointed nature of the movie and its unsettling content, I assure you, it will haunt you forever.
- Wild The life of Cheryl Strayed doesn’t sound like anything all that extraordinary. She had an abusive father, and she and her brother were raised by her divorced mother, who was lost to cancer. Cheryl fell into a life of self-imposed misery, ultimately reaching a point at which she was abandoned by her ex-husband (to whom she had not been faithful), addicted to hard drugs, and pregnant. It was then that she decided to forsake her entire city life and go on a solitary, three-month, three-state hike, hoping to mentally fix the life she had already broken. In Wild, Reese Witherspoon gives the performance of her career as this average, everyday, lost woman who finds herself through the painful dedication required by the hike. Director Cedric Kahn utilizes the intense performance from Witherspoon (as well as a very effective Laura Dern as the mother) and a fascinating stream-of-consciousness style to create an intimacy for the audience as we witness this woman’s troubled life at the same time that she is overcoming it. Of the movies I saw during the year, few had quite the emotional impact that Wild had, despite the fact that it does very little to invoke emotion, remaining simple and direct throughout, allowing the emotional moments to stand on their own.
- Calvary Martin McDonagh, you may recall, is the playwright who wrote and directed the superb dark comedies In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. His older brother John Michael McDonagh made The Guard with Brendan Gleeson a few years ago and is back this year with another Gleeson vehicle, and he is just as clever as ever. Calvary stars the ever-terrific Gleeson as the priest of a small Irish parish who is trying to connect with his grown daughter who has come for a visit, give advice and scolding to his unhinged parishioners, and keep his penchant for alcohol at bay. Also, a man who was the victim of child abuse at the hands of a priest has promised to kill him the following Sunday. If this does not sound like a funny movie to you, then you very well may not find it funny! But this movie, as serious as it is in subject matter, made me laugh more than any other 2014 movie. The simple reason why is because tragedy, especially the extreme and absurd kind found in this movie, makes for great comedy, and because I have always been more drawn to a cynical sense of humor than a light-hearted one (For instance, when a teenage boy tells the priest he is considering suicide because he can’t get a girlfriend, Gleeson calmly recommends pornography and shoos him away.). However, Calvary is one of those special movies that are many things, and it knows when to be understatedly silly and when to be serious, and excels at both.
- Nightcrawler In the past, when I said that I thought Jake Gyllenhaal was a good actor (See Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead, Brothers, End of Watch, and Prisoners as evidence.), I was roundly mocked, mostly due to the fact that the public at large has hated him, which of course means that all my friends must also (jk, sort of). But now Gyllenhaal has thoroughly redeemed himself in the eyes of all with Nightcrawler, one of the most original movies of the year and a career-best role for the guy who plays crazy way too well. The story concerns a mentally unwell amateur photographer who discovers the world of ambulance-chasing, meaning that he makes it his business to film the effects of disasters such as car accidents and sell the footage to a news station. The thing is, this guy has no problem getting much, much closer to the gory action than is morally allowed and will commit crimes himself if it means getting better video. This the first movie to be directed by Dan Gilroy (brother of Michael Clayton’s Tony Gilroy) who also wrote it, and it is a more exciting and well-made thriller than is often made by those with tons of experience. Even if he doesn’t make another great movie for the remainder of his career, he has one truly great one already under his belt, which is, again, more than many wealthy filmmakers can say.
- The Grand Budapest Hotel It is a consistent thrill to see each new Wes Anderson movie because here is a man who knows how to make whimsy. Whimsy is rare in movies because it is very difficult to balance out; most who try it often end up with goofy instead, which is fine but just not the same. The thing about Wes Anderson, and especially his new movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, is he can make a movie as light or dark, real or fake, as he likes and still retain that whimsical feel. In this new movie, Anderson’s biggest yet in scale (which nevertheless occasionally uses intentionally cheap-looking stop-motion effects just for the absurdity of it), a cast of dozens of strong personalities are put through the Anderson filter, led by a delightful Ralph Fiennes. The plot, which concerns a priceless painting and involves lots of chases, is an excuse for our being bombarded by barrel-loads of fast-paced yet totally dry dialogue by Wes Anderson and the luscious, colorful photography by Anderson regular Robert Yeoman. It is a movie that exists for its style and humor and makes no excuses for it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. What other movie can you think of that has scenes featuring body dismemberment and the murder of a cat and looks like it was colored in by crayons?
- Snowpiercer In a time when the term “sci-fi movie” brings about thoughts of grotesque, computer-animated creatures ripping things apart or thrashing against metal (Or worse, it may bring about thoughts of boring teenagers stuck in some future setting where they must fight each other to the death for whatever silly reason.), we need to be thanking our lucky stars for Snowpiercer, one of the most wildly entertaining and creative movies of the year period, science fiction, action, or otherwise. The story concerns a future in which the world has frozen over and the surviving humans have been rescued onto a super-expensive, life-preserving train. On the train, however much money you had when you boarded determined in which section you would stay, with the front being a luxurious palace for the wealthy and the back being a horrid stinkhole for the broke. After having been fed up for a generation by the bullying nature of the mysterious engineer (whose representative is played with wonderfully cheerful sadism by Tilda Swinton), action star Chris Evans leads a group of the poor on a fight through the train to claim their equal rights as humans. Directed with exciting energy by Bong Joon-ho, using a screenplay based on the graphic novels by Jacques Lob, Snowpiercer is a superb action flick: intelligent, original, and genuinely exciting.
- The Babadook Just as Snowpiercer was heads above the other movies of its ilk, The Babadook did something new and exciting for the horror genre like I haven’t seen in years. It was written and directed by Jennifer Kent, an Australian filmmaker who has created a story that is just as scary as any other popular supernatural thrillers of late, if not moreso, but which is made all the more poignant and frightening by the real-life implications lurking beneath the monster in the closet images. The story concerns a widow and her son (Essie Grant and Noah Wiseman; she is a powerful presence and he is a superb child actor) who discover a mysterious pop-up book that promises to haunt whoever reads it. This horror device is fairly unique and the Babadook monster makes some startling appearances throughout leading up to the intense finale. What’s more disturbing is what the Babadook seems to really be: the life-changing trauma of loss and grief. Kent exercises incredible patience and tact in her feature debut, revealing enough for us to know what kind of story she’s actually telling while letting the surface horror movie play out on its own. The Babadook is the kind of movie destined to be discovered and rediscovered. Its scares are timeless.
Honorable Mentions---The Boxtrolls, Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes, The Drop, Ida, The Imitation Game, Into the Woods, Jodorowsky’s Dune,
The Lego Movie, Locke, A Most Wanted Man
10 Great-Looking Movies I Couldn’t See During the Year---American
Sniper, Citizenfour, Foxcatcher, Inherent Vice, Life Itself, Mommy, Mr. Turner,
Selma, Two Days One Night, Whiplash
5 Least-Favorite Movies---Deliver Us from Evil, Haunt, Let’s
Be Cops, The Monuments Men, Winter’s Tale
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