Here’s the headline regarding movies in 2014—most of the
big-budget, Hollywood films were either just OK or really bad. However, the good news embedded in that
headline is that there was a revival of smaller, independent films, some of
which were outstanding and many of which are already available via pay-per-view
and/or streaming video providers.
Before I get started listing the movies I liked, I should
point out that I did not see “Two Days, One
Night” and “Wild Tales,” which might still make the list, once I get to see them. If you know me and/or have read my list before, you probably
know a few things about my movie preferences:
· My favorite movies have both a good plot and
well-developed characters.
· I don’t like movies about nasty people doing
awful things to each other.
· I enjoy movies that either entertain me and/or
in some way uplift me.
· I don’t watch a lot of animated films.
· I don’t include documentaries on my list.
· I tend to like films where the script is fresh
and interesting.
· I’m not invited to free movie screenings, nor do
I get to meet the casts or directors.
So, with that, here is my list
of the Best Movies of 2014, in inverse order:
Directed by Josh Boone, this is a story about teenagers
with cancer. I know what you’re
thinking—I said I like movies that entertain or uplift me—but this movie
actually is uplifting in many ways, without being schmaltzy. That’s due to an outstanding book by John
Green, a great screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael
H. Weber, and outstanding performances by Shailene
Woodley (who is great in everything), Ansel Elgort,
Nat Wolff,
Laura Dern (who should get a special award for playing a mom in both this and
“Wild”), and Willem Dafoe. The movie is
surprising in its lack of cancer-genre clichés.
This low-budget Australian horror film is suspenseful less
because of its villain (the title character, who first appears in a children’s
book) than because of its heroine (played by Essie Davis), who is the scariest
character in the movie. As a result,
you’re not sure whether what you are seeing is real or imagined. I would have rated it higher if the director
(Jennifer Kent) hadn’t telegraphed much
of the story early in the film. But it
was still riveting to watch, and the ending is equally confounding.
The brainchild (pun intended) of writer-director Gillian
Robespierre, this movie stars Jenny Slate as a raunchy, Jewish
comedian who has a relationship with a WASPy Midwesterner (played by Jake Lacy)
that leads to her getting pregnant. She
then has to determine what to do about both the relationship and the pregnancy,
and the film is neither preachy or cliché in exploring those choices. With fine supporting performances by Gaby
Hoffmann and Polly Draper, this movie defies convention.
Writer-director Jim Jarmusch makes movies that are not for
everyone (half the time, they’re not for me).
Add in his selection of Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston—two actors who
require little or no makeup to look like vampires, and you have the most
intelligent vampire movie in a long time.
After all, it includes musical references ranging from Schubert to Eddie
Cochran to Jack White, and literary references that include phony passports in
the names of Daisy Buchanan and Stephen Dedalus. The film even includes John Hurt playing
Christopher Marlowe as a centuries-old vampire (I guess he’s not buried in that
unmarked grave after all). The plot
centers around a married vampire couple whose immortal lives are getting stale
until the entrance of her sister (played by Mia Wasikowska) who shakes things
up a bit. This movie is stylish to a
fault, but it works.
It’s not a stretch to say that Marion Cotillard is one of
the world’s best screen actresses, and this film supports that assertion, as
she plays a Polish woman named Ewa who arrives at Ellis Island in 1921 to watch
her sister taken and quarantined with tuberculosis. Ewa spends the rest of the movie doing
everything she can to survive and reunite with her sister. In that process, she enters into a very
questionable and unconventional relationship with a Jewish showman/pimp named
Bruno, played by Joaquin Phoenix.
Directed by James Gray and written by Gray and Ric Menello, this film
also features a scene-stealing performance by Jeremy Renner. Overall, it paints a painfully realistic
picture of life and respect in a time and place where both are undervalued.
A Swedish film written and directed by Lukas
Moodysson and starring Mira
Barkhammar, Mira Grosin,
and Liv LeMoyne
as three 13-year-old girls who don’t fit in and, after being humiliated in gym
class, decide to form a punk rock band.
Of course, only one of the girls actually knows how to play an instrument,
so this isn’t one of those movies where they go on to achieve greatness or win
a big competition. Instead, the film
just explores the uncomfortable and exuberant nature of being a young teenage
girl, and all the insecurities that come with it. Each parent is very different but very
real—not the cartoon characters so often depicted in teen movies. What I liked about this movie is seeing the
world through the eyes of these very smart but somewhat confused young minds and
the joy they take from each experience.
Intellectually, I loved this movie’s humor, absurdity, and
performances by a star-studded cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray
Abraham, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, and Bill Murray, just to name a few. However, viscerally, I was left slightly underwhelmed
by the inherent glibness that director Wes Anderson displayed in the movie (as
he often does). That direction and the
script by Stefan Zweig lacked the sweetness and character development of Anderson’s
last film, “Moonrise Kingdom,” so I ranked this lower than did most movie
critics. Even with those caveats, it is
still a very good film that displays Anderson’s unusual take on the world.
Talk about a unique movie, this one features one man, in a
car, talking to several characters (we only hear their voices) on a mobile
phone (with Bluetooth, of course), shown in real time (everything takes place
in the 90-minute length of the movie).
It doesn’t hurt that the man—Ivan Locke—is played by Tom Hardy (who had
quite the year as an actor), or that the movie is excellently written and
directed by Steven Knight. It also
matters that some of the voices are supplied by such fine British actors as
Ruth Wilson, Olivia Colman, Andrew Scott, and Ben Daniels. But the beauty of this movie is its
immediacy—a life in turmoil is happening as you are watching it, and you feel
for the lead character as much as the faceless characters on the multiple
calls. By the end, I was almost as
exhausted as Ivan Locke assuredly was.
The award for “Absolutely Weirdest Movie of the Year” goes
to this film, directed by Jonathan Glazer and written by Glazer and Walter
Campbell from a book by Michael Faber.
Set in Scotland, it’s about a woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, finding odd men and seducing them. Right from the beginning, the filmmaking is
very strange, but the really weird part comes as we find out who (and what)
this woman really is. I’m not sure why I
was so riveted to (and by) this movie; maybe it was the eerie nature of every
encounter, or maybe it was watching Johansson explore her completely naked body
in a mirror for several minutes (it is Scarlett Johansson after all). Whatever, it’s a film that plays in your head
for several days after it’s over.
Another actor who had a really good year was Reese
Witherspoon, who in this movie plays an employment agency counselor who has to
find jobs for three men from Sudan, played by Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany, and
Emmanuel Jal, who were among the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” If you don’t know about this horrific story,
I urge you to google it, so you get a better idea of what happened in Sudan
from 1983 to 2005. Adding to this film’s
credibility is that actors Duany and Jal were actually among those Lost
Boys. Director Philippe
Falardeau and writer Margaret
Nagle exercise the good sense to make this movie about the Africans,
rather than focusing much on the white people (played by Witherspoon, Cory
Stoll, and Sarah Baker) who helped them settle in Kansas City. In fact, the first part of the movie focuses
on the boys and their sister, as they try to survive in Africa. This is a good movie about a story that
should be told.
First released in 2013 but not available in the US until
early in 2014, the premise of this movie revolves around a lunch delivery
system in Mumbai in which someone at home prepares a lunch and puts it into a
series of metal tins that become a larger “lunchbox.” Those lunchboxes are then given to delivery
men who transport them via bicycle to the office workers for whom they are
intended. The system is famously efficient,
except in this rare case, when the wrong man starts receiving lunch from a
woman he doesn’t know. Soon, they start
including notes and letters with those lunches, and the movie goes from
there. Written and directed by Ritesh
Batra, and starring Irrfan Khan
(recognizable from many other roles), Nimrat Kaur,
and Nawazuddin
Siddiqui (as Khan’s younger protégé), this is an excellently tender
movie that reaffirms the beauty of emotions expressed in writing.
Written and directed by newcomer Justin Simien, this film
was incorrectly marketed as a comedy.
While there are some funny lines, it is squarely a movie about racism in
many of its forms. It starts out with
characters that seem one-dimensional, but as it moves along, you start to see
the other sides of many of those characters—some for the better and others for
the worse, but mostly just interesting.
Tessa Thompson is outstanding in the lead role, and she is supported by
good performances from an ensemble including Tyler James Williams, Teyonah
Parris, Brandon Bell, and Justin Dobies.
While the film suffers from low-budget editing and a few missteps from a
first-time director, it is nevertheless successful in pointing out that
although there’s color in the White House, racism still exists throughout
society, even in the world of academia.
James Gandolfini’s last role is a beauty, befitting his
immense talent for expressing multiple emotions simultaneously. He is joined here by Tom Hardy and Noomi
Rapace in a movie that stayed under the radar this year but is really
good. Directed by Michaël R. Roskam from
a story and script by Dennis Lehane, it explores Brooklyn’s seedy underworld,
including the influence of Chechen mobsters.
But it’s more about three people whose lives have suffered through
various twists and turns until they arrive at this moment, which culminates at
the film’s climax on Super Bowl Sunday.
It’s just what happens when really good actors inhabit well-written
characters.
Alejandro
González Iñárritu’s unusual comedy is about the insecurities that
actors face on a regular basis, and it is illuminated by outstanding
performances by Michael Keaton, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough,
Emma Stone, and Zach Galifianakis (surprisingly playing the least outrageous
character in the film). It is something
of a meta-movie in that Michael Keaton (who played “Batman” earlier in his
career) is playing a character who starred as “Birdman” in several movies
earlier in his career. There are scenes
in this film that are absolutely brilliant at depicting the difficult and
unpredictable lives of stage actors, but those scenes are often followed by
ponderousness that failed to keep my interest.
As such, I ranked it lower than some other reviewers. Nevertheless, this is still a very good film,
loaded with wonderful performances.
This is the film that surprised me the most in 2014. Released in Europe in 2013 and in the US this
year, it is set in post-WWII, socialist Poland (with English subtitles), and
it’s about a beautiful young woman named Anna (played by Agata Trzebuchowska)
who grew up in a convent and is about to take her vows as a nun. However, before that occurs, the mother
superior tells her she has an aunt who would like to meet her and suggests that
Anna spend some time with this aunt immediately. Upon meeting the aunt (played by Polish film
icon Agata Kulesza), Anna learns that her family was Jewish, and the two women
set out on a journey to learn what happened to that family. Shot in black and white by director Pawel
Pawlikowski and written by Pawlikowski
and Rebecca
Lenkiewicz, this is a stunningly engrossing film about loss and
self-discovery, and it deserves to be seen.
OK, I’ll be honest…I enjoy an occasional feel-good movie,
and there are two on my list, including this one. Written, directed by, and starring Jon
Favreau as a well-known chef who embarrasses himself in a public spat with a
restaurant critic (played by Oliver Platt), he sets out to redeem himself
through the unlikely venue of a food truck.
He brings his son (played excellently by Emjay Anthony) along on the
trip, which also serves as a bonding experience for them. Favreau assembled a bunch of his friends to
costar in this movie, including John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Scarlett Johansson,
Robert Downey, Jr., and Dustin Hoffman.
The result is an enjoyable experience that leaves you smiling (and
hungry).
One of the few big-budget films on my list, this one is
like a futuristic “Groundhog Day” meets “Saving Private Ryan.” Directed by Christopher McQuarrie and written
by Jez Butterworth and John Henry Butterworth from a book by Hiroshi
Sakurazaka, it stars Tom Cruise as a reluctant soldier, fighting an alien
enemy, who gets splattered by an alien’s remains before he is killed. After that, he keeps dying and waking up in
the same military camp, before having to fight the same battle. Eventually, he enlists the help of a seasoned
warrior, played by Emily Blunt, and they go about trying to win the war, even
though each time he dies, he has to find Blunt again and restart the
process. This is an intelligent, sci-fi,
war movie that is not bogged down by typical romantic entanglements, and it’s
Cruise’s best movie in years.
Jake Gyllenhaal is at his best when there’s a creepiness
beneath that movie star exterior, and here he’s at his creepy best as a
disturbed young man who becomes a freelance news videographer. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy and
costarring Rene Russo and Bill Paxton, this film explores the depths of what
those who produce a TV news broadcast might be willing to do for improved
ratings. Enabled by their thirst for
gory news footage, the lead character starts to become a player in his own stories. This all leads to a disturbing albeit
believable conclusion.
This X-rated examination of sexual excitement and
depravity is not for the kids. Written
and directed in two volumes (each full-length features) by Lars Von Trier, it
begins with Stellan Skarsgård’s character finding Charlotte Gainsbourg’s
character (oddly named Joe) bruised and beaten on the street. He takes her back to his home, where she
describes her life as a nymphomaniac and he likens her activities to fly
fishing (I didn’t say this is a normal set of films). Her endeavors are shown in flashbacks first
featuring Stacy Martin as young Joe and later by Gainsbourg. They are shown in graphic detail and include
segments with characters played by Shia LeBeouf, Hugo Speer, and Willem Dafoe. Also in supporting roles are Christian Slater
as Joe’s father and Uma Thurman, in a movie-stealing performance as the wife of
one of Joe’s lovers. The second volume
is more disturbing than the first and includes Joe’s exploration of
sadomasochism with a character played by Jamie Bell. This is essentially a porn film, but I’m
recommending it for its interesting story, well-developed characters, and
well-written dialogue.
As I’m sure you know, I like music, and so does this
movie. Written and directed by John
Carney, it stars Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo (who both had good years), and
it’s about a young singer-songwriter who meets a down-on-his-luck recording
company executive and, after discovering some common bonds, they set out to record
an album that incorporates the ambient sounds of New York City. What I love about this film is that the
relationship is not about romance; it’s about creative expression and rebirth,
and the movie features fine supporting performances by Adam Levine, James
Corden, Hailee Steinfeld, Catherine Keener, and Mos Def.
It’s a coincidence that my Number 9 and Number 8 movies
are both about music, because they couldn’t be more different. In this film, Miles Teller plays a drumming
student named Andrew, at a music conservatory, who starts playing in the
school’s prestigious jazz band, led by an instructor named Fletcher, played by
J.K. Simmons. While it first seems like
Fletcher is trying to coach the best out of his students, his techniques begin
to appear more and more abusive. Written
and directed by Damien Chazelle, the beauty of this film lies in the
performances, especially that of Simmons, who has always been a good actor but
never such an Oscar-worthy one (even though the Golden Globes considered him a "supporting actor"). This is one of those roles like
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone, or Dustin
Hoffman as Raymond Babbitt. I know I’ll
never forget it.
And now for something completely different, imagine a
failed climate change experiment which leaves the Earth as a frozen wasteland,
incapable of supporting life. Then,
imagine that as this was happening, a few hundred people boarded a train that now
travels around the globe, and that these are the only people left on Earth, but
they have established a class system in which the lowest class inhabits the
rear sections of the train. This is the
story behind director Joon-ho Bong’s
surprisingly affective movie, starring Chris Evans, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Jamie
Bell, and Tilda Swinton (who always inhabits her roles with aplomb). I can’t say much more about it without giving
away the story, but it is a very good action movie with intelligence and heart.
This is the best feel-good movie of 2014. It tells the true story of how, in 1984, the
coal miners were on strike, and Margaret Thatcher’s government sent British
police to help break it up and demoralize the miners. A group of gay and lesbian advocates, who
also felt repressed by British police, decided to start raising money to
support the miners, and the result was an unlikely, and at first uncomfortable
partnership between the two disparate groups.
That partnership eventually developed into friendship between a small
group calling themselves “Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners” (LGSM) and most
of the residents of a small, Welsh mining town.
Directed by Matthew
Warchus from a script by Stephen
Beresford, the film features an outstanding cast that includes Ben
Schnetzer, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Paddy Considine, Imelda Staunton, Bill
Nighy, and George MacKay. If Frank Capra
were alive today, he would have liked this film, which features characters in
turmoil who lift each other, and themselves, to success.
A British film from 2013 that was not released widely in
the US until early in 2014, this is written by Misan Sagay, directed by Amma
Assante, and stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw—one of the few films I know of that was
written, directed, and starring three different women of color. In it, the character of Dido Elizabeth Belle
(played as a young girl by Lauren-Julien Box) is the mixed-race daughter of a
Royal Navy Captain (played by Matthew Goode).
When her mother dies, she goes to live with his aristocratic parents,
played by Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson.
While her lineage provides her with certain benefits, her skin color
restricts her socially, and that dichotomy is explored throughout the
movie. All this is also occurring while
there is a movement afoot to end slavery in England, and the eventual decision
may have to be made by Wilkinson’s character, who is the Lord Chief Justice. Rather than being a stuffy, British, period
piece, this is an exciting and rewarding film.
Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of a broken woman who finds
redemption by hiking 1100 miles is brought to life beautifully by screenwriter
Nick Hornby, director Jean-Marc
Vallée, and star Reese Witherspoon.
This could have been a really boring movie, but instead it captures your
interest in the opening scene and holds it until the quietly triumphant
conclusion. Aided by outstanding
performances by Laura Dern and Thomas Sadoski, the viewer feels everything that
Cheryl felt after the loss of her mother and her subsequent descent into
addiction and promiscuity, and how her reawakening came along the Pacific Coast
Trail. Witherspoon’s Oscar-worthy
performance is her best to date, and she was completely believable in the role,
even in carrying the same, 70-pound backpack that Strayed had carried. The cinematography by Yves Bélanger is often
breathtaking, and this is a film worth seeing.
This brings new meaning to the concept of commitment to a
film project. Every year, for twelve
years, writer-director Richard Linklater assembled the same cast for two weeks
to film scenes for this movie. The
result is the ability to watch the same actor (Ellar Coltrane) playing the same
character (Mason), starting at the age of 6 and concluding when he is 18. Playing his parents over the same period are
Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, and both are brilliant in those roles. The director had his own daughter, Lorelei
Linklater, play Mason’s sister, Samantha.
In the hands of a lesser director, this movie could have been gimmicky,
but Linklater also has experience developing long-term characters in the
“Before” movies (“Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” and “Before Midnight”), and
he (and Ethan Hawke) drew on that experience to make a movie in which the
characters lead interesting lives, without so much happening as to seem
unreal. By the end of the 2 hours, 45
minutes it took to watch this movie, I really felt like I knew these
characters, and their strengths and faults, much better than in typical movies,
which simulate the passage of time.
Director Christopher Nolan combined visual elements of Spielberg
and Kubrick with his own sensitive script (co-written with his brother Jonathan)
and modern filming techniques to explore themes first described by Einstein and
Hawking while making them accessible to the common moviegoer. That’s no small accomplishment, and this is a
fine movie that examines the relationships between time and space as well as
the relationships between characters played by Matthew
McConaughey, Anne Hathaway,
Jessica
Chastain, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon,
and a slew of other, talented actors. The
film explores how our own humanity can both positively and negatively affect our
environment and our endeavors to improve that environment. The convoluted plot has to do with the Earth dying
and a plan to travel through a wormhole to find a planet capable of supporting
life. But that plot is secondary to the development
of the characters while the secrets of time and space are revealed. This is a well-written movie that is visually
arresting and emotionally fulfilling, and I strongly recommend it.
When Alan Turing and his team eventually built the first
electromechanical machine designed to break complex codes, what they were doing
essentially was inventing the first prototype of what we now call a computer. This movie is a fictionalized account of that
invention, and how it was driven by the necessity to break the code the Nazis
used with their Enigma machine to convey messages to their troops and ships. But this movie, directed by Morten Tyldum
and written by Graham Moore from a book by Andrew Hodges, does much more than
that. It examines the inner mind of a genius
who was also a homosexual—something not tolerated in 1940s England. Played brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch, Turing
had to live in a world in which he was different from most other people in
terms of his intellectualism, his views of societal norms, and his sexual
preference. The film also explores the
restricted views of women in society and how Joan Clarke (an actual person
played in the movie by Keira Knightly) had to deal with those views while
trying to forge a role as a female mathematician. With
additional, excellent supporting performances by Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles
Dance, Alan Leech, Matthew Beard, and Tom Goodman-Hill, the film has layers of
complexity and addresses difficult issues without seeming preachy. By the end, I felt exhilarated that I had
witnessed a historical milestone while despondent that 60 years later, even the
most progressive nations are still slow in accepting and respecting our
differences. The film accomplishes all of
that while still being entertaining and well-constructed. As such, it is clearly the best movie of
2014.
