If I’m counting correctly, I saw 87 movies that were released theatrically in 2014, which may be a new record. In writing about 25 in all for my best of the year list, that’s actually not overkill to say I feel strongly about just over a quarter of the movies I saw this year. Why limit myself for the sake of brevity when there are recommendations to be made and when just about any one of these could become one of your favorites? Here’s ranks 11-25:
A wealthy Japanese family discovers that their 6-year-old son Keita is not their biological son but was switched at birth. Hirokazu Kore-eda takes this high concept situation and turns it into a profound family drama, one that first touches on powerful chords of class divides and blood lines in Japan, but one that also ends on the perfect note.
Perhaps an even greater tearjerker than “The Fault in Our Stars,” Steve James’ “Life Itself” is a celebration of the life of everyone’s favorite film critic Roger Ebert. James is unafraid to show Ebert at his worst, both in his behavior as a competitive and caustic journalist and former alcoholic and in his physical condition undergoing suction from his throat as treatment for his cancer. While loosely based on Ebert’s autobiography of the same name, “Life Itself” finds depth as a documentary exploring movies, film criticism and most notably the people Ebert’s life touched. Everyone from Errol Morris to Werner Herzog to Ramin Bahrani and Richard Corliss are on hand to pay their respects, and it’s a touching remembrance whether you’re a cinephile or not. But it’s most importantly a film about Roger the man more so than just the critic, and James finds room for sweet stories about Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times colleague Bill Nack and how Ebert came to be a father figure for his wife Chaz’s children and grandchildren. “Life Itself” is the perfect tribute to Ebert’s memory because it doesn’t just fawn over him but it feels as though it is him. It’s warm, loving and funny but also deep, critical and flawed. It’s hard to say if Ebert would’ve loved this movie, but he would have known it all too well. (This blurb originally appeared in Sound on Sight’s annual Best of the Year Poll)
“I Origins” is a film of science and spirituality, using grandly melodramatic gestures to pose a simple question: “What would you do if something spiritual tested your understanding of the world?” Mike Cahill’s film is a feverish, investigative and urgent mystery paced in a way that it earns its broadly dramatic strokes. It’s also beautifully fascinated with the human eye.
“The Wind Rises,” Hayao Miyazaki’s biopic of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, finds Miyazaki grappling with beauty, desolate conflict and melodrama in a way his whimsical career has never allowed him before. It’s full of enchanting displays of flying and color but jarringly edited with the grim realities of war, poverty and disease. “The Wind Rises” is Miyazaki’s most grounded film, but only he could allow it to also take flight.
- Winter Sleep
Talkative, introspective, atmospheric and wonderfully engrossing, the Palme D’Or winner “Winter Sleep” conveys sprawling themes of wealth, morality and privilege across nearly 200 minutes yet never over stays its welcome. Nuri Bilge Ceylan makes a gradual asshole out of his lead character and blows up this tiny, isolated mountain town to capture the scope of all of human behavior.
As a whole, Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” is a provocative, perverse, highly explicit and bizarrely funny drama that challenges the perception of sex and transforms it into themes of mechanics, nature, philosophy and spirituality. While Vol. 2 is plain repulsive and torturous, Vol. 1 is filled with raw, intense drama from Uma Thurman, Christian Slater and Shia LaBeouf, and its psychological ruminations reveal an auteur at the top of his game.
“The 100 Year Old Man” is exactly what the title describes, yet is so unexpectedly and darkly uproarious. Completely deadpan, straight-faced, and yet cartoonishly absurd, this Swedish riff on a “Forrest Gump” plot follows a clueless old man managing to murder and explode everything that happens to get in his way. A blockbuster hit across Scandinavia, look for it Stateside hopefully next year.
Gabe Polsky’s documentary about the Soviet National Hockey team in Russia elevates the sports history to an art, conveying hockey in terms of creativity, teamwork, loyalty and respect for one’s teammates and country. Given unprecedented access to a former hockey legend and now Russian diplomat Slava Fetisov, “Red Army” offers a sobering, alternate perspective to the Cold War and how the game is played.
Bennett Miller’s tense, sterile story of Olympians Mark and Dave Schultz functions first as a sinister, chilling character study, but additionally as a cynical portrait of the American dream. Steve Carell’s prosthetic nose and heavy breathing reveal a scary figure full of delusion that’s far too familiar in American society.
Jake Gyllenhaal is unpredictably great as Louis Bloom, acting like a clueless, lost puppy who might just kill you. His comically weaseling act mixed with a strange sincerity for businessman clichés recalls Travis Bickle, among other great movie anti-heroes. Dan Gilroy’s film acts as a scathing critique on modern day journalism while rolling in the dark, pulpy story the media loves to sensationalize.
- Edge of Tomorrow AKA Live. Die. Repeat. AKA All You Need is Kill AKA Oblivion Prequel AKA Untitled Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt Sci-Fi
Despite the on the face similarities to “Groundhog Day”, “Edge of Tomorrow” is a smarter and more profound action/sci-fi than most audiences gave it credit for. Tom Cruise proves why he’s the biggest action star in America by growing into his heroic persona after repeated failures and deaths. But he also conveys the frustration of being used as a tool and the pain of seeing a loved one die over and over again. Doug Liman’s film repeats things on end, but always seems one step ahead.
With the exception of “Snowpiercer”, “The Raid 2” was by far the most cathartically violent film of the year. Gareth Evans upped the stakes on the breakout first film with a more liberated camera, a smarter plot, better acting and stylish set dressing. Evans’s feverish camera is blisteringly clear and unflinching, in incredible muddy prison brawls and subway battles with weapons and combat that are plain medieval.
Jean-Marc Vallee’s follow-up to “Dallas Buyers Club” grapples with the inspiring nature of Cheryl Strayed’s 1,100-mile hike and the more harrowing, cynical nature of her mental journey. Reese Witherspoon plays Strayed as a negative, bitter and sharp-tongued woman whose tribulations both mental and physical along the trail make an unspoken statement for women everywhere.
- Force Majeure
The single best shot of the year came from the Swedish human comedy “Force Majeure”, in which a “controlled” avalanche comes tumbling down toward a family in a single, unbroken take. How the mother and father of this precious nuclear family react toward this event dictate the couple’s relationship and questions of human impulses in a way that’s atmospheric, patient, uncomfortable and thought provoking.
A documentary about the greatest movie never made, “Jodorowsky’s Dune” is loaded with outrageous anecdotes connecting luminaries like Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, and H.R. Giger to the mad genius at the movie’s center, cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. But Director Frank Pavich makes the convincing case for the auteur, for passion and for cinema itself.
10 More:
“Mistaken for Strangers”, “Neighbors”, “The Interview”, “Two Days, One Night”, “Particle Fever”, “Big Hero 6”, “What If”, “Low Down”, “Le Week-end”, “Interstellar”
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