The Best Movies of 2014: 11-25

The Best of the Year list rolls on with my picks for the 11th through 25th best movies of 2014.

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:

  1. Like Father, Like Son

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.

  1. Life Itself


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)

  1. I Origins

“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.

  1. The Wind Rises

“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.

  1. 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. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2014: 11-25”

The 10 Best Movies of 2014

The Best Movies of 2014, from Boyhood, Citizenfour, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Gone Girl and more.

Despite a lack of racial diversity, gender equality, originality, strong box office returns or general cultural interest in things that aren’t Taylor Swift or “Orange is the New Black”, the movies manage to put out more than a few good ones each year.

But because all of the above are all anyone’s been clamoring for this year, it’s hard to say this was a strong year for the movies and then read a post like Mark Harris’s in Grantland. His article “The Birdcage” is the most compelling and informative Death of Cinema post you’re likely to read this or any year. He argues that Hollywood is following superheroes down the franchise rabbit hole, in which it isn’t enough for a movie to be a movie; it has to fit with the brand.

I look at my Top 10 list now and only see two blockbusters, only one of which will become a franchise, so presumably it can’t all be bad. But increasingly I’m not so sure. Following the events of “The Interview,” will Hollywood be likely to take the risks that produced that movie, among many of the other daring films this year? It’s unlikely that anything will ever be made quite like my Number One selection this year, but does the audience for such a film get smaller or larger moving into 2015?

The 10 films I’ve listed here are simply the ones I enjoyed the most, not necessarily the ones most likely to push cinema forward or be the game changers the industry needs. Later this week I’ll list out my picks for the 11-30 Best Films of 2014, and hopefully those will help tip the scales a little more. Continue reading “The 10 Best Movies of 2014”