The trouble with living in the Midwest is that by year’s end
I haven’t had a chance to see everything
I wanted to see from the year prior. Films trickle inward from the
coasts, and even then their presentation is often dubious. For instance, Paul
Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice was a
prime example of why I wait to put together my list and I missed it because I
think it was only open for about a week. My 19 year old self would have been
there opening night, but my 29 year old with three or four different hoops to
jump through in order to see a movie, it takes a real above and beyond effort
to see everything I want to see. An effort I frankly just don’t have anymore. I
see the films eventually. I put them on hold at the library or they pop up on
Netflix, but they don’t make the list! What a shame!
The year end list is important to me for some reason. I love
putting it together the week of the Oscars. It’s a ritual, undertaken merely to
exercise the film loving muscle in my body that I’ve been honing since I was 16
or 17 and saw Mulholland Drive.
Checked out from the library. From there I became obsessed. I spent whole
summers holed up in my basement bedroom watching stacks of films. Submitting to
an entire history of a medium. I had strict rule: Watch, at the very least, a
film a day. I usually squeezed in two or three a day in addition to working 16
hours a week at AMC where I squeezed in movies after shifts, 11AM matinees on
days off, and saw some films in a piecemeal fashion during ushering shifts. It
is that good and pure obsession that I am trying to pay homage to.
15. Neighbors
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
Obligatory new dad pick. The plot’s a little goofy, but the
characters—new parents desperately trying to salvage the cool people they once
were—are great and full of heart. That’s actually par for the course for
Stoller, whose The Five-Year Engagement
and Forgetting Sarah Marshall get to
be silly, raunchy, and moving all at once. It’s a delicate craft. Sure the gags
are great, but the scene where Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s characters are
trying to have sex and their baby keeps turning around in her bouncy chair to
stare at them and the characters having to abandon the act via the weirdness
was one of the truest things I saw all year.
14. The One I Love
Directed by Christopher McDowell
Caveat emptor: Watching this film with your significant
other is going to lead to a heavy conversation about your relationship. I don’t
want to spoil anything, because watching this film unfold is a treat (as are
the performances of Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss), but if you’re on shaky
ground with the special man or woman in your life this incisive look at
marriage might tip you one way or the other.
13. Jodorowsky’s Dune
Directed by Frank Pavich
I finally put myself up to watching The Holy Mountain this year. How I made it through film school
without seeing Jodorowsky’s infamous masterpiece is beyond me. Rosie had gone
to bed early and I had a couple hours to kill, pulled the trigger, and sat rapt
soaking in one of the weirdest artistic statements I’ve ever experienced. It’s
a brilliant and evocative piece of art that belongs in a museum. I also read Dune this year, primarily because this
documentary had come out and I wanted to imagine the novels setting with a
Jodorowskian palate. It was magnificent. David Lynch’s adaptation is dogshit,
and really, it’s not his fault. It was the 80s and he tried. The studio
interfered, but some of those effects are inexcusable and it’s all so cheesy and
incomprehensible you wish they’d just abandoned it all together. Jodorowsky’s Dune plays like salt in the wound. Look upon that gorgeous and
fucked up concept art and weep. Oh, what could have been! Fortunately, the film
isn’t merely a glimpse of a great film we the people were deprived of, but a
fascinating glimpse into the mind of a madman.
12. 22 Jump Street
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
21 Jump Street
looked funny enough, but only when looking up The Lego Movie did I put together the pieces that Phil Lord and
Christopher Miller were the masterminds behind the tragically short-lived MTV
cartoon Clone High. A show I watched religiously the ½ season it was on. A show
that cemented the groundwork of what would become my adult sense of humor.
Which is to say, a well-timed dolphin squeak will basically have me
hyperventilating on the floor. These guys, Jesus Christ. I can’t even. We
watched 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street back to back and I was
sore the next day. From the clever usage of professional man meat Channing
Tatum to the constant tongue-and-cheek lampoonery of sequels to that goddamn
“Suns Out, Guns Out” tank top, 22 Jump
Street is not only the year’s funniest film, but one of the funniest films
I have ever seen. If Lord and Miller don’t already have the keys to the comedy
kingdom (which, based on the success and overall wonderfulness of The Lego Movie, they probably do) this
needs to be arranged.
11. Birdman: or the
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
This one was sort of a perfect storm of “Things that are
right up my alley.” Here’s a list within the list of why I loved Birdman: One,
I love all of Iñárritu’s films. Two, I love Raymond Carver. Three, I love me a
good behind-the-scenes showbiz movie. Four, the acting is amazing (though I’d
say despite all of the praise Michael Keaton is getting he is upstaged by
Edward Norton and Emma Stone). Five, it’s a technical marvel that plays with
the form of cinema in a unique and, most importantly, fun way. Six, it’s
incredibly heady but also incredibly funny which makes for a deep richness.
Seven, did I mention Emma Stone is amazing? She delivers a monologue midway
through the film that is such a showstopper the director should have cued the
film to burn on screen before correcting it. Eight, it was an experience that
left me rapt in my oversized chair in the squeaky, overpriced cinema suites
chairs at AMC and it’s so rare to go to the movies these days and have an
actual Experience it’s worth noting here.
10. Guardians of the
Galaxy
Directed by James Gunn
James Gunn may be known for peddling filth as a part of the
Troma Entertainment cadre, but the way he has you both weeping and IDing with
Star Lord in the first five minutes of the movie is nothing short of masterful.
From there, Chris Pratt and a terrific supporting cast deliver what is easily
the best, most entertaining and most emotionally satisfying Marvel movie yet.
9. Only Lovers Left
Alive
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Without a doubt, Only
Lovers Left Alive was the coolest film of 2014. It was the sort of cool
that only Jim Jarmusch can deliver as probably the coolest director in the
business. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are electric as a pair of vampires
living out their eternal days (or nights, I suppose) in a languid way typically
associated people living in opium dens. Jarmusch cleverly sets the scene in the
dying city of Detroit against the town’s rock and roll history and it’s just a
marvelous film to let wash over you with its gorgeous visuals and incredible score.
8. Frank
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson
I think a lot of why I loved this movie is tied to when I
watched it. I’d just had surgery, I was zonked out on hydrocodone and feeling
incredibly strange. I instinctually picked Frank
to watch off the Netflix queue and something about the combination of all those
things made it a movie that has really stuck with me. It’s a beautiful and
brutal depantsing of the kind of social media fueld hype machine that makes
music so insufferable these days. Domhnall Gleeson is excellent as the
obnoxious, talentless, tweeting weasel that infiltrates Frank’s band and the
scorn he draws from the rest of the group is a source of great humor. Michael
Fassbender wears a big paper mache head for most of the film but that doesn’t
make his turn as a brilliant, mentally ill musician any less stirring. It’s a
poignant look at the Daniel Johnstons of the world and the suffering that leads
to that great, weird, outsider art we all love so much.
7. Calvary
Directed by John Michael McDonagh
The films of John Michael Mcdonagh’s more famous brother
Martin (2008’s In Bruges and 2012’s Seven Psychopaths) always make my year
end list, so I’m not surprised that talent flows freely in the family McDonagh.
Anchored by Brendan Gleeson’s tremendous performance of a good priest in a
small seaside town spending a week getting his affairs in order before he is to
be murdered on a beach to atone for the sins of the Catholic Church. It sounds
bleak, and while there is certainly a storm cloud hanging over this film, there
is a fair bit of humor and heart to balance out this magnificent character
drama.
6. Snowpiercer
Directed by Bong Joon-ho
Sometimes it’s the weird ones that really stick with you,
and boy oh boy, is Snowpiercer a
weird one. It’s also probably the most fun I had watching a movie last year. It
also features Tilda Swinton’s best performance in a year where A.) Tilda
Swinton was in almost every single movie and B.) Tilda Swinton straight-up
killed it in every single movie she was in (See Also: Only Lovers Left Alive, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Zero Theorem being her other three
films this year, each one featuring a totally different side of this phenomenal
woman). In Snowpiercer, she’s the one
keeping a ragtag group of peasant people (led by Chris Evans, in fine form
here) from fighting their way through the titular train’s class system to the
engine room where they plan to take control of humanity’s last salvation in the
frozen and environmentally devastated remains of Earth. God bless this new wave
of Korean directors bringing their insane, inventive flourishes to English
language cinema.
5. Interstellar
Directed by Christopher Nolan
I’ll be honest, that this film’s central heartbeat centers
around a father-daughter relationship rather than a father-son relationship is
what made Interstellar so deeply
resonant with me. It would have still been a fine modern space exploration epic
if they’d gone the father-son route as scripted. I’m biased, with my own baby
girl and all, but it’s more heartbreaking that way and I was weepy numerous
times during the film’s span. It’s master stylist Christopher Nolan’s most
emotionally devasting work to date in addition to being his most
technologically marvelous. It’s a wondrous film to behold, and while it’s a bit
all over the place prone to switch genres or throw wild metaphysical stuff your
way at the drop of a hat, the not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-gonna-happen-next
was a big reason I was so thoroughly entertained and moved.
4. Ida
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
A beautiful, transcendent, amazingly photographed film about
uncovering uncovering the horrors of one of humanity’s darkest hours. Holocaust
films come and go, but the hushed and
heartbreaking journey of young nun-in-training Anna discovering her Jewish
heritage (and her birth name and the fate of her family) on the cusp of taking
her vows tells a side of the atrocity that we haven’t really seen before.
Frames of this film are burned into my brain, courtesy of the striking black-and-white
cinematography of Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, always leaving the
subjects low in the frame and leaving a great deal of negative space to
symbolize any number of things. The weight of history, the room to ascend to
grace and acceptance, a setting where the world is threatening to completely
overtake its characters. It’s austere and incredible work, punctuated by any
number of times the camera comes to rest on Agata Trzebuchowska’s eyes that cut
right through the celluloid and into your soul. Maybe I’m biased, having spent
film school writing papers about the quietly devastating films of Ingmar
Bergman, Robert Bresson, and Seijun Suzuki, but on the strength of Ida I think Pawel Pawlikowski has earned
a seat amongst those greats and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
3. The Battered
Bastards of Baseball
Directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Ken Burns’ 10+ hour long Baseball series. It’s a very informative
series on the whole history of the game. It’s also stuffy and full of blowhards
like George Will who will talk your ear off about the purity of the Great Game
of Ball. The Battered Bastards of
Baseball is a magnificent counterpoint to the Burns series, in that the
legends it touts are dudes you have never heard of. Dudes with outlandish
facial hair and unsavory lifestyles. It’s a look at baseball outside the
establishment, and this chronicle of the short-lived Portland Mavericks cuts to
the heart of what baseball really is: A childrens’ game played by grown-ass men
for the sheer fun of it all.
2. Whiplash
Directed by Damien Chazelle
How Damien Chazelle didn’t garner a nod for Best Director
escapes me, because there was no film better helmed in 2014 than Whiplash. The tension Chazelle builds in
this student-becomes-the-master piece is so tight and so thick it’s almost
unbearable to watch at times. When the whole thing crescendos with the
undisputable best scene of the last year, it’s electric. Whiplash is bound to be a lasting parable of the price of greatness.
1. Boyhood
Directed by Richard Linklater
While it sure is nice to see a salt of the earth guy like
Richard Linklater garnering so much praise for his most recent effort, it’s
nicer that 2014 produced a film everyone could agree on. Not only did Linklater
quash any notion that the film (shot over 12 years) would be a gimmick, but said
“gimmick” only ended up making for a transcendent filmgoing experience unlike
anything I’ve ever seen. The closest thing I can think of is Truffaut’s Antoine
Doinel series or Linklater’s own Before…,
but where those films pick up a number of years after the last, watching Ellar
Coltrane grow up in the span of three hours is magical.
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