Once a week, Sam Krevlin stops me before Spanish class to clue me in to which movies he’s been catching up on lately. It’s an interaction that helps get me through the day, and as the view from Sra. Cano’s room has gotten progressively whiter over the last few months, Sam’s comments have turned to inquiries as to what my own favorite films of 2014 were.
The fundamental issue with making my opinion public is that no one particularly cares, with the exception of President Jake May, who will pummel me against a locker for refusing to love Whiplash as much as he did. I liked a solid amount of movies this year, and as a result a few are not included in this list of 25. John Wick, the fall revenge thriller starring a resurgent Keanu Reeves, has some of the best action choreography this side of the Atlantic. A Most Wanted Man, featuring a valedictorian performance from the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, was an emotionally intact espionage story. Most memorably, Inherent Vice, the latest offering from my favorite filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson, left me completely mystified. After two viewings, I can’t tell if it’s genius or aimless; all vibe or powerful statement.
In the end, though, confusion is what made this year a cinematically rich one. That is, if you like to argue. Please direct any insults to my Facebook inbox.
15 Very Good Movies:
The Babadook, Birdman, Blue Ruin, Force Majeure, The Gambler, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Immigrant, Joe, Locke, Love is Strange, A Most Violent Year, Noah, Obvious Child, The Rover, Selma.
10) Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman)
Possibly the most misleadingly marketed movie of the year, Fieldston alum Liman’s (’84) Tom Cruise vehicle puts a cute sci-fi conceit – a soldier forced to relive the same harrowing battle over and over again – to slick use, visually and metatextually. Watching Cruise perish repeatedly is inherently fun, but it’s Emily Blunt’s turn as a more valiant warrior that drives the narrative forward while incorporating some great humor at a movie star’s expense.
9) Palo Alto (Gia Coppola)
8) Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski)
Few of the filmmakers who prided themselves on thoughtful visual compositions this year matched the bare black-and-white elegance of this small Polish odyssey. Following a nun who discovers her true Jewish heritage in a post-holocaust nation, Ida is a film that creeps up on you in terms of storytelling and sentiment.
7) Two Days, One Night (The Dardenne Brothers)
Continuing a rather solid year for strong female protagonists, Marion Cotillard delivers her second immaculate performance of 2014 (after The Immigrant) as a recently fired mother who must convince her coworkers to waive a raise in order to regain her job. The Belgian Dardennes are masters of finding suspense in the mundane, but with Two Days they find time for interludes of pure joy, where Cotillard’s (and by default, our own) troubles melt away.
6) Starred Up (David Mackenzie)
The hardest-boiled movie I saw this year, but also one of the tenderest. The committed pair of Ben Mendelsohn and Jack O’Connell, as a father and son who take up residence in the same Glaswegian prison, propel everything in this movie. They are equally unpredictable – and that’s what is so intimidating, and ultimately endearing, about Starred Up.
5) Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
4) Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)
Style flows much more freely than blood in the coolest movie around, a vampire story with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston – a perfectly odd match – as ancient, ageless paramours. Watching Jarmusch crib character dynamics from early work is fascinating, but more than anything else, Only Lovers is an incredibly smooth ode to hanging out.
3) Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller)
I’ve heard and read a few opinions expressing disappointment with Foxcatcher’s lack of interest in the more overtly odd aspects of the true story it is based on. However, Miller and his screenwriters have much more than crazed billionaire John du Pont’s most eccentric tastes on their minds. Every moment, big and small, in this film, contributes to a greater atmosphere of dread. As du Pont, Steve Carell is transformatively brilliant, filtering his most famous tics as a comedian through a character he uncannily apes. As the wrestling brothers he becomes tragically obsessed with, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo are alternately relatable and alien, making Foxcatcher the eeriest kind of nonfiction film: one whose world feels unfamiliar.
2) Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
It’s nearly impossible to do a film like this justice with words – if you actually like it, that is. Plenty of snarky pieces about plot holes and unprecedented sentimentality in Interstellar haunt various corners of the web. But as Taylor Swift – who I have compared Nolan to in the past – tells us, the only option is to shake repeatedly until the haters are no longer in sight. And shake Nolan does – only instead of shutting his ears, he’s shaking us up, dropping an unbelievably human story in the middle of a visually stunning space epic. Every section of this movie feels alive with a different pulse, and that’s the most you can ask from a filmmaker who has yet to truly repeat himself. McConaughey for life.
1) Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
Sexy and sexless, meaningful and aimless, Jonathan Glazer’s third film in many more years is an organized mess. It is the Naked Scarlett Johansson movie and yet it isn’t, giving an objectified actress a chance to shed everything in the name of becoming a nonsexual entity. Under the Skin is truly about everything we (specifically, women) encounter daily, and its hypnotic pace only furthers that notion. It is technically sci-fi but feels aesthetically and emotionally real. Johansson’s performance is one of the most subversive feminist acts in a recent piece of fiction – a being so apparently facile that men see a target. As we find out early on in the film: unlucky for them.
