I‘m curious what the consensus will be in ten to twenty years, once we look back and evaluate the movies of 2014. It seems I continually see people referring to it as either a great year or a terrible year with little in-between. Were you to judge the year on the quality of the mainstream studio features I could see where you might be disappointed. It wasn’t exactly the best year for blockbuster cinema. Hell, Christopher Nolan even came out with a new big budget film and it didn’t even make it onto my list of Honorable Mentions.
However, you look at the mini majors and smaller distributros, studios such as A24, Fox Searchlight, Sony Classics and Open Road and things begin to perk up, but these studios don’t market their films on every channel so at the end of the year when people are asking me “what movies they should see over the holidays” or “what were the best movies of the year?” I’m typically left appearing as if I don’t like anything because so many of this year’s major studio features were junk, and even when the studios do make something that stands out they don’t market said features with the same passion. Even mentioning a movie like The Gambler can cause some people to tilt their heads wondering what I’m talking about, when they’d rather just hear me say, “Oh yeah! The new Hobbit movie is FANTASTIC!” Sorry, not going to happen.
That said, as much as I may not be able to recommend the latest and greatest $100+ million studio blockbuster, at least one movie that cost a reported $178 million made my top ten. Of course, the other nine were made for about a combined $130 million, but hey, I guess I appreciate cheap entertainment.
Before I get to my top ten, however, I’d like to point out a few films that didn’t make it.
The Documentary
I didn’t watch a ton of documentaries this year, but I can tell you Keep On Keepin’ On was the best of the documentaries I watched. The film centers on the story of aging jazz-legend Clark Terry as he serves as mentor to Justin Kaulflin, a blind piano prodigy, and it’s a heart-warming story with some fantastic music. If one thing was reinforced this year, if the fictional movies aren’t doing it for you, pop in a highly-touted documentary and you won’t likely be disappointed.
The Comedies
People love to say I don’t have much taste for comedy, largely because I don’t bend over laughing out loud to the latest fart joke and “fat man fall down” comedies the studios deliver the lowest common denominator. No, I didn’t like Pompeii (Wait, what? That wasn’t a comedy?)
However, three films I would consider comedies made my top ten and of those that didn’t Argentina’s Wild Tales just barely missed out, Jon Favreau‘s sweet family comedy Chef is one I imagine everyone enjoying and then I would even say Only Lovers Left Alive and Venus in Fur should strictly be considered comedies and both are wonderful. And Chris Rock‘s Top Five is one I’ve already learned is just as good the second time around as it was the first.
Action
The Raid 2 is wonderful, it is action personified and I was trying to find room for it on this list. If you haven’t seen it and call yourself an action film fan then get on it ASAP. I would consider X-Men: Days of Future Past an action film and I guess I could even fit Fury into that category as much as it is also a stone-cold war drama with some powerfully memorable moments within a rather mixed narrative bag. All three of those films have enjoyable qualities and while X-Men has faded a bit for me to the point I don’t really care to ever see it again, the other two will get future viewings in my household.
The Conversation Starter
It wasn’t until the twelfth hour that I finally saw Justin Simien‘s Dear White People and wow, what a movie. I’m not sure this is a movie fitting of a review as much as it deserves a 50-page dissection from one character to the next. Simien puts everything on the table with this one and as much as it has the appearance of a comedy (and it is funny), it is largely a drama that puts a microscope on how our society deals with and handles race relations and sexual preferences in today’s world and how there might not be any satisfying way of bringing everyone together in harmony… Then again, perhaps that’s the answer, simply acknowledging it’s not a problem with a solution as much as it’s something that needs to be understood from both sides as something without an easy solution.
Dear White People almost feels like a documentary than a fictional feature and outside of a couple decisions that hit the nail too firmly on the head, he sits back and lets the audience make what they will about what’s taking place in the movie rather than forcing home any kind of agenda. Really, really, really smart filmmaking.
The Actors
I don’t know if it’s my problem or Hollywood’s problem, but the rest of my honorable mentions are largely driven by male performances. Tom Hardy is amazing in The Drop. I loved Mark Wahlberg in The Gambler. Channing Tatum, Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo are outstanding in Foxcatcher, Benedict Cumberbatch gives what may be the performance of his career in The Imitation Game, Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson are outstanding in The Rover and Jack O’Connell lights the screen on fire in Starred Up.
I will say Rachel McAdams does stand tall alongside her male counterparts in A Most Wanted Man and thankfully there were some more strong female performances to discuss in the films that made my ultimate top ten, which we can get into right now… just click on over to the next page.
