#6
Boyhood
DIR: Richard Linklater
[amz asin=”B00MEQUNIW” size=”small”]After I first saw Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood I had this feeling it would be an all-time classic. The concept alone seemed to guarantee that before I even saw it. He filmed the life of a young boy one year at a time over the course of twelve years? This I have to see! After I finally saw it I was blown away, assuming no film this year would be able to top it and conceptually I would say no film has, but that’s because it’s a wholly unique experience. For these reasons, I’m sure those that read this site regularly will be surprised to see Boyhood in the sixth slot… I am too, but it was just the fact I haven’t had an immediate desire to watch the movie again that results in its slippage and rewatchability is a major factor in my top ten rankings.
Part of the reason is the film’s length, at 2 hours 44 minutes it’s a commitment to say you’re going to sit down and watch it again, especially when I’m surrounded by so many films I have yet to see. Then again, I wouldn’t want it to be any shorter. Linklater essentially dedicates 13 minutes or so to each year in the life of Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane) and to think of each year of a life being boiled down to such a small snippet of time is to suggest Linklater might not have fully captured the idea of what it means to be growing up, but he has, and beyond that a lot of credit goes to Patricia Arquette as Mason’s mother, delivering a performance on which this film relied as much as Coltrane’s or the concept alone.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
Boyhood holds a spiritual kinship with several of Linklater’s films from Dazed and Confused to all three Before films. It puts you in the mindset of its characters and it does so in such a way that you suddenly find yourself absorbed in their lives, curious as to what’s around the next corner and more than willing to return for another go ’round. There’s something so pure, natural and all-encompassing about Boyhood that it almost doesn’t even feel like the right title. It’s not so much “about” one singular boy as much as it’s about us all, to the point I think everyone will find a little piece of themselves in this movie and that’s the piece you’ll hold most dear.
Read my full review here.
#5
Mommy
DIR: Xavier Dolan
As hard as it might have been to place Boyhood at #6, I also had a hard time placing Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy at #5 and had I had the opportunity to see it again before making this list maybe it would have risen a little higher. Hell, just watching the trailer alone almost bumped it up a couple spots, which speaks to the electricity of Dolan’s filmmaking and Mommy is just the latest in a string of wonderful films from the talented Canadien filmmaker.
Boasting outstanding performances from both Anne Dorval and Suzanne Clement, Dolan also captures lightning in a bottle with Antoine Olivier Pilon, a young performer with the weight of the entire film on his shoulders and wow does he deliver.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
While this is the fifth film Dolan has directed, it’s also the fifth film he’s written and you can sense a personal connection to all his films and Mommy is no different. This very well may be why he’s able to capture emotion without the dialogue lesser filmmakers so heavily rely on. He has no problem drowning out dialogue, shutting his characters up and allowing the images alone to tell the story. Mommy features a scene in which his three leads dance to Celine Dion, and it’s one of the best the film has to offer and one in which so much is conveyed merely through the freedom the character’s are expressing rather than the words they’d otherwise be saying.
Read my full review here.
#4
Gone Girl
DIR: David Fincher
[amz asin=”B00Q5996EQ” size=”small”]”When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain.” Thus begins David Fincher‘s Gone Girl (download the script here), a film that only improves with age (as does Rosamund Pike‘s performance) each time you see it. As much as Nightcrawler left me unsettled, Gone Girl almost 100-times more so, but it wasn’t until I finally watched it again that I began to realize how much I enjoyed it and how much it had affected me. This isn’t a film you necessarily watch as much as it gets under your skin, picking at you until the very end and for that it more than deserves a spot high on my list.
REVIEW SNIPPET:
When I first walked out of the theater I felt Gone Girl was a film I had little reason to ever see again. However, my wife and I discussed it the entire way home and again the next day. I began discussing it further with others and as I began sorting out my thoughts for this review I found myself loving it more and more.
Read my full review here.
