Top Ten Films 2014
As a film critic, typically, I fall in line with the general census of the year save a film or two. There is always the film that I feel is overrated (American Hustle last year) or the film I feel is underappreciated (Fruitvale Station last year), but overall, most of my picks for the best films of the year could be found on any list. Not this year.
Last year’s films were a repudiation of the notion that the strength and innovation in storytelling had shifted from film to TV and video games. Yes, there obvious innovation in TV with series like Games of Thrones and Hannibal continuing to push the boundaries of a longer narrative, but last year’s movies were equally inventive and daring. For me, this year is a revival of hand drawn animation. Hand drawn animation is unfortunately an art form that is dying. With the advent of computer animation, the more expensive, and at times, labor-some hand animation has dwindled, and yet, this year three masterpieces emerge. Two from the powerhouse of Studio Ghibli: Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises which in retrospect is one of the best romances I’ve ever seen. How many animated films can cause male teenagers to cry? I took my high school class to see the movie and yes indeed there were tears. Also from Studio Ghibli, what some are arguing is the most beautiful film ever made, The Tale of Princess Kaguya. And finally, although the movie was made in 1980, it received its first American release: Paul Grimault’s The King and the Mockingbird. Reminding me of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, I understand why Miyazaki points to this film as an inspiration. And those are just the animated films. So many great movies came out this year with a few I haven’t seen yet considering they weren’t released in the bay area, but what a great year for cinema!
1) The Wind Rises ****
Even if The Wind Rises was not / is not (there is some speculation about Miyazaki’s future) Hayao Miyazaki’s swan song, it should still rank among his best films. It is true that it lacks his typical sense of magical whimsy, but he has done something even more wondrous. The Wind Rises taps into an incredible understanding of imagination and how imagination fuels creation. So many movies about writers have this utter simplistic notion of how creativity works. I remember seeing Finding Neverland and watching J.M. Barie see Julie Christie’s character with a coat hanger in her hand and we are supposed to believe this is how he came up with the idea for Captain Hook? Really? The Wind Rises begins where so much creativity does: in your childhood dreams. It would take traveling the world, falling in love, and years of attempts for Jiro Horikoshi to develop his seamless plane. But The Wind Rises like great films works on so many levels. Not only is it one of the best understanding of inspiration I’ve seen, it is also a true tragedy which unfolds as Jiro watches his beautiful creations be turned to war. It is also one of the best romances I have ever seen. With all of the great films I’ve seen this year, this is the film that continues to haunt my imagination.
2) The Tale of Princess Kaguya ****
Like The Wind Rises, The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli release, but not a Miyazaki movie. Isao Takahata, best known for his masterpiece Grave of the Fire Flies, has scored again with is first movie in fourteen years. Isao’s film starts out as one of the most beautiful representations of childhood. As a bamboo cutter cuts down a tree, he discovers a little doll inside that comes to life. A girl that can fit in the size of your palm. Eventually named Kaguya, her childhood is drawn in almost charcoal like drawings and colored with pastel and watercolor. It may be one of the most beautiful films ever created. It evokes in a strange way, Miyazaki’s film about the innocence of childhood My Neighbor Totoro. But, Isao has always pushed boundaries and here he does too. As Kaguya becomes a genuine princess and suitors came to call, we see the struggle between her wanting to be a free spirit and obey and respect her father’s commands to marry. He believes he is doing what is best for her while she believes submitting to his will is the right thing to do… it is an incredible social critique about the role women play and how so often perceived “happiness” comes from fulfilling patriarchal desires.
3) The King and the Mockingbird ****
When I named Apocalypse Now Redux one of the best films of the year, I received a lot of flack for putting a movie “officially made” in 1979 on my top ten list for 2001. Here we go again! The King and the Mockingbird, a French movie conceived in the 1950s but brought to creation in 1980, has finally had its first American release… the wait was worth it. Rumored to have hugely influenced Hayao Miyazaki, The King and the Mockingbird is a throwback to the golden age of Disney animation. Here a film perhaps most similar to Disney’s Alice in Wonderland has paintings taking a stroll on their own only to have another send soldiers to capture them. An adventure begins in a castle that reaches into the sky and seems endless and magical. It is a remarkable feat of imagination and does so much with silence. At the end, twist upon twist only add to the impeccable dream like logic that governs this strange, but mesmerizing tale. In the end, my first three entries this year all take me to a magical place in my mind… my childhood… animation unlike any other form has the power to evoke something more fantastical than any computer can come up with. It is precisely that it is not real that makes it all the more whimsical.
4) Boyhood ****
Tossing out the conceit and difficulty of shooting a single movie over the course of twelve years, Boyhood by Richard Linklater would still be a masterpiece even if it wasn’t so inventive. Many stories are built around the genre of Bildungsroman or a coming of age story. Linklater has given us precisely that, but he has left out all of the typical scenes that we expect from such a story. The closest thing young Mason comes to learn about death is seeing a dead bird in his backyard. We keep waiting for his mother to develop an illness or someone to get injured, especially in the scene where they are throwing blades into a wall, but none of that ever happens. Rather than giving us graduation, a seminal event in the coming of age story, he gives us the ride home afterwards. Rather than giving us a divorce, he starts the movie after it’s already happened. Rather than giving us the scene where Mason loses his virginity, he get him holding a girl at sunrise. It goes to the point that Linklater is trying to make and Mason verbalizes so well that our lives are not made by the big moments, but rather a collection of small silent or subtle moments. The brilliance of this movie is not that he captured a story so much as he captured the process of growing up so even though I share no similarities with Mason other than we are both male and artists, I connected intimately with this movie in a way that I haven’t with some many that came before it.
5) Calvary ****
The best film about faith since Groundhog Day or perhaps since Martin Scorsese’s masterful adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ, Calvary continues the incredible string of masterpieces by the McDonagh brothers. This film belongs with their best works. John McDonagh sets in motion a seven day waiting period for a priest who is told he is going to be killed because he is innocent. Although he knows the identity of the person who is hunting him, he instead of thinking of himself focuses his pastoral duties on his much needed flock. This is not a happy movie. The world in this film is filled with disconnect and utter isolation. No one has any real connection to anyone, save a priest who is trying desperately to get people to connect with one another and the ending offers the McDonaghs’ best glimmer of hope in this cruel world.
6) The Grand Budapest Hotel ****
Wes Anderson’s movies have always been animated even when they are done in live action. That was a profound realization I had when I saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox. So often, they evoke the paradox of melancholy and joy, the paradox of innocence and adulthood. With The Grand Budapest Hotel, which may be his most stylized film, Mr. Anderson has indeed grown up. I don’t mean that as an insult to his former movies, far from it, but as an explanation of this one. The Grand Budapest Hotel unlike his previous works is not set in the present but mainly in the past. It does not use a modern soundtrack and rather than evoking the nostalgia of a childhood lost, it instead is nostalgic about an era long since gone. This incredible comedy deals with the idea of masks and how we create edifices that give our lives meaning. The Hotel is an edifice that is crumbling in the modern era, just as the manager’s character played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes is just an edifice as well.
7) Whiplash ****
For me, Whiplash is one of the great versions of the Faust / Mephistopheles story. JK Simmons’ Fletcher perfectly embodies the tempting demon who offers Miles Teller’s Andrew Newman fame and glory as one of the great jazz drummers, but only demands his soul in return. In the opening scene of the movie, Fletcher literally appears out of nowhere, part of his powers and disappears as easily. His band practice room is in the basement and lit with yellow light. It is here that the movie Whiplash gets it name, pulling us from one extreme (Fletcher telling Teller that he was chosen for a reason) to another (demeaning him in the most personal of ways). Andrew endures this with the promise of getting better and perhaps in one of the most frightening moments, he is indeed getting better. But his character begins to resemble Fletcher more than himself as he splits from his family and the girlfriend he cared for to focus on music. The movie delves into the psyche and desire of a generation to be great and to be remembered with a cautionary tale about the price. An incredible film.
8) Life Itself ****
I cannot be unbiased when it comes to this film. I grew up watching and idolizing Roger Ebert’s intelligence, wit, and writing. But what I came to love as I got older was his heart. After he lost his ability to speak, his voice in his blog became the most important philosophical voice of my generation. This documentary by his friend Steve James started out to chronical his life which unfortunately ended four months into filming, but what James has done is assemble perhaps the best bio documentary I’ve ever seen. Ebert was insistent that James not worry about his reputation or his image and put anything he needed into this film. Seeing the fights between him and his wife, seeing the blemishes as people described his darker days while drinking only enhanced the incredible wisdom Roger had. His love of movies inspired me to love cinema, but his love of life and of humanity inspires me even more. This is the most moving picture of the year.
9) Mr. Turner ****
Mike Leigh has done it again. In what may be his best work since Topsy Turvey (1999), Leigh’s biopic of the English landscape painter J.M.W. Turner is like the painter himself, a little socially awkward, not always sure of where it is going, but beautiful and precision that allows it to capture something special. Tuner is not portrayed as a misunderstood artist or as someone we should necessarily inspire to. He has more warts than the typical biopic hero (this year’s Unbroken for example). In modern times, he might have been diagnosed with a condition to explain his peculiarities, but like a savant, he comes to life when it comes to his special talent: painting. The world is brought to life by incredible work by cinematographer Dick Pope who paints the scenery much the same way Turner transforms a canvas. But the real achievement here is underrated character actor Timothy Spall who disappears into the character giving not only one of the year’s best performances but also one of his career.
10) Joe ****
David Gordon Green is back! For years his movies were mainstays on my top ten (George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow, Snow Angels) and after falling from grace with commercial attempts like Your Highness, he has returned to his southern Gothic roots to create a story about a man who so hates himself that his job is literally killing the world. Joe takes crews out into forests with wet axes to inject poisons into trees in order to kill them. It is on this mission that he meets a young boy who reminds him of himself before he got lost. Seeing this young man’s family, raised by a homeless alcoholic father, Joe at first keeps his distance. He can’t get involved in these types of things. This movie provides not only a returning vehicle for Green, but also for its lead actor, Nicholas Cage, who has become a joke of an actor after having one of the great careers in cinema. But the true revelation of this movie is Gary Poulter; the homeless man that Green cast to the play the alcoholic father. It is a character who has been lived in and epitomizes true evil. The movie is rightfully dedicated to Poulter who passed away before the film’s release. His only role is one of the best of this year.
Runners up: Inherent Vice ****, Citizenfour ****, Selma ****, Force Majeure ****, Ida ****, Birdman ****, Two Days, One Night ****, Only Lovers Left Alive ****, The Immigrant ****, Nightcrawler ****
Other Great Movies this year: Snowpiercer ***½, A Most Violent Year *** ½, Under the Skin *** ½, Wild *** ½, Dear White People *** ½, Love is Strange *** ½, Imitation Game *** ½, The Lego Movie *** ½, Captain American: Winter Solider *** ½, Homesman *** ½, Edge of Tomorrow *** ½, The Badadook *** ½, The Skeleton Twins *** ½
Best Actor: Brendan Gleeson, Calvary
Runner Up: TIE: Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner and Michael Keaton, Birdman
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Runner Up: Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Runner Up: Gary Poulter, Joe
Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Runner Up: Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer
Best Cinematography: Robert D. Yeoman, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Runner Up: Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal, Ida
Best Score: Justin Hurwitz, Whiplash
Runner Up: Joe Hisaishi, The Wind Rises
Best Editing: Steve James, Life Itself
Runner Up: Sandra Adair, Boyhood
Best Production Design: Ondrej Nekvasil, Snowpiercer
Runner Up: Adam Stockhausen, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Best Original Screenplay: John Michael McDonagh, Calvary
Runner Up: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo, Birdman
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice
Runner Up: Isao Takahata, The Tale of Princess Kaguya
Best Documentary: Steve James, Life Itself
Runner Up: Laura Poitras, Citizenfour
Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Runner Up: Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Best Animated Film: The Lego Movie (minus those already in my top ten)
Most Overrated Film of the Year: Foxcatcher
Worst Films of the Year: Transcendence
And as always a link to my friend's, Grouchoreviews, top ten list. One of the best movie critics I know and read: http://www.grouchoreviews.com/features/254
