My Top 10
(more in-depth commentary, and other writer’s choices over at Rogerebert.com):
1. Beyond the Lights, directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood.
2. Boyhood, directed by Richard Linklater. Review here.
3. Closed Curtain, directed by Jafar Panahi. Review here.
4. Force Majeure, directed by Ruben Östlund. Review here.
5. The Grand Budapest Hotel, directed by Wes Anderson.
6. Ida, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Review here.
7. Inherent Vice, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Review here.
8. Love Is Strange, directed by Ira Sachs. Review here.
9. Only Lovers Left Alive, directed by Jim Jarmusch. Review here.
10. Under the Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer. Review here.
And because there are so many other movies to see, 2014 being a really good year, here are other films. So let’s call it a Top Whatever. In no particular order.
11. The Babadook: The other night, I stood in front of the IFC Center, waiting for the screening of King Vidor’s The Crowd. Three youngish guys had just emerged onto the sidewalk after seeing The Babadook. They stood smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk, so that passersby had to circle around them, and talked, feverishly about how great the movie was. They were clearly horror fans (from what I gathered in my blatant eavesdropping) and many of them expressed dismay and disappointment about how so many horror films treat serious subjects in a really cursory manner, whereas in The Babadook those serious subjects are the whole point. One of the guys said, “I mean, it’s about grief, right? The whole thing is about grief!” The other one said, “Yeah! Exactly!” They were so excited about it that they decided to go out and have a drink to discuss it more. Now that’s a good movie. My review of The Babadook is here.
12. Neighbors. One of the best comedies of the year. Refreshing. Hilarious. Unexpected. Not what you think it will be at all. Go, Rose Byrne. She and Seth Rogen make a great comedic team. The movie is about a lot of things, letting go of youth, while you still insist to yourself that you can hang with the kids, and be cool, remember when we were cool, honey, remember? A really confident and effective film. Wrote about it – and Zac Efron, who is incredible in it, here.
13. Selma. This is a major film. By focusing on the struggles of Martin Luther King with the locals in Selma (not just George Wallace and the whites, but the rival civil rights groups who considered Selma their territory), director Ava DuVernay pours that huge story into a narrow and totally charged container, keeping things specific when they could go really broad. It goes broad anyway, in the harrowing sequences of the walk over the bridge (masterful) and in the “coming around” of Lyndon B. Johnson, as he finally stepped up to do the right thing. All of those behind-the-scenes are important. They provide context and a window into King’s very specific non-violent movement. The performances are tremendous. The script had been knocking around Hollywood for a while. DuVernay rewrote it, bringing the focus back to King and his colleagues, where before it was a lot about white reaction to the events. (Here’s a fantastic interview with DuVernay about how Selma came to be.) An extraordinary film. A major moment in so many ways.
14. Last Days in Vietnam. Rory Kennedy directed this phenomenal documentary about the final weeks of the Vietnam War, and the backstage stories about Vietnamese trying to get out on the last helicopters leaving the city, as well as the concerted and desperate efforts from American soldiers and American aid workers and embassy workers trying to get their Vietnamese friends and co-workers out. Made up almost entirely of newsreel footage (many of which are famous images: the helicopters being pushed off the deck of the aircraft carrier, the line of people climbing up the chimney to get onto the helicopter hovering over the roof), there are many many stories here I had never heard. An extraordinary document of first-hand witnessing.
15. Goodbye to Language. What can I say, it’s Jean-Luc Godard. A political and sexual and visual mishmash, angry and strange, funny and bizarre, Godard is still experimenting, still pushing the boundaries of what film can do, what a story can take. It’s in 3-D, and he futzes with the image, so that faces are superimposed over backgrounds, or there is almost a halo effect over certain scenes, so you feel like you are looking at something that has been exposed too many times. Or that if only you squinted hard enough all of the images would align and click into place. Godard fans will recognize his style, his interests. You either love it or hate it. But the best part of it is: he forces you to deal with what HE wants to show you. It’s his way or the highway. I love that forcefulness, and I love thinking about what he puts onscreen. His stuff has enormous reverb. Deafeningly loud.
16. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Blown away by this first-time director’s debut. My Rogerebert.com review is here.
17. Gone Girl. There was a lot of agonized commentary over David Fincher’s Gone Girl, the kind of commentary I find tiresome. Did the movie endorse misogyny? worried the worry-warts. In my opinion, these are the wrong questions. I don’t care what a movie endorses. (Showing something is not endorsement, by the way, but that’s a side issue.) All I care about is whether or not a film knows what it is, and then goes ahead and IS that thing with 100% commitment. (I may not care for the end result, but that, again, is another issue.) Gone Girl does that: it is what it is, ferociously. I didn’t find it worrisome or troubling, I didn’t feel like “all women are evil witches” was the message. All I felt was: Jeez Louise, this broad is out of her MIND, and … even better … she is totally entertaining in her vicious world-class manipulation. Jen and I were guffawing at the image of her lolling around, her mouth full of Kit-Kats. Like, she’s the honey badger, man, she doesn’t give a shit anymore. This is kicking it old-school, this is Barbara Stanwyck, this is femme fatale, this is grown-up time. Give me darkness, give me sick and twisted, give me some anger. I have my own opinions about Gillian Flynn’s book, and the whole “cool girl” thing, which I thought was pretty brilliant. What I loved about the movie is that it was relentless in devoting itself to that sick disgusting relationship, and those two gross people. I wasn’t disturbed by it. I thought it was hilarious.
18. Blue Ruin. Adore this beautifully made and terrifying and hilarious twist on the revenge film. And Eve Plumb is in it. Honestly, what more could you want from life? Jan Brady as backwoods vicious matriarch? Hell, yes. My review here.
19. Snowpiercer. It’s been months and I still love talking about that movie. I am still not over it. Grandiose and dark, thrillingly designed and executed, it was one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year. My review here.
20. Life Itself. Steve James’ documentary about Roger Ebert is one of the most touching films I’ve seen all year. It gives a great portrait of Roger as a newspaperman, one of the last of his kind, and is also the story of Roger’s final illness, and his marriage to Chaz. The film must go on. I watched it in tears. It’s an amazing accomplishment, and the success it has received thus far is richly deserved. Here’s my post on seeing it at EbertFest.
21. Nymphomaniac Vol. 1. I am not sure the protocol here. Am I supposed to not separate the two films out? Judge them as one film? I saw both, and reviewed both for Ebert. Volume II didn’t grab me as hard as Volume 1 (My review of Vol. II here.) It took me a while to come around on Lars von Trier, and I still can’t stand Breaking the Waves, but Melancholia was my breaking point. I am still in LOVE/LUST with that film (my review here) I went into Melancholia expecting to hate it, and I love it so much I saw it 4 times in the movie theatre and now own it. It’s fun being wrong. Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is a dizzying and sometimes ridiculous polemic, even slapstick at times, delving into the hundreds of sexual exploits of one particular woman. It’s intellectual, it’s agonized, but it’s also hilarious. Uma Thurman’s scene is one of my favorite scenes of the year. “Come on, children, let’s go look at the whoring bed!” My Rogerebert.com review of Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is here.
22. Clouds of Sils Maria. One of the best films about an actor’s process that I have ever seen. It’s up there with Opening Night (and I rarely put anything up with Opening Night). The two films have a lot in common, and Clouds of Sils Maria earns the right to stand in the company of Opening Night. I adored it. My review is here.
23. The Double. I’ve read that some people despised this film, and it’s on a couple of Worst Of lists. I thought it was awesome. Taking Dostoevsky’s harrowing story about a man who is haunted by his own double running around town, and putting it into a completely specific world – it’s not our world, it’s some OTHER world – was a beautiful choice. Removing the story from a recognizable context and placing it in some other dark industrialized Orwellian world highlighted the intensity of the tale, the destabilizing of one man’s identity. I was riveted by it.
24. We Are the Best! What a delight. What a fun and touching movie about three 12-year-old girls in 1982 Stockholm, forming a punk band. Fantastic. My review is here.
25. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely. This is a cheat, since it has not gotten a release yet and is still making the festival circuit rounds, and getting occasional screenings in random places. Josephine Decker is the director. She also did Butter on the Latch, another extraordinary film showing her unique vision and style. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely takes place on a farm, and Butter on the Latch (which mixes documentary footage as well as surreal horror-film elements) takes place at an actual Serbian folk-music camp that occurs every year in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. I want to go to that folk-music camp. Sign me up! Seeking both films out in a double feature (I think BAM just did that recently) would be well worth it. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely knocked me flat, I’m telling you. It is not like anything else. If I told you the plot, I would be doing the film a disservice. In a way, the film is more about Decker’s distinctive style than anything else, but there are images in the film that have never left me. The moment with the frog. The kitchen utensils in the air, against the blue sky. The final scene. Please keep Decker on your radar. Keep your eyes peeled for her. This feels like a pretty major voice. And now I will point you to The New Yorker, and Richard Brody’s excellent piece: Pay attention to Josephine Decker. Yes. What he said.
26. Nightcrawler. A disturbing and uncompromising character-study. It’s also a really interesting look at the world of “night crawlers,” guys who race around town with cameras, filming crime scenes, and then selling the footage to news stations. It’s a world I know nothing about. But at the center of it is Jake Gyllenhall’s creepy Rupert Pupkin-ish performance. Definitely his best work yet, and I’m a fan. My review is here.
27. The LEGO Movie. While on vacation with my family in New Hampshire, I ended up watching the movie four times, with my various nieces and nephews. I had not seen it in the theatre. I had read the good reviews. I adore Chris Pratt. I loved him from the second I saw him in Zero Dark Thirty (“I’m listening to Tony Robbins and planning out my future. I really want to talk to all of you guys about this.”), and his small role in Moneyball was terrific. If you read the book, you know how it makes you fall in love with Scott Hatteberg. Chris Pratt gets that. Perfect casting. Anyway, it’s been so fun seeing him get these huge roles now. The LEGO Movie has a great script, wonderful voice performances, and is inventive and fun. I mean, come on. I watched it four times in four days. At one point, I said to my nephew, “Can we watch The LEGO Movie again?”
28. The Strange Little Cat. Almost difficult to describe. Hypnotic. Very funny. I reviewed it for Rogerebert.com. The revolt of the objects.
29. A Coffee in Berlin. Staying with the German theme: A Coffee in Berlin is a monster-hit in Germany, racking up tons of awards, and it hasn’t gotten a ton of play over here. I am not sure why. Maybe people think it’s going to be serious and then are disappointed when it’s not? Maybe the fact that it’s black-and-white makes it seem like it will be serious? I have said before that I wish more movies felt free to be silly, and also that directors knew how to be silly like they used to. They used to know how to do it. A Coffee in Berlin has its deep side, but in some respects there is nothing deeper than truly absurd silliness. I loved this movie. I reviewed it for Rogerebert.com.
30. The Skeleton Twins. My kind of movie. So much so it feels custom-fit. I want all movies to be like this. I am just happy The Skeleton Twins exists. Reviewed it here.
Other movies I saw this year and loved: Child’s Pose, The Boxtrolls , Watchers of the Sky, The Homesman, The Guest, Dear White People, Kelly & Cal, Omar, Joe, Le Week-end. I’m probably forgetting some stuff.
I’ve missed some of the movies on many Top lists, and still have some catching up to do. Some of the movies everyone is raving about I didn’t care for at all. That happens sometimes. These are the movies this year I really loved.
. It’s about a bunch of movie-mad characters in 1980s New York who start on a wild goose chase to track down a (fictional) lost film. In an early scene, the lead character, Ceinwen, a Southern transplant to New York, goes to see King Vidor’s masterpiece 1928 silent film, The Crowd, with her romantic prospect, a British post-doc mathematician named Matthew. Neither of them have seen it. (Warner Brothers did release it on VHS, but it has never been released on DVD to this day. If you want to see it, you have to keep your eyes peeled on the TCM listings, or you have to look for it at art-house theaters.) It is a crucial moment in the book (and Farran opens the book with a perfect quote from the movie): the two characters bond together in a new love of silent films, and it starts them on the path to see more of them. They basically trip over a mystery of a lost film, completely forgotten in the mists of time. All sorts of wonderful hijinx ensue as they try to track it down. 
