Member Since: 8/19/2013
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Best Movies of 2014 List!
Quote:
15. Goodbye World
A film I reviewed at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year finally got its release this year. Writer/director Denis Hennelly and co-writer Sarah Adina Smith found a new approach to two tried and true cinematic genres: 1) the end of the world and 2) the group of infighting “friends” stuck in one location together.
14. Unbroken
The life story of Louis Zamperini was so awesome, you’d have to really screw up to make a lousy movie out of it. What director Angelina Jolie does that elevates Unbroken above typical awardsy movies is she stays out of its way.
13. Boyhood
I’ve been in the pro-Boyhood camp since I saw it at Sundance. Perhaps the biggest common criticism speaks to what I got out of the film. In many ways, Boyhood could be made traditionally with a three months shoot, two sets of actors aged up and down.
12. Begin Again
The movie I absolutely needed to see at a low point creatively, Begin Again has inspired me all year and I know it will continue to. It has something to say about art vs. commerce, relationships both business and personal, and believing in yourself.
11. Gone Girl
I have a lot of helpful friends who want to give me advice for improving my love life. They tell me I need to have “game.” I need to say this or do that to land a lady. Finally, I have an example to give them for why I’m not interested in that tactic.
10. Winter's Tale
I went easier on Winter’s Tale than most critics and I was still too hard on it. Winter’s Tale has been the gift that keeps on giving this year. I have bonded with others who witnessed its sex bed and oceanliner infant dropping. I’ve encouraged them to see the alternate ending which involved Russell Crowe’s frozen corpse and face ice.
9. The Overnighters
As you may be able to tell from reading my reviews, I am a pretty spiritual guy. I believe in moral and ethereal forces, and spend a lot of time thinking about humanity’s relationship with one another. The Overnighters puts many of those theories to the ultimate test.
8. Rudderless
The second music movie on my list, Rudderless also uses music as an inspiration, but as an emotional healing more than any actual career achievement for the musician. It is the powerful story of a father mourning his son, finding a way to go on by playing the music his son left behind. As you might imagine, it contains many emotional gut punches, but the kind you want out of a drama. Don’t sugar coat this. Let us go through everything Sam (Billy Crudup) is going through with him. Then when we see there’s a way to survive a tragedy, we can believe it in a meaningful way.
7. Tokyo Tribe
Not surprisingly, the best musical of the year was the Japanese rap opera Tokyo Tribe, not Into the Woods or Annie. I don’t even care much for rap, but these are melodic enough raps for me. The sheer inventiveness of handing off the story to different rappers won me over instantly, to the point that when they started speaking, I was itching for the rap to continue.
6. The LEGO Movie
It’s simply extraordinary the way Phil Lord and Chris Miller took a toy and its cross promotional brand synergy and turned it into a satirical indictment of the Hollywood blockbuster.
5. 22 Jump Street
As extraordinary as Lord and Miller’s Lego Movie was, 22 Jump Street was totally speaking my language. I am Franchise Fred because I truly believe they should always make more sequels to everything, no exceptions. I stand by that and 22 Jump Street is why. They were able to comment on the buddy movie archetype of the first movie in a new way, yet reflexively consistent with 21 Jump Street.
4. Blue Ruin
The movie I discovered in my trip to Cannes was released this year, and I will continue to champion it. There were some other excellent down and dirty action movies this year like John Wick and The Raid 2, each with much more elaborate choreography, but something about this gritty indie was more powerful.
3. Coherence
Funny, I gave Coherence the number three
spot last year for seeing it at Fantastic Fest, and here it ends up at number three again. How’s that for consistency? This intellectual sci-fi film with no visual effects is far more exciting than even Guardians of the Galaxy.
2. Interstellar
I completely loved Interstellar and everything about the plot, emotion and spirituality worked for me. I saw it as Christopher Nolan embracing emotion and the unknown more than he ever has before. Where Inception was a structural masterpiece that left me cold (and frankly I felt the tragic love story was cheap and shallow), I was proud to see Nolan include X factors that might not answer everyone’s questions.
1. Whiplash
Curse my conservativity. I was a little afraid to give a movie I saw the first night of Sundance the highest rating. I was leaving room for something to be even better, but I should’ve given Whiplash a 10/10 and thrown down the gauntlet for other Sundance films to measure up. Whiplash is such a powerful movie that it can mean different things to different people.
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via http://www.craveonline.com/film/arti...nion#/slide/15
So, it wasnt only a bad year for music... :\
Glad Rudderless is there, one of THE BEST movies released this year. Director/Cast...
The Soundtrack should be nominated for an Oscar.
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that wasn't even better than the first one
