No longer are we talking about movies merely because we saw them. Now we are talking about the top 15 movies of the year. Movies we actually liked! Kinda. With reservations. But increasingly fewer reservations as the list counts its way down. (Our individual 2014 film rankings, meanwhile, are available here.)
15. Non-Stop. Reservations? Fuck your reservations. An action thriller wherein a U.S. Marshal has to solve a murder mystery, and clear his own name, all whilst flying on an airplane 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean? Wherein the one and only LIAM NEESONS not only does all of the above, but also quiets a fussy bunch of dissatisfied airline customers by promising them twelve months of free international travel? With the assistance, as those exuberant valets forgot to mention, of the sexy and mysterious flight attendant LUPITA NYONG'O? What about it indeed. (MK)
On occasion you go to the movies and you just have a great fucking time. This was one of those occasions. (KH)
15. Non-Stop. Reservations? Fuck your reservations. An action thriller wherein a U.S. Marshal has to solve a murder mystery, and clear his own name, all whilst flying on an airplane 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean? Wherein the one and only LIAM NEESONS not only does all of the above, but also quiets a fussy bunch of dissatisfied airline customers by promising them twelve months of free international travel? With the assistance, as those exuberant valets forgot to mention, of the sexy and mysterious flight attendant LUPITA NYONG'O? What about it indeed. (MK)
On occasion you go to the movies and you just have a great fucking time. This was one of those occasions. (KH)
14. Under the Skin. Polarized reactions leave this film in an odd spot. Matt is suspicious of its artiness, and frankly (I think) a little freaked out by its praying mantis premise, whereas I'm totally down with the chilling way it handles the perverse mystery of being a woman. Because that's what's going on here, right? An alien arrives in Scotland, puts on Scarlett Johansson's body, and proceeds to reap all the power, and then the pain, that come along with that deal. I like a film that makes you so uncomfortable you feel the need to talk through it. And I like a director that dares to film a movie star driving a van around Glasgow, propositioning actual men. (KH)
I didn't like this movie. Sorry. But I did like Namwali Serpeli's n+1 essay about it! (MK)
I didn't like this movie. Sorry. But I did like Namwali Serpeli's n+1 essay about it! (MK)
13. Birdman. If you've ever had any kind of performance itch, the exhilarating long tracking shots of Inarritu's answer to Noises Off will make you wish you'd given your life to the theater. Especially if Ed Norton and Emma Stone were going to be there, making saliva bridges on the roof. The first third, in which all of the souls and stakes of the St. James were still being discovered by the camera, was pretty close to the best film of the year, but pretty soon, those shots ran out of appealing tricks. Much as I liked his levitations, I didn't really care for Riggan Thomson's talking alter ego, or even his regular ego, which wanted, I don't know what, respect? The Hollywood-Broadway rivalry was pretty juvenile (maybe that's accurate, I hope not), as was the portrait of The Critic as a posh old woman who delights in ruining famous scruffy men. Lovely last shot, though, of Emma Stone's face, looking up, jaded no more. (KH)
12. Gone Girl. Honestly, the book was better. You always lose something when you turn a first person novel into a film. It's the difference between looking through a character at the world, and looking at a character within her world. But enough education. This is not your MFA prof. I like the way both book and movie expose the nastiness at the core of our assumptions about enlightened women and men: that "smart" women are lethal and "nice" guys are fake. A deeply misanthropic story, but I have to say I admire its vengeance. I can't really say it's a feminist story, but I don't buy that it's anti-feminist either. For its part, the movie did have its own unique charms. Goldfarb's reading of the film as Lynchian is pretty great, and Ben Affleck is almost too perfectly cast as a guy with a face you just want to punch. (KH)
11. Mr. Turner. Well, Mike Leigh is basically my favorite working director, and J.M.W. Turner's art is all over my desktop, so there was no way on Mr. Turner's blue-green earth that I wasn't going to like this film. In fact it's a damn fine snorting good movie. Thomas Hardy said that Turner did not paint objects modified by light, but "light as modified by objects," and Leigh is scrupulously faithful to that vision. Some of the objects here are so lovely -- including Turner's aged servant and father, Billy -- that I often wished for more of them, even at the expense of the luxuriant light. But I'll take what I can get. (MK)
10. Ida. The title says it all. A beautiful little shard of a film, as slender and lovely and sad as any of the three main characters’ highly visible spinal cords. For me, it evoked more than it achieved—a little bit more narrative flab on those bones might have produced a fuller experience—but it won’t be easy to forget Red Wanda or her quietly yearning niece. (MK)
9. Foxcatcher. A very weird film about the disease of wealth, as embodied by Steve Carrell in prosthetics, and the deadly awkwardness of getting in its way. My favorite Bennett Miller flick by far, though I'm a bit troubled by the liberties it takes with the Schultz-DuPont story, which seems more disturbing, and more interesting to me, than the foreboding trajectory this movie takes. So what's good about it? The determined creepiness of the DuPont PR machine, the thin line between a spar and an embrace, and especially the plaintive brotherly love between Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, two actors I'd watch take a helicopter, never mind move with studied agility across an Olympic wrestling mat. Carrell, too, was chillingly good, which is saying something, because I thought I was over his schtick. (KH)
Personally, I had 22 Jump Street ahead of this. But the "ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist" helicopter chat is still probably the best pure Tatum moment of 2014. (MK)
Personally, I had 22 Jump Street ahead of this. But the "ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist" helicopter chat is still probably the best pure Tatum moment of 2014. (MK)
8. Noah. Biblical literalism done the right way. Are there problems? Of course there are problems. But they begin with western monotheism itself, which -- as Darren Aronofsky's movie makes beautifully, terrifyingly clear -- is founded on a primordial fable of justified genocide. Genesis 6:7: "And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."
For all its flaws, Noah makes you feel the weight of this destruction -- and, even more wonderfully, it makes you complicit in it. We are rooting for this righteous Lord, and his patriarchal servant Russell Crowe, to destroy both man and beast; to purge the planet of its corrupt creatures and begin again, purified. How marvelous! How ghastly! This is an achievement that can survive any conceivable complaints. (MK)
For all its flaws, Noah makes you feel the weight of this destruction -- and, even more wonderfully, it makes you complicit in it. We are rooting for this righteous Lord, and his patriarchal servant Russell Crowe, to destroy both man and beast; to purge the planet of its corrupt creatures and begin again, purified. How marvelous! How ghastly! This is an achievement that can survive any conceivable complaints. (MK)
7. Boyhood. It's a dream and a remarkable achievement to film a single story with the same cast in the same locations over twelve years. For that alone, Boyhood deserves all the praise it's gotten. But we are Linklater fans -- chiefly of the talky Before trilogy, which explores similar lifespan questions with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke -- so our reservations can only be measured against our expectations. For my part, I wish the film had been braver. So much of its focus was on the remarkableness of its own premise -- "How big you've gotten!" "Where have the years gone?" -- as though Linklater, scattered across numerous other projects and preoccupations over that twelve-year span, couldn't quite trust his audience to follow the thread. But the thread is right there. It's Ellar Coltrane's face. It's his body. Ellar is the thread. If only Linklater had had a little more confidence in that, the writing might've been freer, the story fuller.
On the other hand, the pleasure of watching Hawke and Patricia Arquette age was an unexpected one, as was the undercurrent that underlies a great many American childhoods: domestic instabilities aside, they are, so often, very safe. (KH)
Totally agree. Linklater parented this film much more like Hawke than Arquette, and it shows. (For me, most of all in Arquette's character, who as Iron Mom Freddi Karp has pointed out, dwindles all too easily into a cliche of long-suffering dignity.) But damn: I'm still glad I got to take that ride in Dad's Mustang. (MK)
On the other hand, the pleasure of watching Hawke and Patricia Arquette age was an unexpected one, as was the undercurrent that underlies a great many American childhoods: domestic instabilities aside, they are, so often, very safe. (KH)
Totally agree. Linklater parented this film much more like Hawke than Arquette, and it shows. (For me, most of all in Arquette's character, who as Iron Mom Freddi Karp has pointed out, dwindles all too easily into a cliche of long-suffering dignity.) But damn: I'm still glad I got to take that ride in Dad's Mustang. (MK)
6. The Drop. Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, and Rust and Bone's Mattias Schoenaerts (an Iron Favorite from 2012) are tough guys and schemers in Brooklyn, going through the usual paces required by a Dennis Lehane short story. Goldfarb isn't wrong to call this movie "slight," but I see it as something closer to an epic in miniature. Of course it helps to have Gandolfini here, offering us in his final role a dark, muffled parody of a small-time Soprano. But it's Tom Hardy who steals the show, and makes this the best American movie I saw in 2014. Just as Llewyn Davis is the cat, Hardy's Bob Saginowski is the pit bull puppy, in the best possible sense. (MK)
Hardy's gravelly performance is even more amazing when you consider that he talks like no human person has ever talked and still manages to convince you he's from New York. A totally singular voice. (KH)
Hardy's gravelly performance is even more amazing when you consider that he talks like no human person has ever talked and still manages to convince you he's from New York. A totally singular voice. (KH)
5. Selma. The standard pitfalls of biopics -- impersonations, hagiography, bad writing -- none were on display here. Selma is remarkable not just for its calm insistence on the radical King (this is a #BlackLivesMatter film, make no mistake), but also for its success in rewriting the great orator, whose actual words are somehow licensed to Steven Spielberg. Ava DuVernay surely deserved those rights, but she and writer Paul Webb made do with what they had. That said, it's hard to beat the original footage. See Selma. But then watch the Selma chapter of Eyes on the Prize. (KH)
4. The Trip to Italy. This really was the year of beloved directors making follow-ups that weren't quite as good as their predecessors (see: Boyhood, Mr. Turner, Night Moves). Like 22 Jump Street, this was a sequel that was all about its sequel-ness. Winterbottom, Coogan and Brydon double-down so hard on the elements that worked in The Trip -- the impression-offs, the Romantic scenery, the mouth-watering food, the women they don't deserve, the brush with death at a famous grave -- that at times it felt like the same movie. But while the Lake Country tour is still the better film about tourism and artistic rivalry, there was enough development here -- via Italian film history and Coogan's tender relationship with his teenage son -- to make The Trip to Italy it a worthy second chapter. I like a mellower Coogan. I like him quite a bit. (KH)
3. Two Days, One Night. It's official. These Belgian brothers cannot make a bad film. As Will put it so well in his post, this isn't just a story of economic insecurity in our neo-liberal age, it's a tale of mental instability, too. Cotillard's Sandra is perhaps the most poorly-equipped person in Belgium to organize her co-workers to save her job. And yet, she plods on through the weekend in her tank tops, ringing bells and knocking on doors, giving her same tepid spiel to each colleague, because she knows she can't let her patient family down. Aside from one notable shark jump, the pacing is masterfully understated, and the moments of genuine emotion are in every case moments of solidarity, each of them hard worn and well-earned. My God, was there optimism at the end. The most brightly colored film we've ever seen from the Dardennes. (KH)
2. Force Majeure. As Will K. points out, this film shares its major premise with a Seinfeld episode: on a skiing trip in the Alps, a father tramples over his own family to escape a looming avalanche. (NB: there should be more serious European art films made on the basis of Seinfeld episodes: I would totally see a Portuguese "Sniffing Accountant," a Dutch "Marine Biologist" or a Romanian "Bizarro Jerry.")
But Force Majeure also so much more than that. Above all it's a gorgeous, unsparing depiction -- in the perfect setting of a modern ski resort -- of the alienation and hubris of twenty-first century bourgeois society. Don't believe me, or don't care? Well, it also features an amazingly domesticated turn from your second favorite Game of Thrones wildling, and by far the best Alberto Tomba "La Bomba" reference in 2014. Seriously: see it tomorrow. (MK)
But Force Majeure also so much more than that. Above all it's a gorgeous, unsparing depiction -- in the perfect setting of a modern ski resort -- of the alienation and hubris of twenty-first century bourgeois society. Don't believe me, or don't care? Well, it also features an amazingly domesticated turn from your second favorite Game of Thrones wildling, and by far the best Alberto Tomba "La Bomba" reference in 2014. Seriously: see it tomorrow. (MK)
1. Leviathan. If you know us, you probably saw this coming from across the Arctic, caudal fins and all. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev did make my original Iron List's #2 film of the previous decade.
This film is heavy handed, sure: but some things are just heavy. Like whales, for instance. Or Russian tragedy. In Leviathan, Zvyagintsev disdains the elegant parsimony that often characterizes many internationally successful non-Anglophone films, including Ida, Force Majeure, and his earlier masterpiece, The Return. Instead he mounts a far riskier but potentially grander attempt to represent human experience in all its clumsy joys and agonies: the bad jokes, the worse decisions, and the predictable but no less painful victory of the powerful over the powerless.
There's a hint of truth in the accusation made by Putin's Ministry of Culture, that Leviathan gives Western audiences exactly the portrait of Russian society that they wants to see: corrupt, soaked in vodka, and intolerably bleak. How accurate the film's portrayal of family life and small town politics near the Arctic Circle is, I can't say: I've never been to Murmansk Oblast. But that's beside the point. If the film is in some sense anti-Russia (or Putin's Russia, at least), it is certainly not anti-Russian. The people in this town, from the central figure of Kolya -- the Job-like handyman whose home is threatened by the town mayor -- to the dopey policeman Pasha, or his ebullient wife Angela, overflow with life and sympathy. The very richness of their world is what makes its destruction so crushing, and Leviathan so powerful. (MK)
This film is heavy handed, sure: but some things are just heavy. Like whales, for instance. Or Russian tragedy. In Leviathan, Zvyagintsev disdains the elegant parsimony that often characterizes many internationally successful non-Anglophone films, including Ida, Force Majeure, and his earlier masterpiece, The Return. Instead he mounts a far riskier but potentially grander attempt to represent human experience in all its clumsy joys and agonies: the bad jokes, the worse decisions, and the predictable but no less painful victory of the powerful over the powerless.
There's a hint of truth in the accusation made by Putin's Ministry of Culture, that Leviathan gives Western audiences exactly the portrait of Russian society that they wants to see: corrupt, soaked in vodka, and intolerably bleak. How accurate the film's portrayal of family life and small town politics near the Arctic Circle is, I can't say: I've never been to Murmansk Oblast. But that's beside the point. If the film is in some sense anti-Russia (or Putin's Russia, at least), it is certainly not anti-Russian. The people in this town, from the central figure of Kolya -- the Job-like handyman whose home is threatened by the town mayor -- to the dopey policeman Pasha, or his ebullient wife Angela, overflow with life and sympathy. The very richness of their world is what makes its destruction so crushing, and Leviathan so powerful. (MK)
What we most regretted missing in 2014: Locke, Enemy, Norte, Inherent Vice, Top Five, Only Lovers Left Alive, Stranger by the Lake, A Most Wanted Man, Nymphomaniac, Exodus: Gods and Kings.
And there you have it: another year in the books. Sometimes you have to write to know what you think (h/t Joan Didion), and we guess we think this year was not so bad after all. Side note: we are now halfway through the decade in film, with some strong contenders for the next leviathan Iron List. Will we still have the energy to blog in 2020? Will you have the energy to submit longwinded lists of your own? The next five years will tell. For now, we're off to Hot Tub Time Machine 2: a strong contender for #30 in 2015.
And there you have it: another year in the books. Sometimes you have to write to know what you think (h/t Joan Didion), and we guess we think this year was not so bad after all. Side note: we are now halfway through the decade in film, with some strong contenders for the next leviathan Iron List. Will we still have the energy to blog in 2020? Will you have the energy to submit longwinded lists of your own? The next five years will tell. For now, we're off to Hot Tub Time Machine 2: a strong contender for #30 in 2015.