Ed: Blue Ribbon contributor Dave Goldfarb is so cranky with himself this year! Just wait til he hears what we think of Manu in Two Days, One Night.
Let’s get this straight. I was a terrible movie viewer this year. Terrible. Too much good television to watch? Maybe. More like: I’m incapable of watching movies at home without multi-tasking. The result? A year of watching movies that make one thing clear: I’m a philistine. I’m *positive* I must have watched more foreign language movies from 2015, but…I can’t remember what they were. Despite time spent Googling “foreign movies 2014” (while watching other movies). The only two subtitled movies mentioned below I watched in the last week for the sole purpose of not revealing the depths of my cultural shallowness via this list.
Let’s get this straight. I was a terrible movie viewer this year. Terrible. Too much good television to watch? Maybe. More like: I’m incapable of watching movies at home without multi-tasking. The result? A year of watching movies that make one thing clear: I’m a philistine. I’m *positive* I must have watched more foreign language movies from 2015, but…I can’t remember what they were. Despite time spent Googling “foreign movies 2014” (while watching other movies). The only two subtitled movies mentioned below I watched in the last week for the sole purpose of not revealing the depths of my cultural shallowness via this list.
When it comes down to it, when forced to choose between watching that darn foreign movie that I would actually like and enjoy, I hemmed and hawed about subtitles preventing me from simultaneously reading some bullshit about the Mets offseason and watched some unenjoyable garbage that I ended up hating even as I ignored it (Dumb and Dumber To comes to mind). Anyway, here’s my list, which I will now defend vigorously and with anger, denying everything written above, because you and your list full of foreign gems is bullshit and you’re a commie pinko who liked Noah:
1. Boyhood: Very few films could live up to 12 years of production. Boyhood was good enough for another 12. Ramshackle, beautiful, and full. Perfect? Not by a long shot. But Boyhood earns every single one of its flaws.
2. Birdman: Dizzying in every way. A whirling dervish without a soul? More or less. But when the actors are having this much fun making something so technically impressive and delightful to watch, who cares?
3. Gone Girl: A winking ridiculous tour through American castration paranoia, and one of the funniest movies of the year. David Fincher seems like the least likely director to do Lynchian pastiche, and Trent Reznor the least likely composer, but they do it fantastically.
4. Only Lovers Left Alive: The best movie ever made about hipster (in the original sense of the word) vampires rolling languidly around a cadaverous Detroit? Could very well be.
5. Inherent Vice: Delirious and heavily Dude and Long Goodbye indebted. Something I desperately need to see again to wrap my brain around. But any movie that does a credible mashup of Pynchon, Coen Brothers, and Altman is goddamn aces in my book.
3. Gone Girl: A winking ridiculous tour through American castration paranoia, and one of the funniest movies of the year. David Fincher seems like the least likely director to do Lynchian pastiche, and Trent Reznor the least likely composer, but they do it fantastically.
4. Only Lovers Left Alive: The best movie ever made about hipster (in the original sense of the word) vampires rolling languidly around a cadaverous Detroit? Could very well be.
5. Inherent Vice: Delirious and heavily Dude and Long Goodbye indebted. Something I desperately need to see again to wrap my brain around. But any movie that does a credible mashup of Pynchon, Coen Brothers, and Altman is goddamn aces in my book.
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel: Cheating here. I watched it piecemeal, and didn’t give it enough attention when I did. But from what I can recall, Sandy Alderson made some smart moves this offseason by not making many moves given their youth and position on the win curve, and I really should watch this again.
7. Whiplash: Overwrought but compelling. Thought J.K. Simmons was a bit overpraised, but it’s still a solid performance.
7. Whiplash: Overwrought but compelling. Thought J.K. Simmons was a bit overpraised, but it’s still a solid performance.
8. Winter Sleep: A frustrating, unnerving film. I’m still far from certain that the film requires its length, and there are moments of legitimate tedium. But the tedium is rewarded. As chatty as Once Upon A Time in Anatolia was laconic, it spends most of its time in caves literal or not, its characters trapped together or in themselves. But it’s at its most terrifying not in constriction, but when the camera expands towards the at first mesmerizingly beautiful and then mesmerizingly desolate Turkish expanse. 0/100 stars: too hard to read Mets news through.
9. Two Days, One Night: Ugh. I found so much of this repetitive and plodding despite Cotillard’s phenomenal performance. (Did anyone else want to punch her wet noodle husband in the balls?) But that ending…so damn irresistible.
10. The Drop: Tom Hardy’s seductive performance is the only reason to see this slight movie. But it’s a hell of a reason.
11. The Babadook If Australian horror is this good, I need to see a lot more Australian horror.
12. Coherence: Let’s get one thing straight: this is no Primer. Instead it’s Primer’s low-rent sci-fi cousin, showing up to the dinner party wrapped in mystery and charisma but secretly being a top-notch Magic the Gathering player. But still: a good dinner party is a good dinner party.
10. The Drop: Tom Hardy’s seductive performance is the only reason to see this slight movie. But it’s a hell of a reason.
11. The Babadook If Australian horror is this good, I need to see a lot more Australian horror.
12. Coherence: Let’s get one thing straight: this is no Primer. Instead it’s Primer’s low-rent sci-fi cousin, showing up to the dinner party wrapped in mystery and charisma but secretly being a top-notch Magic the Gathering player. But still: a good dinner party is a good dinner party.
13. The Imitation Game: Script might very well have been constructed by one of Turing’s machines it so doggedly followed the Touching Hollywood Biopic rules, but still a moving- and enjoyable-enough experience.
14. Chef: Delightful and corny. Delightful because it’s corny. More worthy of standing in line for than a kimchi slaw hot dog food cart.
15. 22 Jump Street: I watched 21 by myself at home, and this in the company of others at the theater. I’ll leave the nature vs. nurture arguments to the philosophers: all I know is I laughed much harder at the sequel.
14. Chef: Delightful and corny. Delightful because it’s corny. More worthy of standing in line for than a kimchi slaw hot dog food cart.
15. 22 Jump Street: I watched 21 by myself at home, and this in the company of others at the theater. I’ll leave the nature vs. nurture arguments to the philosophers: all I know is I laughed much harder at the sequel.
16. Under the Skin: Bizarre but surprisingly touching. The movie would’ve made a lot more sense if they included parts of the book that I instead found out about from Wikipedia.
17. Guardians of the Galaxy: A nice corrective to the somber Christopher Nolan-influenced superhero tent poles. Hollywood will quickly overlearn this lesson, and we’ll be back to Batman & Robin in no time.
18. Starred Up: British prisoners are just so much more adorable than American prisoners, ya know?
17. Guardians of the Galaxy: A nice corrective to the somber Christopher Nolan-influenced superhero tent poles. Hollywood will quickly overlearn this lesson, and we’ll be back to Batman & Robin in no time.
18. Starred Up: British prisoners are just so much more adorable than American prisoners, ya know?
19. Blue Ruin: The plot felt thin, but the inevitable march of a blood feud to tragedy (and minor redemption) was palpable.
20. Foxcatcher: In retrospect, having found both this and Moneyball disappointing, maybe I was always just a fan of the greatly missed Philip Seymour Hoffman and not Bennett Miller at all. Either way, I loved Capote. This was no Capote. Ruffalo's good-but-not-great performance blows away both a truly forgettable performance by Tatum and the malignancy from threadbare motive of Carrell’s nasal DuPont. All thrown together by a meandering, cliched script. Wait, I liked this movie? I did: very easy to read articles on how Michael Cuddyer was worth forgoing a draft pick through.
Honorable mentions:
Locke (a more heralded but less deserving performance by Hardy) , Edge of Tomorrow (the first half), Frank (parts), A Most Wanted Man, The Guest (the menacing first half), Top Five (minus the incredibly embarrassing, dated, and prolonged gay joke), Interstellar (parts), The One I Love
Shamefully not seen:
Mr. Turner, Force Majeure, The Wind Rises, Joe, Night Moves, Selma, American Sniper,The Theory of Everything (I guess?), Ida, Goodbye to Love, A Most Violent Year, A Trip to Italy (saw the series instead, and regretted it: there is such a thing as Too Much Coogan), We Are the Best
Would be willing to commit various crimes and misdemeanors to go back in time and not see: Snowpiercer. As Woody Allen said about The Magus: "If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see Snowpiercer." Although to be fair, I wouldn't watch any of the 2009 through 2012 Mets either.
Best director/biggest letdown:
I Origins and Noah.
20. Foxcatcher: In retrospect, having found both this and Moneyball disappointing, maybe I was always just a fan of the greatly missed Philip Seymour Hoffman and not Bennett Miller at all. Either way, I loved Capote. This was no Capote. Ruffalo's good-but-not-great performance blows away both a truly forgettable performance by Tatum and the malignancy from threadbare motive of Carrell’s nasal DuPont. All thrown together by a meandering, cliched script. Wait, I liked this movie? I did: very easy to read articles on how Michael Cuddyer was worth forgoing a draft pick through.
Honorable mentions:
Locke (a more heralded but less deserving performance by Hardy) , Edge of Tomorrow (the first half), Frank (parts), A Most Wanted Man, The Guest (the menacing first half), Top Five (minus the incredibly embarrassing, dated, and prolonged gay joke), Interstellar (parts), The One I Love
Shamefully not seen:
Mr. Turner, Force Majeure, The Wind Rises, Joe, Night Moves, Selma, American Sniper,The Theory of Everything (I guess?), Ida, Goodbye to Love, A Most Violent Year, A Trip to Italy (saw the series instead, and regretted it: there is such a thing as Too Much Coogan), We Are the Best
Would be willing to commit various crimes and misdemeanors to go back in time and not see: Snowpiercer. As Woody Allen said about The Magus: "If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see Snowpiercer." Although to be fair, I wouldn't watch any of the 2009 through 2012 Mets either.
Best director/biggest letdown:
I Origins and Noah.