Month: May 2015
2014: Year in Review
The three best movies of this year were films that did just about everything right. These were terrific masterpieces of cinema. The movies were Whiplash, Locke, and Guardians of the Galaxy, in that respected order.
Whiplash was a powerhouse movie of outstanding performances, a dark character study, and a story that kept you surprised as it constantly moved down new paths. JK Simmons gave the performance of his career, and won a well-deserved best supporting actor oscar. Miles Teller was great too, and I really like that this kid is building up his credibility before appearing in the new Fantastic Four movie, (both Whiplash and the Spectacular Now were great.)
After Whiplash comes Locke. What a film. A crowning achievement in how much they were able to accomplish with so little. This is one of the most experimental movies I have ever seen. The entire film takes place in a car with one single character on screen. Other than that, it’s just voices on the speaker phone. And yet the movie comes alive due to a riveting screenplay with some truly wonderful dialogue. It’s amazing how captivating this film turns out to be.
Next comes the big blockbuster of the bunch. Guardians of the Galaxy. The new Star Wars of sorts. Certainly the Star Wars of the superhero universe. It’s the movie that proves that Marvel can do no wrong (although some of their movies aren’t great, such as Thor 2.) This film has fantastic action, humor, characters, and storytelling. And who could forget the music? It all comes together in a movie that is visually spectacular. This is the movie that announces Chris Pratt as a new A list star, and the biggest thing to come out of 2014.
After those top three, the next movies on the list are great, but also slightly flawed. Gone Girl is next and while it is incredibly suspenseful, the movie does go on a little too long. Something tells me the more I see this movie, the more it will drop to a lower spot on the list. That’s because it’s a mystery and the problem with all good mysteries is that once you know how it ends and how things are going to turns out, the excitement and suspense will never be there the same way again. Sometime a movie has enough going to overcome that (Like The Usual Suspects and L.A Confindential,) but more often than not, the twist is what makes the movie so special.
A movie that is terrific in a completely different way is The Grand Budapest Hotel. This one is an artisitc gem. It’s one of those films that works on all levels, meaning that even when the dialogue isn’t especially brilliant, the atmosphere and beauty of the scenery or movement or camera shots makes up for it. The story isn’t spectacular, but this is a comedy and in most comedies it’s the humor that counts. This is no exception. The laughs are there and so are the thrills including a ski chase or hotel hallway gun fight that are both fantastic.
X-Men Days of Future Past is one of the better movies in that series. It just has such a winding storyline that connects to tons of other films in the series while at the same time giving us something very creative and new.Tthis is the time travel movie of the X-Men universe. Just like the 2009 Star Trek, that used an alternate reality and jump on the timeline to change the whole world of the movie, X-Men Days oF Future Past uses the same strategy. That means characters and events in the X-Men history were all altered. And the action was pretty great too. Just the Quicksilver stuff alone was terrific.
22 Jump Street is the rare comedy that is as good if not better than the original. It’s pretty remarkable, actually. Birdman gets points for creativeness, being filmed in what feels like a single, long tracking-shot. The camera never stops moving, and it turns out to be a pretty amazing trick.
Captain America: the Winter Soldier is one of the most impressive things imaginable. A superhero movie that has come out over ten years since the craze began (14, actually, since it all started with X-Men in the year 2,000), and is absolutely one of the best there is. Sure, it’s not in the top two or anything (Batman Begins and Iron Man hold those spots on my list), but it’s up there as not only a great superhero flick with fantastic fights and action, but also a cool mysterious conspiracy plot.
The Lego Movie is a good bit of fun. It’s one of those movies that is filled with clever jokes and hidden meaning ideas. It’s a superhero story of sorts in a Matrix kind of way about a guy who is prophecized to be amazing, but seems like just an average joe. Call it Kung Fu Panda meets Star Wars. The results are pretty spectacular. Unfortunately, there’s not enough room for it on this year’s list.
That’s because the final spot goes to John Wick, the best action movie in years. It’s a surprise that Keanu Reeves is back at it again, but he’s been looking for the right action movie to hit over the past few years now (appearing in 47 Ronin and Man of Tai Chi). It is this movie, John Wick, which turns out to be his big winner. The movie did so well that there is already a sequel in the works. This is a revenge thriller done right, complete with great stunt and fight choreography.
Top Ten of 2014
1. Whiplash
2. Locke
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Gone Girl
5. The Grand Budapest Hotel
6. X-Men Days of Future Past
7. Birdman
8. John Wick
9. Captain America: the Winter Soldier
10. 22 Jump Street
2014 Full List
Movies missed:
Selma
Still Alice
Under the Skin
While We’re Young
2013: Year in Review
2013 was an interesting year. It was the year of the accopalypse comedy, giving us both This Is The End and The World’s End, (both similarly titled and both in the summertime.) The best part is that they were both very good films. This was the year of both The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle, two very different movies that came out at the same time of the year, and were clearly connected. That connection was simply Martin Scorcese and Robert Deniro. American Hustle was meant to be like Goodfellas and other Scorcese movies. It accomplished its goal and even added comedy into the mix along with everything else. On top of that, the movie featured Scorcese’s former go to man, Deniro, in a small role. Meanwhile, The Wolf of Wall Street featured Scorcese’s current go to guy, Leonardo Dicaprio, and was directed by Scorcese himself. The movies were both about con artists or guys who ripped people off and had the FBI out to get them.
And then there were the unique movies that couldn’t be put into any of the usual categories. Movies like Blue Jasmine and The Way Way Back. One was a depressing yet wildly fascinating drama, and the other a heartfelt coming of age summer story. These were all incredibly likeable movies featuring all-star casts in smaller roles. From Sam Rockwell in tThe Way Way Back to Andrew Dice Clay in Blue Jasmine, these films were perfectly cast with actors hitting it out of the park. Cate Blanchet even won an oscar for Blue Jasmine and boy did she deserve it.
In some of the more familiar genres, we got a great thriller with Prisoners and a throwback animated movie with Frozen, that was clearly a tribute to the older Disney films of the nineties, complete with musical numbers and fairy tale atmosphere. And then there were the final two spots. At least three movies got kicked off the list, not quite making it into a final position. those films were Iron Man 3, The Wolverine, and Side Effects. All good films, but none of them great. Instead, The Heat proved to have real comedy chops that got funnier with each repeat viewing (just like Bridesmaids), and Man of Steal proved to have enough style and flavor to make it pretty intriguing. That movie was too long and maybe a little too dark, but it was packed with creative ideas and powerful emotion. Just like The Way Way Back and Blue Jasmine, this was a movie where casting really made a difference. Kevin Costner, for example, in a small role, was dead on the money, playing the human adopted father of Clark Kent.
At the end of the list, the final three spots were reserved for movies that definitely had their flaws (Man of Steal – way too much destruction at the end, and The World’s End – too much time spent on the Lamp ending,) but were overall pretty great.
1. Prisoners
2. This is the End
3. Blue Jasmine
4. The Wolf of Wall Street
5. The Way Way Back
6. Frozen
7. American Hustle
8. The World’s End
9. The Heat
10. Man of Steal
2012 Year in Review
1. Silver LiningsPlaybook
2. Django Unchained
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. The Avengers
5. The Cabin in the Woods
6. Argo
7. The Amazing Spider man
8. Wreck-it Ralph
9. Hitchcock
10. Seven Psychopaths
2012 was unfortunately not a great year for movies. It was more of a year where people jumped on board things that weren’t anything special and pretended that they were amazing. I’m talking about movies like Lincoln or Beasts of the Southern Wild (both nominated for bes picture, if you can believe that.) Of course, this all came at the end of the year, and there is plenty to talk about from earlier on.
The year started with movies like The Grey and Chronicle. Those movies weren’t anything special, but they also weren’t half bad, the way most January movies tend to be (compare that to the January movies of this year, 2013, Broken city, Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters, and Gangster Squad.)
The first really good movie of 2012 was 21 Jump Street. That movie was written by Jonah Hill, and like the rest of the Judd Apatow team members for writing and starring in their own movies (Seth Rogen, Jason Segal), Hill scored a very funny movie here. it was followed by a few other movies that were okay, like Wrath of the Titans, and it all led up to Cabin in the Woods,the Avengers, and Moonrise Kingdom. All in late April or early May. Both Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers were written and produced by Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who also directed The Avengers movie and really gets the most credit for how that movie turned out. Good as that film was, Cabin in the Woods is even better. This was certainly Joss Whedon’s year.
Moonrise Kingdom was a mid-year entry by filmmaker Wes Anderson who hadn’t really been relevant for a while. Anderson’s last three movies (The Life Aquatic, the Darjeeling Limited, and the Fantastic Mr. Fox), weren’t nearly as good as his first three (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and the Royal Tenenbaums). It was Moonrise Kingdom that was going to set the stage for how the third part of Anderson’s career would be going. the movie turned out to be a lot of fun, and right at home with those first three films, about a kid who acts like an adult and is full of himself, as well as his own, creative ideas.
There were other decent movies out at the start of the summer, but none that were that memorable. Ted was funny, but not really any better than 21 Jump Street. Snow White and the Huntsman was cool with all of it’s visuals, but in the end it turned out to be the same old cliched kind of a movie that appears everywhere we look (hero makes a rousing speech to get the knights to go to war at the end.) Prometheus and Savages and Men in Black 3 were all just okay. None of them was truly bad, but at the same time there wasn’t a one of them that was anything special at all. At least they were all a lot better than the Hunger Games, which is another one of those movies like Lincoln and Beasts of the Southern Wild, that I think everyone just fell in love with because everyone else was in love with it. People stopped thinking for themselves this year and it became a disaster.
Things started to get interesting at about the midpoint of the summer (really the midpoint of the year). The movies that should have been good weren’t and the movies that had no reason being any good were. I’m talking about the way that the Dark Knight Rises was lousy, and yet was the movie with more potential than anything else around. And while that movie didn’t meet expectations, the Amazing Spider Man did. That movie was surprisingly well-made and interesting. I say surprisingly because the director only made one movie before, (500 Days of Summer), the lead actor (Andrew Garfield) only starred in one movie before (the Social Network), and it was way too soon after the last Spider Man trilogy to be rebooting the franchise. Yet it worked.
Another movie that should have been a lot better than it turned out to be was the Bourne Legacy. It looked like Jermey Renner was a good choice to take over (and to be honest, the problems weren’t his fault), but the movie itself fell way short of the other Bourne films. That’s really because of the writing which couldn’t decide if it wanted to be it’s own thing and stay away from the other Bourne movies or wanted to be an exact clone and just copy their formula. It was an absolute mess. By the time the fall began, two thirds of the year were over and there were only five good movies to talk about. The Cabin in the Woods, the Avengers, the Amazing Spider Man, Moonrise Kingdom, and 21 Jump Street. That meant in the final portion of the year, the fall and start of winter, there needed to be 5 other good movies just to have enough for a top ten list. Luckily there were.
Argo was an instant classic and became one of the best movies of the year. Silver Linings Playbook was even better, knowing down the pins as both a black comedy and a psychological drama. The new Quentin Tarantino movie, Django Unchained, didn’t disappoint either. That movie might have been a little too long, but it was still filled with clever dialogue, intricate plotting, and some wild action.
Finally, there was Looper and Zero Dark Thirty. Both movies were good and almost great. Zero Dark, like Django, was just a little too long. It was always interesting, and powerful, but not nearly as gripping as director Kathryn Bigelow’s last movie, the Hurt Locker. and Looper had a lot of cool ideas to it, but also in many ways felt like something we had seen before. We’ve seen plenty of time travel movies, and today it’s always going back in order to do something, not just going back for fun. In Looper, it’s not the main characters going back, but other characters (the target) who the main characters need to kill. It’s a pretty cool take on the genre, but still ends up feeling kind of familiar.
I’m really happy about Argo and the Avengers and Silver Linings Playbook and the Cabin in the Woods. Other than those four movies, however, everything else felt like it was good, but not great.
My number five movie of the year is Moonrise Kingdom, and even that film isn’t quite as good as Wes Anderson’s earlier trilogy. it is certainly miles better than the last three films he made. Between him and Tarantino with Django, we had some great filmmakers turning in some awesome work. Even Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, might not have been on the same level as his Lord of the Rings films, but it was still pretty cool (Certainly the best of his three Hobbit films.)
Most disappointing of all was how much Christopher Nolan dropped the ball with his final Batman movie. Thankfully the other two superhero movies of the year (the Avengers and the Amazing Spider Man) picked up the slack and made up for Nolan’s lousy entry in the genre.
To end on a positive note, I’m glad that Silver Linings and Argo recieved the attention they did. Those were the two great movies of the end of the year, and Joss Whedon’s two films were the two great movies from the start of the year. Everything else fell somewhere in the middle, both in terms of where in the year it was and also in terms of how good or bad it was.