The Year in Review: The Best Films of 2014 (Part One)

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2014, A Field in England, Alan Partridge, best films of 2014, cinema, Enemy, favorite films, film reviews, films, Go For Sisters, Grand Budapest Hotel, Movies, Only Lovers Left Alive, personal opinions, The Babadook, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The One I Love, We Are the Best!, Witching and Bitching, year in review

And now, at long last, we get to the final stretch of the race: my selections for the Best Films of 2014. I’ve already listed my favorite horror films of the year but this is the overall list: everything gets thrown into the same pot, regardless of genre. Astute readers will definitely notice a little overlap with the horror list but I attempted to use two very different sets of criteria for judging the films: what may make a film one of the best horror movies of the year won’t necessarily make it one of the best overall films of the year and vice versa.

This was an especially difficult list to make this year for one main reason: I saw an awful lot of good-to-great films in 2014. I didn’t get a chance to see a lot of the “obvious” choices for Best of the Year, such as Nightcrawler or Boyhood, but I did manage to see most of the underdogs and “dark horses,” so to speak. None of this, of course, is by way of saying that my choices are any more valid than the mainstream: we just have slightly different priorities, that’s all.

For me, I define a truly great picture in a very specific way: it really has to move me. It can make me mad as hell, so giddy I’m karate-kicking the wall or so heart-broken that I want to die…but it damn well better make me feel something more than just entertained. Lots of films are entertaining (there are even parts of Sharknado that are entertaining, surprisingly enough) but that’s not quite good enough to make that kind of impression on me. After whittling the 350+ films I watched last year down to a shortlist of the very best 2014 titles, I’ve managed to whittle that down even further to my 21 favorite films of the year. Unlike the horror list, this won’t be in any particular order, save the top slot: if I thought whittling the list down to 20 was impossible (it was), then ranking them seems about as likely as flapping my arms and achieving liftoff.

With no further ado, I now present the first half of my Best of 2014 list. Make sure your trays are in the upright position, fasten your belts and prepare for take-off.

The Twenty-One Best Films of 2014

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The Grand Budapest Hotel

Is The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson’s “ultimate” film? Despite my never-ending love of and loyalty to Rushmore, I might need to concede this point. Everything about the film speaks to some aspect of Anderson’s back catalog: the fascination with miniatures; the blink-and-you-miss-’em cameos; the “missing father” dynamic that’s at the heart of nearly all his films; the immaculately fashioned production design; the gorgeous cinematography; the “iron fist in a velvet glove” repartee; the intentionally screwy timeline…it’s all here. Holding the whole production together, however, are two of the best performances of the entire year: Ralph Fiennes absolutely owns the film as the impossibly cool, suave M. Gustave but he’s very nearly upstaged by young Tony Revolori as the eternally loyal lobby boy, Zero. There’s a real sense of joy and wonder to the film, along with the requisite Andersonian sense of tragic romance and a supremely dark edge, as well: there’s a real sense of menace and violence to The Grand Budapest that’s strangely missing from most of Anderson’s other films. Plus, you get Willem Dafoe in one of his funnest roles in years. The Grand Budapest Hotel brings Anderson back to the fore in a big way.

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Only Lovers Left Alive

As a rule, I’m not the biggest vampire fan in the world but leave it to Jarmusch to force me to include a vampire flick on my Best of Year list. Only Lovers Left Alive is lush, atmospheric and hazy, the perfect complement to the Bohemian bloodsuckers at its center. There’s something swooningly romantic about the relationship between Adam and Eve, a romance that’s spanned across continents and centuries. Set against the decaying backdrop of modern-day Detroit, Jarmusch spins his usual web and everything about the film is as immaculate as miniature diorama: extra points for John Hurt’s delightful performance as the rakish Christopher Marlowe, Eve’s “shoulder to cry on” since the time of Shakespeare. This isn’t just one of the best films of the year: it’s one of the best films in Jarmusch’s long, distinguished career.

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We Are the Best!

Perfectly capturing the frustrations, joys and miseries of being young and on the fringes of “polite” society, We Are the Best! is, without a doubt, one of the most joyful, exuberant films I saw all year. There’s something undeniably kickass about watching the trio of young girls at the center of the film slowly gain confidence, leading up to the joyful middle-finger attitude that sends the whole thing off on a happy note. Were this just a peppy story, it wouldn’t have stuck the landing as one of the best of the year: writer-director Lukas Moodysson guides everything with an assured hand, however, giving the proceedings just enough bite to give them weight. The scene where Hedvig blows away the chauvinistic music teachers with her display of guitar pyrotechnics may be one of my favorites of the whole year: if you don’t stand and cheer, you probably have coal instead of a heart.

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Go For Sisters

I’ve followed legendary writer-director John Sayles career since I was a kid: Piranha (his first script) was one of my favorite movies, growing up, and I can still remember the first time I saw The Brother From Another Planet. Quite frankly, there’s no one else out there quite like Sayles and there never will be: with an almost uncanny knack for vivid characters and the ability to twist even the most straight-forward situation into a knot, Sayles is truly one of the keystones of “classic” indie film, right along with Jarmusch and Soderbergh. Go For Sisters is Sayles’ second home-run in a row, after the stellar Amigo (2010), and may be one of his best, most fun and most accomplished films yet. This time around, he gets phenomenal performances from LisaGay Hamilton and Yolonda Ross as former best friends who end up on opposite sides of the law, yet must rekindle their friendship in order to help Hamilton find her missing son. Edward James Olmos is reliably excellent as the former lawman-turned-private eye but the entire film, part and parcel, belongs to Hamilton and Ross: if there was any justice in this world, they’d both get nominated for Oscars.

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A Field in England

Trippy, surreal, bizarre and intense, Ben Wheatley’s amazing A Field in England is the closest a film has brought me to insanity since the first time I watched Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain…umm…”altered,” shall we say.  For most of its runtime, the film is a strange little oddity about deserters during the British Civil War of the 1700s who stumble upon a strange, featureless and unbelievably foreboding field in the middle of nowhere. At a certain point, however, it’s like Wheatley cracks open the egg of knowledge right in your face, splattering your brain pan with so much terrifying insanity that it makes you physically ill. For one of the few times in my entire life, I sat staring at the screen, my mouth hanging wide, drooling everywhere: it’s no lie to say that, for one brief moment, I was standing on the downward slope of sanity, fully prepared to slide off into the abyss. Hyperbole? Maybe but we can talk after the film blows your head off and puts it back upside-down. This, friends and neighbors, is truly experimental cinema at its very best.

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Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

I’m going to assume that the sound I hear is all of the spit-takes out there, so I’ll give you all a moment to compose yourselves…ready? Good. How, exactly, did the Steve Coogan vehicle Alan Partridge end up on my Best of list? Isn’t this just another dumb big-screen version of another TV show/radio show/Broadway play/public access show/dinner theater-type thingamabob? Maybe yes, maybe no: I’ll admit to knowing nothing whatsoever about the character until I sat down to watch the film, so that certainly wasn’t the draw for me. Here’s what I can say, however: Alan Partridge is, without a doubt, the funniest film I saw in 2014, hands-down. In fact, I laughed so hard at the film that I was frequently crying, when I wasn’t almost falling out of my chair. Ladies and gentlemen: I haven’t laughed that hard in…well, I honestly can’t remember. Everything about the film is hilarious and quote-worthy: from the dream sequence involving a mob of Alans to the awesome dialogue to some of the very best sight gags I’ve ever seen, Alan Partridge is a film that keeps raising the comedy bar, yet effortlessly sails over it every time. Colm Meaney is marvelous as Alan’s put-upon and marginalized co-worker but Steve Coogan is an absolute god as the titular moron. Everything about this film is a complete winner: I’d be shocked if this isn’t considered a cult classic within the next decade or so…you can bet your forensic trousers on it!

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The Babadook

In a year that seemed to split horror fans and critics in a million different directions, there was one thing that almost everyone could agree on: Jennifer Kent’s amazing debut film, The Babadook, was easily one of the highlights. Genuinely scary and with an air of originality missing from much popular horror fare, this Australian tale of a troubled mother and son facing down pure evil is old-fashioned horror given a bright, shiny new coat. If The Babadook were only a full-throttle horror flick, however, it never would have made it past my Best of Horror list. Instead, Kent’s film is just as much about the trials and tortures that parents must deal with when raising children, especially if said children are as immensely troubled as young Samuel is. When the film lets loose, it’s almost too raw to watch: the scenes where the mother tells her young son how much she hates him would be utterly horrifying, with or without the eerie specter of Mr. Babadook hanging over everything.

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Enemy

The first thing you’ll notice about Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy is the sickly, jaundice-yellow hue that seems to infect every frame of the film like some sort of creeping mold, followed by the oppressively thick atmosphere of dread that hangs over everything like a pall. After that, you might notice how many truly odd things happen in the margins of the frame and how little explanation we get for anything that happens. Later on, you might notice how this seemingly simple tale of a man running across his doppelgänger keeps turning and folding over on itself, like a pulsating amoeba cleaving itself in two. By the time you get to the truly stunning finale, an absolutely terrifying revelation that’s the equivalent of waking from a dream and plunging into a nightmare, one thing should be clear beyond all else: Villeneuve’s film is the perfect horror tonic for our era, a surreal dreamscape where the rat race, our eternal search for immortality and our inability to resist flipping over as many rocks as we can results in our complete and utter destruction. Absolutely unforgettable, Enemy is, without a doubt, one of the finest films to come from a rather fine year.

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Witching & Bitching

Alex de la Iglesia’s newest film, Witching & Bitching, opens with a gold heist that involves body-painted street performers (Silver Jesus for the win!) and climaxes with a pitched battle against a towering, blind fertility goddess. Stuffed between these two poles we get plenty of snarky “battle of the sexes” commentary (much of it quite politically incorrect, shall we say), some jaw-dropping practical effects, a sense of humor that can best be described as “out there” (one of the film’s best, most outrageous scenes involves someone hiding inside a toilet) and a romantic angle that starts as a joke and finishes in just about the sweetest way possible. This is a big, loud horror-comedy-fantasy that isn’t afraid to shoot for Peter Jackson by way of Steven Spielberg territory, while still manages to (usually) keep at least one foot anchored on solid ground. Even for a career as varied and delightful as de la Iglesia’s, Witching & Bitching is one varied, delightful film.

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The One I Love

Without a doubt, one of the biggest, best surprises of the entire year, Charlie McDowell’s extraordinary The One I Love is that most impossible of things: an intelligent, trippy, doppelganger-themed love story that manages to shatter conventions left and right. The whole film is grounded by one of my favorite duos of the year, Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss: the two are so perfect as the imperfect couple looking to “fix” their broken marriage by way of shrink Ted Danson’s dubious “immersion” therapy that they almost overshadow the rest of the film. Note that I say “almost,” however, since The One I Love has a way of burrowing under your skin and taking root. At times laugh-out-loud funny, at times sinister, occasionally baffling and always brilliant, this was one of the freshest, most original films I saw all year. I know I’ve said this before but in a much weaker year, The One I Love would be a tough act to follow.

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And there we have it: the first half of my Best Films of 2014, in random order. Tune in later as we finish off with the other eleven, including my pick for the very best film of 2014. What will take it all? Who will be left in the dust? Who will survive and what will be left of them? Stay tuned, loyal readers…stay tuned.

10/10/14 (Part One): What a Drag It Is Not Getting Older

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31 Days of Halloween, Adam and Eve, Anton Yelchin, art films, auteur theory, Bill Laswell, Christopher Marlowe, cinema, Dead Man, Detroit, drama, ennui, eternal life, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Ghost Dog, hipsters, horror movies, husband-wife team, independent film, Jeffrey Wright, Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt, Mia Wasikowska, Movies, Only Lovers Left Alive, romance, romantic films, Tangiers, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Vampire Code of Conduct, vampires, vampires vs humans, writer-director, youth vs old age

In certain ways, the classical notion of vampires is equitable with the current phenomena known as “hipsters”: vampires are intelligent, urbane individuals who look down on the dregs of “normal” society, take pleasure in obscure, archaic entertainments, consider themselves to be more sophisticated than those around them and lament the tawdriness of the modern age in contrast to purer, more interesting “times gone by.” Minus the blood-sucking bit and aversion to sunlight (well, perhaps not completely forgetting the aversion to sunlight bit…), that description sounds an awful lot like the current conception of hipsters. At the very least, both groups appear to share a common attribute: a completely world-weary and jaded viewpoint that makes snark and sarcasm more natural go-to responses than honest simplicity. For bored, ageless vampires, the business of “living” appears to be as much of a burden as “regular folks” are to the modern hipster. The whole thing is just so…gauche.

Auteur Jim Jarmusch’s newest film, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), takes the above parallel between vampires and hipsters to its logical extreme, positing Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as the bored, ageless vampires Adam and Eve, doomed to cast a disparaging eye on the wreck that is humanity for more centuries than they care to recall. Or, at least, that’s definitely Adam’s take on the whole mess of existence. In fact, he’s so agitated with the inanity of the “zombies” (the vamps favorite descriptor for humanity) that he’s commissioned a wooden bullet and plans to commit the ultimate act of bored defiance: if this world won’t cease its tedium, he’ll just have to cease his existing.

Eve, on the other hand, views things just a little differently. In fact, it’s probably easiest to view Eve as a Gothic variation on the whole “manic pixie girl” ideal: unlike Adam, she hasn’t lost her sense of joy at being alive. As she sees it, living for hundreds of years can get tedious and humdrum, of course, but it also allows for more experiences and wonder than any “regular” person could ever have. After all, she’s best friends with the one and only Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt)…how many “regular” people can say that?

This contrast between Adam and Eve forms the foundation of Jarmusch’s film, his rather belated follow-up to The Limits of Control (2009). As befits someone who tackles genre films in the most unconventional ways possible (Dead Man (1995) is a trippy art-film masquerading as a Western, while Ghost Dog (1999) is a treatise on Eastern philosophy filtered through a gonzo Mafia framework), Only Lovers Left Alive is a highly unconventional film. For one thing, there isn’t a whole lot of narrative thrust to be found here: much of the film’s running time is taken up with the relationship between Adam and Eve and what happens when she leaves her home in Tangiers to come see him in Detroit (despite being married for, apparently, hundreds of years, the couple live across the world from each other, which has to one of the handiest metaphors for long-distance relationships in some time). Plot points do raise their heads from time to time, of course: the couple is visited by Eve’s young, out-of-control sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), and must figure out how to replenish their exhausted blood supply. On the whole, however, Jarmusch is largely uninterested in the vagaries of a traditional plot: this is all about atmosphere and vibe, two fronts which Only Lovers Left Alive really takes to the bank.

More than anything, Jarmusch’s newest film is an art film: the emphasis is most definitely on mood, with evocative shots, exquisite slo-mo and deliberate framing taking precedence over any traditional narrative devices. To that end, events sometimes come and go with a sense of arbitrary randomness: Adam’s best friend, the human Ian (Anton Yelchin), is dispatched early on but it so much as cause a ripple in the narrative. Ava seems poised to serve as some sort of villainous character (she’s so selfish, obnoxious and derisive towards humans that she feels cut from a much more traditional “vamps vs humans” film) until she’s pretty much written out of the story without so much as a second thought. Adam appears to be a rock star, of some sort, and much is made in the film about him constantly hearing his music in surprising places (a restaurant, for example) but this ends up having no bearing on the story whatsoever. Like much in the story, these various plot ends aren’t meant to be tied up neatly: they’re used for seasoning, like salt on a steak.

Lacking any sort of driving narrative, the responsibility for the success (or failure) of the film rests solely on its considerable craft: as with anything else in his catalogue, Jarmusch is more than capable of not only making this work but making it work spectacularly well. For one thing, Only Lovers Left Alive looks fantastic: the well-lit daytime scenes may seem a little blown-out but the night-time scenes are exquisite and highly evocative. The score, all hyperbole aside, is a true thing of beauty: not only does it manage to elevate the film, as a whole, but Jarmusch’s musical choices are just a ton of fun, all on their own. The scene where Adam plays his music is pitch-perfect (apparently, vampire music sounds like droning, Eastern-tinged shoegaze, which makes complete sense), as is the truly nice moment where Adam and Eve dance to a Motown tune. The Bill Laswell instrumental that closes the credits totally rips and this was the first art film I’ve seen in sometime that practically demands I check out the soundtrack.

As with all of his films, Jarmusch assembles a first-class ensemble and puts them through some pretty excellent paces. Hiddleston and Swinton are absolutely magnificent as the ageless lovers: not only is their relationship genuinely romantic but the pair make a truly unearthly couple…they not only look but act and sound like age-old creatures living in an era not of their construction. Wasikowska turns in another great performance as the childish, casually evil Ava and is quickly proving to be one of this generation’s most capable genre actors. It’s always good to see John Hurt in a film and he tears into the character of Christopher Marlowe with gusto, although I wish he got a little more screen-time. Likewise, Yelchin and Wright turn in great supporting performances as Ian and Dr. Watson, respectively: Hiddleston’s scenes with Wright are definitely a highlight of the film.

As a huge fan of Jarmusch’s work (Dead Man is one of my all-time favorite films), I went into this expecting nothing short of greatness and, for the most part, my expectations were met. Only Lover’s Left Alive is definitely an extraordinary film, from the peerless performances to the gorgeous cinematography and back to the picaresque locations (the dilapidated, ramshackle setting of the once-might Detroit makes a pretty awesome, if obvious, metaphor for a vampire film, since the city seems as undead as the vampires). That being said, I still found myself slightly letdown by the film: there’s nothing inherently wrong with the picture – truth be told, there’s a lot about it that’s very, very right – but it still manages to feel somehow slight, at least when stacked up against his previous work. Whether this due to my perception or Jarmusch’s intention, there definitely seems to be a disconnect (at least for me), a disconnect that I rarely noticed in his earlier films.

Ultimately, however, my slight dissatisfaction ends up being a pretty moot point: Only Lovers Left Alive is a pretty great film and certainly one of the more interesting vampire films to emerge in some time. The main idea, that ageless individuals with access to all of the music, art, history and time in the world, can still manage to be bored and listless is an extremely relevant one in this day and age of the Internet: after all, humanity now has access to just about everything that Jarmusch’s vampires do and we’re not content, either. It’s an interesting notion, is this idea that having it all really means we get nothing. It’s certainly not the kind of idea that’s par for the course in most vampire films. When you’re dealing with Jarmusch, however, “usual” and “par for the course” are pretty meaningless terms: he’s been doing it his own way for over 30 years, now, and I’m imagining he won’t be stopping anytime soon.

The 31 Days of Halloween (Week 2)

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31 Days of Halloween, Blood Glacier, Chillerama, Dead Birds, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Halloween traditions, horror, horror movies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kiss of the Damned, Only Lovers Left Alive, Stage Fright, Stoker, The Burrowers, The Last Winter, The Thing, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, The World's End, Under the Skin, Visitors

One week down, four more to go. Due to some scheduling issues over the weekend, my planned films for this previous week ended up changing around. In the interest of being complete, here’s a recap of what went down last week:

Oct 1st — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) / The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 (1986)

Oct 2nd — Halloween (1978) / Halloween II (1981)

Oct 3rd — Alien (1979)

Oct 4th — Hellbenders (2012) / Some Guy Who Kills People (2011)

Oct 5th — Invaders From Mars (1986)

As I mentioned, just a wee bit different than the proposed schedule. Since I don’t expect this week to be quite as chaotic, here’s what I expect to screen over the next seven days:

Oct 6th — The World’s End (2013) / Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Oct 7th — The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) / Friday the 13th (1980)

Oct 8th — Stoker (2013) / Under the Skin (2014)

Oct 9th — Stage Fright (2014) / Chillerama (2011)

Oct 10th — Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) / Kiss of the Damned (2012)

Oct 11th — Blood Glacier (2014) / The Last Winter (2006) / The Thing (1982)

Oct 12th — Visitors (2003) / The Burrowers (2008) / Dead Birds (2005)

Stay tuned on write-ups for Friday, Saturday and Sunday of last week as I try to clear out the weekend backlog. As always, thanks for hanging out at the Graveyard!