by Brett Parker
The beauty of art is that it always finds shrewd and sublime ways to flourish even if you try your mightiest to suppress it. Take for example the current state of the film industry: the general sing-along is how Hollywood has gotten too bloated on high-concept blockbusters, causing the “smaller picture” to die a slow, horrible death. You know the smaller picture: a modestly-priced work of simple cinematic pleasures that relies more on elemental fundamentals than CGI effects and major international movie stars. In an age where studios are desperately trying to protect their millions amidst the ashes of the Great Recession, billion-dollar franchises have been shoving smaller pictures as far down as it can on the Hollywood priority list. Just ponder all the remakes, sequels, and comic book properties you’ve witnessed at the box office lately and you realize that a studio movie about people sitting around and talking feels awfully scarce these days.
Yet I couldn’t help but notice that I had a wonderful time at the movies this past year. From summer popcorn tentpoles to gritty indie gems, flicks seemed ridiculously on-point, dishing out the kind of killer goods that make me love the art of cinema in the first place. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a giddy theory for my moviegoing joy: the primal pleasures of the smaller picture were being smuggled into theaters in the guise of flashier products. Like the old masters of the classical Hollywood system, filmmakers are getting shrewder at hiding emotional treasures within the framework of a ticket grabber. Over the past year, we saw a rowdy comedy masquerading as a juggernaut superhero franchise, a black comedy about marriage hiding in a whodunit thriller, an Audrey Hepburn romance packaged as a hot-button indie flick, a horror movie in the guise of Oscar-bait, a sociological study of African-American anxieties planted inside a Hollywood tell-all, and in the grandest example of all, a Nickelodeon boy’s tale elevated to artistic profundity by a brilliant acting conceit. A true movie lover couldn’t help but feel wonderfully complicit in an elaborate con job in which the take is unfiltered cinematic euphoria. And it is that very euphoria that leads me to dish out my Top 10 Movies of 2014 with great enthusiasm:
1) Interstellar
Christopher Nolan has pushed his grandiose theatricality to new heights with an enormous outer space epic overflowing with theoretical ideas that prove to be just as exciting as the breathtaking special effects on display. Matthew McConaughey delivers a masterful showcase of Hollywood leading man craftsmanship as a NASA pilot who steers a crew of scientists into another interstellar dimension on a journey that’s as magnificently time-bending as it is rabidly awe-inspiring. You have to give Nolan serious props for plunging into the recesses of your head and your heart simultaneously. By literally bridging the gap between The Right Stuff and Star Trek, Nolan has put breathtaking wonder back into the space opera.
2) Gone Girl
David Fincher delivers one of his very best dazzlers yet by hiding both a pitch-black comedy and surreal horror movie about marriage deep within a potboiler mystery. Fincher begins by conjuring up smoldering suspense over whether-or-not suburbanite Nick Dunne (a perfectly-cast Ben Affleck) had anything to do with the disappearance of his wife, Amy (a transcendent Rosamund Pike), before springing twists that elevate the material towards one of the most brilliantly savage critiques of marriage ever put on film. As Gillian Flynn’s unforgiving screenplay (based on her best-selling novel) takes an axe to modern day media culture and romantic expectations, Fincher deals a masterful blow to American delusions with ripple effects that’ll be felt by future couples everywhere.
3) Foxcatcher
Critics are so busy (rightfully) praising Foxcatcher as a great prestigious drama of the highest thespian order that I wonder if they notice it’s spiritually a horror film as deeply unsettling as The Exorcist. By exploring the real life tragedy of millionaire John du Pont’s Foxcatcher wrestling team, director Bennet Miller delivers one of the most penetrating explorations of the American caste system by showing troubled players from both the upper and lower class trying to meld with one another. The superb acting speaks oceans about the contemporary male crisis, from Steve Carrell twisting his repressed dork act into a Hannibal Lecter version of old money to Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo’s wonderfully acute portrayals of simple men who need sports to communicate. Thanks to Miller finding the perfect vehicle for his solemn gifts, Foxcatcher expertly discovers petrifying terrors within the contradictions of American wealth.
4) Guardians of the Galaxy
One of the best-kept secrets about the mega-successful Marvel movies is how they say just as much about the current state of the planet as any recent documentary. That’s why a seemingly-simple tale of warriors in space ended up capturing the culture’s attention with such grandeur, for the tale of a cocky bro, a self-reliant feminist, a bloodthirsty foreigner, an ill-tempered laborer, and a vapid lunk teaming up to conquer overwhelming terror became the ultimate dish of pop identification and wish-fulfillment fantasy in 2014. Through a strangely irresistible melding of Ghostbusters and Star Wars vibes, director James Gunn shows great command with pop images (a zero gravity escape from a prison and a romantic musical moment under the stars proved breathtaking) without diminishing any of his screwy sensibilities. With an infectious 80’s soundtrack, Chris Pratt getting his Han Solo on, and Vin Diesel picking up the most bizarre voiceover paycheck in Hollywood history, Guardians of the Galaxy wonderfully captures the present era’s meshing of goofiness and idealism.
5) Only Lovers Left Alive
Playing on his ideal of hip cats yearning for the past, indie film legend Jim Jarmusch delivered an endlessly fascinating vampire tale by completely rearranging the priorities of the ancient creatures towards more rock-centric tastes. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton pour every last drop of their coolness factors into the roles of Adam and Eve, two ancient vampires who find the modern era’s thick-headed negligence towards vintage arts and culture a source of alarming depression. The mind-blowing way Jarmusch throws tired vampire cliches into the trash while exploring their myth to make grand statements about finding true beauty in art is astounding. This is easily one of the best vampire movies ever made, boosted by Jarmush’s beautiful attempt to make the greatest hipster movie ever made.
6) Obvious Child
In a post-Seinfeld era, a comedian weaving the pain of real life into a stand-up act isn’t exactly a new idea, but the way director Gillian Robespierre uses such a device to put femininity on the table proves to be moving and lyrical in unexpected ways. Of course the film’s allure would be nothing without the star-making grace of the irresistible Jenny Slate. As Donna, a struggling comedienne dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, Slate is beautifully revelatory in the way she makes silliness a sensible act of self-reliance. Yet in the film’s more dramatic moments, her vulnerability makes you ache for her the way you did with Audrey, tipping you off that Obvious Child just might be a clever update of Breakfast at Tiffany’s with a grittier New York City landscape. Melding the hilarious and the heartbreaking with great humility, everything that Slate pours into Donna truly proves to be a cinematic gift.
7) Begin Again
After the breakout success of Once, writer-director John Carney dealt with the pressure of going mainstream by making a great movie about just how damn complicated it is to actually go mainstream. Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley (in her 2014 performance that is actually way more worthy of her current Oscar nomination) bring great bohemian vibes to two musical outcasts trying to regain solid footing in the music industry by illuminating scrappy methods and artistic ideals to overcome big corporations trying to screw them over. While being painfully honest about the realities of the music industry and commercial entertainment, Begin Again still manages to be as lovely and exuberant as Once while treating us to infectious and tender songs guaranteed to be mainstays on your iPod.
8) Selma
The most impressive directorial job from this past year comes from Ava DuVernay, who blew the doors off of everything we’ve come to expect from movies about black struggles and delivered a transcendent drama for the ages. Considered the first major motion picture to focus on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, DuVernay and the phenomenal David Oyelowo in the lead role answer the task with stunning power and conviction. While the trailer promised a more familiar kind of movie, the way in which this model biopic puts countless cliches to rest is astonishing. Dr. King’s complexities, flaws, joy, intelligence, and hardships are captured with an exciting dramatic precision and philosophical dialogue that gives his story the grandeur it deserves and then some. How fitting that a man who stood for constructive truths and smart idealism has garnered a movie that pushes for the same things in today’s cinema.
9) Nightcrawler
As if a cooky Tim Burton weirdo and a troubled Martin Scorsese outcast were put into a blender, Jake Gyllenhaal delivered one of the very best performances last year with the focused glee of a satanic boy scout. As a late-night loon who videotapes nasty accidents and bloody crimes to sell to news stations, Gyllenhaal and director Dan Gilory hauntingly explore alarming ways in which the American success blueprint allows for creepers to thrive and how we’re all pretty screwed once the psychos figure out middle-management speak. While attacking the dark side of our media culture isn’t exactly a groundbreaking concept, Nightcrawler gets its killer vibes from the realization that once the contradictions of the Great Recession meets the desperation of all-American weirdos, then this country is about to get a hell of a lot more bizarre.
10) Top Five
By writing, directing, and starring in a thinly-veiled account of his own celebrity lifestyle, Chris Rock has crafted one of the most detailed and hilarious depictions of black stardom ever put on film. With Top Five, Rock finally has a perfect outlet to explore the pressures and peculiarities of being a black celebrity through a media that isn’t always prepared to think of black people as full-blooded souls. The beautiful part about the experience is that Rock uses this tale to whip up all the things he loves about the movies, from slapstick hilarity (Cedric The Entertainer brings down the house in the most outrageous sex scene of the year) to old school romanticism (the lovely Rosario Dawson is one of the smartest romantic interests in years) to Hollywood dirt (Jerry Seinfeld makes it rain at a strip club with gusto) and to people just walking and talking in New York City (a wonderful shout-out to Nora Ephron, according to Rock). By giving audiences a peak behind the showbiz curtain that’s just as painfully honest and wildly hilarious as Rock’s stand-up routine, Top Five proves to be a better tale of showbiz strangeness and leading-man pressures than Birdman.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
-Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
-Boyhood
-Chef
-The Grand Budapest Hotel
-Inherent Vice
-Jersey Boys
-X-Men: Days of Future Past
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