My Top Best and Worst Films of 2014

by Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 02, 2015

This year was an amazing year for films.  We had great dramas such as Foxcatcher, The Theory of Everything, Locke and The Skeleton Twins.  We had original science fiction like Snowpiercer and the good but not perfect Christopher Nolan film, Interstellar.  We had some pretty funny comedies like 22 Jump Street, Neighbors and the charming Chris Rock film Top Five.  We had endearing films like Chef, St. Vincent and Begin Again.  We had some exciting action movies like The Equalizer, Godzilla, Fury and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, which featured the last performance by the late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  We had films out that I wasn’t able to see due to their limited release availability like Inherent Vice, A Most Violent Year and Selma, which I would love to have seen before compiling this list.

The year had a lot of stupid religious movies, which is odd to have so many in one year, like God in Not Dead, Son of God, Heaven is for Real, Left Behind and Exodus: Gods and Kings, with the exception of Noah, they felt like they were banging down the door like Jehovah’s witnesses, cramming their make believe God down our atheistic throats.  Before I get into the good stuff I’m going to go into the disappointing to the unbearable movies, like I, Frankenstein and Need for Speed, that some of us were subjected to throughout 2014.

The Monuments Men is a horribly boring film with George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman and Bill Murray in it.  How was that possible?  I still don’t know but it was bad I mean, what happened to this movie?  The poorly executed movie was bumped from its original December 2013 release.  We now know that the studio wanted this disappointment away from the award season films, which was a good move on their part.

Another disappointing movie this year that I wanted to love was Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  The movie was monotonous and sadly played like a parody of the much better and more kitschy 2005 original.  The best part of the flick was sexy Eva Green but outside of her scenes, horrible….. and sad.

The Expendables 3 was dull for a movie about muscles and explosions.  The choice to add in a younger cast to help the older Expendables was a bad move, first because the younger cast were so bland and boring and second, because it goes against the original concept of the movies, which is getting older action stars from the 80’s teaming up in a mega blockbuster and kicking lots of bad guy ass.

The Amazing Spiderman 2 was quite disappointing to watch, aside from the chemistry that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone had, the movie failed.  There were too many villains and the movie was blatantly setting itself up for another set of movies rather than being its own movie.

Transcendence was as ridiculous as Lucy, another film with Morgan Freeman playing Morgan Freeman.  Johnny Depp looked bored to death in this soulless part; he looked like he just wanted to cash his check and sail back his island to escape it all.  This movie makes you hate technology it was so bad.

Transformers 4: Age of Extinction is the worst movie and loudest of the year.  We’ve been fouled three times and yet we went back for more, thinking quite stupidly, that this time around it will be the Transformers movie we’ve always wanted.  Part 4 was lazy; it was a copy-and-paste job that failed on every possible level.  Shame on you yet again Michael Bay.

Thankfully there were so many great films this year.  Below are my honorable mentions.

Enemy was an existential thriller about a history professor that encounters his own doppelganger and is faced with questions about mortality.  The excellent film also has probably the most startling scene of the year in its last minutes and yet another crushing performance by Jake Gyllenhaal.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was an intriguing espionage spy movie that just so happens to be a superhero movie as well.  It had the best chase sequences of the year and took the possibility of Marvel films to a whole new level.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a political thriller about having to be forced to choose sides for the betterment of your species.  It was an evolutionary tale about the survival of the fittest.  The photo realistic CGI work on the apes was seemless.  Andy Serkis gives yet another memorable performance.  Also the film had one of the most complex and menacing bad guys of the year with the gloomy, wrathful ape, Kobe.

The Lego Movie was a wonderful way to start the year off.  This animated feature was as refreshing as they come.  The movie was about one little Lego man’s journey to discovering that he’s more than just a forgettable worker in the massive production of a consumer society.  He discovered that ‘everything wasn’t awesome’ and that creativity, inspiration and spontaneity define what it means to be alive.  Also everything about Batman was awesome.

The Edge of Tomorrow was an original blockbuster movie in a time where repeat movies (oddly enough that this movie is about repeating events over and over) have become an unfortunate norm.  Tom Cruise plays a coward that is forced to live through a D-Day-type battle fighting an armada of aliens until he figures out how to kill them all.  The action sequences are some of the best this year and Emily Blunt proves yet again that she can do no wrong.

The Zero Theorem was a small science fiction movie about a mathematician that’s been absorbed into the corporate system of perpetual production.  The film is about a paranoid man searching for meaning to such an extreme that illusions become acceptable to him.  The film looks amazing and is just the right kind of crazy you would expect from a Terry Gilliam film.

Gone Girl was not an exploration into feminism, it was a film that showed that women can be as vicious as men when they want to be.  It’s a film about disconnection and the cold calculating minds of certain mentally ambiguous people, for that it’s quite unique.  It’s a wonderful looking film thanks to master director David Fincher.  All the performances in the film are stellar but Rosamund Pike’s transformation is one of the best leading actress executions of the year.  Plus the film as some of the great surprising twists of the year, leaving many audience members baffled in their seats.

The Grand Budapest Hotel was equivalent to the most delicious cupcake you’ve even eaten, with a bittersweet center.  The delightful film invites us into wonderful sets and rich and interesting characters, and then ends with its final passages reminding us that all good things must come to an end.  This is true to life just as it was when the lights came up and the credits started rolling.  Lucky for us, at least in the case of the film, we can simply hit rewind and start it all over again.

John Wick was a stylized raw film and an absolute joy to watch from beginning to end.  Keanu Reeves kicks major Russian mafia ass for such a great reason.  The assholes killed his dog and stole his car so that was it.  Out came the guns and the black suit and the rest of the film was just Reeves killing lots of people.  The great thing about this action thriller is he did it so beautifully even how he shot people was interesting.  I haven’t seen that kind of shooting since Christian Bale in Equilibrium.

The Trip to Italy is as basic as they come; two funny men travel the hills and valleys of Italy in search of great food and wine.  What’s so incredibly charming about it though is the conversations the two men have while on their trip in Italy, whether it’s their Michael Caine or James Bond impersonations or their reactions to the entombed poor souls in Pompeii, who fell victim many centuries ago to the volcanic force of Mount Vesuvius.  The film is hilarious and quite scenic, making anyone who watches it, want to fly to Italy immediately to eat pasta and drink red wine while on a piazza in the scorching summer heat.  

Here is my top ten films of the year.  They are a collection of films that are my favorite and not necessarily anyone else’s.  I can say as I stated above that this was a great year for films so this list ended up being a little harder to compile then prior years.

10. Guardians of the Galaxy

Marvel Studios have proven themselves to be innovative film craftsmen as they expand on their cinematic universe, but I along with most people, didn’t see this juggernaut coming.  This movie has no right to be this fun; it has all the makings of stupid failure.  Instead it’s a blast even upon multiple viewings.  The characters are all unique and fresh, I mean the film has the most loveable tree in the history of cinema.  The worlds that were created were so rich in texture and filled with color, making it so refreshing in a time when there is a lot of lazy CGI work done on blockbusters, an example being the forgettable, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

9. Citizenfour

This daring documentary is a testament of what can be achieved and exposed in this time in cinema history.  The film follows whistleblower Edward Snowden as he leaks documents implicating the National Security Agency for spying on non-targeted Americans, for the purposes of control and providing private spending and habit information to their multinational corporate partners.  At its heart and what was so inspiring about it is its bravery.  Snowden along with the remarkable journalist involved showed such courage, such honor in a time when these things are fake, empty words decorated and then spewed by bureaucrats.

8. The Imitation Game

This inspiring yet tragic film, brilliantly acted, was about the life and mind of Alan Turing, the father of modern computing.  This film was also about inequality and ignorance.  Benedict Cumberbatch was enthralling as Turing figuring out how to decode the so-called unbreakable German Enigma machine during WW2.  

7. Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal transforms himself into slithering predator in this sickeningly honest film.  The film is a dark satire on the journalism business along the blood soaked night streets of Los Angeles.  In this ‘if it bleeds it leads’ candid film a young opportunist takes his camera into horrifying situations to get footage for the local news.  It’s a wonderfully cruel film and at points it’s hard to watch but still worth every minute.  It’s a cautionary tale about this point in our history where some disturbed people have quit the human race in order to be famous.

6. Whiplash

This film hits you to the core and if you don’t like Jazz (I don’t know how you couldn’t) then this film makes you a believer.  It teaches you that a ‘good job’ isn’t good enough if you want to achieve greatness.  It also asks about the cost both personally and socially, to achieve excellence, who will you have to leave behind and should you even make that sacrifice in the first place.

5. Wild

This daring, and in some cases hypnotic, film is about a young woman’s journey to discover herself.  She hikes for 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail starting in the Mojave Desert.  For me, this film is one of the most emotionally driven and brutally honest films of the year.  This film did not use filmmaking gimmicks or any form of spectacle to draw its audience into this woman’s need for change.  Reese Witherspoon also gives a career best performance playing the woman who this remarkable story is based on.

4. Boyhood

This coming-of-age unique tale (12 years to be exact) is an organic film that reveals life in a series of moments rather than a continuous narrative.  It’s a beautifully shot and acted ambitious film that deserves all the attention it’s getting for indie filmmaking favorite, Richard Linklater.

3. Only Lovers Left Alive

Eve and Adam are two vampires that pretty well live under the radar in this beautifully directed film.  In a time when vampires have become superheroes or monsters, this film decides to tell a story about societal emptiness and communal decadence.  It’s about two people, for the most, part staying out of the way as they witness mankind destroy its own humanity alone with its environment.  At its heart though, the film is about the possibility of everlasting love, survival and the power of knowledge.

2. Under The Skin

Taking hypnotic filming cues from 2001: A Space Odyssey, this film tells the story of an indifferent alien in the form of Scarlett Johansson, that begins to experience human emotion as she brings men back to her absorption chamber for processing, essentially death.  The film is shot beautifully as the alien roams the streets searching for more victims.  This is not a film for everybody but it is worth a look, if anything for Johansson’s riveting performance and director Jonathan Grazer stunning visuals and sound, which he wonderfully offers in this odd film.  

1. Birdman

This magnificent masterful film is a symbolic roller coaster ride through the subconscious mind of a washed-up actor.  Riggan Thomson struggles to find meaning and relevancy in a world where many around him are fighting for the same thing.  Michael Keaton gives a career best performance in a film filled with great performances.  Emma Stone and Edward Norton are among the standout actors in this wonderful, refreshing piece of cinema that will most defiantly become a cult classic and favorite for years to come.