The Best Movies of 2014

20. Godzilla- It has been called the first “post-human blockbuster. "It’s because of that guy on top. Nothing else matters, particularly us tiny humans, on the face of such majesty. I like the argument that says that this is a film designed to restore reverence for the divine. Mission accomplished.  

19. Edge of Tomorrow- Emily Blunt. Go watch this for Emily Blunt. She should be showered with praise, money, glory, and awards. She should also be a superhero. Marvel needs to get to work on that.  Tom Cruise is also in this,  if that means anything.

18. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes- Andy Serkis as Caesar the ape is a better character than 95% of the “human” characters in Hollywood releases this year.  If a film has me cheering for a group of monkeys over the humans it depicts, then it's doing something either very very right, or very very wrong. Thankfully this time, it's by design, so thumbs up. 

17. Big Hero 6- This is what a lighthearted, colorful, fun superhero movie is supposed to look like, with bright character designs and a clear and imaginative world -- the superb Western/Eastern city of SanFranokyo -- to support and elevate the characters. The story, which follows young engineering wiz Hiro and his college-aged older brother Tadashi, is based on a strong central relationship between a well established, likable strong pair, with the rest of the main crew taken from a fairly traditional, though still immensely enjoyable, batch of misfits to fulfill the 6 heroes the title promises. It's basically everything Guardians of the Galaxy should have been as well as the best animated movie of the year. (Yes, even better than The Tale of Princess Kaguya, and slightly more substantial than Ernest and Celestine. Don't even talk to me about The Boxtrolls or The Book of Life.) Big Hero 6 was also released with a short film, "Feast," about a dog and his owner, which is just about perfect and should put anyone with a heart in a good mood to watch the feature. 

16. X-Men: Days of Future Past- The best superhero movie in years as well as the best blockbuster of the year.  The main draw here is the opportunity to witness the fantastic cast from the original X-Men interact with the newer, younger crew from X-Men: First Class. From my review: "The story, which goes back and forth from a future hopefully about to be erased, and a past that could alter time for the better, loses focus on occasion, and it doesn't make much sense. However, at least it knows where its strengths lie. I'll allow any narrative inconsistencies just to be able to have the wonderful confrontation between the two Charles Xaviers played by Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy, who have never been better, beating the casts of any movie this size (even The Avengers) with raw talent and a fascinating, unexpectedly complicated character at their disposal." 

15. Snowpiercer- A high-speed, constantly moving train holds what remains of humanity after a scientific experiment made the rest of the world a frozen, inhabitable tundra. The people at the back of the train lead poverty-stricken lives. Their objective: to get to the front of the train where the rich lead luxurious lives. They want in. Their obstacle: the army. Get through the army, kill the oppressor who set up this system. Simple as that. Action filmmaking at its finest. 

14. Goodbye to Language 3D- As it’s title suggests, Goodbye to Language defies linguistic interpretation. It is an episodic film ostensibly structured around two main parts labelled “Nature” and “Metaphor,” about two couples and their adorable dog, but it also contains several interludes, flowing in and out of the main stories as it pleases. It in no way resembles a conventional film. The best way to experience something like this is to find an element you like and hold on to it for dear life. For me, that was the use of 3D. A woman gently bathes her hands in a crystalline pool of water full of leaves. A visual wonder. Another woman takes a sip from a public water fountain. A revelation. A ship creates ripples and waves in its path to the nearest dock. Poetry. The look and the texture of the water in 3D, the way it seems to gently pour over the edges of the frame to breach the divide between the viewer and the screen, that alone would make Goodbye to Language one of the greats, but with such an abundance of talent, director Jean-Luc Godard would be crazy to stop there, so he keeps on giving. In Goodbye he has crafted my favorite shot of the year, that of a woman wearing a black hat and a brown raincoat, reaching out in vain towards the audience through a sharp dark fence while a fathomless ocean and a cloudy sky hover quietly behind her. It is an image that has to be seen in 3D to be able to convey the fullness of its melancholy power. It is Stunning. 

13. A Most Wanted Man- This first-rate spy thriller should be watched if only because it features the last great performance from the inimitable Philip Seymour Hoffman. From my review: "While [director Anton] Corbjin exploits the political atmosphere of the post 9/11 world, he restrains himself from ever declaring a political agenda. He is not concerned, for example, with the morality or effectivity of torture, nor does he make a case for or against intelligence institutions and their increasing prominence in recent years. Yes, torture is a part of our world. Yes, institutions like the CIA have massive powers that they didn’t have before. But Corbjin doesn’t use these universally accepted truths to make argue for or against a political position. Instead, he uses them to explore how they have affected the people involved with them. In that way, A Most Wanted Man is more philosophical than political in the question it raises. “Every good man has a little bit of bad, doesn’t he?” the cynical Martha tells Gunther. In this modern, post 9/11 world where people are inclined to see the worst in each other, A Most Wanted Man dares to see the best, and central to this viewpoint is Philip Seymour Hoffman's humanizing performance."

12. Birdman- Made to look like one shot, this is an impressive feat of cinematography by the great Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki. Michael Keaton is also great here as an actor who once played a superhero around twenty years before the events of the film, then dropped out of the map and finally seeks to regain his fame and credibility through an incredibly-difficult-to-pull-off art project. Sound familiar? 

11. Begin Again- A guy (Mark Ruffalo) walks into a bar. There, he meets a girl (Keira Knightly) with a beat-up guitar. He's a producer. She's a musician. They're perfect together, so they decide to record an album. I’ve seen the movie that follows three times. Every time, it has left a big, goofy grin on my face. This is pop entertainment at its best.

10.The Double- A guy meets his doppleganger. Bad things ensue. Jesse Eisenberg is wonderful as both the sheepish Simon and his extremely confident lookalike James. Mia Wasikowska also does marvelous work as the woman torn between the two Eisenbergs, showing simultaneously the assertiveness that would draw her to a guy like James and the sensitivity that makes her Simon's kindred spirit. As the only actress to appear twice on this list (she plays a manic vampire in Only Lovers Left Alive) I’d say that she’s the acting MVP of 2014. 

9. The Grand Budapest Hotel- “You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” Thus says M. Gustave H, concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel, as humanity prepares for a World War that will change things forever. 
It left me a little cold at first, but a second viewing managed to put it on this list, and it would not surprise me if my estimation of this movie kept rising over time. Grand Budapest is much darker and more violent than I ever anticipated. Extremely sad, too. It is a tone which at times clashes violently with Wes Anderson’s cheery pastel visuals. The movie has a silent-film vibe with lots of great physical comedy that shouldn't belong with its more somber elements yet manage to work as a whole. The whole thing is utterly bizarre and just barely hanging together, but perhaps this is Anderson's intention: to show the cracks of a world, of an artwork, exquisitely brought to life from his imagination in order to remind viewers of its fragility. It's a small miracle that this film exists. I'm grateful for it.

8. Ida- Poland, 1961, a young novitiate named Anna is called to her mother superior’s office. There, she is told that her actual name is Ida, that she is a Jew, that her family has mostly been eradicated by the Holocaust, and that she has one relative left whom she must visit and get to know if she is to take her vows to become a nun.  In five minutes, Anna’s world (and the film along with it) is thrown into a state of chaos. This will not be a film about a Catholic nun with a clear vocation but that of a Holocaust survivor who has no idea who she is or what she hopes to accomplish with her life. With the revelation of her real identity, doubt creeps into Ida. Everything she has been told about herself is not true. She has to choose whether to embrace her Jewish roots, her Catholic upbringing, or something else entirely. To do so, she takes a trip with her aunt Wanda to the site of her parents death where she may find some answers to stabilize her recently upended life.  Every frame in Ida is minimalistic and perfectly composed. If there are any props or extras visible, then they are there to advance the plot, enhance the character, or simply to achieved a balanced, pleasing composition. On the surface, everything is harmonious, and nothing is extraneous to the picture or out of place. For many films, this would probably an exaggeration, but one could actually take any randomly selected frame from Ida and hang it as a painting. The sheer beauty and stability  onscreen serves to counter the dreary subject matter and should be reason enough for any cinephile or aesthetically inclined viewer to rejoice.  I’m glad that Ida looks so lovely because I’m not sure I would be able to adequately handle a tale of this magnitude if it didn’t have something as overwhelmingly positive as the visuals to counteract some of the disheartening story beats. At least it has a  happy ending, I think. It is a Rorschach test that reveals more about the viewer than the film. It’s perfect.

7.Under the Skin- Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who comes to Earth so that she can lure guys into her home and consume them. If that’s not enough to make it into a top ten, then what is? On top of that, the film has some of the most unique and surprising visuals of the year, as it was shot documentary-style in the wide expanses of a beautifully desolate Scotland. 

6. Gone Girl- A glimpse into the darkest corners of two twisted minds. The first is that of Amy, a woman played by Rosamund Pike, a wife intent on destroying her husband (Ben Affleck, in an amazingly inscrutable performance) because he forced her to move Missouri! The second, that of director David Fincher, one of the most twisted minds in film.  Fincher is able to mine this incredibly dark story for little bits of humor, making Gone Girl into the best comedy of the year. My favorite bit: Amy sits in front of a television, entranced, eating ice cream as she watches the story of her staged disappearance play out onscreen while her guilty-looking husband is the only one up there for the world to blame. 

5.The Immigrant- Ewa, a young Polish woman, immigrates to New York to escape a ravaged post World War I Europe. In Staten Island, she’s separated from her sick sister who is sent off to quarantine. Her family abandons her, and she is left all alone. A “savior" in the form of Joaquin Phoenix’s Bruno materializes out of nowhere. It’s too good to be true, as Ewa soon finds out. She’s abused and mistreated but  she keeps going, hoping to one day earn enough money to help her sister. She sees the good in everyone, even in her worst enemies.  “You are not nothing,” Ewa tells Bruno. One wonders how a person can be so good under such terrible circumstances? There’s a confession scene in which Ewa explains to a priest how she’s able to do so. It is one of the most honest and heart-wrenching depictions of faith ever put onscreen, and Marion Cotillard plays it to perfection (it’s a terrible shame that she will not win any awards for this, because she deserves all the praise she can get.) The Immigrant is also the most beautiful film of the year, by far, shot in a classically styled manner (befitting its subject) with every elegant, perfectly composed shot advancing the story a little bit until the film's perfect final image. 

4. Only Lovers Left Alive-Using the most ingenious of entry points, Jim Jarmusch has crafted a melancholic, poetic lament for the loss of culture, beauty and love. This is the only film that I have seen that makes use of the longevity of vampires to actually make a point. Adam and Eve (Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton), as their names suggest, have lived hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They have experienced first hand the Middle Ages, plagues, wars, Shakespeare, Byron, and rock music. They have observed the rise and fall of nations and civilizations, quietly shaking their heads at the mistakes humans (or zombies as they call us) repeat time after time. Simply put, they have figured out the key to life: love, as silly as it may sound. Love of music, dancing, architecture and literature. Love for their environment and for one another. That's what keeps them going. Everything else that fills our zombie lives (endless wars for oil, obsession with fame) is meaningless. Even the blood which these vampires drink for survival is treated in a clinical way, almost as a necessary evil they must put up with just to be able to live long enough to compose another song, read another book. Jarmusch seems to understand this, so he places a particular emphasis on aesthetics. The soft, moonlit visuals; the droning, electric music; and the dry, literary-based humor all take center stage, leaving scarcely any room for plot. The film lasts a little under two hours, but it feels long in the best sense possible. I only wish it were longer.

3.  Interstellar-  “Love is the only thing that transcends time and space.” So says Anne Hathaway’s stranded, lonely astronaut in a climactic point of the film. It’s that simple. Interstellar unfolds over several years. It involves a plan to send a group of astronauts (led by Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway) to find humanity a new planet to live on. It features plagues, black holes, time travel, five dimensions, frozen planets, and giant waves, yet it all boils down to those words. In the end, this is a courageously simple story about the love between a father and the daughter he left behind. Read this, by Bilge Ebiri, the most eloquent defender of Christopher Nolan's films. 

2. Boyhood- The great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky referred to film as “sculpting in time,” and there’s no better concept than this to describe what Richard Linklater does in Boyhood as he charts the life of a boy from age 6 to 18, played throughout the film by the same actor, Ellar Coltrane. Aside from him, the film shows the evolution of his parents, played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as they age and mature alongside their son. Their performances are the two finest of the year, so good that many people felt unsatisfied that the movie didn’t tell more of their story. If “I wanted more” is the best criticism one can level against a 2h 45min movie, it's a safe bet to say that you’ve got a gem in your hands. Here’s my full review.  

1.The Strange Little Cat- William Wordsworth once wrote that the purpose of poetry was to take ordinary matters and to “throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way.” The poet takes something and presents it in a new light, through a new lens. In that way, everyday objects and happenings become full of wonder and excitement. The Strange Little Cat is poetry at its finest. It starts with an ordinary family of five and makes it strange and fascinating. It is a movie entranced by the slight movements and gestures of each member as they maneuver around one another to organize a family dinner with some cousins, uncles and a grandmother. The rhythms of everyday family life, mostly centered around the kitchen, have never been so faithfully recreated: People flowing in and out of the kitchen; a young woman serving drinks while her mother chops up food; two little cousins fooling around with a remote controlled helicopter; an uncle coming over to fix the broken washing machine. All of these comings and goings, these tiny details, feel utterly authentic. Depending on what you look for in a film, either nothing happens here or everything does. Wordsworth again: “the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.” Think this is true? go watch The Strange Little Cat  Don’t think so? May I recommend Trans4mers. (The Strange Litte Cat is on DVD and on Fandor to stream.)

The Godfather, Part III

The Godfather Part III is a film steeped in history, memory, and, most of all,  regret. Regret for a life lived in crime and regret for a family lost due to this life. The movie  is a deathbed memory of the Godfather himself as he thinks over his eventful life. It begins at a party, of course, as all Godfather films must. Michael receives a medal from the Catholic Church, and so begins one of his most complicated relationships, one which takes him to Sicily and into the Vatican, where he befriends the Pope himself. 

There’s a Churched-owned corporation involved called Immobiliare in which Michael tries to get a controlling interest even as he’s pressured by his Mafia friends to launder money for them through it. It’s all very complicated, but utterly engrossing as it unfolds onscreen. What the plot of the film accomplishes is to play into Francis Coppola's big thematic irony around which he structures the film: there is no escape for Michael. Not even if he goes legitimate can he get away from the life he chose for himself. He has a quote for it: “The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.” “Legitimate” is a made-up concept in the world of The Godfather. Instead of thugs with guns, Michael is surrounded by lawyers with pens to do his dirty work.

A lot of people do not consider this to be at the level of the first two, and maybe it is the most imperfect of the three, but it's also the one with most heart, the one where Michael looks most like an actual, vulnerable human being instead of an untouchable Mafia overlord, as he finally realizes his life has been a train wreck of deceit and moral compromise. The roots of Shouty Pacino begin to take hold here ("just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"), but there is still a lot of nuance in his performance. Just look at the rising level of admiration Michael feels towards Vincent (Andy Garcia) in their first scene together. He goes from dismissing the guy to respecting him and even inviting him into the family picture at the end. Michael says nothing that would lead one to believe he cares for Vincent, but Pacino shows everything with just his eyes. And throughout I really did believe that hotheaded Vincent, as played by a wonderfully deranged Andy Garcia (he bites a guy's ear off!), was the carbon copy of James Caan's Sonny. 

Part III is designed to heavily call to mind the first two parts, with multiple flashbacks and repeated situations taking center stage. “Never let anyone know what you’re thinking,” Michael tells Vincent as they consider what to do after a hit on him. It’s almost exactly the same thing Vito Corleone tells Sonny in Part I. All this has happened before, and it will happen again. The tragedy is that it unfolds before our eyes without our ability to change it. One could even say that the ghost of Fredo is the star of the film, which starts with a flashback to the moment of his death as he peacefully prays a Hail Mary on a quiet lake. The rest of the film is not so peaceful. In fact, it might be the most violent of the trilogy, with the most gruesome amounts of death, as if to drive home the point of this pointless way of life to both Michael and the audience. 

It's clearly inevitable from the first death-filled frames of the film— which show the decaying ruins of Michael's Nevada mansion from Part II — that someone else close to Michael will perish (ex-wife Kay, nephew Vincent, son Tony?). Alas, it ends up being his precious daughter Mary. People are not too kind to Sofia Coppola's depiction of Mary (and for good reasons, since she’s a terrible actress who should stick to her work behind the scenes), but there's an innocence written into the character that is impossible to get rid of. There's a strange (and very meta) scene in which Mary looks into the camera and tells her dad to smile as she takes a picture. One can tell that she really loves her father. It's the most convincing bit of acting Sofia Coppola performs throughout the film. Is it because she turned pro for one scene or because the man behind the camera is not Michael Corleone but Francis Ford Coppola? Coppola Sr. took a lot of flak for casting his daughter, but the blinding love he has for his daughter beautifully mirrors the love Michael has for Mary, particularly in this scene. It's enough to cancel out the more problematic elements of the performance. As a result, Mary's death at the end hurts.

Instead of going legitimate, Michael loses everything he cared for. The cycle of Dons and Death repeats again; it is the price that Michael has to pay, the thing for which he can never forgive himself. All of his wealth and power lead him nowhere. In the end, the great Michael Corleone, the Godfather, is just an old man who died peeling an orange and who would have given everything to escape his family history, to save his daughter.

Verdict- 4/4

The Godfather, Part III (1990) 2h 50min. R.