There is no universal theme to the films of 2014. If you try to connect everything, it all ends up winding down to the the all-ighty-ollar. Which is my Simpsons-earned cultural capital way of saying a perfect crease would give a perfect dollar sign for everyone, but there are still risk-takers and that sends the fold off the mark. While there were some big, exciting action movies (parenthetical shout-out to John Wick), some powerful historical films (hands up for Selma), and fun potty comedies that attempted to grow up (a Batman grunt of approval directed at Neighbors), to me 2014 was the meta-movie year.
Related: William Bibbiani’s Top 14 Movies of 2014 and
Witney Seibold’s Top Movies of 2014
Trending was a trend in 2014. And so was artistic adaptation. Birdman dropped a former superhero actor (Michael Keaton) into both a Raymond Carver play and the digital age (his name, trending on Twitter after an embarrassing underwear run through the streets of New York, will likely spark more of a career comeback than a Broadway play will). Clouds of Sils Maria placed an actress (Juliette Binoche) in a film version of a play, where she took the older part of the miserly boss. She came to fame 20 years prior by playing the sexy young intern in the film version of the play. That role is now being played by a superhero actress (Chloe Grace Moretz) who’s perhaps more famous for her viral TMZ run-ins with the law than she is for her acted superpowers.
Celebrity was examined. Edge of Tomorrow rebooted Tom Cruise’s career by rebooting his action persona in a movie in which the primary plot propulsion is the looping process of rebooting into action. Under the Skin gave us Scarlett Johansson as an alien who attempts to be human, but she cannot be penetrated or eat cake. Check our penchant for celebrity slut-shaming and body-shaming for an additional meta-level layer to that adventurous film. More directly, Beyond the Lights exposes the hypocrisy of shame thrown at female pop stars as opposed to the male pop stars who publicly and physically humiliate them. Top Five wrestles with the lack of diversity in entertainment that’s offered in black cinema (the slave narrative, the Tyler Perry film, and the black comedian in drag; well, in Chris Rock’s film it’s a bear suit). But perhaps an even bigger artistic contribution was how readily Rock openly (and hilariously) addressed a number of top to bottom problems in our society — racism, income inequality, lack of equal opportunity, medicine made for profit — on the press tour for his own meta-movie about a comedian going on a press tour.
Why did Boyhood resonate with people so deeply? Because its main character comes to the conclusion that whatever is trending at the moment, probably isn’t going to be memorable when looking back. Richard Linklater’s filmed experiment was shot once a year for 12 years it was able to genuinely, not ironically, include the very real optimism of Obama’s promised change, and pop songs now regarded as lame.
Film is currently wrestling with an identity. Some of our favorite auteurs (Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson) are attempting to save celluloid. But most have adapted to and embraced digital camerawork. As a result,there are more films being made than ever before. But so many of them lack distribution and studio support. Studios can pick up less of those tabs, and in fact they are greenlighting less films simply because most of their money is going into mega-films that they’ve mapped out a release plan for, one decade in advance.
With all this upheaval and lack of solid footing outside of established tentpoles, it makes sense that filmmakers would be grappling with universe building vs. art, diversity, and their own careers. They do so in a manner that is also identifiable with their consumer. Audiences are also in an uneasy place concerning income, stability, and race. Most everything that goes viral is some distraction from that lack of stability.
Oh, yeah, and some of those tentpoles provided a mighty fine distraction in 2014. Studios bought themselves more time (and mapped out years!) to chase that almighty dollar. Here’s hoping movies continue to crease and fold unpredictably into “all-ighty-ollar.”
Slideshow: Brian Formo’s 14 Best Movies of 2014
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
Brian Formo's Top 14 Films of 2014
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14. Obvious Child
The subversive advertising that labeled Obvious Child as the feel-good abortion comedy of the year, might've undercut the impact this film could have had by making it appear as one note and was on a soapbox.
While discussions of getting an abortion are important and integral to the plot of a few female characters in Obvious Child, Gillian Robespierre's film is moreso about how messy it is to grow up. Not just as a person, but also as a comedian. There's a womblike comfort in the lowball laughs that come from poop and penis jokes. Shit gets real for Donna Stern (Jenny Slate). It's an abortion that makes her evaluate that realness.
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13. The One I Love
If your husband or wife were duplicated, would you be able to tell your original apart? Would you fall in love with the new version that doesn't carry the same baggage of hurt that comes with any long relationship?
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass give great performances in the most chamber of chamber plays, The One I Love.
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12. Birdman and Edge of Tomorrow (TIE)
I put these two together because, for me, they share the same appeal: they dissect the ego of an actor. Birdman fictionally, and Tomorrow symbolically.
Michael Keaton was Tim Burton's Batman, which means that he set the comic book table, and everyone else was late to the party; much like his fictional character in Birdman, Riggan Thomson. Tom Cruise isn't as popular as he once was, but Hollywood will continue to allow him to reboot himself until they figure out how his stardom works best at the domestic box office.
Birdman is a lively, energetic movie with its head up its ass. But it's about characters whose heads are up their own asses (a washed-up former superhero actor mounts a Broadway play as his big comeback, meanwhile comic book movies are all the rage, prompting the New York Times to try to destroy his play before it opens). Keaton butts heads with a character actor who's famous for butting heads (that actor is played by Edward Norton who is famous for butting heads with directors). As the saying goes, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
And while Keaton fell through the 2000's cracks, Cruise – with his superstar marriages, and mega-studio support – has continuously been able to redefine his stardom. In Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise is a 50-year-old action hero who gets to continuously hit reset, regroup and rejoin a battle with aliens. Learning from mistakes, carefully avoiding specific areas, discovering intergalactic secrets, Edge of Tomorrow is boot camp for rebooting a career.
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11. The Guest
The most giddy glee I felt at the movies in 2014 was The Guest. It's a comedy of manners that escalates into a massive military conspiracy. If a soldier has been trained and brainwashed to kill indiscriminately, how else can the small things be settled?
The Peterson family sees the positives (more help with chores, less bullying of their son at school, protection for their daughter) of "David's" (Dan Stevens) arrival. Before the negatives set off an alarm that brings a secret military operation to their doorstep.
Great fun, great music, a great performance from Stevens, and a good find in newcomer Maika Monroe make Adam Wingard's follow-up to You're Next a great pleasure.
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10. Foxcatcher
Foxcatcher is a collision course of unmet expectations. Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is an Olympic Gold-winning wrestler who is professionally in the shadow of his older, also Olympic Gold ordained brother, David (Mark Ruffalo). Mark eats Ramen noodle bricks, and accepts $20 checks for speaking at public schools. We talk of Olympians as national heroes, but Mark has been cast aside unless he wins Gold again. Because, what have you done for the US lately? His brother is a family man. He no longer needs individual validation unless its for leading others.
A man of immense American corporate legacy (supplying gunpowder for the American revolution, and meeting all its chemical needs since) wants to be Mark's family. They both need individual validation from living in cast shadows of their family legacies. That man, John du Pont (Steve Carrell) has let down his family, by being untalented and interested in more brutish sports.
Bennett Miller's film builds an immense tension from family pressures. For David, to provide, from Mark to be a singular identity, from John to live up to his last name and gain his own respect. You know it's going to end badly, but Miller puts the screws to the viewer, ensnaring them. Like Ruffalo's magnificent, subtle performance, it sneaks up on you. My chest was still sore an hour after leaving the theater.
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9. Top Five
Chris Rock was on fire with his press tour for Top Five, tackling white Hollywood, inequality, hip hop, and Obama. On fire. Choose a topic, Rocks's got the triple truth.
That's actually why Top Five works really, really well. Rock is Andre Allen, a has been actor who's made a slave uprising movie because he doesn't think he can be funny anymore; because he's sober. And the film is him walking-and-talking to a reporter (Rosario Dawson) from The New York Times. So it's all a presentation that erodes away: lies that find their way to truths, bluster that turns soft, and stories to give exclamation points.
Like Rock's best stand-up, Top Five is raunchy. But it has a heart. And Rock never thinks he's the most interesting guy in the room. He drops some cameos in that will make you cover your mouth in shock. But I'll go ahead and uncover my mouth and shout this: Top Five is the best comedy of the year.
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8. Force Majeure
The 2014 film that you absolutely need to see with another human being is Force Majeure. A heady dissection of manhood that stops itself -- after multiple arguments about what a father did (and more importantly what he did not do) during an avalanche -- and starts to have fun with the narrative.
The first hour is mostly a dissection of the need for an apology that never comes. But Ruben Östlund realizes that these arguments, once they start approaching the hour mark, start to get a little redundant. So why not have some fun? Let the man feel a high at a bar when a woman informs him that her friend thinks he's handsome. High five! At least one woman finds him desirable! Östlund, cheekily, has the same woman come back around and to say, "Sorry. My friend was pointing at someone else."
See this Swedish souffle with someone you love. You might find yourself agreeing with each other through multiple points, only to have an argument about a minute thing that was said.
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7. Godzilla
The grandest illusion of the year. There's something gleefully mad about reintroducing Godzilla in a big spectacle, but keeping her on the sidelines while other monsters wreak havoc. But while some were upset by that, I actually think that keeping Godzilla underwater most of the film actually forced director Gareth Edwards to make a rollicking, funny, sweeping, and suspenseful film. Its filmmaking foreplay.
Edwards has to set the stage up for the giant atomic lizard to knock down. So when she does show up, the excitement of seeing her has been earned. Godzilla doesn't just emerge, there's a plot that makes her emerge in free will. This Godzila is blockbuster existentialism, my friends. (With a killer train sequence that rivals some of the best moments in Jurassic Park.)
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6. Inherent Vice
Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice is a postcard of the sun going down on California. The hippie movement is dwindling, real estate moguls are pushing out black communities, and Reagan has closed all mental health institutions, paving the way for private high-end babysitting institutions to take their place. It's the division of the haves from the have nots.
Did I get this all from the first viewing of Inherent Vice? No. The first viewing, the mystery felt like a locomotive that eventually got away from me because I was trying to keep up with it. It was a contact high that wore off. Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) is investigation a lead on a missing real estate mogul, it was given by his ex (Katherine Waterson), who's now also missing.
But the second viewing felt like a majestic drift that took me out to sea. Follow the advice: let Vice wash over you.
Warner Brothers will love me for saying this: see Inherent Vice twice. It's a many splendored film.
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5. Mr. Turner
In a year full of complaints about biographies of famed Brits being films that put their life experiences on a conveyer belt (The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game), we'd like to point you to Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner. It's one of the fullest biographies ever made. It's so rich in detail that the details are able to fill in many of the previous years. Oh, and it's some of the most awe-inspiring digital lensing that we've ever seen.
Fitting, since Mr. Turner is a portrait of a painter. The easiest compliment to give is the beauty. The film is a series of moments, countrysides, reprehensible actions done by Turner (Timothy Spall), followed by humane and gentle moments he exercises in genuine generosity.
In short, it's a life. In a film. And just as those who comment on Turner's marine paintings before the railroad empties the shipyards, it's perfectly captured.
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4. The Immigrant
The American dream is neither truth nor fiction. It's a mixture of both. In the early 20th century, Ellis Island was a beacon of hope. Those being held, awaiting their hearing, not just detained -- they were entertained. Great opera singers and magicians journeyed to the island to perform for the weary, but hopeful immigrants.
Ewa (Marion Cotillard) is sent back to Ellis Island after her uncle calls immigration officials. It concerned a rumor that he heard about her conduct on her way to America. In this wayward station she is told to remain hopeful. She witnesses an illusionist (Jeremy Renner) levitate on a stage. The guards give her advice. On the main land, however, she is pimped as a rich man's daughter (by Joaquin Phoenix) so that men who've been duped by the American Dream can have the fantasy of sleeping with the American Dream.
James Gray's film is gorgeously filmed, magnificently performed, and closes in a picture-perfect way where both Cotillard and Phoenix's beaten souls have an equal chance at redemption.
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3. Clouds of Sils Maria
Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche deliver the best performances of the year. When Sils Maria is released in 2015 (the film played at numerous festivals throughout 2014, and will officially be released by IFC in March 2015) they could very realistically have given the best performances for two-years running. High praise. They have great chemistry.
Binoche plays an actress, Stewart is her assistant. They giggle with each other, they drink, the smoke, they know each other's wounds, they form a co-dependence. When they talk about art and drama, however, they drift apart.
Olivier Assayas' film tackles how women age and engage with one another. Wrapped inside a movie about a play being turned into a movie, Maria seems to whisper that what we talk about when we talk about art ... is bullshit. Our moments with each other are more dramatic and real than any stuffy drama. And those drama can be as silly as superhero movies.
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2. Noah
Darren Aronofsky's Noah was the most exciting big-budget studio film of 2014. While comic book movies are all the rage, Aronofsky's Noah treats the great flood as the ultimate origin story: the origin of life as we know it. Not like creationism, moreso that the Earth was different, pre-Noah. It had a dustier hue and was a place where angels still gave a damn about humans and tried to help guide humans to a better path. Before their creator attempted extinction. Their angelic particles mixed with the earth and they were reborn as rock giants.
Noah is risky, audacious filmmaking (Aronofsky actually makes Noah the antagonist for the third act; for audience allegiances to shift in a single-entry fantasy film is immensely impressive). In addition to that surprising gift, we are given the most committed performances from Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, and Anthony Hopkins in ages. Of this year, Noah is truly one of the greatest stories ever shown.
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1. Under the Skin
Speaking of showing not telling, Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin is a masterpiece of the moving image. We are shown the genesis of a creature from another world (Scarlett Johansson), who knows that her task is to lure men into a black trap of goo where they are preserved in limbo. Eventually their organs are sucked out into some other dimension for some purpose that we don't understand.
Everything we don't understand in Under the Skin is because the lifeform we are watching, "Laura", also doesn't understand. She does understand that her female human body is the bait necessary for their harvesting process.
Much like a young human actress, Johansson's "Laura" is programmed to seduce for some unseen being's benefit. As she attempts to become human, her body becomes no longer threatening to others. It's threatening to herself.
Glazer's film uses a mix of footage from from surveillance cameras, to a vacant black stages, before he shows Earth as a harsh, uncaring place. The oceans and the woods do not provide protection for the people that enter them.
