Let's Go Out To The Movies: 'Focus' (R - Warner Bros. - 1 hr, 44 mins.)

Directed and Written by
Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Alo Party Peoples.

For whatever reason, the first big market trend of 2015 seems to be high profile hard-R releases going big at the box office. Nobody expected American Sniper to be the juggernaut it's become, Fifty Shades of Grey, essentially soft core porn, made over 80 million opening weekend and is still number one at the box office, Kingsman may be struggling but it's become a close second and it's probably destined to become a cult classic. In short, movies specifically for adults are on top of the world, though that may change once blockbuster season rolls around, but for now we have Focus, a Will Smith vehicle built mostly around dialogue that is being marketed as an IMAX movie.

Will Smith plays veteran con man Nicky 'Mellow', a man at the top of his game as he takes on Margot Robbie's Jess as his apprentice. As they work together on bigger and bigger heists, they start to fall in love, only for him to ditch her out of the blue. Three years later they run into each other again in the middle of an even bigger job, and their relationship picks up again at the worst possible time.

Alright, so it's a talk-y dark-comedy romance, why on Earth is it playing in IMAX? I thought that too, but then I actually saw it and found that Focus has some gorgeous cinematography. The camera slowly glides in, through, and around urban landscapes with such finesse that it's almost worth the price of an IMAX ticket. In fact, maybe the camerawork is too good, the audience gets so sucked in by all the eye candy that they forget to pay attention to the story, but the plot isn't that important, because Focus is not a very story driven film, instead the star is the dialogue, delivered by the two leads. Smith delivers an appropriately downplayed dose of his legendary charisma, Margot Robbie consistently matches him, and the two have fantastic chemistry as they trade one pair of dry one-liners after another.

The annual post-Oscars dry spell has been surprisingly good this year, and Focus is no exception. This one is really good, it's the best Will Smith has been in years, more than worth checking out in one way or another.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: 'McFarland USA' (PG - Disney - 2 hrs, 8mins)

Note- I'm sorry that this is a bit later than usual, there was something a bit more pressing happening over the weekend than a pretty decent family flick from Disney. -End Note

Directed by Niki Caro
Written by Christopher Cleveland,
Bettina Gilois, and Grant Thompson

Alo Party Peoples.

I sat down to write a review of McFarland USA, but then realized that I have almost nothing to say about it. It isn't bad, in fact by the standards of family movies coming out in the annual post-Oscars dry spell it's pretty good. But in telling the true story of a washed up high school football coach starting a cross-country team at a predominantly Latino high school to inspire their way out of poverty, it has so few noticeable new takes on the genre and so little technical prowess that the only thing I can say about it is "yeah, it's pretty good". So I guess there's no reason to go on.

Have a nice day.

Gre-


-That would be lazy, but I'm only semi-joking. McFarland USA is so generic and cookie-cutter a movie that it is impossible to write an engaging review of it. So I'm trying something new. A list of disconnected, semi-sarcastic semi-snarky one-sentence descriptions of and statements about the movie. If the film makers didn't put any effort into their work, why should I put effort into talking about it?

• If The Best of Me is a really good Lifetime movie, then McFarland USA is a really good Disney Channel movie....
• ...and if this wasn't coming from Disney it would be called white savior Oscar bait, and it still kind of is...
• ...but it's as much about a stranger from a strange land trying to connect with a different culture as it is about cross-country teams, and that's where the movie works best...
• ...which means that when it goes back to being Remember The Titans it becomes far less interesting....
• ...if you've seen any other inspirational sports movie in your life, you've seen McFarland USA...
• ... but nothing else worth seeing right now is appropriate for your kids, so give it a shot

See you next time, hopefully with a better movie, or at least a more interesting one.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

The Archivis' 87th' Academy Awards Breakdown

Alo Party Peoples.

Now that all is said and done, 2014 was a pretty great year for cinema. David Fincher made his best thriller in years, Phil Lord and Chris Miller started getting box office clout, Darren Aronofsky questioned how far we should go in the name of religion, Damien Chazelle questioned how far we should go to earn the respect of our superiors, Tom Cruise got cool again, Wes Anderson made his magnum opus, Marvel Studios made both the funniest escapist fantasy and the smartest escapist fantasy, Ava DuVernay stripped away the secular saint image of Martin Luther King - proving that Oscar bait can have a brain in the process - and super-intelligent apes conquered the uncanny valley. There was a lot of good stuff.

That makes it all the more frustrating that the Academy seems to have lost their damn minds and been far more snobbish than usual. Host Neil Patrick Harris summed it up best. "...honoring the best and whitest - sorry, brightest." He is of course referring to this being the whitest Oscars since 1998. This is proof that the Academy doesn't have a PR department, otherwise they would have never let every acting nominee be white. I'm not going over the big prizes, you can find plenty of people doing that, instead I'll be looking at categories that I don't think most press covers.

But I'll get the Big Six out of the way first. Best Picture went to Birdman because it's about a semi-retired actor having a sad over not being famous anymore, it should have gone to Selma because it's the most important film of 2014 and blows almost everyone else out of the water, but at least it didn't go to Boyhood, which is what I was fearing. Best Director went to Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman because, as The Artist proved in 2012, the Academy loves themselves some gimmicks. David Fincher was snubbed for Gone Girl and Ava DuVernay was snubbed for Selma because both films were simply too brutal and/or intense for the Academy's delicate sensibilities.

As for the four acting prizes, Best Actor rightly, sort of, went to Eddie Redmayne's portrayal of Stephen Hawking, David Oyelowo's expert portayal of Martin Luther King should have been nominated. Best Actress went to Julianne Moore, it should have gone to Rosamund Pike's career redefining turn as the bats*** insane Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. J.K. Simmons actually deserved to get Best Supporting Actor for Whiplash, they got something right for once, even if Channing Tatum's sutble turn as a washed up Olympic wrestler in Foxcatcher was snubbed. Meryl Streep did not deserve to be nominated for Into The Woods and only was because she's "magic Meryl f***ing Streep", as Neil Patrick Harris put it during the show.

Best Original Screenplay

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
• Boyhood
• Foxcatcher
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Nightcrawler

Wes Anderson was robbed. I know he isn't for everyone, but I can't see it for any of the other nominees, except maybe Nightcrawler, I didn't see that one. Boyhood is over three hours of nothing, and the closest it gets to a theme is "Time sure does fly, don't it?" Foxcatcher is a very good actor's showcase, but not much else. Birdman only got it because the story of, again, semi-retired actor that isn't famous anymore, speaks to most of the Academy's ancient voting base. Phil Lord and Chris Miller's script for The Lego Movie should have been nominated for the miracle of turning what is essentially a toy commercial into a cutting satire of feature length toy commercials without becoming a jaded cynical mess, and there's an argument to be made that Selma should be there for telling the story of Martin Luther King when they couldn't use any of his speeches.

Best Adapted Screenplay

• The Imitation Game
• American Sniper
• Inherent Vice
• The Theory of Everything
• Whiplash

Damien Chazelle was robbed for Whiplash. Sure, it's no masterpiece, but it's better than anything else here. The Theory of Everything is a paint-by-numbers biopic that just happens to be backed by a great performance from Eddie Redmayne. American Sniper at least has an idea, i.e. telling the late Chris Kyle's story as that a simple man caught up in the waves of history, but it fails to execute that idea and falls apart as a result. Gillian Flynn should have been nominated for Gone Girl because it's the greatest Lifetime movie ever made.

Best Animated Feature

• Big Hero 6
• The Boxtrolls
• Song of the Sea
• How To Train Your Dragon 2
• The Tale of Princess Kaguya

This category isn't worth talking about because the best animated film of the year wasn't even nominated. 

Darn darn darn darn-y DARN!

In all seriousness, of the nominees, Big Hero 6 deserved to win. It's a damn good superhero movie, animated or otherwise, and as far as kids movies go it's phenomenal, but The Lego Movie still should have been in there, period. It should have won because it is a great film, no qualifiers necessary. (Incidentally, I also think it would be awesome for Phil Lord and Chris Miller to win an Oscar because then those mad geniuses could do whatever the f*** they want for their next movie, and I want to know what that looks like.)

The Technical Awards

• Cinematography, Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ida, Mr. Turner, Unbroken
• Costume Design, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Inherent Vice, Into The Woods, Maleficent, Mr. Turner
• Film Editing, Whiplash, American Sniper, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game
• Makeup and Hairstyling, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Foxcatcher, Guardians of the Galaxy
• Production Design, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Interstellar, Into The Woods, Mr. Turner
• Sound Editing, American Sniper, Birdman, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Interstellar, Unbroken
• Sound Mixing, Whiplash, American Sniper, Birdman, Interstellar, Unbroken
• Visual Effects, Interstellar, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men: Days of Future Past

Snubbing aside, these are actually some pretty good lists. As much as I've panned American Sniper, it genuinely deserved to be up for Sound Editing, kudos to that crew. Whiplash is an editing masterpiece, it deserved to be up there. The Grand Budapest Hotel was rightly kicking ass in the decoration awards, Wes Anderson's signature handmade style is unquestionably a labor of love and it looks beautiful. Visual Effects, on the other hand, is kind of a mess. Noah had the best use of visual effects this year, Edge of Tomorrow brought pre-Call of Duty video game war zones to life, neither was nominated, and there's room if you switch a couple of the nominees out. Days of Future Past is nothing special, and Winter Soldier would be more comfortable in Film Editing or Cinematography. As for the actual winner, I can appreciate the attention to hard science that went into Interstellar, but Dawn of the Planet of the Apes deserved it more.

The Music Awards

• Best Original Score, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Interstellar, Mr. Turner, The Theory of Everything
• Best Original Song, "Glory" from Selma, "Everything is Awesome" from The Lego Movie, "Grateful" from Beyond the Lights, "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" from Glenn Campbell... I'll Be Me, "Lost Stars" from Begin Again

Holy s***, they got something right again. The Grand Budapest's score perfectly fits the quirky fresh-out-of-art-school nature of the film, and Glory's fusion of gospel with rap fits Selma's drawing parallels between the Civil Rights movement and the protests in Ferguson. These were good picks.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Chasing Oscar Nominees With A Digital Notepad Hoping For An Interview: 'Whiplash' (R - Sony Pictures - 1 hr, 47 mins)

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed and Written
by Damien Chazelle

Of 2014's Best Picture nominees, Damien Chazelle's Whiplash is the odd man out. We had four biopics, Richard Linklater's vacation footage, Wes Anderson's magnum opus, a bizarre editing trick, and... an actor's showcase about a jazz instructor and his hot-headed drummer student. This is that one entry where everybody is surprised by, but not very concerned about, it getting a nomination. I'd say that it's about on par with the year's surprise snub Foxcatcher in that it isn't great, but it's still really good and backed by great performances.

Miles Teller plays Andrew, an aspiring young drummer at one of the most prestigious music schools in the country that catches the eye of J.K. Simmons as Mr. Fletcher, one hell of a teacher, by which I mean that his class is hell. He pushes his students to the limit via constant screaming, emotional abuse, occasional physical abuse, and generally acts like a royal prick to his students in order to get the best possible results, and at first you think you know where this story is going. He's harsh, sure, but he's got a heart of gold and it's all for a good reason, but then Whiplash turns its hand and it turns out that he's just an asshole, even if he gets the job done. Either way Andrew is determined to impress him, but by the end he, and the audience, are left questioning whether it was worth it.

Who knew Miles Teller could act? He's amazing in this, it's like somebody found a lookalike with actual talent. He's able to play the gambit from desperate sadness to the determination it takes to drum non-stop for hours until his hands are bleeding, to sheer anger at how much of an ass Fletcher is. Speaking of which, J.K. Simmons is absolutely incredible as Fletcher, he absolutely deserves the Supporting Actor nomination. He's in that space where you know you're watching a despicable human being, the kind of man that routinely screams homophobic slurs at his students, repeatedly slaps his drummer across the face to teach him how to stay on tempo, and we even learn that he drove one of his students to suicide, but hot damn does Simmons sell it, and it is an absolute blast to watch him do so. Even if you will hate your self for enjoying it.

Besides Best Picture, and Supporting Actor for Simmons, Whiplash also up for Best Adapted Screenplay. It has probably earned that, and is definitely more deserving of a writing nomination than say, American Sniper, or Boyhood, or Foxcatcher if we're being honest. (both of the latter are up for Original Screenplay) Then again, the story of a desperate student pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into a class that he's probably not cut out for, while constantly fearing it may all be for nothing can't help but speak to me, maybe I'll watch this years later and think it's the most pretentious thing ever. As far as the technical awards it's up for, Editing and Sound Mixing, it's more deserving of the former than almost everything else (it makes me weep for the state of the Academy that Boyhood is up for editing), and it absolutely deserves the latter. (Seriously, how in the hell is Interstellar up for sound mixing?)

I don't know that Whiplash is Best Picture caliber, but it is pretty damn excellent. As far as this year's nominees go, I'd place it between The Grand Budapest Hotel ahead, and American Sniper behind. You will probably have to wait until after the actual awards to see it, but if you have a chance to do so it's more than worth the time.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Talk About Movies: A Defense Of Kingsman's Flash Mob Of Death

Note - This article contains significant spoilers for Kingsman: The Secret Service, and to some extent assumes you have seen it. - End Note

Alo Party Peoples.

I mentioned in the review that Valentine was trying to kill most of humanity in a desperate attempt to stop global warming. He planned to achieve that by distributing SIM cards with free data to all, with a virus on board programmed to emit mind control rays that turn people into feral, bloodthirsty killing machines. In the process of uncovering this, Galahad ends up in a deliberate send-up of the Westboro Baptist Church where Valentine is testing his machine, compelling him, and to be fair everyone else there as well, to stab, shoot, bludgeon and otherwise massacre their way through about fifty racist, homophobic, and generally reprehensible redneck caricatures.

The scene channels Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill with it's bloody, surreal, visceral, comedic horror. It's amazing from a technical perspective, the cameraman becomes part of the choreography as they weave in and out between the combatants in one long unbroken slow-motion shot, it turns Colin Firth from a serious actor doing a silly action flick for an easy paycheck to a genuinely great action star, and yes, it was terrible how cathartic and exhilarating it felt to watch a bunch of Bible Belt bigots being bloodily beaten to death for about four minutes. I feel bad for liking this scene, I shouldn't be able to like this scene, I'm probably going to hell for liking this scene, but I did like it.

But the scene is utterly shameless, has no subtext what-so-ever, and you can see the screenplay bending over backwards to make it happen. They needed to have a scene that shows just how lethal the Kingsmen are in action, but that requires having one of our heroes brutally murder dozens of people while giving the audience permission to not hate themselves for enjoying it, and they took the easiest route possible. "Here's a bunch of people that we ALL hate being brutally beaten to death. Enjoy!"

I can already see people taking a film that is little more than You Only Live Twice by way of 21 Jump Street and turning it into a political talking point. Is it right-wing because the villain is an extreme environmentalist and our heroes are a bunch of blue-blooded aristocrats, or is it left-wing because our main hero is a hot-headed street tough showing those aristocrats that they are becoming obsolete in a changing world and saving it in the process? Is it in poor taste that the only one of Valentine's co-conspirators that we learn the party of is a Republican, or is it in worse taste that most of the Obama administration's heads explode during the climax?

Valentine is an environmentalist by coincidence, he's primarily an insane genocidal super-villain for our heroes to thwart. When the co-conspirator's heads are exploding it isn't a big dramatic set-piece, there is almost no blood and their heads go up in multi-colored mushroom clouds set to the Star Spangled Banner, its a joke, and a hilarious one. Even in the church scene I started this discussion with, it's made clear from the start that the combatants aren't in control of what they're doing and it being in a church isn't relevant to the plot, they just needed to show what the Kingsmen could do when they had nothing holding them back and how truly insane Valentine is.

I'd say that putting a political spin on this movie is like going to the Superbowl and complaining about the color of the uniforms. It doesn't matter what color the uniforms are, just watch the damn game! This isn't like White House Down where being a left-wing wish fulfillment fantasy is the point. What Kingsman exists to do, and largely succeeds at, is making a cheerful homage to golden-age James Bond. Are there some political jokes in the margins? Absolutely, but they're exactly that, and they aren't why the movie exists.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' (R - 20thCentury Fox - 2 hrs, 9 mins)

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Written by Matthew Vaughn and
Jane Goldman

When trailers for Kingsman: The Secret Service started popping up, I thought I had it figured out. It looked like a YA-esque boarding school drama set at a spy training school being released as a mid-November distraction before prestige season got started, probably not good, but also probably harmless. Then it was pushed back to February and I started to get worried about it, especially when it was set to go up against likely juggernaut Fifty Shades of Grey. Then the professionals were strangely silent about it, the result of a press embargo, which usually might as well be a flashing red sign that reads STAY AWAY.

I could not have been more wrong in my assumptions, because Kingsman is really good. It's a shame that Fox has been more or less hiding it behind Twilight porn fanfiction, because Kingsman is a wonderful time at the movies that takes its influences of golden age James Bond, modern spy-thrillers, and urban youth culture, and mixes them all into a fantastic action-comedy that ends up being what The Interview aspired to be but couldn't quite make it.

Our story involves Taron Egerton as Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin, a young British street tough that gets arrested for stealing a car from the leader of a rival gang. He gets bailed out by Colin Firth as Harry 'Galahad' Hart, who tells him that his late father was a field agent for a top secret intelligence agency called the Kingsmen, and now he needs Eggsy to replace a recently fallen agent. For a moment it looks like it will become "Jimmy Bond" by focusing on a competition between Eggsy and a bunch of high-bred snobs to become a Kingsman, but it soon becomes more about thwarting Samuel L. Jackson as Richmond Valentine, a caricature of any number of rags-to-riches rappers with a plan to use his cellphone data empire to wipe out most of humanity in a desperate attempt to stop global warming.

It's incredibly over-the-top, but director Matthew Vaughn is more than game for this material. He already did golden-age spy flicks with X-Men: First Class,  he's done over-the-top action comedy from a Mark Millar comic before with Kick-Ass, and he combines them here to make something kind of amazing. It's shot and edited wonderfully, the choreography is great, and he keeps finding inventive ways to spoof various parts of the spy genre. For example, Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella makes her big screen debut as Valentine's lead hench-woman, a ninja with prosthetic sword legs. Let me repeat that. A ninja, with prosthetic sword legs. Is this woman a good actress? I'm not entirely sure, but she's perfectly cast for this part, and she looks great in action scenes.

Those action scenes are also where Kingsman finds much of its humor as it moves from gleefully exaggerated, darkly hilarious and bloody Tarantino-esque brawl to another. There is one scene in particular, which I won't dare spoil, that plays out like a cathartic ultra-violent flash mob of death that I thought was amazing and will almost certainly be one of the year's most talked about moments in film.

Kingsman: The Secret Service was a pleasant surprise for me, and a prime example of why one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. When did we start getting good movies in February, because I don't want it to stop.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: 'Jupiter Ascending' (PG-13 - Warner Bros.- 2 hrs, 7 mins)

Note- Oscar Hunt 2015 is still going on, and the latest Best Picture nominee I caught was Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. It's a twee literary/film snob hipster fest, but it is a really good one, even if I don't think I can work an article out of it. If it somehow ends up going home with Selma's Oscar, I think I can live with that. -End Note

Directed and Written by
Andy and Lana Wachowski

Alo Party Peoples.

Nearly two decades ago, Warner Bros. took a chance on a bizarre high-concept sci-fi pitch from two almost completely unknown filmmakers. The result was The Matrix, one of the biggest game changers ever for film making in general, and especially for action films. While I might not think it holds up especially well, it did put the idea that even effects driven spectacle can have something going on under the surface in the minds of the critical press, other film makers, and the movie going public, something that I would argue is an incredibly valuable thing.

Ever since then high concept has been the Wachowski's stock and trade, and Jupiter Ascending is their latest effort in that regard. A galaxy spanning space opera that is finally getting released after a six month delay. Was it worth the wait? Well, let me put it this way. If The Matrix proved action flicks can have a brain, then Jupiter Ascending proves that they can be lobotomized. It wants to be a movie of big ideas, intricately detailed worlds, and overarching themes, but it feels like either the studio or the editors have forced the film currently in theaters as Jupiter Ascending to focus primarily on the action scenes. As a result it's sufficiently entertaining in its current form, but it constantly feels like it could have been so much more than that.

Our story focuses on Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones, the daughter of a Russian immigrant family that discovers she is the genetic reincarnation of essentially the queen of the universe. The queen's three children, not wanting to lose any of their inheritance, send a group of mercenaries to kidnap her and force her to sign over her title, leading Channing Tatum as a human-wolf hybrid named Caine to protect her long enough for her to claim her title.

The big idea here is that the queen was the CEO of Abraxas Industries, a company in the business of seeding thousands of planets with human populations, letting them grow to the point of overpopulation, and then harvesting them for a life extending serum traded among more advanced species. If that sounds like a new angle on The Matrix's central conceit of humanity being a bunch of cattle unaware and uncaring that they're headed for the slaughterhouse except for one special snowflake that not only knows the truth but can save them all, then your'e right. The difference here is that while Neo always thought he was different and couldn't wait to be told that he was the Messiah, Jupiter has no delusions of godhood and just wants to save her family from planet wide genocide.

That, both the conceit of 'God is an industrial farming outfit' and Jupiter's devotion to keeping her family safe, is what the directors/writers clearly wanted Jupiter Ascending to be about, but somewhere down the road either they or the studio decided to focus it on big effects driven spectacle instead. The fighting is consistently impressive from a technical standpoint, but since the dramatic scenes that would have built up character among the combatants are so few and far between these action beats are almost completely un-involving.

In the end Jupiter Ascending is something of a disappointment, at least in its current form. Its worth seeing for die-hard Wachowski fans, but for everyone else I can say to wait for a directors cut on home video. I'd still call it a good time, but only if you can ignore how much better it could have been.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

The Archivis' New Top Ten Movies of 2014 (That I Saw)

Note- This was originally a script for a video revising my best of 2014 list that I was never able to record for various reasons.

Alo Party Peoples.

My name is Greg Byrne, and tonight I’ll be taking you through the best that popular cinema had to offer in 2014. I know I already did one, but I’ve had some time to think and it could use some revision. Some movies have risen in my opinion, others have fallen, I’ve caught up on some of the stuff I missed through home video, and limiting myself to seven films made the original list lean more than a little heavily on sci-fi/fantasy material.

Because of that last one I’m expanding this list to an even ten. After all, I’m on record as stating that plenty of old guard critics turn their noses up at genre entries, so why should I do the same to their jam? To put it another way, if I get to have Tom Cruise dying over and over again in a mashup of Aliens and Groundhog Day, they get to have Richard Linklater’s real-life version of The Truman Show, fair is fair.

Now, I present my Top Ten Best Movies of 2014, that I saw.

#10) Interstellar

Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Johnathan Nolan

I bet you thought this would be higher, I know I certainly did.

Thinking back on it, Christopher Nolan’s love letter to the space program has more than a few problems. It can’t decide whether it wants to be hard sci-fi or pulp sci-fi, there is a case to be made that not taking Earth out of the picture once the primary cast leaves it undermines a lot of the tension in the third act, and the sound mixing is occasionally bad enough that one could be forgiven for assuming the projectionist fell asleep on the job. That being said, I can’t help but admire sticking as close to hard science as a story about rocketing off through mysterious portals to unexplored alien worlds can hope to, and yes, the message that the end of manned spaceflight symbolizes the death of human ambition appeals to the misguided idealist in me, and it’s actually become relevant again since Ted Cruz is now head of the committee overseeing NASA. Just when we were putting money into the space program again.

#9) 22 Jump Street

Directed and Written by
Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Phil Lord and Chris Miller have really come into their own this year. They might not exactly be big names yet, but they’ve got a couple of big hits under their belts that audiences and critics alike have loved. They seem to have mastered a comedic doublethink where they’re more than willing to mock the shallow and easily disposed of kinds of movies they make while at the same time proving themselves and their work to be quite indisposable. Their latest outing builds its jokes around the all too common sequel killer of making the first movie again but with more money involved, while making the conflict between that and the main cast’s desire to branch out into something new the central conflict of the movie. All while somehow never coming off as pretentious and being the best pure comedy of the year.

#8) Gone Girl

Directed by David Fincher
Written by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl starts out as a kind-of-cheesy murder mystery by way of the Lifetime Channel that just happens to have a much higher budget and a lot more talent involved than that description might imply. But then, almost out of nowhere, it reveals its true colors as a lurid, sleazy, and just a little trashy psychological-thriller. How trashy are we talking? It’s the kind of film that gets in a clear two frame shot of Ben Affleck’s penis in the middle of the resolution more or less because it can, but with a director like David Fincher at the helm it becomes something close to a masterpiece.

#7) Noah

Directed and Written by
Darren Aronofsky

There were a lot more religious and/or Bible movies this year for whatever reason. Some of them were forgettable fluff, some of them were strangely empty, and then there’s Noah. Darren Aronofsky took a look at the rather short and straightforward section of Genesis that is Noah’s ark and decided to make it less like Sunday School and more like Lord of the Rings... and a rant against over-consumption of fossil fuels (in case antediluvian humanity being a bunch of globalized city dwellers tearing up the Earth in search of a sparking rock was too subtle)... and a psychological horror film once Noah and company get on the ark. Just one of those angles would probably be enough to carry a movie, but combining all of them results in a unique and bizarrely brilliant film that’s like nothing else you’ll see in theaters.

#6) The Fault In Our Stars

Directed by Josh Boone
Written by Scott Neustadter
and Michael H. Weber

In 2012, author and vlogger John Green turned a bog-standard teenybopper romance story into something like a deconstruction of its own genre by throwing the ever-present specter of death into the proceedings, and the resulting book, The Fault In Our Stars, won the hearts of crying teenage girls on Tumblr the world over. In 2014, director Josh Boone turned that book into a movie that still captures the spirit of its source material and the gravity of its subject matter, but also reconstructs its genre by showing that love can transcend the mortal coil. In a year awash with YA movies, this was something special, mostly because the people involved put actual effort into making the best movie possible. That alone would have gotten it in my good graces, but it also being a charming little production earns it a spot on this list.

#5) The Lego Movie

Directed and Written by
Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Phil Lord and Chris Miller's other big hit in 2014, while obviously playing to a different audience than 22 Jump Street, comes at its subject matter with the same liberal dosage of meta-humor that allows them to transcend the inanity of their premises. The Lego Movie starts out looking like the kind of soulless, purely profit-driven, toyetic film-as-product that could only exist in the Franchise Age in the worst possible way, but then quickly becomes a sharply cutting satire of pretty much everything wrong with corporate Hollywood and the way Lego sells its products, without resorting to jaded cynicism or coming off as mean spirited. That shouldn’t be possible to pull off, but Lord and Miller somehow managed to do just that. Everything is awesome, even when it really shouldn’t be able to.

#4) Guardians of the Galaxy

Directed by James Gunn
Written by James Gunn
and Nicole Perlman

Everything was awesome about this too. James Gunn, a veteran of the indie scene for years made his entry into the big leagues with a gleefully irreverent action-comedy that also works as a pulp-space-opera in the vein of the original Star Wars or The Fifth Element that feels almost, well, alien in a grim, self serious 21st’ Century blockbuster landscape. If anyone high up at Disney sees this, let me give you some advice. Since he’s already in your Rolodex, get this man on a Star Wars project A.S.A.P. You will not regret it, I guarantee.





#3) Captain America: The Winter Soldier 

Directed by Anthony and
Joe Russo
Written by Christopher Markus
and Stephen McFeely

The best and riskiest Marvel Studios project to date, Winter Soldier goes above and beyond simply being a phenomenal action film, and gets as close to controversial as a money-printing arm of the Disney Empire will ever dare to get. Taking on the fact that you kind of have to get political with this character in a modern setting, it pits Steve Rogers and company up against the 21st’ Century surveillance state by making them whistleblowers in Star Spangled Spandex, while still being an immensely entertaining spy thriller adventure romp.

#2) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 

Directed by Matt Reeves
Written by Mark Bomback,
Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver

Much like its predecessor in 2011, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the best kind of summer blockbuster. It manages to be a smart, thoughtful piece of big-idea sci-fi while also being a gripping war drama that just happens to involve sentient monkeys, and then it becomes a viscerally thrilling action film in the third act. We’ll get to what was better in a second, but this was easily the best film of the summer, the opposite of what we usually expect in that season, and is my favorite movie of the year.

#1) Selma

Directed by Ava DuVernay
Written by Paul Webb

In a year when the achievements and shortcomings of the Civil Rights movement were one of the most talked about aspects of culture, Ava DuVernay’s Selma strips away the mythology around Martin Luther King to reveal the imperfect human underneath, and claims that he had more in common with the protesters in Ferguson than the sanitized version of the man we usually see. It boldly posits that society does not improve on a preset timer, but only improves when those who will not stand for an unjust status quo tackle it head on and force society to change for the better. Gripping, brutal, and emotionally moving, Selma is a spectacular film, and while it might not be my favorite movie of the year, it is definitely the best film to be released in 2014.

Let’s see what’s coming up in 2015. The Wachowskis are doing a space opera, that sounds like a party, Divergent 2 looks hilarious, a new Avengers, and ooh, a new Star Wars, no matter how that turns out, it will probably be something to talk about. Thanks for watching, and have a nice day. Oh, and before you ask, I’m probably not doing a video version of the worst list since that hasn't really changed.