With 2014 coming to its end, it’s time for us to make a
conclusion of the movies we have met in the cinema. Today, I would like to
share 10 most popular movies of 2014 below. Speak out if you have different
opinions.
Under the Skin
Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin is a film about a
beautiful, scary alien that is itself beautiful and scary and alien: it’s an
entirely extraordinary, outrageously sensual film that Glazer’s previous
excellent work had really only hinted at, partially and indistinctly. His Sexy
Beast (2000) was a visually accomplished, exciting and intelligent crime
thriller that was way ahead of the woeful mockney-geezer mode of the time.
Birth (2004) had Kubrickian ingenuity and chill, with some remarkable moments;
it was a movie that deserves cult-classic status but has yet to achieve it.
Then a decade went by, and it seemed that Glazer might be a stylist for whom a
sustained cinema career would perhaps not be achievable (and heaven knows, it
can happen to the most talented).
There are no two words in the English language more harmful
than good job. Such is the philosophy of J.K. Simmons' monstrous music
instructor Terence Fletcher in Damien Chazelle's thrillingly brutal masterpiece
Whiplash. With his bullet-shaped bald head, mad-dog eyes, and bite that's every
bit as bad as his bark, Fletcher is like a vicious Marine drill sergeant at
Parris Island. His latest recruit is Andrew Neiman (brilliantly played by Miles
Teller), a cocky jazz-drummer prodigy whom he puts through a meat grinder of
physical and verbal abuse. We've all seen movies like this before: A naïve kid
is beaten down only to then be built back up. But Chazelle has more on his mind
than 106 minutes of bebop, bleeding palms, and bluster. He's grappling with Big
Ideas—ambition,
alienation, and the psychological toll of pursuing perfection—via two actors
who boil over with bare-knuckle intensity.
The One I Love
What if your love story could start over? Would it do more
good or harm? "The One I Love" tackles these questions through a
premise so unusual we'd rather not explain it. Let's just say that during a
weekend away, a couple (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) stumbles upon a
bizarre way to return to the glory days of their now-crumbling relationship.
Its surreality makes "The One I Love" a comedy. Still, you'll be
surprised how long the movie's quiet existentialism leaves you thinking.
Gone Girl
Let's admit right from the get-go that the degree of difficulty
in pleasing everyone who devoured Gillian Flynn's bruise-black beach read was
off the charts. And I certainly get why some fans of the novel walked out of
the theater disappointed. Movie adaptations never mesh with the way we envision
characters on the page. But I loved David Fincher's Gone Girl. I loved it as a
bleak account of modern love after it's curdled, as a wicked satire of
cable-news scandal-mongering, and as just a good old-fashioned dark-as-hell
thriller. Fincher's film managed to tease us, play with our loyalties, and
sucker punch us with surprise twists most of us already knew were coming. There
was no film this year that left me with a sicker smile on my face.
Wes Anderson's films have always been easier to admire than
embrace. They're like hermetic, handcrafted dioramas in which every last
detail, no matter how tiny, has been exquisitely attended to—often at the sake
of real emotional engagement. But with The Grand Budapest Hotel, a deliriously
funny and wistfully romantic fairy tale about a time long lost to history, the
director finally found the human touch. It suits him. Set in the fictional
European nation of Zubrowka sometime between the world wars, the film tells the
story of a world-class concierge and gigolo named Monsieur Gustave (a
marvelously persnickety Ralph Fiennes) and his ever-loyal lobby boy (the droll,
deadpan Tony Revolori). A grab bag of dizzy intrigue swirls around them and the
supporting cast of colorful oddballs, all while the ominous specter of fascism
looms just outside the frame. For once, Anderson has created a confectionary
universe that not only dazzles your eye but also breaks your heart.
"Nightcrawler" is so good, it should have come out
in 1999, when maverick filmmakers like David Fincher, David O. Russell, Paul
Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze were connecting with big swings. Dan Gilroy's
directorial debut is an amalgam of "Network," "Psycho" and
"Bringing Out the Dead," a biting satire about the media and the
American dream in 2014. At the center is Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a
tightly coiled lost boy who finds his calling as a freelance news videographer.
Lou's a Horatio Alger for the modern age, and the lengths he goes to remain a
success are horrifying and hilarious, often at the same time.
When it comes to superhero movies, I have become an
agnostic. I have neither the faith of a fanboy nor the knee-jerk derision of a
men-in-tights heathen. But if there's one movie that's come the closest to
making me a believer, it's James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. Marvel's merry
band of squabbling misfits goosed anarchic life into a genre that tends to get
mired in existential heaviosity. And what's not to love about a posse of
anti-heroes that includes Chris Pratt's cocky Star-Lord and Zoe Saldana's
green-skinned assassin, plus a mound of muscles, a foulmouthed raccoon, and a
grunting tree named Groot? Guardians works precisely because it's so unlike
every other comic-book movie. At last, an excitingly unpredictable blockbuster.
Hollywood trades in car chases and shoot-outs, worm-holes
and tornadoes to distract us from the pure white-knuckle thriller that is
everyday life. The cinema is our sanctuary, our palliative. It is where we go to
escape the high-stakes horror of the working day or the churning drama of the
domestic hearth. There is nothing quite so scary or galvanic as everyday life.
Roger Ebert was a towering cultural figure. So much so that
he sometimes bordered on being a thumb-waving cartoon. But in Steve James'
beautiful documentary about the late film critic's extraordinary life, he's
unforgettably human. Despite the Pulitzer Prize he won at the Chicago Sun-Times
and the small-screen fame that came from his on-air partnership with Gene
Siskel, Ebert was a populist. He spoke plainly, he never pretended to be
smarter than his audience, and his enthusiasm (and occasional lack thereof) was
infectious. He was one of us. But he was more than that. In Life Itself, we
learn that Ebert was a recovering alcoholic who could be prickly—until he met
his beloved wife, Chaz. The most poignant moments in the film are the small,
intimate ones shared by the couple as Ebert undergoes a grueling series of surgeries
to battle the cancer that stole his voice but never succeeded in quieting him.
Easily the geekiest and most obsessive documentary I saw all
year, Frank Pavich's Jodorowsky's Dune is an exhumation of the weirdest movie
never made. In the mid-'70s, eccentric Chilean auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky (El
Topo) tried and failed to adapt Frank Herbert's sci-fi talisman Dune. The false
starts, bizarre detours, and cult luminaries attached to the project are
probably more interesting than the film would've been. But Pavich argues
(convincingly) that Star Wars, Alien, and The Terminator wouldn't exist as we
know them were it not for one man's epic fail. A delightful celebration of a
visionary whose dream never got the chance to live outside his head.
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