My Top 20 Films of 2014, Part I

2014 was an awesome year for film, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We had a surplus of good and great movies of all flavors. To not find good movies, you either have to have terrible taste, or else be in need of trying harder to find the great material. This is one year where there was such a spectrum of interesting, engaging films, that there's a lot of variance in people's year-end lists.

When I started compiling my list, I was initially struck by how few films I saw this year that I truly hated. There were a few disappointments, to be sure, but not many outright dogs. There were plenty of films I avoided, mostly out of a sense that it wasn't my thing. I circled back and caught a few of those movies on DVD and most of them we so forgettable it took a look at a list of this year's releases to remember I even watched them. So take a lesson from that - you can still see plenty of movies and not waste too much time and money on outright crap.

(I'm not doing a Worst of 2014 list, but I will say my least enjoyable experience in a theatre this year was SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL for. As I'm sure there were worse movies in release this year, it feels really disingenuous to claim that as the worst movie anyone could have seen this year.)

I made it a point to see a lot of movies this year and as I started taking stock, I realized that my list of favorite and recommended movies could not be contained by a mere top 10. In all honesty, I probably could have gone into the 20s, but at a certain point, a best-of list can be so long as to be ridiculous. I ended up drawing the line at a Top 20 because in looking at the movies represented, you could probably pick any five of them at random and I wouldn't be embarrassed to have them called out as the five best of the year.

These are all ranked, but any such list is going to be comparing apples-to-oranges to some degree. I did my best to figure out where everything fell, but in the end, is there really that much difference between being 3rd and 4th? Or 14th and 15th?

I haven't seen everything, but I've reached the critical mass where I feel comfortable standing on these picks. My yet-to-be-viewed films include THE IMITATION GAME, UNBROKEN, AMERICAN SNIPER and INHERENT VICE. I'm also really bummed I didn't get out to see WILD this weekend, as all indications are it probably would have landed somewhere on this list.

Also, FAULTS probably would have snuck into the high-teens somewhere, but as it's not getting a wide release until March, I'm treating it like a 2015 film. (This is also how MILLUS is listed with this year and how COHERENCE would have been on this list had it not been eventually nudged out.)

Today we'll cover 11-20 and then the Top 10 tomorrow.

11. Rosewater - The story of how journalist Maziar Bahari was imprisoned by the Iranian government on suspicion of being a spy after appearing in a satirical segment of The Daily Show that covered the 2009 Iranian election. Comedian and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart weaves an emotional and thoughtful mediation on torture, coercion and freedom. We see how torture can break a man, and how it doesn't necessarily have to be physical beatings, but just prolonged isolation and deprivation of hope. When Bahari is able to take a small victory against his captors despite being powerless, it's one of this year's most uplifting moments.

12. Captain America: The Winter Soldier - I don't know how coherently this plays to viewers who haven't seen at least the first CAPTAIN AMERICA or THE AVENGERS, but at least unlike most Marvel productions, its connections to the other Marvel films is a virtue rather than the worst thing in the film. (Few things were saddder than THOR: THE DARK WORLD's persistent name-dropping of events in THE AVENGERS, as if desperately saying, "You liked that film, didn't you? We're part of that thing you like!") Part superhero-film, part spy-thriller, CAP 2 uses it's lead character as a black-and-white counterpoint to the shades-of-grey world we live in today, particularly with regard to surveillance and national security. Yes, some of the logistics of the Helicarrier plot are goofy, but the pacing, themes and character arcs make that less of an issue than it could have been. This is also the comic-book movie that proved you CAN juggle a lot of major characters in a comic book film that isn't an AVENGERS-like team movie. Nowhere is that more evident than in the use of Black Widow, made far more indispensable here than she was in IRON MAN 2. (Honestly, the film easily could have been called CAPTAIN AMERICA & BLACK WIDOW, and Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury is also probably put to his best use here too.) I still love the goofy charm of seeing all the heroes rub shoulders in THE AVENGERS, so that's probably still my favorite Marvel movie, but this is a VERY close second.

13. Kill the Messenger - Few things disappoint me more than the total shrug this based-on-a-true-story film was greeted with upon release. Five years from now, people will be asking, "Why didn't tell me Jeremy Renner was so good in KILL THE MESSENGER?" Renner plays a reporter named Gary Webb, who exposes the CIA's role in supplying Los Angeles gangs with cocaine in the '80s, the sales of which went to fund Contra rebels. Webb's moment of glory comes at the middle of the film, and our expectations about the noble profession of journalism are subverted as the second half details a brutal smear campaign that wrongly destroys Webb's credibility, career and marriage.

14. Edge of Tomorrow - I still don't think the ending totally tracks, but that's about my only problem with this Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt vehicle that finds Cruise trapped in a GROUNDHOG DAY-like timeloop in the middle of an alien invasion. It's both smarter and funnier about time travel than the marketing indicated and Cruise again proves why he's one of the last TRUE movie stars. Dare we hope that Blunt's against-type performance here as a total badass signals a future for her as a major action star?

15. John Wick - JOHN WICK shows that just because an idea is old, doesn't mean it's dead. Break it down to its barest essence and it sounds like one of those script's you'd pass by for fear of it being generic: "A retired hitman is drawn back into the trade on a crusade of vengeance. Brutality ensues." The brilliance of the film is the way that first-time director Chad Stahelski moderates the tempo. For every intense, non-stop action sequence where Keanu Reeves takes out a small army of goons, there's a moment where the film takes stock of the stakes and allows characters to react to the fallout of the action orgy. There's actual emotional engagement here, and it's another case of a director using Keanu's occasional blankness to good effect.

16. 22 Jump Street - At this point, I need to stop being amazed when writer/directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller totally stick the landing on something that seemed destined to disappoint. This sequel sends Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum undercover in college (where they are admonished "just do the same thing as before.") The script milks the meta-humor exactly long enough to keep from wearing it out and even manages to freshen up old bits like "sleeping with the boss's daughter." Ice Cube thankfully has more to do in this one (give this man his own vehicle!) Honestly, the rest of the movie could have been mediocre and the ending credits gag would still make this a must-see, as we're taken on a tour of about a dozen future sequels for the franchise.

17. The Theory of Everything - While I still have some script issues with this one, you can't deny that both Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne give amazing performances as Jane Hawking and Dr. Stephen Hawking. Redmayne especially, as he's forced to spend must of the film bent into a misshapen position, immobile and limited in every possible way that one could communicate emotion. That barrier presented Anthony McCarten with an unusual challenge when the time came to write one of the film's most emotional moments, the break-up between Dr. Hawking and his long-supportive wife. Though it feels like other moments bend over backwards to make both of them squeaky-clean in the separation, that moment is powerful, raw and honest.

18. The Fault in Our Stars - If this had a fall release date, would we be hearing Oscar buzz for Shailene Woodley? She gives an expectedly-moving performance as a teen fighting cancer who finds love with another cancer survivor. I've never read the John Green book which is adapted here by THE SPECTACULAR NOW's Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, but the film hits the right emotional beats by really understanding its teen characters. Neustadter & Weber really understand how to craft real people whose emotions can drive a scene, without having to rely on plot to provide all the urgency and heavy-lifting. That's got to be tricky when dealing with source material that is able to get inside both characters heads, something impossible to truly pull off in a visual medium. It definitely says something about their writing that fans of the novels generally come away satisfied with the screen translations. I once briefly met Neustadter and he jokingly suggested I give (500) DAYS OF SUMMER another chance. I'm thinking I might actually have to do a "second opinion" post about that sometime in 2015.

19. Neighbors - We need more of these. An original comedy idea with a premise that seems low-concept, but excels thanks to strong character. A married couple with a baby moves in next to a frat house and clashes with the college kids. The smart move is that the frat boys are allowed to be real people, likeable people, and not one-dimensional stereotypes. The couple - played by Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne - also are fleshed out more than you'd expect rather than just getting stuck playing dofusses mad at those damn kids. Expecially refreshing is the fact that Byrne's character is a total participant alongside Rogan rather than being relgated to a "nagging wife role." (The film even has a meta joke about that.) I'll always cheer for a film that doesn't fall back on the most dumbed-down execution.


20. Millius - Would you enjoy the experience of sitting down with a number of titans of filmmaking as they all share tall tales of a larger-than-life peer? Then rush off to Netflix and look up the documentary MILIUS in their streaming category. The real-life Bill Brasky in question is John Milius, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Apocalypse Now. He's also the writer-director of Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. It would be a crime to spoil many of the great stories offered in this documentary. Though many tales paint him as a force of nature, there's also little doubt that few have a way with the pen as he does. When a producer needs someone to write "bigger speeches" to convince Sean Connery to sign onto a film, Milius's name alone sways the actor's opinion. When Milius is on his game, the pages seem to flow out of him like water over Niagara Falls. And when the writer falls on hard times, you feel the weight of that tragedy.

Come back tomorrow for the Top 10!

EDGE OF TOMORROW is the kind of sharp action film we need more of

I've been seeing promos for EDGE OF TOMORROW for about six months now, and it's rather embarrassing that it took a couple comments during Tom Cruise's interview with The Daily Show last week before I woke up to a major aspect of its premise.  The film stars Cruise as a solider named Cage who is part of a battalion of ground troops taking on an alien force in Europe.  When he dies in battle, he suddenly wakes up a day earlier, quickly realizing he's now part of a time loop that resets the day each time he dies.  This gives him the chance to learn from his mistakes and try to last longer on the battlefield, hopefully eventually scoring a victory.

It's a perfect metaphor for the nature of a video game character/player.  It is perhaps the most literal translation of what it's like to play something like SUPER MARIO BROS, where Mario gets sent to a new land, and - thanks to extra lives - gets a restart from the beginning every time he dies.  If EDGE OF TOMORROW didn't exist, it's whole hook would be a clever enough conceit to actually take another run at re-adapting MARIO BROS for the big screen.

I haven't read any reviews yet, but early chatter seems to use GROUNDHOG DAY as shorthand when describing the concept.  EOT uses the time loop in an entirely different way than that earlier film, though.  In GROUNDHOG DAY, Phil Conners is trying to find a way out of the loop. He needs the repeating day to stop.  In EOT, the loop is a tool that the protagonists use to gain information and experience that will let them achieve a deciding victory in this war with the alien occupiers.

When we first meet Cage, he's a Major in the military's PR department.  He had a hand in creating a propaganda star out of Emily Blunt's Rita Vratski, who won a major battle on her first day in the field and became the poster girl for their new recruitment drive.  Cage is a pretty boy, a glad-hander with zero combat experience and no desire to get anywhere near a battlefield.  Most amusingly, Cruise seems to be playing him as an amplification of his own public persona rather than his action movie persona.

I don't want to get too much into the mechanics of how Cruise is able to reset, or too heavily into the specifics of what his mission becomes.  What is important is that after a few runs through the loop, he tracks down Rita, who's familiar with what's happening to him because she too used to be a repeater.  She trains him and through her we not only learn the rules, but figure out the road map to defeating the aliens.

One thing a lot of writers could learn from the script is economy of action. Cruise's first time through the repeating day is shown in fairly heavy detail.  During the second time, we see less.  There's a nice cut from Cruise telling his commanding officer, "Just give me 30 seconds and I can explain all of this" to him being dragged off kicking and screaming.  We don't need to see Cruise recap the previous fifteen minutes in a failed attempt to convince the commander he knows the future.  We just need to see the result - that he's disbelieved.

The timing of the cut also provokes a laugh and gets some comic relief in.  There are a few more moments of these that happen throughout.  Once or twice we see a scene end abruptly and then start over just seconds earlier, indicating that Cruise met an untimely (and sometimes darkly comic) death and we're catching up to him after he's already relived through the necessary preamble.  (I dare not spoil the best one of these but it involves Cruise trying to slip away from his platoon unnoticed.)

The film is peppered with moments like that.  We come into the second or third version of a scene much later than we did on the first go-round.  At times, we're only shown a series of events on the final time Cruise completes the event.  There's a moment late in the film where he's trying to convince a general that the ground mission will fail and that the only chance is for the general to release some contraband he has in a safe.

It's easy to overlook how challenging this performance must have been for Cruise.  Obviously a film a shot out of sequence, so actors are used to having to track their performances without the benefit of playing the film in any sort of emotional continuity. There's an extra degree of difficulty when an actor has to perform multiple versions of the same scene - often with near-identical dialogue - but bring a different emotional nuance to each version.  The cocky version of Cage whom we meet in the start slowly disappears over the course of the film.  "Press Junket" Cruise matures into "Ethan Hunt" Cruise.

The first scene in the loop is usually Cruise's confrontation with a commanding officer played by Bill Paxton.  We see that a variety of ways and each instance leads into a number of other scenes that follow that particular stage of Cage's development.  Cruise has to make sure all these jigsaw pieces fit perfectly, even though he might spend a week shooting 12 iterations of that scene, he has to make sure the version that fits with his 4th version of the loop is distinct from the others AND matches the later scenes from that version of the loop.

Of course, when he shoots the next scene in that sequence, it will be on a completely different day and also likely as one of many multiple incarnations of that scene.  And it's not as if he's playing one extreme to the other.  This is a gradual arc, a little like stepping up the musical scale one key at a time.  An actor gets little credit when they pull this off because the perfect continuity is invisible, but it's the sort of performance that you can only get from a dedicated professional.  That's just one reason why only a fool would dismiss this as a big dumb shoot 'em up.

It's soon apparent from the way that Cruise is anticipating every minor event unfolding during this meeting (sort of like Bill Murray masterminding his heist in GROUNDHOG DAY, or telling Rita about everything that will happen seconds from now in the diner) that he's lived through this many times before.  We don't need to see five failed attempts to win the general over - all that maters is this last desperate time where Cruise DOES say the right thing to get what he needs.  This is also the sort of scene that works better late in the film when the audience is so used to the rules the movie is playing by that it's easy to process what's going on.  There's a certain point where the movie stops explaining every last little thing and trusts that you're smart enough to keep up.

The break into the third act is another moment that underlines how perfect the structure of this film is.  Without betraying too much, all I'll say is that there's a clear "oh shit" moment where we realize that all bets are off.  One of the problems of telling a time travel story is that if the characters can always go back in time, the stakes are diminished.  This safety net is obliterated by a development that establishes a tight ticking clock on the end.  Just when we've finally gotten used to the idea of "Oh, he can just die and start over. No big," the film pulls the rug out from under us.

The only aspect of the script that doesn't totally track for me is the final ending.  And since I've been careful about not blowing other plot points, this is your final warning that what follows after this is nothing but SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

We cool?  Okay, so the team succeeds in destroying the Omega, and just before Cruise dies in the processes, he absorbs the Omega's blood, which is what sent him back in time in the first place.  He wakes up in the past, but somehow several hours sooner than he usually did.  What's more, despite time rewinding, the Omega is apparently somehow still dead even though those events haven't happened yet.

That seems a little weird to me. Cruise leaping back a little further I guess I could just chalk up to him absorbing a lot more blood before he died.  (I considered that it's just that he died a few hours sooner than scheduled, but the fact is even when he lasted well past his original time of death, he always bounced back to the exact same point in time.)  The Omega remaining dead I guess is just supposed to be one of those weird time-travel things, where I suppose if it's killed at one point in the loop it reverberates backwards.

It seems to be a deliberate paradox, but I'm a little thrown by the fact the film doesn't try to explain it.  There's not even a scene of Cruise or his science buddy making a theoretical guess as to what it all means.  It doesn't ruin the film or anything, but I do wish the ending were more airtight.

Still, I highly recommend EDGE OF TOMORROW as the sort of action film we need more of.  The characters take center stage and the movie is intelligent about every one of its developments.