Re: Our Top 10 of 2014
Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2015 8:43 am
There are still plenty of movies I need to get to, including Norte, the End of History and Two Days, One Night. Oscar-movie wise, I haven't caught up with American Sniper (will see it eventually), The Imitation Game (ambivalent about seeing it), Wild (ditto), Whiplash (ditto), The Theory of Everything (don't want to see it), Birdman (don't want to see it), or Foxcatcher (ambivalent about seeing it). I have seen Selma and Mr. Turner, both of which I like, as well as Inherent Vice, which wasn't really for me.
In roughly descending order, here are some favorites of what I've seen so far, based on US theatrical releases 2014 ...
Goodbye to Language (JLG)
See You Next Tuesday (Drew Tobia)
Dumb and Dumber To (Farrelly Brothers) - not joking about this, I adore it, it's like late period Jerry Lewis
Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
Memphis (Tim Sutton)
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Beyond the Lights (Gina Prince-Bythewood)
The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
Venus in Fur (Roman Polanski)
List-worthy, but I excluded them for reasons of no theatrical US release as far as I could tell: Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German, from 2013-2014 festival circuit, would be #2 but I guess it hasn't opened in this country until its recent run in New York), Field Niggas (Khalik Allah, incredible "amateur" documentary you can find on YouTube or Vimeo), Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara), The Black Box (Stephen Cone; I think this is only now getting a VOD release), Transformers: The Premake (critic/filmmaker Kevin B. Lee's wonderful and smart documentary about the geographical production of anticipation, also available on YouTube), Person to Person (Dustin Guy Defa's short film, yet another available to view online for free).
In roughly descending order, here are some favorites of what I've seen so far, based on US theatrical releases 2014 ...
Goodbye to Language (JLG)
See You Next Tuesday (Drew Tobia)
Dumb and Dumber To (Farrelly Brothers) - not joking about this, I adore it, it's like late period Jerry Lewis
Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
Memphis (Tim Sutton)
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Beyond the Lights (Gina Prince-Bythewood)
The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
Venus in Fur (Roman Polanski)
List-worthy, but I excluded them for reasons of no theatrical US release as far as I could tell: Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German, from 2013-2014 festival circuit, would be #2 but I guess it hasn't opened in this country until its recent run in New York), Field Niggas (Khalik Allah, incredible "amateur" documentary you can find on YouTube or Vimeo), Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara), The Black Box (Stephen Cone; I think this is only now getting a VOD release), Transformers: The Premake (critic/filmmaker Kevin B. Lee's wonderful and smart documentary about the geographical production of anticipation, also available on YouTube), Person to Person (Dustin Guy Defa's short film, yet another available to view online for free).