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| Wild, Mommy, A Most Violent Year, and Birdman are 2014's best films. |
This year has had ample goodies, though, that made it all
worthwhile. That’s been evident since The
Grand Budapest Hotel gave the early winter an unusually strong film—just
weeks after the Oscars were handed out, it seemed we had a frontrunner for this
year’s race! 2014’s been a very good year for Canadian talents with three
Canuck films making the list and, for the first time ever, a film by a Canadian
director earning the top spot. Highlights of the year, as always, include the
top moments from TIFF—getting to do my first roundtable with Jean-Marc Vallée and Laura Dern is a career highlight, as are a few other interviews and moments
outside of my work on the blog that leave some great memories from 2014. On the other hand,
covering the growing Ottawa film festival scene, especially the Animation
Festival, marks additional highlights of the year, as does programming CDFF,
and, finally, voting in the annual OFCS awards. It’s nice to be a bit more than
an outside commentator, and any opportunities like round-tables, interviews,
gigs, and voting privileges are appreciated boosts.
This list largely reflects my appreciation for the American
and Canadian indies of the year, especially in a year when barely any of the
major studio offerings were worth seeing at all. Only Gone Girl and Into the Woods
really deliver among this year’s studio films (and to some extent Godzilla) and it’s been such a struggle
to keep up with all the good indies that there just isn’t time to waste on
sequels, prequels, Marvel movies, and other nonsense. Some of the year’s bigger
releases have yet to make it to Ottawa—Selma,
Inherent Vice, Mr. Turner, Cake, and American
Sniper simply aren’t here due to availability. We’ll look forward to those
films in 2015 as we bid adieu to the
standout films of 2014!
The Top Ten Films of 2014:
1. Wild
(Dir. Jean-Marc Vallée)
It still surprises me
that I love Wild as much as I do. I'm
a die-hard Jean Marc Vallée fan, sure, and the film fits my trend of picking
arty adaptations as the best of the year, but I rarely take to stories of
outdoorsy inspirational types. Perhaps I connect to Cheryl Strayed's story so
much because of how unhappy I am with where my life is right now, and I wish I
had her courage to walk away from a life going nowhere. More than anything, I
would love to hurl my metaphorical hiking boot over the side of a mountain and
yell ‘fuck!’ at the top if my lungs, and I think it's no coincidence that Wild hooks me instantly on both page and
screen. I love how vividly Vallée’s passion infuses each frame of the film and how
the sharpness of his direction perfectly connects the fluidity of the
cinematography by Yves Bélanger with the power of the performances by Reese
Witherspoon and Laura Dern to radiate with a spirit and burst of life that feels like the
sun hitting your face on a warm fall day. The intricacy of the editing by
Vallée and Martin Pensa, moreover, might be the single most bracingly cinematic
coup of the year, for no film engages both the heart and the mind as powerfully
as Wild does, playing on memory and
creating associations between people and places as Cheryl overcomes her grief
and finds herself on the PCT. Vallée’s kaleidoscopic vision makes the story
both intimately specific and, in a way, universal as Wild invites viewers to glue
the pieces with the
shards of their own memory bank. Wild
is more powerful and moving with each trip down the PCT: it’s the best film of
the year.
(Wild is currently in theatres from Fox Searchlight Pictures.)
2. Mommy
(Dir. Xavier Dolan)
Leave it to Xavier
Dolan to rejuvenate the Quebec box office. Mommy
is a smash after Quebecois cinema has seen a bit of a slump, and the roaring
success of Mommy is refreshing proof
that audiences want to see films that are both original and reflective of their
experiences. It’s fitting, since Dolan helped bring ample attention to Quebec
and the so-called “Quebec New Wave” when he killed his onscreen mother five years ago,
but he brings her fully to life in Mommy,
his most mature and most fully realized film yet. It’s remarkable to see the
growth of this filmmaker in the years since I
Killed My Mother, and
whereas Dolan’s early films show genuine visual audacity, largely rooted in
homage and cinephilia, Mommy displays
a masterful hand at innovation in film form as Dolan takes the
social-media-friendly aspect ratio of the film as the perfect visual
complement to the emotionally oversaturated frame. His writing is even more
mature, as Mommy boasts wildly
dynamic characters—especially the female ones—on par with those in films of
Allen, Almodóvar, Cassevetes, and Arcand. Anchoring Mommy in every frame is Anne Dorval’s electrifying performance—the
best of the year—and the high-calibre acting makes Mommy an invigorating film experience on all fronts.
(Mommy is currently in theatres from eOne Films and it screens at
Canada’s Top Ten in January.)
(Dir. J.C. Chandor)
Many 2014 films
confront the myth of the American Dream, but none does so as forcefully as A Most Violent Year does. This third
feature from J.C. Chandor is his best film. A crackling and sharply layered
screenplay weaves America’s three greatest institutions—oil, family, and
violence—into a web of power, ideology, and criminality. It’s a system that
corrupts everything, yet A Most Violent
Year presents the one man determined to emerge unstained. A Most Violent Year is a simmering, slow
burn of a film as Chandor plays with genre, perceptively folding the fate of
Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) into a parable that’s equal parts Death of a Salesman and The Godfather. Isaac is unwaveringly
cool as the right-minded Morales while Jessica Chastain is ferociously
explosive as his cunning wife. Anna flies under the radar and Chastain owns
every scene in which she appears, and A
Most Violent Year gives the world of the gangster film one of its shrewdest
and strongest female characters. Dark, tense, and consistently riveting, A Most Violent Year is one of the
decade’s best crime dramas.
(A Most Violent Year opens in theatres in 2015 from Elevation
Pictures and beginning Dec. 31 in the USA from A24.)
(Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu)
The adaptation nut in
me absolutely loves Birdman. The play
on film and theatre is flat-out brilliant, for director Alejandro González Iñárritu
and DP Emanuel Lubezki combine the disparate energies of stage and screen to
make a film that consistently verges inward like theatre, but then leaps out of
the limitations of the stage and soars as Birdman finding freedom in the distinctly
cinematic escapism that the snobby theatre types of the film mock. The conceit
of Birdman’s long-take is an
imperceptible magic act, as the film brings a stage production to life in the
most cinematic of ways and weaves the camera in and out of the backstage world as
Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) merges film and theatre in a ballsy attempt to
resurrect his fledgling career. The dazzling cinematography of Birdman also works as an ingenious
expression of Riggan’s own madness as he soars around New York with flights of
magical realism and/or insanity. The jazzy drum score by Antonio Sanchez brings
everything in Birdman up a beat as it
gives the action a sense of spontaneity and of live performance, which makes Birdman unlike anything I’ve ever seen
before.
(Birdman is currently in theatres from Fox Searchlight Pictures.)
5. The F Word
(Dir. Michael Dowse)
The hopeless romantic
in me just adores the charming pair of Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan. They’re
the sweetest, funniest, and cutest onscreen pair of the year, and I could watch
their back-and-forth repartee every day of the year. Few comedies capture the
honesty of the awkward grey area between friendship and love as authentically
as The F Word does, but the ace
script by Elan Mastai is witty yet believable from beginning to end. As
Wallace and Chantry seemingly banter about nothing and make jokes about Elvis’s
favourite sandwiches and the like, The F
Word has a perfect ear for the way people bond over the most seemingly
inconsequential things and find their compatibility by sharing experiences. It’s funny and heartfelt, especially since the clever
back-and-forth between Wallace and Chantry doubles as a shield in the will-they-or-won’t-they
dance they do as they tiptoe the line between friendship and love.
(The F Word is available on home video from eOne Films.)
(Dir. James Gray)
The Immigrant is another of 2014’s tales about the myth of the
American Dream, but this elegant film by James Gray unfolds like a fable as it
tells of Ewa (Marion Cotillard), a Polish immigrant, who is coerced into
prostitution as a means to survive. Cotillard gives one of her most magnetic
performances, while Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner offer strong turns as
Ewa’s pimp and saviour. The real star, however, is the elegant cinematography
by Darius Khondji, which shrouds Ewa’s ill-fated tale in glimmering
sepia-tinged sadness. The final shot of the film, which splits Ewa’s destiny
and reality in two, might be the most subtle and evocative image of the year.
Gray’s direction is restrained and precise as The
Immigrant somberly allegorizes the fallacy of the American Dream. Making it
in American feels like a cross between a dream and a nightmare, and The Immigrant masterfully sits somewhere
between the two.
(The Immigrant is available on home video from eOne Films.)
(Dir. Wes Anderson)
Bust out the courtesans au chocolat and dab on some Eau de Panache to cheer
on The Grand Budapest Hotel! This
zany lark might be Wes Anderson’s finest film and it set an high bar for 2014. Layer upon layer builds a
story within a story within a story as The
Grand Budapest Hotel whisks viewers to the fictional land of Zubrowka and
cordially invites them to stay at one of the finest establishments that
Anderson has ever created. It’s always fun to see how Anderson situates a story
around a singular setting, and the intricately designed hotel is the perfect
setting for the slapstick chorus of wacky adventures that come and go from the
doors of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Budapest
boasts one of the most colourful ensembles of the year, headlined by a
riotously poncey and deadpan Ralph Fiennes, who gives one of his most
unexpected turns as the mannered concierge Gustave H.
(The Grand Budapest Hotel is available on home video Fox Searchlight
Pictures.)
(Dir. David Fincher)
I still love the fact
that Gone Girl, the book, had me
rooting for Amy throughout every one of its crazy pages, yet Gone Girl, the movie, puts me on Nick’s
almost every frame of the way. Gone Girl is
the big bold blockbuster that many of us say the studios should be making
instead of mindless comic book films, sequels, and remakes, so anyone who doesn’t
recognize the brilliance of David Fincher’s taut drama deserves every Transformers flick and Marvel movie that
comes his or her way. This spot-on adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel is the
cinematic equivalent of a page-turner as Fincher’s cool, calculated vision cuts
through the turbulent marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne with fierce precision and
a wicked sense of humour. The film perfectly casts Ben Affleck and Rosamund
Pike as Nick and Amy, two beautifully awful people whom one alternatively loves
and hates with every one of Gone Girl’s
crosscut scenes.
(Gone Girl is currently in theatres and on iTunes, and it comes to
Blu-ray/DVD on January 13 from Fox.)
(Dir. David
Cronenberg)
Maps to the Stars, like Gone
Girl, is a deliciously unnerving satire. What Gone Girl is to love and marriage, Maps is to fame and fortune, and this darkly hilarious film from Canadian
master David Cronenberg exposes the grotesqueries of celebrity and sends up our
own fascination with the strange and unusual world of the rich and famous.
Cronenberg makes the rare move of both setting and shooting much of his film
outside Canada, and Maps depicts the
most garish image of Hollywood that Tinseltown has ever scene. Cronenberg
dashes a wild mix of sex and violence as he boldly realizes the brilliant
screenplay by Bruce Wagner along with a mix of Hollywood stars like John Cusack
and Robert Pattinson with top Canadian talent like Sarah Gadon, and Maps to the Stars crafts a wicked ghost
story about the emptiness of Hollywood and the decay of celebrity. The skin of
a fifty-year old actress might be the greatest coup of body horror that Cronenberg
has ever done, and Julianne Moore’s maniacal performance as fading actress
Havana Segrand deservedly puts the film on the map among the best films, Canadian or otherwise, in 2014.
(Maps to the Stars is in limited release from eOne Films and screens
at Canada’s Top Ten in January.)
(Dir. John Maloof,
Charlie Siskel)
I’ve reviewed more
documentaries than ever before in 2014, and Finding
Vivian Maier easily stands at the top of a very good year for docs. This
breathtaking voyage through the archive unearths a wealth of hidden art as
photographer/historian/filmmaker John Maloof discovers the world of Vivian
Maier after he stumbles upon a collection of her photographs and negatives. As Maloof sifts through the remnants of Vivian's life, one
sees how little one can know about a person through the fragments of her
life, but learn so much through the intimacy of her work. It’s easy to see a
bit of oneself in Vivian Maier as Maloof and fellow director Charlie Siskel
unearth the inadequacies and insecurities shouldered by the reclusive artist. There’s something ineffably beautiful amongst the bittersweet tragecy of Maier's life as the film tells of an artist who simply found
joy in creating her work and scraped by on a piecemeal life to do so. The more
the filmmakers uncover about the loneliness of Vivian Maier, however, the more they reveal about
the politics and fundamentals of art that keeps talented individuals outside of
the canon. What makes a great artist is truly subjective, yet the more one
learns about Vivian Maier, the more one appreciates and understands the many
exquisite photographs that appear onscreen.
(Finding Vivian Maier is now available on home video from Films We
Like.)
Honourable mentions: The Babadook, Begin Again, Boyhood, Force Majeure, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Into the Woods, The Lunchbox, A Most Wanted Man, Nightcrawler, Only Lovers Left Alive, Rocks in My Pockets, Still Alice, Tracks, Tu Dors Nicole.
Picks for the Best
Documentaries of 2014: Available in the annual Nonfics poll!
Shout out to the best
unreleased films from 2014: Sunshine
Superman, I am Big Bird, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ned Rifle, The New Girlfriend, The Riot Club, The Wanted 18, Wet Bum.
What are your favourite films of 2014?
Previously in the ‘2014 in Review’ series:
-Part 3: The Best Performances of the Year
-Part 2: The Best Canadian Films of the Year
-Part 1: The Worst Films of the Year
Thanks to all the friends, publicists, contest partners, festival friends,
fellow writers, and, especially, readers for making this another good year!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!