The 10 Best Movies of 2014

The Best Movies of 2014, from Boyhood, Citizenfour, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Gone Girl and more.

Despite a lack of racial diversity, gender equality, originality, strong box office returns or general cultural interest in things that aren’t Taylor Swift or “Orange is the New Black”, the movies manage to put out more than a few good ones each year.

But because all of the above are all anyone’s been clamoring for this year, it’s hard to say this was a strong year for the movies and then read a post like Mark Harris’s in Grantland. His article “The Birdcage” is the most compelling and informative Death of Cinema post you’re likely to read this or any year. He argues that Hollywood is following superheroes down the franchise rabbit hole, in which it isn’t enough for a movie to be a movie; it has to fit with the brand.

I look at my Top 10 list now and only see two blockbusters, only one of which will become a franchise, so presumably it can’t all be bad. But increasingly I’m not so sure. Following the events of “The Interview,” will Hollywood be likely to take the risks that produced that movie, among many of the other daring films this year? It’s unlikely that anything will ever be made quite like my Number One selection this year, but does the audience for such a film get smaller or larger moving into 2015?

The 10 films I’ve listed here are simply the ones I enjoyed the most, not necessarily the ones most likely to push cinema forward or be the game changers the industry needs. Later this week I’ll list out my picks for the 11-30 Best Films of 2014, and hopefully those will help tip the scales a little more. Continue reading “The 10 Best Movies of 2014”

The Grand Budapest Hotel

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” finds Wes Anderson embracing his visual style fully and showing complete control as a director.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson has been making Wes Anderson movies his entire career; no one quite does it better (though many have tried). They’re rife with perfectly precise miniatures of colorful, excrutiating detail, and over the years his set dressing has conveyed kitsch, adolescence and cartoons.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” may be the most Wes Anderson-y film yet. Its title character M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) embodies the fastidious perfectionist with an eye for fashionable excellence in a way that no other Anderson character has captured the director’s true sense of style. It’s a silly, sinister and sneaky caper that thrives on its careful construction.

Gustave is the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel in the fictional Eastern European country Zubrowska in 1932. Years later after war has forever affected the majesty of the region and the hotel itself, we meet Zero Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham) regaling his days as a young lobby boy (Tony Revolori) under Gustave’s tutelage.

Fiennes is wonderful as an eloquent and aloof manager and womanizer, quick witted in his authority and charmingly blunt to the elderly women he beds. His prize is Madame D. (an almost unrecognizable Tilda Swinton under pounds of makeup), a wealthy maiden who suddenly turns up murdered, but not before bequeathing a priceless painting to Gustave. As a result, Gustave soon finds himself on the run from Madame’s vindictive son (Adrien Brody) and the authorities (led by a hilariously out of place and without an accent Edward Norton). Continue reading “The Grand Budapest Hotel”

Very Early 2014 Movie Preview

25 interesting films worth getting excited for at this very early stage.

This time last year I published a list of some of my most anticipated movies of 2013, and although I acknowledged at the time that I really had no clue of the quality of any of the films, let alone what they would even be about, it’s amazing the picks that landed and the ones that didn’t.

In the plus column, I plugged “Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Gravity,” “Prisoners,” “The Place Beyond the Pines,” “Captain Phillips,” “This is the End,” “Before Midnight” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”  Not a bad batting average.

On the minus side however, I talked about “To the Wonder,” “Oldboy,” “Ender’s Game,” “I’m So Excited” and “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.”

And a handful, including “The Monuments Men,” “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” and “Labor Day”  still have not come out. How about that for a prediction?

So which of the 25 movies I’ve picked here will we be talking about at the end of 2014? It could be all of them.

Continue reading “Very Early 2014 Movie Preview”