So if I knock off and don't post until the 2nd, don't hate me. Well, don't hate me for that, anyway. Same rules as in recent years: I just kinda meander back through my posts; some call it impressionistic, some call it lazy.
But first . . .
Top five 2014 films I'm eager to see in 2015:- Inherent Vice
- Selma
- Mr. Turner
- Ida
- Listen Up Philip
And so . . .
- January is when I finally got to see Her, which if not ultimately my favorite 2013 film, was right up there. The Rocket was an unanticipated treasure.
- Traditionally sterile February brought Gloria, which made at least one best-of list, though not mine.
- March was The Grand Budapest Hotel: Wes is more. Oh, and the dark and creepy Enemy, which for my money is the better dark and creepy Jake Gyllenhaal flick this year.
- April, aka the cruelest month in Malaysian martial arts/cop/action flicks, brought the excruciating Berandal (The raid 2). Also Under the Skin, which I will always pair with Her: in a span of a few months, one of the most beautiful women in the movies, also possessed of one of the sexiest voices, had one role in which the visual was absent and another in which the aural is minimized, and she gave two of the best performances of my 2014 in those two films.
- In one day in May, I saw the astonishingly high-concept Locke and my second-favorite vampire flick of the year, Only Lovers Left Alive.
- June was mostly World Cup, duh, but I did see The Fault in Our Stars, the second teen film starring Shailene Woodley that has grabbed me (2013's The Spectacular Now being the other). And in a very different brain segment, La danza de la realidad (The dance of reality) by Alejandro "wtf?" Jodorowsky.
I'm back; this part of the program is brought to you by Jim Beam (long story).
- Snowpiercer? Seriously? Yes, and July, with the Cup having some off days as it wound down, opens with a mass transit bang. Then La Vénus à la fourrure (Venus in fur), which was excellent, but a couple of months later Scary Normal star Laura Anne Welle got the role at the Station Theatre in Urbana, making me queasily glad that I wouldn't be around to see her so scantily dressed in this, no matter how good I'm sure she'd be.
- Boyhood, in August, is the first 2014 film I'm 100% confident in calling great, Richard Linklater's masterpiece, which is tall cotton. Get on Up, which I expected to be a routine biopic, surprised me.
- Why on earth did I go to only 4 films in September? Why none is worth mention here is a different question.
- October's Gone Girl may actually be the most morally reprehensible film of 2014, but it's certainly one the films that inspired the more worthwhile conversation. Pride, one of the year's best? Nah, but one of the most lovable! Dear White People--hey, based on how much it made me feel, this may just be my #1 for the year!
- November: Ordinarily I don't put negatives in here, but Birdman? Yeah, good flick, but genius? Top ten? Not on my watch. And Interstellar? Ditto. Whiplash, on the other hand--extreme dissent from my YUP author David Thomson notwithstanding--ripped my drum kit. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, on (can this be true?) my first M4 of the year, moved me, as did Citizenfour.
- December: I watched it on DVD, but the beauty of the 21st century is that Vi är bäst! (We are the best!) is still a 2014 film, one of the best. The same rules apply to Frank, though I confess it didn't move me as much. The fucking Babadook, on the other hand, scared the fucking shit out of me in a way that no film has done in a long, long time. Also, The Homesman seems to me an underrated great film. And Top Five a nearly great Woody Allen film.
- Dear White People
- Boyhood
- Gone Girl
- The Babadook
- Grand Budapest Hotel
- Locke
- Under the Skin
- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
- Only Lovers Left Alive
- Vi är bäst!
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