Yesterday, we got the first fantastic trailer for Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s new Los Angeles-set musical La La Land. It looks great and I can’t wait to see it. Ryan Gosling stars as a jazz pianist who falls for an aspiring actress, played by Emma Stone, in the City of Angels. There’s lots of singing and dancing and it is just not something that we really see anymore.
I’m excited because this is the next film from Chazelle, who blew me away with Whiplash. So stop what you’re doing and watch this right now. Lionsgate is planning to release Chazelle’s La La Land in select theaters starting December 2nd this year, with a wide release soon after.
There were a tremendous number of innovative and well crafted movies in 2010. This made it very hard for me to decide on my top movie for this year. A lot of the the critics that I really respect pick a ton of independent films that only 20% of film-goers have even really had the opportunity to see. I tend to watch more populist films or independent films that get a fair amount of press. As I have already expressed, I am only picking from movies that I have seen, so I had to pass over films like Never Let Me Go, or A Prophet.
Even without those films, and not counting the three that I finally chose, we still had Inception, Black Swan, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Dogtooth, True Grit, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Meek’s Cutoff, and Winter’s Bone. Yes, you heard that correctly, I am not including Inception in my top three. It is certainly a good film and I would consider it part of my top 10 of the year, but it had some big problems that I couldn’t get past. Christopher Nolan wants us to see this as his greatest achievement, and while it is gorgeous and very intricately crafted I wish he didn’t feel the need to explain everything so explicitly and the fact that we don’t get much character development.
As far as the box office for the year, it looks like this year is lining up to be very similar to 2010. Five of the top ten highest grossing films of the year were animated, six if you include Alice in Wonderland, and many of them were very good, but I think that as we march backwards through time we will see the chasm between a film’s financial success and visionary prowess shrink. So let’s see the three films that I put on the top of the heap.
Tom Hooper’s historical feature The King’s Speech was the big winner at the Oscars celebrating the films of 2010. It won 4 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Colin Firth who gave a fantastic central performance as a man with a crippling handicap who just happened to be Britain’s King George VI. The central relationship between Firth and Geoffrey Rush who plays his unorthodox speech therapist is filled with a wry and self-effacing sense of humor.
It’s a pleasure to watch Firth bring a heavy tension and frustration to his role as a man who cannot find his voice who has been thrust into the role of the voice of all of England. Firth begins the film by stepping up to a microphone as if he is stepping into a hangman’s noose. After a series of failed attempts with vocal coaches, his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) pairs him with the unconventional Rush who insists on calling the budding monarch “Bertie” and treating him as an equal. Eventually, Firth unbends under Rush’s calm, unforgiving style and unwavering good humor. Firth’s agony and this rich relationship makes this one a good candidate for the best of the year.
Toy Story 3 was the top grossing film of the year coming in almost $100 million above Alice in Wonderland. I often think about the reason why these animated films do so well at the box office. I think a huge part of it is because kids can’t go to the movies by themselves. So with every group of happy children there is at least one adult along for the ride. It is like a buy one get one deal in reverse where the theaters sell one ticket and get one more at full price for good measure. However, I think that with Toy Story 3, there may have been times when the kids were being dragged in by the parents who were hoping to catch a glimpse of the magic they saw years before.
In this third and what we thought would be final Toy Story movie, we see a bunch of toys desperately trying to force an 18-year-old to play with them the way he did a decade ago. Coming to the realization that he has moved on, they mourn and debate about their place as Andy’s toys. The Toy Story movies have always been about the joy of play, but never before has it seemed like such a drag to be a toy. The fate of most toys is probably a horror story if we think about it. Essentially, they are immortal beings whose only pleasure comes from entertaining fickle children who will quickly grow up to forget them, leaving them to be broken and discarded.
There were few grimmer movie moments in 2010 than the point where the toys face their deaths, and few more uplifting sequences than the film’s ending. It’s strange to speak of a kids’ film as challenging, moving, and heartfelt, but Pixar’s movies continue to be some of the most sophisticated and entertaining films that we see all year, bar none. They did it again this year with Finding Dory though maybe not to the extent of Toy Story 3.
Writer Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, A Few Good Men) and director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) make a movie about the contentious beginnings of Facebook, scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from metal band Nine Inch Nails. While that certainly sounds interesting and potentially exciting, it also sounds like it could be a bit of a mess. I remember thinking when I heard about the plans for this film that it had everything it needed to be great it just had to find a way to put all those things into one box.
That is what makes this movie is so audaciously impressive. Sorkin is famous for his extremely verbal dialogue. How could that exist alongside the visual stylings of a guy like Fincher? And what business do these guys have working on a Facebook biopic since their specialties seemed to be government corruption and cover-ups, murder, scandal, and social unrest? They made it work to amazing effect. Using the deposition recordings of two separate lawsuits against Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg as an ingenious framing device,The Social Network traces the site’s origin in all its agonizing complexity.
Speaking of Zuckerberg, if you have seen this movie, the picture that you get in your head probably looks a good bit more like actor Jesse Eisenberg than the actual founder. Eisenberg was able to capture the innovation and youthful energy of Zuckerberg while also detailing his all too human flaws. We completely forget that this is a movie about recent events in the unfolding of the technological world and we are enthralled in this compelling story of a genius who is often petty and puerile but is also driven pathologically by the same thing that drives the 500 billion users of Facebook… the need to belong.
What do you think? Did I get it right? I’m actually going to put an asterisk on this one because I would like to potentially come back and add Toy Story 3 if I don’t use my four ties before the end.
Continuing our search for the Best Movie of all time, we come to 2011. Marching backwards to near the dawn of the decade, we saw some brave and creative work coming out of Hollywood. The Artist, a silent black and white film, swept five of the top awards at the Oscars including best picture, best director, and best actor. However, I did not see it as a brilliant work so much as a bit of nostalgia to feed to an industry which is extremely narcissistic.
Plenty of others could have made this list including three great Marvel properties (Captain America – The First Avenger, X-Men – First Class, and Thor) which set things running for the current spate of superhero films which we are all enjoying. We also had the end of the canonical Harry Potter franchise with The Deathly Hallows Part 2even though Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is trying to recapture that magic later this year. And I can’t forget Super 8, Melancholia, Moneyball, Source Code, The Intouchables, and The Help just to name a few. It was a good year, but let’s take a look at my top 3.
The BFG doesn’t waste any time getting us into the action. We are barely introduced to young Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) who is awake at 3am in her dilapidated London orphanage. After hearing a noise outside, she goes to the balcony and sees something amazing. She spots a giant around 30 feet tall shrouded with a cloak to keep himself hidden. As they meet eyes, she runs back inside to hide under her blanket, and we see a large hand come through the window. Less than 10 minutes into the movie, Sophie is already being whisked away to Giant Country where the giant tells her that he intends to keep her for the remainder of her life.
Lucky for Sophie, the giant who snatched Sophie away is a Big Friendly Giant who sets off to Dream Country every night to collect dreams and spread them to households while bottling the nightmares away in his lab. He is indeed big, but as we soon learn, the other 9 giants are as much as twice as large as him and they aren’t so friendly. They eat humans, and children are some of their favorite snacks. With imaginative names like Meatdripper, Fleshlumpeater, Bloodbottler, and Gizzardgulper that could only be concocted by Dahl. I was disappointed that Mathison and Spielberg made these supposedly menacing creatures into giant ogres who pose dwarf-sized threats.
It is so hard to distinguish between the best movies of the year and the ones that I like to watch repeatedly. Sometimes they are one and the same. I absolutely loved The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I have a feeling that my enjoyment of the movie is more about my personal connection than the actual worth of the film.
There are also several very good films that I consider extremely worthy of being considered the best of the year, such as; Lincoln, Life of Pi, The Master, and Silver Linings Playbook. They are honorable mentions, but unfortunately I had to cut it down to three.
How deeply should I think about a movie who’s star is a farting corpse? If that were really all it was, I wouldn’t be giving it a second thought, but any movie that leaves a theater of people alternatively cackling with raucous laughter and asking themselves what the hell they just watched is worth talking about. I did come away with one thought… From now on, I’m going to fart in front of my closest friends as an expression of love.
I’m not even sure how a movie like Swiss Army Man is conceived. Though I guess I should expect it from the directing duo, “Daniels” who made the crazy video for the song, “Turn Down For What.” I don’t know how they came up with the idea, but I’m glad that they did. I’m glad that films like this are being made. As sophomoric as much of it was, it was strange and unique and beautiful.
Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe turned in a couple of funny and very moving performances. This film has so much ambition for a bleak, body oriented comedy. The focus is the absurdity of the human condition. We’re led along by our gross bodies, yet we spend all our lives denying and concealing their urges. The film frequently achieves a kind of weird poetry. A shot of a pallid, waxy Radcliffe laying in a bed of clover with a turd next to his head is especially beautiful. It sounds completely absurd and unappealing as I write it here, but that is what this film does so well. What sounds disgusting or juvenile actually plays out very differently on screen.
Underneath all of the bodily function humor, we have a very familiar story about a fairly sad protagonist who overcomes his fears and issues with the help of an eccentric and fearless friend. Filled with great pop culture references, “If you don’t know Jurassic Park, you don’t know…” and catchy music that will have you humming along, this is an emotional film that left me with a huge smile beaming across my face. I’m not sure how long it will linger in my memory or how it will stand the test of time, but I had a great time watching it. I think the ending will leave you questioning what you just saw while you laugh uncontrollably. Be sure to see it with people. This is a film that like a fart should be shared with the ones you love.
The Neon Demon is an uncompromisingly divisive film. The 10th feature film for Nicolas Winding Refn who has made quite a name for himself with his unique style and controversial subject matter. His best known previous film was the extremely well received 2011 film, Drive, starring Ryan Gosling. After returning to the screen with Ryan Gosling in 2013’s Only God Forgives, Refn has now chosen to make a very female-centric film in The Neon Demon. In it there is a stirring commentary on the culture of beauty in our society today.
Refn said that this film was allowing him to be born into the body of a beautiful 16 year old girl. He didn’t know what it was like to be beautiful and with two daughters, the oldest of which is 13, he wanted to explore the idea of beauty and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Some believe that Refn has gone too far and has slipped into the realm of smut in his latest film. I can see where they are coming from since there are some very extreme taboos that he plays with including cannibalism and necrophilia. However, while it certainly is not for everyone, The Neon Demon is a powerful film which has had me pondering its themes of beauty and death ever since I saw it last week.
You will probably notice a pattern with my picks as we continue to go through this exercise. I’m looking for films that have staying power. I have as much fun as the next guy in the moment, munching popcorn to an action flick, but if you ask me for details a month or two down the road I will give you a blank stare. I love movies that impact you and leave you thinking and feeling something more than entertained.
Based on the 1975 novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, the entire movie can be summed up in the first sentence of Ballard’s novel.
Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.
As I have been looking at my top films for a given year, I needed a method for looking at a large number of films for the year so that I could compare them. In my search, I came across Letterboxd. I tried Letterboxd a few years back before it had the number of users that it does today. They have made significant improvements and the user community is phenomenal. I would encourage any movie lover to keep their film diary at Letterboxd.
The site has also let me look at a number of films from any given year and sort them in a multitude of ways. Letterboxd has 12,585 films listed with a release date of 2014. This is also where the featured image comes from and where I will pull the featured image from all of my annual entries. This is to give you a chance to see some of the other films that I had to pass over to get my favorites. According to the site, I have seen 63 of those films. So with that, let’s look at my top 3 films of 2014.
