We Got This Covered’s Top 10 Movies Of 2014

2014, though not the strongest year for film in recent memory, certainly provided many memorable titles that we're all eager to watch again. While it's hard to say that there was one definitive movie that absolutely blew everyone away this past year, there were a rather large handful that made a strong impact on the film community. As you've surely seen by this point, the review team at We Got This Covered have all given you their own personal best of lists. Now, however, we've compiled one more top 10 taking into account each individual writer's picks. What you'll see here is our collective choices for the best that 2014 had to offer. Whether it be superhero films, innovative indies, thought-provoking sci-fi or animated wonders, the following 10 movies are what the We Got This Covered team feels are representative of cinema's highest points in 2014. Enjoy! 10) Snowpiercer Movies like this just don't get made any more. Boasting a stellar cast, a bonkers concept and a steam punk pirate version of John Hurt, Snowpiercer is something special. The screenplay may clunk and the action may defy comprehension, but it's a perfect storm of bat-shit insanity that keeps on giving. Chris Evans is gruff as hell as the man inciting revolution on the last bastion of human society - a train that has devolved into a bonkers Marxist nightmare as it circumvents a globe in a permanent apocalyptic winter. Tilda Swinton is magnificent, Jamie Bell does his best Colin Farrell impression and Alison Pill plays the organ in a world that is equal parts Gilliam and Glukhovsky - and if those aren't selling points I don't know what is. Following the the box office flop of Danny Boyle's Sunshine, major studios seemed reluctant to invest in another ambitious sci-fi, but boy are we glad they shelled out for this one. Everyone loves a crazy movie, and Snowpiercer is about as crazy as you can get. 9) X-Men: Days of Future Past Not everyone was excited for X-Men: Days of Future Past, not because people don't like the X-Men, but because they had been let down by the franchise too many times before to really get their hopes up. Also, audiences were a bit nervous about how well Bryan Singer would be able to balance out the immense cast, time-travel storyline and larger themes coherently - but man did he pull it off. X-Men: Days of Future Past is not only the best X-Men film yet, but one of the best superhero films of all-time. It's simply just a really great viewing experience provided by a group of people more than willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. As the Avengers half of Marvel’s cinematic universe grows more and more tired, this is the kind of superhero movie that really deserves your money. It’s stuff like this that made me us want to be film critics in the first place: unexpected surprises that defy preconceptions and make the world a more enjoyable place. Sure, it's not perfect, but when this much zany fun is on offer, perfection isn’t a necessary requirement. Brett Ratner, McG et al. can take their committee-written productions and shove ‘em – X-Men: Days of Future Past is the bomb. 8) Boyhood The first time you watch Boyhood, it’s hard to argue that Richard Linklater wasted his time by filming the story of an average kid from Texas over the course of the 12 years it took star Ellar Coltrane to age from adolescence to adulthood. Boyhood is both a science experiment and an astounding artistic achievement, a still frame look at each of the formative years of a young man’s life. Played in sequence, these glimpses into the lives of Mason Junior and Coltrane blur together to create the kind of life in motion film has always captured, but rarely from such a macroscopic level. Watch Boyhood a second time, and its merits as an actual film are more open to debate, with peaks and valleys revealing themselves as they do in life itself. The real power to Boyhood isn’t in the decade-spanning conceit, but in how that conceit makes the viewer filter Mason’s growth through their own. The fact is, most teenagers aren’t very interesting people, which is why Boyhood isn’t really Mason’s story so much as it is your own. Like any good time capsule, the magic of first opening up to Boyhood won’t repeat itself until you yourself have something new to bring to it. As such, Boyhood may not be 2014’s single best film, but it will undoubtedly be among the year’s most enduring. 7) The LEGO Movie 2014 was full of films that were far better than they had any right to be, and The LEGO Movie is undoubtedly one of them. We have dynamic directing duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the masterminds behind the equally surprising 21 Jump Street and its sequel) to thank for that. They turned what initially sounded like yet another attempt by Hollywood to turn a recognizable brand into a blockbuster film franchise into a fun, smart, imaginative, delightful, funny, and thoughtful effort that truly understands why LEGO has endured the test of time, and why the little building toy is so important to countless fans around the world. The LEGO Movie is unlike any animated film we’ve seen; Lord and Miller creatively use every kind of LEGO piece ever invented for their purposes, leading to some surprisingly hilarious and oftentimes ingenious creations and landscapes. The characters are memorable and relatable, and the story takes some surprisingly honest twists and turns that aren’t normally found in blockbuster family fare. Add in the incredibly catchy theme, “Everything is Awesome,” and you’ve got one of the most heart-warming and fun films of the year. 6) The Grand Budapest Hotel Of all the treats that filmmaker Wes Anderson has concocted, The Grand Budapest Hotel is easily the most overstuffed – and is all the better for it. The madcap, magnificently acted, slyly constructed comedy is about the friendship between a decadent hotel owner, Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), and his loyal lobby boy with a pencil mustache, Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori). The plot thickens when one of Gustave’s lovers bequeaths a painting to him, setting a series of suspicions, crimes and misdemeanors into motion. Leading the charge is Fiennes, with the exalted voice and deft comic timing more accustomed to Chaplin than the English actor. He anchors the production, one both playful (check out the zippy chase scene through the snowy Alps) and precise – many of the shots are symmetrical, as per the director’s style. The film is also stuffed to the brim with quick jokes, dazzling production design and genre jumping (prison break drama, slapstick comedy, revenge thriller). With so much going on, it is not surprising that Anderson’s latest improves on later viewings. In one of the film’s signature lines, Gustave tells Zero that, “there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” However, in his latest, the idiosyncratic and imaginative The Grand Budapest Hotel, the light outweighs the dark, and the fantasy resonates more than the fascism. 5) Under the Skin Under the Skin has the exact same plot as any first contact film from Le Voyage dans la Lune to Avatar: species travels to new celestial body, encounters native life forms, mayhem ensues. Stripped down to a beat sheet skeleton, it’s a giant cliché. And yet, Under the Skin is also the most singularly haunting film of 2014, an overwhelming plunge into the endless void of space and death that’s flecked with the distant white of starlight and life. A speck of pink living, driving, and stalking amidst the nothingness is the sublimely cast Scarlett Johansson as an alien mimic prowling Glasgow for prey. To say even that much is to say far more than the film ever does, and despite its hypnotic soundtrack, it’s the silence of Under the Skin that gives it an otherworldly power. Like the obsidian Monolith from one of the sci-fi classics it often evokes, Under the Skin stands before you unyielding, unkind, but not uninviting. It gives so little because it has faith the viewer can make their way through the rich fog of its ambiguities. Playfully masking the only line of exposition as a pun (when trawling for men to abduct, the creature often asks for directions to the “M-8.”), Jonathan Glazer has directed one of the year’s simplest stories in the most audaciously opaque means imaginable. Beyond just its entrancing compositions and experiments with form, Under the Skin is the most “movie” movie of 2014, a dark star in the constellation of cinema as visual medium, and, as Roger Ebert would say, “machine that generates empathy.” Whether that empathy can, or should be shared with a thing that doesn’t have any of its own is just another of Under the Skin’s many entangling mysteries. 4) Whiplash A dazzling duel between drummer and drill sergeant instructor, Whiplash is the year’s most unflinching thriller – not bad for a film set mostly in a music conservatory. It follows Andrew (Miles Teller), a student that wants to be the greatest drummer of his generation. Ensnared and invigorated, the freshman walks around New York with his ear buds in, the tinny clasps of drums vibrating through his head. However, as he starts clashing with his masochistic teacher, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), those noises vanish into a void of emptiness. Instead of letting the pain drag him down, Andrew strives even greater to achieve perfection. Whiplash contains two of the best performances of 2014. As the stubborn, bitter Andrew, Teller did most of the drumming, bringing the role a startling authenticity. Meanwhile, Simmons is chilling and sourly funny yet also humanizes his character so that Fletcher’s motive for pushing his students feel realized. The film, a master-class in screenwriting, veers in unpredictable directions and always creates greater stakes for Andrew as he tries to prove his worth. Fletcher’s classes, meanwhile, are thick with suspense, as any missed beat or off-key note gets the teacher’s fury. The feud at the thriller’s center leads up to one of the greatest finales in contemporary cinema, an electrifying concert sequence that is edited and shot with flare. The audience walks out on a dizzying high, feeling as rattled and riveted as the title would indicate. 3) Birdman It’s hard to think of a more meta movie in 2014 than Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, but it’s funny that as cinephiles celebrated a quarter of a century since Michael Keaton’s defining turn as the Dark Knight in Tim Burton’s Batman, Iñárritu and Keaton would team-up to take it all apart. But Birdman isn’t just a clever commentary on Keaton’s career, or a deconstruction of Hollywood’s superhero obsession. No, it’s also an ode to the need to free the creative beast, a take down of cultural snobbery, and a love letter to those who will risk anything – life, limb or dignity – to make something that truly matters, even if it only just matters to them. But aside from snide commentary about how comic book movies are killing the culture and stifling the soul, one must salute Birdman as a technical achievement. Filmed as if it were one, long, continuous take, Iñárritu doubled his difficulty by shooting in a real Broadway theatre versus building a set with removable walls that would have made camera movements easier. And then, the director takes things further with an extended sequence where Keaton’s character Riggan Thomson seems himself flying around Manhattan, and the line between what’s real and what’s imagined becomes as blurry for the audience as it does for Riggan. Of course, all kinds of technical mastery wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans if it weren’t for the great cast. Keaton is a standout because so much of Riggan’s story is metaphorical for the actor, but there’s something about just how far out on the ledge that he goes. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that he doesn’t take for granted, and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor would be icing on the cake. Ably supported by Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough, Lindsay Duncan, and especially Edward Norton, Keaton makes Birdman so much more than an inside joke. The film is a compelling comedy/drama in its own right, brought to you by a director at the peak of his technical game. 2) Nightcrawler It's incredibly difficult to build an entire movie around a complete creep, but first-time director Dan Gilroy manages the task with aplomb in Nightcrawler, creating an absorbing and disturbing thriller that unsettles as much as it electrifies. Jake Gyllenhaal is scary-good (and just plain scary) as Lou Bloom, an opportunistic leech who finds his calling as an overnight TV newsman. "If it bleeds, it leads," he's told by another journalist (Bill Paxton), and Lou takes to that dogma like a moth to flame. Stalking the city streets and always hunting for his next story, Lou is unnervingly devoted to his chosen profession. Gyllenhaal underwent an extreme physical transformation to play the role, and his sunken eyes are the most terrifying part of Nightcrawler. You understand why they're sunken in too - because Lou, a vampire of the modern era, would never risk closing them and missing a single moment of marketable footage. He's naked ambition personified. Nightcrawler is built around his captivating performance, but Gyllenhaal is far from the film's only strength. Rene Russo relishes the part of Nina, a producer at a local TV station who strives toward a certain image for her program: "A screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut." In a sick and twisted way, she and Lou are made for each other, two ruthless entrepreneurs feeding off a culture that demands its daily blood and guts. Gilroy doesn't shy away from how unholy their alliance truly is. He also doesn't take any half-measures in terms of filming; Gilroy's Los Angeles plays like a slick, modern blend of Drive and Mean Streets, marrying neo-noir visual stylings with an engaging restlessness. It's a way we've never seen the oft-filmed city before. The script is also a biting satire of our sensationalist news culture. Lou is a vulture, to be sure, but he's also a savvy businessman, always looking for the next rung up and searching for ways to improve his bargaining positions. That the guy is so successful just speaks to Nightcrawler's pessimism about the way things are now, and the way they are going. Soon, the film implies, there will come a time when nothing is safe from Lou's invading lens, when privacy will shrivel and die under the beam of his ever-present flashlight. Nightcrawler is one of the year's scariest thrillers, wired into the modern state of the media and intelligent enough to craft a tall tale that appears more plausible with every passing day. 1) Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians Of The Galaxy coming in at number one? You better believe it. James Gunn's celestial caper is a galactic testament to everything we love about Hollywood magic, and the mere fact that Marvel let Gunn make the movie he wanted - with characters who weren't marketable until after release - keeps my spirits high about not only the Marvel Universe, but mainstream Hollywood in general. Where do you even want me to start here? The soundtrack is easily one of the best of 2014, two CGI characters end up striking some of the year's sweetest on-screen chemistry, Chris Pratt asserts himself as a charismatic leading lad, Gunn includes a Lloyd Kaufman cameo.....this is what happens when you let creative minds thrive instead of being stifled by mass audience appeal and promotional ability. Guardians Of The Galaxy represents a bold new direction for Marvel thanks to a Troma-bred filmmaker who believed in a rag-tag group of heroes the world knew nothing about, turning them into the lovable characters that the studio so hoped the Guardians would become.