Films of 2014 certainly didn’t suffer from lack of variety. There were brilliant documentaries about whistleblowers and indie bands and bio-pics about enigma-decoding mathematicians and Olympic wrestlers. There was a reefer-toking detective, a boy growing up a dozen years in 3 hours and more robots pulverizing architecture. Without this medley of stories, it would have been significantly less fun to go to the movies. Luckily, it was a blast. Below is a brief list of some of the finest films produced in 2014.
5. Gone Girl
Gone Girl expertly revived the suburban noir for modern theaters. Based on Gillian Flynn’s novel by the same title, director David Fincher crafted another fine film in his career’s already-superb catalogue. On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears and leaves her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) in the tent of a media circus while all evidence implicates him as her murderer. The movie boasts a disorienting bunch of lived-in characters in the periphery, from the amoral criminal lawyer (Tyler Perry) to Nick’s bespectacled, critical sister Margo (Carrie Coon). An intricately composited plot and universal sense of distrust provide this film with a misanthropic view of life in the ‘burbs.
4. I Origins
I Origins focuses on two molecular biologists (Michael Pitt and Brit Marling) who are observing different species to look for a genetic marker that would denote the origin of the evolution of the eyeball. Since theists often use the human eye’s complicated machinery as evidence of an intelligent design, finding a species that could adapt to have light-sensitive cells (vision) would ostensibly discredit intelligent design. This conceit is the launchpad for I Origins and only the first third of the movie. It’s poignant, visually stunning and philosophically quite heavy.
3. Citizenfour
With classic cinematic elements of an international spy thriller, from encrypted communication with covert sources, hiding out in a glamorous hotel overseas, a secret police, massive government secrets and a hostage situation of national scale, Citizenfour would be much less scary if it weren’t a documentary. Before Edward Snowden began sharing confidential documents about the indiscriminate scrutiny from the National Security Agency in June 2013, he contacted London Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who recorded his days being holed up in a Hong Kong hotel. Unlike a typical documentary that retrospectively focuses on a subject, Poitras chronicles the most important American news break of the decade as it unfolds. Citizenfour is not only the finest documentary of the year, but a remarkable example of boundless paranoia.
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
There is something radically sinister in the way this film undersells its threats. The enemies include a loose murderer, ersatz Nazis and incompetence. The hotel’s concierge Gustave H, played with flamboyant composure by Ralph Fiennes, and his protégé, the lobby boy Zero, are navigators of a chaotic story. It retains Wes Anderson’s antiseptically clean, storybook quality, but may be his most ambitious film. It contains a number of genres, from an art heist, young love and prison break in its concise 99-minute runtime. And it’s all woven together flawlessly.
1. Birdman (or, ‘The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance’)
Halfway through 2014, it became incredibly exhausting to go to the theaters with the excess of derivative films that regularly flood the marquee. That’s why it’s exciting that every so often a movie like Birdman can come around and make the movies fun again. Riggan (played by Michael Keaton) is a play director who struggles with assembling his Broadway production. The story’s interminable momentum is electric, and Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography and ceaseless tracking is hypnotic and nothing short of insane. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film alternates between a deeply upsetting comedy and a whimsical tragedy with theatrical skill.
Check out the complete Arts and Culture Staff picks for Best Films of 2014 at dailyemerald.com.