Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s end-of-the-year
Top 12 ‘Favorite Films of 2014’ list. We’ve come to the final part of this
4-part special and today I’m listing my Top 3 favorite films of this past year
and my number 1 might surprise you but not in the way you think. So let’s get
back to the list…
My favorite ‘biopic’ of the year takes the spot at Number 3 as
it tells the story of a man who for years never got the recognition that he
truly deserved… until recently…
3. THE IMITATION GAME
Whereas ‘The Theory of Everything’ was a sad but fairly
uplifting biopic, ‘The Imitation Game’ is a much more heartbreaking story. It’s
the true story of computer scientist Alan Turing who, during World War II,
developed a device known as the bombe in order to decrypt the German Enigma
Code. It was a success and as some predict, not only did it save countless
lives but it also shortened the war by about two years. And yet, for the
longest time, no one ever knew anything about it because it was kept secret and
in 1952, Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency, all because he was a
homosexual which at the time was illegal in the U.K. and even today, not every
state in the U.S. has legalized same-sex marriage. And it wasn’t until last
year (technically two years ago since it happened in 2013) when his work was
finally revealed to the public and was given the proper recognition that he
deserved that he unfortunately never got when he was still alive as he died
just two years after his arrest as a result of suicide. This story truly hits
you on an emotional level as you really sympathize with this man who was
unjustly prosecuted just for being gay, which quite frankly makes it one of the
most important films to come out this year. But at the same time, it’s also a
great World War II ‘political’ thriller.
It covers all aspects of Turing’s life, from his early days
as a young lad when he both constantly got bullied by his peers and also had a
friendship with another boy named Christopher that unfortunately didn’t last as
a result of Christopher’s early death to his tenure with MI5 and his
development of the bombe to his final years and his arrest and the film
balances all of this really well. And at times it’s also a very thrilling race
against time as we see Turing and his team trying to break the Enigma Code
because they only have a certain amount of time each day to crack it before the
code changes at the end of each day. One of my favorite scenes of this year
comes during the scene where the bombe finally works because despite the fact
that they can now figure out all of the secret messages that Germany is sending
out, they can’t really do much about it. At first, they look to help out a
bunch of civilian ships that are about to be attacked by German U-Boats but
Turing points out that they can’t because otherwise the Germans will figure out
that they cracked the code and would resort to a new method of keeping their
messages secret meaning that this whole operation would end up being entirely
worthless and despite the pleads from one of Turing’s co-workers, who has a
brother on one of the targeted ships, the others soon realize Turing is right.
It’s a very hard-hitting scene where the characters realize that even though they
broke new boundaries, it comes at a cost and I guess you can say that’s
probably the reason why Turing’s work was kept hidden for so many years.
Benedict Cumberbatch gives one of the best performances of
the year in the role of Turing. As I noted before in my original review of the
film, there’s a similar aspect of Cumberbatch’s performance as Turing to his
turn as Sherlock Holmes in, well, ‘Sherlock’ in that both characters have this
awkwardness to them. But whereas Sherlock is more confident in himself and his
awkwardness comes from how he acts amongst other people, Turing is much more
awkward in the sense that obviously he’s hiding a big secret from everyone,
that being his homosexuality. There’s a scene in which Turing learns that one
of his co-workers is secretly a Soviet spy but learns that if he reveals this
to anyone, then the spy, being the only one that Turing has shared his secret
with at this point in time, will then spill the beans about him being gay.
Again, it’s all a case of Turing being in an incredibly tough and unfair
situation in a time when people like him were looked down upon by everyone
around them. It’s unclear whether or not Cumberbatch will actually win any
major awards for his performance here giving how many other great performances
we’ve gotten this year but it’s still one of the best performances of the year
and the highlight of a very well-directed and well-acted biopic that will
hopefully help continue to highlight the truly groundbreaking work that Turing
did in his life and the fact that he sadly got prosecuted just for being
homosexual is something that unfortunately is still fairly common today in
certain ways.
My Number 2 pick is the latest, and more importantly, the
best entry in the franchise to date. Who would’ve thought that a series that
started to go into decline with its third installment would rise from the ashes
to deliver another superb superhero film?
2. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
As we all know, in 2006 the X-Men film franchise started to
go into a rapid decline after ‘X-Men’ and ‘X2’ director Bryan Singer decided
not to come back to direct the third film. While admittedly I don’t think
‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ is ‘as bad’ as some have put it out to be, it was still
a major disappointment that didn’t do its famous comic storyline ‘Dark Phoenix’
justice. Things got even worse with the series’ first spin-off, ‘X-Men Origins:
Wolverine’, which was just a mediocre superhero film in pretty much every
single aspect. It wasn’t until 2011 when the series finally started to get back
on track with ‘X-Men: First Class’ and one of the key reasons for the success
of ‘First Class’ was the return of Bryan Singer to the franchise. He may not
have directed the film, but he did co-write/produce it as X-Men: First Class,
with its badass James Bond-esque 60’s atmosphere and terrific cast highlighted
by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as the younger versions of Professor X
and Magneto, respectively, was easily one of the best superhero films of the
last few years. Wolverine also got a much better spin-off two years later with
‘The Wolverine’. And this year, Singer, for the first time in more than a
decade, returns to the position of director with ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’,
which is easily the best film in the series to date and his return to the
series that he helped start in the first place is more than welcome.
This entry was based off of arguably the most famous ‘X-Men’
comics storyline to date, ‘Days of Future Past’, though technically it does
stray quite a bit from the source material as shown from various changes like
having Wolverine go back in time instead of Kitty Pryde, among other things.
But that’s okay because the film is still very well-written. True, this series
has been known (and not 100% in a good way) for emphasizing more on Wolverine
than any other of the many mutant characters but here, Wolverine isn’t the main
character in this entry. Instead, it focuses more on the younger versions of
Professor X, Magneto, and Mystique. And sure, that still means that all of the
other roles in this film are much smaller by comparison but everyone does their
job in their various bits of screen-time. Whereas previous X-Men movies have
had one weak link in their casts (like January Jones in ‘First Class’ or
Svetlana Khodchenkova in ‘The Wolverine’), ‘Days of Future Past’ has the best
ensemble cast of any film in the entire series with everyone doing an excellent
job. This film, more than previous X-Men films, also is the first to really
showcase the ‘team’ element of the series in the action sequences so really,
this film is probably the closest in spirit to the comics.
In ‘First Class’, the biggest standout of the cast was
Michael Fassbender as Magneto, which makes sense considering that ‘First Class’
is pretty much Magneto’s story. In ‘Days of Future Past’, though, it’s the
other way around and the biggest standout is James McAvoy as Xavier in what is
easily Xavier’s story. The first time he appears, we see that he’s become a
shell of his former self after the whole incident with Magneto in Cuba during
the Cuban Missile Crisis in ‘First Class’, which ended up with him both losing
his legs and his ‘adoptive’ sister Mystique, who ended up going with Magneto.
It’s fascinating to see Xavier at such an all-time low to the point where, with
Beast’s help, he frequently takes an antidote that gives him the ability to
walk again but at the same time also blocks his telepathic ability, which he’s
completely fine with because he could no longer deal with the voices in his
head. It’s only until Wolverine comes along to help guide him back to being the
man that he once was, with a little help from his future self as well (on that
note, it’s awesome to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen reprise their roles
as Professor X and Magneto one last time and they go out on a high note; not
only that, but the scene between young and old Xavier is one of the best scenes
in the film). Of course, Michael Fassbender is once again excellent as young
Magneto as well and Jennifer Lawrence, who was already excellent as young
Mystique in ‘First Class’, is even better here.
Finally, let’s talk about the ending of the film, which of
course did one crucial thing that altered the entire film franchise. After Wolverine’s
journey back in time is complete, he returns to the future but now finds
himself in an alternate reality where both Cyclops and Jean Grey are alive,
thereby erasing the continuity of ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’. Not only that, but
at the end we see that Wolverine in the past was picked up by Mystique posing
as General Stryker; in other words, it looks like ‘Origins: Wolverine’ was
erased as well. Some aren’t as big on this ending as it ‘messes up’ the entire
continuity of the franchise but I don’t see why that’s such a big problem if it
means we can now forget about the two weakest entries in the entire series. It’s
clear that this is what the filmmakers were looking to do; fix the wrongs of
the previous entries and quite frankly they succeed in doing so. After two
straight duds as far as superhero films go, the ‘X-Men’ film franchise is now
back on track and now ‘Days of Future Past’ stands tall as the best ‘X-Men’
film to date and a welcome return to the franchise for director Bryan Singer,
who was sorely missed by all ‘X-Men’ fans. It’ll be interesting to see what
happens next with this franchise when ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ hits theaters in
2016, apparently set to be the end of this ‘reboot trilogy’ of X-Men films that
began back in 2011 with ‘First Class’.
And finally, we come to my Number 1 pick; my absolute
favorite film of the year. My Number 1 pick is…
Yes, that’s right folks, for the first time ever, it’s a tie
as I have not one but two films taking the Number 1 spot on this list. I
couldn’t possibly pick one over the other as I loved them both equally and for
their own unique reasons. The first of these two films was the most fun movie
theater experience I’ve had this year.
1A. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Comic-Con 2012; Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige announces
that ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is in production for a 2014 release. Like many
people, my first reaction was similar to what Korath the Pursuer (Djimon
Hounsou) says when Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) tells him his ‘other’ name;
Star-Lord… “Who?” I had absolutely no idea who the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’
were and from what I can tell, not even many comic book fans knew either. I
have to admit for a while I was actually questioning Marvel’s judgment for
going with a relatively obscure series (a ‘d-list’ bunch of heroes as some
might say) as the basis of one of their major ‘Cinematic Universe’ film... cut
to today, where I’m so glad that I was wrong to question Marvel to the point
where I now have complete faith in anything they do. That’s because ‘Guardians
of the Galaxy’ ended up being not only the best superhero film of 2014 but also
the best film in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. Yes, that’s
right, I think that this film is even better than ‘The Avengers’, which
definitely speaks big words to how great a film ‘Guardians’ was. Now don’t get
me wrong, ‘Avengers’ is still a great film, but I feel that there are a few
reasons as to why ‘Guardians’ is the better movie.
First of all, I think it’s much funnier than ‘Avengers’,
which admittedly didn’t start getting into the humor up until Iron Man first
appeared on screen. ‘Guardians’ is more consistent with the humor from beginning
to end and also a bit more daring in its humor. I still can’t believe that a
MCU movie under the Disney banner could get away with not only a joke about how
Star-Lord’s ship would look like a Jackson Pollack painting if they had a
black-light (which I’ll admit I did not get until a while after seeing the film
twice) but also the line ‘they got my dick message’. But while ‘Guardians’ does
have a lot of comedic dialogue/moments, that doesn’t mean that it’s 100% a
comedy. It still gives time for some serious moments (more on that in a sec). ‘Avengers’
admittedly also has a rather simple story; Loki tries to take over the world
with help from the Chitauri and the Avengers team up to stop him. There’s
nothing wrong with that, for the record, but ‘Guardians’ has a much more
complex story… and yes, I’m aware that some people criticized the movie for
having a complicated story but really, I never noticed.
Finally, the biggest reason why ‘Guardians’ is better than
‘Avengers’ is because of its emotional resonance. This movie starts off not
with a funny scene but a really damn sad scene where Peter Quill’s mom dies
right in front of him. Definitely not your typical opener to a superhero film.
But then after Quill is abducted by Yondu and his Ravagers and the Marvel
Studios logo runs, it cuts to Quill dancing to ‘Come and Get your Love’ during
the opening credits, a perfect way to showcase what kind of adventure we’re in
for while also highlighting one of the best elements of the entire film; its
soundtrack. It’s an adventure in which we care about the main characters, who
may be, to quote one of the Nova Corps members, a ‘bunch of a-holes’, but in
reality they’re just looking for a place where they belong and that place is
with each other. True, this may be a light-hearted superhero adventure in the
veins of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Serenity’ but it also takes time for effectively
emotional moments, from Quill seemingly sacrificing himself to save Gamora when
she’s left floating in space to Groot sacrificing himself to save the others
when Ronan’s ship crash-lands into Xandar. That scene where Rocket tries to
stop Groot from doing it and Groot comforts Rocket by placing one of his twigs
on his face… gets me every time, let me tell you.
Even though the film focuses on a five-person group as its
heroes, it does an excellent job at balancing out their roles in the film and
all five roles are perfectly cast. As soon as the first trailer hit for the
film, it was immediately proven that Chris Pratt was perfectly cast in the role
of the charming yet cocky Star-Lord. Zoe Saldana is also superb in the role of
Gamora, who because she’s the most serious member of the group doesn’t get as
many funny bits of dialogue but she still has a few great lines here and there,
like when she laments about how she’s going to die surrounding by the biggest
idiots in the galaxy or when she tells Star-Lord she won’t fall for his ‘pelvic
sorcery’. The biggest surprise, though, is easily Dave Bautista as Drax. Like
Gamora, Drax is also a very serious character but in his case this results in
quite a lot of hilarity due to the fact that metaphors go over his head (even
though he claims that nothing goes over his head as his reflexes are fast
enough to catch it). It’s even more impressive considering that from what I
read online before seeing the film, it seemed like Drax would be the least
memorable of the group and yet it’s arguably the other way around. And of
course, as everyone predicted beforehand, Groot and Rocket are easily the
biggest standouts of the film with both Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper,
respectively, doing phenomenal jobs in the roles.
Now let’s talk about the villains, because like with almost
every other MCU film that does not feature Loki, they’re regarded as the
weakest parts of the movie. But I heavily disagree with that; in fact, I assure
you that if I didn’t like this film’s villains then ‘Guardians’ wouldn’t have
been this high up on the list and I wouldn’t have said that it was better than
‘Avengers’. I think Ronan’s a bad-ass villain for a few reasons. First of all,
he does have a clear motive; he wants to eliminate his race’s mortal enemies,
the Xandarians. If anything, that’s better than him just being evil. Second, he
doesn’t go down so easily during the final battle. It actually takes the
Guardians three tries just to defeat him and they do so in one of my favorite
(and one of the most hilarious) finales to any superhero film that I’ve seen
when Star-Lord distracts the big turd-blossom with a dance-off. Finally, and
perhaps most importantly, HE DEFIES THANOS! We never saw Loki do that so if you
ask me, Ronan and Nebula get major props in my book for actually having the
guts to say ‘screw you’ to frigging Thanos. As for Nebula, in the first half of
the film she unfortunately gets screwed by not getting much to do but if
anything they make up for it in the second half of the film. Plus, unlike
Ronan, she does survive the final battle so hopefully she’ll be back in the
future and I know that in the comics she’s also an adversary of the Avengers
and plays a part in the ‘Infinity War’ storyline so if you’re reading this
Russo brothers… hint hint…
‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is perhaps the most important
superhero film yet in this current era of superhero films because it shows that
Marvel is not afraid to go outside their comfort zone. Heck, this whole Marvel Cinematic
Universe itself was a major gamble as nothing like it had ever been done before
and now in 2014 Marvel Studios has established one heck of a cinematic universe.
But ‘Guardians’ also shows that they’re willing to make a film even if the
characters that well known. While DC has still not yet done any superhero film
that didn’t primarily star Batman or Superman, Marvel Studios has done films
for supposedly B-list characters like Iron Man and Thor, made two excellent movies
featuring the supposedly bland Captain America, and of course, made a movie in
which we cared so much about a frigging talking raccoon and a walking tree creature
that could only say ‘I Am Groot’ in that order. Kudos to you Marvel for yet
another excellent entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one that expands
upon the universe more than any other film in the franchise without even doing
that much to connect it to the other MCU movies other than using Thanos (now
played by Josh Brolin who despite being on screen for barely 3 minutes
immediately makes quite the intimidating impression)… and that’s perfectly okay
in my book. These ‘a-holes’ who are not ‘100% dicks’ managed to prove everyone
wrong and now stand as part of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to
date.
As for my second Number 1 pick, this film just blew me away from
beginning to end and really, would you ever expect anything less… from
Christopher Nolan?
1B. INTERSTELLAR
If I haven’t already mentioned this before in a previous
post, I’m a huge fan of ‘old-school’ blockbusters. By that, I mean when a
big-budget film, in its execution, feels like a classic blockbuster from way
back when, even with all of the modern film tricks, that is an absolute
must-see in the theater, which is especially relevant now considering that the
advancements in technology and services like Redbox and Netflix have led to
some debate about the concept of going to the movie theaters possibly becoming ‘obsolete’,
which I must say I would absolutely hate to see if it really happened. Some
recent examples of this include ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ and ‘Super
8’ and that is also the case with ‘Interstellar’. Hopefully you got the chance
to see this film in theaters, especially if you got to see in both IMAX and in
70 mm projection. I unfortunately never got the chance to see Nolan’s last two
Batman films in IMAX so I made a big effort to see this film in IMAX the first
time and I was even luckier to have the chance to see it in 70 mm projection. I
literally have no idea how long it has been since I’ve seen a movie projected
in that way giving how most theaters have switched to digital projection and I
must say, it actually looks much better when projected in this fashion. You
could actually hear the projector running during some of the quiet parts of the
movie. This is the very definition of pure cinematic nostalgia. I saw this
movie twice in theaters and while I didn’t see it in IMAX the second time, I
got the chance to see it in 35 mm at my local theater and it was just as
awesome as it was the first time.
This film is a visual masterpiece with some truly amazing
visuals and like in his ‘Dark Knight’ movies, Nolan made an effort to use as
many practical effects as possible. The dust storms on Earth were real, the
visuals in space were done beforehand and used during filming so that the
actors didn’t have to do it in front of a green screen, and all of the new
worlds that the characters travel to were all filmed in practical locations,
which I did like as while the looks of the planets may have been very simple
compared to worlds in other sci-fi films it still maintained that sense of
realism that Nolan has such a knack for, and yes I say this even though it’s a
sci-fi movie. Sometimes the simplest visuals yield the best results. The
cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema is superb (the absence of Wally Pfister is
not that big of a loss) as is the score by Hans Zimmer… oh my god, the score
was absolutely superb, especially in the scenes where Cooper leaves home as
Murph runs out too late to say goodbye (‘Stay’) and of course as many people
have already mentioned, the scene where Cooper and Brand try to dock with their
ship after the incident with Dr. Mann resulted in it getting damaged (‘No Time
for Caution’), which is easily one of the best scenes in the entire film. Some
say that the music was too overpowering but I wouldn’t say that’s the problem.
As noted before, it’s in the sound design which sometimes is overpowering to
the point where it’s hard to hear any dialogue at times.
But at the same time, this movie also benefits from a lot of
genuinely emotional resonance, which some feel Nolan’s work usually lacks. As I
said in my Spoiler Post for the film, I don’t entirely agree on that because I
feel that there is emotional depth in his movies, it’s just that it’s always
reserved for the main character (like Dom in ‘Inception’, just to name an
example). Technically that’s the case here too but here it’s done perfectly in
terms of the relationship between Cooper and Murph. It’s a heartbreaking situation
to see both of them having to deal with him being forced to leave her and her
brother behind to go off on this mission and we see both of them struggle to
deal with this on an emotional level. There were two scenes that really hit me
on an emotional level. The first is when Cooper talks to Murph before leaving
and, as noted earlier, he leaves off as Murph rushes out unfortunately unable
to say goodbye as he leaves. The other is after Cooper has already spent many
years away from home due to him and the other members of his crew spending too
long on Planet Miller. He watches all of the video logs made by Tom as he grows
up, marries, and has a kid and of course gets very emotional about it (in one
of the most powerful scenes of the movie consisting of just a single shot of
Cooper reacting to everything) and then Murph makes one video log (this being
the first appearance of Jessica Chastain in the film) telling him that she’s
now as old as he was when he left and she wishes he was home by now. Matthew
McConaughey, Chastain, and Mackenzie Foy all do fantastic jobs in the roles of
Cooper and older and young Murph, respectively. I also want to highlight Bill
Irwin for his great turn as the robot TARS, who provides some very funny quips
of dialogue in his back and forth with Cooper. Of course, as with any Nolan
movie, the cast is superb from top to bottom including Anne Hathaway, Michael
Caine, Wes Bentley, and David Gyasi. And yes, I liked the whole subplot with
Matt Damon’s character, Dr. Mann. Did it detour from the main story? Yes, but
at the same time I also found it very fascinating to have a character like Mann
who becomes so dis-enchanted with trying to find a new home for the people of Earth
that he cowardly tries to get back home, even if it means that he messing
everything up for Cooper’s crew.
In short, ‘Interstellar’ was a movie I was anticipating ever
since Nolan was hired to direct because as I’ve said before, Nolan in my
opinion has yet to make a bad film. And I’m sure some of you are going to
accuse me of being a Nolan fan boy and, sure enough, there have been plenty of
comments made by these fan-boys attacking anyone who dared not to like this
film just like what happened when ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ got released back in
2012. But like I said before, I’m not that stupid. I recognize that this film
was very polarizing and it has its critics. But me personally, this film really
impacted me on an emotional level and was truly a one-of-a-kind cinematic
experience. Some say the idea of going to the cinema has become old-fashioned
due to services like Redbox and Netflix but I’m not one of those people. I
still enjoy going to the theater to see a new film and films like
‘Interstellar’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ showcase why I love doing this. In
the case of ‘Guardians’, it shows that I go the cinema to have fun (you starting
to understand why this list was predominantly blockbusters now?) and in the
case of ‘Interstellar’, it’s even better when a film is truly a must-see event
in theaters, especially if you get the chance to see it on a big screen like
IMAX and see it in the old-fashioned 70mm projection. Nolan’s a man of film and
this is his love letter to it and that is why ‘Interstellar’ is one of my
absolute favorite films of the year.
So that’s it folks,
my Top 12 (or I guess you can say 13) favorite films of 2014. Thanks for
reading and it’s time to start up a whole new year of movies.
