The Top 100 Films of 2010-2014 (...And the 10 Worst)

For those who fall under its spell, cinema is a magical thing. It is what we think about, it's what we dream about, it's certainly what we talk about, and it's what we write about. And the last of these is what led me to this present undertaking, one that is now finally finished. After having seen hundreds and hundreds of motion pictures in recent years, I came to the decision  that rather than wait for the decade's conclusion for the traditional glance backwards I would do something different; I decided to try and present an in media res snapshot of how cinema looked during the first half of the twenty-teens. And while the effort was daunting it offered untold rewards in the process. Follow along to discover the best the silver screen has had to offer us of late. But first, some quick facts and superlatives!

Number of films on the list in a foreign language:  10 (1 Polish, 1 Italian, 1 Danish, 1 Swedish, 6 French)

Number of films on the list directed by women:  8

Number of directors with 2 films on the list:  8

Number of directors with 3 films on the list:  2  (which correlates directly with...)

The Best Director of the past half-decade:  Christopher Nolan;  1st runner-up: David Fincher

The Best Actress of the past half-decade:  Jennifer Lawrence;  1st runner-up: Scarlett Johansson;  2nd runner-up: Jessica Chastain

The Best Actor of the past half-decade:  Ryan Gosling;  1st runner-up: Joseph Gordon-Levitt;  2nd runner-up: Michael Fassbender


And now, without further ado, here are the 100 greatest films from 2010-2014:

100.  Prisoners
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano;  Directed: by Denis Villeneuve

99.  I Am Love
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini;  Directed by: Luca Guadagnino

98.  Killing Them Softly
Starring: Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini;  Directed by: Andrew Dominik

97.  Only Lovers Left Alive
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, John Hurt;  Directed by: Jim Jarmusch

96.  The Hunt
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Alexandra Rapaport, Thomas Bo Larsen;  Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg

95.  Win Win
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Alex Shaffer, Amy Ryan;  Directed by: Thomas McCarthy

94.  Blue Valentine
Starring: Ryan Gosling. Michelle Williams, Mike Vogel;  Directed by: Derek Cianfrance

93.  One Day
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Rafe Spall;  Directed by: Lone Scherfig

92.  Fury
Starring: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf;  Directed by: David Ayer

91.  50/50
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt; Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick;  Directed by: Jonathan Levine

90.  Blue Is the Warmest Color
Starring: Adele Exarchopoulos, Lea Seydoux;  Directed by: Abdellatif Kechiche

89.  Wreck-It Ralph
Starring: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer;  Directed by: Rich Moore

88.  Kill Your Darlings
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall;  Directed by: John Krokidas

87.  Django Unchained
Starring: Jamie Foxx. Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio;  Directed by: Quentin Tarantino

86.  The Ghost Writer
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams;  Directed by: Roman Polanski

85.  Kick-Ass
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicholas Cage;  Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

84.  Argo
Starring: Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, John Goodman;  Directed by: Ben Affleck

83.  Enemy
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Melanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon;  Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

82.  127 Hours
Starring: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara;  Directed by: Danny Boyle

81.  Amour
Starring: Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert;  Directed by: Michael Haneke

80.  The Help
Starring: Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone;  Directed by: Tate Taylor

79.  Mud
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Reese Witherspoon;  Directed by: Jeff Nichols

78.  This Is the End
Starring: Jay Baruchel. Seth Rogen, James Franco;  Directed by: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

77.  Prometheus
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron;  Directed by: Ridley Scott

76.  You and the Night
Starring: Kate Moran, Niels Schneider, Alain Delon Jr.;  Directed by: Yann Gonzalez

75.  The End of Love
Starring: Mark Webber, Shannyn Sossamon, Michael Cera;  Directed by: Mark Webber

74.  Philomena
Starring: Judi Dench; Steve Coogan;  Directed by: Stephen Frears

73.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Starring: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer;  Directed by: David Fincher

72.  The Grand Budapest Hotel
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Jude Law;  Directed by: Wes Anderson

71.  Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Starring: Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling;  Directed by: John Requa, Glenn Ficarra

70.  American Hustle
Starring: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence;  Directed by: David O. Russell

69.  The Ides of March 
Starring: Ryan Gosling. George Clooney, Evan Rachel Wood;  Directed by: George Clooney

68.  Weekend
Starring: Tom Cullen, Chris New;  Directed by: Andrew Haigh

67.  The Avengers
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson;  Directed by: Joss Whedon

66.  The Imitation Game
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode;  Directed by: Morten Tyldum

65.  Beasts of the Southern Wild
Starring: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Gina Montanna;  Directed by: Benh Zeitlin

64.  Hannah
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana;  Directed by: Joe Wright

63.  Frank
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal;  Directed by: Lenny Abrahamson

62.  Bridesmaids
Starring: Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne;  Directed by: Paul Feig

61.  Gone Girl
Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris;  Directed by: David Fincher

60.  Don Jon
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore;  Directed by: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

59.  The Town
Starring: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner;  Directed by: Ben Affleck

58.  Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Starring: Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Adam Brody;  Directed by: Lorene Scafaria

57.  Love Is Strange 
Starring: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei;  Directed by: Ira Sachs

56.  Laurence Anyways
Starring: Melvil Poupaud, Suzanne Clement, Monia Chokri;  Directed by: Xavier Dolan

55.  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland;  Directed by: Francis Lawrence

54.  The Master
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams;  Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson

53.  Starred Up
Starring: Jack O'Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend;  Directed by: David Mackenzie

52.  Blue Jasmine
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins;  Directed by: Woody Allen

51.  Animal Kingdom
Starring: James Frecheville, Guy Pearce, Jacki Weaver;  Directed by: David Michod

50.  Short Term 12
Starring: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever;  Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton

49.  Margin Call
Starring: Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore;  Directed by: J.C. Chandor

48.  Stranger by the Lake
Starring: Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick d'Assumcao;  Directed by: Alain Guiraudie

47.  Black Swan
Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel;  Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

46.  Not Fade Away
Starring: John Magaro, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote;  Directed by: David Chase

45.  Magic Mike
Starring: Channing Tatum; Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey;  Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

44.  TiMER
Starring: Emma Caulfield, John Patrick Amedori, Michelle Borth;  Directed by: Jac Schaeffer

43.  The Cabin in the Woods
Starring: Kristin Connolly, Fran Kranz, Chris Hemsworth;  Directed by: Drew Goddard

42.  Force Majeure
Starring: Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Kristofer Hivju;  Directed by: Ruben Ostlund

41.  Lincoln
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones;  Directed by: Steven Spielberg

40.  Whiplash
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser;  Directed by: Damien Chazelle

39.  Heartbeats
Starring: Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider;  Directed by: Xavier Dolan

38.  Winter's Bone
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkins, Dale Dickey;  Directed by: Debra Granik

37.  Foxcatcher
Starring: Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo;  Directed by: Bennett Miller

36.  The Dark Knight Rises
Starring: Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy;  Directed by: Christopher Nolan

35.  Blue Ruin
Starring: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves;  Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier

34.  Captain Phillips 
Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Catherine Keener;  Directed by: Paul Greengrass

33.  Hugo
Starring: Asa Butterfield. Chloe Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen;  Directed by: Martin Scorsese

32.  Safety Not Guaranteed 
Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson;  Directed by: Colin Trevorrow

31.  Guardians of the Galaxy
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista;  Directed by: James Gunn

30.  Cloud Atlas
Starring: Tome Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess;  Directed by: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer

29.  Take Shelter
Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham;  Directed by: Jeff Nichols

28.  Anna Karenina 
Starring: Keira Knightley, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jude Law;  Directed by: Joe Wright

27.  Young Adult
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson;  Directed by: Jason Reitman

26.  Frozen
Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad;  Directed by: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee

25.  Interstellar
Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain;  Directed by: Christopher Nolan

24.  Frances Ha
Starring: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Adam Driver;  Directed by: Noah Baumbach

23.  The Place Beyond the Pines
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes;  Directed by: Derek Cianfrance

22.  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieren Culkin;  Directed by: Edgar Wright

21.  Nightcrawler 
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed;  Directed by: Dan Gilroy

20.  12 Years a Slave
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender;  Directed by: Steve McQueen

19.  Looper
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt;  Directed by: Rian Johnson

18.  Life of Pi
Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall;  Directed by: Ang Lee

17.  Zero Dark Thirty
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Ehle, Chris Pratt;  Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

16.  Dallas Buyers Club
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner;  Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallee

15.  Inception
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page;  Directed by: Christopher Nolan

14.  Boyhood
Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke;  Directed by: Richard Linklater

13.  Silver Linings Playbook
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro;  Directed by: David O. Russell

12.  Her
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams;  Directed by: Spike Jonze

11.  Fish Tank
Starring: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Harry Treadaway;  Directed by: Andrea Arnold

10.  Ida
Starring: Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik;  Directed by: Pawel Pawlikowski

9.  Moneyball
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Chris Pratt;  Directed by: Bennett Miller

8.  Drive
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac;  Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

7.  Skyfall
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench;  Directed by: Sam Mendes

6.  Under the Skin
Starring: Scarlett Johannson, Adam Pearson, Paul Brannigan;  Directed by: Jonathan Glazer

5.  The Social Network
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer;  Directed by: David Fincher

4.  Beginners 
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer;  Directed by: Mike Mills

3.  Gravity
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney;  Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

2.  Inside Llewyn Davis
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake;  Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

1.  The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller;  Directed by: Stephen Chbosky


...And now, unfortunately, here are the 10 worst offerings I watched during the past half-decade:

10.  The Double
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn;  Directed by: Richard Ayoade

9.  Man of Steel
Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon;  Directed by: Zack Snyder

8.  Elysium
Starring: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley;  Directed by: Neill Blomkamp

7.  The Adventures of Tintin
Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig;  Directed by: Steven Spielberg

6.  Top Five
Starring: Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Hart;  Directed by: Chris Rock

5.  The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx;  Directed by: Marc Webb

4.  Daydream Nation
Starring: Kat Dennings, Josh Lucas, Andie MacDowell;  Directed by: Mike Goldbach

3.  Super
Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler;  Directed by: James Gunn

2.  This Must Be the Place
Starring: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Eve Hewson;  Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino

1.  Sucker Punch
Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone;  Directed by: Zack Snyder

The Top 20 Films of 2014

This post comes a bit belated, what with it now being 2015 and all. But for me it was important to see every last movie that I thought might be important to the year end rankings. Necessarily, I wasn't able to see some of the year's tail-end releases until January had already set it. Now convinced that I've done my duty as an amateur critic as capably as possible, what follows now is a list of every 2014 movie release that I've seen followed by the 20 best of the year. Enjoy!

13 Sins, 22 Jump Street, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, American Sniper, The Babadook, Bad Johnson, Belle, Big Eyes, Birdman, Blue Ruin, Boyhood, Captain American: The Winter Soldier, The Congress, Cuban Fury, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, Divergent, The Double, Edge of Tomorrow, Enemy, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Filth, Force Majeure, Foxcather, Frank, Friended to Death, Fury, The Giver, Godzilla, Gone Girl, Goodbye World, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Guardians of the Galaxy, Happy Christmas, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Horns, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1, Ida, The Imitation Game, The Immigrant, In Your Eyes, Inherent Vice, Interstellar, The Interview, Into the Woods, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Knights of Badassdom, Labor Day, Laggies, The Lego Movie, Let's Be Cops, Love Is Strange, Lucy, Maleficent, The Maze Runner, The Monuments Men, Nightcrawler, Noah, Non-Stop, Obvious Child, The One I Love, Only Lovers Left Alive, Pompeii, The Skeleton Twins, Snowpiercer, Starred Up, Still Alice, Stranger by the Lake, The Theory of Everything, Tom at the Farm, Top Five, The Two Faces of January, Unbroken, Under the Skin, Walk of Shame, The Way He Looks, Whiplash, The Wind Rises, X-Men: Days of Future Past, You and the Night        (80 films total)

Top 20 Films of 2014

20.  Fury (4 out of 5 stars)
Fury was one of two very good American-centered war films in 2014, the other being American Sniper. But, when push came to shove, I chose to side with the fictional combat tale over the one steeping in real life. Why? Because I'll always prefer a story that humanizes both sides of an intensely antagonistic struggle rather than default to the admittedly easier "us vs. them" ideology, in which "us=good" and "them =bad." Of course though, the Nazis are the bad guys, and of course this World War II set drama would culminate in one of those all too frequent High Noon style standoffs. Yet what makes Fury to be both seen and taken to heart is how it remembers to humanize the individuals underneath the uniforms, and the picture is never afraid to detour from conventional plot structure in favor of humanizing this point. Additionally, the film contains what is likely the greatest tank battle ever committed to film, an adrenaline-fueled tour de force of machinery and cinematography.

19.  Enemy (4 out of 5 stars)
Enemy marks the first collaborative effort between Jake Gyllenhaal and French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, this despite the fact that their follow-up film (Prisoners) was theatrically released first in autumn 2013. Much has been made of the fact that Gyllenhaal's first major attempt at solo headlining a franchise failed rather mundanely. Sure, there were fleeting moments of sly humor and wit hid underneath the musculature the Swedish-American donned to literally fill out the role of a mainstream action star. Thankfully that timeline was not meant to be, and he took a momentary step back from the spotlight to seriously think about what kind of actor he wanted to be. And now after a few interesting choices Enemy is the film to note that Gyllenhaal fully embraced the idea of being an indie auteur. A brief plot description for the film would be that a man living and loving in Toronto is advised by a colleague to watch a certain flick. When he does so he spots an actor in the movie that bears more than a striking resemblance to him. An exact resemblance, in fact. What follows is a tale that weaves down ever more labyrinthine corridors. And while "the double" is now a cliched plot device Villeneuve finds unsettling new ways to breathe life into a tale older than Alexandre Dumas. Also, Enemy contains what is single-handedly the greatest "what the f--k" moment from any motion picture of the year.

18.  You and the Night (4 out of 5 stars)
You and the Night feels like what the union of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Xavier Dolan's aesthetics might appear: incredibly vibrant, emotionally charged, sexual panoply laced with sorrow. This film is not only French, it might very well be the most outre French film I've ever seen. The tale ostensibly is about an attractive young man and woman who, with the aid of their cross-dressing maid, are hosting an orgy at their posh apartment one evening. And I applaud this motion picture for not shying away from some graphic sexual depictions, especially when they turn surrealistic. But the idea of group play is, by and large, merely a MacGuffin because You and the Night is so much more interested in revealing what lies naked under the skin, in the soul, than in the mere form underneath the clothes. The film's dialogue is often wonderfully over the top, and at many points I felt as if I were watching an adaptation of an obscure stage dramedy I'd never heard of before. But that is not the case, and the film stands out boldly as its own creation.

17.  The Grand Budapest Hotel (4 out of 5 stars)
The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson's second consecutive period piece, and by leaping even further into the past (one as historically astute as it is broadly fictional) the director frees himself from any lingering suspicions I harbored after his last outing, the tenderly rendered but vaguely hollow Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson's aesthetic as a filmmaker is singularly specific and inimitable. Even Tarantino, his closest stylistic cousin of the modern movie era and who paints in a recurring pattern of blood-soaked homage flecked with irony, lacks the high-wire follow through of the aesthete from Austin, Texas. And while some may deride his purview as both limited and repetitive, I think his commitment to a specific vision is what has made him one of the most original and exciting directors of twenty-first century American cinema. This latest picture of his, set in the 1930s Central European country of Zubrowka, displays a career best performance from Ralph Fiennes, never more nimbly doleful. And while Zubrowka may never have existed on any real map, it is a land well worth a visit.

16.  The Imitation Game (4 out of 5 stars)
Like a succeeding film on this list, The Imitation Game is also a World War II era combat tale, albeit one of a very different kind. This motion picture tells the remarkable true story of Alan Turing, a brilliant English mathematician who leads the charge to uncrack the Nazi's seemingly impenetrable Enigma machine. Huzzah, for king and country! And the surface tale matches that spirit, crackling with scientific inquiry until, in beatific glory, we behold one of the modern computer's first true ancestors. It's a remarkable story that is both excellently filmed and acted. The film's inner core though contains a sadder and altogether more poignant tale, one involving barbarous treatments against the then perceived disease of homosexuality and what happens when one man, deprived of true romantic love, turns ever-increasingly to the one object with won't fail him, that won't reject him.

15.  Frank (4 out of 5 stars)
Musicians have a reputation for being temperamental and difficult to work with. Some also bear the albatross of being tortured geniuses. Frank then is a story interested in the positive correlation known to exist between artistic creativity and mental illness. Michael Fassbender plays the film's title character, a man who lives his entire life wearing a giant fiberglass head. Domhnall Gleeson, playing the straight man and providing the audience with a vantage point into Frank's band before he joins it, revels in the aura of his masked lead singer and front man. Yet he still tries to determine the artistic direction they follow, in ways both large and small. But such an off-beat group, which includes a mercurial Maggie Gyllenhaal, believes that Frank must be protected from the world at large. As it unfolds, the film is by equal measures hilarious and thought-provoking, and Fassbender once again proves that he is a fantastic performer even when deprived of an actor's primary trait for storytelling: his face.

14.  Gone Girl (4 out of 5 stars)
This is a tale we've all heard before: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl experience marital strife, and then girl just...disappears. David Fincher has been on one helluva roll since '08, having directed four excellent adaptations of paperback source material (three fictional, one non-fiction). Accordingly he turns what could have been a tawdry thriller in the wrong hands into an icy indictment of the state of matrimony and exposes those secret selves lurking beneath the facade of the partner we think we know. Fincher's greatest coup though was in casting relative unknown Rosamund Pike as the missing girl in question, Amy Elliott Dunne. Once again, Fincher seems to have a preternatural gift for finding actresses who seem to blossom fully formed once he puts them onscreen, and Pike proves herself never less than magnetic under his precise direction. It must also be mentioned that Ben Affleck, portraying the man accused of killing his wife, chomps into the part with such natural douchebag charisma you'd swear he'd been born for this.

13.  Love Is Strange (4 out of 5 stars)
Love Is Strange is the best romance of 2014, and it just so happens to be a tale about two recently married gay men. Also, the men are both senior citizens. This film starts where most other romantic ones would end, with the trading of the nuptials. Ira Sachs is too clever a director to follow such well trod territory though, so instead he has created a tenderly rendered drama in which one of the men is fired from his position as a Catholic high school music instructor, and without their combined income they lose the NYC apartment which they call home. One moves in with a nephew and his family while the other crashes on the sofa of downstairs neighbors in their old building. Suddenly, having just pledged their lives together, they've never been more physically and emotionally separate from one another. Alfred Molina and John Lithgow are superb as the recently wedded duo, and they bestow both their characters and the couple's relationship with such hangdog grace and lived-in candor that it can't help but make you wish that all couples in their twilit years could be as much in love as these two are.

12.  Starred Up (4 out of 5 stars)
I've never seen a more engrossing film which purports to be in my own language and yet in which I understand less than 80% of the dialogue that is said. Jack O'Connell, he of the recent World War II epic Unbroken, stars here as a juvenile delinquent transferred (or "starred up"as per the picture's title) to a brutally intense adult prison, one in which he along with a number of his onscreen peers speak with near-impenetrable English accents. It was as if their jaws had been crammed full of broken glass, and each man violently flings his words like dangerous debris. None of this matters though because the finished product here is fantastic, and Starred Up is one of the most thoroughly rendered prison dramas to ever be put onscreen.

11.  Stranger by the Lake (4 out of 5 stars)
The term Hitchcockian is used a lot these days, but I swear that if dear old Alfred had lived long enough to make a sexually explicit thriller about a murder centered upon a gay nude beach in France then this would likely have been the end result. Stranger by the Lake functions as a meditation about men and how their desires come into direct conflict with proscribed norms and mores. I'll mention here that the film features very graphic, non-simulated sexual acts between adult males. But if that particular caveat can be overcome, then one can truly appreciate how this French thriller pulses with eroticism and danger behind every bush, beneath every wave.

10.  Force Majeure (4.5 out of 5 stars)
What happens when a man fails in a pivotal moment to act like he is expected to as the default protector of his family? This is the question posed and meditated upon in this Swedish language film. Force Majeure centers on an idyllic family spending a week at a chic ski resort. But when a seemingly out of control avalanche threatens the lives of the family Tomas, the patriarch, turns and flees while leaving his wife and two young children behind. And while the danger falls short of actually reaching them a more insidious damage creeps in. The film is both startlingly clear-eyed and often uncomfortable in its depiction of gender roles and what is assumed, fairly and unfairly, about these respective parts we occupy.

9.  Whiplash (4.5 out of 5 stars)
I'll admit to not having listened to a vast amount of jazz in my life, but director Damien Chazelle most certainly has. And he uses this musical style as both the diegetic soundtrack and the stylistic muse of his debut film. Whiplash is a motion picture that lives up to its title; it is a turbo-charged, violently kinetic exploration of how true greatness must be achieved, if it ever can be, through crucible. Miles Teller portrays a young drumming prodigy and J.K. Simmons his sadistic coach who is determined to push him to the breaking point and beyond. The dynamic interplay between these two characters, who need and repel each other in equal measure, is breathtaking to watch and unfolds with all the palpable intensity of a lucid dream.

8.  Foxcatcher (4.5 out of 5 stars)
Bennett Miller has directed only three feature-length films, all of which are stories based on actual people and circumstances. And while Capote was a gripping portrait about writing a Great American Novel in the form of a real life horror tale from the heartland it is the latter two, first Moneyball and now Foxcatcher, which ostensibly center around the world of sports. In reality though they function as obverse sides of the same coin by using athletics as an analogy to explore fundamental precepts about America itself. And while the former is an uplifting story of persevering as an underdog and using shrew acumen to get ahead it is the latter film that really sinks into your marrow and shows you just how fetid and disturbing the underbelly of patriotism in this country may truly be.

7.  Blue Ruin (4.5 out of 5 stars)
This film centers on a desire as old as the human condition itself: revenge. The picture opens on a homeless man living by the ocean, scrounging for his daily existence. It doesn't take long for us to uncover that the circumstance which drove him to such dire straits was the murder of his parents. As if that distant trauma weren't bad enough, now the responsible offender is being released from prison. In our vagrant's mind that clearly cannot stand, and so he begins a somber journey which exacts much bloodshed and an ever higher toll on his psyche. And while that description could seem to render this film interchangeable with almost any recent Liam Neeson or Denzel Washington flick, it couldn't be further removed from such shoot 'em up fare. The title Blue Ruin refers not just to the busted car which carries the protagonist along his journey; it also references the overwhelming sadness which drives an already broken man to risk losing those final vestiges of decency he holds so dear.

6.  Guardians of the Galaxy (4.5 out of 5 stars)
"We are Groot." Who would've thought those three words would bring tears to my eyes? This story combines the trappings of the original Star Wars with the rollicking spirit of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and boy does it pack a wallop for having done so. Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't just the best popcorn flick of 2014, it's also the best movie released to date by new juggernaut on the block, Marvel Studios. While The Avengers was also an excellent high sugar candy rush, it has to be noted that there were a half dozen preceding films required to fit such a colorful cast of characters into a single theatrical release. Yet Guardians of the Galaxy manages to not only introduce and wedge together an equally vibrant group of misfits, it also forces them to confront an evil bad guy hell-bent on...you know what, it doesn't even matter. This film is just too much fun to bother getting bogged down in plot. So make like Groot, and shake your groove thang along with him.

5.  Interstellar (4.5 out of 5 stars)
Some people have compared Christopher Nolan to the lake Stanley Kubrick, and I don't think it's an unfair comparison. The filmographies of both directors are full of emotionally distant, coolly intellectual, complicated tales in which it can be hard to glean meaning and answers from. Yet with his latest offering Nolan has made what is doubtlessly his most emotional motion picture thus far. And by pouring so much of himself into this celestial epic he has made what is arguably his second-best film (The Dark Knight stands unchallenged). Upon first viewing Interstellar left me with a slightly muddled impression; I knew I liked it but wasn't sure that I loved it, to say nothing of all the quantum mechanics talk which went over my head. But having remembered that Inception also left a similar aftertaste I braved the theater once more, and this time I became an acolyte of Interstellar. The film is an allegory of humankind painted on an incredibly large canvas with broad brush strokes yet which still uses a sophisticated palette with regard to the interplay of emotions and choices being presented. What Nolan has achieved with Interstellar is in creating a terribly complicated, deeply divisive, nearly three hour space opus. And I can't recommend it highly enough.

4.  Nightcrawler (4.5 out of 5 stars)
Nightcrawler is a film that has three things going in its favor above all else: remarkably assured direction from debut filmmaker Tony Gilroy; the return from the wilderness of Rene Russo (also Gilroy's wife) who fully evinces her character's take-no-shit sexuality and hard-edged opportunism; a portrayal from Gyllenhaal which is not only the best performance of 2014, but also the best of his career. His charming Lou Bloom is a spider, a predator who through happenstance stumbles into a career filming car crashes and robberies along the neon-flecked highways of Los Angeles at night and peddling them for broadcast on the morning news. "Think of our newscast as a creaming woman running down the street with her throat cut," Russo's character advises Lou. And Lou immerses himself in the business of this kind of network news. He likes seeing his footage on television, and he becomes good at this line of work. Very, very good at it. Nightcrawler stands as the most scathing indictment of the network news industry since Sidney Lumet's Network. And to top it all off, the film contains a performance for the ages.

3.  Boyhood (4.5 out of 5 stars)
As has been noted elsewhere before and will be noted ever after, this film could have failed spectacularly. No one on the project was bound by a legally traditional studio contract, so the project continued in essence on nothing more than a good faith clause on the part of all of its principal leads. So any of the professional (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) and non-professional (Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater) actors could have jumped ship at any point. Additionally Coltrane, the story's main subject, could have turned into a rather stilted or untalented performer as he aged. (Not everyone who who stars as the turkey in their elementary school play will turn out to be Julliard worthy, as we well know.) And even upon completion the finished product could have come across as nothing more than a gimmick, an opportunistic narrative conceit that trivializes the actual maturation of a normal kid. Thankfully, the gods of cinema smiled upon this project because none of that came to pass. Instead, Boyhood stands as one of the most original and achingly moving films of the twenty-first century, a journey across 12 years in three hours that can't help but leave us in awe.

2.  Ida (5 out of 5 stars)
This Polish drama, filmed in black-and-white and stunning in its cinematographic composition, tells the story of a nun in 1960s Poland who, before being allowed to take her final vows, must travel to Warsaw and visit the only living relatives she has left. Once there, her aunt informs the young woman that her real name is Ida (rhymes with Rita) and that she is actually a Jew. What follows next is a road trip, one both intimate in narrative detail and epic in dramatic scope as it hunts through the buried wreckage of the past, literally and figuratively. And at nearly every turn, in subtle but ceaselessly surprising ways, the director undercuts our perceptions of who these characters truly are. Ida is the cinematic example of a pristine snow globe: it fills you with thoughts of beauty, sadness, and wonder all at the same time.

1.  Under the Skin (5 out of 5 stars)
This film is the closest spiritual successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey that I have ever seen. Like 2001, this one also contains a borderline impenetrable tale, a minimum of dialogue, and evocatively haunting imagery and sequences. It has also grossed barely a dollar or two, and I only know one other person who has actually watched it thus far. And while Scarlett Johansson spends not an insignificant part of the film naked, anyone who decides to watch it with titillation in mind will be sorely disappointed. this is because there is nothing erotic about this film despite its plot, to wit: Johansson's character is an alien in the guise of a beautiful young woman who cruises the streets of Glasgow in a shoddy van ensnaring any young man too unfortunately horny to resist the ride that she offers. What happens next to these men is beyond eerie, is utterly captivating, and is nearly indescribable. Johansson's character, which is never named, is completely divorced from any connection the the desires her sensuous form creates. (And Johannson, to her credit, imbues the role with the razor sharp impassivity it duly requires.) But then an event occurs which renders the boundary between the false external surface and the unknown being within less liminal than she expects. And by the time it reaches its altogether startling conclusion, the tale has become something wholly more important than could previously have been thought. Under the Skin is the best film of 2014.

Is Blue Really the Warmest Color?

     You see that image of a poster for Blue is the Warmest Colour? You do? Great. Now I want you to look at all of those 5 star reviews. There's a whopping four of them framed around the poster's lone 4 star review. And, in my opinion, that positioning doesn't seem accidental; you can almost feel the antagonism of The Times rating as it and its compatriots muscle their way in on The Guardian's assessment, a comparatively meager 4 stars. Admittedly, The Guardian does provide the poster with its greatest single blurb ("Blazingly emotional and explosively sexy"; there's no exclamation point to cap off the statement, but it feels implicit). However, we all know that what a reader first-and-foremost takes away from a review is the rating of said item, not the best tagline buried within the piece. This, Dear Reader, is where the devil's advocate would say: So what? Why should I even give a fuck about the semiotics of the poster when this is, ostensibly, a review about the film itself? Rebuttal: Because, Dear Reader, sometimes the dividing line between "good-and-great" can be infinitely harder to distinguish than the barrier which separates "good-and-bad."
     I watched Blue is the Warmest Colour this afternoon, and some of the things I'd heard about it were true while others proved to be false. The film's runtime is a full 3 hours, but the experience moved by more briskly than I thought it might. There is indeed a 5 minute-plus scene involving the two female leads naked and engaged in rather robust vaginal stimulation with one another. (If you're a straight male or a lesbian, enjoy. If you're a gay man or straight woman, enjoy it as an experiment in "wow, they really went there, didn't they?" filmmaking.) But the biggest surprise in store was that, despite the film's central premise of depicting in great detail the love affair between two women, this was not actually a "lesbian movie." You see, while Adele (the main protagonist, who shares a given name with the actress portraying her) has affairs with both men and women the film never forces her sexuality into a binary box; rather, it allows her fluidity to heighten the narrative's proceedings and to, perhaps, imbue certain scenes with an added touch of poignancy.
     If the preceding sentence is any indication, I really liked this film. In fact, if I had unilateral control over the Academy Awards, I would retroactively nominate Adele Exarchopoulos for Best Actress (thus eliminating Meryl Streep's completely unnecessary 18th nod). And beyond that, I would have to think very, very hard about whether I would actually give the Oscar to Cate Blanchett over the young Frenchwoman. On this point, I am not being hyperbolic. Ms. Exarchopoulos was only 18 at the time that BitWC was filmed, and she displays such extreme emotional dexterity that it is an uncanny experience to watch her. But here comes the snafu: what should I rate the film?
     My initial click of the star-rating feature on the picture's Rotten Tomatoes review page was 4 and 1/2 stars out of a possible 5. Then I exited the tab, closed the laptop, and went and got some Jimmy John's with my dog piled in the backseat of the car. Case closed and judgment rendered, as it were...except it wasn't. All the while I had the nagging suspicion that I may have overrated the film. While on the surface it may seem a trivial thing, the difference between a 4 star film and something more highly rated is a velvet rope I judiciously guard. And in my gut, I knew that this was a 4 star film. But, initially, I overcompensated by a (mere) half star because I felt guilty. Because, sometimes, it's easy to question the validity of one's own opinion if it doesn't align with the prevailing winds around you (and which, in this instance, was the seismic outpouring of acclaim for BitWC). An hour after first rating the flick I was back on the RT site and adjusted what I had initially given the movie which what I believed was in fact more appropriate, at least from my own aesthetic viewpoint. So, here's where I avoid some shitty cliche about being true to thyself and instead say, come back y'hear? And also, if you think it'd be your cup of tea, go watch BitWC pronto. (And it's available on Netflix instant, which should help.)

Blue is the Warmest Colour = 4 out of 5 stars