It’s finals
week, so that means it’s time for my annual ranking of every single movie I saw
this year. My movie year runs from the
start of each summer to the end of the next school year, so it includes movies
from 2013 and 2014. This was a great
year for movie-watching. I was able to
watch 93 movies, easily topping last year’s 80, which was my previous
record. Not only did I see a lot of
movies, there were a ton of really good ones.
I ranked the 72 that came out in the last year and a half, but I also
have some comments about the older ones at the bottom of the list. I realize this list is ridiculously long, but
hopefully you’ll enjoy looking through it.
Please feel free to comment on the movies you’ve seen – that’s really
the point of the whole list.
72. Cloud Atlas Despite taking the bottom spot on the list, I will admit that I was actually interested by this movie. It seemed like it almost could have been a good movie, and I found parts of it interesting. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the book. I even tried to read the book after seeing the movie, but when I tried reading it, I couldn’t get Tom Hanks and his stupid accents out of my head, so I had to stop. I’m really not quite sure what the movie is about, but it’s a collection of intertwined stories with the same actors playing different characters in different lives. Tom Hanks gives not one but several of the worst acting jobs of his or any other person’s careers. In one life he plays a gold chain-wearing gangster with a “whaddya you want?” accent. In another, I kid you not, it sounds like he’s doing a bad impersonation of Jar-Jar Binks. They had one Caucasian actor try to play an Asian man in one of the main storylines, and every time he was on the screen I kept thinking to myself “What the hell is wrong with his eyes?” The same man’s wife was Korean in real life, but they tried to make her into a red-haired Britt in another scene. Let’s just say that didn’t go well either. I will give everyone involved with this movie credit – they really went for it. Too bad almost everything about it, from the special effects to the dialogue to the acting, was a total disaster.
71. The Wolf of Wall Street I’m sure I will get some disagreement here, seeing as this was actually nominated for Best Picture, but I hated this movie. To be clear - if this wasn’t directed by Martin Scorcese, there’s no way it would’ve even sniffed a nomination. Second, it might seem hard to believe that a movie about drugs, sex, and money would be boring, but they manage to pull that off. How? By taking every scene, every speech, every bit of dialogue, and making it last about twice as long as it should have been (sort of like this movie list, I suppose). I guess when you’re Martin Scorcese you don’t have to edit your films. And finally, the plot. I know this is based on a true story, but that doesn’t necessarily make it enjoyable to watch a bunch of Wall Street wanabee douchbags spend the whole movie bragging about ripping off people’s money to spend on hookers and drugs. Yeah, I know we got caught, but look at all that crazy stuff we did! Man, those were the days!
70. Movie 43 I watched the red-band trailer for this movie and thought it was laugh-out-loud funny. It got absolutely scathing reviews – it was universally hated by critics, but I figured it was just going to be low-ball gross-out humor that critics never like, but I, on the other hand, am never above. It turns out it was too much even for me. It’s a bunch of sketches loosely tied together, each one raunchier than the next. Some of them sound hilarious – in fact we actually spent the better part of lunch one day laughing at the concepts and some of the lines from the sketches. And there is actually an A-list cast too – Emma Stone, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Richard Gere, Naomi Watts, Hallie Berry, and others. It’s just that every single skit not only crosses the line, it crosses way over it, to the point of being repulsive.
69. We’re the Millers Jason Sudekis and Jennifer Anniston pretend to be a family to help smuggle drugs over the border …… Forget it. I’m not going to waste any more time summarizing this movie and you shouldn’t waste your time seeing it.
68. Before Midnight I didn’t make it through all of this, so my review isn’t really complete, but I watched enough of it to know that it wasn’t for me. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s characters from Before Sunset and Before Sunrise are back, but now they’re married, have kids, and argue all the time. It’s actually pretty close to how I would imagine these two ending up, but I just didn’t enjoy watching it. No matter how “realistic’ the dialogue is, it just isn’t that much fun to watch a couple get into petty arguments. I’m sure at the end they resolve things a little more, but all the pretentiousness and self-absorption that seemed charming in the first two movies when they were falling in love, seems horribly annoying now that they’re dealing with real life. To be fair, almost everyone that reviewed this movie thought it was great, so it sounds like other people enjoyed it. I thought it was painful to watch.
67. Don Jon This is essentially a movie about a guy watching porn. The second half of the movie is better than the first, as one character ends up having more depth than we thought, and another has much less. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Scarlett Johansen are always pleasant to watch, but it isn’t even close to enough to redeem it.
66. Oblivion You can cast Tom Cruise in it, you can give it a big budget and put lots of good effects and cool ships in it, but if it doesn’t have anything interesting or original to say, it still isn’t going to be a very good movie.
65. Arrested Development This is the only TV series on my list this year. Part of why I was able to watch so many movies this year is that I pretty much stopped watching TV. There isn’t a single show on that I watch anymore. So when they brought back this series on Netflix, I decided I had to give it a try. A couple years ago I watched the entire series over about two weeks, and thought that it was one of the funniest shows I’d ever seen. This effort to bring the show back was not a success. It was all the same characters, but something was missing. I watched the first couple episodes of the new season before pulling the plug. Better to be remembered fondly than to try to come back and fall flat, I guess.
64. About Time Obligatory spouse romantic movie rental, only my wife fell asleep about 2/3 of the way into the movie. I was at least interested enough to watch the end of it, but it was pretty mediocre. A guy finds out that all the men in his family can travel in time. He uses the time travel to fall in love with the girl that he eventually marries (Rachel McAdams). Instead of watching this, go watch Groundhog Day, I promise you’ll enjoy it more.
63. Blue Jasmine Worth seeing, if only for Cate Blanchett’s Oscar-winning performance. I’m pretty sure I mention every year that I’m not a big Woody Allen fan, and while I didn’t dislike this movie, it didn’t do anything to change my opinion.
62. Seven Psychopaths Colin Ferrell plays a struggling screenwriter, Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken play a couple of friends that make a living by kidnapping dogs. Woody Harrelson plays a gangster whose dog gets kidnapped. Not bad, but it’s never quite as funny or clever as it thinks it is.
61. Thor: The Dark World I thought the first Thor movie was pretty bad, but then Thor was in the Avengers, and that was fun, plus Loki is a pretty terrific bad guy, and the previews looked fun, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Nope, still pretty bad. Despite having Stellan Skarsgard, Anthony Hopkins, and Natalie Portman, the acting just isn’t good, and all the effects in the world can’t save a thin plot.
60. Gangster Squad I remember almost nothing about this movie. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t bad. Sean Penn plays a gangster. Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin play cops that are playing outside the rules to bring him down. Emma Stone plays Sean Penn’s love interest, who is also Ryan Gosling’s love interest. The people are nice to look at, the story is fine, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some version of this move several times before.
59. Fish Tank Fish Tank follows the life of a 15 year-old girl in Essex that has been kicked out of school and seems to be headed down a pretty bad path. Her mom is a piece of work, partying and hanging out with a bunch of different guys until she meets Connor, a mysterious and charming guy played by Michael Fassbender. Connor takes Mia under his wing, and encourages her to pursue her interest in hip-hop dancing. Most of the movie is great – I thought it was potentially going to be a top-20 movie for me, but the last quarter of the film takes a couple of turns that made it almost unwatchable for me.
58. The Bourne Legacy I’m not quite sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea to make another Bourne movie without Jason Bourne, but Jeremy Renner makes a capable action movie star and there’s enough action to keep it mildly entertaining.
57. This is the End The trailer for this made it look like it might be fall-out-of-your-chair funny, but alas, it was only mildly amusing. James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and a ton of other celebrities play themselves at a huge party at James Franco’s house. Only right during the middle of the party The Rapture happens, and the end of the world begins. There are a number of funny scenes, and quite a few actors get to make fun of themselves, but I am getting a little tired of this group of guys (Rogen and Hill in particular), and I thought the movie was a disappointment.
56. Pacific Rim My obligatory summer blockbuster viewing of the year. Giant human-made robots fight monsters that rise out of the ocean. The dialogue, acting, and plot are all pretty bad, but the action is pretty good. Fun to watch with my 13 year-old, but not much beyond that.
55. Resptrepo Oscar nominated war documentary, which spends a year following a group of soldiers stationed in the Korungal Valley in Afghanistan. It probably does as good a job of any movie showing what daily life is like for a soldier in a war zone, but any documentary really rises or falls on the shoulders of the characters it follows. While it is interesting to get a glimpse into these soldier’s lives, there isn’t any one soldier or officer in the platoon that captivates you with their personality.
54. Inside Llewyn Davis The Coen Brothers have an incredible catalogue that includes True Grit, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Raising Arizona, all of which could be considered modern classics. They’ve only made a couple of duds, including A Serious Man in 2009, which I know some people liked, but it was not enjoyable in any way. Unfortunately this one isn’t much fun to watch either. Llewyn Davis is a struggling folk singer, who manages to alienate almost everyone he comes in contact with. The movie has a good feel to it, in part because the original music fits the movie perfectly. The acting is great – the characters, like the music, just fit the story. My biggest problem with the movie is that the lead character is so unlikeable that it is hard to root for him, and hard to like the movie. From an artistic standpoint, it is successful, I just didn’t enjoy it that much.
53. The Company You Keep Robert Redford and Susan Sarrandon play aging activists living undercover after being accused of a bank robbery in the ‘70’s. A former companion is found out, and Shia Lebeouf plays a journalist trying to uncover what really happened. Not particularly memorable, but pleasant enough.
52. The Counselor The Counselor was directed by Ridley Scott, with a screenplay by Cormac McCarthy. If you’re familiar with McCarthy’s books, or even the movies made from his books (The Road, No Country for Old Men), you know that his work is not exactly light fare, but it’s usually very good. About ¼ of the way through the film, I knew that it was not going to end well for anyone, because in a Cormac McCarthy story, it never does. The movie features some of the most memorable scenes of the year, but not necessarily all in a good way. Even though it has a terrific cast, at times it feels like the dialogue consists of people reading from a Cormac McCarthy book. On a side note, this was one of four Michael Fassbender movies I saw this year, and his drug smuggling lawyer in this film is probably the most pleasant character of the four. He’s great in every one, though.
51. Blue Valentine After seeing The Place Beyond the Pines, I was interested in watching more by the director, Derek Cianfrance. Blue Valentine tells the story of the relationship between Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams). The movie flashes back and forth in time, so we simultaneously see the relationship develop and fall apart. The story is told well, and Gosling and Williams have good chemistry, making it a worthwhile Netflix viewing.
50. Smashed Smashed is directed by James Ponsoldt, and I decided to watch it after enjoying his most recent movie, The Spectacular Now. Aaron Paul and Mary Elizabeth Winstead play a married couple who spend almost all of their time together drinking and partying hard. The relationship changes when Winstead’s character decides to try to get sober. In both of Ponsoldt’s movies that I’ve seen, alcoholism is front and center in the movie, and it’s interesting to see how the complex characters deal with it and with each other in different ways.
49. The Desolation of Smaug This is a slight improvement over the first installment of the trilogy, but still disappointed me. There are some great scenes, Gandalf is always great, and Smaug is good too. But I’m still puzzled why they decided to make this into three movies. This installment isn’t particularly faithful to the book either, adding in lots of orcs and battles that aren’t part of the book and weren’t necessary.
48. The Butler The Butler follows an African American man (Forest Whittaker) whose career as a White House butler for eight different presidents brings him a front row seat to just about every major event in recent US history. It’s a pleasant way to get a quick history lesson (albeit a Hollywood version of history), and Whittaker does a nice job. As a side note, my sister got to go to the premier of this movie in New York with the director and all of the actors, which sounds like it was pretty exciting. As a second side note, I watched this movie while sitting on my couch, which was not quite as exciting.
47. The East Brit Marling plays a young woman that goes undercover for a private intelligence company to infiltrate a radical anarchist group called The East. She eventually becomes conflicted as she spends months living with the cult-like group. I didn’t really like the end, but I enjoyed watching the story unfold, and Brit Marling is going to be a much bigger name in coming years.
46. Kon Tiki This nominee for Best Foreign Film recreates the voyage of explorer Thor Heyerdal’s across the pacific on a small raft in the 1940’s. The real-life Heyerdal went on the voyage to support his hypothesis that Polynesia could have been settled by people from South America. I always enjoy books and movies about adventures at sea, and this is a solid one.
45. Man of Steel I wanted so badly for this to be a great superhero movie. In the previews it looked like it was going to be great, focusing on the scenes of a young Clark Kent wrestling with the responsibilities of his powers and how to use them. And I thought the first half was terrific, with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane playing Clark’s Earthly parents. The second half of the movie ends up being too much of a good thing. When the bad guys from his home planet come to Earth to settle the score, the effects are great, but the movie becomes the fight scenes, and it just goes on and on. It’s a shame because it was so close to being really good. Michael Shannon get a big role here as the main bad guy, and as always, he’s excellent. It’s too bad the movie leaves little room for subtlety in his character. It’s very evident when you compare this to the recent Batman movies the difference between a director with great visual style (Zac Snyder), and someone that is actually a great director (Christopher Nolan). The special effects and fight scenes are important, but only if you use them the right way and don’t overdo it.
44. Now You See Me I went into this with pretty low expectations, since it is a movie about magic, after all. It stars Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, and while it’s forgettable, it was pretty easy to get sucked in and entertained for 2 hours.
43. The Reluctant Fundamentalist I don’t remember hearing much about this movie when it was in the theaters, but it was very good. It tells the story of a Pakistani man that comes to the US to go to college and start his career. His life changes dramatically after 9/11 as a Pakistani living in America. The movies weaves back and forth between his time in the US and the present day, where he is back in Pakistan and now suspected of being a radical Muslim involved with the kidnapping of an American. There is some action that is interesting, but as the movie’s title suggests, the best part of the film is the way it looks at what it means to be a Muslim in a post 9/11 United States.
42. 42 Mildly entertaining movie about the life of Jackie Robinson. I enjoyed watching this version of the story, but it also felt a little whitewashed, and the Jackie Robinson portrayed in the movie comes off as more a saint than an actual complex human being.
41. Captain America 2 If you are going to see a movie called Captain America 2, you pretty much know what to expect. I thought the first one was a pleasant surprise, and the sequel was enjoyable. The plot is a bit convoluted at times, and Captain America isn’t as fun as Iron Man, but there is some meat here with a plot that is essentially about a giant drone that is going to pre-emptively take out any national security threats.
40. ACOD Adult children of divorce. Not a great title, and not a great topic for a movie that’s mostly a comedy, and I suppose that’s why no one saw it. Which is a shame, because it’s actually pretty funny and pretty interesting. Adam Scott plays a guys who tries to get his divorced parents to get along well enough to come to his younger brother’s wedding. It’s about 80% of a terrific movie. A few scenes are over the top, but overall it was a pleasant surprise.
39. World War Z Movie theaters seem to be overrun with movies about zombies and vampires the last couple years, but I’m actually ok with that. I like these types of movies, and I even made a top 10 vampire and zombie movies list last year. This is based on a best-selling book of the same name by Max Brooks. Part of what made the book unique is that there is no protagonist, it just jumps from city to city to chronicle how the remaining humans fought and survived the zombie war. I guess a movie like that wouldn’t work in Hollywood, so they really made it into a completely different movie about the zombie apocalypse. It isn’t great, but there are some TENSE action scenes, and if you enjoy these types of zombie apocalypse movies, then I’d recommend it.
38. Elysium This movie got poor reviews, in part because everyone’s hopes were so high for this film as director Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to the amazing District 9. After reading all the negative reviews my hopes were sufficiently lowered, and I actually enjoyed it. Like District 9, even though it is a science fiction film, it is also a not-so-subtle critique of social inequality. It’s not as good as his first movie, but still interesting. Sharlto Copley, the South African actor who was so good as Wikus in District 9, is terrifying as the bad guy in this one.
37. Side Effects Underrated Stephen Soderberg movie. Like most Soderberg movies there are a number of characters whose stories intertwine and eventually come together. Suspenseful and thoughtful at times, trashy at others, but definitely entertaining.
36. Anchorman 2 The original is a top 10 all-time comedy for me, so even though I knew this wouldn’t be as good I had to watch it. And it’s not as good, but I still enjoyed watching it. I’m not sure there was even a script for this movie. Really the whole premise was to get Ron Burgundy back together with Wes Mantooth, Brick Tamblyn, and Brian Fantana and see what happens. Most of the time it works.
35. The World’s End From the same producers and actors that made Shawn of the Dead, this movie is about a group of middle aged men that come together (mostly grudgingly), to attempt to drink 12 pints at 12 pubs in one night, a feat they tried, but couldn’t pull off in their younger days. In the middle of the night, they realize the town has been taken over by aliens, and they’re going to have to fight them off if they’re going to finish the pub crawl. I wouldn’t call this great filmmaking, but it’s good for quite a few laughs.
33. COG As I’m typing this list, I’ve realized that there were a lot of overlooked independent films that I saw this year that were pleasant surprises, including this one. COG stands for child of god, and it’s based on a short story by David Sedaris, who happens to be the funniest writer alive. This isn’t a comedy though, it’s a thoughtful drama about a young man that graduates from an Ivy League school and decides to spend a year with a friend (who ditches him) working on the land in Oregon. Even though I’ve read all of Sedaris’ books I didn’t really remember this story, but what I enjoyed the most about it was how it looks at relationships, homosexuality, and faith with a gentle approach that you wouldn’t see in a bigger movie.
32. Europa Report Europa is the name of one of Jupiter’s moons, and this low-budget sci-fi movie follows a crew that takes on a mission to the moon to explore and look for life. The trailers make it seem like a found-footage horror movie, but thankfully it’s not that movie at all. In fact, it might be one of the most realistic space exploration movies ever made. Even though Gravity was more spectacular, this was more interesting in a lot of ways.
31. Blackfish It’s impossible to watch this movie and not be angry about keeping orcas and other whales in captivity. After seeing this I know that I will never go to a show at a facility that keeps large marine mammals in captivity. The movie outlines dozens of incidents where trainers are injured or even killed as they work with orcas in places like Sea World. It’s hard to believe that they continue to allow trainers to get in the water with these animals. In the wild they never attack people, but as the movie points out, they become different animals when they are forced to live out their lives in small enclosures.
30. Place Beyond the Pines The best thing about this movie is that I went into it thinking I knew exactly what the movie was going to be like, having seen the trailer for it a bunch of times, but then it ended up being a totally different movie. I didn’t enjoy the second half of the movie quite as much as the first half, but I enjoyed the movie more because the second half existed, if that makes any sense. Oh, and this has Ryan Gosling in it. There is no one cooler than Ryan Gosling right now.
29. Trance Trance is one of those films that seems like it should be a little better than it actually is. Danny Boyle is one of my all-time favorite directors, so I went into it with pretty high expectations. The basic plot is that an auctioneer gets involved with an art heist. During the heist he gets knocked unconscious and then can’t remember what happened. The bad guys torture him, then decide to use hypnotherapy to help him remember what he did. This is where the movie gets trippy. It isn’t perfect, but it’s fun, and the plot twists keep you entertained. Probably the only reason it isn’t higher on the list is that my expectations for Boyle are so high, I thought it could have been better.
28. Blue Like Jazz This movie is loosely based on a book by Portland author Donald Miller. The book is terrific – it chronicles Miller’s experience coming from a conservative Christian home in Texas and then moving away to go to Reed College in Portland. The movie is very different in structure from the book, but what they have in common is both approach faith and spirituality in a very different way than it is normally presented in the mainstream media. A few things added into the movie seemed out of place, but I just appreciate any movie that is not condemning of Christianity and where the Christians aren’t portrayed as condemning of everyone else.
27. Out of the Furnace Another example of a movie where the trailer seems to give away the whole plot, but then the actual movie ends up having more to it. Good cast (Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson), and a gritty feel (set in a depressed steel belt town) make it enjoyable to watch. There were a few things I didn’t like: Forest Whitaker’s character seems totally miscast, and the final scene doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the movie, but otherwise I thought it was a worthwhile crime thriller.
26. Fruitvale Station Fruitvale is the name of a public transit station in Oakland where Oscar
Grant was shot to death by police after an altercation on New Year’s Eve, 2008. The movie follows Grant and his life in the days before the shooting. It’s terrific, and one of the most thought-provoking movies of the year.
25. The Hunt Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Film, this is the story of a man (played by Mads Mikkelson) who is accused of molesting a young girl at the kindergarten where he works. The girl is also his best friend’s daughter, and it is horrifying to watch as his friends, his co-workers, and almost everyone in the small Danish town where he lives turn against him. It’s a testament to how good the movie is that even though it’s incredibly frustrating to watch the man’s life ripped apart by a misunderstanding, it is still great to watch.
24. The Silence As a warning, there are a couple of assault scenes in this movie that are tough to watch – it almost made me stop watching the movie. If you can get past those scenes, this is a terrific movie. It’s a crime mystery that begins when a 13 year-old girl disappears from the exact spot that a different teenager girl was assaulted and murdered more than 20 years ago. The new case re-opens old wounds for many different people, and it is fascinating to see how each of the people’s lives are turned upside down by the investigation. The mother of the original girl that disappeared, the police detective who spent years investigating the case, and the parents of the girl that is missing all struggle to deal with what happened and is happening again. Great character and plot development.
23. Rush Had I seen this movie in the theater, it might’ve ranked several spots higher on the list. The car racing scenes are terrific, and I wished I’d been able to see them on the big screen. It’s a true story about car-racing, but it’s mainly about the rivalry between two drivers, Niki Lauda and James Hunt. The actors for these parts are perfectly cast, and overall it’s a very enjoyable sports movie.
22. Dallas Buyers Club This is a terrific movie, good story, great acting. But allow me a moment to talk about Matthew McConaughey. This was the year of McConaughey. Not only did he win an Oscar for this movie (which he deserved), he steals the only scene he’s in in Wolf of Wall Street, he was amazing in the HBO series True Detective, and he makes another appearance in the top 5 of my movie list this year. Who would’ve thought that the mimbo from movies like Failure to Launch and The Wedding Planner would end up taking the title of best actor? I went back and watched Dazed and Confused for the first time this year, his first big-screen role. He’s not a polished actor, but even then as Wooderson his charisma jumps off the screen and you can tell he’s headed somewhere. This was the year he arrived. The movies he’s got in the hopper right now look pretty great too, including Interstellar, which I’m predicting now will be at the top of next year’s list.
21. Philomena Another of the rare movies that deals with faith and religion in a non-cookie cutter way. Philomena, played by Judi Dench, is a British woman that got pregnant as a teen and was sent to a Catholic convent where she was forced to give up her son to adoption. Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is a disgraced political spokesperson, who agrees to write a story about Philomena and her search for her adopted son. Philomena remains a devout Catholic, and Sixsmith an atheist, and they interact beautifully as their journey takes them to the convent, across the ocean to the United States, and back again. The story is beautifully told, and avoids being overly sentimental. It is a powerful story of forgiveness, and a surprising Best Picture nominee.
20. American Hustle I will always remember this movie as the movie that I went to see during the second half of the Super Bowl to avoid watching the Broncos get destroyed. So I was not exactly in a good mood going in. Good acting (Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, among others) elevates it to Best Picture nominee level, but it was a bit slow at points.
19. Nebraska After watching the trailer for this movie several times I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to see it, let alone why it would get nominated for Best Picture. And for about the first half of the film I was still pretty lukewarm about it. The characters seemed hard to care about, and the story was very slow – lots of scenery shots and pauses in the dialogue. But as the filmed rolled on, it kept growing on me, and by the second half of the movie I was in. The characters aren’t necessarily the most pleasant people, but they seem real, and it works towards a terrific final third that I really enjoyed.
18. Monsters I heard of this low-budget sci-fi movie because it was directed by the same guy that directed the new Godzilla. It was a movie that I planned to half-watch (so I could work on this movie list at the same time!), but I ended up getting totally sucked in and couldn’t take my eyes off it. It looks like a horror movie in the trailers, but it isn’t. If you are in any way a fan of science fiction I would highly recommend it. One of the most pleasant surprises of the year.
17. Short Term 12 Here’s a movie that deals with some pretty heavy stuff (it’s set in a foster care group home), but it’s still got a sense of humor and it never feels depressing. Brie Larson plays Grace, one of the staff members at the group home, who has her own difficult past that she hasn’t really dealt with. Foster care is an issue that is close to my heart, and I was skeptical going in that this movie would be a Hollywood version of what a group home was like, with lots of quirky characters that learn to work out their differences in the end. Thankfully it ended up being so much better than that.
16. The Kings of Summer I think most boys dream at some point about going off and living in the wilderness. My Side of the Mountain, Hatchett, and Into the Wild are books that come to mind about this theme. In this story, three high school boys decide to run away and build a house in the woods. It was one of three really good coming-of-age movies that came out this year, and it’s beauty isn’t necessarily in the plot, but in the relationships between the boys and the challenges and fun they have trying to make it on their own.
15. The Act of Killing I promise you have never seen a movie like this. It’s a documentary in which the film-makers set out to chronicle the genocide committed in Indonesia in the 1960’s. Except to chronicle the genocide, they are able to get a couple of the death-squad leaders that killed hundreds of people to help them make a movie about the genocide. They tell the men that they will help them film whatever kind of movie they want to make, as long as they tell their story. Some scenes are simply a recounting of how they would kill people. Other scenes are filmed in the style of a crime movie, with the actual men playing themselves or even the people they were executing. Others scenes are surreal, dream-like sequences. It is at times appalling, but incredibly powerful, especially as some of the men, perhaps for the first time, start to realize what they have done.
14. The Great Gatsby There are some easy comparisons between this and The Wolf of Wall Street. Both star Leo DiCaprio as a super-wealthy playboy who spends lavishly and throws huge parties. The comparisons end there. While Wolf of Wall Street is a hateful movie about Wall Street criminals who spend the money they earn from duping investors on drugs and hookers, Gatsby is one of the classic works of American literature. I enjoy director Baz Luhrman’s visual style, and I thought this was a terrific adaptation of the book.
13. All is Lost Robert Redford is at sea in a boat that he’s trying to keep from sinking. He’s the only actor on screen for the entire movie, and there are only a couple of lines of dialogue the whole time. That’s it. Oh, and it’s fantastic. I’m not quite sure why he didn’t earn a Best Actor nomination – I much preferred his work in this film to DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street or Bale in American Hustle.
12. The Spectacular Now Shalaine Woodley is the next big thing, now that she’s in bigger movies like Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars. But if you saw her in The Descendants you knew she had a great future, and she is the main thing that is terrific about this movie. She plays a sincere and charming high school student that mostly keeps to herself, until she bumps in to Sutter, a popular, hard partying classmate. The two fall for each other, and I loved the way the movie portrayed the relationship – everything about it seemed authentic, probably due to the excellent acting from Woodley and Miles Teller as Sutter. Alcohol plays a big part in the movie, but it’s a different message than you see in most teen films. The teen drinking isn’t glorified, but it isn’t condemned either. It becomes more and more clear as the movie goes on that at least Sutter, if not both of them, have some serious issues with alcohol that they are going to have to deal with. The characters are so good in this movie it was hard not to see kids that I’ve taught before in both of their performances.
11. Gravity Most people that saw this movie seemed to fall into one of two camps: Those that thought it was spectacular – a technical marvel that was unlike anything we’d ever seen on the big screen, and those that thought it was overrated and stupid. I’m probably in the first camp, although I’d agree that the plot wasn’t all that interesting. But that misses the point. This was a thriller that has you gripping your armrest almost the entire running length. It’s a movie that you almost have to see on the big screen and in 3D. The only other movie I can think of that even comes close to being as spectacular to look at in 3D was Avatar.
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson movies aren’t for everyone. They are certainly quirky, but to me they seem quirky in a sincere, rather than an ironic way, and that is why I love pretty much all of them. I think I love more than anything else that he is a great storyteller, and with the acting, the sets, the costumes, the music, and the dialogue, he makes the stories so much fun to get lost in.
9. Lincoln This is really a movie that should have been on last year’s list, but I didn’t get around to watching it until the start of last summer. But what a wonderful movie. Tommy Lee Jones was amazing. Daniel Day Lewis is so good that you forget it’s him. Everything about it was interesting, and it should have won Best Picture in 2012.
8. A Hijacking
7. Captain Phillips Here’s a recommendation: First, watch Captain Phillips, a terrific movie about Somali pirates with a big budget, Tom Hanks, and some top-notch suspense/action scenes. Then watch A Hijacking – a small budget Danish film, also about Somali pirates hijacking a freight ship. Both are fantastic movies, but they are totally different films. Captain Phillips is tense and has you on the edge of your seat. A Hijacking has no action at all – it just focuses on the negotiations and the psychological damage of being a hostage. Captain Phillips has Tom Hanks with his first good performance in a decade. A Hijacking has no one you’ve ever heard of or even seen before. It’s fascinating to me that you could have two movies about the same thing be so completely different, but both be excellent films.
6. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Most years I make this list there is at least one movie that I rank higher than everyone else thinks I should. I have a feeling Walter Mitty is that movie this year. It didn’t get great reviews, but I loved it. Ben Stiller plays a character who spends most of his time daydreaming about amazing adventures, but very little of his real life doing anything of consequence. The closing of his office at Life Magazine, and a co-worker (Kristen Wiig) that he has a crush on inspire him to consider stepping out of his own head and into the real world. I thought it had some of the best cinematography of any movie I saw this year, and perhaps I enjoyed it so much because I think there’s more than a little Walter Mitty in me.
5. The Lego Movie This honestly might be my favorite kids/animated movie ever. I’ve loved some of the Pixar movies (especially the Toy Story movies and The Incredibles), but this may top all of them. Funny, with a good story, great voice acting (including some amazing cameos), and while all four of my kids loved it, I think I liked it more than they did.
4. Her I thought this was the most creative movie of the year. All of Spike Jonze’s (Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) movies have been interesting, and this one is no exception. Yes, it sounds absurd to say that it’s a movie about a man that falls in love with his operating system. I don’t want to say that the movie makes it seem ‘realistic’, but like some other great movies about artificial intelligence (2001, Blade Runner), it deals in an intelligent way with the theme of what it means to be human and to love.
3. The Way Way Back I mentioned before that there were several great coming-of-age movies this year, and The Way Way Back probably made me happier than any movie the whole year. Duncan is a 14 year old, forced to go with his mom (Toni Collette), his mom’s boyfriend (Steve Carrell), and his daughter, to spend their summer in a summer resort town. Duncan is painfully awkward, Steve Carrell’s character is a total ass, and it looks like it is going to be an awful summer. I knew how most of the story was going to unfold, but it is done in such a charming, fun, way that I couldn’t help loving it. The writers previously wrote the screenplay for The Descendants, and the cast is fantastic (especially Allison Janney as the crazy neighbor and Sam Rockwell as the goofy water-park worker).
2. Mud Every year there is at least one movie that totally surprises me with how great it is. I always have a soft spot for coming of age movies and books, and this movie had me in the first 10 minutes. Great movies are enjoyable not just for their plot, or even their acting, but just because it feels wonderful to be caught up in the world that the movie exists in. This was the movie that sold me on Matthew McConaughey as one of our greatest living actors, and the director, Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) is someone that I’m looking forward to following in coming years. I don’t want to tell much more about the plot because you should just see it.
1. 12 Years a Slave As soon as I walked out of 12 Years a Slave I knew I had seen the movie that would top my list. It’s the first time that the Best Picture winner has also topped my list, an only slightly less prestigious honor. For me it joins a very short list of movies (Shindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan come to mind) that are artistically stunning but also profoundly moving in the way they force you to deal with historical events. There have been other movies that have dealt with slavery before, but none like this. The emotions aren’t filtered through a white character’s lens, and there is no softening of the edges. You are forced to confront the brutality of slavery with no humor to soften the impact, no cheerful sidekick to save the day. It is powerful and eye-opening in a way that few movies ever have been. With most movies, even very good ones, I think about a couple of scenes that didn’t quite ring true, a character that was miscast or a few lines of dialogue that seemed out of place. With 12 Years a Slave it seems like every single detail is perfect – this was exactly the movie that Steve McQueen set out to make. At times it is hard to watch, and it is certain that it will make you uncomfortable, but don’t use that as an excuse not to see this film. This is as good as movies get.
72. Cloud Atlas Despite taking the bottom spot on the list, I will admit that I was actually interested by this movie. It seemed like it almost could have been a good movie, and I found parts of it interesting. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the book. I even tried to read the book after seeing the movie, but when I tried reading it, I couldn’t get Tom Hanks and his stupid accents out of my head, so I had to stop. I’m really not quite sure what the movie is about, but it’s a collection of intertwined stories with the same actors playing different characters in different lives. Tom Hanks gives not one but several of the worst acting jobs of his or any other person’s careers. In one life he plays a gold chain-wearing gangster with a “whaddya you want?” accent. In another, I kid you not, it sounds like he’s doing a bad impersonation of Jar-Jar Binks. They had one Caucasian actor try to play an Asian man in one of the main storylines, and every time he was on the screen I kept thinking to myself “What the hell is wrong with his eyes?” The same man’s wife was Korean in real life, but they tried to make her into a red-haired Britt in another scene. Let’s just say that didn’t go well either. I will give everyone involved with this movie credit – they really went for it. Too bad almost everything about it, from the special effects to the dialogue to the acting, was a total disaster.
71. The Wolf of Wall Street I’m sure I will get some disagreement here, seeing as this was actually nominated for Best Picture, but I hated this movie. To be clear - if this wasn’t directed by Martin Scorcese, there’s no way it would’ve even sniffed a nomination. Second, it might seem hard to believe that a movie about drugs, sex, and money would be boring, but they manage to pull that off. How? By taking every scene, every speech, every bit of dialogue, and making it last about twice as long as it should have been (sort of like this movie list, I suppose). I guess when you’re Martin Scorcese you don’t have to edit your films. And finally, the plot. I know this is based on a true story, but that doesn’t necessarily make it enjoyable to watch a bunch of Wall Street wanabee douchbags spend the whole movie bragging about ripping off people’s money to spend on hookers and drugs. Yeah, I know we got caught, but look at all that crazy stuff we did! Man, those were the days!
70. Movie 43 I watched the red-band trailer for this movie and thought it was laugh-out-loud funny. It got absolutely scathing reviews – it was universally hated by critics, but I figured it was just going to be low-ball gross-out humor that critics never like, but I, on the other hand, am never above. It turns out it was too much even for me. It’s a bunch of sketches loosely tied together, each one raunchier than the next. Some of them sound hilarious – in fact we actually spent the better part of lunch one day laughing at the concepts and some of the lines from the sketches. And there is actually an A-list cast too – Emma Stone, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Richard Gere, Naomi Watts, Hallie Berry, and others. It’s just that every single skit not only crosses the line, it crosses way over it, to the point of being repulsive.
69. We’re the Millers Jason Sudekis and Jennifer Anniston pretend to be a family to help smuggle drugs over the border …… Forget it. I’m not going to waste any more time summarizing this movie and you shouldn’t waste your time seeing it.
68. Before Midnight I didn’t make it through all of this, so my review isn’t really complete, but I watched enough of it to know that it wasn’t for me. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s characters from Before Sunset and Before Sunrise are back, but now they’re married, have kids, and argue all the time. It’s actually pretty close to how I would imagine these two ending up, but I just didn’t enjoy watching it. No matter how “realistic’ the dialogue is, it just isn’t that much fun to watch a couple get into petty arguments. I’m sure at the end they resolve things a little more, but all the pretentiousness and self-absorption that seemed charming in the first two movies when they were falling in love, seems horribly annoying now that they’re dealing with real life. To be fair, almost everyone that reviewed this movie thought it was great, so it sounds like other people enjoyed it. I thought it was painful to watch.
67. Don Jon This is essentially a movie about a guy watching porn. The second half of the movie is better than the first, as one character ends up having more depth than we thought, and another has much less. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Scarlett Johansen are always pleasant to watch, but it isn’t even close to enough to redeem it.
66. Oblivion You can cast Tom Cruise in it, you can give it a big budget and put lots of good effects and cool ships in it, but if it doesn’t have anything interesting or original to say, it still isn’t going to be a very good movie.
65. Arrested Development This is the only TV series on my list this year. Part of why I was able to watch so many movies this year is that I pretty much stopped watching TV. There isn’t a single show on that I watch anymore. So when they brought back this series on Netflix, I decided I had to give it a try. A couple years ago I watched the entire series over about two weeks, and thought that it was one of the funniest shows I’d ever seen. This effort to bring the show back was not a success. It was all the same characters, but something was missing. I watched the first couple episodes of the new season before pulling the plug. Better to be remembered fondly than to try to come back and fall flat, I guess.
64. About Time Obligatory spouse romantic movie rental, only my wife fell asleep about 2/3 of the way into the movie. I was at least interested enough to watch the end of it, but it was pretty mediocre. A guy finds out that all the men in his family can travel in time. He uses the time travel to fall in love with the girl that he eventually marries (Rachel McAdams). Instead of watching this, go watch Groundhog Day, I promise you’ll enjoy it more.
63. Blue Jasmine Worth seeing, if only for Cate Blanchett’s Oscar-winning performance. I’m pretty sure I mention every year that I’m not a big Woody Allen fan, and while I didn’t dislike this movie, it didn’t do anything to change my opinion.
62. Seven Psychopaths Colin Ferrell plays a struggling screenwriter, Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken play a couple of friends that make a living by kidnapping dogs. Woody Harrelson plays a gangster whose dog gets kidnapped. Not bad, but it’s never quite as funny or clever as it thinks it is.
61. Thor: The Dark World I thought the first Thor movie was pretty bad, but then Thor was in the Avengers, and that was fun, plus Loki is a pretty terrific bad guy, and the previews looked fun, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Nope, still pretty bad. Despite having Stellan Skarsgard, Anthony Hopkins, and Natalie Portman, the acting just isn’t good, and all the effects in the world can’t save a thin plot.
60. Gangster Squad I remember almost nothing about this movie. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t bad. Sean Penn plays a gangster. Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin play cops that are playing outside the rules to bring him down. Emma Stone plays Sean Penn’s love interest, who is also Ryan Gosling’s love interest. The people are nice to look at, the story is fine, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some version of this move several times before.
59. Fish Tank Fish Tank follows the life of a 15 year-old girl in Essex that has been kicked out of school and seems to be headed down a pretty bad path. Her mom is a piece of work, partying and hanging out with a bunch of different guys until she meets Connor, a mysterious and charming guy played by Michael Fassbender. Connor takes Mia under his wing, and encourages her to pursue her interest in hip-hop dancing. Most of the movie is great – I thought it was potentially going to be a top-20 movie for me, but the last quarter of the film takes a couple of turns that made it almost unwatchable for me.
58. The Bourne Legacy I’m not quite sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea to make another Bourne movie without Jason Bourne, but Jeremy Renner makes a capable action movie star and there’s enough action to keep it mildly entertaining.
57. This is the End The trailer for this made it look like it might be fall-out-of-your-chair funny, but alas, it was only mildly amusing. James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and a ton of other celebrities play themselves at a huge party at James Franco’s house. Only right during the middle of the party The Rapture happens, and the end of the world begins. There are a number of funny scenes, and quite a few actors get to make fun of themselves, but I am getting a little tired of this group of guys (Rogen and Hill in particular), and I thought the movie was a disappointment.
56. Pacific Rim My obligatory summer blockbuster viewing of the year. Giant human-made robots fight monsters that rise out of the ocean. The dialogue, acting, and plot are all pretty bad, but the action is pretty good. Fun to watch with my 13 year-old, but not much beyond that.
55. Resptrepo Oscar nominated war documentary, which spends a year following a group of soldiers stationed in the Korungal Valley in Afghanistan. It probably does as good a job of any movie showing what daily life is like for a soldier in a war zone, but any documentary really rises or falls on the shoulders of the characters it follows. While it is interesting to get a glimpse into these soldier’s lives, there isn’t any one soldier or officer in the platoon that captivates you with their personality.
54. Inside Llewyn Davis The Coen Brothers have an incredible catalogue that includes True Grit, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Raising Arizona, all of which could be considered modern classics. They’ve only made a couple of duds, including A Serious Man in 2009, which I know some people liked, but it was not enjoyable in any way. Unfortunately this one isn’t much fun to watch either. Llewyn Davis is a struggling folk singer, who manages to alienate almost everyone he comes in contact with. The movie has a good feel to it, in part because the original music fits the movie perfectly. The acting is great – the characters, like the music, just fit the story. My biggest problem with the movie is that the lead character is so unlikeable that it is hard to root for him, and hard to like the movie. From an artistic standpoint, it is successful, I just didn’t enjoy it that much.
53. The Company You Keep Robert Redford and Susan Sarrandon play aging activists living undercover after being accused of a bank robbery in the ‘70’s. A former companion is found out, and Shia Lebeouf plays a journalist trying to uncover what really happened. Not particularly memorable, but pleasant enough.
52. The Counselor The Counselor was directed by Ridley Scott, with a screenplay by Cormac McCarthy. If you’re familiar with McCarthy’s books, or even the movies made from his books (The Road, No Country for Old Men), you know that his work is not exactly light fare, but it’s usually very good. About ¼ of the way through the film, I knew that it was not going to end well for anyone, because in a Cormac McCarthy story, it never does. The movie features some of the most memorable scenes of the year, but not necessarily all in a good way. Even though it has a terrific cast, at times it feels like the dialogue consists of people reading from a Cormac McCarthy book. On a side note, this was one of four Michael Fassbender movies I saw this year, and his drug smuggling lawyer in this film is probably the most pleasant character of the four. He’s great in every one, though.
51. Blue Valentine After seeing The Place Beyond the Pines, I was interested in watching more by the director, Derek Cianfrance. Blue Valentine tells the story of the relationship between Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams). The movie flashes back and forth in time, so we simultaneously see the relationship develop and fall apart. The story is told well, and Gosling and Williams have good chemistry, making it a worthwhile Netflix viewing.
50. Smashed Smashed is directed by James Ponsoldt, and I decided to watch it after enjoying his most recent movie, The Spectacular Now. Aaron Paul and Mary Elizabeth Winstead play a married couple who spend almost all of their time together drinking and partying hard. The relationship changes when Winstead’s character decides to try to get sober. In both of Ponsoldt’s movies that I’ve seen, alcoholism is front and center in the movie, and it’s interesting to see how the complex characters deal with it and with each other in different ways.
49. The Desolation of Smaug This is a slight improvement over the first installment of the trilogy, but still disappointed me. There are some great scenes, Gandalf is always great, and Smaug is good too. But I’m still puzzled why they decided to make this into three movies. This installment isn’t particularly faithful to the book either, adding in lots of orcs and battles that aren’t part of the book and weren’t necessary.
48. The Butler The Butler follows an African American man (Forest Whittaker) whose career as a White House butler for eight different presidents brings him a front row seat to just about every major event in recent US history. It’s a pleasant way to get a quick history lesson (albeit a Hollywood version of history), and Whittaker does a nice job. As a side note, my sister got to go to the premier of this movie in New York with the director and all of the actors, which sounds like it was pretty exciting. As a second side note, I watched this movie while sitting on my couch, which was not quite as exciting.
47. The East Brit Marling plays a young woman that goes undercover for a private intelligence company to infiltrate a radical anarchist group called The East. She eventually becomes conflicted as she spends months living with the cult-like group. I didn’t really like the end, but I enjoyed watching the story unfold, and Brit Marling is going to be a much bigger name in coming years.
46. Kon Tiki This nominee for Best Foreign Film recreates the voyage of explorer Thor Heyerdal’s across the pacific on a small raft in the 1940’s. The real-life Heyerdal went on the voyage to support his hypothesis that Polynesia could have been settled by people from South America. I always enjoy books and movies about adventures at sea, and this is a solid one.
45. Man of Steel I wanted so badly for this to be a great superhero movie. In the previews it looked like it was going to be great, focusing on the scenes of a young Clark Kent wrestling with the responsibilities of his powers and how to use them. And I thought the first half was terrific, with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane playing Clark’s Earthly parents. The second half of the movie ends up being too much of a good thing. When the bad guys from his home planet come to Earth to settle the score, the effects are great, but the movie becomes the fight scenes, and it just goes on and on. It’s a shame because it was so close to being really good. Michael Shannon get a big role here as the main bad guy, and as always, he’s excellent. It’s too bad the movie leaves little room for subtlety in his character. It’s very evident when you compare this to the recent Batman movies the difference between a director with great visual style (Zac Snyder), and someone that is actually a great director (Christopher Nolan). The special effects and fight scenes are important, but only if you use them the right way and don’t overdo it.
44. Now You See Me I went into this with pretty low expectations, since it is a movie about magic, after all. It stars Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, and while it’s forgettable, it was pretty easy to get sucked in and entertained for 2 hours.
43. The Reluctant Fundamentalist I don’t remember hearing much about this movie when it was in the theaters, but it was very good. It tells the story of a Pakistani man that comes to the US to go to college and start his career. His life changes dramatically after 9/11 as a Pakistani living in America. The movies weaves back and forth between his time in the US and the present day, where he is back in Pakistan and now suspected of being a radical Muslim involved with the kidnapping of an American. There is some action that is interesting, but as the movie’s title suggests, the best part of the film is the way it looks at what it means to be a Muslim in a post 9/11 United States.
42. 42 Mildly entertaining movie about the life of Jackie Robinson. I enjoyed watching this version of the story, but it also felt a little whitewashed, and the Jackie Robinson portrayed in the movie comes off as more a saint than an actual complex human being.
41. Captain America 2 If you are going to see a movie called Captain America 2, you pretty much know what to expect. I thought the first one was a pleasant surprise, and the sequel was enjoyable. The plot is a bit convoluted at times, and Captain America isn’t as fun as Iron Man, but there is some meat here with a plot that is essentially about a giant drone that is going to pre-emptively take out any national security threats.
40. ACOD Adult children of divorce. Not a great title, and not a great topic for a movie that’s mostly a comedy, and I suppose that’s why no one saw it. Which is a shame, because it’s actually pretty funny and pretty interesting. Adam Scott plays a guys who tries to get his divorced parents to get along well enough to come to his younger brother’s wedding. It’s about 80% of a terrific movie. A few scenes are over the top, but overall it was a pleasant surprise.
39. World War Z Movie theaters seem to be overrun with movies about zombies and vampires the last couple years, but I’m actually ok with that. I like these types of movies, and I even made a top 10 vampire and zombie movies list last year. This is based on a best-selling book of the same name by Max Brooks. Part of what made the book unique is that there is no protagonist, it just jumps from city to city to chronicle how the remaining humans fought and survived the zombie war. I guess a movie like that wouldn’t work in Hollywood, so they really made it into a completely different movie about the zombie apocalypse. It isn’t great, but there are some TENSE action scenes, and if you enjoy these types of zombie apocalypse movies, then I’d recommend it.
38. Elysium This movie got poor reviews, in part because everyone’s hopes were so high for this film as director Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to the amazing District 9. After reading all the negative reviews my hopes were sufficiently lowered, and I actually enjoyed it. Like District 9, even though it is a science fiction film, it is also a not-so-subtle critique of social inequality. It’s not as good as his first movie, but still interesting. Sharlto Copley, the South African actor who was so good as Wikus in District 9, is terrifying as the bad guy in this one.
37. Side Effects Underrated Stephen Soderberg movie. Like most Soderberg movies there are a number of characters whose stories intertwine and eventually come together. Suspenseful and thoughtful at times, trashy at others, but definitely entertaining.
36. Anchorman 2 The original is a top 10 all-time comedy for me, so even though I knew this wouldn’t be as good I had to watch it. And it’s not as good, but I still enjoyed watching it. I’m not sure there was even a script for this movie. Really the whole premise was to get Ron Burgundy back together with Wes Mantooth, Brick Tamblyn, and Brian Fantana and see what happens. Most of the time it works.
35. The World’s End From the same producers and actors that made Shawn of the Dead, this movie is about a group of middle aged men that come together (mostly grudgingly), to attempt to drink 12 pints at 12 pubs in one night, a feat they tried, but couldn’t pull off in their younger days. In the middle of the night, they realize the town has been taken over by aliens, and they’re going to have to fight them off if they’re going to finish the pub crawl. I wouldn’t call this great filmmaking, but it’s good for quite a few laughs.
33. COG As I’m typing this list, I’ve realized that there were a lot of overlooked independent films that I saw this year that were pleasant surprises, including this one. COG stands for child of god, and it’s based on a short story by David Sedaris, who happens to be the funniest writer alive. This isn’t a comedy though, it’s a thoughtful drama about a young man that graduates from an Ivy League school and decides to spend a year with a friend (who ditches him) working on the land in Oregon. Even though I’ve read all of Sedaris’ books I didn’t really remember this story, but what I enjoyed the most about it was how it looks at relationships, homosexuality, and faith with a gentle approach that you wouldn’t see in a bigger movie.
32. Europa Report Europa is the name of one of Jupiter’s moons, and this low-budget sci-fi movie follows a crew that takes on a mission to the moon to explore and look for life. The trailers make it seem like a found-footage horror movie, but thankfully it’s not that movie at all. In fact, it might be one of the most realistic space exploration movies ever made. Even though Gravity was more spectacular, this was more interesting in a lot of ways.
31. Blackfish It’s impossible to watch this movie and not be angry about keeping orcas and other whales in captivity. After seeing this I know that I will never go to a show at a facility that keeps large marine mammals in captivity. The movie outlines dozens of incidents where trainers are injured or even killed as they work with orcas in places like Sea World. It’s hard to believe that they continue to allow trainers to get in the water with these animals. In the wild they never attack people, but as the movie points out, they become different animals when they are forced to live out their lives in small enclosures.
30. Place Beyond the Pines The best thing about this movie is that I went into it thinking I knew exactly what the movie was going to be like, having seen the trailer for it a bunch of times, but then it ended up being a totally different movie. I didn’t enjoy the second half of the movie quite as much as the first half, but I enjoyed the movie more because the second half existed, if that makes any sense. Oh, and this has Ryan Gosling in it. There is no one cooler than Ryan Gosling right now.
29. Trance Trance is one of those films that seems like it should be a little better than it actually is. Danny Boyle is one of my all-time favorite directors, so I went into it with pretty high expectations. The basic plot is that an auctioneer gets involved with an art heist. During the heist he gets knocked unconscious and then can’t remember what happened. The bad guys torture him, then decide to use hypnotherapy to help him remember what he did. This is where the movie gets trippy. It isn’t perfect, but it’s fun, and the plot twists keep you entertained. Probably the only reason it isn’t higher on the list is that my expectations for Boyle are so high, I thought it could have been better.
28. Blue Like Jazz This movie is loosely based on a book by Portland author Donald Miller. The book is terrific – it chronicles Miller’s experience coming from a conservative Christian home in Texas and then moving away to go to Reed College in Portland. The movie is very different in structure from the book, but what they have in common is both approach faith and spirituality in a very different way than it is normally presented in the mainstream media. A few things added into the movie seemed out of place, but I just appreciate any movie that is not condemning of Christianity and where the Christians aren’t portrayed as condemning of everyone else.
27. Out of the Furnace Another example of a movie where the trailer seems to give away the whole plot, but then the actual movie ends up having more to it. Good cast (Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson), and a gritty feel (set in a depressed steel belt town) make it enjoyable to watch. There were a few things I didn’t like: Forest Whitaker’s character seems totally miscast, and the final scene doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the movie, but otherwise I thought it was a worthwhile crime thriller.
26. Fruitvale Station Fruitvale is the name of a public transit station in Oakland where Oscar
Grant was shot to death by police after an altercation on New Year’s Eve, 2008. The movie follows Grant and his life in the days before the shooting. It’s terrific, and one of the most thought-provoking movies of the year.
25. The Hunt Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Film, this is the story of a man (played by Mads Mikkelson) who is accused of molesting a young girl at the kindergarten where he works. The girl is also his best friend’s daughter, and it is horrifying to watch as his friends, his co-workers, and almost everyone in the small Danish town where he lives turn against him. It’s a testament to how good the movie is that even though it’s incredibly frustrating to watch the man’s life ripped apart by a misunderstanding, it is still great to watch.
24. The Silence As a warning, there are a couple of assault scenes in this movie that are tough to watch – it almost made me stop watching the movie. If you can get past those scenes, this is a terrific movie. It’s a crime mystery that begins when a 13 year-old girl disappears from the exact spot that a different teenager girl was assaulted and murdered more than 20 years ago. The new case re-opens old wounds for many different people, and it is fascinating to see how each of the people’s lives are turned upside down by the investigation. The mother of the original girl that disappeared, the police detective who spent years investigating the case, and the parents of the girl that is missing all struggle to deal with what happened and is happening again. Great character and plot development.
23. Rush Had I seen this movie in the theater, it might’ve ranked several spots higher on the list. The car racing scenes are terrific, and I wished I’d been able to see them on the big screen. It’s a true story about car-racing, but it’s mainly about the rivalry between two drivers, Niki Lauda and James Hunt. The actors for these parts are perfectly cast, and overall it’s a very enjoyable sports movie.
22. Dallas Buyers Club This is a terrific movie, good story, great acting. But allow me a moment to talk about Matthew McConaughey. This was the year of McConaughey. Not only did he win an Oscar for this movie (which he deserved), he steals the only scene he’s in in Wolf of Wall Street, he was amazing in the HBO series True Detective, and he makes another appearance in the top 5 of my movie list this year. Who would’ve thought that the mimbo from movies like Failure to Launch and The Wedding Planner would end up taking the title of best actor? I went back and watched Dazed and Confused for the first time this year, his first big-screen role. He’s not a polished actor, but even then as Wooderson his charisma jumps off the screen and you can tell he’s headed somewhere. This was the year he arrived. The movies he’s got in the hopper right now look pretty great too, including Interstellar, which I’m predicting now will be at the top of next year’s list.
21. Philomena Another of the rare movies that deals with faith and religion in a non-cookie cutter way. Philomena, played by Judi Dench, is a British woman that got pregnant as a teen and was sent to a Catholic convent where she was forced to give up her son to adoption. Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is a disgraced political spokesperson, who agrees to write a story about Philomena and her search for her adopted son. Philomena remains a devout Catholic, and Sixsmith an atheist, and they interact beautifully as their journey takes them to the convent, across the ocean to the United States, and back again. The story is beautifully told, and avoids being overly sentimental. It is a powerful story of forgiveness, and a surprising Best Picture nominee.
20. American Hustle I will always remember this movie as the movie that I went to see during the second half of the Super Bowl to avoid watching the Broncos get destroyed. So I was not exactly in a good mood going in. Good acting (Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, among others) elevates it to Best Picture nominee level, but it was a bit slow at points.
19. Nebraska After watching the trailer for this movie several times I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to see it, let alone why it would get nominated for Best Picture. And for about the first half of the film I was still pretty lukewarm about it. The characters seemed hard to care about, and the story was very slow – lots of scenery shots and pauses in the dialogue. But as the filmed rolled on, it kept growing on me, and by the second half of the movie I was in. The characters aren’t necessarily the most pleasant people, but they seem real, and it works towards a terrific final third that I really enjoyed.
18. Monsters I heard of this low-budget sci-fi movie because it was directed by the same guy that directed the new Godzilla. It was a movie that I planned to half-watch (so I could work on this movie list at the same time!), but I ended up getting totally sucked in and couldn’t take my eyes off it. It looks like a horror movie in the trailers, but it isn’t. If you are in any way a fan of science fiction I would highly recommend it. One of the most pleasant surprises of the year.
17. Short Term 12 Here’s a movie that deals with some pretty heavy stuff (it’s set in a foster care group home), but it’s still got a sense of humor and it never feels depressing. Brie Larson plays Grace, one of the staff members at the group home, who has her own difficult past that she hasn’t really dealt with. Foster care is an issue that is close to my heart, and I was skeptical going in that this movie would be a Hollywood version of what a group home was like, with lots of quirky characters that learn to work out their differences in the end. Thankfully it ended up being so much better than that.
16. The Kings of Summer I think most boys dream at some point about going off and living in the wilderness. My Side of the Mountain, Hatchett, and Into the Wild are books that come to mind about this theme. In this story, three high school boys decide to run away and build a house in the woods. It was one of three really good coming-of-age movies that came out this year, and it’s beauty isn’t necessarily in the plot, but in the relationships between the boys and the challenges and fun they have trying to make it on their own.
15. The Act of Killing I promise you have never seen a movie like this. It’s a documentary in which the film-makers set out to chronicle the genocide committed in Indonesia in the 1960’s. Except to chronicle the genocide, they are able to get a couple of the death-squad leaders that killed hundreds of people to help them make a movie about the genocide. They tell the men that they will help them film whatever kind of movie they want to make, as long as they tell their story. Some scenes are simply a recounting of how they would kill people. Other scenes are filmed in the style of a crime movie, with the actual men playing themselves or even the people they were executing. Others scenes are surreal, dream-like sequences. It is at times appalling, but incredibly powerful, especially as some of the men, perhaps for the first time, start to realize what they have done.
14. The Great Gatsby There are some easy comparisons between this and The Wolf of Wall Street. Both star Leo DiCaprio as a super-wealthy playboy who spends lavishly and throws huge parties. The comparisons end there. While Wolf of Wall Street is a hateful movie about Wall Street criminals who spend the money they earn from duping investors on drugs and hookers, Gatsby is one of the classic works of American literature. I enjoy director Baz Luhrman’s visual style, and I thought this was a terrific adaptation of the book.
13. All is Lost Robert Redford is at sea in a boat that he’s trying to keep from sinking. He’s the only actor on screen for the entire movie, and there are only a couple of lines of dialogue the whole time. That’s it. Oh, and it’s fantastic. I’m not quite sure why he didn’t earn a Best Actor nomination – I much preferred his work in this film to DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street or Bale in American Hustle.
12. The Spectacular Now Shalaine Woodley is the next big thing, now that she’s in bigger movies like Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars. But if you saw her in The Descendants you knew she had a great future, and she is the main thing that is terrific about this movie. She plays a sincere and charming high school student that mostly keeps to herself, until she bumps in to Sutter, a popular, hard partying classmate. The two fall for each other, and I loved the way the movie portrayed the relationship – everything about it seemed authentic, probably due to the excellent acting from Woodley and Miles Teller as Sutter. Alcohol plays a big part in the movie, but it’s a different message than you see in most teen films. The teen drinking isn’t glorified, but it isn’t condemned either. It becomes more and more clear as the movie goes on that at least Sutter, if not both of them, have some serious issues with alcohol that they are going to have to deal with. The characters are so good in this movie it was hard not to see kids that I’ve taught before in both of their performances.
11. Gravity Most people that saw this movie seemed to fall into one of two camps: Those that thought it was spectacular – a technical marvel that was unlike anything we’d ever seen on the big screen, and those that thought it was overrated and stupid. I’m probably in the first camp, although I’d agree that the plot wasn’t all that interesting. But that misses the point. This was a thriller that has you gripping your armrest almost the entire running length. It’s a movie that you almost have to see on the big screen and in 3D. The only other movie I can think of that even comes close to being as spectacular to look at in 3D was Avatar.
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson movies aren’t for everyone. They are certainly quirky, but to me they seem quirky in a sincere, rather than an ironic way, and that is why I love pretty much all of them. I think I love more than anything else that he is a great storyteller, and with the acting, the sets, the costumes, the music, and the dialogue, he makes the stories so much fun to get lost in.
9. Lincoln This is really a movie that should have been on last year’s list, but I didn’t get around to watching it until the start of last summer. But what a wonderful movie. Tommy Lee Jones was amazing. Daniel Day Lewis is so good that you forget it’s him. Everything about it was interesting, and it should have won Best Picture in 2012.
8. A Hijacking
7. Captain Phillips Here’s a recommendation: First, watch Captain Phillips, a terrific movie about Somali pirates with a big budget, Tom Hanks, and some top-notch suspense/action scenes. Then watch A Hijacking – a small budget Danish film, also about Somali pirates hijacking a freight ship. Both are fantastic movies, but they are totally different films. Captain Phillips is tense and has you on the edge of your seat. A Hijacking has no action at all – it just focuses on the negotiations and the psychological damage of being a hostage. Captain Phillips has Tom Hanks with his first good performance in a decade. A Hijacking has no one you’ve ever heard of or even seen before. It’s fascinating to me that you could have two movies about the same thing be so completely different, but both be excellent films.
6. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Most years I make this list there is at least one movie that I rank higher than everyone else thinks I should. I have a feeling Walter Mitty is that movie this year. It didn’t get great reviews, but I loved it. Ben Stiller plays a character who spends most of his time daydreaming about amazing adventures, but very little of his real life doing anything of consequence. The closing of his office at Life Magazine, and a co-worker (Kristen Wiig) that he has a crush on inspire him to consider stepping out of his own head and into the real world. I thought it had some of the best cinematography of any movie I saw this year, and perhaps I enjoyed it so much because I think there’s more than a little Walter Mitty in me.
5. The Lego Movie This honestly might be my favorite kids/animated movie ever. I’ve loved some of the Pixar movies (especially the Toy Story movies and The Incredibles), but this may top all of them. Funny, with a good story, great voice acting (including some amazing cameos), and while all four of my kids loved it, I think I liked it more than they did.
4. Her I thought this was the most creative movie of the year. All of Spike Jonze’s (Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) movies have been interesting, and this one is no exception. Yes, it sounds absurd to say that it’s a movie about a man that falls in love with his operating system. I don’t want to say that the movie makes it seem ‘realistic’, but like some other great movies about artificial intelligence (2001, Blade Runner), it deals in an intelligent way with the theme of what it means to be human and to love.
3. The Way Way Back I mentioned before that there were several great coming-of-age movies this year, and The Way Way Back probably made me happier than any movie the whole year. Duncan is a 14 year old, forced to go with his mom (Toni Collette), his mom’s boyfriend (Steve Carrell), and his daughter, to spend their summer in a summer resort town. Duncan is painfully awkward, Steve Carrell’s character is a total ass, and it looks like it is going to be an awful summer. I knew how most of the story was going to unfold, but it is done in such a charming, fun, way that I couldn’t help loving it. The writers previously wrote the screenplay for The Descendants, and the cast is fantastic (especially Allison Janney as the crazy neighbor and Sam Rockwell as the goofy water-park worker).
2. Mud Every year there is at least one movie that totally surprises me with how great it is. I always have a soft spot for coming of age movies and books, and this movie had me in the first 10 minutes. Great movies are enjoyable not just for their plot, or even their acting, but just because it feels wonderful to be caught up in the world that the movie exists in. This was the movie that sold me on Matthew McConaughey as one of our greatest living actors, and the director, Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) is someone that I’m looking forward to following in coming years. I don’t want to tell much more about the plot because you should just see it.
1. 12 Years a Slave As soon as I walked out of 12 Years a Slave I knew I had seen the movie that would top my list. It’s the first time that the Best Picture winner has also topped my list, an only slightly less prestigious honor. For me it joins a very short list of movies (Shindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan come to mind) that are artistically stunning but also profoundly moving in the way they force you to deal with historical events. There have been other movies that have dealt with slavery before, but none like this. The emotions aren’t filtered through a white character’s lens, and there is no softening of the edges. You are forced to confront the brutality of slavery with no humor to soften the impact, no cheerful sidekick to save the day. It is powerful and eye-opening in a way that few movies ever have been. With most movies, even very good ones, I think about a couple of scenes that didn’t quite ring true, a character that was miscast or a few lines of dialogue that seemed out of place. With 12 Years a Slave it seems like every single detail is perfect – this was exactly the movie that Steve McQueen set out to make. At times it is hard to watch, and it is certain that it will make you uncomfortable, but don’t use that as an excuse not to see this film. This is as good as movies get.
Older
Movies
In addition to all the new movies I watch, I always enjoy going back to check out some classics and view older movies that people recommend. This year I made top 10 lists for comedies and science fiction movies, so that prompted me to watch a lot of movies in those genres. Feel free to opine whether or not you think any of these are truly "classics" or not.
In addition to all the new movies I watch, I always enjoy going back to check out some classics and view older movies that people recommend. This year I made top 10 lists for comedies and science fiction movies, so that prompted me to watch a lot of movies in those genres. Feel free to opine whether or not you think any of these are truly "classics" or not.
Back to the
Future This is an
all-time classic for me, and I hadn’t seen it for years, so I thought it would
be fun to watch it with my son now that he’s about the same age I was when I
saw it. It’s a movie that holds up well,
and my son enjoyed it too. Is there
anyone that doesn’t like this movie?
Top Secret Another old favorite from the 80’s that I watched for the first time in at least 15 years. Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, an American that gets caught up in a spy plot in Germany. It’s really just a very silly movie, and sadly it seems like there aren’t many comedies like this being made any more.
Ghostbusters This is my favorite comedy movie ever made. Bill Murray is also my favorite comedic actor, and even though he has so many great roles (Stripes, Groundhog Day, Rushmore, Caddyshack), I think Peter Venkman is my favorite Bill Murray role.
The Big Lebowski Another top 5 all-time comedy for me. The Dude abides.
The Box This was a more recent sci-fi movie, based on a book called Button, Button by Richard Mattheson, the same guy that wrote I am Legend. The premise of the movie (and the book) is that a man shows up on a couple’s doorstep with a small box. In the box is a button. Press the button, and the couple will receive $1,000,000 dollars. But when the button is pressed, someone they do not know will die. It’s an interesting premise, and I enjoyed reading the book. The movie, on the other hand, is a mess, and like every version of I am Legend that has been filmed (there have been 3), the movie makers felt like it was necessary to take a story that was already good and make it into something different.
Total Recall When I made a top-10 science fiction movies list earlier in the year, I listed this movie (the 1990 original) as one of my honorable mentions. So I watched it for the first time in ages to see how it held up, and it did not hold up well. I remembered this as one of Arnold’s most entertaining sci-fi movies from the era when he was the action king of the world. There are a few good scenes, but what I had forgotten was the whole part about the mysterious leader of the resistance movement essentially being a weird-looking growth coming out of another guy’s side. That pretty much ruined this movie for me.
Dark City I re-watched this movie while I was thinking about my all-time top 10 science fiction movies. I hadn’t seen it in 16 years since it came out in the theater, and I only vaguely remembered it as an intelligent sci-fi film. It turned out to be even better than I remembered it. As the name implies, it is a truly dark movie. It’s about a group of parasitic beings that have created a city of perpetual night, where they re-shape the cities and re-shape the memories of the humans every night in order to figure out how people work. If you are a fan of science fiction movies and haven’t seen it, I would highly recommend it.
Before Sunrise I watched the Before…movie series totally out of order. I watched Before Sunset first, and thought it was a pleasant movie. This year I came back and watched this one, the original about how the two characters first meet and fall in love. It was slow, but also enjoyable, although I think I actually enjoyed the sequel more. The third installment, Before Midnight, came out to good reviews, this year, but I thought it was unbearable to watch. Not really my kind of movies, but with the first two I could see why people enjoyed them.
Chimpanzee This movie was delightful. No joke. There is good and bad about the Disney Nature movies. The good is that you get to see incredible footage of animals in the wild, and a bigger audience learns about some species or habitat. The bad is that it seems like most of these movies are guilty of anthropomorphizing, and it always seems to me like the filmmakers think people won’t be interested if they don’t attach some sort of human narrative to the lives of wild animals. But when it comes to chimpanzees, it’s hard not to see the parallels between them and us. I didn’t like the narration, but the ‘story’ in this documentary is amazing. If you have kids that like animals, watch this movie with them.
A Dolphin Tale After we watched this in the theater my girls rented it and we watched it several more times. The true story of a dolphin caught in a net that loses its tail fluke and the people that help rehabilitate it. It is totally sappy with bad acting, but it is actually kind of cool at the end to see all of the real people, including kids and veterans that lost limbs, that were inspired by the dolphin’s recovery. Also, I am a total sucker for this kind of thing.
Big Miracle Another ‘based on a true story’ movie starring Jim from The Office and Drew Barrymore. It’s about some whales in Alaska that get trapped in a frozen bay, and the local and eventually national effort to rescue them. Again, it’s not a great movie, but I am a sucker for this kind of thing, and my kids liked it. I’d much rather watch this type of movie than something like Ice Age 7.
Holes Pretty solid adaptation of a terrific kids book. The cast is perfect, including Sigourney Weaver’s nasty warden, except the main character, Stanley Yelnats, is supposed to be a tall, overweight kid, and instead he’s Shia LeBeouf.
Stand By Me After seeing so many good coming-of-age movies, I felt like I needed to re-watch the movie that probably first comes to mind for anyone in my generation when you mention coming-of-age movies. In some ways it isn’t as good as I remembered (the acting really isn’t very good), but for the most part it remains a classic so many years later. Four boys, on their own, adventures, laughs, and kids dealing with some pretty serious issues as well. It’s a timeless story, and I think it will be the gold standard for this type of movie for many years to come.
Dazed and Confused When I made my list of my 10 favorite high school movies ever made earlier in the year, this was a movie that several people said should have been on the list. I had actually never seen it before this year. I did enjoy it, but I don’t think it’s quite top 10 good. More than anything I enjoyed the chance to see Matthew McConaughey in his movie debut.
3 O’Clock High This was another movie several people mentioned as one of their favorite high school movies, and another one that I’d never seen. Jerry is assigned to write an article about the new kid, Buddy Revell, who is rumored to be a psychopath. When Jerry accidentally bumps into him, Buddy challenges him to a fight after school at 3 O’Clock. He spends the whole day trying to dodge the showdown. It’s great, in a 1980’s kind of way.
The Raid: Redemption Is it possible to have a movie with too many fight scenes? This movie sets out to see if that is possible by essentially making a movie that is one long fight scene. A SWAT team is trying to fight their way to the top of an apartment building that is controlled by a drug lord. I’m normally a big fan of a good fight scene, in fact I’ve even come up with a list of my all-time favorite fight scenes. But this was a little too much even for me.
Bubba Ho-Tep Dan Kumprey, I saw this movie based on your recommendation, and I feel like you owe me an hour and a half of my life back. Ok, it had actually been on my list for a while, but Dan reminded me of it and I moved it up in my queue. I know it’s supposed to be corny, but even Bruce Campbell couldn’t save this one for me.
Hunger Before 12 Years a Slave, I hadn’t seen any of Steve McQueen’s work, so I thought I would go back and watch his first film. Wow. This is probably not a movie most people are going to want to watch, but it was one of the most fascinating movies I watched all year. McQueen’s visual style that was so striking in 12 Years a Slave is evident here. Lots of long, quiet shots of things that aren’t pleasant to watch. As a director his style is clearly very confrontational, and I had to fast forward through some scenes I just couldn’t stomach. Michael Fassbender plays a 1980’s IRA member going on a hunger strike to protest conditions in the prison he’s a captive in. The movie has more than one 20 minute stretch with no dialogue, and we don’t even see the main character until about halfway into the movie. Fassbender is amazing – if he’d been a bigger name when this came out I think he would’ve won an Oscar for this role. By the end of the movie he is so thin that it’s hard to believe he survived making the movie. Fascinating, but not pleasant to watch in any way.
Sneakers Early 90’s spy movie starring Robert Redford, Dan Akroyd, and Sidney Poitier. This is an old fave, and I watched it again with Caleb this year.
The Hobbit Last year this was probably my most disappointing movie of the year. So why did I watch it again? Well, my 9 year old son and I read The Hobbit this year, so we decided to watch this together before seeing The Desolation of Smaug. It still wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it more the second time, perhaps because my expectations had been lowered and because I watched it over two days, so it didn’t seem quite as long.
The Naked Gun Old school slapstick comedy classic. It’s still really funny. It is a little weird seeing OJ Simpson in the movie, though.
Top Secret Another old favorite from the 80’s that I watched for the first time in at least 15 years. Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, an American that gets caught up in a spy plot in Germany. It’s really just a very silly movie, and sadly it seems like there aren’t many comedies like this being made any more.
Ghostbusters This is my favorite comedy movie ever made. Bill Murray is also my favorite comedic actor, and even though he has so many great roles (Stripes, Groundhog Day, Rushmore, Caddyshack), I think Peter Venkman is my favorite Bill Murray role.
The Big Lebowski Another top 5 all-time comedy for me. The Dude abides.
The Box This was a more recent sci-fi movie, based on a book called Button, Button by Richard Mattheson, the same guy that wrote I am Legend. The premise of the movie (and the book) is that a man shows up on a couple’s doorstep with a small box. In the box is a button. Press the button, and the couple will receive $1,000,000 dollars. But when the button is pressed, someone they do not know will die. It’s an interesting premise, and I enjoyed reading the book. The movie, on the other hand, is a mess, and like every version of I am Legend that has been filmed (there have been 3), the movie makers felt like it was necessary to take a story that was already good and make it into something different.
Total Recall When I made a top-10 science fiction movies list earlier in the year, I listed this movie (the 1990 original) as one of my honorable mentions. So I watched it for the first time in ages to see how it held up, and it did not hold up well. I remembered this as one of Arnold’s most entertaining sci-fi movies from the era when he was the action king of the world. There are a few good scenes, but what I had forgotten was the whole part about the mysterious leader of the resistance movement essentially being a weird-looking growth coming out of another guy’s side. That pretty much ruined this movie for me.
Dark City I re-watched this movie while I was thinking about my all-time top 10 science fiction movies. I hadn’t seen it in 16 years since it came out in the theater, and I only vaguely remembered it as an intelligent sci-fi film. It turned out to be even better than I remembered it. As the name implies, it is a truly dark movie. It’s about a group of parasitic beings that have created a city of perpetual night, where they re-shape the cities and re-shape the memories of the humans every night in order to figure out how people work. If you are a fan of science fiction movies and haven’t seen it, I would highly recommend it.
Before Sunrise I watched the Before…movie series totally out of order. I watched Before Sunset first, and thought it was a pleasant movie. This year I came back and watched this one, the original about how the two characters first meet and fall in love. It was slow, but also enjoyable, although I think I actually enjoyed the sequel more. The third installment, Before Midnight, came out to good reviews, this year, but I thought it was unbearable to watch. Not really my kind of movies, but with the first two I could see why people enjoyed them.
Chimpanzee This movie was delightful. No joke. There is good and bad about the Disney Nature movies. The good is that you get to see incredible footage of animals in the wild, and a bigger audience learns about some species or habitat. The bad is that it seems like most of these movies are guilty of anthropomorphizing, and it always seems to me like the filmmakers think people won’t be interested if they don’t attach some sort of human narrative to the lives of wild animals. But when it comes to chimpanzees, it’s hard not to see the parallels between them and us. I didn’t like the narration, but the ‘story’ in this documentary is amazing. If you have kids that like animals, watch this movie with them.
A Dolphin Tale After we watched this in the theater my girls rented it and we watched it several more times. The true story of a dolphin caught in a net that loses its tail fluke and the people that help rehabilitate it. It is totally sappy with bad acting, but it is actually kind of cool at the end to see all of the real people, including kids and veterans that lost limbs, that were inspired by the dolphin’s recovery. Also, I am a total sucker for this kind of thing.
Big Miracle Another ‘based on a true story’ movie starring Jim from The Office and Drew Barrymore. It’s about some whales in Alaska that get trapped in a frozen bay, and the local and eventually national effort to rescue them. Again, it’s not a great movie, but I am a sucker for this kind of thing, and my kids liked it. I’d much rather watch this type of movie than something like Ice Age 7.
Holes Pretty solid adaptation of a terrific kids book. The cast is perfect, including Sigourney Weaver’s nasty warden, except the main character, Stanley Yelnats, is supposed to be a tall, overweight kid, and instead he’s Shia LeBeouf.
Stand By Me After seeing so many good coming-of-age movies, I felt like I needed to re-watch the movie that probably first comes to mind for anyone in my generation when you mention coming-of-age movies. In some ways it isn’t as good as I remembered (the acting really isn’t very good), but for the most part it remains a classic so many years later. Four boys, on their own, adventures, laughs, and kids dealing with some pretty serious issues as well. It’s a timeless story, and I think it will be the gold standard for this type of movie for many years to come.
Dazed and Confused When I made my list of my 10 favorite high school movies ever made earlier in the year, this was a movie that several people said should have been on the list. I had actually never seen it before this year. I did enjoy it, but I don’t think it’s quite top 10 good. More than anything I enjoyed the chance to see Matthew McConaughey in his movie debut.
3 O’Clock High This was another movie several people mentioned as one of their favorite high school movies, and another one that I’d never seen. Jerry is assigned to write an article about the new kid, Buddy Revell, who is rumored to be a psychopath. When Jerry accidentally bumps into him, Buddy challenges him to a fight after school at 3 O’Clock. He spends the whole day trying to dodge the showdown. It’s great, in a 1980’s kind of way.
The Raid: Redemption Is it possible to have a movie with too many fight scenes? This movie sets out to see if that is possible by essentially making a movie that is one long fight scene. A SWAT team is trying to fight their way to the top of an apartment building that is controlled by a drug lord. I’m normally a big fan of a good fight scene, in fact I’ve even come up with a list of my all-time favorite fight scenes. But this was a little too much even for me.
Bubba Ho-Tep Dan Kumprey, I saw this movie based on your recommendation, and I feel like you owe me an hour and a half of my life back. Ok, it had actually been on my list for a while, but Dan reminded me of it and I moved it up in my queue. I know it’s supposed to be corny, but even Bruce Campbell couldn’t save this one for me.
Hunger Before 12 Years a Slave, I hadn’t seen any of Steve McQueen’s work, so I thought I would go back and watch his first film. Wow. This is probably not a movie most people are going to want to watch, but it was one of the most fascinating movies I watched all year. McQueen’s visual style that was so striking in 12 Years a Slave is evident here. Lots of long, quiet shots of things that aren’t pleasant to watch. As a director his style is clearly very confrontational, and I had to fast forward through some scenes I just couldn’t stomach. Michael Fassbender plays a 1980’s IRA member going on a hunger strike to protest conditions in the prison he’s a captive in. The movie has more than one 20 minute stretch with no dialogue, and we don’t even see the main character until about halfway into the movie. Fassbender is amazing – if he’d been a bigger name when this came out I think he would’ve won an Oscar for this role. By the end of the movie he is so thin that it’s hard to believe he survived making the movie. Fascinating, but not pleasant to watch in any way.
Sneakers Early 90’s spy movie starring Robert Redford, Dan Akroyd, and Sidney Poitier. This is an old fave, and I watched it again with Caleb this year.
The Hobbit Last year this was probably my most disappointing movie of the year. So why did I watch it again? Well, my 9 year old son and I read The Hobbit this year, so we decided to watch this together before seeing The Desolation of Smaug. It still wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it more the second time, perhaps because my expectations had been lowered and because I watched it over two days, so it didn’t seem quite as long.
The Naked Gun Old school slapstick comedy classic. It’s still really funny. It is a little weird seeing OJ Simpson in the movie, though.
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