**Editors note: since this list ran on December 31st over at The Film Stage I have caught up with six 2014 releases that otherwise had not been considered - they were all thankfully good but no game changers amongst them. I can firmly stay I stand by my top 10. With that said I must acknowledge or embarrassingly confess that last year one did get away - The Broken Circle Breakdown. The film has had a great run including a much-deserved Oscar nomination, I haven’t included it on this list but it certainly deserves notice, in any year.
And while this list aims to organize this year’s best, that idea is somewhat lucid. Many critics included David McKenzie’s Starred Up, which I had seen in 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It had been included on last year’s Fink 50. Under the rules of this logical - Eden, which played at TIFF and the New York Film Festival, and will also screen at Sundance this month, may find its way onto 2015 top ten lists. So be it: of course if we’re being fair the most fun I had in a movie theater this year was seeing Purple Rain in 35MM at the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers (and a rare pristine print no less - not one of the pink-faded AGFA prints that I’m used to). So how was 2014 in the grand scheme of things?
While it’s unfair to get all Chicken Little, sure the box office was down but the sky is not falling, at least not cinematically. This year produced far less masterpieces than years past in my humble opinion: I’m not exactly sure what it is, perhaps blame it on the fact I’m a year older and thus crankier with age. The standout, a reoccurring headliner on these year-end lists is without a doubt Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a new American classic, the kind of film that comes around once every five years, and one that my admiration has only grown for upon a second viewing. Removed from my initial viewing by a few difficult months, I found second viewing to be even an even more mesmerizing and emotional experience than my initial screening. Memory is a powerful thing, Boyhood, like the other excellent pictures gracing my list make a space for us to live within the frame. This is no truer for Boyhood than it is for Ava DuVernay’s Selma, a gripping work of immediacy evoking contemporary civil rights issues currently playing out in American streets today Ferguson and Staten Island; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s beautiful meditation Winter Sleep; and Mike Leigh’s odd and fascinating Mr. Turner with Timothy Spall giving the performance of the year.
2014 has produced several very good films, some I admit I have missed due to distribution quirks that are designed to separate the best of the bunch for a while until the major releases run their course. Others have languished between festival runs, while well-reviewed pictures came, went and are waiting in limbo to be released and discovered. Besides those challenges, I remain convinced some masterpieces are never seen, rejected by the gatekeepers and tastemakers, relegated perhaps to local and regional film festivals and uploaded by their creators to YouTube and Vimeo - thinking about such things is akin to thinking if we are alone in the universe: it can keep you up at night.
In 2014 I had seen 274 films, staring with August Osage County and ending with Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (I know, not proud of either one of these titles), plus in the first two days of 2014 I had seen three additional titles released in 2014. What’s missing? I regret that I did not see A Most Violent Year and Still Alice due to the way the films had been released. Oh well.
The Fink 50 (in descending order):
Top Ten
1.- Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
A revolutionary, ambitious masterpiece that frequently resists an episodic structure. A single film that despite the 12-year duration of production unfolds simply as life does: there are no transitions, the only clues as to what year we have are Linklater’s subtle soundtrack choices. Haunting in its details, Boyhood is very simply the story of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) living moment to moment, often moving through Texas with his mother who hasn’t quite figured things out (Patrica Arquette) and occasionally bratty sister (Lorelei Linklater). Ethan Hawk beautifully plays the wayward father, himself in flux as he matures from musician to actuary. Often Mason does not understand the context of each moment which is partly why I believe the film’s impact grows more profound upon subsequent viewings. A masterpiece in any year, Boyhood represents above all the very best in American independent filmmaking: strong storytelling often presenting conflict or danger as Mason experiments with drugs, drinking, sex and ultimately heartbreak. Leaving him on the same ambiguous note it found him some 12 years and 165 minutes later, Boyhood is a sublime, exhilarating, and emotional cinematic experience, and a new classic.
2.- The Congress (Ari Folman)
A rather brilliant and exciting commentary on celebrity, youth culture, and movie-making, The Congress is an essay on identity and persona wrapped in a sci-fi adventure. Robin Wright plays herself, an aging actress who agrees to give up her craft to sell her brand to a big studio, who scans her into a database. Some years later she’s invited to a futuristic congress, the film shifts modes from live action to hand-drawn animation. One of the year’s most ambitious films, The Congress is a visual and intellectual feat: entertaining and engrossing throughout, densely packed, it delivers on the ambition it presents in the first act, and then some.
3.- Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
A biopic doesn’t quite describe Mike Leigh’s brilliant Mr. Turner fronted by a career-best performance by Timothy Spall as legendary British painter J.M.W. Turner. Leigh’s first digitally shot film (shot by long-time collaborator Dick Pope) the haunting opening scene captures perfectly a landscape painting of a mid-career Turner with a performance that is truly strange. Leigh, known for his improvisational style allows the viewer to enter this space as a fly on the wall, witnessing the quirks of Turner as embodied by Spall: the performance is fascinating recalling his work in Leigh’s Life is Sweet. Establishing and breaking rhythms, like J.M.W. Turner the film refuses to compromise, engrossing and immersive - it’s both beautiful and at times challenging.
4.- Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
A beautiful and haunting meditation on life, religion, duty, and honor set in central Anatolia - Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a man of great creative energy who reluctantly manages his family’s assets with sister Necla (Demet Akbag), while playing a quasi-father figure to his young wife Nihal (Melisa Sozen). Filled with beautiful performances, Winter Sleep, running over three hours takes its time, unfolding slowly and often in long takes. It’s not uncommon for a conversation to unfold at the pace it would in real life, not in movie-time. Liberated from artificial drama the film essentially draws us in to a dysfunctional, flawed household as Aydin balances his duties, responsibilities and ambitions as he enters his later years, like Nihal he still has not found himself. Captivating from frame one, Winter Sleep is worth the commitment required to experience it.
5.- Selma (Ava DuVernay)
If 2014 is considered the “year of outrage” - the 2015 wide release date for Selma arrives far too late. A visceral frontline examination of Martin Luther King’s civil rights marches in Selma, met with extreme violence including murder as Alabama’s good ol’ boys fight to maintain status quo prior to LBJ’s intervention and the passage of the Voter Rights Act. Undoubtably this film will provoke conversations within a current context (one early moment seems eerily Eric Garner’s final moments) and Ava DuVernay’s direction ads a sense of immediacy to Paul Webb’s script. Raw, it also presents Martin Luther King Jr (David Oyelowo), George Wallace (Tim Roth), and LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) as complex men, each with their own motivations and ideals of justice.
6.- Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)
An essential movie for 2014 - Laura Poitras is granted a privileged perspective, remaining mostly objective as she becomes a participant in history. Invited by “CitizenFour”, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, to Hong Kong where he debriefs with Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald and others regarding the trove of documents chronicling domestic surveillance, Poitras completes a trilogy about the US post-9/11. The result is a compelling and timely documentary attempting to add transparency and featuring crusaders including William Binney, the film is claustrophobic yet critical. Poitras, despite becoming a player in this saga, has crafted a remarkable, chilling picture, risking her freedom and security to do so. Taking an often transparent approach by include email correspondence between all parties, Poitras exposes both the risks and the duties she and Greenwald have to their source including the behind the scenes sausage-making as Snowden, both the man and his data are crafted into a news package for the mainstream media.
7.- Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Recalling PTA’s earlier work, Inherent Vice is a brilliant ensemble fronted by “Doc” (Joaquin Phoenix) a down on his luck unlicensed private detective on a mission. A twisted plot need not be explained here (after all, isn’t it best to go in cold?) yields unless surprises and rewards along the way in a film thats all about mood, atmosphere and attitude. Delightful, dark and twisted - vintage Paul Thomas Anderson to its core recalling the lighter moments of Boogie Nights with several new twists.
8.- The Rover (David Michod)
A cold blooded, powerful and moral thriller staring Guy Peirce and (a virtually unrecognizable) Robert Pattinson as travelers traversing an apcoypitic landscape in rural Australia. A bleak and compelling nightmare lensed by Natasha Braier, The Rover is a chillingly sparse picture, cementing David Michod as a new master.
9.- Wetlands (David Wnendt)
The grossest gross-out comedy of the year, and one of the rare films I’ve seen that has truly shocked me. Adapted from Charlotte Roche’s novel by David Wnendt, Wetlands is one of the year’s best (and not be confused with the 2011 French-Canadian masterpiece of the same name), no subject is taboo in this picture including sex, hygiene, gender, and identity. Fronted by Carla Juri as Helen, a young women with chronic anal fissures and heroine who answers questions we might be afraid to ask without a filthy mind and an open heart. Love is a battlefield, and Wetlands is a coming-of-age story that’s opening credits alone I suspect would shock (and delight) John Waters.
10.- Eden (Mia Hansen-Love)
Aiming to capture a moment in time, the development of French touch music, a genre of EDM Mia Hansen-Love has crafted a brilliant, sweeping epic with the spirit of the New Wave. A psychological study of music creation, influenced by the globe-trotting lifestyle of Paul (Felix de Givry) through his ups and downs as he bounces between Paris and New York. Eden is richly textured, exciting filmmaking with excellent performances.
(links to Full Reviews, where available)
11. - Finding Fela
12. - Victor Charlie Romeo 3D
13. - Goodbye to Language 3D
14. - Moebis
15. - Map to the Stars
16. - The Grand Budapest Hotel
17. - Nightcrawler
18. - The Lego Movie
19. - National Gallery
20. - Gone Girl
21. - Abuse of Weakness
22. - Haemoo
23. - Interstellar
24. - The Wind Rises
25. - Under the Skin
26.- Zero Motivation
27.- Nymophomaniac: Vol. I
28.- Omar
29.- The Immigrant
30.- Birdman
31.- Force Majeure
32.- Ida
33.- The Newburgh Sting
34.- Two Days, One Night
35.- Kill the Messenger
36.- Beyond the Lights
37.- Rosewater
38.- Virunga
39.- Tales from the Grim Sleeper
40.- Snowpiercer
41.- Stop the Pounding Heart
42.- American Sniper
43.- St. Vincent
44.- X + Y
45.- The Good Lie
46.- The Dog
47. - The Babadook
48. - High Society
49. - PK
50.- Hector & The Search for Happiness
John Fink writes at TheFilmStage and FinkOnFilms and tweets @finkjohnj
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