I've been hesitant to post this list for weeks because I keep questioning where to place a couple of titles. I've been rolling my eyes at Boyhood ever since it was released and scored a perfect 100 on Metacritic. I mean, I thought it was an extraordinary experience, but I found several of its individual scenes clunky. I was so engrossed with what Birdman was accomplishing up until the last 20 minutes and then it just lost me and I left the theater shrugging my shoulders. And I found Selma incredibly rousing and effective, but I can't tell how much I'm rooting for its timeliness and the personal stories of the team involved with it more than I am actually judging it as a piece of art.
I struggled with the placement of several other titles, some because I questioned my initial love of them as I thought about them some more (Whiplash, Dear White People), or I questioned if they were too small/not ambitious enough (Ida, Only Lovers Left Alive, The LEGO Movie, Obvious Child), or I was ignoring major flaws in them because I just enjoyed them so much (Snowpiercer, Edge of Tomorrow), or I realized my admiration grew in my mind after initially writing them off for certain immediate flaws I found (Grand Budapest, Gone Girl, Babadook, Nightcrawler).
Even if I didn't unequivocally LOVE a single film this year, there were at least 30 movies I saw this year that I really liked, revealing that 2014 was a really rich year for cinema. I realized Under the Skin was my clear number one choice when I really thought about which movie I found the most resonant and a distinctive cinematic achievement of genre, mood, style, and substance. 2014 really was a great year for genre films, even if they were almost entirely outside of the Hollywood system. This year was decent for Hollywood movies, I guess, but I just saw a bunch of B/B-/C+ movies that ended up blending together in my head, although I liked Godzilla way more than I should have...
Anyway! Here's my list:
1. Under the Skin
2. Boyhood
3. Ida
4. Only Lovers Left Alive
5. Selma
6. Birdman
7. Snowpiercer
8. The LEGO Movie
9. Obvious Child
10. Stranger by the Lake
11. Whiplash
12. The Grand Budapest Hotel
13. Life Itself
14. Gone Girl
15. Edge of Tomorrow
16. Starred Up
17. Force Majeure
18. The Babadook
19. Nightcrawler
20. Calvary
Runners-Up: Wild, Begin Again, Dear White People, Love is Strange, Beyond the Lights, We Are the Best!, Finding Vivian Maier, The Guest, Jodoworsky's Dune, Le-Weekend
Movies I Admired More Than I Actually Liked: Two Days, One Night; CITIZENFOUR; A Most Violent Year; Foxcatcher; The Immigrant
Sequels I Liked But Not As Much as the Originals I Loved: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, How to Train Your Dragon 2, 22 Jump Street
Most Notable Movies I Felt MEH About: Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Pride, Top Five, Blue Ruin, Enemy, Locke, Mr. Turner
Only Straight Up Bad Movies I Saw This Year: Noah, Maleficent
Most Important Movies I Still Have to See: Mommy, The Interrupters, Goodbye to Language, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Winter Sleep, Child's Pose, The Missing Picture, Stray Dogs, Actress, Manuscripts Don't Burn
I kept track and rated all the movies I saw (84 and counting as of now!) on my Letterboxd: http://letterboxd.com/gayzosam/list/2014-movies/
Phew. Finally done with that. Cig time.
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