IL’s Films Of The Year 2014

Here we go then (and I deliberately haven’t read anyone else’s first so as not to be unduly influenced). First, the stats. I saw 39 films this year, 34 of which are 2014 UK releases and therefore eligible for consideration. This compares to 42 and 32, respectively, for 2013, so a very similar sized pool. But that’s where the similarities end. Whereas last year I was scrabbling around to find 10 films I actually liked, this year, there were at least 15 which simply had to be in the Top 10. And I couldn’t find anything in 2014 which I hated anywhere near as much as the ludicrous Gravity and the execrable Silver Linings Playbook from the year before. Even Interstellar was alright. I must be going soft….

Before leaving 2013 behind, I should note that The Great Beauty would have been challenging for the film of the year if I had only seen it before Jan 2014. And whilst we’re on the subject, the wonderful How We Used To Live was a 2014 release, but I saw a preview in 2013, so I discounted it. Without such rules, surely anarchy would prevail.

So I think we’ve established it was a pretty damn good year, but into each life some rain must fall, so as is traditional, we’ll start at the bottom of the barrel and work up.

Worst Films of 2014

The absurdly overpraised and actually rather dull Dallas Buyers Club just misses the list, but I’m afraid a couple of other big hitters are due my opprobrium.

3) The Double

After 2011’s Film Of The Year Submarine, I’m afraid Richard Ayoade’s follow-up is a terrible misfire. An incoherent mess, stylistically all over the place, and hamstrung by Jesse Eisenberg giving that performance he always gives. Again. But not as irritating as…

2) The Grand Budapest Hotel

I’ve always been agnostic re Wes Anderson, but I did like Moonrise Kingdom. Here however, he turns the twee dial up to twelve to teeth-grating effect, while managing to be boring at the same time. And now the film is being showered with awards and nominations, I find my stance hardening against this one.

1) Bad Neighbors

OK, I was off sick and desperate for something to watch, and this had been generally favourable reviewed. But it just seemed like the same old fratboy comedy nonsense really, topped off by Seth Rogen and particularly Rose Byrne giving performances akin to the proverbial fingernails scraping down a blackboard. Nice acting by Zach Efron’s pecs though.

 Phew, that’s better. On to nicer things. This year’s honourable mentions start with Pride, for generally being nice and avoiding the worst excesses of Brit working class hero films (see The Full Monty, Billy Elliot et al), and for resisting the temptation to frame the whole shebang with a pointless love story. Then there was the riveting Locke, 85 minutes of Tom Hardy in a car, but like piecing a jigsaw together. ’71 was also a tense and gripping watch; possibly a touch far-fetched though? Inside Llewyn Davis was a return to form by the Coen Brothers, that odd bit in the middle with John Goodman being cancelled out by the prodigious use of a cat. And finally, I really don’t know what to say about Under The Skin, a film I found intensely pretentious when I saw it, but haven’t been able to get out of my head since. Startlingly original, it almost made the journey from the worst list to the best list in the time since its initial viewing. But not quite.

Best Films of 2014

Here they are then….

10) Leviathan

I’m not sure ‘enjoyed’ is the right word, but I did admire this hulking great slab of vodka-soaked Arctic misery. The stark but majestic landscape was beautifully photographed, contrasting with the relentlessly depressing portrait of Putin’s Russia, rotten to the core like the titular beast on the beach.

9) Stranger By The Lake

The French gay cruising murder mystery is a genre I feel we really have been missing prior to this film. The whole timbre of this movie was unnerving, sexy and slightly queasy-making all at the same time. Another distinctive piece rendered slightly surreal by the sun-blasted cinematography. Probably wouldn’t have worked if set on Clapham Common.

8) Frank

There’s probably still room for a biopic of Frank Sidebottom’s real life, but until then this will do. In some ways it’s as lightweight as a papier mache head, but works as a defiant defence of people and their general oddness, which makes its heart at least entirely genuine.

7) The Drop

I wasn’t convinced by Tom Hardy before this year, but now he’s proved me wrong twice in two completely different roles. He certainly convinces here as a moody but outwardly good-hearted Brooklyn bar owner (more pet-loving used to indicate benevolence, but minus points for it being a dog this time), but the power of this movie is that it really doesn’t play out like you think it will. Best last line of the year too.

6) The Wolf Of Wall Street

Scorsese’s epic has everything we fete him for, a delirious and woozy momentum which somehow Leonardo DiCaprio can harness, despite Hollywood’s persistence in miscasting him in alpha male roles (he still looks too boyish, I think). Worth it for the attempt to get home on Quaaludes alone, and if not up with Goodfellas, it still deserves to go down as some great American film-making.

5) Boyhood

Brilliant concept, superbly executed, and I know it’s going to win this poll and probably the Oscar too. I did love it, but felt my attention wandering slightly towards the end; could have done with 20 minutes shaving off it IMHO. Patricia Arquette gets my best actress nod though for her beautifully-judged performance (or should that be performances, given that she must have given a whole bunch of them over the twelve years).

4) Calvary

I didn’t have a clear winner this year, so once we hit the Top 4, really any of these films could take the title on a different day of the week. This droll but dark meditation on the fate of a good priest is a great ‘who’s gonna do it’. And why don’t we saw more of the wonderful Dylan Moran in films and on TV these days?

3) Lilting

Some found this rather too slight, but I was genuinely moved by the tale of beautiful but bereaved Ben Whishaw and his attempt to reach out to ex’s mother. The sadness is as much in the isolation felt by the first-generation immigrant who finds herself alone in a country she hasn’t ever understood, as much as in the romantic relationship cruelly cut short.

2) Two Days, One Night

A mildly-depressed Marion Cotillard spending a weekend stomping round bland Belgian suburbs trying to persuade her co-workers to forego their bonus so that she can keep her job really doesn’t sound too promising on paper. But this actually works like a thriller, with each encounter effectively a cliffhanger, as you’re never sure of the reaction she will get from each of her colleagues. The denoument looked like it could only be cheesily uplifting or horridly downbeat, but the film pulls it off in a way which is neither, and above all, feels true.

1) Starred Up

What a great year for my future husband Jack O’Connell (we’ve been together since Skins, dontcha know); even Angelina Jolie couldn’t ruin it. He’s incredible (and frequently super-hotly topless) in this powerful prison drama that’s not in any way easy to watch. I saw it just before Xmas and am still trying to get the fingernail dents out of my sofa. But it seared itself on my psyche as well as my soft-furnishings, so gets my douze points for ’14.

Right, I’m off to read everyone else’s lists now and prepare not only my bouquets and brickbats, but probably also a great long list of 2014 films I still need to catch. Happy viewing for 2015 all. Xx