My Review of the Year! Pt. 2: What I Loved In 2014

Considering I see at least 2 – 3 new releases a week on average, it’s fair to say that whittling down my favorites from 2014 was no easy task. As such, before I delve in to my list, honorary mentions are rightly deserved for some of the films that didn’t make the cut. So a round of applause for Nymphomaniac, 22 Jump Street, Two Days One Night, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Rover, and Paddington. But these ones below are the 14 I loved more than anything else; they made me laugh & cry in equal measure, thrilled me, and stirred me. They’re the best of the best from 2014, and if you haven’t already, make sure you see them all.

14: Life Itself

An expertly crafted love letter to film criticism’s commander in chief, Life Itself profoundly detailed the prosperous highs and painful lows of Roger Ebert’s life. Moving and magnificent, it was the best documentary I saw this year.

13: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

An exceptional sequel with seamless SFX bringing the eponymous simians to life, Dawn was a thrilling and fascinating cinematic experience, helmed by an extraordinary motion capture performance from Andy Serkis.

12: Mr. Turner

An incandescent canvas of vivid colours, augmented by Timothy Spall’s spellbinding performance and instilled with the tribulations & triumphs of art, artistry, and life in the 1800s, Mr. Turner was a cinematic masterpiece that found Mike Leigh at his creative best.

11: A Most Wanted Man

Tightly woven, terrifically played, and terrifyingly true to life, A Most Wanted Man was the perfect final curtain to Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s life & career. Those final shots will live long in the memory.

10: Inside Llewyn Davis

A profoundly moving movie that was perfectly pitched and a joy to both look & listen to, the Coen’s ode to Greenwich Village music scene was a folking masterpiece.

9: Leviathan

A muted masterpiece that plunged to the deepest depths of human depravity to reveal the how monstrous we all can be, Leviathan excellently retold the story of Job in a haunting & honest way.

8: The Grand Budapest Hotel

A contemporary comedic treasure and Wes Anderson’s best film to date, Grand Budapest transported the audience to a wondrous new world that was so intoxicating you couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of disappointment when it ended.

7: The Wolf of Wall Street

A tale of unimaginable debauchery, Wolf of Wall Street was Scorsese firing off on all cylinders, telling the tale of a larger-than-life figure that epitomised the greed that led to the financial crises we currently find ourselves in. DiCaprio has quite simply never been better.

6: Blue Ruin

An intelligent and exciting revenge thriller with a consistently pulsating pace, Blue Ruin was a beacon of light in a genre whose brains were generally found splattered across the screen.

5: Calvary

A brave & brilliant masterpiece and a thing of visual beauty, Calvary tenderly explored religion with more confidence than many hardened veterans of the medium. Director John Michael McDonagh is one with immense potential.

4: Boyhood

To hell with those who dismissed it as a “concept” film! Boyhood was at once a tale of childhood, an observation on adolescence, a parable about family, an ode to maturity, a salute to parents, a celebration of society, an odyssey of emotion, an achievement in filmmaking and a love letter to cinema… or, put simply, a film by Richard Linklater.

3: Under the Skin

Not your typical modern masterpiece I grant you, but Jonathan Glazer’s superbly realised Under The Skin proved how subversive cinema could be. Eerie, enigmatic, and ethereal, it crawled under my skin from the moment it began and preceded to envelop my mind.

2: Pride

There were few films released in 2014 that managed to embody the warmth & wit of Pride. Based on a true story, Matthew Warchus’ film tells the profound tale of how a group of gay activists helped support miners striking in Wales during the summer of ’84. Bold, bittersweet, and bolstered by an array of terrific performances from the likes of Imelda Staunton & Bill Nighy, Pride perfectly composited heart with humor while addressing a serious socio-political situation from our recent past. Not only is it a great film, it’s arguably one of the most important contemporary British films ever made.

First published by Culturefly on Dec. 26^th 2014

1:  12 Years A Slave

In an interview he gave while promoting 12 Years A Slave, director Steve McQueen pointed out a cinematic travesty; that more films had been made about Roman slavery than American. With this incredibly moving and indelible film, McQueen righted that cinematic wrong. Driven by a haunting central performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup, McQueen conjured a tableau of terror that vividly confronted the realities of American Slavery in an honest & utterly heartbreaking way. America may now be known as the land of the free, but given how Hollywood has strived to ignore this key chapter in their nation’s history, it can hardly be considered the home of the brave.
First published by Culturefly on Dec. 26^th 2014

As ever, if there are any that you don’t agree with or think I’ve missed, then let me know in the comments section below. Have a great new year, and see you in 2015

James :D

My (Belated) Mid-Year Review: What I Have Loved & Loathed So Far!

What with all those lucky people in Venice feverishly looking ahead to what cinematic delights are in store for us over the next 12 months, I have decided it was high time I looked back at the films that have impressed me & the ones that have repulsed me so far this year. I shall, of course, be posting my own official top & bottom 10 films at the end of the year. But for now, here's a taste of those that will be battling it out in my head for a place on a list that is coveted by no-one... except perhaps me.

What I've Loved
While those in Venice are lapping up some of the frontrunners for next year's academy awards, notably Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's highly anticipated Birdman, over here I'm still hung up on the winner of this year's Best Film, Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave. In an interview I watched with the director before seeing the film, he pointed out the startling travesty that more films had been made about Roman slavery than American, a wrong that he has certainly righted with this vividly haunting masterpiece that combines various extraordinary components to create one exceptional film.

Although I saw many sterling works after 12 Years - including Jonathan Glazer's beguilingly beautiful Under The Skin, John Michael McDonagh's poignantly powerful Calvary, and Wes Anderson's gloriously gratifying The Grand Budapest Hotel - I had convinced myself that no other film would affect me so strongly this year... until I sat down and watched Richard Linklater's ode to adolescence, Boyhood.

The indie director has long since been looked upon as an artist determined to push the boundaries of his art form, but even when set against those standards, Boyhood remains an astronomical  achievement. Shot over 12 years with the same cast, it's a captivating bildungsroman of one young boy's journey from childhood to adulthood. Though helmed by a superbly naturalistic performance by newcomer Ellar Coltrane, it's without doubt the writer/director who impresses most here for creating an extensive time capsule of youth and, by extension, life.

What I've Loathed
Mark Kermode once said during one of his eminently entertaining blogs that he believes one of the key traits of a good film critic is the willingness to watch anything. Something that I have always abided by, having long been of the opinion that you'll never know if something is good or bad until you see it for yourself. It is with that in mind that I traveled to one of my local cinemas on the day of its release to see if Grace of Monaco was really deserving of universal panning it received. It took little more than 2 minutes to come to the conclusion that it had all been entirely justified. A "true" story firmly based within the realms of fiction, this relentlessly frustrating tale of how Grace Kelly saved Monaco from ruin was perfectly summed by Kelly's real son, Prince Albert II, as a "farce".

Of course, this isn't the only film to get my blood boiling; with Seth MacFarlane's churlish cowboy comedy A Million Ways To Die In The West, turbulent Liam Neeson vehicle Non-Stop, and ghastly girls-doing-it-for-themselves comedy The Other Woman all leaving me in an all-consuming haze of hatred. But the one that really made its mark, that frustrated & angered me the most in the cinema so far this year, was David Ayer's blood-splattering, brain-frying binge of testosterone Sabotage.

It wasn't enough that the plot seemed determined to transport you to the darkest pits of hell, or that every character was so unnecessarily aggressive that not only did you find yourself disliking them, you wanted to leave the cinema just to avoid their company. No, Ayer had to go one further by taking a tongue-in-cheek actor I've always had a guilty soft-spot for and turn him in to nothing more than dull driver of needless exposition. We've all seen our share of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but even in those low moments, he's cheeky personality & natural charisma won through. Here he's saddled with the task of simply looking perpetually forlorn throughout and leaving you to simply wish he'd leave and never come back!


Whether any film I see between now and the end of the year will be able to matched the brilliance of Boyhood or staleness of Sabotage remains to be seen. Looking ahead, the films that particularly leap out at me are The Drop, A Most Wanted Man, The Imitation Game, and Fury. All I know at the moment, is that I can't wait to see them all!

Below are select reviews by James of the films mentioned above:

- 12 Years A Slave

- Boyhood

- Calvary

- Grace of Monaco

- Non-Stop

- Sabotage