As is my normal tendency, I got a
little stalled out this year on topics to write about in the spring and early
summer. That should change in a few weeks with my most anticipated film of the
year, Boyhood, seeing its release in
my neck of the woods on the 25th of this month. I will be first in
line.
Until then, I wanted to catch
everyone up on the best few films I’ve been able to see this year. Out of the
15 or so titles I’ve seen from 2014, there are four that I feel are worthy of a “top”
list, but I didn’t feel strongly enough about a fifth film to round it out and
make it a top 5.
There are a few films I simply
have not been able to catch yet although I really wanted to, including most
notably the Scarlett Johansson vehicle Under
the Skin, as well as blockbuster titles Edge
of Tomorrow and Godzilla. The
rest of the year is shaping up to be pretty great, as well. Until then, catch
up on the following titles if you haven’t been able to yet:
4. Enemy
Improving on his 2013 film Prisoners, director Denis Villeneuve
builds an eerie and genuinely unpleasant cinematic world around which to tell
his doppelganger story, which like his former effort also stars Jake Gyllenhaal.
A lonely and aloof college professor, Gyllenhaal’s character comes into contact
with a doppelganger who happens to be a brash and cocky aspiring actor, and the
film follows each character’s story as they attempt to resolve the mystery.
This is Gyllenhaal’s best performance to date in a dual role. The ending will
leave you gasping.
3. The Lego Movie
I had to make room for one of the
two great features this year by directing duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and I
thought this film was superior in many ways to their recent comedy sequel 22 Jump Street. Though the film is an
impeccable crafting of the many different worlds that Lego operates in, perhaps
the most impressive thing about this film is how it manages to remain hilarious
throughout while actually having some interesting thematic points of view. I can’t
wait for the inevitable sequel.
2. Chef
This was the biggest surprise of
the year for me so far. Jon Favreau writes, stars and directs in this comedy about
a chef that is a loose metaphor for his own career in the film industry. A
visionary chef in a renowned Los Angeles restaurant, Chef Carl Casper must
reinvent himself after his culinary endeavors are stifled and he subsequently
receives a blistering review from a food blogger. The story then becomes
somewhat of a travelogue, as it follows him and his son on a journey across the
continental U.S. in a food truck, as they attempt to restore their relationship
while Casper finds his voice as film director, ahem, I mean chef. It is
surprisingly sweet, funny, and has some of the best food porn in any movie I’ve
seen in awhile. 1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Sometimes, forces converge in a
director’s path that enables their voice to sing at its most beautiful pitch.
This is the case with Wes Anderson’s latest film, which I find to be his best.
The whimsical focus of the story, a concierge at the titular hotel played
wonderfully by Ralph Fiennes, is the exact type of material we’ve become used
to Anderson working with. But the backdrop of the imminent Nazi occupation of
Hungary and the ensuing World War allows him to add thematic depth and a sense
of meaning to the whole thing, and I wonder if this is Anderson acknowledging the
quaintness of his own work, while demanding that we don’t focus solely on the
hipster-glossiness of his films and mine for the truth that undoubtedly lies
within all his work. A real gem, this one.
