Top Ten Movies of 2014

January 12, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Birdman, Boyhood, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Enemy, Fury, Gone Girl, Nightcrawler, The Guest, The Raid 2, Top Ten, Whiplash

Let’s be frank: 2014 was a killer year for film. It was so murderous, you could call it Lou Bloom; so voluptuous, you could call it Eva Green. It was so sweet and sexy, you could call it Hello Kitty. If you were amongst the ranks of dissenters, whining on some Lazy-E-boy somewhere about how there weren’t enough Trans4mers movies or Hercules adaptations, you’re wrong. That’s all there is to it. 2014 popped cherries. It was violently mayhemious, hallucinatorily glorious, redonkulously fist-to-facey and totally, wholeheartedly, unapologetically weepy (yeah, I teared up more than once, what’s it to you?).

2014 was the year that Bill Murray aped a grump, Tom Cruise aped Bill Murray and Andy Serkis aped an ape. It was a kick-to-the-shinception of a year with title releases that saw anal polyps pop in sexplotitation flicks (Wetlands), hammer fights (The Raid 2), Ridley Scott falling on his face (Exodus: Gods and Godhelpmethismovieisbad), doppelgängers galore (Enemy, et al.), hungry games (some that involved auto-cannibalism, some that didn’t), Christopher Nolan falling on his face (Inter-mitently-stellar), STDemons (It Follows), Walrusfurmations (Mr. Tusk, Tusk, Mr. Golden Tusk) and lots and lots of bloody bloody vengeance (too many to list.)

It told the tales of Martin Luther King (Selma), of James Brown (Get On Up), Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything), Alan Turring (The Imitation Game), John Du Pont (Foxcatcher), Cheryl Strayed (Wild), Noah (Noah), Roger Ebert (Life Itself), Robyn Davidson (Tracks), Alejandro Jodorowsky (Jodorowsky’s Dune), Maziar Bahari (Rosewater), Jimi Hendrix (All is By My Side), Dido Elizabeth Belle (Belle), Joe Albany (Low Down), Cesar Chavez (Cesar Chavez), Abraham Lincoln (The Better (more like worse! heyooo!) Angels), and a dude named Sky Lord.

This 14th year of the 21st century crammed every element possible into the indie box, shook it up and spurted it out like spicy hot cream. From sci-fi (Space Station ’76, Young Ones) to DIY game shows (Cheap Thrills, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter), road trips (Chef, The Trip to Italy) to Twilights Zones (The One I Love, The Double), there was more buried treasure than a pirate map. Trouble is, with all these untrumpeted indie releases, you often do need a map to find them.

Maybe the fact that I attended three film festivals (Sundance, SXSW and SIFF) and was able to eke out some hidden gems that would go on to sneak past most audiences (and critics. Poor, lonely, lonely critics) helped me come to the assertion that 2014 rocked the socks off of c*cks but even without those underground, super covert, keep-them-secret-keep-them-safe riches, 2014 had a trove of wide-releases to match.

Those who guard galaxies, John Wicks, men with X’s in their names, Hobbitses, noir Liam Neesons, Godzillas and lobby boys all helped transformed the mass media cinema culture of 2014 into one worth remembering, even in the face of a fast approaching year that will see Han f*cking Solo behind the wheel of the Millennium f*cking Falcon.

Honorable mentions won’t be ticked off as we’re in the process of cranking out a top 100 movies of 2014 list and that does more than the duty of a normal man’s honorable mentions section. So ten tops and ten only. No funny business. No ties. No b*llshit. So strap in, check yourself before you wreck yourself and let’s make a f*cking list.

10. ENEMY

If 2014 was a year about blowing minds, none did it more casually and assuredly than Denis Villenue‘s total tonal WTF-fest Enemy. Starring not one but two Jake Gyllenhaals, Enemy tracks a man coming to terms with his own fracturing identity. Or did it? This existential experiment about giant spiders, locks’n’keys, balls’n’chains, dreamscapes, unrelenting ambiguity and twinsies might at first appear to be a bundle of malarky but once you dig your heels into it and break it down like a certifiable horse whisperer, everything miraculously makes sense. Not necessarily in a 5+5=10 kind of makes sense way but I’m willing to content that I have an explanation for this film (that I won’t divulge here) that will convincingly put the many aggressively jigsawed pieces into satisfying place. As the unholy apex of violently disorienting endings, there’s yet to be a movie this year that tops the complete and total f*ck you that Enemy seemingly ends on and yet, going back over it all with a fine-toothed comb (or a scalpel, it’s really up to you) it’s a masterpiece of a mind-game that isn’t as unsolvable as the casual observer may assume. For blowing my mind and allowing me to eventually recover it, Enemy sneaks into the tenth spot.

“What occurs as Enemy progresses is quaking, the earth below your feet seems to tremor faster and faster, moving its way up the Richter scale. A floating Tarantula as big as a Goodyear blimp slinks its way over Toronto. A woman’s body with a Tarantula’s head walks upside down through a corridor. At 90 minutes, it shrinks and expands the mind, then ends abruptly with no questions answered. Enemy is a rollercoaster personally designed by the Devil. Twist and turn, crash and burn.” (Full Review)

9. THE GUEST

Heading into last year’s Sundance Midnight Premiere of The Guest, I had nothing to go on save for the above image – an armed, robo-faced Arayan slipping through a blood-red colorscape with all the wrong kind of intent. The film that followed knocked me out (and this is after seeing five (!!!) films already that day). The Guest left me humming and high on transcended genre thrills, shellshocked from grenades and ringing in the ears from some large caliber weapon or other. I was hooked like a junkie on that sweet blue sky. Dan Stevens is a dream in the eponymous role, guiding us through Adam Wingard‘s hallucinatory and unapologetically violent landscape with the cold-hard gusto of a seasoned pro, forcing smiles, guffaws, sneers and drop jaws in equal, calculated doses. The concept of the film could be reduced to “What if Bourne malfunctioned?” and the result manages to feel fresh, even through curtain after curtain of homage. When I caught The Guest for a second time, I found that my initial enjoyment hadn’t been stayed so much as intensified – this was clearly one of the most entertaining films of the year and for it, has earned a spot on this list.

“Slam Drive and Stocker together, rub them down in a spicy 80’s genre marinate and sprinkle with mesmerizing performances and dollops of camp and you have The Guest. Like a turducken of genre, Adam Wingard‘s latest is a campy horror movie stuffed inside a hoodwinking Canon action flick and deep fried in the latest brand of Bourne-style thriller. It’s clever, tense, uproarious, and hypnotizing nearly ever second.” (Full Review)

8. DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

There were no blockbusters this year that came close to topping Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. I mean, the freakin’ thing had apes firing automatic weapons on horseback. And tanks. And some of the most harrowing depictions of war ever set to screen. And tanks. That’s because Reeve’s film dealt with the idea of the anatomy of war and of a war mentality with a kind of sobering ideology that so few blockbusters dare to touch. It’s war sans glory. There are no heroes, just a bunch of wounded f*ck-ups. Andy Serkis‘ monkey-work was arresting as always (green screen bling king) but it was Toby Kebbell who stole the show as the year’s best villain, the emotionally-and-physically scarred Koba. There were few scenes this year that were more powerful than when all-out warfare erupts at the hands of Koba. That 360 tank sequence was a dream within a nightmare but when Koba literally drags an unwilling soldier to his death, you realize that the dreams of revolution can only be written in bright red streaks. These were haunting moments of filmmaking somehow stuffed into a PG-13 movie about monkeys ruling the world. What the hell? But even when you strip back all the ambitious themes of the film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is still a mighty entertaining piece of blockbuster fare with unbelievably perfect FX work and stunning camera work. It really does work on every level.

“As Reeve’s film leaks historical allegories like a zesty geyser, his political astuteness pans to a smart dissection of why we choose war in the first place. War is a side effect of fear, fear a scar of misunderstanding. Koba’s are scars that cannot be healed. Dreyfus won’t stand for Three-Fifths of a vote. Peace is a process. Wars start inevitably. It’s not that these two civilizations could not peacefully co-habitate, it’s that sometimes a punch in the face seems like a more swift resolution than drawn-out talks.” (Full Review)

7. THE RAID 2

And then there’s Gareth Evans borderline genius The Raid 2; an action movie that makes guns look p*ssy-shaped in the face of a fury of hand-to-hand combat, that unloads scene after scene of inhumanely choreographed fistsplosions and that delivers perhaps the best martial arts movie of all time (or at least of the last decade). What this second Raid movie has over the first is a good story, and a damn good one at that. Like Internal Affairs and The Departed before it, The Raid 2 tells the tale of a deep cover agent, set with all the angsty check-behind-the-lamp paranoia and grueling psychological breaks that such a position demands. But that doesn’t really matter once the car chase scene rolls around and is filmed by a dude disguised as a seat cushion. Evans – who wrote this before he wrote and directed the first film – doesn’t skimp on the narrative gooeyness and when he eventually launches into a balls-to-the-walls orgy of violence that’ll have your blood pumping in ungodly, death-inviting spurts, you’ll know that you were born to behold this film. It’s just all so righteous.

“To try to boil down what is so sublimely excellent about The Raid 2: Berandal is a futile exercise in tilting at windmills. It’s like boxing a griffin, outthinking a Sicilian, or KY-Jelly wrestling an anaconda. Instead of trying to describe the irrepressible satisfaction this balls-to-the-walls, smarter-than-your-dad actioner elicits, instead conjure up what it felt like to lose your virginity, if you lost your virginity in a ten-on-one man brawl in a pit of mud.” (Full Review)

6. BOYHOOD

Boyhood topped my most anticipated list for 2014 and for some time, I considered it my favorite film of the year. There is something undeniably magical about watching young Ellar Coltrane grow up before our very eyes in Richard Linklater‘s ambitious 12 year experiment and that something makes for a film that demands our uninterrupted empathy like few others have. It truly gave me all the feels. Some have confused Linklater’s long-gestated gimmick as a form of indie-cred beating off where it’s really just offbeat genius. Watching Boyhood for the second time didn’t ignite all the fiery passions that it had the first so it’s lost a little traction throughout the year with me, but nothing can make me forget that first magical experience I had with it, sitting amongst the first audience to behold its glory in a giant Sundance screening room. Revisiting the oh-so-true growing pains of adolescence was heart-rending enough but Boyhood really thrives in the quieter moments where we just sat back and watched an unextraordinary young boy mature, awkwardly bragging about hooking up with a girl from out of town, huffing back on a doobie and having the cavalier gaul to admit his highness to his mom, chatting with his dad about girls and Star Wars. It may be the film on this list that I’ll re-watch the least, but it shouldn’t be.

“Calling it a coming-of-age story feels slight as Boyhood tracks the joy and pain of growing up, one delicate moment at a time. We find ourselves in Macon, a perceptive youth, in his strength and in his weakness, in his whiny teenage angst and his youthful abandon, in his quasi-stoned prolific moments of reflection and his meekest helplessness.” (Full Review)

5. FURY

I’m willing to admit that David Ayer‘s Fury is a bit of a mess. Then again, aren’t most of Tarantino’s films? (If you say no, I’d like to direct you to the Django Australian miner scene…) Django was my favorite movie of 2012 because it was big and weird and overwritten. And dazzling and savage and brilliant. It was great not in spite of its giddy flaws but because of them. Fury shares the same traits. Somewhere in the midst of it, the crew settles down to an impromptu dinner party (a scene that has divided critics and audiences alike). It sticks out from the rest of the movie like a sore thumb and yet is one of the most beautiful, affecting scenes of 2014. Then Ayer follows that up with Fury‘s tracer-fire highlighted Tiger tank battle and you can forgetaboutit. It’s a movie that works scene-to-scene maybe a touch better than it does as a whole but as an assemblage of scenes, Fury is a big, beautiful, bent out of shape ball of fire and I unabashedly loved it. Ayer dares to air out old things in new light (war as a job. As a mostly shitty but sometimes awesome job) and his film features the best ensemble cast work of the entire year. Push back all you want, Fury is here to stay.

“To boil Ayer’s masterful Fury down to “war is hell” is to ricochet off the mark. To call it a movie without subtext is to poke holes in a block of swiss. The themes stare you in the face, they thump into your cranium and they sick in your soul. They bear witness to wartime masculinity pig-piling on itself in a nasty, self-fulfilling prophecy that causes and perpetuates war. The rally speeches become just as dangerous as the nuclear weapons. The hoorahs build into their own Manhattan Projects.” (Full Review)

4. NIGHTCRAWLER

We’re getting down to the big ones at this point and there’s perhaps no movie bigger, bolder and more bonkers this year than Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler. From the very moment we stumble upon Lou Bloom, the sociopath with a banker’s name, everything feels like a happy accident, as if Gilroy’s camera just happened upon this X-manly-purported slip of a human and decidedly followed him like a nightly news crew. But there’s no accidental filmmaking in Nightcrawler (there are many accidents, though mostly of the vehicular kind) and as Gilroy bends his titular Nightcrawler into bigger and odder shapes, he makes room for one of the most important and mind-altering filmic trips of the season. With the borders filled in by revivalist performances from Rene Russo and Bill Paxton – and a whole chunk of space dedicated to Riz Ahmed‘s consciously unconscious thespian discharge – Gilroy’s perfectly written diatribe to greed and America’s obsession with suburbian horrors becomes the most arresting and visceral thematic account of where we stand as a nation and featured the best performance of the year in Jake Gyllenhaal. Greed is good is dead. Long live all is greed. Long live Lou Bloom. Long live Jake Gyllenhaal.

“With a name as innocuous as Louis Bloom, you wouldn’t initially suspect the lead character of Nightcrawler to be so dangerous. But the virulent Lou is the kind of guy who dissolves into shadows; who feeds vampirically in the darkness. He’s not a villain so much as a force of nature. Silent but deadly. Throughout the film, Lou’s facial expressions percolate with a kind of serpentine other-worldliness. As if his tongue could dart from his mouth at any moment to nip at the night air. It doesn’t. He remains squarely within the realm of the human. No matter how inhumane he is. A testament to Dan Gilroy‘s narrow degree of restraint and Gyllenhaal’s tightrope-walking ability.” (Full Review)

3. WHIPLASH

The fourth (and final) entry to this list that I caught at Sundance 2014, Whiplash knocked me on my ass. Adapted from an award-winning short film, Damien Chazelle‘s Full Metal Jazz Kit is a whirlwind of genre. It’s a sports movie blanketed in a war movie and punched in the face by a character study. JK Simmons roars as a drill sergeant of a conductor and we gratefully whimper in response. His performance is monsterous and marked by some of the best one-liners of the year (“That’s not your boyfriend’s d*ck; don’t come too early). Whiplash is a film that’s all about keeping tempo and getting walloped when you don’t. That beady stare that Fletcher’s perfected promises a hearty verbal wallops if not a lashing or two from those unnaturally muscled 60-year old guns. Like the most studious graduates of the school of hard rocks, Chazelle keeps tempo like Buddy Rich, chugging us along to a grand finale that is nothing short of grand. Really, really f*cking grand. If you don’t want to explode up from your seat with hands full of applause at curtain time, you’re probably deaf. Or at least tone deaf.

“Through Chazelle’s assured hand and Blacklist-topping script, Whiplash is fantastically dynamic – a perfect ode to that musical constant acting a central catalyst to the film’s narrative. While students get smacked for being the slightest bit off tempo, Whiplash is unmistakably paced to precision – the loving design of a satisfied perfectionist.” (Full Review)

2. GONE GIRL

Ben Affleck‘s grin can eat shit like none other and only a genius like David Fincher could cast on a grin alone. If there’s but one linchpin moment to Gone Girl (there’s so many) it might be his solitary poo-scarfing beam. Planted next to his wife’s missing poster, smirking like a grinch, the man looks a positive jackass. And this is the brilliance of Gone Girl – to present two sides and make us uncomfortable choosing either. As much a dissection on media as it is on marriage, Gillian Flynn‘s adaptation of her own novel presents a darker Amy and a less reasonable Nick. In this dark tale, no one gets away with being called “amazing”. Backed up some of the best score work of the year (Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor solely backing Fincher’s horse is just too perfect to be true) and one-upped by the preeminent kill of the year, Gone Girl is a masterclass stroke of jet black intelligence.

“Always going, going, gone, David Fincher absolutely knocks it out of the park. Gone Girl is one of the best, and darkest, visions he’s ever dished up. Always one step before the action, Fincher demands we race to catch up. Each shot ends just marginally too quickly. His vision is frantic by design. Things get lost in the dark that are never recovered. You just have to pretend along with it.” (Full Review)

1. BIRDMAN

Ka-KAW! Number one. Explosions in the sky. Theater in the streets. Birdman is the most relevant, important and downright entertaining film of the year. Kind of a comedy, kind of a drama and 100% a showcase of actors doing their best acting, Iñárritu’s jeremiad on the death and resurrection of art in the 21st century is as bitingly funny as it is boldfaced misunderstood. Existentialism has never seemed so moody and hysterical as Michael Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone tear up the world stone-by-stone and try and piece it together to fit their narrow-minded narratives. Their undressings are their undoings and Iñárritu shoves the camera oh-so-perfectly down their throats. No film this year played with the mounting importance of social media, the unbecoming preeminence of superhero culture and the distressing role of celebrity status while meticulously piecing together a construct of high art like Birdman was able to and from the no-cut gimmick to a firing-on-all-cylinders ensemble cast, Birdman left me as intellectually rock hard as Mike Shiner on dress rehearsal night. No need to fade to black, this is what movies are made for. Period. The end.

“Steeped in an exacting degree of irreverent relevance, Iñárritu’s able to pull off the rare feat of raising existential questions in the same scene that he blows up a cityscape. It’s like seeing Black Swan and A Beautiful Mind fist-fighting in a Charlie Kaufman play; a crossroads of cinema and theater that’s entirely novel and entirely brilliant.” (Full Review)

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So there you have it. Ten magical films to cherish from henceforth until happily ever after. Ten Bountiful beauties that will transport you to a better (or worse) place, regardless of your potentially feeble headspace. No need to thank me, just doing my critic-y duty. If you happen to disagree, I’m willing to afford you one spoonful of words. Anything more than that is a waste of breath and probably warrants a punch in the mouth.

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Weekly Review 68: ALEXANDER, LEAVE, PREDESTINATION, INTERVIEW

January 11, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Predestination, The Interview, This is Where I Leave You

Having just tied a tidy little bow on 2014 with our Top Ten Movies of the Year article, there is still always that sense that you missed something. Still in the midst of compiling that infamous Top 100 list, we took to scourging through some of those that slunk under the radar for one reason or another as well as a controversial new release and the first (surprisingly good) 2015 of the year. So buckle up because where Weekly Review‘s going, we don’t need roads (primarily because it’s a website.)

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY (2014)

Up at 30,000 feet and on those marginally-larger-than-domestic-flights screens, the more down-the-middle the film, the better. So I thought I’d knock out a 2014 family film that had most people shrugging and saying, “Eh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.” So I guess this one’s on me and them both. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is just about as bad as I thought it would be. It’s almost as bad as its terrible, horrible, no good, very bad name. Utterly stifling the comedic talent of Steve Carrell, this “comedy for the whole family” has as few little snickers as it does laugh out loud moments. In fact, I don’t remember laughing once. It’s comedy by committee, paying a blind eye to the many, many missteps it takes along the way. It’s a mess of stale, cliched physical comedy with a hackneyed message so elementary and diluted that it’s hard to not scoff. (D)

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU (2014)

An enviable collection of comedians align for This Is Where I Leave You, a dark dramedy about a family assembled to sit Shiva after their father passes away. Rose Bryne joins Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver and Corey Stoll with Kathryn Hahn, Timothy Oliphant, Connie Britton andsam shepard Jane Fonda rounding out the cast. Working from a script from Jonathan Trooper – who adapted from his own novel – the variable Shawn Levy is in his element, gently parsing clever comedic beats into the earnest atmosphere of familial woes. It never quite goes the distance – particularly with Fey’s character arc – and some of the bits land awkwardly but as far as general release dramedies go, you could fare far worse. Also, Adam Driver. (C+)

PREDESTINATION (2015)

Time travel movies are easy plot-hole kerfuffle territory and Predestination has its fair share of gapers and yet, it’s kind of magnificent. Surely the first act could have been handled with more grace and, frankly, felt less mandatory than it does but once you start to piece together the puzzle (something that happened for me far before the movie found it necessary to make every plain-faced obvious) the experience begins to unfold into something explicitly rewarding. Add an understated performance from Ethan Hawke and an uncommon intelligence and you have a product that’s well worth a watch, gapers and all. (B-)

THE INTERVIEW (2014)

Somehow, The Interview has become one of the most important, talked about movies of the year and for good reason. It became a battleground for freedom; the metaphorical doorstep to international censorship the likes of which even Mitt Romney was willing to speak against. It’s a damn shame that the actual movie – the one behind all this “we’ll nuke ya” drama – isn’t very good. In it, James Franco is on fire but in all the wrong kinds of ways. Like a self-immolating junker ten feet too far from an extinguisher. His melon-headed character is obnoxious and petty and occupies so much of the breathing room of the film that it’s unable to show any other signs of life. As a big fan of the Seth Rogan-Evan Goldberg fast-food combo, I thoroughly expected myself to jeer through the dumbness of another This is the End. Instead, I just got honey-potted. (D+)

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2015 Oscar Nominee Predictions

January 11, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Awards Tagged Awards, Birdman, Boyhood, Gone Girl, Nightcrawler, Oscars 2015, Selma, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash

2014 has been one big toss up for Oscar contenders. With the release of nominees from the Golden Globes (winners now), SAGs, the PGAs, the ADGs, the ASCs, the WGAs and the BAFTAs as well as AFI Top Ten, LAFCA, NYFCC and more things have been shaping up into more and more of an unconventional top crop for contenders. Front runners Boyhood, The Imitiation Game, Birdman, The Theory of Everything, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Selma look to nab nominations across the board while darker films like Nightcrawler, Gone Girl and Whiplash are looking more and more likely to be amongst the conversation as serious players.

However hazy some of the later-down-the-list nominees might be, the front runners and potential winners are looking more locked up than they do most year before the nominations are even announced, with few big battleground categories. You could assuredly put your money on a Richard Linklater win for Best Director, Michael Keaton for Best Actor, Julianne Moore for Best Actress, JK Simmons for Best Supporting, and Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actress. Wes Anderson‘s script for Grand Budapest Hotel looks like a shoe-in win while Gillian Flynn hopes to score Oscar gold for Gone Girl.

I would bet money on a second Emmanuel Lubezki win in a row (Gravity, now Birdman) for Best Cinematography, even though it’s looking like a crowded field. This happens to be the case with many of the technical fields. Just too few slots for too many contenders. Those categories that I really feel like I’m just taking a shot in the dark at are Best Song, Sound Editing/Mixing and Best Visual Effects (which could go many, many ways.)

Otherwise, I’m just hoping that my Best Picture contenders are on the money since if things go the way I’m thinking they will, we’ll have one of the best Best Picture collections in recent history.

BEST PICTURE
Boyhood
The Imitation Game
Birdman
The Theory of Everything
Selma
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gone Girl
Whiplash
Nightcrawler

BEST DIRECTOR
Richard Linklater “Boyhood”
Alejandro G. Inarritu “Birdman”
David Fincher “Gone Girl”
Ava DuVernay “Selma”
Wes Anderson “Grand Budapest Hotel”

BEST ACTOR
Michael Keaton “Birdman”
Eddie Redmayne “The Theory of Everything”
Jake Gyllenhaal “Nightcrawler”
Benedict Cumberbatch “The Imitation Game”
David Oyelowo “Selma”

BEST ACTRESS
Julianne Moore “Still Alice”
Reese Witherspoon “Wild”
Rosamund Pike “Gone Girl”
Felicity Jones “The Theory of Everything”
Jennifer Anniston “Cake”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
JK Simmons “Whiplash”
Mark Ruffalo “Foxcatcher”
Edward Norton “Birdman”
Ethan Hawke “Boyhood”
Robert Duvall “The Judge”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Patricia Arquette “Boyhood”
Emma Stone “Birdman”
Keira Knightley “The Imitation Game”
Jessica Chastain “A Most Violent Year”
Meryl Streep “Into the Woods”

BEST EDITING
Whiplash
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
Interstellar

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Wes Anderson “Grand Budapest Hotel”
Alejandro Inarritu et al “Birdman”
Richard Linklater “Boyhood”
Dan Gilroy “Nightcrawler”
Ava Duvernay, Paul Webb “Selma”

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Gillian Flynn “Gone Girl”
Graham Moore “The Imitation Game”
Nick Hornby “Wild”
Damien Chazelle “Whiplash”
Anthony McCarten “The Theory of Everything”

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Fource Majeure
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Wild Tales (Argentina)
Tangerines (Estonia)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Birdman
Mr. Turner
Grand Budapest Hotel
Unbroken
Interstellar

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Grand Budapest Hotel
Interstellar
Into the Woods
Birdman
The Theory of Everything

BEST SOUND MIXING
Into the Woods
Interstellar
Whiplash
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers 4

BEST SOUND EDITING
Whiplash
Into the Woods
Interstellar
Birdman
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Into the Woods
Grand Budapest Hotel
Mr. Turner
The Imitation Game
A Most Violent Year

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Gone Girl
Interstellar
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Theory of Everything
The Imitation Game

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Citizenfour
Life Itself
Jodorowsky’s Dune
The Overnighters
Last Days in Vietnam

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
The LEGO Movie
Princess Kaguya
How to Train Your Dragon 2
The Boxtrolls
Big Hero 6

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Interstellar
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Godzilla
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
The Theory of Everything
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Foxcatcher

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Glory” (Selma)
“Mercy Is” (Noah)
“Opportunity” (Annie)
“Yellow Flicker Beat” (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part I)
“Miracles” (Unbroken)

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50 Most Anticipated Films of 2015

January 9, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists 2 Comments

2014 was a hell of a year for film, though after just glancing at 2015, this new year looks to be downright insane. With new franchise films like Star Wars, Mad Max, Bond, Hunger Games, Jurassic World, Furious 7 and Avengers and films from directors like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Danny Boyle, David O’Russell, Ron Howard, Michael Mann, Richard Linklater, Ben Wheatley, Noah Baumbach, Denis Villeneuve and countless others, this could go down as the biggest year for film ever.

Last year, we ended up anticipating many of the treasures that the year was to hold, although some of its finest still managed to elude us. This year will certainly hold similar results but that’s half the fun of it anyways.

But for all the wonders to behold, 2015 certainly looks to hold some duds. So before we get onto what looks best, let’s air out some of those that did not make the list:

Even with Alan Taylor at the helm, Terminator: Genisys looks downright awful while Neill Blomkamp‘s Chappie is looking far too cheesy. Disney‘s Cinderella movie is all but destined to be bad. I have no idea what to think of Fifty Shades of Grey though I guess I can expect some “graphic nudity” so I guess that’s nothing to balk at. This Entourage movie looks incorrigible in all the wrong kind of ways. Magic Mike XXL losses Steven Soderbergh so it’s now just a male striper movie… At a distance, Ant-Man seems to be Marvel’s first flop.

I’m wary about the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on and similar things go for Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, which could be good, could be bad but I just don’t really care enough to make a bet either way. The Vacation reboot with Ed Helms feels the same way, though I can’t imagine it’s great. Terrence Malick annoys me (yeah, I said it) so I don’t feel anything towards Knight of Cups or his yet untitled Austin music scene flick. And I’m not entirely convinced Werner Herzog‘s Queen of the Desert will actually be released this year but if it is, I’m definitely looking forward to it.

This year’s list included a whopping 11 titles from the 2015 Sundance slate (which I’ll be attnding in just under 2 weeks) so we should have a great working list of confirmations going within the onset of the month. Aside from that, I’m sure there will be many pleasant surprises along the way as well as bumps in the road (see Interstellar) but for now, all we can do is wish and wait…

50. PAN

This Peter Pan origin story looks very stupid but I cannot ignore the fact that Joe Wright – of Pride and Prejudice and Hannah fame – is at the helm. In Wright, I trust. With a scenery-chewing Hugh Jackman as the villainous Blackbeard and Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, I’m hoping that this lives up to Wright’s reputation and isn’t the CGI-laden dullard-fest it looks to be. In theaters July 24.

49. JUPITER ASCENDING

The Wachowski‘s far-out Jupiter Ascending was originally slated for release at the end of last year, leaving the film with that troubling “delayed” taste in our mouths. Whether it was a financial decision; a ploy to move it out of a crowded December slate and take advantage of an oft underwhelming February season; or a creative one; perhaps the film just flat-out sucked and they wanted as much tinker time as possible; we’ll see if they’re able to deliver a sci-fi blockbuster worth writing home about. In theaters February 6.

48. JURASSIC WORLD

More a morbid curiosity pick, this long-awaited fourth installment to the Jurassic Park franchise hopes to hit the reboot button hard with a swashbuckling Chris Pratt at the forefront but if the first trailer is any indication, its quality is certainly not guaranteed. Blockbuster season June 12 release.

47. INSIDE OUT/THE GOOD DINOSAUR

How far Pixar has fallen since its long standing reign as animators supreme. It’s been since Up that Pixar has knocked an original idea out of the park and with not one but two films (with original concepts) releasing this year, the odds of them rising to the top of the animated studios looks better than it has in years. Inside Out is an odd saga told from the perspective of a little girl’s emotions – Joy, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, Anger, etc. – while The Good Dinosaur charters a friendship between a boy and his Apatosaurus. Respective June 19 and November 25 release.

46. MACBETH

One of the Bard’s most harrowing sagas of unchecked ambition, MacBeth tells the story of an army general who conspires with his seductive wife to become King. Starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as Macbeth and his Lady, this looks to be one of the rare Shakespeare adaptations that sticks. Release TBA.

45. SLOW WEST

Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Rory McCann and Kodi Smit-McPhee star in a old west road movie from first time director John Maclean and little more has to be said than Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Game of Thrones‘ The Hound and Western and I’m sold on the concept. We’ll see shortly if this is one worth talking about later down the line as it premieres in little more than two weeks. Slow West debuts at Sundance.

44. CRIMSON PEAK

Guillermo del Toro is definitely an acquired taste and one that I’m not sure I can stomach much more of. Battlebots (er, Pacific Rim) was lost on me and his FX horror show, The Strain, failed to capture my attention for more than a few episodes, leaving me wanting for the del Toro of old; the del Toro who made Pan’s Labyrinth. Crimson Peak looks like an odd little haunted house flick and will certainly benefit from the casting of Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain, though Charlie Hunnam in the leading spot leaves much to be desired. Halloween-inspired October 16 release.

43. THE LOBSTER

To say you fully understood Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Dogtooth is a lie but that doesn’t make the film any less interesting. The Lobster looks a little more straight-forward – a dystopian love story where single people are forcibly matched up in a weird hotel – and has an unrelenting cast including Léa Seydoux, Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell, and John C. Reilly. Unspecified March 2014 release.

42. THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY: PART 2

The name might not be catchy but its box office conflagration is sure to be. Though the first few hours of this two-parter failed to live up to many’s expectations (I enjoyed it) the second action-filled finale is sure to bring the noise. While we’ll have to wait to see if critics are willing to warm up to its fires after being burned by the last one, audiences are sure to turn this into one of the year’s most profitable films. Release on November 20.

41. FURIOUS 7

After the tragically ironic death of Paul Walker, this seventh take on the Fast and Furious franchise took a long break from production, returning to sub in Walker’s unfilled scenes with CGI and brotherly body doubles. With horror aficionado James Wan working as director, Furious 7 promises to take a detour from the vehicular heists for a throwback revenge flick. Here’s hoping that the untimely passing of Walker wasn’t a decisive finishing blow to the only franchise he thrived in. Coming to theaters April 3.

40. STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

Anyone who took Psychology 101 in college remembers the Stanford Prison Experiment – where men were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard and begin to preternaturally assimilate with their relegated role. After taking on David Sedaris with the somewhat winning C.O.G., director Kyle Patrick Alvarez hopes to weave the cautionary tale of humanity’s darker tendencies into a compelling narrative. Sundance premiere.

39. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 5

I adored Brad Bird‘s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and loved J.J. Abram‘s MI:3 and was more than ready for another dose of the MI series. However, when Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) stepped into the director’s chair, I was exceedingly disappointed. Though Tom Cruise‘s breezy charm and the series seriously-not-serious tone can hopefully elevate the film to blockbuster perfection, I’m still admittedly nervous about McQuarrie’s involvement. Christmas ’15 release.

38. FANTASTIC FOUR

A knock-out cast – Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell – and director Josh Trank are enough to win over the curiosity of this series skeptic. After all, the most recent renditions of this quadron of supers was a certifiable dud so it has very little to live up to and so long as Trank can match the emotional heft and wowing spectacle of Chronicle, we should be in good shape. August 7 wide release.

37. KNOCK KNOCK

The perma-wooden Keanu Reeves unexpectedly won audiences over with last year’s ultra-violent John Wick while Eli Roth‘s latest, the Amazon horror homage The Green Inferno, went unseen when Open Road pulled the film from release. A combination of these two mighty hit-or-missers is a strangely inspired formula and when you mix in a pair of femme fatales, more than just our curiosities are piqued. Premieres at Sundance.

36. LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT

Ewan McGregor plays a fasting, hard praying Jesus on a forty day desert bender in Rodrigo Garcia‘s ambitiously arthouse Last Days in the Desert. It’s fair to assume the dialogue will be slim but with Gravity and Birdman cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki working the camera, I can’t help but imagine the picture is stunning to behold. Premieres at Sundance.

35. EVEREST

Jake Gyllenhaal has been on a tear of late and his latest is a loose retelling of the events of Jon Krakauer‘s “Into Thin Air” with a hell of a list of co-stars – including Keira Knightley, Robin Wright, Josh Brolin, Jason Clarke, John Hawkes, and Sam Worthington. Expect a high-octane, well-acted romp. September 18th release.

34. MISSISSIPPI GRIND

Ryan Fleck‘s Half Nelson was a big hit in the indie scene so it was a bit of a letdown when his follow-up, the Zack Galifianakis-starring dramedy It’s Kind of a Funny Story, failed to deliver more goods. Mississippi Grind looks to win back his goodwill with a Southern gambling drama starring the always winning Ben Bendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds. Debuts at Sundance.

33. JANE GOT A GUN

Famously troubled production Jane Got a Gun has been through the wringer. This Natalie Portman passion project was originally in the competent hands of Lynee Ramsay – who quit Day One of production – and with an entirely different male cast (Michael Fassbender, Jude Law and Bradley Cooper were all attached at different times) but the changes haven’t made me less interested (even if they do invite a touch of wariness.) With Joel Edgerton and Ewan McGregor now in the male roles and Warrior‘s Gavin O’Connor behind the camera, this could wind up as fetid as its making but has the distinct possibility of being quite wonderful. Release September 4.

32. SOUTHPAW

Another Jake Gyllenhaal film, this time from director Antoine Fuqua with a screenplay from Sons of Anarchy helmer and scribe Kurt Sutter, Southpaw tells the story of a boxer clawing his way to the top. Though Fuqua isn’t a guarantee behind the camera and Sutter has a knack for over-writing, the presence of Gyllenhaal alone may be enough to make this mighty entertaining. Release TBA.

31. RESULTS

Part of Sundance’s US Dramatic Competition, Results pairs Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders as an unlikely pair of personal trainers. Many fawned over director Andrew Bujalaski’s odd Computer Chess so expectations are high. Sundance premiere.

30. ’71

Many expected Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken to propel Jack O’Connell into international stardom (it didn’t) but that doesn’t mean the young actor hasn’t proven his worth before. He was a powerhouse in Starred Up and had nothing to do with the problems of Unbroken. Already nominated for a BAFTA for Best British Film, ’71 tells the story of “a young and disoriented British soldier who’s accidentally abandoned by his unit.” It sounds awesome and I’ll be seeing it shortly at Sundance. ’71 plays Sundance and then is onto a limited release February 27.

29. BLACK MASS

I don’t love the casting – Johnny Depp, Sienna Miller, Benedict Cumberbatch – but Scott Cooper‘s underrated directorial status (Out of the Furnace) is enough to have me thinking this might be a surprise winner. Black Mass tells the story of Whitey Bulger, infamous criminal and brother to a senator who flipped to become an FBI informant to take down a rival Mafia family. September 18 wide opening.

28. THE SEA OF TREES

Gus Van Sant‘s trippy-premised The Sea of Trees has Matthew McConaughey playing a suicidal man who becomes lost in a forest and must find his way out with a newfound Japanese friend. The whole thing sounds otherworldly and strange, something of a Rust Cohle existential nightmare, and Van Sant’s track record screams quality so what’s not to like? Release TBA.

27. DARK PLACES

Gillian Flynn‘s last adaptation went on to fill my number two spot of the Top Ten Best Movies of the Year so to say I’m anticipating her next flick is a bit of an understatement. Having just finishing reading the novel on which the film will be based, the potential is great though the casting and director’s choice (Gilles Paquet-Brenner) have left me a little cold. Release TBA.

26. HIGH RISE

Ben Wheatley is a monster. Kill List is one of the best horror movies of the past few decades while Sightseers is a searingly hilarious dark comedy. A Field in England wasn’t quite my cup of tea – a bit of a madcap experiment gone wrong – but High Rise looks to be a return to form for the maniacal director. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Moss, Sienna Miller, James Purefoy, Luke Evans and Jeremy Irons, it seems Wheatley can finally attract a real cast, who will all assemble to tell the story of a high-rise apartment gone terribly wrong. US release TBA.

25. BEASTS OF NO NATION

Idris Elba suits up as a commandant who takes young Agu under his wing as a child solider in an unnamed African civil war. Elba’s a treasure (see Luther) even though he isn’t always gifted the most rewarding material so to see him take the tutelage of True Detective writer and director Cary Fukunaga will hopefully be a pairing most special. Release TBA.

24. Z FOR ZACHARIAH

Proffered as a love triangle for the intelligentsia, Z for Zachariah sees a post-apocalyptic future where two men fight for the affection of the only woman they know to be left standing. Starring Margo Robbie, Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor, director Craig Zobel‘s follow-up to the winning Compliance debuts in just a few weeks at Sundance. Debuting at Sundance.

23. THE MARTIAN

Ridley Scott‘s first return to original sci-fi fare in too long, The Martian boasts screenwriter Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) and a cast that features Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Matt Damon and Sean Bean. Whether Scott will continue on his streak of near misses or really knock it out of the park is yet to be seen but we can still hope can’t we? Opens wide November 25.

22. THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS

Derek Cianfrance is a gorgeous storyteller and his next film tells the tale of “a lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia who raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat.” From a distance, it sounds kinda quirky and sentimental but I have overwhelming faith in Cianfrance’s good taste. Starring Michael Fassbender and Rachel Weisz, this could be an emotional powerhouse. Release TBA.

21. UNTITLED SPIELBERG/HANKS COLD WAR FILM

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are more often than naught lucky pennies for one another. Their successes have been varied, though largely war-driven and their latest looks to add to that list of wins. Going on to receive awards attention is a distinct possibility though it may hem too closely to 2012’s Argo to be a real contender. Opens October 16.

20. KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE

If there’s one guy working in Hollywood who is the anti-Christopher Nolan, it’s Matthew Vaughn. The guy just came out and said that people are sick of Nolan’s relentlessly dark take and I think he might just be right. Vaughn’s style is unapologetically just that: style. He imbues his films with an irresistible sense of gleeful violence, elevating comic book fare into truly thrilling blockbuster engagements. The reviews for his latest have been positively glowing and I can’t wait to see his spy product. February 13 release stateside.

19. TOMORROWLAND

Damon Lindelof is one of the most divisive creative minds working in Hollywood today (I love him) so anything with his name attached typically draws a dichotomy of fanfare. He really is the ultimate crowd splitter. But whether or not you love or hate him, Tomorrowland looks mighty intriguing. With Brad Bird (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) at the helm, a cast that pairs up George Clooney and Britt Robertson and a Disney-sized budget, this ride-turned-movie looks to be one big – hopefully beautiful – mystery. In theaters May 22.

18. BLACKHAT

Michael Mann‘s hacker thriller has the fact that it’s a hacker thriller working against it but if Mann’s name means anything (it does) it’s that he should be able to mount insurmountable odds. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Blackhat hopes to break the record of sh*tty January releases. Hits theaters January 16.

17. DIGGING FOR FIRE

Joe Swanberg is the feather in the cap of the terribly-named mumblecore sub-genre, delivering hit after hit of pertinent indie fare. His latest, co-written by Jake Johnson, looks to continue the streak. With a great cast – Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson, Sam Rockwell, Sam Elliot – to boot and an intriguing premise about a husband and wife who find a bone and a gun, Digging for Fire could start off the year right. Premieres at Sundance.

16. IN THE HEART OF THE SEA

Another Hemsworth-starrer, Ron Howard‘s In the Heart of the Sea tells the events that inspired Moby Dick – a sperm whale preys upon a ship full of whalers. Howard’s last (Rush) was an underrated win and this looks to mix similar amounts of narrative ingenuity and big screen spectacle. Opens March 13.

15. MISTRESS AMERICA

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach reunite for this dramedy about a college freshman thrown for the loop by a new step-sister. Baumbach and Gerwig’s last union resulted in the most excellent Frances Ha so anticipation is almost stiflingly high for their next product. Premieres at Sundance.

14. THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

To say that Marvel is on a roll is the understatement of the year. Only they could turn a relatively unknown quantity such as Guardians of the Galaxy into the most profitable (domestically) film of the year. The Avengers: Age of Ultron will look to topple the box office records of its predecessor while upping the stakes and (hopefully) imparting that these Avengers are not as death proof as they’ve been so far. Expect it to destroy box office records on May 1.

13. GREEN ROOM

Jeremy Saulnier, of Blue Ruin fame, returns to the color wheel for his film’s namesake to tell another twisted tale of circumstance gone wrong. Starring Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin and Patrick Stewart as a white supremacist, Green Room seems like just the kind of mystery I cannot wait to see unfold. Release TBA.

12. THE END OF THE TOUR

Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg join director James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) to tell the true story of a reporter’s journeys with David Foster Wallace (of “Infinite Jest” acclaim) during a book tour. Ponsoldt delivered a surprise hit with The Spectacular Now and with compelling source material and a knack for earnestness, looks to do it again. Debuts at Sundance.

11. DEMOLITION

A man struggles with the unexpected death of his wife in Jean-Marc Vallee‘s Demolition. The third film on this list to star Jake Gyllenhaal (are you spotting a trend?) Demolition also features Naomi Watts and Chris Cooper and could just be the kind of film to earn serious awards attention for it. Release TBA.

10. MAD MAX: ROAD FURY

I’m gonna go ahead and admit that I’ve never seen the original Mad Max films (consternation aplenty). It’s just one of those flicks that no-one ever inducted me into and I’ve never really wanted to just watch by myself. So yeah, now that that’s off my chest, I have to admit that the new Mad Max movie looks pretty freakin’ rad. Tom Hardy in the spotlight and George Miller behind the camera looks to make for one bang-up dystopia. May 15 release date.

9. SPECTRE

Continuing down the path that Sam Mendes‘ Skyfall set Bond upon, Spectre looks to firm up the beginning of the end of Daniel Craig‘s 007. With Christoph Waltz joining the cast as the infamous Blofeld and Léa Seydoux hopping in as the femme fatale, the formula for success looks to be all calculated and in place. If they can edge a touch more fun into the proceedings (see Casino Royal) Spectre could be one of the best Bonds yet. Hits theaters November 6.

8. JOY

Sizing up David O. Russell‘s latest takes little more than noting the cast list – Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro. If you were to place a cold bet on Oscar odds at the end of the year, putting all three up for nominations would likely win you money as O. Russell’s track record of late has been nothing short of meteoric. Joy tells the true story of a Long Island single mom (Lawrence) who pioneered such inventions as the Miracle Mop. Christmas Day release.

7. THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT

Richard Linklater promises that That’s What I’m Talking About is a spiritual follow-up to Dazed and Confused, that picks up right where Boyhood left off. No, it doesn’t feature any of the same characters but it plants us right in the throes of the onset on college, where some of the Dazed kids were heading and where Mason had just arrived. Assuming that Linklater is able to keep up his hot streak, That’s What I’m Talking About hopes to be one of the best indies of 2015. Release TBA.

6. STEVE JOBS

This movie should have been David Fincher‘s. It should have starred Christian Bale. But it doesn’t and it won’t. Its future, in fact, is hazy at best. But with Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 127 Hours) now in the director’s chair and Michael Fassbender filling in for Bale, the turnaround could have been much, much worse. I’m gambling a lot on Aaron Sorkin with this pick and perhaps even more on Sony to not f*ck it up but I’m left hoping that Sorkin’s long awaited telling of Steve Job’s tale is well worth the wait…and the drama. Release TBA…if at all.

5. SICARIO

Denis Villeneuve delivered a one-two knockout with Prisoners and Enemy (both of which debuted at the 2013 TIFF) and now returns to tell a feminist survivalist cartel story. Count me in. Starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Jon Bernthal, Sicario has my expectation of landing super-sunny-side up, as anything short of a masterpiece would sully Villeneuve’s fast rising star. Release TBA.

4. SILENCE

Martin Scorsese has been talking about Silence for decades. Two 17th century Jesuit priests embark to Japan to plant the seed of the good book and not all goes according to plan. The fact that Silence has been Scorsese’s long time passion project is reason enough to anticipate its release even though I’m saddened to see Daniel Day Lewis (who was long expected to be attached) not included amongst the cast list. Release TBA.

3. THE REVENANT

Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s Birdman was my favorite movie of the year and his follow-up looks equally out-of-this world. Starring two of the best living actors – Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy – The Revenant takes us back in time to 1820 where a man is mauled by a bear and must take vengeance on those who left him for dead. Sound excellent to you? Yup, me too. Christmas Day limited release.

2. THE HATEFUL EIGHT

Every year Quentin Tarantino makes a film, it’s my favorite of the year so there’s no hemming and hawing about why his latest is so high up on this list. Though its getting to the screen has been somewhat of a dramatic tale in and of itself (cast, leaked, canceled, revived) Tarantino’s story of blizzard-bound bounty hunters is sure to be an invariable winner. We must wait until November 13 to finally see it.

1. STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

It’s been a lifetime of waiting for most of us younger generation Star Wars fans. I grew up on the original trilogy, attended the premiere of Episode 1 and my distain for George Lucas‘ turd-filled prequels has multiplied like a cancer over the years. We deserved more. J.J. Abrams aims to renew hope in one of the most loved franchises of all time and the Christmas-released trailer had me buzzing in excitement. Though I go into it with reservations, this is without a doubt the film I’m most anxious to see in 2015. Releases wide on December 18.

So there we have it, all 50 most anticipated films of 2015. Go ahead and weigh in: what did we miss? what are you most excited for?

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Weekly Review 67: ALICE, SNIPER, THEOREM

December 29, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged American Sniper, Reviews, Still Alice, The Zero Theorem, Weekly Review

In the few moments of downtime, I’ve managed to churn and burn through a shortlist of 2014 Must Sees including Still Alice – for which Julianne Moore will win an Oscar – American Sniper – Clint Eastwood’s dutifully told biopic on prolific sniper Chris Kyle – and Terry Gilliam‘s weirdo-fest The Zero Theorem. So hurry, hurry, super scurry, cuz it’s Weekly Review.

STILL ALICE (2014)

A rather down-the-middle illness drama, Still Alice offers Julianne Moore the opportunity to showboat her skillz and saunter away with an Oscar. Her performance is the stuff of typical award fare – resilient with flourishes of weepy breakdowns – even when the film itself is cloyingly melodramatic, not above the pay grade of made-for-TV cinema. Not bad so much as bland and conventional, Still Alice takes on Alzheimer’s disease with a unwavering chin and occasionally delicate grace, supplying a fair share of sympathy for its characters and their situations even when it admittedly takes too many swings at its audience’s tear ducts. A cut above Hallmark, but not by a wide margin. (C)

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

Watching a screener of American Sniper on my XBox One was a dangerous game of brinkmanship. All that separated me from an online melee of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was a simple press of the home button. After all, Clint Eastwood‘s passable but derivative biopic is essentially watching a professional play Call of Duty. Played masterfully by a bulked-up Bradley Cooper, Chris Kyle’s whole mantra could be boiled down to a call of duty – he joins the war effort because 9/11 and… ‘Murica! – but Eastwood fails to get into the nitty gritty of what makes the man tick. While a biopic that thoughtfully examined and picked apart Kyle’s hero status would have been infinitely more interesting, Eastwood’s latest is at the very least a powerful starring vehicle for Cooper. (C+)

THE ZERO THEOREM (2014)

Terry Gilliam‘s films have always been an acid trip but The Zero Theorem walks us deep into an unrelenting, unforgiving K-hole and lets go. Named for the formula which computer scientist cum tortured protagonist Qohen Leth (a shaved bald Christoph Waltz) seeks desperately to solve, The Zero Theorem postulates a dystopian future that’s brimming with window dressings and a few spectacular bits of CGI cinematography that’s undeniably short on substantive DNA. The should-be timely piece adds up to Gilliam’s wandering take on technology but exactly what he’s trying to say gets as jumbled up as the film’s neural nets, blood red jumpsuits and Matt Damons in snowy, wall-street wigs. (C-)

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The 10 Best Horror Movies of 2014

December 28, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged As Above/So Below, Best of 2014, Creep, Honeymoon, Horror Movies, Housebound, It Follows, Oculus, Starry Eyes, The Babadook, The Borderlands, The Houses October Built

People might tell you that 2014 was a lackluster year for horror. They would be wrong. Very, very wrong. In fact, 2014 was a superlative 365-days for the genre. So much so that piecing together a Top Ten List was exorbinately difficult as there were at a handful that may have earned a place in a lesser year but didn’t exactly have the goods to nose their way into the top slots. Among those notable contenders is Kevin Smith’s batshit walrus misadventure Tusk, superior alphabetical anthology flick The ABCs of Death 2, and a trio of delectable found footage flicks featuring werewolf realism – Wer – Altimizer’s gone demonic – The Taking of Deborah Logan – and a horrific vampiric flu – Afflicted. Cautionary internet tale The Den had a lot going for it as well, another strong contender for the year. Had I considered E.L. Katz‘ monstrously good Cheap Thrills a horror – I don’t – it might have topped the list but that’s an argument to be had in a separate space.

10. THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT

It takes little imagination to find a souring brand of daunting realism in Bobby Roe‘s grizzly found footage account (one of four on this list) of a group of Halloween thrill-seekers who stumble too far down the rabbit hole. Going above the conventions of normalcy, The Houses October Built arcs at terminal velocity into the unforgiving maw of a real hellhole, offering scares that gingerly walk the fine line between reality and invention in which it’s improbable to parse the artifice of trying to scare the sh*t out of someone with actually, you know, trying to kill them. You’ll never enter a haunted house the same again.

9. THE BABADOOK

A storybook nightmare come alive with electric performances from Essie Davis and youngster Noah Wiseman, the former of which offers a performance embedded with equal strands of motherly sacrifice and true terror, the later half-wittingly stumbling into one of the least self-aware performances from a child the year had to offer, regardless of genre. The Babadook may not present the bone-chilling frights some of the its chief pundits have claimed but its mightily well made, with fierce attention to relationships and an original enough concept to boot – an undeniably winning formula in our eyes.

8. THE BORDERLANDS

The whole descent into hell thing has been done before (even once later on this list) and anyone a fan of the genre is no stranger to priests nosing into miracles-cum-hauntings but the way in which The Borderlands builds and builds while tightening and tightening makes it a fine study of found footage done justice. The other chief victory for director Elliot Goldner comes in his writing, which keeps us surprisingly invested in the characters, offering three-dimensional beings not often found in the found footage catalog. Robin Hill‘s wisecracking Gray clashes perfectly with Gordon Kennedy‘s damaged but devoid Deacon so that when things finally come to a head, and boy oh boy do they, you’re rooting for them, not against (as is too often the case.)

7. OCULUS

2014 was a plugged full of studio misfires for the genre – a fact that has contributed to the misconception that it was a minor year for horror – what with Annabelle, The Purge: Anarchy and Ouija all being marked gaffes and The Evil Within and The Quiet Ones failing to make much noise at all – but if there was one studio released scary movie that fans and critics were able to rally around it was this. Oculus thrives on its sense of internal consistency and increasingly high-stakes games of mindf*cking, and Karen Gillan s overly committed performance didn’t hurt. For a film about a haunted mirror, Oculus is able to inject an overbearing sense of dread into what could have easily been a disaster of epic proportions. That director Mike Flanagan also managed to blend two time periods seamlessly into one, presenting a fully distorted picture that was great than the mere sum of its parts, is further evidence of his subtle mastery of the genre.

6. HOUSEBOUND

Sam Raimi accidentally invented the horror-comedy in 1981, almost stumbling upon a wheelhouse hungry subcultures didn’t yet know they wanted, his whacked-out formula later taken by a young, tooth-cutting Peter Jackson to further extremes in the celebrated messterpiece Braindead. In the great tradition of wily horror-gone-funny, New Zealand’s very own Housebound jettisons the zany hallmarks of past horror-comedy successes – all the while very intentionally tipping their hat to them – giving it space to hone in on its very own import of yuck-horror and bloodspolsions. This tongue-in-cheek haunter may be bratty, puerile and claustrophobic but, most importantly, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

5. CREEP

Mark Duplass has always played something of an everyman. Even on The League – an FX comedy deliciously overstuffed with caricatures of characters – his Pete is snarky but believably human. Perhaps that’s what makes his turn in the delightfully eerie Creep so, uh, creepy. Starring opposite him is (first time) director Patrick Brice, playing a man who’s just responded to a mysterious Craigslist ad that enlists him as a cohort of sorts to Duplass’ increasingly odd asks. Never quite going the direction you expect, Creep relies sternly on the ever captivating presence of its two leads – who never disappoint – and their slightly askew developing relationship.

4. HONEYMOON

Rose Leslie melted many snowy hearts north of The Wall as Ygritte on HBO‘s winning Game of Thrones series but seeing her stripped of that throaty accent, her hoary nightgown and, eventually, her personality in Honeymoon showed a new side to her, one hemmed with dimensionality and rich with ambiguity. She was, in a phrase, a nightmarish panorama. Less a conventional antagonist than a harbinger of uncertainly and unease, Leslie’s Bea was one of the more interesting characters additions from 2014 and director Leigh Janiak knows just how to manipulate her stalwart tendencies and flip them on their head. In a film that’s all about marital bliss gobbled up, Honeymoon is one savagely appetizing gaze at alien femme fatality.

3. AS ABOVE/SO BELOW

Critically dismantled, criminally underseen, As Above/So Below was dealt a losing hand upon its unceremonious theatrical dumping. To get an idea of how little confidence Universal had in their picture, they screened the film at 7 PM the night of its official release. Meaning, they screening it a mere 3 hours before they started showing it to general audiences. Of all the entries on the list, this suffered the biggest blowback for its critical panning in the eyes of the suits – coming in with a shabby 21 million off an estimated 5 million production budget – but the true loss came on behalf of the audiences who skipped it assuming ineptitude. From the truly inspired Paris Catacomb settings to its litany of diabolical lore, As Above/So Below is stuffed with arcana and welcome scares, like a giddy, terrifying adventure of Legends of the Hidden Temple with an improved upon Laura Croft as your host.

2. STARRY EYES

If there is one consistency from the year, it’s that 2014 was a moment for the woman in horror. From As Above/So Below‘s kickass Perdita Weeks to Honeymoon‘s subterfuging Rose Leslie, Oculus‘ exceedingly zealous Karen Gillan, The Babadook‘s sublime Essie Davis, Housebound‘s ever-angsty Morgana O’Reilly and It Follow‘s perfect casting in Maika Monroe, the stars have not shone brighter on the fairer gender within our beloved genre. But no entry on the list had as big an ask of their actress as Starry Eyes, a bone-dry, humorless waxing on the pitfalls of ambition. Alexandra Esso literally buried herself in the role and you won’t find another who chick on this list or any another that undergoes such a shocking 360. An absolutely blood-curdling series of dispatches – a barbell tops the gruesome weapons list – in the midst of Essoe’s particular brand of body dysmorphia makes it an unforgettable genre entry that’s slowly been earning a deserved cult following.

1. IT FOLLOWS

The urban legend of the STDemon seems like one that’s been whispered amongst circles of throbbing-genitialed teenagers forever. Debuting at Cannes and making a hell of a festival circuit run, It Follows spins its own Are You Afraid of the Dark type mythos of a sexually transmitted entity that never stops, never sleeps, never reasons. Just follows. Brilliant in its simplicity, It Follows doesn’t squander time with getting to know you’s. Rather, it’s a raw, dirty, brilliant orgy of nail-crunching tension, rich with pregnant silences and offscreen moments of self-sacrificing, proving that sometimes the simplest of ideas are the best of them.

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Out in Theaters: INTO THE WOODS

December 24, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anna Kendrick, Billy Magnussen, Chris Pine, Daniel Huttlestone, Emily Blunt, Into the Woods, James Corden, Johnny Depp, Lilla Crawford, Meryl Streep, Musicals, Out in Theaters, Reviews 2 Comments

Last year, Telltale Games released a video game called “The Wolf Among Us.” The interactive story re-imagined fairy tales of lore – from Snow White to Georgie Porgie – as a community of troubled New Yorkers caught up in a multiple homicide investigation. You play as Bigby Wolf, a detective with a past as coarse as his beard hair, now a man doing his best to pay penance for the huffing and puffing of his past.

Rob Marshall‘s Into the Woods has its own Big, Bad Wolf – Johnny Depp with a crumpled mustache and a rapey solo track. He bays at the moon while singing about how badly he wants to gobble up Red Riding Hood. It’s weird, off-putting and noxious – essential Depp 101. Where Telltale was able to take familiar characters and weave a story around them that benefits from our understanding of their respective fables, Into the Woods relies entirely on mimicking the collective conscious of lore, spoon-feeding back a narrative that’s more anecdotal smorgasbord than anything refined and singular. It’s one big inside joke that’s sure to tickle musical fans pink while leaving those on the other side of the fence howling for respite.

The story starts out in precious sing-song with a baker and his wife wailing their woes of a womb left barren, a pernicious Little Red (Lilla Crawford) embarking to grandma’s with a basket brimming with baked goods, Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) unwittingly off to trade his milky white cow for some magic beans and a spindly witch played by Meryl Streep hemming and hawing about an aged curse and popping in and out of frames in daffy gusts of smoke. Their paths, for one reason or another, have all been pointed into the woods. And so we embark with ballad after ballad, lungs brimming with gusto.

It’s within said woods that The Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Emily Blunt) must gather a cow as white as milk, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as gold as…gold? in order to break the curse that Steep’s witch placed on their house many years ago. Many songs follow.

For those turned off by musical numbers, Into the Woods is an auditory onslaught that fails to break from the repertoire of singing, singing and more singing long enough to develop a story beyond the patchwork of colliding fairy tales. Chris Pine steals the show with in-film brother Billy Magnussen in a number called “Agony” but clever moments of tongue-in-cheek nods to the adults in the audience like this are woefully sparse.

The cast is admittedly stellar – Anna Kendrick, Corden, Blunt, Pine and, to a lesser degree, Streep all own their numbers, even if I personally found some of those numbers grating. But such is the nature of the musical. You’re either in it or you aren’t. It’s just not my cup of tea. What I completely fail to understand is any Oscar buzz surrounding the film as the mere idea of Streep with a nomination frustrates me beyond belief (in a year stuffed with excellent, unsung female performances.) She’s played the Academy Darling card too many times recently, earning a nod nearly every time she puts her face to celluoid. The Iron Lady doth protest too much, methinks.

C

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Out in Theaters: THE IMITATION GAME

December 24, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Allen Leech, Charles Dance, Keira Knightley, Mark Strong, Matthew Goode, Morten Tyldum, Out in Theaters, Reviews, The Imitation Game

At the onset of The Imitation Game, Alan Turing asks if we’re paying attention, not dissimilar from Hugh Jackman in Christopher Nolan‘s The Prestige.The Prestige played its B-movie twisty route with a kind of goofy, self-aware panache, knowingly stringing you along for a series of loony forks in the road. David Bowie played Nikola Tesla. We rightly paid attention. By point of comparison, The Imitation Game is dreadfully forthright. Almost unaware that the subtext that we’re supposed to be looking out for is already right there on the surface. There’s no code to track to understand the meaning of the film, it’s just all there. Plain and simple. And boring. That’s not to say the result isn’t an admittedly lovingly made historical piece destined for awards buzz. The thing has Oscar noms tramp stamped all over it. And yet with all its attention paid to the effect of the film, there’s no hiding the fact that it’s a contrived work of old-fashion non-fiction, one without much depth of intention. Believe me, there’s no need to pay close attention.

Benedict Cumberbatch again steps into the shoes of a man cripplingly bad at being normal (a la Sherlock and his turn as Julian Asange in The Fifth Estate.) He’s an unintentional misanthrope, a nerdy megalomaniac, a puzzle genius sans a lick of understanding for social graces. Back under the whip of imitating an existing figure, Cumberbatch offers his all but it’s a SSDD situation at best. We’ve seen the best of Cumbie struggling with crippling genius in the wingtip shoes of Sherlock. There’s simply no need to return to the well again, and again, and again. Seriously, this guy’s more typecast than Arnold.

Tasked with cracking the uncrackable German Enigma code, Turing must race against the clock (as American lives are lost by the second) all while withstanding political pressure from all sides. Add to that his secret homosexuality and you have a character who should be indefinitely rich in layers but winds up seemingly as complex as a Boston Creme Pie.

Morten Tyldum‘s old-fashion biopic finds an entry point into Turing by expounding upon three turning points in his life: his childhood, his secretive wartime activities and a post-war investigation into his private life. The three periods poke holes in a seemingly steely character but it’s most often only the meaty middle bits that are genuinely compelling. Young Al (Alex Lawther) develops a did-they-or-didn’t-they FWB situation with classmate Christopher and though the lil’ Lawther handles the material aptly, there’s nothing in those segments to propel the narrative forward without a dollop of clunky platitudes. The scenes exist to highlight the challenge of Turing’s latent gayness and suss out what makes him such an isolated being but it’s a hokey tactic that wrestles in even hokier speeches. “You know,” Christopher says to Alan, “it’s the people no one imagines anything of who do things that no one can imagine.” Thanks for the advice Lionel Logue.

Similar feel-good hokum can be found splattered throughout the bulk of Graham Moore’s tidy script, revealing The Imitation Game for the covetous awards hog it truly is. WWII? Check. Unsung but crucial historical figure? Check. Demons in closet? Check. “Wrap it up fellas, the Oscar’s in the bag.” Even the unwieldy CGI seems like an inside joke.

The idea of Keira Knightley as a era-smashing woman code-breaker threatens to upend the carefully formatted Oscar tedium but when she’s relegated to hiding her intelligence in the shadows, her character turns mostly moot. Knightley’s brainy Joan Clarke is certainly no Joan of Clarke, allowing the predominant belief that women can’t be nothing but seamstresses and baby-makers to shape her destiny. While Turing stuffs his unlawful preference in the closet (homosexuality was illegal in England until 1967) Clarke is his similarly secretive counterpart, solving puzzles by candlelight because the idea of a codebreaker with a vagina is just too much for those old snooty white guys to handle. Plus, cooties.

There’s an intriguing by-product to Clarke and Turing’s unorthodox union in which they both recognize and accept each other for who they are (Turing being gay and Clarke being…a smart woman?) but it’s mostly shadowed in an offscreen haze, only truly rearing its head for a late-stage Oscar moment scene. Clarke mostly becomes a fulcrum point around which Turing’s character evolves but is never substantial in herself, much like upper-decker officers Mark Strong and Charles Dance and inside team members Matthew Goode and Allen Leech. The pieces are all there but they’re as shaped and wooden as pawns, which Moore’s script plays them as.

In 1952, Alan Turing was convicted of gross indecency due to the investigation that bookends the film. In trying to prove that Turing was a spy, the local law reveled a romantic relationship with a 19-year-old boy. In a moment of Oscar glory, a discredited Turing admits he’s chosen to take “straight” pills rather than a prison sentence. Tears are had and I was reminded that this was the first time in the film that I actually felt much. For a film that tries to tackle so much within such a limited spectrum, The Imitation Game is as dated about its politics as it is about its filmmaking. Where it should have been brave, bold and pioneering, it’s clunky, squeamish and ultimately forgettable.

C

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The Absolute Worst Films of 2014

December 20, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Brick Mansions, Divergent, Gimme Shelter, Hercules, Horns, If I Stay, Lists, Maleficent, Ouija, That Awkward Moment, They Came Together, Worst Movies 2 Comments

As the year comes to a close, most critics hover around their keyboards blasting out lists on this or that – Top Tens, Best Performances, Coolest Stunt Involving a Bunny Rabbit – and cutting through all the praise is the purely gleeful opportunity to take aim at the worst of the worst – those films that left us shuttering, that inspired us to reach out to friends and family and warn them off, that wouldn’t just melt away with time but rather forced us to remember their terribleness throughout the entire year. And though many may expect the likes of Haunted House 2, Tammy, Heaven is for Real, Blended, God’s Not Dead, The Identical, The Best of Me, etc. to make an appearance here, they won’t make the list because I didn’t subject myself to their nominal abject horror.

Last year, our Absolute Worst of 2013 List included Getaway, Oz, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Movie 43, The Hangover: Part 3, The Fifth Estate, After Earth, The Mortal Instruments, The Canyons and The Host and though this year’s worst weren’t quite as bad as last’s year putrid bunch, they were still some bad, bad mommas. So before we get to the worst of the worst, let’s blast through a quick list of films that were quite thoroughly offputting but not quite enough to crack the top ten. Nonetheless, avoid these trash piles whole-heartedly.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Annie
The Foxy Merkins
Ping Pong Summer
Leading Lady
The Purge: Anarchy
Into the Storm
About Last Night
Labor Day
The Better Angels
Annabelle
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Bad Words
Decoding Annie Parker
300: Rise of an Empire
Stage Fright
Pompeii
Exodus: Gods and Kings

10. GIMME SHELTER

Vanessa Hudgen‘s scrubby mop and her horrendous Jersey accent aren’t really to blame for the emotional wash-out that is Gimme Shelter. Nor is Brendan Fraser and his Brendan Fraser-iness. Director Ron Krauss, on the other hand, is. Coming off a human trafficking billing, Krauss wrings the welts of abused children for every weepy sentiment he can and in doing so makes a despicable and entirely ugly product. Miles from the brilliant Rolling Stones song from which it takes its name, Gimme Shelter paints the wholly wrong picture of child abuse with boorish abandon, mixing ice-cream parlor super-88 montages with a cracked out, stanky skanky Rosario Dawson.

9. BRICK MANSIONS

Were it not for the untimely passing of star Paul Walker, I’m convinced Brick Mansions would have been a straight-to-DVD release. It’s a parkour movie that edits out the parkour, an action thriller without any octane, a remake of a French film that keeps its French star inexplicably intact, supplanting him in a racially divided Detroit. There is literally a moment where the two leads simultaneously backflip over the bad guys. This actually happened. In an actual movie. Not to mention the entire plot is one big borrowed MacGuffin from other Walker franchise, the wholly more enjoyable Fast and Furious. The whole thing is frustratingly scrubbed of life and energy, mistakenly betting on the starring power of Walker and a red-pepper-slicin’ RZA.

8. THAT AWKWARD MOMENT

In terms of chemistry gone wrong, none can top That Awkward Moment. With 3/4 of its cast entirely likable (Miles Teller, Imogen Poots, Michael B. Jordan), this rank “comedy” supports a borderline violent, totalitarian anti-feminist worldview in which woman are doormats to be treated as such. I can’t think of another film this year that so actively tried to disarm womankind and did so with such gross snarkiness. I found the film distasteful to say the least and even borderline damaging for those unfortunate enough to mistake its message for reality. That Awkward Moment presents a backwards zeitgeist that needs to be put in the rear view as a prize to be won. Zac Efron has never stooped so low.

7. THEY CAME TOGETHER

I make a point of avoiding movies that will too easily make its way onto this year end list of worsts. I don’t see Sandler nut-kicking vehicles. I don’t watch Seltzer-Friedberg spoofs, I don’t bathe in Nicholas Sparks waters. I won’t bother with Christian-pandering flickolas. I go into movies fully expecting some modicum of entertainment and if I know that I’m going to be sighing and watch-checking for a number of hours, I just don’t bother. Then came They Came Together, a well-disguised trap; a nut-twisting landmine that reels you in with promises of satire only to deliver brain-crushing wallops of stupidity. Even the oddball charm of Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd couldn’t wash away the stench of absolute failure in this Larry the Cable Guy-level spoof. The amazing thing is some people actually liked this. Critics recommended it. I don’t know if I watched the film in an alternate universe or if some critics were getting paid off to hand out passes but there was nothing in this movie that made me even think about cracking a smile.

6. OUIJA

To me there’s a monumental difference between bad movies and lazy movies and my disdain for the later far outweighs the former. Transcendence was a bad movie – it got jumbled up, dotted the T’s and crossed the I’s and went haywire – but at least it tried something. It wasn’t a rehashed conglomerated of old parts mashed together clumsily and without regard. Oujia represents this other side of the spectrum, the side in which nothing new is attempted, where everything reeks of lethargic malaise. Entirely lacking in inertia and completely devoid of novelty, it’s the kind of film that gives horror a bad name, that has the nerve to off its hapless teenagers in the most predicable of ways, that fails to present even one reason for its existence. In a word, it’s shameful.

5. HERCULES

Disney’s 1997 animated Hercules is a thing of magic. The gospel-fed songs are inspiring and catchy as all hell (“Herc was on a roll”), the hero’s journey is handled with a weighty, classical approach, the animation absolutely soars and Danny Devito was a half-man, half-goat. I love it. Now take Brett Ratner‘s shatner of a flick and try and describe just one thing about it. It stars a man named The Rock. He battles stuff ‘n’ things. He pulls down a pillar at one point. I’m not sure if he was a God or not. It didn’t really matter. 2014’s Hercules is so bad because it’s so nothing. There is not one single memorable thing about it. Too bloodless to revel in and too thoughtless to engage with, it’s a white-washed mash of “Who gives a shit?” I’ll tell you who, not me.

4. MALEFICENT

Angelina Jolie‘s inhuman cheekbones stars amidst a wash of CGI in an origin story that takes a meaty dump on the beloved Sleeping Beauty fairytale lore of yore. This revisited Disney saga is a Frankenstein’s monster of blockbuster glitz that batters its audience with allusions to rape and then has trees fighting men. Utterly without a voice and any discernible perspective, Maleficent rests on the starring power of Angelina Jolie, an actress more apt to strike a pose than to, ya know, act and you feel the strain of the film’s weight upon her underfed shoulders. Yucky, grossly dull and entirely fake, Maleficent represents rock bottom for Disney’s live action re-tellings and is an absolute task to endure.

3. IF I STAY

Chloe Grace Moretz is a darling. She is not however dramatically inclined and the wholly incompetent If I Stay is bitter proof of that. The story is tragi-porn city, with a plot that involves a coma, dead parents, a dying brother and, gasp, an on-the-rocks teenage romance. 2014 has been the year of shoehorning calamity into romance – cancer cough, Fault in Our Stars, cancer cough – but none did it worse than If I Stay. Like a battering ram trying to bust down the gateway to our tears, the film wears its cheesy intent on its sleeve and is all the worse for wear for it. There’s a threshold for how much an audience will believably endure before we just begin to snicker and If I Stay crosses that line early on and proceeds to cross it again and again and again.

2. DIVERGENT

At 139 minutes, Divergent is the most punishing motion picture of the year – a recklessly lengthy stretch of kids jumping over shit and yelling “dauntless”. Plastered in black pleather and smeared with Jai Courtney grimaces, this popular kids book turned wannabe hit franchise is the worst derivative young adult dystopia of the (growing) lot in many parts because of its utter narrative incompetence. There’s class-based factions, shifting power structures, social uprisings – basically the makings for timely political intrigue – but it’s all handled with the good grace of a date with Bill Cosby. Did I mention Jai Courtney was in this?

1. HORNS

Joe Hill’s novel Horns was warmly met by fans and critics, receiving a nomination for the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, a prize that had in the past gone to the likes of Thomas Harris and Steven King. Alexandre Aja, director of The Hills Have Eyes remake, Piranha 3D and last year’s widely panned Maniac takes Hill’s novel and bastardizes its mania into harebrained stupidity. Daniel Radcliffe sports an anaconda boa and horns that make people confess their wildest sins (like wanting to eat a whole box of donuts!), religious allegories saunter into and out of frame and I think the whole thing is supposed to be some wildly miffed commentary on puberty and masturbation. But who the fuck knows. The result feels like a vision distilled down more times than good vodka, losing parts and pieces along the way until it wound up the ugly, pointless, plodding movie it was, one that is aggressively frustrating for its absolute missed potential and even worse for supposing all the while that it does have a point, a heart and a brain.

So there we have it, the worst flicks according to moi. On the way out the door though, we’ll take two more quick pot-shots, this time for the worst performances.

Worst Actress: Cameron Diaz “ANNIE”

The singing. The acting. The faces. I don’t know which was worst. In a movie crammed with a brazen lack of charm, Cameron Diaz added log after log to the awful fire, hamming her way to this man’s Razzie chart-topper. As I noted in my review, there’s a very fine line between satire and mockery and it’s one that Diaz tragically misunderstood in the role. An actor’s journey is to find the humanity in their character – no matter how despicable, cold or inhuman – and from that understanding create a living, breathing human. We buy into the fact that this is not just a celebrity caked in makeup and dressed funny to be captured on camera so long as they ready themselves to convince us. It’s an unspoken contract that actors make with their audiences, one that Diaz violently violates as the ham-fisted Ms. Hannigan, a puppet of a character that’s more Oscar the Grouch than woman.

Worst Actor: Jai Courtney “DIVERGENT”

The latest in “let’s make him a Hollywood “it” boy” (following in the footsteps of the somehow infinitely less dull Sam Worthington) Jai Courtney is the most fruitless actor working today. With a resume that includes franchise bed-pooper A Good Day to Die Hard, I, Frankenstein and Divergent, he’s got very little talent and even less pathos, set with the kind of face that invites a hearty punch. His work may not ever be aggressively bad but it’s always been aggressively careless. Maybe it’s because we got in a tiff before the premiere and I was harboring feelings of distain towards the Aussie actor but I earnestly can’t think of a performance that annoyed me more than his work in the endlessly punishing Divergent.

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Out in Theaters: FOXCATCHER

December 19, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bennett Miller, Channing Tatum, Foxcatcher, Mark Ruffalo, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Steve Carell

On the most recent season of American Horror Story (Freak Show) there’s a depraved foil by the name of Dandy Mott, a highfaluting, affluent shut-in with a penchant for inflicting violence on those his physical inferior. His tailored suits and slickly oiled part stand in stark contrast to the tattered, deformed calvary of freaks that make up the namesake of the season, but beneath the perfumed facade of opulence and manicured sophistication is a reeking air of base barbarism. His is a most brutish proclivity nurtured utmost by an uninhibited sense of entitlement. In possessing all, nothing has value. Not even human life. With great money comes great power… and little responsibility. As King Joffrey infamously teased, “Everyone is mine to torment.”

Since the most recent economic collapse and subsequent Occupy movement, those in the upper echelon, the “one-percenters”, have become a sort of nationally derided myth. They jet around the world in lavish abandon, attending lush fundraisers, imbibing impossibly priced champagne and banging it out with gaggles of Eastern European models. Maybe slashing the throats of homeless vagabonds every once in a while for good measure. They’ve become caricatures, long teeth and all; braggarts removed from reality; personified wallets who can’t fold into the ebb and flow of middle-class normality. In this folklore view of the uber-wealthy, Patrick Batemans are hiding everywhere. If ever there was a symbol for the recklessly moneyed lifestyle of the criminally wealthy, it’s John du Pont. He’s pretty much the Batman of being a douchey trust-fund baby.

Watching interviews with Du Pont, it becomes immediately clear how out of his depth he is in just about any situation. From charities to coaching, he fumbles his way through his affairs unconvincingly. Writing checks his brain can’t cash. Like a special needs kid quoting Rudy. It’s almost heartbreaking how bad this guy is at being human. Droning on about discipline, responsibility, ornithology, or philately, there’s something to the way he speaks (so soft, so mindless) that makes you want to tune out. That demands it. His patterns of speech may be polished but they’re oh so hollow, like a Kenny G record. He’s basically a walking, talking Ambien with stubby teeth and a quality for malfeasance. There’s no question that were he not quite literally made of money, no one in their right mind would give this loon the time of day.

Foxcatcher follows the true story of du Pont and his relationship with Olympic gold medalists Mark and Dave Schlutz. After winning the top prize for wrestling at the 1984 summer games, Mark (Channing Tatum) still exists in the shadow of older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) until mysterious millionaire John du Pont invites Mark to take part in a training initiate known as “Foxcatcher”. While training at du Pont’s world class facility for the upcoming Worlds championship, Mark and Du Pont strike up an odd relationship that doesn’t fit neatly into a coach-pupil/father-son/boss-employee box. At times, their connection is that of an upsetting bromance. It’s odd but in a very specific, unclassifiable way. Picture an out-of-shape bag of man “pinning” down an Olympic athlete – who rightfully can’t mask his disdain for this lesser act of ego-masturbation – and you’ll get a general sense of their relationship. The whipping boy and the mutt seems as close as I can get.

If you didn’t live through the ’80s (or watch the trailer) you might not know how this story ends and I’m not going to spoil it for you here. We’ll just say that things get a little messy. In a first-degree kind of way. But it’s a quietly devastating tale, more than worth the journey.

As Du Pont, Steve Carrell is a frightfully vacuous vessel of self-righteous delusion. So he’s Michael Scott without the punchlines. (That’s what she said!) He’s the kind of guy who pats himself on the back and won’t stop until you join in on the patting. A pasty, flat-faced, shark-nosed, long-gummed mama’s boy with drug-fueled paranoid fantasies, he’s a misanthrope at an arm’s length from reality. Director Bennett Miller approaches his character with similar distance.

We’re never privy to the anecdotal insanity of Du Pont’s most colorful acting outs- the sociopathic multimillionaire reportedly drove around his property in a tank, paid off wrestlers to search his attic for ghosts, and “used dynamite to blow up a den of fox cubs” – rather our time spent with Du Pont is as vacuous as Carrell’s many thousand yard stares. It’s hollow by intention.

But this isn’t a movie interested in condemning a man for blowing up a den full of perhaps the most objectively cute critters in the world (though my heart whimpers at the thought of this heinous act), this is a film about a mental disease: affluenza. To call into question the legitimacy of said “disease” is part and parcel of the intrigue of Miller’s slow-moving character study. Miller invites us to form our own opinion on du Pont’s guilt, he avoids taking a definitive stance on the matter. Rather, we’re left to our own devices to piece together whether this man is really a monster. Or really even a man at all.

Du Pont’s numbered relationships and bipolar posturing clue us into a kind of deep-seated mental trauma and gives us a lick of sympathy for the character but it’s the same sympathy we feel towards Artificial Intelligence – like when you yell at Siri for misunderstanding the name of your favorite Mexican restaurant. He’s a character without character; a shell of a being that feeds on praise and trophies like sustenance.

Perhaps it’s the absence of any perceivable inner monologue that makes him such a distressing piece of work. Carrell plays him like a half-lobotized goof with cobwebs and dust bunnies kicking around his noggin with a physical stature to match. Not only is he a tabula rasa of talent, he demands praise for his talentlessness. A scene where du Pont “wins” a wrestling match for the elderly shows he’ll pay off competitors to lose and still do a victory dance in the end zone. There’s something severely twisted about that notion.

And while Du Pont may have traded in his tailored four-piece for a custom gold-and-powder-blue track suit, there’s still a kind of self-dignified manner to the way he slumps himself. The way he demands the love and respect of his wrestling team is that of a neglected boy torturing his stuffed animals. In his mind, he’s Atlas, balancing the future of the world on his checkbook. For Du Pont, it’s praise or die.

With a measured dose of restraint, Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher offers ample insight into a complexly noncomplex character, staging an acting showdown for Steve Carrell, Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum (the former two should and will earn Oscar nominations.) It’s withdrawn and quiet – Rob Simonsen‘s melancholy score is a spider, trapping us in Miller’s sobering web; absent more often than naught – the kind of Oscar bait that clearly registers as such but is still ultimately devastating. Dandy Mott might be a parody of this type of affluent sociopath but there’s something much more terrifying to du Pont’s long silences and labored breathing, especially when it holds up against archival footage of the man himself.

Some people collect stamps. Others Beanie Babies. John du Pont wanted to collect talent. He wanted to bunch it all up in his verdant Pennsylvania farm and own it for good. The result is the quietly explosive Foxcatcher; a somber rough-and-tumble look at moneyed mannerisms; the banality of clean white tennis shoes. And if it doesn’t leave you shaken and stirred, you might just already be a Bond martini.

B+

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