My Films of the year 2014.

I will not rank these films; they have all brought me pleasure or enlightenment in different ways.   So let’s start with three British biographical films,  each with a standout central performance. 

Mr. Turner was brought to us by Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall.   I thought it was brave and beautiful, and as it won the Palme D’Or at Cannes I cannot understand why it has not (yet) won more awards.     It was worth driving an hour each way to se in on a good screen.  

The Imitation Game provided Benedict Cumberbatch  with an opportunity to show that he can play brilliant men with social difficulties in very different ways.   His Alan Turing was vulnerable as well as arrogant.    The only thing I did not like was the awkward framing device, but at last the story of this brave man, tragically mistreated by the government of his time, has been told on screen. 

The Theory of Everything showed us another determined British genius,  Stephen Hawkin.    Jamie Redmayne’s physical acting was superb, but he also caught the mathematician’s sly humour and  sensuality.      This film was not about science; it was about inspired by his first wife Jane's book, and is about their marriage, and it is about being human.  

But maybe the most remarkable British film of the year was  Under the Skin,    which took Jonathan Glazer and Walter Campbell 10 years to develop from Michael Faber’s source novel, and in which Scarlett Johansson  gave a truly remarkable and courageous performance.      Under the Skin is science-fiction,  and I saw five more high quality SF films this year.  

Scarlett was also one of the stars of Her, Spike Jonze’s  vision of a possible future interface between humans and AI.    In it Joaquin Phoenix  gave an amazingly understated and effective performance, a million miles miles away from his Johnny Cash.    Alex Garland’s Ex Machina will follow soon, but will, I am sure, be very different.

I enjoyed the scope and heart of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar,  and thought that much of the negative criticism it attracted was misplaced.   For sure it was not The Dark Night or Introjection, but  I remember that when someone asked Joseph Heller why he had not produced another novel as good as Catch 22 he replied ‘Why hasn’t anybody?’ 

Edge of Tomorrow cost a lot to make,  and did not do well at the box office.   It  was relaunched on DVD as Live Die Repeat  in the hope of attracting fans of its source video game.    I simply do not understand it’s commercial failure.     Cruise gives one his best performances,  Emily Blunt is fantastic,   and it has a plot that does not insult the audience’s intelligence.   Oh, maybe that was the problem!

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes    seemed to me to be better than its many predecessors, apart from the original first movie,   being more thoughtful  and convincing.    I have often said that Andy Serkis should  an Oscar category reserved for him,  Best Motion Capture performance.     The technology now allows truly convincing and moving characters to be created, and Serkis still leads the field.   

My last SF film is three years old, and actually a filmed stage show, but I did not get a chance to see the National Theatre’s live broadcast of Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein until October this year.     Cumberbatch’s sheer physicality as the Creature was a revelation, and the staging prefigured Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony in many splendid ways. 

Maleficent was a retelling of The Sleeping Beauty as a psycho-drama,  dominated by Angelina Jolie as the mutilated fairy queen who seeks wreak revenge on her abuser.     The film is well worth watching simply for her.

Brendan Gleeson, another of my favourite actors, worked with John Michael McDonagh to make The Guard, a cop caper set on the West coast of Ireland.   In Calvary they  joined forces again, but here Brendan Gleeson  plays a good priest serving a West coast parish who is told in the first scene that he will be killed to pay for the sins of so many bad priests.    This movie move me, and as it is one of a kind, I have no difficulty in making it my favourite film this year - of its kind. 

Then come three thrillers.   David O. Russell’s American  Hustle is a joy,  a top ranking comedy thriller and I cannot think of any one thing about it I did not  like.    Russell had previously worked with Christian Bale and Amy Adams in The Fighter and Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook.  He brought them  together for this film, and with them having such fun together, a great supporting cast and great soundtrack,  how lucky we are. 

David Fincher’s Gone Girl is very different.    With Rosalind Pyke and  Ben Affleck  giving subtly ambiguous   performances in Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her best selling novel,   this is a dark and  engaging thriller.   

A Walk Among the Tombstones comes from one of Laurence Bloch’s dozen  novels about  an unlicensed private eye,  Matthew Stutter,   here played by  Liam Neelson.    Stutter is a flawed but humane – and moral – man, struggling with his past and his alcoholism.    Unlike the Taken franchise this is a life affirming movie.   

 Jim Jarmush’s Only Lovers Left Alive is his elegant take on the vampire genre,  with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston  winning our sympathy without being in any way pathetic,  and gently exploring their (really) long term problems of living for centuries.    (See the Plight of the Vampires article below for my revised view of vampire movies.)

And then there is The Grand Hotel Budapest.   Wes Anderson’s  intricately designed comedy, as lovely as a Faberge egg, with Ralph Fiennes  exercising and relishing his comedy chops amidst the usual  Anderson repertory company of stars.   Again my favourite film of its kind released this year. 

I note that thirteen of these films were either made in England or Ireland, or featured British stars.    They are not selected because of these connections.   They are selected because they are all in their way remarkable and admirable.