Taking stock of 2014 in movies it is easy to look at the top of the box office charts and chalk this up as a disappointing or even bad year in cinema. There was plenty of comic book moviemaking and, while there were a few entertaining films in the blockbuster category, there was nothing particularly special (I don't count Guardians of the Galaxy as special) and there was plenty of junk.
For me, even some of the big movies that seemed to register decently with critics I found myself disliking. I hated the Captain America movie, which was generally praised by critics. Plenty bothered me about Godzilla, not least of all that it obscured the star of the show. Maybe the one Summer blockbuster movie that really clicked with me was Edge of Tomorrow, which was not much of a blockbuster commercially.
As for the high-profile Hollywood prestige blockbusters, you only need look at a few discussions of Best Picture candidates to find that Hollywood had a pretty weak year in that regard. While several of those films have yet to be commercially released, there isn't much buzz about most of the movies being rolled out in the next few weeks. Then you look at Fincher's Gone Girl or Nolan's Interstellar, and, while both were well-reviewed, neither looks like they'll end up as career highlights for the two filmmakers.
So from the perspective of the big budget, highly marketed films, this has been a pretty weak year, which has been reflected in the weak box office numbers that have had studios and exhibitors hoping for a bounce-back 2015 before summer of 2014 was even over.
If you look deeper, however, I think there has been plenty to like about what has been in the theaters. I'm not going to put together a top 5 or 10 list at this point because I have some catching up to do on some films in the next few weeks. But even before I try to finalize my list of films-seen in the next few weeks, I can look back and feel like there's been good material out there to watch in 2014. I do wish, however, that the industry was in better shape and taking theatrical releasing more seriously. Many of the indie distributors are basically VOD companies at this point and films like Snowpiercer and The Immigrant were dumped by The Weinstein Company when they should have been much bigger pictures (and probably should have been released in the fall, not dumped in the summer).
But that's a post for another day. Here I wanted to note that movies like The Guest, Cold in July, Citizenfour, Enemy, In Fear, and others have been the kind of under-appreciated gems that keep me going to the cinema with the attitude that I can and will be pleasantly surprised. While there is still time left, I feel like I can say that 2014 hasn't been a bad year for the cinema, even if it has not been a good year for the studios.
All of that throat-clearing aside, there are a few movies I wanted to note that I have watched or re-watched lately.
Birdman is one of those films that has moments of genius but that never quite comes together as a transcendent film. At times, the film is too self-aware and feels like it is straining a bit too hard to be bigger than the sum of its parts. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu wants it to be brilliantly great, but it is merely good. It is a showcase for actors, in the best and worst ways. While they get plenty to chew on, there are a few too many scenes that feel like they mean more to the actors than to the audience. There's always a risk that films about the creative process can become too masturbatory and this film swerves close to that at times, but in the end it is a worthwhile film. It just doesn't stick with you for very long.
Nightcrawler seems on its face to be a critique of the media, but I don't think it works as well it would like in that department. It stretches things too far to be a spot-on critique and as far as these things go there still isn't a movie that's any fresher or sharper than Network when it comes to critiquing the media. Nightcrawler works much, much better as a critique of corporate culture generally. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a soul-less ladder-climber that studies generic corporate management maxims and customs and employs them with brutal efficiency and effect. The film is a devastating attack on corporate culture as sociopathic and demonstrates how corporate success often comes from brutality and exploitation masked in corporate euphemisms. This film should be shown and studied by MBA students more than journalism students. Not quite a great film, but a good one and one that has some interesting things to say.
The Babadook received some great buzz coming out of 2014 Sundance, and then it sat on a shelf for most of the year. It was eventually released by IFC Midnight, one of those companies that seems to be in the VOD business more than anything else. That's a shame, because this is a movie worth seeing in the theater with an audience. Story-wise, this haunted house film does not break any new ground. What I liked about the film is how it uses the audience's knowledge of the genre to cleverly play with the audience's expectations and sense of what is happening. The result is a fun, entertaining, and decently scary little horror film that is highly recommended.
Keanu Reeves returns to the Gun Fu genre with the throwback John Wick, an entertaining, if not entirely sensible action movie. The film was solidly directed by a couple of career stuntmen, which means they work hard to choreograph the stunts and to make sure you see what is going on. The result is a visually coherent film that contains a ton of violence and a mountain of killed henchmen that would make 80s Schwarzenegger and Stallone proud. Story-wise, the film keeps things simple and, while it falls into a few cliches (e.g., the classic scene where the villain has the hero beaten and then gives a speech and leaves before actually killing the hero or making sure it is done), it never gets in the way of the action. There are a few fun touches, such as the hotel for hit-men run by Ian McShane. There's also an interesting undercurrent to the story about old-school and new-school criminals clashing over ethics and honor - but it never quite gets realized or fully explored and is a lost opportunity at being something more interesting than a pure gunplay movie. Overall, it's a fun experience worth watching for action movie aficionados, but not a classic.
Given it is 25 years old this year, I decided to give Ridley Scott film and Michael Douglas vehicle Black Rain a re-watch. It is always interesting to re-visit that time when Americans were filled with angst about the Japanese. All told, while Black Rain does some Japanese stereotyping, the biggest stereotype in the film is played by Douglas, who plays the anti-authoritarian NYPD detective sent to deliver a Yakuza member to Tokyo (it doesn't make sense; just go with it). The detective is a caricature of the loud-mouthed blue-collar American and a cop movie cliche to boot. It's almost funny to watch Douglas swagger around with his glamour mullet and motorcycle-riding rebel act, which isn't a bit convincing. Throw in Scott bending over backwards to get smoke and steam into nearly every shot and there are plenty of amusing 80s cliches to go around (so 80s that it is a bit hard to believe it was released as late as 1989).
If I had to guess, I'd guess about 20-30 minutes of Black Rain got chopped out to keep things simple and moving. There are a few jarring juxtapositions that feel like more ground should have been covered before jumping so far, and a lot of character motivation work gets left undone. Character-building scenes being cut might explain Kate Capshaw's character, whose motivations are left completely unexplored or unexplained as she shows up from time to time to help Michael Douglas for no reason other than they both happen to be Americans in Japan. The climax of the movie wastes all the time spent setting up the audience's expectations for a big motorcycle chase (there is a chase, just not much of one). And then there's the out-of-nowhere, pointless speech that gives the movie its name, evidencing the film's belief that the Japanese of 1989 were all obsessed with the outcome of World War II, even 44 years after the fact. The movie just doesn't have anything interesting to say, it isn't much of a stylistic exercise, and there isn't enough joy to be had in watching the ridiculous cop hero blasting his way around Tokyo to make this movie worth your time. Stick it back in the vault.
All movies screened in the theater, except Black Rain, which was streamed via Amazon.
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