Surviving another Christopher Nolan movie
2014 wasn't a great movie year. I went through my archives before preparing this list and saw that only six new viewings earned a "great movies" rating. Have I run out of great movies to watch, or did I merely make poor choices this year? Maybe trying my hand at other writing projects affected my judgment? Maybe binge-watching
Archer,
Glee and
The X-Files on Netflix took away from valuable movie time? Hard to say.
Then again, these lists are arbitrary anyway. Consider
last year's article. I've barely thought about some of my "best-of" selections since viewing them (eg.,
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith), yet I've rewatched honorable mentions
Colonel Redl and
Wake in Fright several times each. What I list depends on what I'm feeling the moment I'm writing. This is more a "year in review" article than a definitive anything.
Nonetheless let's try, for tradition's sake, to craft 2014's Best and Worst list. The usual restrictions apply: no re-watches, one film per director.
The Best: 10. Gone Girl (2014, David Fincher)David Fincher has a Hitchcockian flair for elevating pulp silliness into art. Consider
Gone Girl, a fascinating thriller that made a huge splash this fall. Critics loved teasing the film's sexual politics and media satire, giving an edge to its warped dynamics. Mainly though, it's Fincher's crafty, screw-loose plotting and spellbinding misanthropy that resonates long after you've left the theater.
9. The Pianist (2002, Roman Polanski)Drawing on Wladyslaw Szpilman's Holocaust memoir and his own experiences, Roman Polanski avoids the feel-bad cliches of most Final Solution films. The result is the best Holocaust drama ever made: Szpilman's tale contains no heroism, merely scrapping for survival. Adrien Brody's immersive performance shows that Method acting isn't a lost art. Pity he's done nothing half so interesting since.
8. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, Martin Scorsese)Martin Scorsese's white collar
Goodfellas ignited controversy eclipsing even
Gone Girl's gender wars. Is
The Wolf of Wall Street a chilling cautionary tale, clever black comedy or epically amoral? Is Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort a monstrous sleazeball or poster child for real-life scumbags? Has Marty's frenetic but absorbing style drowned in perverse excess? All I know is that Scorsese hasn't made a film this good since
Casino.
7. The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960, Ken Hughes) From
Victim to
The Imitation Game, there's no shortage of movies depicting England's now-defunct anti-sodomy laws.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde predates either film, couching its tolerance plea in a glamorous Technicolor period piece. If Peter Finch lacks the flamboyance of, say, Stephen Fry, he has the wit and style in spades. He's helped by a great supporting cast, while the script handles its tricky subject with tact and sympathy.
6. The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch) No one's ever described David Lynch as restrained, so
The Elephant Man was a pleasant surprise. Though stylishly directed, it's really an evocative character study, treating the deformed John Merrick as a wounded man whose deformity makes him neither frightening nor inspirational. Anthony Hopkins has never been better, but John Hurt naturally dominates the film.
5. Newsfront (1978, Phillip Noyce)This much-beloved Australian film holds up exceedingly well. Phillip Noyce's episodic tribute to a bygone age views Australia through the lens of newsreel photographers. It's an intimate epic, covering decades of history yet never losing sight of its protagonists, especially Bill Hunter's redoubtable Len Mcguire. All delivered in a seamless retro style evoking Classic Hollywood. To think that Noyce's most recent movie costarred Taylor Swift.
4. Birdman, Or: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (2014, Alejandro González Iñárritu)At first,
Birdman's just an exercise in meta-humor: see Michael Keaton play an actor who can't escape his star-making superhero role! Watch Edward Norton as a preening douchebag! Observe Emma Stone doing Emma Stone things! Thankfully, Alejandro González Iñárritu's black comedy is much more. From its immersive camerawork, fiery dialog and raw, observant humor, it's vivid, intense, funny,
alive in a way few films aspire to be.
3. This Sporting Life (1963, Lindsay Anderson)Lindsay Anderson provides the definitive coda to the "kitchen sink" drama. Annoyed by
Look Back in Anger or
Room at the Top's cranky posturing?
This Sporting Life's equally grim yet transcends whinging through Anderson's eerily Expressionist direction and Richard Harris's marvelously raw performance. After this film and
Billy Liar, who cares what Jimmy Porter has to say?
2. Women in Love (1970, Ken Russell)A handsome D.H. Lawrence adaptation with a twist: Ken Russell's direction. Best-known for its sexual content,
Women violently juxtaposes Edwardian gentility with ever-present death and rich, borderline surreal compositions. Nude wrestling aside, it's remarkably
different than what we expect in period dramas. The amazing cast, especially Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, is icing on the cake.
1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933, Fritz Lang)Before 2014, I was familiar with Fritz Lang the way
Bart Simpson's familiar with Pablo Neruda. Of all the Lang movies I watched this year, I most enjoyed
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. No movie better captures Lang's singular genius. It's a comic strip premise of a mad doctor threatening to unleash his posthumous "Empire of Crime." Yet Lang's stylish, breakneck direction makes
Testament both artistically accomplished and effortlessly entertaining. Whether consciously or not, every superhero film, James Bond movie and police thriller of the past 80 years owes its existence to
Testament.
Honorable mentions: Advise and Consent,
The Entertainer, Hannah Arendt,
Hud,
If...,
Jane Eyre (2011),
M,
Macbeth (1971),
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,
Under the SkinThe Worst:These movies stink. At least one entry will infuriate some readers: I await your comments.
10. The Bunker (1981, George Schaefer)Has there been a worse portrayal of Adolf Hitler than Anthony Hopkins'? It's a bad idea to let Hopkins act unsupervised, and he predictably plays the Fuhrer as a Welsh-brogued Tasmanian Devil, swallowing scenery and costars whole. Yet his terrible performance is the only noteworthy aspect of this long, epically dull TV movie. Never has Nazi Germany been so boring.
9. Interstellar (2014, Christopher Nolan)I hesitate placing
Interstellar on my worst list because, on a technical level, it's pretty impressive. But my tolerance for Christopher Nolan's facile faux-intellectualism has finally reached the breaking point. Though pretty to watch, this movie's dull and painfully pedantic, explaining every tiny twist and character motivation through ten hour monologues. All that plus endless Matthew McConoughey mumbling. I await Mr. Nolan's next film almost as eagerly as a
Twilight reboot.
8. Bluebeard (1972, Edward Dmytryk) Somehow, this baffling
turkey is even worse than its reputation.
Bluebeard tries blending arthouse drama, black comedy, horror film and skin flick into one kitsch package. Too bad it's not art, isn't funny, isn't scary and certainly isn't sexy. Richard Burton's wooden pomposity has never been more misjudged: he acts more interested in Joey Heatherton's jello recipe than killing her. Well, Dick had to pay for Liz's diamonds
somehow.
7. Carrie (2013, Kimberly Peirce)There's something singularly obnoxious about movies like this. Obviously no thought was put into
Carrie beyond "Hey, the original made money! Why not remake it?" If that's your thinking, why bother remaking it at all? Just re-release the original
Carrie, which holds up very well despite dated special effects and Piper Laurie's overacting. There isn't a moment in this version that's not insipid, insulting or tedious, despite Judy Greer inexplicably playing the voice of reason.
6. Inadmissible Evidence (1968, Anthony Page)John Osborne's plays make dodgy screen adaptations, none more than this deadeningly literal take on
Inadmissible Evidence. Osborne's play is a Brechtian nightmare, warping harsh reality with the delusions of a pathetic has-been. Anthony Page's adaptation makes it the tedious tale of a loser who putters around London whining about his life. Even with Nicol Williamson reprising his stage role,
Evidence misses the point of what cinema's all about.
5. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968, Michael Anderson)Possibly the dullest movie ever made. This stentorian snooze-fest uses the trappings of an all-star cast and papal pageantry to sucker viewers into thinking it's profound. Not with three hours of limp pomposity, enacted by stiff cardboard cutouts played by actors who should have known better. As a drama it's stillborn; as politics it's fossilized; as a statement on faith it has nothing to say. At least we know where Pope Francis gets his PR ideas.
4. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (2008, Rawson Marshall Thurber)I didn't like Michael Chabon's novel, so it's some achievement that this movie's even worse. Bad casting, cheesy prose and incompetent direction hamper an already obnoxious story: that, and our leads surely rank among the least likeable protagonists in film history. Plus, you'd get a better Pittsburgh atmosphere staring out my apartment window than watching this snoozefest.
3. The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962, Harald Reinl)After enjoying Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse movies, I dipped into CCC Film's low-budget Mabuses. Most are forgettable schlock, but
The Invisible Dr. Mabuse's nonsense plotting, transparent perverts and murderous clowns achieves some kind of Grade Z grandeur. How did MST3K miss this one? These counterfeit Mabuses prove that German studios were just as adept at shameless rip-offs as Italians and Roger Corman.
2. Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967, John Huston)
What's worse about John Huston's absurd psychodrama? That Huston filtered his camera through urine to literalize the title? Marlon Brando providing the worst Southern accent in history while goggling at nude Robert Forster? Characters calmly discussing murder, sexual torment and nipple mutilation like a weather forecast? The insufferable Asian oik pictured above? That it was made?
1. Lady Caroline Lamb (1972, Robert Bolt)I spent ages tracking down Robert Bolt's sole directorial effort, and what did I find? Being a brilliant screenwriter doesn't translate to directorial skill. Bolt's incompetent direction is one big strike, along with the facile, historically-inaccurate script and very 1970s costuming. But
Lamb's fatal flaw is Sarah Miles: so good in
The Servant and
Ryan's Daughter, here she's ravenously hammy, glass-shatteringly shrill and intolerably unpleasant. Eight years of anticipation for
this?
Here's hoping 2015 is a better year, movie-wise at least.
Previous lists: 2012 and 2013.