Baumer's top 50 films of 2014/Panda's top 20 of 2014 pg 8/Numbers pg 14

[4815162342]

Where is Noah?

 

#51

[Noctis]

#51

Bye.

[Robertron]

Bye.

Oh calm down princess.

[BK007]

Ah, How to Train Your Dragon 2. Didn't hold up as well as I thought it would. Loved it in the cinema and thought it was better than the first.

 

Then I watched both back to back and the first, I'd forgotten how good it really is and what you've said remains the problem with this movie.

 

It does phenomenally until Hiccup decides to leave his father and friends behind to confront Drago. I didn't like how that was setup, but then the characters come to the fore again and it was lovely. The problem does lie with the villain. If there was more of a reason for him to seek out and crush Hiccup and co. it would give everything more stakes and etc. I don't mind the battle happening so quickly after the parents were united, but it had to be cast against a better motive backdrop. 

 

Then it was way too rushed at the end. Like, they remembered that it was a "children's movie" even though it never has been, and decided to end it early. I think a more solemn journey back to Berk, only to find it being taken over or destroyed would have been better...but then how would you solve that Toothless is gone... I think the villain really needs a rework. Though villains in general have been badly incorporated in most blockbusters. It's surprising how badly handled character development for "villains" are. Big Hero 6/Boxtrolls/Book of Life were all awful handling the villain as well. The only other animated movie I saw this year, Peabody, didn't have one, but a myriad of other issues. 

 

In terms of blockbusters, Edge of Tomorrow is great (rewatched it) with its sense of danger. The rest, from what I remember, Dawn is great too, Captain America awful, Hobbit awful, Mockingjay okay, Guardians bad, Maze Runner average, DOFP great, Godzilla average, Lucy okay, ASM2 fucking bad and can't even remember who was the bad guy in TF4. I think DOFP should be a "template" based on possibilities of how someone were to be a "villain". It's a real basic template, but then they rely on the shit characterization a la ASM2 more often than not. It's frankly pathetic. 

[4815162342]

30. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

 

 

Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy is a very divisive set of films here on the forums, with the third and final entry being the most polarizing of them all. It's also notable that multiple people who loathed the first two films dug this one a good bit, and people who liked the first two a lot disliked this one. This weird inversion I think comes down to a couple executive decisions made by PJ in the post-production phase for the movie. First, he decided to really, really make the second half of the film non-stop action with no rest stops. Once the Dune worms erupt it's 40+ minutes of fight fight fight with the only breather being for Thorin's acid trip. And second, he decided to really hack this film up in the editing room to cut the running time down. Whereas the first two Hobbit movies felt fairly seamless and constant, the editing for this movie, especially once the titular battle hits, is really choppy. Characters simply drop off the face of Middle-Earth never to be seen again, characters make big entrances and then just vanish, and a few plot and character threads are abruptly cut off. It gives the Battle and its aftermath a very incomplete feel to it, once that presumably will be corrected with the EE. That said, PJ goes gonzo with several things in the Battle and it helps make it a fun ride, from catapult trolls to wall headbutt trolls to Lego FU Hawking Las.

 

The first half of the film though is very well done, with lots of building character and dramatic tension. The confrontation at Dol Guldur is a bit of a mixed bag. There's some nice elements, but the actual confrontation with Sauron wasn't handled well. But the evolution of Bard as a character is handled very well, from his desperate fight against Smaug to becoming the leader of the Laketown survivors. A lot of people complained about Alfrid getting so much screentime and lines, but I found it handled well enough to provide some levity and continuation of PJ's Dickensian spin on that town's rulers. Freeman and Armitage really carry the film on the shoulders, with Freeman's Bilbo really shining as the moral heart and Armitage bringing Shakespearean brooding in Thorin's descent into madness.

 

The Hobbit Trilogy is certainly nowhere near as good as the Lord of the Rings, but it, for me, is ultimately an entertaining and satisfying journey that helps build a fantasy universe with more fascinating aspects, even if a number of them over the three films could have been executed better.

[4815162342]

29. Whiplash

 

 

JK Simmons is the frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and he certainly deserves it when he wins. As the ferocious, demanding, proud, and relentless jazz band teacher at a prestigious music conservatory, he instills fire and fear into all who cross his path, and into a select few, a determined and insatiable drive to prove themselves the better of him. Whiplash is very much a story of the price of success and expertise and the personal sacrifices people choose to climb as high as they can. Miles Teller is good, even if he remains very punchable, as the student who refuses to take JK Simmons' abuse lying down, and continously assert his worth and his talent in any way that he can. The war between the two slowly simmers and boils until it culminates in an intense and wild frenzy as Teller finally refuses to play by Simmons' rules and just unleashes his power statement of presumed dominance.

 

The one jarring issue that almost threw me from the film entirely was the car crash scene. It really, really came close to jumping the shark, off the rails, and into the abyss Lone Ranger style. Everything about it was ridiculous and contrived and it just felt dumb, and it being used as the plot device for Teller's second act fall from grace really rang hollow and made that portion of the film just not work well. Thankfully the film recovers really well and lulls you into thinking that maybe Teller and Simmons finally understand and forgive one another...until the aforementioned intense and wild ending where Simmons throws Teller under the bus and Teller replies "fuck the bus, this is my time to shine." Few films this year match the raw and adrenaline-fueled climax of the ending, the film just nearly made a fatal mistake getting there.

[Empire]

Whiplash only 29....

[4815162342]

Whiplash only 29....

 

The car crash scene and its aftermath really, really did not work for me

[Dementeleus]

I'm not doing a top 50, but I think our placements for it would be roughly similar, Numbers.

[CoolioD1]

I think people are too harsh on that moment or take it too literal. the crash itself doesn't matter, what matters is that miles teller is crazy and simmons doesn't give a shit about him.

[4815162342]

I'm not doing a top 50, but I think our placements for it would be roughly similar, Numbers.

 

Our placements will not be similar for this next one though...

 

 

 

 

28. Boyhood

 

 

Much has been made about Boyhood being filmed over 12 years and deservedly so, it definitely is an achievement and unique story method to come back to the same core actors and actresses each year to film a new segment about the evolution of the characters. But Boyhood's big technical and thematic core also raises the film's one sticking problem: It's pacing. Being split up into 12-13 episodes of about 12-13 minutes each means that the plot, character, and atmospheric momentum has a lot of stopping and starting. The method works fine when there's a consistent arc over a couple episodes, such as the rise and fall of Patricia Arquette's marriage to the alcoholic abusive teacher. But when the the episodes really just amount to isolated episodes that sort of close off at the end, the result is a lot of sagging and dragging in the middle of the film. I think Linklater had a very good core concept, but I think the film would have been better served if instead of those 12-13 episodes, it was more like 4-5 and we got more time to explore Mason as a human being with desires, talents, and problems.

 

The acting in the film by the main 4 is excellent, especially Ethan Hawke as Mason's deadbeat dad turned responsible guy after a second chance. It's kinda odd that in a film called Boyhood about a boy's development the best and most complete character arc goes to his biological dad, but that's digressing. Ellar Coltrane is very good as Mason, and Linklater is sure glad that picking the kid at age 6 or so didn't backfire immensely, given how much of a crapshoot it is with child actors as they age.

 

The film, even with its substantial pacing issues and its somewhat disappointing inability to really dig into Mason in most of its segments, remains an emotional and affecting experience that hits on a lot of things we feel growing up, and then others feel as parents trying to shepherd their kids forward.

[Dementeleus]

Tsk tsk...

[CoolioD1]

[Empire]

Okay, now I am really curious what your #1 will be.

[Ethan Hunt]

What the heck, this list just seems to be taking all the films that people love and placing them not quite near the top of then list, is your top 20 gonna be Lisa-esuiq?

[baumer]

So many "top films" threads going on.

 

I will get to all of them.  But it's hard to read them all at once.

[Kalo]

So many "top films" threads going on.

 

I will get to all of them.  But it's hard to read them all at once.

and another will be soon I just watched my 50th 2014 release! i am doing an overview list though, so I can list my bad good and midrange in one set. also 2014 was a really really good year for films imo. 

[4815162342]

What the heck, this list just seems to be taking all the films that people love and placing them not quite near the top of then list, is your top 20 gonna be Lisa-esuiq?

 

How dare you, he who dislikes Star Wars

[4815162342]

27. X-Men: Days of Future Past

 

 

After X-Men: First Class came out, there was a lot of speculation as to whether it was a prequel, a reboot, or something else. This film made it a something else, as the film is a prequel, sequel, and reboot all in one, taking the original X-generation, having them interact with the new (in the past) X-generation, and merging them together to make a third brand-new generation that can tell stories in a new way now that the timeline has been altered. The film does a great job of having the timelines intersect, using cynical future Wolverine as the connector that causes all sorts of mischief and mayhem as he tries to set things right in the 70s. The neo-future Sentinels with their morphing and power absorption abilities are neat, kinda like how the Borg adapt, and the future scenes showing the desperate struggle to buy time is handled very well. I'd have liked to see more time with the new mutants like Bishop and Blink to give them more than just some cool moves. I am curious to see how the Anna Paquin action sequences that got cut from the film would have played out in sequence with the film.

 

Jackman, McAvoy, Fassbender, Stewart, and McKellen are all on form for the film. Peter Dinklage is fine as Bolivar Trask, though the character is a little underwritten. The two main issues I have with the film are that 1) It's not entirely sure if the real protagonist of the film is Wolverine or young Xavier, since Wolverine gets the screentime early on to move the plot into gear, but the final showdown is all about Xavier trying to reach Mystique. So things are a little muddled there. 2) The way a bunch of mutants from First Class are just brushed aside with a hand wave of off-screen death or random three-minute cameo is way awkward.

 

The highlight of the movie for sure is Quicksilver vs. the Pentagon. Sorry MCU, you may have "claimed" him first, but it's pretty damn sure that Singer et al have done him best.

[4815162342]

26. The Rover

 

 

The Rover is like a somber version of Mad Max set about 5 years before the first Mad Max. Society is crumbling in the interior of Australia though we get the sense that the military is enforcing order along the coastlines. Guy Pearce stars as the title character, a loner of a man content to drift around and get drunk, melancholy about the state of his life for reasons that are slowly revealed throughout the film, the last one right at the very end. It's a very downbeat and grim performance, he speaks intermittently, but when he does it's all nihilism about the world not giving a damn about anything and the dark fate that awaits everyone eventually. Robert Pattinson does well as a clearly mentally deficient criminal who gets left for dead and then scooped up by Pearce as leverage after the crooks who leave Pattinson behind steal Pearce's car. Scoot McNairy also makes a good impression in a minor role as Pattinson's older brother.

 

The film is a slow burn, with sparse but effective bursts of violence punctuating events. The relationship between Pearce and Pattinson grows throughout the film, and though Pearce outwardly conveys disgust and contempt, you get the sense that slowly he feels bonded to his quasi-prisoner. There's one very substantial logic flaw that nags me about the beginning of the film (it only dawns on you when you reach the very end), but other than that this is a film that knows exactly where its going and how to quietly and effectively get there. After two solid Australian flicks (Animal Kingdom and now this) it'll be nice to see if David Michod will get a shot at a big opportunity Stateside.