The Fink 50: the best films of 2014

**Editors note: since this list ran on December 31st over at The Film Stage I have caught up with six 2014 releases that otherwise had not been considered - they were all thankfully good but no game changers amongst them. I can firmly stay I stand by my top 10. With that said I must acknowledge or embarrassingly confess that last year one did get away - The Broken Circle Breakdown. The film has had a great run including a much-deserved Oscar nomination, I haven’t included it on this list but it certainly deserves notice, in any year.

And while this list aims to organize this year’s best, that idea is somewhat lucid. Many critics included David McKenzie’s Starred Up, which I had seen in 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It had been included on last year’s Fink 50. Under the rules of this logical - Eden, which played at TIFF and the New York Film Festival, and will also screen at Sundance this month, may find its way onto 2015 top ten lists. So be it: of course if we’re being fair the most fun I had in a movie theater this year was seeing Purple Rain in 35MM at the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers (and a rare pristine print no less - not one of the pink-faded AGFA prints that I’m used to). So how was 2014 in the grand scheme of things?

While it’s unfair to get all Chicken Little, sure the box office was down but the sky is not falling, at least not cinematically. This year produced far less masterpieces than years past in my humble opinion: I’m not exactly sure what it is, perhaps blame it on the fact I’m a year older and thus crankier with age. The standout, a reoccurring headliner on these year-end lists is without a doubt Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a new American classic, the kind of film that comes around once every five years, and one that my admiration has only grown for upon a second viewing. Removed from my initial viewing by a few difficult months, I found second viewing to be even an even more mesmerizing and emotional experience than my initial screening. Memory is a powerful thing, Boyhood, like the other excellent pictures gracing my list make a space for us to live within the frame. This is no truer for Boyhood than it is for Ava DuVernay’s Selma, a gripping work of immediacy evoking contemporary civil rights issues currently playing out in American streets today Ferguson and Staten Island; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s beautiful meditation Winter Sleep; and Mike Leigh’s odd and fascinating Mr. Turner with Timothy Spall giving the performance of the year.

2014 has produced several very good films, some I admit I have missed due to distribution quirks that are designed to separate the best of the bunch for a while until the major releases run their course. Others have languished between festival runs, while well-reviewed pictures came, went and are waiting in limbo to be released and discovered. Besides those challenges, I remain convinced some masterpieces are never seen, rejected by the gatekeepers and tastemakers, relegated perhaps to local and regional film festivals and uploaded by their creators to YouTube and Vimeo - thinking about such things is akin to thinking if we are alone in the universe: it can keep you up at night. 

In 2014 I had seen 274 films, staring with August Osage County and ending with Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (I know, not proud of either one of these titles), plus in the first two days of 2014 I had seen three additional titles released in 2014. What’s missing? I regret that I did not see A Most Violent Year and Still Alice due to the way the films had been released. Oh well. 

The Fink 50 (in descending order):

Top Ten

1.- Boyhood (Richard Linklater) 

A revolutionary, ambitious masterpiece that frequently resists an episodic structure. A single film that despite the 12-year duration of production unfolds simply as life does: there are no transitions, the only clues as to what year we have are Linklater’s subtle soundtrack choices. Haunting in its details, Boyhood is very simply the story of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) living moment to moment, often moving through Texas with his mother who hasn’t quite figured things out (Patrica Arquette) and occasionally bratty sister (Lorelei Linklater). Ethan Hawk beautifully plays the wayward father, himself in flux as he matures from musician to actuary. Often Mason does not understand the context of each moment which is partly why I believe the film’s impact grows more profound upon subsequent viewings. A masterpiece in any year, Boyhood represents above all the very best in American independent filmmaking: strong storytelling often presenting conflict or danger as Mason experiments with drugs, drinking, sex and ultimately heartbreak. Leaving him on the same ambiguous note it found him some 12 years and 165 minutes later, Boyhood is a sublime, exhilarating, and emotional cinematic experience, and a new classic.

2.- The Congress (Ari Folman)

A rather brilliant and exciting commentary on celebrity, youth culture, and movie-making, The Congress is an essay on identity and persona wrapped in a sci-fi adventure. Robin Wright plays herself, an aging actress who agrees to give up her craft to sell her brand to a big studio, who scans her into a database. Some years later she’s invited to a futuristic congress, the film shifts modes from live action to hand-drawn animation. One of the year’s most ambitious films, The Congress is a visual and intellectual feat: entertaining and engrossing throughout, densely packed, it delivers on the ambition it presents in the first act, and then some.

3.- Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)

A biopic doesn’t quite describe Mike Leigh’s brilliant Mr. Turner fronted by a career-best performance by Timothy Spall as legendary British painter J.M.W. Turner. Leigh’s first digitally shot film (shot by long-time collaborator Dick Pope) the haunting opening scene captures perfectly a landscape painting of a mid-career Turner with a performance that is truly strange. Leigh, known for his improvisational style allows the viewer to enter this space as a fly on the wall, witnessing the quirks of Turner as embodied by Spall: the performance is fascinating recalling his work in Leigh’s Life is Sweet. Establishing and breaking rhythms, like J.M.W. Turner the film refuses to compromise, engrossing and immersive - it’s both beautiful and at times challenging. 

4.- Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

A beautiful and haunting meditation on life, religion, duty, and honor set in central Anatolia - Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a man of great creative energy who reluctantly manages his family’s assets with sister Necla (Demet Akbag), while playing a quasi-father figure to his young wife Nihal (Melisa Sozen). Filled with beautiful performances, Winter Sleep, running over three hours takes its time, unfolding slowly and often in long takes. It’s not uncommon for a conversation to unfold at the pace it would in real life, not in movie-time. Liberated from artificial drama the film essentially draws us in to a dysfunctional, flawed household as Aydin balances his duties, responsibilities and ambitions as he enters his later years, like Nihal he still has not found himself. Captivating from frame one, Winter Sleep is worth the commitment required to experience it.

5.- Selma (Ava DuVernay)

If 2014 is considered the “year of outrage” - the 2015 wide release date for Selma arrives far too late. A visceral frontline examination of Martin Luther King’s civil rights marches in Selma, met with extreme violence including murder as Alabama’s good ol’ boys fight to maintain status quo prior to LBJ’s intervention and the passage of the Voter Rights Act. Undoubtably this film will provoke conversations within a current context (one early moment seems eerily Eric Garner’s final moments) and Ava DuVernay’s direction ads a sense of immediacy to Paul Webb’s script. Raw, it also presents Martin Luther King Jr (David Oyelowo), George Wallace (Tim Roth), and LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) as complex men, each with their own motivations and ideals of justice.

6.- Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)

An essential movie for 2014 - Laura Poitras is granted a privileged perspective, remaining mostly objective as she becomes a participant in history. Invited by “CitizenFour”, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, to Hong Kong where he debriefs with Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald and others regarding the trove of documents chronicling domestic surveillance, Poitras completes a trilogy about the US post-9/11. The result is a compelling and timely documentary attempting to add transparency and featuring crusaders including William Binney, the film is claustrophobic yet critical. Poitras, despite becoming a player in this saga, has crafted a remarkable, chilling picture, risking her freedom and security to do so. Taking an often transparent approach by include email correspondence between all parties, Poitras exposes both the risks and the duties she and Greenwald have to their source including the behind the scenes sausage-making as Snowden, both the man and his data are crafted into a news package for the mainstream media.

7.- Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Recalling PTA’s earlier work, Inherent Vice is a brilliant ensemble fronted by “Doc” (Joaquin Phoenix) a down on his luck unlicensed private detective on a mission. A twisted plot need not be explained here (after all, isn’t it best to go in cold?) yields unless surprises and rewards along the way in a film thats all about mood, atmosphere and attitude. Delightful, dark and twisted - vintage Paul Thomas Anderson to its core recalling the lighter moments of Boogie Nights with several new twists.

8.- The Rover (David Michod)

A cold blooded, powerful and moral thriller staring Guy Peirce and (a virtually unrecognizable) Robert Pattinson as travelers traversing an apcoypitic landscape in rural Australia. A bleak and compelling nightmare lensed by Natasha Braier, The Rover is a chillingly sparse picture, cementing David Michod as a new master.

9.- Wetlands (David Wnendt)

The grossest gross-out comedy of the year, and one of the rare films I’ve seen that has truly shocked me. Adapted from Charlotte Roche’s novel by David Wnendt, Wetlands is one of the year’s best (and not be confused with the 2011 French-Canadian masterpiece of the same name), no subject is taboo in this picture including sex, hygiene, gender, and identity. Fronted by Carla Juri as Helen, a young women with chronic anal fissures and heroine who answers questions we might be afraid to ask without a filthy mind and an open heart. Love is a battlefield, and Wetlands is a coming-of-age story that’s opening credits alone I suspect would shock (and delight) John Waters.

10.- Eden (Mia Hansen-Love)

Aiming to capture a moment in time, the development of French touch music, a genre of EDM Mia Hansen-Love has crafted a brilliant, sweeping epic with the spirit of the New Wave. A psychological study of music creation, influenced by the globe-trotting lifestyle of Paul (Felix de Givry) through his ups and downs as he bounces between Paris and New York. Eden is richly textured, exciting filmmaking with excellent performances.

(links to Full Reviews, where available)

11. - Finding Fela 

12. - Victor Charlie Romeo 3D 

13. - Goodbye to Language 3D 

14. - Moebis

15. - Map to the Stars

16. - The Grand Budapest Hotel

17. - Nightcrawler

18. - The Lego Movie

19. - National Gallery

20. - Gone Girl

21. - Abuse of Weakness

22. - Haemoo

23. - Interstellar

24. - The Wind Rises

25. - Under the Skin

26.-  Zero Motivation

27.-  Nymophomaniac: Vol. I

28.-  Omar

29.- The Immigrant

30.- Birdman

31.- Force Majeure

32.- Ida

33.- The Newburgh Sting

34.- Two Days, One Night

35.- Kill the Messenger

36.- Beyond the Lights

37.- Rosewater

38.- Virunga 

39.- Tales from the Grim Sleeper

40.- Snowpiercer

41.- Stop the Pounding Heart

42.- American Sniper

43.- St. Vincent

44.- X + Y

45.- The Good Lie

46.- The Dog

47. - The Babadook

48. - High Society

49. - PK

50.- Hector & The Search for Happiness

John Fink writes at TheFilmStage and FinkOnFilms and tweets @finkjohnj

Fink on Films: The 20 Worst of 2014

Remaining quite cranky in my annual list of the top 10 films over at The Film Stage, I was surprised to find very few films I actually hated. 2014…maybe…kind of…sort of….wasn’t so bad after all cinematically. For some personal reasons the year was less than stellar, providing all the more reason to look forward to 2015. It also begs the question: am I coloring the year? I’m not so sure, on this list there’s one obvious picture that stands out, on the very opposite end of the spectrum from CitizenFour and Selma and that is Let’s Be Cops. Released just as the Ferguson police department was raging war on its citizens for demanding answers and accountability, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Police brutality in any comedy is rarely funny, against the backdrop of Ferguson it seemed downright inappropriate. End of Watch, one of the best films about policing ever made - it certainly was not. 

Others on this list earn a place for downright insulting your intelligence and wasting your time - on the bottom of the charts is a comedy that seemed to lack laughs - seeing it its opening night in a multiplex it was met with an award silence for much of its 100 minute running time - the film was so bad I begged friends via Facebook to buy me a drink or five to forget about it (that was after I wrote a scathing review). Why remember it? Perhaps I can save you from the same mistake I made. Others just simply didn’t work, and there is certainly a pattern here: the list, at its core includes unfunny comedies (again subjective), action movies with little to no character development that don’t give us a real reason to care, dramas that miss the mark and to be fair a dull documentary. Along the way you’ll also encounter (or hopefully when searching for something to watch on TV - steer clear of) a feature length commercial, an extended cut that wrecks the momentum of its original, and plenty of movies that just aren’t very much fun. A new years resolution I’ll be aiming for is to see less bad movies: often they are not possible to ignore - sometimes I’m astonished something so baffling has been made and has graced a local movie screen. Sometimes I’m proven wrong by a truly absorbing experience (I have given positive reviews to faith-based pictures before - including 2014’s Gimme Shelter). 

Agree with me, hate me? Feel free to leave a comment.

And now, in the words of (the tragically and disturbingly still above ground) Casey Kasem - on with the countdown:

20.- The Maze Runner (Wes Bell) Slick looking but ultimately boring - truth be told it commits the ultimate sin that you’ll find frequently on this list - I can’t remember what the hell happened.

19.- When the Game Stands Tall (Thomas Carter) The message trumps entertainment in this Texas sports drama that ultimately forgets to have fun - Varsity Blues this is not.

18.-Deliver us From Evil (Scott Derrickson) I imagine the real life story is insanely more interesting than Derrickson’s film that invents and takes liberties - including a deadly beating that didn’t happen in real life. If the NYPD ever decides to stop whining about Bill DeBlasio, Patrick Lynch should pick his next fight with this movie. (Full Review)

17.-Intramural (Andrew Disney) An unfunny sports comedy that unlike When the Game Stands Tall is having too much fun without stopping to let us in on the joke. Perhaps it requires either being drunk or high, therefore the lone Alamo Drafthouse outpost in Colorado is the only theater that legally should be showing it. (Full Review)

16.-The Face of Love (Arie Posin) One of two talent-filled features that simply falls flat this year - staring Annette Bening as a women stalking a man (Ed Harris) who resembles her late husband (Robin Williams and Jess Weixler also co-star). Transitioning from earnest to creepy and into melodrama cliché all within a scene is quite a unique failure - perhaps the only filmmakers that could pull off such a feat successfully are Mike Leigh and Tyler Perry.

15.- Left Behind (Vic Armstrong) I imagine the entire budget of this film went towards its cast (including Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Jordin Sparks and Lea Thompson), a low-rent affair from the get-go (gosh that music score! Smooth jazz - come on, this isn’t a 90s made for TV picture, or is it?) - it never delivers instead growing offensive. Truly a dangerous picture rather than an inclusive faith-based work.

14.- Dumb and Dumber To (Bobby & Peter Farrelly) Not without a few laughs, but it certainly doesn’t live up to the original. Granted, we know what we’re getting and some moments have a kind of sweetness that’s broken up by frequent sexism that quite frankly made me cringe. It’s got a lot of “humor” or attempts at humor that instead inspire the opposite reaction - and I’m no prude, perhaps I’m overthinking this one.

13.-Horrible Bosses 2 (Sean Anders) What promise Sean Anders’ first feature, Never Been Thawed, presented to us. While I’ve been a fan of some of his work since then (including the delightful She’s Out of My League), Horrible Bosses forces laughs. A comedy sequel is difficult to pull off: how do you keep it fresh (the backbone of comedy) while keeping the character and spirit of the original in tact? Here’s a textbook example of what not to do.

12.- I, Frankenstein (Stuart Beattie) Another film I don’t remember very much of. (I actually had a horrible viewing experience - - yes, I’m calling you at National Amusements Concourse Plaza Multiplex in the Bronx, never again!) Aaron Eckhart whom you may remember as a cold hearted bastard in the great indie In The Company of Men, 17 years ago, does something with a Frankenstien - the action is frantic and the visuals are dark (and I saw it in 2D - again - screw you Concourse Plaza Multiplex). I don’t think I missed a masterpiece here.

11.-Legend of Hercules (Renny Harlin) A bland origin story of Hercules (and one of two Hercules pictures out this year) staring Kellan Lutz whom Hollywood is still trying to make happen. B-grade movie that again I don’t remember very much of.

10.- Pompeii (Paul WS Anderson) Noticing a trend here? I should stop wasting my money on these kinds of films - I did recall the 3D was pretty good here - the story, not so much.

9.- Meet the Mormons (Blair Treu) A slickly produced commercial for the Mormon faith that oddly felt of out of place in a commercial multiplex. If its a “commercial”, it’s awfully curious that its producer, Intellectual Reserve, an arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints opted to keep it behind an exhibitors paywall. I (well MoviePass, let’s be honest) payed $10.50 to watch a commercial. While some stories are quite interesting others are less than extraordinary, preaching to the converted - literally. (Full Review)

8.- Third Person (Paul Haggis) Playing as a parody of a pretentious art house film - Paul Haggis’ Third Person is not without ambition, although once the gig is up (and the audience gets ahead of its narrator fairly quickly) it grows into a tiresome and often unintentionally hilarious misfire. It’s unfortunate given the talent involved including writer-director Haggis, Liam Neeson, Maria Bello, Mila Kunis, Kim Basinger, Adrien Brody, Oliva Wild and James Franco - but what looks good on paper doesn’t always translate to screen. It’s 137 minute running time doesn’t help matters either.

7.- Step Up: All In (Trish Sie) So this happened, in 3D. While the dance numbers are passively exciting in spades, the script is quite paint-by-the-numbers. There’s not excuse to phone it in. (Full Review)

6.-Citizen Koch (Carl Deal & Tia Lessin) A weak documentary that follows activists looking to unseat Wisconsin governor Scott Walker while telling us too little about the brothers Koch, industrial magnates whom collect objects of power. The problem is Citizen Koch isn’t doing anything that MSNBC and NPR haven’t done more effectively recently: it provides very little new information about David and Charles Koch or “Astroturf” grassroots organizations like Citizens United. I suspect the reasons real PBS didn’t air it is because MSNBC - especially Rachel Maddow and Chris Haynes - had beat them to it.

5.- Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Version (Adam McKay) Why fix what wasn’t broken? This version, extended by 24 minutes returns painfully unfunny bits that were luckily scrapped from the film’s very funny PG-13 rated version. These “unrated” or “extended cuts” seem like a bait-and-switch of sorts: comedy should be efficient. I imagine a lot of trial and error goes on in the Judd Apatow factory but this version is downright unwatchable returning jokes that likely bombed in front of a test audience. Motivated by a cheap profit and made possible thanks to digital cinema, I hope this idea is never repeated again. (Full Review)

4.- That Awkward Moment (Tom Gormican) Zac Efron, Miles Teller, and Michael B. Jordan try so hard to make a terrible script work, but when it’s lacking engaging, realistic characters and substance you can only get so far. The dialogue — made up mostly of quick one-liners, some likely improvised — wear out their welcome quick, while providing zero background information on these guys, apart from the fact that they went to college together. And when all else fails: cue the music and lets build it into a montage. (Full Review)

3.- The Other Women (Nick Cassavetes) Unfunny and disturbingly anti-feminist: not a single independent women to be had in this picture that tires very hard for laughs. Cameron Diaz stars as a high-powered attorney who discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her…with his wife - played by a manic Leslie Mann. Mann, a talented actress is truly scary here as a women who must be suffering from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder that crosses the line away from the intended light comedy. A truly awful picture, and a miracle in its own right: a film with three female leads that manages to flunk the Bechdel Test. 

2.-Let’s Be Cops (Luke Greenfield) A film that was truly unhelpful to the dialogue started around its release, the film hit theaters right as Ferguson, MO was searching for answers. Here our “heros” pretend to be cops illustrating attitudes society holds towards the police in general: while this could be helpful - heck even a Jackass style film about pretend cops could be helpful, it’s a cop out. (Not to be confused with Kevin Smith’s worst feature of the same name) Going for cheap laughs verses intelligent social commentary it may very well be the wrong film at the wrong time, but I doubt in any circumstance it would be considered funny.   

1.-Sex Tape (Jake Kasdan) I hope the Sony hacks eventually reveal how this awful picture came into being: perhaps on paper it looked good - Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, and Jake Kasden…something interesting might happen, right? Not with a DOA script by Kate Angelo, Segel and Nick Stoller full of comedy tropes and borrowed elements (it also knows nothing about pornography, technology, intimacy, the list could go on). It’s a comedy so broad that perhaps its for no one, save for a chuckle or two I think I could sue Sony Pictures for falsely marketing this as a comedy. I can safely say I’d rather get punched in the nuts then have to watch this picture again. (Full Review)

John Fink writes at Fink on Films and at The Film Stage - and tweets @finkjohnj