Under normal circumstances, assembling a list of a given year’s best films is a simple matter of keeping score as you go, adding and removing movies as the months roll on, knowing full well that your carefully assembled rankings will probably just get blown to hell in the fall when the big studios start rolling out their prestige flicks. This method usually makes for a well balanced list of high-profile and dark horses while whittling out the ones that are worse in retrospect.
But in 2014, the rush of high quality flicks never came to offset the outsider picks. Unlike 2013’s slate of award season smashes (The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years a Slave, Her), this year’s Oscar contenders have been alternately limp (The Judge), well-meaning but flawed (Rosewater), existential overkill (Interstellar), uninspired (Big Eyes) or performance-driven but otherwise unremarkable (The Theory of Everything).
So without any frontrunner competing for ad and print space, there’s more room for newcomers, genre flicks, experimental fare and topical films. The following movies stood out on this critic’s end of year list.
Genre
After nearly being buried by The Weinstein Company because director Bong Joon-ho (The Host) and producer Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) refused to massacre the film in edits, Snowpiercer benefited from a much- deserved word-of-mouth campaign. Defying labels and expectations, the film contains science fiction without any expository baggage, action without any idiotic heroics and is political without being didactic. It might not be your cup of tea, but it is certainly one of the year’s most perfectly realized visions.
Two of the year’s greatest achievements in genre filmmaking are Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (sci-fi) and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (horror), both of which partially explore the difficulties women face in maintaining their independence against threats both corporeal and existential. Each has a bold and unique vision with breathtaking visuals and gripping terror that you’ll need to see to believe.
Newcomers
Contributing to The Babadook’s impressiveness is the fact that it is writer-director Kent’s feature debut, a massive feat given how tonally, visually and structurally sound it feels. The horror never gets in the way of the drama, there are no cheap scares or obvious setups, and it is legitimately terrifying in both style and narrative. Look for great things from her.
Proving that Hollywood’s lack of trust in women is self-defeating, another female newcomer—Gillian Robespierre—had her massive break in 2014 with Obvious Child starring comedian Jenny Slate. Though perhaps known among closed-minded crowds as the “abortion comedy,” Obvious Child is an intelligent and hilarious subversion of romantic comedies that explores how its lead character’s on-stage honesty is challenged by off-stage reality.
Experimental
After filming every summer for 12 years, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was released in 2014. A first in nonfiction cinema history, audiences saw a young boy (Ellar Coltrane) grow up before their very eyes from age six to 18. Its boldness is matched by its coherence, and Boyhood is as revolutionary as it is just plain good.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu is known primarily for dramas such as Babel and 21 Grams, but this year saw him plunge into playful territory with Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). There’s no shortage of gimmicks—a masked single take, stunt casting Michael Keaton as a washed-up actor best known for playing a superhero, flirtations with magical realism—but Iñárritu keeps things moving with humor and taste.
Political
The Academy’s race problem is well-documented in its history of preferring tales of white saviors over black self-empowerment. Fortunately, this year saw a film that actively confronts the self-congratulatory white liberal guilt that has dominated Hollywood for far too long. Selma tells the story of the voting rights marches in Mississippi, with moments that feel pulled straight from today’s front pages. It neither reduces Martin Luther King, Jr. to kitsch nor propels him to sainthood, depicting activism in progress as honestly as the film world has ever seen (and making Ava DuVernay the first black woman nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director).
Citizenfour is a bit of astonishing documentary filmmaking, which sees director Laura Poitras thrust into the Edward Snowden affair after production had already begun. Describing the plot beyond this is pointless as so much about Snowden’s story is unprecedented, but it is as valuable a piece of political journalism as it is documentary artistry.
