10 Movies I Could Take or Leave from 2014

30. Winter's Tale



This movie tries so hard to push all my buttons. It's beautifully shot and has lots of things I love: immortals, romance, a non-linear narrative, and a powerful twist. It's the twist that bothers me though. Winter's Tale did such a nice job of investing me in one kind of story that when the twist came, I wasn't just unprepared for it, I actually resented it. Sadly, not sticking the landing on stories I otherwise really enjoyed is going to be a recurring theme in this post.

29. Under the Skin



I wrote a full review of Under the Skin, but the short version is that I found it intellectually interesting, but was never emotionally invested in Scarlett Johansson's character.

28. Non-Stop



It's a tense thriller that showcases everything I like about Liam Neeson as an action hero, but the plot feels forced along by some dumb decisions and then the whole movie goes completely off the rails when the villain's unbelievable motivations are revealed.

27. The Amazing Spider-Man 2



I really, truly love Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone as Peter and Gwen and it's frustrating that they're in such stupid plots with such boring, poorly drawn villains. Garfield and Stone make it impossible for me to hate this movie, but I can't bring myself to like it either.

26. 3 Days to Kill



Frankly, I get this one a little confused with The November Man. Both are about aging assassins who need to protect young women, but 3 Days to Kill is the better one. Amber Heard is pretty ridiculous as the person who pulls Kevin Costner back into the spy game, but she's kind of fun too and I enjoyed Costner's character and his relationship with his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld). It's not a great spy thriller, but it's a good B-movie and I'm glad to see Costner back this year in some fun roles.

25. Mr. Peabody and Sherman



The drama that threatens Peabody and Sherman's relationship is forced and clunky and I felt nothing about the lessons either of them learned about each other. But there are some really funny gags and I laughed out loud quite a bit. Wish there had been even more of that.

24. Edge of Tomorrow



Another movie that's awesome right up until the end where it falls apart. There's been a lot of love heaped on this movie this year and mostly I think it's deserved. Cruise's character is pleasantly against stereotype for him, Blunt is totally badass, and the way the movie structures its live-die-repeat sequences is ingenious. But the movie has no idea how to end itself and simply stumbles its way through the last act to get to the closing credits. I ding it heavily for that.

23. Only Lovers Left Alive



Like Under the Skin, this is another that I reviewed for Halloween. I like it better than Under the Skin, because Swinton and Hiddleston's characters are so generous about giving me things to connect with. And unlike Lucy, it has some profound thoughts about the purpose of human existence. But I don't think it's re-watchable for me. I enjoyed the time I spent with the characters, but not enough to want to do it again, so that makes it a good movie that I'll probably forget about in a year.

22. 300: Rise of an Empire



I had really low expectations for this, so that's probably why I was as pleasantly surprised as I was. It isn't visually unique like the first 300 (which I guess is no longer unique either now that it's been imitated a bunch of times) and the story isn't as compelling, but it's got a decent plot and Eva Green is awesome as the scene-chewing villain Artemisia.

21. Gone Girl



I probably need to give Gone Girl another look to see if I like it better, but I had a hard time with it the first go. I get the commentary on modern news media and the way it turns people's tragedies into consumable pop culture, but I don't feel like that commentary was anything new or insightful. I totally agree that that's what the news does and that we let it do that, so I don't know how much more there is to say. Far more interesting is the idea of masks and how we hide our true selves from other people, including folks we're supposed to be in honest relationships with. I love thinking about that, but struggled with the point of view that Gone Girl seems to take on it. I appreciate that my struggle is exactly what the film wants from me, but like Winter's Tale, that came out of nowhere and threw me off guard. Unlike Winter's Tale, Gone Girl is very artful about pulling the rug out from underneath me, so I'm enjoying still mulling it over all these months later. If this were a Best of 2014 list instead of a ranking of how much I liked these movies, Gone Girl would place a lot higher.

2 Movies I Hated from 2014

37. At Middleton



I have two major issues with At Middleton. First, it's a victim of its own marketing. It advertised itself as a fun, romantic comedy between a couple of middle-aged people who meet while visiting a prospective college campus with their kids. I'm a big fan of Andy Garcia and enjoy Vera Farmiga in most things as well, so I was super invested in watching them meet cute and fall in love. But that's not what At Middleton actually is and I resented the bait-and-switch.

It's actually a melancholy drama about unhappy marriages and adultery. But even as that, it's still majorly flawed. It deals honestly and unflinchingly with the complex emotions involved when someone falls in love with someone other than his or her spouse, but it could have been even more powerful if it had paid any attention to Garcia and Farmiga's absent spouses. Instead, it forces the kids to act as solo defendants for the marriages. That works to a limited extent, but it's still silencing a couple of major voices in this drama.

36. Lucy



I had a hard time not making this my most hated movie of the year, but at least it has some scenes of Scarlett Johansson kicking butt. Beyond that though, the plot is dull and the point the movie wants to make is ridiculous. The character of Lucy becomes less interesting as she becomes more powerful and Morgan Freeman is only there for exposition.

The movie's ultimate message (which it thinks is pretty darn profound) is that the reason humanity exists is to pass along knowledge to later generations. That's not only bleak, it's pointless. Knowledge has no value unless it's used for some purpose, but Lucy offers no suggestion of what ultimate knowledge might be used for. It's simply about accumulating information for its own sake.

Under the Skin (2014)

Who's In It: Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, The Prestige)

What It's About: An alien disguises itself as a woman in order to travel Scotland and lure men to their dooms. Until...

How It Is: Not as much a horror film as the premise suggests, but that's okay. I may stretch the definition of the genre this month. Johansson plays a murderous alien, but the film isn't about exploring the horror of that from her victims' point of view. It's interested in her story and that's cool, even though I wasn't as wrapped up in it as I wanted to be.

Director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) believes that if a shot is worth taking, it's worth spending at least thirty seconds looking at. And sometimes that's true. Under the Skin is largely a gorgeous film and makes great use of its Scot landscapes and cities. But the languid editing reaaaally makes the movie drag. To its credit, my mind never wandered away from the movie and some of my time was well spent pondering Johansson's character and her motivations. But some of my time was also spent waiting impatiently for the next shot. That means that I was always interested in what was coming next, so the film is riveting in that way, but it can also be frustrating.

Something Glazer did that was cool though was shoot some of the film Borat-style with hidden cameras recording Johansson as she seduces and has conversations with non-actors who don't know they're being filmed. I knew that going in, but I didn't know how much was shot that way or which scenes. That meant that for a while every shot had the illusion of authenticity, so that when some really horrible things started to happen they were that much more impactful as I tried to figure out what was staged and what was just Glazer letting the camera record life. As the film went on though, I got better at figuring out what was what and that impact wasn't as powerful.

I don't want to reveal too much about the development of Johansson's character, but she does have an arc and it's at least an interesting one, if not especially powerful for me. She's a blank slate, a cipher that you can either read a lot into or not much at all. Britt Hayes wrote an awesome piece for Screen Crush that's an example of the depth to be mined from what's going on with Johansson's character. I watched it from a different perspective and didn't get as much out of it. It's a good film and possibly a great one, but where it falls on that scale depends on how much you're willing to give back to it. Maybe I was just feeling lazy, but while I was intellectually curious about how the alien was changing and behaving, I was never emotionally invested in it.

Rating: Two out of five man-eating extraterrestrials.

Her (2013)

I've heard from several people that they have a hard time getting past the premise of Her. That's fair enough; it's about a dude who develops romantic feelings for his phone. If that's all you have to go on, it's a tough concept to buy into. Even if you accept the main character's feelings, how are you supposed to relate to them? Fortunately for me, I had several other ways into the film.

First is the cast. I love every one of the people mentioned on that poster. Joaquin Phoenix is one of the finest actors working today, as is Amy Adams. Rooney Mara and Olivia Wilde are also very talented and I have good feelings about them from Side Effects and House respectively. And even though Scarlett Johansson's face never appears in the movie, she's also a great actor and I love her voice. Then there's Spike Jonze, an ambitious filmmaker with interesting things to say and powerful ways to say them. And finally, there was hardly a Top 10 list for 2013 that didn't include Her on it. I knew it would be about much more than a creepy relationship and I was right.

Her does have some things to say about the relationship between people and our technology. That's actually the least insightful commentary it offers though. It's not profound to suggest that we love our phones and computers, but Her goes much deeper than that. It's about relationships in general. What do we want from them? How much work are we willing to put in?