Majestic Twelve: Movies of 2014

2014 was a strange year for films. Most of them were adaptations of Young Adult Novels featuring dystopia-futures where the youngsters played by people who are likely my age or slightly older have to fight to the death of arbitrary reasons. And while I may not have said it often, I’m tired of seeing these kinds of adaptations everywhere because they all basically have the same ideology that the future will suck and these teenage gobshites are going to be the ones to somehow make it suck less with their angsty romance subplots.

But I say no to this foolishness. No such nonsense will make my list this year as we will focus on films that are fun, exciting, and adapted from more interesting things like comics, manga, or lucid fever dreams. Here we go with the best films of 2014 (as decided by me).

#12 – X-Men Days of Future Past – I hate how four of my entries will be comic book movies. This really is due to a lack of being able to pay for films, a lack of people to see them with, and a lack of anything I actually found interesting enough to willingly spend my money on (YA Novels, man). And X-Men Days Of Future Past, while certainly one of the better entries in its respective franchise, is still a huge mess of a film in a lot of ways. It doesn’t explain anything on how Shadow Cat got her new Time-Travel Power. The time-changing effects of what Wolverine does in the 70’s and how they change the current era don’t make any sense at all. There are plenty of issues with logic that I want to simply laugh at. The only thing that keeps me from hating this as much as the Amazing Spiderman 2 is the fact that for all the crap Days of Future Past tries to pull, it does a lot of things right. The action scenes always look like fun. The actors really brought their A-game this time around (save for maybe Jennifer Lawrence). It erases all of the worst movies from the canon, leaving only the good ones to actually matter moving forward with the franchise. And, yeah, the younger cast being back was fun. A fun film in many respects, but a logical nightmare in so many ways.

#11 – A Walking Among Tombstones – I feel every list should have an obligatory entry for Liam Neeson (I’ll regret saying that next year if all I have to work with is Taken 3). But Liam Neeson generally turns out interesting or fun work and while Walk Among the Tombstones is nothing unique or that will light the world on fire, it did stick to a basic “Bad Ass Liam Neeson Movie Formula” with a few redeeming twists to keep things interesting, at least with the supporting cast. Certainly not perfect, but enjoyable nonetheless.

#10 – Big Hero 6 – I warned a lot of comic book films would make the list. Annoyingly enough, the remaining three are all Marvel films. I have nothing against Marvel, but they’re really getting a monopoly on this top twelve list. Big Hero 6 is unique in that it’s the first animated Marvel film. It’s based on the manga-style comic Marvel has put out under the same name, and the film (from what I’ve been told) follows the plot of the second book in the series detailing the origin of the Big Hero 6). Visually, it’s fun. Narratively, it’s short, simple, but enjoyable overall. It’s good, but not my favorite animated Disney work and not my favorite comic book film. Respectable and worth a look, but you’re aren’t missing anything if you can’t find time to see it.

#09 – The Grand Budapest Hotel – A fun film I reviewed back on my old personal blog, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a small film featuring a large cast of diverse, big name actors in one of the more hysterical situations of the year (at least in film). Hard to believe your main protagonist is the same actor that was also Voldemort in Harry Potter. The narrative is silly and can get off the walls at times, but it a fun little adventure to follow the story of a Hotel Concierge and his Lobby Boy as they get dragged into a murder mystery frame job, a chase for epic loot, and meet lots of bizarre characters along the way. Good fun if you don’t mind a much more laid back comedy.

#08 – The Judge – The Robert Downey Jr movie of the year (because he didn’t have as many in 2014), The Judge is a nice drama-piece with hints of comedy scattered about in which RDJ’s character reunites with his estranged family (estranged by choice) for his mother’s funeral. The visitation goes sour when the father (the town’s local judge) gets into legal troubles involving a potential murder. RDJ, a big city lawyer his father hates, offers to step in and keep his father out of jail. The tension between the two and how the entire murder goes down is intriguing to watch. Lots of great acting here, everyone seems to play off one another rather well and it’s always a treat to see RDJ’s antics.

#07 – St. Vincent – It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Bill Murray movie. Boy has he aged a bit. There are a lot of fun stories about this film and it’s production that help make it more amusing, but the film itself is quite a treat. Watching the kinda-father/kinda-son relationship form between the two main characters is quite enjoyable and while somewhat predictable, there are a few surprises that make it worthwhile. The ending also has some feel good moments like all stories of this nature that make the entire piece satisfying after a good hour or more of solid laughs at Bill’s horrible excuse for “parenting” the neighbor’s kid.

#06 – Edge of Tomorrow / Live Die Repeat / All You Need is Kill – I was half tempted to bump this down a few spots because they couldn’t settle on the name of this damn movie. Can we just call it Tom Cruise Gets Killed by Aliens and call it a day? That’s not a spoiler. He literally spends half the movie dying at the hands of aliens in a desperate attempt to learn where their stronghold is and get a better understanding of the unusual time-warping powers he’s acquired (basically, he has extra lives). It’s a great film that didn’t do as well in the Box Office as I had expected, but what surprised me most is that it’s a Tom Cruise movie I enjoyed. Not just a movie with him in it that I enjoyed like Tropic Thunder, but a movie STARRING Tom Cruise that I didn’t immediately hate. Maybe he isn’t so bad after all.

#05 – Gone Girl – I had low expectations of a simple murder-mystery going into the film. When I came out, I was blown away by just how many twists that ride too and how much more complicated it became even halfway through the film. Sure, the low expectations may have set it up to surprise me that much. But I’ve seen enough murder-mystery plots to basically have the thought they’ll all end up about the same with minor differences. This turns from a that genre and morphs into a frame-job and then into something else entirely, almost feeling like a thriller film. And it has an ending that leaves chills down my spine worse than an average horror film. In short, good job David Finch and team. You guys pulled off a good one.

#04 – Captain America: Winter Soldier – It feels like so long ago when this came out. Back then I was in a relationship and lived in a different town entirely. It was like a whole lifetime ago. But it was still in 2014 and, up another film we’ll mention soon, I thought it was the best film in Marvel’s roster, even surpassing Avengers. I mean, seriously, a film that took the dweeb from the first Captain America and turned him into basically Jason Bourne or James Bond but cool? A film that changed the genre of the Captain America films from action to spy-thriller? This is the Dark Knight of the Captain America series and despite an upcoming film on the list, it still holds up as one of the best films Marvel has done. Cannot wait for Civil War.

#03 – Snowpiercer – A strange movie in a lot of respects. First, it’s released was technically in 2013, but it was a severely limited release. It didn’t get a wide distribution until it popped on Netflix in 2014. So, while not TECHNICALLY a 2014 film, most of us didn’t get to see it until 2014, and thus I think it deserves the spot on the list regardless. That out of the way, Snowpiercer is one of the few Dystopian films of the year that managed to be interesting. How? Instead of simply saying everything went to shit and we all live in shacks, it decided to make things more bizarre (thus fun). The world was frozen over by some kind of chemical and society had to pile on to a massive world-travelling train created by the world’s richest man. Of course a class system would eventually emerge where those of high society get the front cars with the best stuff while the lower class get protean sludge and sleep in piles in the back cars. The adventure over the uprising of the lower-class rebels spits in the face of Hunger Games’ recent attempt to start that up in their latest film. And it’s another film that Chris Evans can say he did before retiring completely and switching over to directing (and he did a damn fine job too).

#02 – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – What can I really say that hasn’t already been said? Andy Serkis and company deliver one hell of a performance as a band of apes in a society on the fringe of war with the last humans after a disease nearly kills all of humanity. The power struggle between Cesar and Koba was spectacular and led to some unexpected, but fun actions scenes. While the humans didn’t do much, they weren’t terrible. The problem is the apes stole the show. But are you surprised? We had apes on horseback with machine guns fighting tanks and overtaking a city. How do you not get upstaged by that? This was a spectacular sequel to the original and I look forward to seeing what they plan on doing next. The art direction, writing, and performances are among the best of 2014 and I don’t expect things to go sour in the next film if they keep everything at that level.

#01 – Guardians of the Galaxy – I didn’t plan on putting this at number one at first. But when I look back and think objectively what film I had the most fun with, Guardians of the Galaxy really does take the number one spot. I laughed. I almost teared up a bit during certain moments. The music was spectacular and fit the tone of the film perfectly. The acting was among Marvel’s best (and two of the characters were CGI creatures voiced by bigger name actors than anyone else who was actually on set performing). This was Marvel’s biggest gambit yet and, as always, it paid off in spades becoming the highest grossing movie of the year. It’s also their most successful “origin” film, being the first and only film to surpass the original Iron Man in that regard. I think we’re all anticipating big things from future adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy and are all looking forward to the inevitable crossover with the Avengers. Just a few more years, guys. It won’t feel that long.

Those are my top twelve movies of the year. This was originally written before seeing the last couple movies of the year that release during the holidays. So unless they’re so spectacularly good that I have to edit this last minute, I figure it’s safe to call this done. If you enjoyed this and want to see more content, as always, be sure to like, comment, share and subscribe. We hope you enjoy Best of the Year entries as we celebrate the best 2014 had to offer.