BEST ACTOR - Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
Jake Gyllenhaal has starred in some of my favorite underrated movies recently (Source Code, End of Watch, Prisoners), and in Nightcrawler he adds to that list another under seen flick, with my now favorite performance of his. Here he plays just-starting freelance videographer Lou Bloom, who captures graphic breaking crime stories on camera and sells the footage to a news outlet. The character is a thief and a complete sociopath and eventually starts to force his way into a position of power within the station. His manipulative, clinical, "straight" performance, even in front of truly horrific situations, was mesmerizing and disturbing. He's evil and personifies the worst of capitalism, but Gyllenhaal is fantastic and somehow makes it so you find yourself reluctantly comparing yourself to him. He's living out the American Dream through the eyes of a sociopath.
Runner-Up: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
J.K. Simmons is a force of nature with calculated precision as Terence Fletcher, a demanding, verbally abusive music teacher from a prestigious music school, looking for the next "great player." When he invites a fresh-faced new drummer to his jazz group, played fantastically by Miles Teller, his relationship wavers between tough love and crossing the line into abuse. Simmons originally came from a music background, adding a level of authenticity to the performance as well. If he doesn't get nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar I'd be surprised.
BEST ACTRESS - Essie Davis, The Babadook
Horror actresses are typically given little more to do than run away, scream, and "be hot." Essie Davis's performance as a single mother in The Babadook captures much more than simple fear - she encapsulates the frustration of parenthood even better than Patricia Arquette or Ethan Hawke in Boyhood. Going from worn out, to concerned, to enraged, to soothing, to jealous, to bitter, Davis goes through the ringer in this movie, giving this nifty little horror gem a huge uplift. While what actually happens in this movie is kind of cheesy, Davis lends an air of authenticity of the role that's particularly tricky to pull off. I hope a successful word-of-mouth for this movie might lift her out of obscurity because she's brilliant in this!
Runner-Up: Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer
I recognize this pick is a little offbeat (usually this type of superlative goes to a "lead" role), but Tilda Swinton's crazy portrayal of Wilfred's personal bodyguard Mason in Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer is one my favorite characters of the year. Her "shoe-on-your-head" speech is amazing, and everything from the way she carries herself, to her wardrobe, to just the slimeball way she interacts with the "back" of the train make her one of the most memorable things about the film, even though she's more of a side character. She's like the extreme version of Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games.
BEST SCORE - Hans Zimmer, Interstellar
To me, Hans Zimmer can do no wrong. All of his scores are great, even for bad movies (like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Lone Ranger), but Chris Nolan's visually beautiful film provided a perfect marriage between the brilliant space travel epic on screen and the ear-gasmic music pouring out of Zimmer's best work yet. The deep-sounding organs crescendo into an almost religious auditory experience. I feel like I give this superlative to Zimmer every year, but he deserves it! Below is possibly my favorite track, called 'Coward'; starting at about 3:30 is where the intense "docking" scene started. And 7:10 definitely reminds me of Tubular Bells from The Exorcist.
Runner-Up: Jeff Grace, Cold in July
Although Cold in July didn't really work for me as a movie, its score was hauntingly reminiscent of John Carpenter in the best ways. You just don't hear synth music like this in movies anymore, and Jeff Grace's score feels perfectly creepy and foreboding.
BEST SONG - The Muppets, "We're Doing a Sequel" from Muppets Most Wanted
Muppets: Most Wanted looked like it was going to be a terrible "made-for-tv" sequel based off of the trailers, but in true Muppet fashion, my expectations were undercut by comedy within the first minute of the film as the brilliantly catchy, funny, self-referential, self-depricating tune "We're Doing a Sequel" broke out. Much like 22 Jump Street, it lets the audience know that they know the sequel could never top the first one, so it immediately gives the finger to any ready-to-pounce critic. The lyrics are so tightly written and sharp that Bret McKenzie, who wrote the song, unknowingly predicted the cynical Toy Story 4 announcement from Pixar 7-8 months beforehand with a throwaway gag. As a Muppet fan, this song is among my favorites!
Runner-Up: SQÜRL, "Funnel of Love" from Only Lovers Left Alive
Jim Jarmusch not only wrote and directed his revisionist vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive, he also wrote the music and score with his rock band SQÜRL. This cover of the classic Wanda Jackson song opens the picture on an appropriately sludgy, hard-edged tone, signified by a slowly spinning record that introduces us to this world of hipster vampires. This song just oozes undead cool.
BEST POSTER - 300: Rise of an Empire
Illustrated by freelance artist Alex Pardee, best known for designing all of The Used's album covers, this intricately hand-drawn poster is purely and simply badass. You just don't see posters designed like this, other than maybe fan art online; I'm glad to see that the Warner Brothers' ad department tried to experiment a little with this particularly bloody design. I never saw the flick because the first 300 was terrible and the trailers for this one looked even worse, but with all that considered I still love this poster and want it framed on my wall.
Runner-Up: Dumb and Dumber To (Teaser Posters)
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OK, so these posters may be just kind of silly, but I thought this was a brilliantly stupid marketing move on Universal's part. Riding off of the unexpected success of this past summer's Lucy, Harry and Lloyd's faces don a parody of that film's conceit of humans only using 10% of their brains (with H & L only using 1%). There are so few clever poster concepts anymore, so I was pleasantly surprised to see these.
BEST TRAILER - Guardians of the Galaxy
There was a lot riding on the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy. In a short 2.5 min spot, the trailer had to essentially set up these 5 characters nobody knows about, establish the offbeat tone of the film, and sell to an audience a talking tree and gun-toting raccoon. Not only did they pull it off, they managed to not induce spoilers by revealing any important plotlines or jokes, gave a decent sense of the Guardians themselves via a simple but funny exchange with John C. Reilly, and ended it with a sweet montage set to the sounds of Blue Suede's "Hooked on a Feeling." Maybe I'm the only one, but whenever I saw this trailer in theaters, I'll admit it, I got goosebumps at the end. It's an offbeat, fun trailer for a offbeat, fun movie, and is no doubt one of the reasons it made so much money at the box office. "What a bunch of a-holes."
Runner-Up: Godzilla (Teaser Trailer)
After Roland Emmerich's Godzilla, we were all crossing our fingers that Gareth Edwards wouldn't mess it up. The initial teaser of Godzilla (2014) was enough indication that it was in good hands, at least visually. The epic chamber choir mixed with the dark and iconic sky jump shot was breathtaking and haunting. Too bad the movie ended up kind of sucking.
BEST PLEASANT SURPRISE - Edge of Tomorrow
Runner-Up: Lone Survivor
What initially came across as a lame, "bro-filled" jingoistic star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg actually turned out, to me, to be one of the most intense war films I've seen in a long time. I truly felt a sense of deep respect by the performers and director towards the real life heroes behind this story, and even if it is a little too on-the-nose with its emotional beats, Lone Survivor totally blindsided me. By the end I was ready to get the crying towel out.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT - Godzilla
As I mentioned before, the trailer for this film was amazing, and I was so hoping for an actually well-scripted Godzilla film for once, but this was just a mess. Characters die with no impact on the plot, Aaron Taylor Johnson's "Ford" character is just a blank slate, and hugely talented co-stars like Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, and Sally Hawkins exist for no reason other than to look up at Godzilla in slack-jawed awe. Even the monster fights were derivative, and besides the last 5 or so minutes, my quota for mindless monster destruction was not satiated.
Runner-Up: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
I was a huge fan of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a surprisingly good start to the prequel series to The Planet of the Apes, and with Matt Reeves directing the sequel I was pretty pumped. Unfortunately, the script was just kind of bland, resorting to the usual "war is inevitable" tale we've seen so many times before, unlike the fresh concepts from Rise such as ethics in science, dealing with Alzheimers, repression, and what it means to be a human / ape. As visually spectacular and as good as Andy Serkis and Tony Kebell are as apes, it was just so dull and forgettable to me.
BEST ACTION SCENE - Quicksilver's Slo-mo, X-Men: Days of Future Past
It seems like every other week a big blockbuster action film is released to theaters, so it takes a lot of innovation to show us an action scene that feels totally fresh and fun. The introduction of Quicksilver (played by American Horror Story's Evan Peters) was the best part of the most recent X-Men film, and his extended "slow-mo" sequence is just beautifully crafted. Set to the tune of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," we see what it's like to experience the world through Quicksilver's perspective, and watch just how the physics and fight moves of moving really damn fast actually work. Joss Whedon's Quicksilver and the upcoming Flash film have a lot to live up to now!
Runner-Up: Just about everything from The Raid 2
The first Raid film was a simple, balls-to-the-wall action movie; you'd think the formula of killing multiple floors worth of bad guys would suffice for the sequel, but the filmmakers decided to open up the world a great deal (unfortunately to the film's detriment). Although it takes a good while of bad storytelling to get to the finale, the wait is worth it. It's literally scene after scene of jaw-dropping action for, I want to say at least 20 minutes straight. This film also gets the superlative this year for "best use of a baseball bat."
WORST MOVIE - Transformers: Age of Extinction
I normally don't include this category, simply because I don't feel as though I see enough "bad movies" throughout the year to make a fair judgment, but what the hell, why not? Although I'm sure there are "worse" films out there (in terms of production values, casting, etc), Age of Extinction represents everything wrong with Hollywood and Michael Bay. The torrent of product placement, the obvious pandering to foreign audiences (let's go to China for no reason!), the indecipherably messy action, the completely non-sensical plot, the objectification of women (even underaged women), a pointlessly long run time, and just a complete waste of directorial effort. This film probably had a crew of about a thousand people all together (an estimated 500 people worked on the visual effects alone), just to serve this junk to the masses who ate it up. It makes me sad for the movie industry, and it makes me sad for society, who keeps flocking back to this crap like the sheep they are, only encouraging Bay's worst tendencies.
Runner-Up: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
In 2004, Sin City was one of the first comic book movies to actually feel like it was ripped from the pages. It was a style unlike anything we'd seen before and was a real visual treat. But 10 years later, in a world where comic book movies are a dime a dozen, the aesthetic just doesn't hold the same power anymore. The Sin City sequel comes just under a decade too late, in addition to being a terrible film, filled with bad dialogue, misogyny, and believe it or not, even worse special effects than the first (Robert Rodriguez prides himself on low budgets, but it really shows here).
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This year was particularly tough to pick the superlatives, and most of the categories deserve their own respective "top ten" lists. I was "this close" [makes small gap between index finger and thumb] to giving Best Actor to Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything, J. Law's "The Hanging Tree" for Best Song, and Best Score was particularly hard and I could've given it to Under the Skin or The LEGO Movie, a score that I think is very unique and underrated. Anyway, I'll have my Top Ten of 2014 posted shortly, so look out for that; in the meantime, let me know in the comments what movies/performances you think deserved to win!
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