LeftLion's Best Films of 2014

Winter Sleep

Ashley Carter lists his favourite films of the year from super best down to just best...

Winter Sleep: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s masterpiece was comfortably the best film of 2014, in what was a pretty awful year for cinema in general. It was perfectly measured and patient, visually stunning and featured a remarkable lead performance from Haluk Bilginer.

All This Mayhem: The best documentary of 2014, Eddie Martin’s All This Mayhem covered the remarkable story of Tas and Ben Pappas, the Australian brothers who exploded onto the skateboarding world stage in the nineties. It’s about raw talent, big personalities, drugs and death; you will never think about Tony Hawk in the same way again. 

Finding Vivien Maier: In what has been another solid year for documentaries, Finding Vivien Maier stood out due to the extraordinary nature of its subject matter. Following her death, lifelong nanny Vivien Maier was posthumously declared one of the most accomplished street photographers of all time, after a cache of over 100,000 photos were discovered by filmmaker John Maloof. He investigated her mysterious life, and uncovered a deeply troubled and enigmatic woman.

Inside Llewyn Davis: The most accomplished film to date from the Coen Brothers, Inside Llewyn Davis was a beautiful examination of the brutal, inescapable practicalities of pursuing a creative career that offers insufficient financial rewards. Oscar Isaac was perfect, and the soundtrack, with re-recordings of Dave Van Ronk songs (the inspiration for Llewyn Davis) is superb.

Teenage: Matt Wolf’s beautiful visual essay explored the emergence of the Teenager, a concept that, as his film explains, did not always exist. With archive footage from early 20th century America, UK and Germany, and narration provided from the likes of Jena Malone and Ben Whishaw reading from contemporary diaries, Teenage captured the struggle between both the adult and youth ideologies striving to define a new idea of what it is to be between childhood and adulthood.

Boyhood

Boyhood: Richard Linklater’s ambitious project, shot over a period of twelve years with the same cast, was arguably the most groundbreaking film of 2014. Seeing actor Ellar Coltrane literally grow up over a period of three hours might have just been a gimmick in lesser hands, but Linklater created a tonally perfect reflection on the struggles of both adolescence and parenting.

A Story of Children and Film: Mark Cousins’s wonderful follow-up to The Story of Film: An Odyssey is the first documentary to ever explore the role of children in cinema. Drawing parallels between the actions of his own niece and nephew, the theory that cinema itself is a relatively youthful art-form and the presence of children in over fifty films from around the world, Cousins explores the reasons behind why the lives of young people are such a prevalent focus in film.

Under the Skin: Jonathan Glazer’s ambitious and visually striking film makes the list simply for being something that I hadn’t seen before. Scarlett Johansson starred as a mysterious woman driving a van around Scotland in the early hours of the morning, picking up strange men. It was far from perfect, but had more than enough aspiration to be one of the best films of the year. 

The Wolf of Wall Street: Unfortunately overshadowed by a storm of fake outrage, Scorsese’s latest feature again showed why he is a master of his craft. In mainstream filmmaking, only Paul Thomas Anderson can match him for perfectly pacing a three-hour plus film. It was wonderfully entertaining throughout, but has bizarrely seen Jordan Belfort emerge as a cult-hero for modern day yuppies who missed the point of the film entirely.

The Homesman: Tommy Lee Jones’s film was another film that was unlike anything else I’d seen all year. A beautifully paced and patient Western that never shied away from illustrating the brutality of life on the frontier, as well as never allowing the viewer any semblance of comfort or relief. The Homesman’s main strength lay in its superb cast, as the brilliant Tommy Lee Jones was joined by Hilary Swank and cameos from Tim Blake Nelson, James Spader and Hailee Steinfeld. 

12 Years a Slave

Harry Wilding could not make a decision about a particular order for his top ten, so went for alphabetical... 

12 Years a Slave: An astonishing true story, beautifully shot by director Steve McQueen and DoP Sean Bobbit. It is superbly acted too – with Chiwetel Ejiofor’s predictably strong turn as Solomon Northup, a free man tricked into slavery, along with amazing support from Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, Lupita Nyong’o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano and more. This raw, brutal look at a subject that is actually rarely represented within cinema, is sure to be a modern classic.

Boyhood: Extremely ambitious filmmaking from Richard Linklater. Of course, the idea of shooting a film so purposefully over such a long period of time, and putting faith in all the actors – not to mention the lead Ellar Coltrane, who started as a six year old and end as an eighteen year old – could have come over all gimmick. However, the idea was safe in Linklater’s hands, and he has captured a great snapshot of growing up in 21st century middle America, which can be translated to the rest of the Western world.

Calvary: John Michael McDonagh’s previous film, The Guard, was funny, no doubt, but this follow-up was on another level. Watching it felt like being punched in the face – in a good way. Calvary still has the humour but also has such a high level of unpredictability and philosophy. Brendan Gleeson‘s performance is one of the best of the year, as the film treads a fine line between laughs and a feeling of creeping terror. It is one of those films that, for a few days after seeing it, feels like it has changed your life.  

Gone Girl: David Fincher’s direction, as always, is superb and Gillian Flynn perfectly adapts it from her novel. Accompanied by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s creepy and atmospheric score and Jeff Cronenweth’s crisp and beautiful cinematography for the third film in a row, he forces the film down its dark path with style and atmosphere. Though, however dark and violent this 18 certificated Gone Girl gets, the humour remains throughout. Of course this is a crime thriller about a, thankfully, out of the ordinary event, but it keeps the novel’s frightening truths about marriage and the media and popularity as it relates to justice.

Her: An astounding achievement from Spike Jonze. The future Los Angeles - clean, sparse, crisp - looks great as well as plausible. In fact, it looks like quite a cosy and happy future, perhaps making any heartbreak within it seem all the more jarring. Jonze has created a unique, but familiar, world to play out the film’s philosophy, humour, and heartbreak in – a world that was very easy, and not disagreeable, to get lost in, especially with a soundtrack by Arcade Fire.

Inside Llewyn Davis: A perfectly realised homage to the Greenwich Village scene of the sixties from the ever dependable Coen Brothers - it is a testament to their talent, that this is no way near their best film but has still made my top ten list. It looks great, it sounds great, and the circular storyline is excellently executed.

Interstellar: A film in which, as soon as it had finished, I wanted to watch again. A Space Odyssey-esque, no doubt, but it is definitely its own film; it is definitely Nolan’s film. I am still not sure about the love theory in it, but the acting, the ideas, the unpredictability and the beautiful visuals just blew me away and confirmed that every Nolan film really is a true event.

Mr Turner: Timothy Spall’s performance must be fit for a BAFTA – his transformation into the snorty yet subtle Turner here is phenomenal. The film, up there with Mike Leigh’s best, meanders through Turner’s later life, without a usual narrative arc. It does, however, manage to suck the audience into the world of the artist without it feeling too patronising or biased, with plenty of humour and beauty throughout.

Under the Skin: This is visual storytelling at its best, in a movie that grabs hold of you instantly and doesn’t let go until the credits begin to roll and you're sat there, not quite sure what to think. It is a film that is hard to shake from your mind, even days after seeing it. In some ways, I'm still not sure what to make of it all, but I know that it may just be a masterpiece. 

What We Do In The Shadows: This mockumentary about a group of vampires sharing a house in Wellington, New Zealand is phenomenally hilarious. It really is, start to finish, just very very funny. They poke fun at allsorts to do with vampire folklore (there are even werewolves, with the excellently cast Rhys Darby as the alpha male) within a well designed and realised world. Even the fight scenes, one of which is honestly like something out of Inception, are also perfectly choreographed and executed. It is hilarious too – did I mention that?