Top Ten Of 2014 and 2015 Oscar Predictions!

It's baaaaaack!  I apologize for the lack of any new posts on this blog since July, but I'm not dead yet!  And though this post hasn't quite been 12 years in the making (like some movies apparently), a lot has happened since I last wrote anything on here.  Not only did I get a job, move to Eau Claire, and pass a bar exam, but I watched a bunch of movies to finally be able to write this post with a semblance of knowledge.  And boy, was it worth it!

We won't quite know how 2014 will be remembered in terms of movies until a few years from now, but as it stands, I don't think I've ever given such consistently high ratings to so many movies in any single year.  This last year, I saw 38 films, and I gave a rating of 8 or higher to 20 of them.  That's over half of the films I saw this year, and I don't think I'd change a single one of those ratings if I had to go back and look at them again (granted, there were a lot of awful films that came out in 2014, but I tend to try and stay away from those).  Needless to say, that made it incredibly difficult to narrow down my Top Ten list this year.

As is the case every year I've done this, any movie to which I've given a 9 or a 10 was guaranteed to make the list, with 8's filling out the rest.  As you may have heard in the lead up to the Oscars, there have been a lot of great films this year, and because of the overall quality of the movies made, a lot of good movies didn't make the cut.  And speaking of "cut," since this post is going to double as both a Top Ten and an Oscar Predictions post, I'm gonna keep my reasonings for each of these films much shorter than in previous year.  So, in an effort to keep this post under 5,000 words, let's get to that list!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

As stated above, this could be a lot longer.  However, I'm gonna keep it to three (in no particular order):

• American Sniper
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Interstellar

10:  The Imitation Game

The big knock on The Imitation Game is that no one making it seemed to know what they were really trying to say (is this movie about a gay man who was persecuted?  Or about WWII?  Or about a misunderstood genius?  What about that whole artificial intelligence test that Turing comes up with?).  But what the film lacks in tact, it more than makes up for with great acting, dramatic pacing, and at it's heart (or at least what I think is its heart), an incredible story about how wars are won just as much behind the scenes as they are on the front lines.

9:  Edge of Tomorrow

The best way I can think to describe Edge of Tomorrow is like a remake of Groundhog Day on steroids, but instead of Bill Murray's depressed weatherman, you get Tom Cruise going from a greenhorn soldier to a war-hardened veteran ready to save humanity, all in a single, countlessly relived day.  This movie is one of the two smartest movies of the summer (along with the next pick), which makes sense seeing that it's directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) and written by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects).  I just threw out the names of three great movies...imagine them all rolled into one, and you've got this sadly under-appreciated gem

8:  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I've already written at length about the genius of DotPotA, so it should come as no surprise that it survived a gauntlet of Oscar-worthy fall movies and still made my Top Ten.  This may make me sound crazy, but this prequel-sequel-reboot was one of the most original movies of the year.  Brilliant CGI (surpassed only by Interstellar in that department), amazing animal acting, and stunning cinematography all worked together with a powerful story to create a worthy entrant on this year's list.

7:  Selma

No movie in 2014 came out of nowhere more than Selma.  Martin Luther King, Jr. finally got a biopic that could stand up to his image, and it happened because the movie focused not on the grandiosity of idol, but on the hardships that he and so many others had to face in their fight to help African-Americans earn the voting rights that they supposedly already had.  David Oyelowo deserved a nomination over at least three of the other acting nominees for a powerful performance that is well worth seeing.

6.  Nightcrawler

No character this year was more terrifying or interesting than Jake Gyllenhall's psycho with ambition, Lou Bloom, and perhaps no other movie got snubbed as much as Nightcrawler when this year's Oscar nominees were announced.  First-time director Dan Gilroy crafted an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that will make you feel sick at how much you're enjoying it.  Like Oyelowo in Selma, Gyllenhall should've been an acting nominee for his crazily brilliant performance here.  I'll never ask you to do anything that I wouldn't do myself, but I'm asking you now to go watch this movie.

5.  Whiplash

Now we're getting down to the good stuff.  I know J.K. Simmons would have you believe that "there are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'good job,'" but I'm gonna hand it to Whiplash.  Good job, everyone.  This movie deserves so much more than it's gotten.  Quick, artistic editing and a scarily intense performance from Simmons make Whiplash a suspenseful viewing experience from start to finish.  The slowly-increasing drum beat at the beginning perfectly begins the viewing experience, and puts the audience on a journey that won't let up until that drum beat slows back down at the very end.

4.  The Grand Budapest Hotel

And now for something completely different!  The Grand Budapest Hotel is perhaps the cinematic opposite of Whiplash, and may also be the apotheosis of Wes Anderson.  GBH uses Anderson's well-defined dollhouse cinematography and adds an over-the-top story and a stableful of A-class acting talent to create a crazy comedy that is actually pretty dark (though I use "dark" in the most pastel-colored sense of the word).  Through it all, Anderson shows a loving nostalgia for all things old (including film, hotels, women...), and creates the best movie he's ever made.

3.  Birdman

The "Most Meta Movie of the Year" award certainly goes to Birdman, which takes outsized versions of Michael Keaton's (and Edward Norton's) public perception, adds in a bit of magical realism, and a lot of Hollywood references to create one of the best movies of the year.  If you're reading this, I'm sure you know that Birdman may be poised to win the Best Picture award, and if it does, I won't complain.  There are many great things about this movie, from the all-around acting to the looks-like-it-was-all-done-in-one-shot cinematography, but it's the simple story of a man wanting to feel beloved for his efforts--while constantly having to live up to his past success in the midsts of dealing with his current failures--that makes Birdman so amazing.

2.  The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie is the first of two perfect 10's that I gave out this year, but it is the far more surprising choice.  When this movie came out last January (over a year ago now), I had no expectations of quality.  Little did I know that what I was about to witness was the best animated movie since Toy Story 3.  Directed by the same guys that brought you 22 Jump Street last summer, The Lego Movie takes what could have easily been an excuse to make a 90 minute corporate commercial and instead imbues it with more heart than almost any movie this year.  The story is smartly designed around whether Lego builders are supposed to follow the directions or to make their own creations, and it ends up deciding that the correct answer is that you're never wrong when you have the possibility to do both.  It's this attention to quality (along with a few handfuls of cameos and Lego-inspired jokes) that makes this movie so...special.

1.  Boyhood

Let's talk about the meaning of cinema for a second.  Why do we watch movies?  If we watch them to escape life, then perhaps Boyhood is the exact wrong pick for the best movie of the year.  There's no explosions, no aliens, no time-traveling (or, in 2014's case, no apes, no Legos, and no Birdmen) in Boyhood.  But if movies are supposed to create a reality that you can connect with and transport you through the screen to that world, then I can think of no better film in 2014 than Boyhood.  What made Boyhood so real was that the world of the film is the world I grew up in.  Scenes depicting Harry Potter midnight releases, baseball games with Roger Clemens on the mound, discussions of how there will never be anymore Star Wars films, and car rides spent in conversation about social media are all experiences that anyone in my generation can share with Mason in this movie.  Likewise, the hardships of parenting, divorce, or domestic violence may have struck home with other viewers in ways that no movie has before.  It is these scenes added together--filmed in a documentary-like fashion over a 12-year period and edited into a single, winding narrative--that make Boyhood a nostalgia factory for any viewer, and the best movie of the year.

Oscar Predictions!!!

In past years, I've made an entire separate post with all of my Oscar predictions.  But since it's already Oscar Sunday (and since this post is already extremely long), I'll just post my picks for each category below (just a side note, I have absolutely no confidence in any of my last three picks):

Live Action Short:          The Phone Call

Animated Short:             The Feast

Documentary Short:       Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1

Foreign Film:                   Ida

Documentary:                  Citizenfour

Animated Feature:          How to Train Your Dragon 2

Visual Effects:                  Interstellar

Sound Mixing:                 Whiplash

Sound Editing:                 American Sniper

Original Score:                The Theory of Everything

Original Song:                 Glory

Production Design:         The Grand Budapest Hotel

Makeup and Hair:          The Grand Budapest Hotel

Costume Design:             The Grand Budapest Hotel

Editing:                            Boyhood

Cinematography:            Birdman

Adapted Screenplay:      The Imitation Game

Original Screenplay:      The Grand Budapest Hotel

Supporting Actress:       Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)

Supporting Actor:          J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

Actress:                            Julianne Moore (Still Alice)

Actor:                              Michael Keaton (Birdman)

Director:                         Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman)

Picture:                           Boyhood

The Dawn is Here

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes isn't just the pinnacle of a new type of acting...it just might be the beginning of a better type of blockbuster.

In 2008's The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent walks up to a podium in broad daylight in front of a crowd of angry and scared Gothamites.  He does so in the hopes of quelling the fears of a city on the verge of a mental breakdown.  But even though his demeanor remains calm, the citizens of Gotham do not.  They interrupt and plead for him to give in to the demands of a psychotic criminal before things get even worse.  And who can blame them?  The Joker is terrorizing their city in a way that's never been seen before, either by them or by us in the audience.  Eventually, even Harvey has to admit that they've reached a new low.  But in this admittance, he reassures everyone that just because it's bad now doesn't mean it can't get better.  "The night is darkest just before the dawn," he declares.  "I promise you, the dawn is coming."

Well Harvey, the Dawn is here.  And it is beautiful.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a sequel to a prequel that rebooted a 46-year old franchise.  Its very existence as a movie seems preposterous.  That type of connectivity to past movies screams out that Hollywood is just trying to make a buck.  But DotPotA (even in acronym form it seems ridiculous!) is so much more than a prequel-sequel-reboot.  It continues Rise of the Planet of the Apes' CGI facelift of the 1968 original in all the right ways.  It isn't a perfect movie.  But it is the best movie you may see this summer.  

What makes DotPotA so good?  The dedication and confidence in its intelligent story, its complex characters, its CGI wizardry, and its simian-like actors.  It would have been easy for director Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Cloverfield) to joke at the absurdity of apes riding on horseback or rebelling with machine guns, but the tone remains serious throughout.  The movie deals with themes of war, rebellion, and family as if its giving a lecture on current world politics.  Who knew a movie about talking apes could be so profound?  This seriousness continues as trust between the humans and apes is built up and destroyed seemingly every 15 minutes, and often in startling ways.

Like it's predecessor, Dawn also never suffers from a lack of stylized directing.  There are silent scenes that rely on the actors and the spectacular CGI visuals alone, including a prolonged opening scene featuring Caesar's ape tribe (a clear nod to the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, except these apes don't need a monolith to boost their intelligence...they already know how to use sign language, much less use weapons).  There's a great 360 degree shot on top of a tank that captures both the ape takeover of the vehicle and the scale of the surrounding battle.  And there's a battle scene between two apes that is at once reminiscent of the construction chase in Casino Royale, yet explores the completely new possibilities of how apes can use their surroundings in a fight in more effective ways than humans.

But the real revelation here, as it also was in Rise, comes from the motion capture acting.  Great movies allow the audience to suspend their disbelief, and in a movie about intelligent apes fighting a war against Earth's last human survivors, that's a pretty big thing to ask.  Yet through the work of multiple actors committed to monkeying around in motion capture suits--along with the brilliant work from Weta Digital (Avatar) to turn these human actors into hulking apes--the audience believes in this world fully, from the opening shot of Caesar's green speckled eyes to the closing one.  

While all the critical attention has been given to Andy Serkis (who played Caesar as both a young and old ape in Rise, and also famously played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and King Kong in...well, you know), special praise here should also be given to Toby Kebbell, who plays the terrifying Koba.  I'm one of the many people who believe Serkis should have at least one Oscar nomination by now, but if a nomination is going to be given out to anyone in this movie, it should be Kebbell that gets the nod over Serkis (though give Serkis credit for allowing his supporting cast to shine...after all, motion capture is his baby.  He didn't have to start a school to help others reach his level.)  

In the ape tribe, Koba is the Scar to Caesar's Mufasa.  He's a loose cannon that is more trusted than he deserves to be, and Kebbell plays it perfectly.  Koba's face is scary enough with his one foggy eye and multiple lacerations, but it is Kebbell's acting that gives Koba a lunacy which is impossible to anticipate.  One scene in particular, where Koba confronts two humans testing machine guns on the waterfront, is so sadistically played that it made people in my theater laugh with delight and scream in terror within moments.  I hadn't heard a theater react like that since seeing Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker.

Which brings me back to that opening paragraph.  Though Harvey's quote is a simple analogy to compare the end of a dark night to the current situation in Gotham, it might as well be comparing that same dark night to the current situation of the summer blockbuster.  A smart summer blockbuster is a rare occurrence.  Outside of the works of Christopher Nolan, we hardly ever see smart summer movies that make boatloads of money anymore.  Studios want their summer movies to play to the widest audience possible, and making movies that would go over the heads of some of that audience means lost profits.  So, we get dumbed down movies like Tammy, Think Like a Man Too, and Transformers: Age of Extinction.  

Dawn is literally arriving after the darkest point of the summer, where a movie that received a 17% rating on Rottentomatoes became critic proof and still took in over $600 million worldwide.  We as a movie-going public should not want this to happen.  No one needs to support Michael Bay.  It's movies like Dawn that deserve our support.

If Dawn of the Planet of the Apes makes money, it will once again show that big, smart movies are still worth making, just as Rise of the Planet of the Apes did when it proved to be far more intelligent and successful than anyone thought it had any right to be, and as The Dark Knight did when it blew away our notions of whip-smart filmmaking in 2008.  This weekend will hopefully end with Dawn taking its rightful place at the top of the box office.  And maybe, just maybe, it will even show Hollywood that someone other than Nolan can direct a sequel that will make money AND be made with the care, concern, and intellect that the audience deserves.

The dark night is over, ladies and gentlemen.  The Dawn is here.  Go and gaze upon its beauty.