The Big Picture: Top 10 Movies of 2014

[Arcane Azmadi]

STAGGERED that Winter Soldier was as far down the list as #5- I didn't know whether Bob would put it or Guardians at #1, but I was betting on Winter Soldier. I couldn't believe he put movies he hadn't even MENTIONED this year ahead of it.

Also, wasn't The Lego Movie a 2013 film? I remember it being last year's "what do you MEAN you're delaying its Australian release for 2 months so it can open on Boxing Day for no fucking reason?!" film- or am I confusing it with something else?

 

[Polarity27]

He gives his reasons for liking each movie except two, where a Lego figure yelling something inarticulate and a beat-em-up scene are supposed to stand in for "why I liked this movie" and are supposed to be AWWWWWESOME! ...but for those of us who haven't seen them, they're just two random, out-of-context action scenes. I have no idea what Raid is about or why I should see it or why it's good.

(I also think Cap 2 is massively overrated and the MCU movies' formula is starting to bug me. I adored everything with Nick Fury, I adored Falcon, but ScarJo just wasn't good enough to make me care about Natasha's scenes and everything with the big WS reveal was like watching Chris Evans emote against a piece of cardboard. That should have been the emotional center of the movie and it was just so dull I didn't care about it at all. I wanted to like it a lot better than I actually did.)

 

[Grabehn]

Space Raccoons > MLK, that is what Bob just said.

No he didn't, there's also Groot.

 

[Nimcha]

Every time somebody says 'everything is awesome' my day has been made.

What a truly awesome experience that movie was. Tears of laughter and then of (earned!) sentimentality. Not many movies can do that to me these days.

 

[The Madman]

No John Wick or Edge of Tomorrow? Shame as both were some of the most fun I've had with action movies in ages.

 

[AgDr_ODST]

Really good list this year. My only problem is with myself in that I've only seen 3 of the 10 movies on his list. A 4th movie that he named has been taking up space on my laptop since about the middle of the year and I've still not watched it yet.

I don't understand the love for Snowpiercer. It was really great up until the last fifteen minutes, then it became an absolute mess. Too many ideas being bounced around ended in a finale that was trying to balance too many themes and plot threads. The last few shots of the movie are supposed to be hopeful, but *spoilers* there is no way a little boy and a teenage girl are going to repopulate the species in the snow. Nope, that movie ended with the death of the human race.

If you had a high post count under your belt I'd be giving you alot shit right about now but since you're new I'll just give you a tip. Next time you are going to knowingly spoil something even if it's semi oldish (in this case earlier this year) news put it in little brackets like this:

Spoiler

[/spo.iler].
Just remove the . in the middle of the second spoiler.

Spoiler

My apologies. I didn't know how to do it. I fixed it.

Spoiler

You're fine Jedi, I was just trying to help.

 

[Moeez]

Need to see Under The Skin, Selma, and Inherent Vice.

Raid 2 is fucking amazing.

Was hoping Bob gave a bit more foreign love. Like Norte, The End of History which is by far my favourite this year:

Nothing quite like a 250min moral epic.

 

[i4njw]

You included Guardians and LEGO, but left out Nightcrawler, Fury, Dawn of the POTA, and X-Men?

Disappointed.

 

[Mr.Evil]

Well, it's that time of year again (oh, wait, you said that already, Bob). My own critiques of Bob's list -

10: This one looks interesting. Haven't seen it.

9: Haven't seen this one either. Also looks interesting.

8: You know, I liked this one, but not as much as I wanted to. The logic behind its premise escapes me other than for the novelty factor. Still, it's off-kilter enough that I think I'd recommend a watch.

7: Haven't seen it, doubt I will.

6: I'm a fan of Wes Anderson, and I liked this one as much as most of his other films. But this one felt a lot more... dark than his earlier work. There's a sense of sadness about this one that isn't quite countered by the whimsy, which makes it different. Still, I liked it.

5: I would've put this one at Number 1.

4: Yes, it's awesome. Hands down the best animated film this year (sorry, neither Big Hero 6 nor HTTYD 2 even come close).

3: Yeah, sorry, can't say I have a lot of enthusiasm for the Raid movies. As action flicks go, they're good, but I need more substance to actually enjoy something like this. I'd put X-men: DoFP, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, or Edge of Tommorrow in this slot (or all three, basically a 3-way-tie).

2: Haven't seen it, but definitely plan to.

1: You know, I definitely liked it. But best of 2014? Nah.

Overall, a solid year. Nothing that wowed me, though. As for next week, I doubt there will be too many surprises.

 

[MDSnowman]

Okay predictions for next week's worst 10 films.

My guesses are:
TMNT
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Transcendence
Robocop
Exodus: Gods and Kings
Tusk
The Fault In Our Stars
The Giver
Winter's Tale
One of those awful Christian movies that came out this year (Son of God, Heaven Is For Real, I Origins, God Is Not Dead, take your pick)

Oh yeah, Bob HATED Transcendence

 

[PunkRex]

No Days of Future Past? I thought that was an amazing film, right up your alley Bob.

I hope Maleficent is on your worst list, it's been a long time since I've despised a movie as much as I did coming out of that.

 

[MorganL4]

Gee I wonder what next week's episode will be about?

I'm gonna go with "The Muppets take Manhattan". Because that seems logical........

Oh wait, there was that thing in the country next to China, I heard something about that somewhere ONCE.... Nah, everyone loves Kermit.

 

[KazeAizen]

No Days of Future Past? I thought that was an amazing film, right up your alley Bob.

I hope Maleficent is on your worst list, it's been a long time since I've despised a movie as much as I did coming out of that.

Days of Future Past really isn't all that amazing. At least not by the standards of modern superhero fair. Its caught painfully in between the early millennium super hero movies in its choice of attire and style of action and the new superhero standard which is filled with continuity nods and easter eggs.

As for Maleficent I doubt it will be on his worst list. It had stones like I've never seen from a Disney movie and was too damn memorable with a hell of a great performance for him to go on his worst list.

 

[walrusaurus]

I'm not really surprised that Bob's list gets less interesting as it gets towards number one, with only Selma being in the number two spot really throwing a wrench in his system, just overall disappointed. While yes, Guardians was a good movie, it's still nothing really more than a studio movie that's a fun time but kind of throwaway. Just because the film was a "gamble" from Marvel (The hottest studio working right now that could literally sell tickets to anything they wanted), doesn't really merit it being the best film of the year when he leaves out probably more deserving films like Obvious Child, Only Lovers Left Alive, Boyhood, Adieu au langage, Mommy, and Birdman (Though I'm less surprised about that one since it lampoons his beloved superhero genre). I just honestly think that Bob has too much of a skew towards the Marvel films, because he acts like they're all these big daring projects when really they're carefully calculated films lacking in creative vision from actual filmmakers, product just to make money. And I can enjoy these movies, there's just no way I would ever put one at the top of a year end list.

It always makes me laugh when i see these comments. "this list is so dumb its all big blockbusters all of which were inferior to list-of-movies-98%-of-the-audience-has-never-heard-of." Top 10 lists are inherently gimmicky and ment for broad generic consumption, to say nothing of the fact that Bobs reviews in general are of movies that are intended for broad mainstream consumption. He only ever dips into the auteur/indie scene when theres nothing else worth reviewing from the big studios. If your looking for a comprehensive list of the arthouse stuff you've come to the wrong site.

 

[Swarles]

snip

-snip-

-snap-

Because of the signature authorship of this video series, I take it as a given that this is "MovieBob's Top 10" instead of say "The Escapist's Top 10". The inherent subjectivity in making a Top ___ list for anything that isn't strictly numerical means that there can never be an authoritative list. I rather like that the Escapist is doing so much to allow so many of their writing staff to present their own top 5 lists for the year.

I understand where you're coming from, and I don't really want to argue on word choice so I think I'll just concede, it's not an authoritative list and while I would rather it be "Favourite Films" rather than just "Top 10" there's nothing really inherently wrong with it.

You're right that the Marvel films don't carry a sense of auteur directing, writing or cinematography. You can see the signature influence at specific points, but it doesn't carry across the film as a whole.

I've reached the same conclusion about Evans. He has explicitly stated that he wants to be a director over an actor, which based on his limited range (albeit appropriately cast as far as I've seen) is probably for the best. It's hardly typical for an entire cast and crew to be emotionally and creatively invested in any given work, but there are those working in the franchise with a love for the work. Tom Hiddleston seems happy, and Kenneth Branagh approached Thor as a fan of the source material. All big budget blockbusters carry with them some scale of soulless, profit seeking management, but Marvel's films are far from the worst offenders in that regard while making broadly entertaining movies. That shouldn't be wholly discounted.

For me why they all feel exactly the same. If they got Quentin Tarantino, Terry Gilliam, and Wes Anderson all to direct Marvel films they would all feel like the same movie. And that's most of my problem and why they feel like a cash cow rather than something that should be praised against The Grand Budapest Hotel and Under the Skin.

I thought Evans was good in Snowpiercer but I'll agree with you, his range isn't that great which is why he's getting cast in pretty much the same roles across the board. I'll agree with you that Marvel's films are far from the worst offenders. I mean look at the souless cash grabs this year that were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Need for Speed, and Divergent. These films are much, much worse than the Marvel films, and they all have nothing really going for them. I'm not saying the Marvel films are inherently bad movies, I am simply saying that I don't feel like they have the same kind of weight as a Only Lovers Left Alive or a Boyhood.

-snip-

It always makes me laugh when i see these comments. "this list is so dumb its all big blockbusters all of which were inferior to list-of-movies-98%-of-the-audience-has-never-heard-of." Top 10 lists are inherently gimmicky and ment for broad generic consumption, to say nothing of the fact that Bobs reviews in general are of movies that are intended for broad mainstream consumption. He only ever dips into the auteur/indie scene when theres nothing else worth reviewing from the big studios. If your looking for a comprehensive list of the arthouse stuff you've come to the wrong site.

I think that Bob has a way here in his Top Tens to give credence to films that he wasn't able to talk about during the year. Obviously people are wanting to see reviews of the biggest films of the year because that's what they're going to see over the weekend and they want to know if it's good or shit, with a top ten list you can show movies that maybe a lot of people haven't seen then and give them recognition. I mean why else would he have had a decent first half to his list, but then hit Captain America and stop talking about independent or auteur driven films. I mean most of the reason I watch YourMovieSucks Top ____ of the year is because he'll probably talk about films I've yet to see and then make me want to go out and see them because they look interesting. Bob had a way to honour the types of films he isn't able to talk about during the year but he didn't do that.

Then again, I don't know why I should expect more from someone who thinks that "film critics" are the tumour infecting the medium because they don't think the Marvel movies are the biggest risk ever taken by any studio and because of that they should win Movie Of The Year every year.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see Boyhood on his least favourite of the year simply because he wants to feel superior to the "Film Critics"

 

[PunkRex]

No Days of Future Past? I thought that was an amazing film, right up your alley Bob.

I hope Maleficent is on your worst list, it's been a long time since I've despised a movie as much as I did coming out of that.

Days of Future Past really isn't all that amazing. At least not by the standards of modern superhero fair. Its caught painfully in between the early millennium super hero movies in its choice of attire and style of action and the new superhero standard which is filled with continuity nods and easter eggs.

As for Maleficent I doubt it will be on his worst list. It had stones like I've never seen from a Disney movie and was too damn memorable with a hell of a great performance for him to go on his worst list.

The only 'ballsy' part of Maleficent was the scene where she had her wings hacked off. Everything else about that film was as bog standard modern, grim-dark fantasy as you could get. The aesthetics were generic fantasy, Frozen did the true love twist a hundred times better and the anti-hero things getting damn tiresome, the only way they could think to make her likable was to make every other character either crazy evil or super dumb/annoying. The film offered nothing new, it was boring but worst of all fell into that awful trope of thinking the only way to make a female character deep and interesting is to beat the crap out of her.

They took the 'mistress of all evil' and turn't her into a freaking victim, and I'd be cool with that if they had something to say but they didn't, they did it because that's what's popular but personally I wouldn't find a character like Sauron better if he was simply out for revenge. Hell, it wasn't even Maleficent who turn't into the Dragon, although I will admit the crow character was kind of interesting.

I really, REALLY didn't like that film.

 

[Nouw]

Where's Nightcrawler? One of the most well directed films of the year with an amazing performance from Jake Gyllenhaal.

 

[Tim Chuma]

More the serious film reviewer coming out here, good to see.

I was glad to see my friend's documentary about Weng Weng finally coming out and Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Canon Films.

Jodorowsky's Dune was something special.

Why Don't You Play in Hell?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1FWScYLqwg

The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lDrkokymLQ

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

Did... did you really just pronounced Battle Royale as "Battle Royal?"

 

[squallina]

It might just be a difference in my personal tastes, but Bob's hard-on for the newer Marvel movies (regardless of their varying quality) is really starting to turn me off his opinions on movies in general.

If you actually listen to his reviews he's not as gushing as everyone assumes he is about them.

I did listen to his reviews of said Marvel movies. I thought, "Hey maybe I really am missing out on something amazing. I better get into this franchise." So I watched them all and didn't really like any of them except for Captain America: The First Avenger. Now I groan every time Bob's super-excited for a Marvel movie because I'm fairly certain I can't agree with Bob on this.