Top 10 best movies 2014

Notes: I already heard about this movie 6 or 8 years ago and, of course, I was really intrigued but I didn’t expect it to be so amazing. I mean, sure, it is a very nice gimmick (shooting a movie over a period of 12 years starting with a boy at 6 years old until he reaches 18 years old) but a gimmick remains a gimmick unless you manage to do something great with it and Richard Linklater certainly did something quite amazing here. Indeed, a traditional movie would give you a nice story, a great story if you’re lucky, but here they gave us a genuine slice of life. Of course, you could argue that they could have shot a documentary and you would have ended up with the same results but I highly doubt it. Indeed, for almost 3 hours, you spend more than a decade with these characters and even though nothing hugely dramatic happens, the whole thing was just spellbinding to behold.

Notes: Through the years, the Academy has made some poor choices but, lately, I have to admit that they finally got it right and this movie was definitely a worthy winner. Eventually, I still think that 'Boyhood' was in fact a better choice but this flick was really not far behind and I liked it a lot. To be honest, I thought that the actual play was in fact about Birdman so I was expecting something slightly different but that wasn't a big deal, in the contrary. What we got here was a very smart, very well directed movie with some really impressive performances. Indeed, it was filled with some very long takes and you can imagine that it must have been rather daunting for the actors involved. For Inarritu, it is the crowning of an already impressive and pretty much flawless career and I will definitely check his next movie starring this time Leonardo DiCaprio.

Notes: In my opinion, it is basically some kind of dark version of 'Fame' mixed with a nail-biting thriller. Still, even though J.K. Simmons was really amazing, giving the best performance of his career, they went really far with this character. I mean, the guy was just downright awful and, at some point, I started to have a hard time believing that someone would accept to be treated like that. But, basically, that's the whole point of this movie, is it all really worth it? For most of the duration of this movie, the answer would be resounding 'NO' and, then, they brought up this amazing ending with a music piece lasting almost 10 minutes with a solo drum of about 5 minutes. At that moment, you basically don't know anymore as the main character, also very played by Miles Teller, seemed to have reached another level of musical awesomeness, and then again, you start to think, maybe it was worth it after all.

Notes: I wasn't disappointed and it turned out to be easily the smartest movie released in 2014. Indeed, even though it was visually quite appealing, it was above all the fascinating ideas developed in this picture that really appealed to me. As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago, I saw a talk show on TV where they were saying that, indeed, some big companies like Google are currently investigating on AI and we should expect some major breakthrough in this area in the near future. In this movie, you could see already the issues we would have to face if we would come up with a very intelligent AI. For example, how could we know what an AI is actually exactly thinking? What would be its purpose in life, a concept we humans are constantly struggling with? And most important, what would be then our purpose?

Notes: Even though even it turned out be a more straightforward documentary than Joshua Oppenheimer's previous directing effort, I was still really impressed and pretty much floored by the damned thing. In my opinion, this movie is such a deep dive into the human soul and it was just fascinating to behold. I mean, this genocide in Indonesia was just the stuff of nightmare, obviously, this tragedy has been a huge trauma for the Indonesian people and it was just so fascinating to see how the people interviewed were dealing with this. Of course, if it would have been a US fictional feature, there would have been some tears and people apologizing for their deeds but the end-result was here so much more complex. I mean, you could see on their face that, very deep down, they somehow were aware that something terrible actually took place but it was buried so deep under a huge amount of denial, propaganda, decades of brainwashing, gossip, fear,… You could even see the ripple effect it had on the children of the perpetrators but even the victims were struggling to deal with these events (for example, it is rather unlikely that Adi’s mother suddenly found out 40 years later that her own brother was a guard in one of these jails). Eventually, it is quite amazing that, from such a horror, the makers managed to deliver something so humanistic.

Notes: It was basically a fascinating character study about a massive sociopath living in a dark and nihilistic world. Eventually, the scariest thing was not Louis Bloom himself but the fact that the whole thing was just so damned realistic. Indeed, I was worried that, at some point, the main character would go even further and would kill someone just to get a good story but, fortunately, they never made this mistake. The interesting thing is that many people thought that Bloom was despicable but, to be honest, the guy didn't really bother me so much. Basically, he just did his job and nobody forced the TV station to buy his videos and nobody forced the audience to watch them afterwards. His job was however despicable, that's for sure, and our world, apparently craving for these kind of images, is pretty sick.

Notes: With this directing effort, Xavier Dolan has delivered some of his best work so far. Indeed, the damned thing was a fascinating drama. Basically, the Canadian made a full circle and came back to a similar tale developed in his directing debut, ‘J'ai tué ma mère'. Indeed, it was again about the struggle between a (very) difficult teenager and his mother, except that the end-result was this time much stronger and I think I have never seen before a better representation of ADHD disorder. The other masterstroke was for Dolan to step aside this time and give the lead to Antoine-Olivier Pilon who was just fascinating in this movie. Then, to make this cast pretty much perfect, Dolan brought back his 2 muses, Anne Dorval and Suzanne Clément, who were fine as well, especially Dorval. To be honest, I wish they developed a little bit more what was going on between Suzanne Clément’s character and her family but it was the only minor flaw in this movie.

Notes: This time, the Dardenne brothers came up with some mix between a social drama and a thriller and the end-result was once again quite impressive. At first, I might have had some doubts about the fact they were working with such an international star like Marion Cotillard (something unique for the Belgian directors) but there was eventually nothing to worry about as Cotillard delivered once again a really strong performance. Indeed, in contrary to some other actresses like Charlize Theron or Nicole Kidman, the french woman didn't require some heavy make-up to become a really believable working-class woman. The only thing that didn't completely work for me concerning this character was the fact that she was a recovering depressive woman. I mean, for how long was she sick? Probably for months and this sickness seemed to make her a liability. As a result, it made it almost understandable that her bosses would want to sack her and I think this tale would have been more powerful if she would have been healthy. Still, what a strong social drama! For each colleague she meets, you get to see a different reaction, a different set of emotions, all human, sometimes rather despicable but always relatable and understandable.

Notes: It seems that Nolan's ambition is pretty much limitless as he decided to tackle this time an epic science-fiction feature reaching out for a seminal masterpiece like '2001: A Space Odyssey' and the guy almost pulled it off. I say almost because even though the whole thing was really entertaining, emotional and gorgeous to look at, the story was actually rather shaky and half of it didn't make much sense whatsoever. Above all, with this movie, you finally got a glimpse of Nolan's actual limitations. By now, we all pretty much agree that he is one of the most talented directors at work today but if you want to go all the way and make a really awesome masterpiece like his example Stanley Kubrick, he has to stop to please the average movie watcher by throwing some random action scenes here and there. It didn’t bother me with 'Inception' but, here, it was really obvious and rather annoying. Still, you get here some rather deep thoughts about life, death, love, the relativity of time and space and it was just exhilariting to see a blockbuster at least trying to tackle such ideas.

Notes: Personally, I always had a hard time with Wes Anderson. I mean, I always admired his work and his movies have always been visually impressive but I was missing something in his stories and I usually didn’t connect with them very well. Anyway, at last, with this movie, he finally nailed it. Indeed, he finally managed to mix his whimsical visual style and his hilarious characters with a very entertaining plot. To be honest, I still think I prefer ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ but this movie is definitely not far behind.