The Best Movies of 2014

I've already ranted about the dismal slate of movies we were given last year, and how disappointing it was that so many critics were in love with them. Still, there are at least five movies from 2014 that I think you should see, and they are:

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
A powerful allegory of many of today's societal problems, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" might even be better than its predecessor from three years before. The visuals surely look better, and if it weren't for the breathtaking visual effects of Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar," this would certainly land a Best Visual Effects Award at the Oscars.

Leviathan
I like movies that make me think of allegories. The obvious parallel of "Leviathan" is to the story of Job in the Bible; this is where the title comes from, for ancient religious texts refer to sea creatures (or whales) as such. (Director Andrey Zvyaginstev also has described how the real-life situation of Marvin Heemeyer in the United States inspired the story.) But there's another likely inspiration: Thomas Hobbes. His famous philosophical work, calling for an absolute sovereign to rule, shares the title, and the cover features the biblical text from Job: "There is no power to be compared to him." How is that relevant? The film "Leviathan" has been described by Ethan Gates in the New Republic as the movie Hollywood loves but the Russian government hates. There are not so unobtrusive criticisms of Russian corruption, and so it's as if the film makers are saying that there is no power compared to Putin, and that's not necessarily a good thing. (This is a powerful sentiment considering how popular Putin is in Russia.) In "Leviathan," there are also moralistic Orthodox clergymen and moments of sexual violence sprinkled throughout the film. And this all, ultimately, follows the expected path -- the total opposite of American movie's usual trajectory -- that "all's well that ends unwell." This is a dark, depressing movie that, allegory or no allegory, requires a bit of patience, but it's certainly well worth it.

Pride
"Pride" is the reason movies should still exist. This is a film that with ease marries the belief that movies should be about something with the simple requirement that they should entertain. And entertain "Pride" does. I think Dominic West dancing to "Shame Shame Shame" was the best thing I saw in the movies all year. Based on the true story of a queer organization coming to help striking miners in rural Wales, this often does feel like a pretty standard message-film, but it's a lot more than that. It's funny, it's heartfelt, it's smart, it has terrific acting. It embraces cliches, but who cares? Messages about friendship and acceptance can sometimes be forgiven for this. One of the best moments in when the group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, drags the leader of the local striking miners to a gay bar in London, and practically pushes him on stage to thank them for their support. While the crowd isn't exactly thrilled to see him, he eventually, like a natural, gives a genuine moment of thanks: "What I'd really like to say to you tonight is thank you. If you're one of the people that's put money in these buckets, if you've supported LGSM, then thank you, because what you've given us is much stronger than money. It's friendship. When you're in a battle against an enemy so much bigger, so much stronger than you, well, to find out you had a friend you never knew existed, well, that's the best feeling in the world. So, thank you."

The Babadook
"The Babadook" isn't necessarily scary because it features some kind of demon-ghost haunting a mother and her son; it's scary because of what it represents. Even the most amateur film historian will recognize the tribute to early cinema German expressionism, but it's deeper than that; consider what one blogger has said about expressionism, that it is "at its bare essence taking the internal and making it external. Expressionists seek to express meaning and emotional experiences -- often radically to reflect mood and tone -- rather than physical reality." Sure, the monster (or whatever the hell it is) is terrifying, as is the poem that accompanies him (where, "if it's in a rhyme or it's in a book, you can't get rid of the Babadook..."). But what's more horrifying is (slight spoiler alert) the way this movie demonstrates, primarily through Essie Davis' character, that the fall into madness is one of the true horrors of life, that real demons are what's inside us, what often can only be put at bay rather than defeated outright. Understanding this will potentially help viewers understand the ambiguous ending a bit more clearly.

(Another good movie from 2014 about mental health is "Two Days, One Night" from France.)

Life Itself
"Life Itself" was by far the best film of the year, and yet this year's Academy Awards would certainly never give you that impression. I wasn't demanding a Best Picture nomination, which it definitely deserved, but Best Documentary is obvious, and yet, now the overrated "Citizenfour" will go home with the win. Why the film was ignored is something I don't understand, though the film's summer release probably didn't help, as the Academy has a terribly short memory. As I wrote back in July, "Life Itself," the documentary tribute to Roger Ebert, is of course a story largely exploiting our love of nostalgia, for there is a lot of footage of Ebert and his partner Gene Siskel dueling over movies. But "Life Itself" is also the best romance of the year and a truly heartfelt homage to the man who most would agree was the film critic of his time.

Honorable Mentions: "Guardians of the Galaxy," "The Overnighters," "In Bloom," "Snowpiercer"

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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Et tu, Koba?

"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is the movie that has brought "Apes" to war. Oddly enough, this is one of the most anti-war films in years, with unmistakable allegories and warnings against unguarded militantism and vengeance. This has been observed by several others. Ari Siletz notes that audiences will surrender to the film's fatalism, that "when the forecast is war, peacemaking is as futile as raindancing in a drought." Here's what Rob Ryan has to say: "The central thesis of the second movie seems to be that despite the best intentions of good leaders, people (and apes) are innately paranoid, hateful creatures that are almost entirely incapable of getting along with each other." Three years ago, in my review of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," the better than expected reboot of the series, I wrote that the horror of the film was that the "descent with modification" that is evolution is flipped and the hegemony of humans over their distant cousins is reversed. The horror of "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is that now both species have guns and will do anything to destroy each other. There exists here an embrace of the "killer ape theory," the idea that "war and interpersonal aggression was the driving force behind human evolution." War has found a way.

This is really evident in the fascinating performance that is Toby Kebbell as Koba. Koba (if I recall correctly) was the ape who was particularly mistreated in the previous film. Here, he is one of Caesar's (Andy Serkis) top lieutenants. In the opening hunt, it is Koba who saves Caesar's life. Koba recognizes that it was Caesar who saved his first, and so he is willing to follow him wherever Caesar takes the apes as their leader. But it's not so simple. The majority of Koba's scenes show him as a character of haunting mercilessness--an angry warrior charging into battle, willing to figuratively and literally jump through fire if he has to. I don't think I've ever seen something as uniquely frightening as an ape shooting assault rifles while charging on horseback into battle. Scars make you stronger, he believes--but they also make you more bitter. He has learned hate from humans, and that appears to be all he has learned, and so he grows impatient with Caesar's cautious pragmatism and pacifism. Koba is clever as he is vicious, making his humorous scenes, like how he "plays monkey" to distract his enemy humans, all the more unnerving. It isn't too surprising that he hates humans so much. His reflection, to some extent, is in Gary Oldman's character, Dreyfus. It's not fully explained, but we can assume that while it's unlikely the apes killed Dreyfus's family, he blames them. He's a man of war by necessity, he might argue, not by choice.

Caesar, our main protagonist, isn't nearly as interesting as Koba. But Andy Serkis is doing remarkable work with this trilogy. After watching the first film, I couldn't help but wonder if Serkis was getting tired playing these characters that require motion-capture technology. After all, he has done this for Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" trilogies, "The Adventures of Tintin," and "King Kong." He is a part of the main cast of the upcoming "Star Wars" film, and while there are interesting, to say the least, theories as to what kind of character he will play (ranging from a Wookie to Yoda to Jar Jar Binks' son), I side with the argument that his character should not be one that requires computer generation. He has proven his ability and imagination with such acting, but now, I say, let him have an opportunity to prove he can do more traditional acting. Serkis knows this; here is what he told the Telegraph: "Caesar and all the other characters I have ever played are driven by one thing and that is acting. Audiences want to be moved by acting, not by visual effect." I still think that audiences don't quite understand the physicality of his work. Here's an great quote from an interesting article in Wired about his performance as Gollum: "He conceived Gollum as an addict whose inner struggle translated into an out-of-control, convulsive physicality. In his audition, he climbed up on a chair, his face contorted, and delivered his lines in a thin voice interspersed with a gurgling cough."

Serkis doesn't necessarily gurgle a cough and contort his face, but his Method acting approach and laborious study of ape movement is obvious. Remind yourself that the actors portraying humans are not seeing the actors portraying apes as we the audience see them, so the pressure is twofold on Serkis and others. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the digital rendering of Caesar seems to look less realistic than that of Koba or Maurice (Karin Konoval), an orangutan who serves as an important adviser to Caesar and a school teacher. Most of the other characters aren't particularly interesting, though. Jason Clarke as Malcolm, the main human, is more of a man of peace (in stark contrast to Clarke's characters in "Lawless" and "Zero Dark Thirty") than Dreyfus. It's not a bad performance or character per se, just a rather flat one. Like Frida Pinto before her, Keri Russell isn't given much to do other than hand out antibiotics to dying apes. But while the movie doesn't have much to offer in terms of character development, the other elements are terrific. The music by the great Michael Giacchino manages to aid the film while seemingly paying homage to the original 1968 film and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (which was released the same year and also famously has apes). Its dialogue isn't exactly that of Shakespeare, but its impressive visuals, powerful imagines and obvious metaphors make it a movie you should see.

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