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There’s something special about a movie that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater, a movie that locks you and your friends in an endless cycle of debate and recollection. They’re not always the best of the best, even, but they’re movies that for one reason or another we can’t stop talking about. And that’s worthwhile.
22 Jump Street
If the plot summary for this one feels like they’re just rehashing 21 Jump Street, well that’s kind of the whole point. Most of the jokes come from some brilliant meta-humor skewering the very concept of formulaic comedy sequels. The single best moment comes from an UNBELIEVABLY awkward moment between Jonah Hill and Ice Cube that gets dialed up to eleven once Channing Tatum gets involved. You’ll know it when you see it.
— Charlie Burroughs
Blue Ruin
Blue Ruin takes the revenge thriller back to it’s ugly, dirty basics. Cinematographer turned writer-director Jeremy Saulnier is one to watch. He has a true filmmakers eye and has turned a small, crowdfunded film into a work of real horror and beauty. Macon Blair’s performance is powerfully understated in this biblically fatalistic tale of revenge.
— John Wedemeyer
Dear White People
In what might be the year’s most necessary cinematic conversation, writer/director Justin Simien has tackled a timely and difficult subject matter with honesty, complexity, and intelligence. The fact that the vehicle for these mature considerations is, rather than a highfalutin’ think piece, an engrossing and entertaining satire, well that’s just the icing on the cake. This is that rarest form of comedy, the one where the jokes arise directly from its sympathetic, well-intentioned, and terribly flawed cast of characters. It’s all held together by one of the year’s most thoughtful scripts, one that refuses to dumb down the issues of race and identity it’s addressing or short-change the three-dimensional people it creates by making anyone entirely villainous or entirely heroic.
— Gabriel Urbina
The Interview
Where to begin? Even without it hitting theaters,
The Interview became one of the most talked about movies of recent years due to the Sony hack and all of its repercussions. The “truth” behind what studio execs talk about, national security issues, and free speech rights were just some of the issues that emerged from Seth Rogan and James Franco’s goofy flick. Not since
Asses of Fire in 1999 did a fart comedy cause this big of an international incident.
— Brett Harrison Davinger
Into the Woods
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Into the Woods is not a perfect film, suffering both as a story and as a musical in its adaptation from stage show to feature film. However, the fact that the film does exist, and exists as a Disney film no less, is a major step in the studio’s treatment of fairy tales and children’s entertainment. That something as subversive and critical of the Happily-Ever-After formula came out of the Mouse House is a big sign of change in the way that we are approaching these kinds of films. It may not be the dawning of a new age, but at the very least it might be the beginnings of a changing of the guard.
— Gabriel Urbina
Leave the World Behind
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I didn’t know Swedish House Mafia when I walked into this documentary, and I can’t say I’ve run out and bought all their music (or hardly listened to it) since. But still, I loved this movie.
Leave the World Behind couches its story in a very universally human tale about the balance between joy and melancholy in a life of transience, and the film’s use of identical interview questions at the beginning and end emphasize just how effective it is at shifting opinion. Remarkable.
— Tim Falkenberg
Locke
Taut and compactly-sized, Steven Knight’s Locke starring a never better Tom Hardy as a man whose life begins to unravel during a particularly stress-laden drive on a British highway. The eighty-five minute morality play – a one man show, nearly real-time affair – sounds on the outset like a stage-driven chamber piece that may outstay its welcome a few miles in. Certainly the idea of someone yammering on his Bluetooth doesn’t seem to lend itself to entertaining or particularly interesting drama. Yet, thanks to inventive filming and a commanding lead turn, Locke is an invigorating and alert piece of filmmaking, one where the contrivances are certainly there and made aware, but quickly forgotten due to its human connection to real world stress and anxiety– which to be fair, quite often takes place independently and behind the wheel of a car.
— James Tisch
Obvious Child
We are currently in the middle of a stand-up renaissance, where it’s now the norm for comedians to make films and shows based on their routines rather just sticking the comedian in someone else’s comedy.
Obvious Child blends the old and new in the best way possible with its abortion-romantic comedy. Donna (Jenny Slate) spends little time deciding what to do with her unwanted pregnancy, but her budding relationship with Max (Jake Lacy) is much more difficult for her. Casting Lacy (
The Office) deserves as much note as Slate’s performance. While there have been plenty of female-centric romantic comedies, the woman is rarely imperfect like she is here. This movie is charming, and I can’t wait to see Slate in her next role.
— Tyler Lyon
The Rover
A slow, plodding (sometimes too plodding) very-near-future post-Apocalyptic story carried by the always captivating Guy Pierce and the better-than-you-could-have-expected Robert Pattinson. David Michod’s after-the-fall wasteland won’t irradiate or mutate you, but it will erode your soul and corrupt everything that was once innocent. In the future, it may be a good double feature with
Mad Max: Fury Road.
— Erik Paschall
The Skeleton Twins
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The Skeleton Twins feels like a bit of a forgotten movie of 2014, perhaps due to the fact that most fans of its main attraction – the pairing of SNL alums Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader – were scared off by the film’s dark, indie roots, and fans of those types of movies were scared off by the seemingly gimmicky casting. But once you get past the film’s admittedly somewhat contrived plot – estranged twin siblings are brought together after failed attempts at suicide on the same day – what you discover is an honest, touching story about their relationship, which is incredibly well acted from both sides. By ten minutes into the movie the casting no longer feels like a stunt and both Wiig and Hader create wonderfully flawed characters that feel real and lived in.
The Skeleton Twins is not a perfect movie by any means, but one that deserves more attention than it received upon its release.
— Greg Rodgers
Top Five
I wish we got more movies like
Top Five. There might not have been another movie this year that did a better job of blending something decidedly mainstream with something that felt fresh. The tale is familiar; the telling was anything but. That’s worth talking about in its own right, but invariably with
Top Five, we end up talking about race. Which we shouldn’t. The cast is almost entirely black, a rarity in Hollywood.
And it shouldn’t matter. Race isn’t a central issue to the movie. Chris Rock is funny. Rosario Dawson is a star. Cedric the Entertainer has one of the most unforgettable supporting roles in recent memory.
Top Five is about people, and about fame, and about the tenuous nature of celebrity culture, and it talked about those things better than nearly any other movie this year.
— Tim Falkenberg
Under the Skin
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It’s somewhat of a backhanded compliment to say that Jonathan Glazer’s
Under the Skin is the closest thing to a Stanley Kubrick film than any other since Kubrick’s demise. To be compared to one of the greatest filmmakers of all time is quite an honor, but Glazer’s vision is much more unique than that. The movie boasts some of the most sensual, rich, and captivating scenes of the year. Whether Scarlett Johansson’s character is luring pawns into black puddles of goo, or driving with facially disfigured men, the images give the film an unmistakable stamp of originality. If it was in doubt before, Glazer has surely earned his “auteur” stamp with
Under the Skin.
— Eduardo Ramos
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