Best of 2014 - Most Surprising Movies

Tim Falkenberg January 6th, 2015 - 12:00 PM

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There are movies that fail to meet expectations, and then there are movies that come out of nowhere to be some of our favorites of the year. Sometimes they’re big budget blockbusters that look questionable in the early going but turn out surprisingly fun. Other times, they’re independent pictures we never expected much from in the first place. For one reason or another, we didn’t see these good movies coming.

The Double

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Directed and co-written by Richard Ayoade (best known to American audiences as the guy we didn’t recognize from the poster for The Watch), The Double is the cinematic adaptation of one of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s most famous short stories. Jesse Eisenberg stars in a dual role as a meek and “invisible” office drone who meets his overly charismatic “twin.” However, it’s Ayoade’s visual style (plus his perfect dark comic timing) that demands attention. It’s part Eraserhead and part Brazil without feeling derivative of either of those two masterpieces, which is probably among the nicest things I can say about any movie.

— Brett Harrison Davinger

Edge of Tomorrow

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This film was not supposed to be good. It had title changed from the far more interesting All You Need Is Kill to the bland and generic Edge of Tomorrow, and is even now being branded as Live / Die / Repeat. Yet despite it’s muddled add campaign, Edge of Tomorrow delivers an adventure with wit and action honed to a knife’s edge. Managing to create a taut narrative out of a time loop would have been impressive enough. The fact that the film is well acted, funny, and thrilling is downright surprising.

— John Wedemeyer

The Equalizer

I walked into this one expecting a simple, fun action film starring an older yet still invincible hero (see: most of Bruce Willis and Liam Neeson’s output for the past few years). And…. that’s exactly what I got. But The Equalizer was actually well put together, from the pacing, to the characters, to its ability to create actual suspense. It wasn’t mind-blowing, or revolutionary, it was just kind of film that did everything it set out to do.

— Erik Paschall

How to Train Your Dragon 2

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Sequels, particularly animated sequels, never live up to the first. It seemed to be an unwritten rule before this movie came out. But How to Train Your Dragon 2 delivered, with beautiful animation, some of the most real characters of any movie all year, and at least one plot twist I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

— Nicole Aronis

Lucy

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That the film was concocted by Luc Besson, the enterprising fifty-something French entrepreneur, is but part of the oddball charm of Lucy. For throughout its 90-minute running time, the movie contorts and expands with a daffy flexibility, moving so quickly through its insane (and borderline inane) plot it’s difficult to quibble with its nonsense science and scatter-brained idea. Brevity, by turn, might be its highest asset. Yet, there’s a giddy and enjoyably looney propulsive rush to the films’ hair-brained schematics. Besson throws imagery and madcap violence at the screen with such reckless abandon; he’s genre bursting to such a heightened degree that Lucy plays like The Tree of Life meets Looney Tunes.

— James Tisch

Maleficent

Last year’s Frozen felt like an evolution of the Disney fairy-tale musical formula, acknowledging changes in attitudes while preserving the appeal of iconic Disney tropes. Maleficent feels more like a condemnation of the older tales. This isn’t just a new perspective; according to this film, everything you know about Sleeping Beauty is wrong. It’s not just a matter of Maleficent secretly being the hero, either. Aside from poor Aurora all of the “good guys” are either useless or evil. It doesn’t mean the movie is perfect by any means, and there’s a fair bit of nonsense that’s probably unneeded. Still, Angelina Jolie absolutely owns every scene she’s in as one of Disney’s most iconic villains, and the film as a whole comes together well enough that I’m still more impressed than disappointed. I don’t know if Disney’s other live-action remakes of classic fairy-tales will be good but I’m definitely more interested than before.

— Charlie Burroughs

St. Vincent

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St. Vincent, to put it simply, was delightful. Murray, along with a toned-down Melissa McCarthy and an unexpected Naomi Watts provided an immense amount of laughs, emotion, and sincere performances. Writer-director Theodore Melfi turned a simple story into something both extremely heartfelt and hilarious.

— Rachel Lutack

See more of the Best of 2014

Best of 2014 – Most Surprising Movies