Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 100 Films of 2014 (20-11)

Bottom Ten | 90-71 | 70-51 | 50-36 | 35-21

So this is even later getting up here than I intended, considering the Oscars were last night and I've yet to write the post for the Top 10. The truth is that I grossly underestimated how much effort it would be to write even just a couple paragraphs for 100 films. By the time I had finished the first 80 I was writing about, I'm pretty certain my mind was fried like an egg. For my own sanity, I had to back away from the keyboard for a while. In the meantime, the usual things (especially work) got in the way, and it made it difficult to write last week. If I were shooting for timeliness with these posts I would have missed the mark.

But I'm not doing this for the hits (although I'd appreciate it if you click through and read on). I'm doing this because I have some things to say about the films I saw. Well, about 45-50 of them or so. The rest I see as an exercise to figure out how to say "eh, it was OK, I guess" in the form of two paragraphs.

Unlike last year, there aren't any clear favorites in my top 20. I'm pretty confident that my top 10 is my top 10, but there's a pretty good chance any of these could be #11, or even higher, depending upo which one I've seen most recently. We start with a film that should have won more than one Oscar, a film that was literally more than a decade in the making.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 100 Films of 2014 (35-21)

We're almost 2/3 of the way through the list, as we count down the next fifteen films. There's a lot of variety here, from two wonderful sci-fi films of completely opposite sizes, a lovely animated film, and a film where a person turns into a sparrow. First off is the first of two MCU entries on this list.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 100 Films of 2014 (50-36)

Bottom Ten | 90-71 | 70-51

We've passed the half way point in the hundred movies of 2014, and from here the groups get a bit smaller. Instead of 20 at a time, we'll go through 15 on the next two lists. Now that we're done with that piece of housecleaning, on to the next batch!

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 100 Films of 2014 (70-51)

To see the Bottom Ten, click here.

For 90-71, click here.

No need for any sort of introduction, here are the next twenty movies on the list.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 100 Films of 2014 (90-71)

This next set of twenty films is kind of a transition zone between the ten movies at the bottom of this list, which I didn't really care for, and the top 70% of the list, which on the whole I liked a good deal.  Up first is a film that kind of is the divider line between the Bottom Ten, and this transitional group.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 2014 Films, The Bottom Ten

Ayyy! Where's a jukebox I can pound?

Every list has to have an end to it. While the movies at the bottom of my list are not that good of movies, each one still had some elements which made them better than a complete waste of time. No, the movies that were complete wastes of time were not films that I happened to see. These were the ones that stunk from afar and needed no viewing to confirm their lack of quality. Instead, most of these movies sitting here at the bottom of my 2014 in film suffer from a lack of proper execution, little reason to exist beyond the potential for franchise dollars, or just a wild mismatch in tone. Without further adieu, here's the infamous ten.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: 2014 in Review

San Fransokyo, winner of the Best Fictional City Award for 2014.

One hundred films.

During my "2014 Film Year"* I saw 100 films from 2014**. Most were in the theater, but many were through Netflix, Amazon Streaming, and even a couple via iTunes. I never intended to watch this many films, it just kind of happened because of a few reasons.