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.
90. The Judge
I seriously considered putting this one on the previous list, as it has more in common with the Bottom Ten than the rest of the films in this group. In fact, from now on, I'm going to call the line between "don't recommend it" and "recommend watching it, with some reservations" the "Judge Line". Some things work, such as Dax Shepard's overwhelmed lawyer, Billy Bob Thornton's slick prosecutor, and one scene between Downey and Duvall. However, most of the movie just doesn't work, as it tries to cram three films into one (family drama, romantic comedy, courtroom drama). Each story line has some elements that had they been the center of a better focused film could have been better.
89. Monuments Men
This film, about a team of soldiers and art experts drafted as soldiers that was put together to save some of the greatest symbols of European culture, was the first one I saw in 2014. It's position here near the bottom of the list is less a reflection on the movie itself, and more on the quality of movies that I saw. I dinged this one a bit because it should have been better than it was, given the absolutely stunning cast (Bill Murray, John Goodman, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, and others). As it was, it was still particularly enjoyable, if a bit fluffy and forgettable. Like many of the films on the lower portion of the list, this one still had a truly great scene, in this case involving Bill Murray's character and a care package he received from home.
88. Tammy
The trailer for this movie sold it rather short. They advertised it as a "wacky" Melissa McCarthy film in the vein of Identity Thief. Yes, Tammy does have some of that, most of which is shown in the trailer. But much of the movie is a more personal, less funny tale of a woman whose life just fell apart taking a road trip with her alcoholic grandmother. There are some funny moments, and McCarthy and Sarandon have some good moments along the way. However, the tone kind of bounces around, and it often fails to straddle that line between absurd ridiculousness and realistic pain and growth. It's the kind of movie we need more of, but ideally they would be better than this.
87. Muppets Most Wanted
There's nothing really wrong with the second of the new batch of Muppets movies. Like even the worst movie starring Jim Henson's creations, it still had some laughs, some great performances by the muppeteers, and a few neat cameos and non-muppet performances. However, at this point I can barely remember a lot of what happens in the film, don't remember any of the songs, and sometimes forgot I even saw the movie. That wasn't the case with The Muppets, a much better film than this one. It wasn't a bad way to spend two hours, but it certainly could have been better.
86. Million Dollar Arm
About a down on his luck agent and his contest in India to find two potential major league pitchers, this movie is actually better than I expected. It was at times pretty funny, and it doesn't try to paint Jon Hamm's character as a complete saint. It often transcends the dangerous zone where these kind of films can end up, where a "white savior" comes and rescues brown people from their miserable existence. Unfortunately, it seems far too focused on how about how well Hamm's life turned out, instead of keeping the focus on the two pitching prospects and their experience in trying to break into the tough business of baseball.
85. American Sniper
Coincidentally, this is one of four straight films based upon true stories. These kind of films are often hard to make into good films, as sometimes the necessity of a well structured film can contradict how things actually happened. Throw in a messy conflict that in many ways is still going on that is also incredibly divisive in its nature, and it can be even more difficult to make a good story. One sure fire way to not do it is to try to remove any element which might be deemed controversial, and to smooth off the rough edges of humanly flawed main character until it approaches dull hagiography.
There's a good film somewhere in the story of Chris Kyle, but it would have to deal with the fact by most accounts Kyle was a violent person who wasn't very honest. It would also have to deal with the elephant in the room and be very nuanced about the larger conflict surrounding Kyle's story, perhaps to an extent impossible so close in time to the events portrayed. It would keep some of the things that worked in the film, like it's emphasis on how our overworked military can put a massive strain on both the soldiers and their families. This better film wouldn't make text out of what should be subtext, having a character explicitly state "I'm doing this to get attention" when she's caught cheating on Kyle. It wouldn't have ridiculously fake babies that take you out of emotionally important scene in the film.
I appreciate that this film affected me in a different way than it did other people. Given its box office total and its unprecedented January success, I'd imagine that this is the case for a lot of moviegoers. That doesn't change the fact that I'm a bit disappointed that Eastwood didn't do a better job with this one.
84. The Imitation Game
The story of Alan Turing and the rest of the team at Bletchley Park that broke the enigma code is a magnificent story that should be told. Also, the story of how a repressive British government unfairly punished Turing (and thousands of others) for their homosexuality is one that deserves a film. Unfortunately, The Imitation Game does a bad job with both stories. Putting aside the historical inaccuracies and anachronisms found in the film (of which there are plenty), it's way too formulaic. I was half expecting Charles Dance's officer to twirl his mustache at one point, while several other times I thought a slow clap was going to break out as our heroes succeeded in just the nick of time. There were times that Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightly's performances rose above the rote nature of the film and genuinely made me feel for the characters, but these weren't enough to salvage the movie as a whole.
83. The Theory of Everything
A general rule of thumb for Oscars skeptics is that the acting winners usually aren't the "best" but the "most". In other words, the Academy voters tend to reward performances where physical hardship, extreme actions, or just down right scenery chewing is required for the role. Subtle performances are more likely to be ignored in favor of big performances. Which is why most stories about The Theory of Everything tend to focus on Eddie Redmaynes performance as Stephen Hawking. After all, he has to go through the motions of Hawking's debilitating neural disease, the story of which spans three decades. He does a fine job of going through the hardships and changes that celebrated physicist suffered through, but his performance may not be the best one in the movie.
However, the film isn't supposed to be about Hawking, it's supposed to be about his ex-wife, Jane Wilde Hawking. Because the film doesn't seem to quite know if this is what it wants, it proceeds throughout it run time unsure of itself. Although it devotes scenes to both characters dealing with the happy, yet complicated, defiance of an initial two-year terminal diagnosis, it never really connects with either of them, save for a few scenes here and there. The film also falls into the trap that The Imitation Game did, plotting out the course of the physicist's successes like it's a formulaic sports movie. I seem to recall one of his lectures devolving into a cliched slow clap session (after the requisite walkout by a couple stodgy fuddy-duddies unconvinced by his work). A few good scenes here and there aren't enough to save this from its place in the zone of tolerable, even intermittently enjoyable, mediocrity.
82. St. Vincent
There are many examples of films that look great on paper, particularly when you read their cast, but miss something in execution. Something I use when trying to figure out what goes wrong for these films is see if you can think if the actor in a given part brings anything to the table. For all but one (possibly two) characters in St. Vincent, I left the film wondering why they bothered casting that actor. For example, Melissa McCarthy isn't given much to do, besides be a single mom worried about her impending custody battle and so overworked she has to pawn her son off on her bitter alcoholic neighbor played by Bill Murray. It isn't that she's bad in the role, it's more that it's a very shallow role, giving her little to work with. Her only purpose is to get into situations at work that require her son to spend afternoons at the neighbors house, so we can spend time getting to know him and the troubled life he leads.
This is too bad, because Bill Murray gives an excellent performance as Vietnam veteran Vincent MacKenna. He's the one complicated character in the bunch, a crusty old man who disappears too frequently into his booze, and only friends appears to be a pregnant prostitute (Naomi Watts) and his cat, who is about as friendly as he is. But as time goes on, we get a better appreciation for his bitterness and issues. He has a gambling problem on top of his alcoholism, and both of those have led to serious financial issues. This complicates matters for him, as he uses what money he doesn't drink or gamble away to keep his Alzheimer's suffering wife who lives in an upscale nursing home. The story of his friendship with his neighbor kid is fun to watch, even as it hits all the predictable beats for this type of film. And the end, while again very predictable, is pretty well earned. Were the movie around the central relationship better, this would easily be 50-60 spots higher on this list.
81. The Interview
Not every battle over censorship, whether voluntary or not, is over the likes of Ulysses. In fact, the most crucial debates often revolve around works of art or culture that are of questionable quality or taste. Such as it is with The Interview.
To be fair, The Interview was better than I expected. It certainly was of questionable taste, but its goal was clearly to be funny, and not to be some sort of grand political statement. Like many of these type of "Seth Rogen" movies, the relationship between him and James Franco's celebrity interviewer is the core of the film, and also the catalyst for the most consistently good material. Randall Park is also pretty enjoyable as the little dictator that was the cause all of the hoopla over this movie.
But surpassing expectations is a relatively small achievement, particularly when those expectations weren't high to begin with. There are parts of the film where the jokes are few and far between, and it probably could have used a bit better targeting of its satire. Had the whole thing not gone down with the Sony hack and its temporary shelving by the studio, its likely this would have quickly faded from our collective consciousness pretty darn quickly.
80. Get on Up
It's very hard to take any traditional biopic, particularly ones about musicians, seriously since I watched Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. It's such a hilarious deconstruction of the cliches and formulas those kind of films like Ray and Walk the Line. From the shoe-horned introductions of famous characters (often portrayed by actors who look or sound nothing like the people they are playing) to the standard rise-fall-redemption pattern these movies tend to take, it's all skewered in a wonderfully hilarious way. So when I watched the trailer to Get on Up, I thought it was going to be an epic failure to take any of the lessons revealed by Walk Hard and be a thoroughly miserable disaster.
It's to the movie's credit that despite following the "music biopic" formula pretty much note for note, it tends to rise above it thanks to a great performance by Chadwick Bozeman (seriously, I'm a bit surprised this performance didn't get more attention) as James Brown, and a story that is absolutely bonkers. It helps that James Brown was pretty bonkers himself, from his poverty-stricken childhood in the Jim Crow south, to his rise at the Godfather of Soul, to his run-ins with the law over his addictions and tax issues. I don't want to oversell this, as it's not exactly a great movie. But it isn't boring, which counts for something.
79. Corner Gas: The Movie
While I'm not a regular fan of the now departed Canadian sitcom Corner Gas like the rest of my family is, I have to say that I appreciate a lot about the show which gets a lot about life in small rural towns right. In a way, it's a less manic companion piece to Parks and Recreation, about the kind of town you'd find when you drive out of the county seat a ways towards the slowly decaying grain elevators on the horizon.
The movie feels like a very extended version of an episode of the show. Which is to say that it's a slight story with some personal stakes, but nothing too heavy on the line. Antics ensue, and by the end things are pretty much back to normal for the people of Dog River. It's hard to dislike a movie like this.
This movie was funded in part through crowdsourcing, which is far less controversial than Wish I was Here (at least in the U. S., perhaps Canadians consider Brent Butt their Zach Braff over it). In fact, my dad and my brother have their names in the credits as supporters of the film. In some respect, I think this shows the benefit of this kind of funding, as it uses self-evident demand to get something created that before may have been stifled because of its questionable benefit to the traditional methods of funding.
78. How to Train Your Dragon 2
There were times watching this film that I was certain this would be much, much higher on my year end list. After all, there are some truly magnificent scenes filled with stunning animation, some very good character moments, and the introduction of a character whose reappearance in Hiccup's life creates a strong conflict for both characters.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn't live up to those highs. Sure, there are very few lows with the film, and its enjoyable through most of its run. But it has a villain that is far too one dimensional to be interesting from a character standpoint, but not noteworthy enough to be enjoyed as a pure agent of chaos or destruction. It also commits a great disservice to a wonderfully structured character played by Cate Blanchett by effectively sidelining her and her impressive abilities during the final showdown. A bad sign of how I truly feel about a film is if I forgot I even saw it in the theater, and there have been times throughout the past year that I had to actively jog my memory about seeing this.
77. Noah
If you have to make a movie based on biblical stories, this is how you do it. Not with boring characters who do boring things, like Exodus: Gods and Kings, but with pre-industrial societies out of a Dethklok video, fallen rock monsters that look like the physical embodiment of Nick Nolte's voice (one of which is voiced by Nick Nolte), and animals lining up by themselves for their exclusive ticket on the Ark. If you ever wanted to watch Ray Winstone bite the head off of 50% of the extant population of a fake lizard, this is your chance to do it!
There were times I didn't know what exactly was being shown on the screen in front of me, but I enjoyed it still the same. The scenes where the animals congregate to get on the Ark are epically stunning, as is the scene of the history of life up to the point of our story. And the flood is portrayed in a way that conveys the horror of what the story entails for all but those safely aboard the Ark.
So why is this film so low on the list? Well, for starters we've reached the point where the difference between the next 40-50 movies is pretty low. In fact, if I were to watch each one between here and #30 or #25, I'd probably put many of them much higher on the list. However, Noah is this low because as wonderful as some of the scenes are, it doesn't work as well as a whole. Once again, we have a movie that has succumbed to "we need a big battle scene like Pelennor or Helms Deep" that's been clearly prevalent in producers' notes since December of 2002. In the back half, it feels less like the fever dream of the first half, and more concerned with hitting the familiar story notes of the biblical tale. Nevertheless, I'm glad I watched it on the big screen, as I imagine some of it's impact is blunted by the the small screens of televisions, tablets, and laptops.
76. The Trip to Italy
A sequel to the BBC show The Trip, this is a trifle of a film that is nevertheless aesthetically pleasing and fun to watch. There's very little conflict, beyond one of the characters having a small fling, and it feels like it was primarily an excuse for everybody involved to take a trip to Italy for a while during filming. It's often funny, occasionally thought provoking, and frequently beautiful to look at. Not only is the scenery gorgeous, but also the many meals which are filmed, every dish, even the ones I know I wouldn't like so much, making my mouth water. It's the best kind of movie to watch when you want something to see, but don't want to commit to something too substantial. Without a few of these, I'm sure I wouldn't have got to 100.
75. A Most Wanted Man
A Most Wanted Man is not Philip Seymour Hoffman's final film role to be released. That honor goes to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, which premieres later this year. However it's his final starring role. It's also one of his best, as he plays a cynical yet committed German intelligence agent. The film as a whole is pretty dour and humorless, but Hoffman's character does bring some humor into the often absurd, pretty much consistently soul-breaking business of gathering intelligence. Robin Wright is also good as an American agent who never quite seems to be telling the Germans everything they'd like to know. The film is a bit too bleak and dour for my tastes, but it certainly is a good showcase for the sorely missed Hoffman.
74. Magic in the Moonlight
Woody Allen's latest film, Magic in the Moonlight was a fun movie to watch that didn't leave much of an impact on me. The chemistry between Colin Firth and Emma Stone was certainly there (although it's yet another pairing of characters with a large difference in age in an Allen film, which given current allegations against him is certainly a bit squicky). And its fun seeing the doubting magician have his eyes as he begins to question if perhaps the medium played by Stone is actually the real deal. But all in all, there's not really much else I have to say about this one.
73. Still Alice
Truth be told, a scenario like what happens to the titular Alice (Julianne Moore) is something that worries, being a person who considers themselves well acquainted with their own mind. The thought of ending up with Alzheimers, whether the garden variety, or the rarer early-onset version, is something I'm concerned about, even though I've got a bit of a way to go before I really should worry. So watching Alice's mind rapidly betray her over a period of a few years was a bit tense. If you're looking for anything else to the story besides basically "she gets diagnosed and goes through the decay to near helplessness and incoherence", then you'll be sorely disappointed. There are some additional story lines involving the effect this has on her family's lives, particularly her husband (Alec Baldwin), and her youngest daughter (Kristin Stewart), but those are a distant second to Alice's story. This movie's worth seeing because most everything Moore is in usually is worth seeing, but beyond her performance and Stewart's, there's not much there.
72. Cake
Unlike pretty much every other one of the films on this list, Cake was one I didn't know even existed until after the New Year. It showed up at Streets of Woodfield for a week or two, and due to some awards buzz for Jennifer Aniston, I was curious. Her performance as the chronic pain suffering lawyer with a pretty terrible personality was pretty good, as she was able to convey the layers of physical and psychological pain she was going through due to terrible car accident she was in. Beyond her performance, and her oftentimes one-sided relationship with her housekeeper (Adriana Barraza), there's not much to the film. However, those two elements go pretty far in making the movie watchable, even if the "big twist" can be seen from a mile away.
71. Begin Again
The latest film from the director and writer of Once is one of the first films about the power (whether good or bad) of music that we've encountered on the list. Keep this in mind, as there will be several more before we're finished. Like Once, the film follows two characters who connect through music, in this case the music of songwriter Gretta James (Kiera Knightley). Dan Mulligan (Mark Ruffalo), a down and out music producer, hears her acoustic performance at a bar and realizes its potential to be a hit. The movie never gets better than the scene from his perspective of how with some additional production her song could be improved, as he imagines different instruments coming in to accompany her guitar and vocals. However, it's about as sweet as Once, and is an enjoyable experience, if pretty insubstantial.
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