One of the most honest and straightforward movies of 2014 saw two of the most well-known Saturday Night Live alums take on roles that were very, very different from anything we had seen them in before. Rian Johnson’s (Looper, The Brothers Bloom) The Skeleton Twins explores mental health, a topic that hits very close to home for me. This is one of those movies categorized as a hit-or-miss drama/comedy, but it is hardly a comedy. This isn’t the heaviest movie in the entire world, but you certainly won’t be smiling much as you empathize with the leads Maggie (Wiig – Bridesmaids, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) and Milo (Hader – Year One, Superbad). You might spend the first 15-30 minutes wondering when the comedy is coming, only to realize that maybe it’s not. This is something much more profound. This is a film for film enthusiasts worldwide.
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Divergent (2014)
In the mold of The Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Maze Runner, and other young adult book franchises comes the surprisingly good Divergent. A surefire box office success because of the successful book series, Divergent did not do quite as well with the critics (41%) as well as the first Hunger Games (84%), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (80%), or The Fellowship of the Ring (91%), but was comparable with the other two. Interestingly, the Divergent franchise has the best cast of any of these movies, even though it is probably the least known. The franchise is four books, and we’ll get four movies from them.
Child of God (2014)
I am a big fan of author Cormac McCarthy. I loved his novel “The Road” and thought the film adaptation was spectacular. It was one of those movies I went into not knowing what to expect, but came out loving it. I read the book after seeing The Road in the theater, and the book was just as good as the movie. I liked the movie so much that I created a trailer for it. I enjoyed No Country for Old Men, but I certainly didn’t think it was the best movie of 2007. I have yet to read the novel, but I will at some point. I picked up two more of his novels this past year. The first was a book called “Outer Limits,” which I enjoyed parts of. The second was “Child of God,” parts of which I enjoyed. I thought both movies were random and very different from “The Road” and how I would expect “No Country for Old Men” to read. I had heard that James Franco (As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury) was directing an adaptation of a McCarthy novel, but I didn’t know it was Child of God until I finished the book.
Exodus: Gods and Kings
Exodus: Gods and Men was a movie I thought would be great, then terrible, and then okay. It ended up being pretty good. I am a massive fan of Christian Bale (The Dark Knight Rises, Out of the Furnace) and Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator). Bale has had numerous hits over the last decade. I’ve seen 13 of his previous 15 movies, and I’ve been a big fan of all of them. Once as reliable as they come, Scott has had some misses in recent years, most notably The Counselor and Robin Hood. Both of these movies should have been great, and both underwhelmed.
Bale plays the role of Moses. Say what you will about Bale, but he’s not afraid to venture outside the norm. He takes chances. I love him as an actor. In the last 5+ years, only a handful of actors have been better (DiCaprio, Pitt, Gosling, Gordon-Levitt, Michael Fassbender, Bradley Cooper, and Tom Hardy) come to mind. The traditional heavyweights outside DiCaprio and Pitt (Hanks, Will Smith, Washington, Cruise, Day-Lewis, De Niro, etc.) have dropped out of the spotlight. Others (Day-Lewis, Hanks) have fallen into the pattern of doing the same movie repeatedly (Tom Cruise saves the world, Denzel Washington saves a plane, a train, a subway, a boat from catastrophe, etc.). Others have gotten into the habit of just making movie after movie to earn a paycheck without the intent of making a great film (De Niro).
Still Alice (2014)
Still Alice is a slightly above-average movie with the best lead performance you’ll see from an actress all year. There are only a couple of shoo-ins at this year’s Academy Awards. I believe that most categories are predictable, but there will be a couple of surprises. The big ones that will not come as a surprise are Patricia Arquette (Best Supporting Actress – Boyhood) and Julianne Moore for her performance as a 50-year-old woman suffering from Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease in Still Alice. Each year, there is a movie that earns a significant award but is not recognized in any other category. This year, that movie is Still Alice. I’m not a huge fan of Moore. I think she’s good, but she’s slightly overrated. Nonetheless, she is due to be recognized, and this is the lead performance that is head and shoulders above the other contenders.