The Best Films of the Year (So Far)

"Locke"

It's been an exceptional year for movies, a point that will be driven into the ground given the glut of quality movies coming in the coming months. Fall is, of course, Oscar season, but this year it just seems like an embarrassment of riches. From big prestige pics like "Interstellar" and "Fury" to the artier likes of "Birdman" and "Nightcrawler", there's a little something for everyone. This is of course, a blessing and a treat, but it seems inevitable that some of the films from the other nine months might get lost in the shuffle. It seems now like a better time than any to take stock of what has truly been a magnificent year for cinema.







THE BEST

"Locke" - I have to admit, my expectations for this were tempered. Yes, Tom Hardy is one of the finest young actors of today, but Steven Knight, the gifted writer of "Eastern Promises" (among others) stumbled a bit with his debut feature, "Redemption" which contained in it all the wit and nuance of a sledgehammer. However, all these doubts were tossed aside as soon as the lights went down in the theater: "Locke" is the kind of movie that gives movies a good name. It's a classic story - a man struggles to to live his life according to his own set of morals, but with the twist being that the entire picture plays out over a series of phone calls: Hardy is the only actor we ever actually see. In the age of whiz-bang gimmickry and over-produced spectacle, it's refreshing to see stripped-down, old-fashioned filmmaking make a comeback.

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" - Speaking of old-fashioned, you'd be hard-pressed to find a movie as wildly retro as Wes Anderson's latest, about a fey hotel concierge and his myriad misadventures. Unlike Anderson's last film, the rather twee "Moonrise Kingdom", this is not simply a nostalgic pastiche, but a standalone success that hearkens back to the days of Ernst Lubitsch without tying itself too deeply to its obvious influences. Anderson's greatest success, however, is tempering his distinctive, almost alarmingly meticulous style with genuine pathos, a balance with which he has often struggled (see: "The Darjeeling Limited"). "Budapest" is simultaneously lively and melancholic, a perfectly realized eulogy to a bygone era. Side note: the ensemble cast is one of the best of the year, with Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzmann, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, F. Murray Abraham, and Willem Dafoe all turning in performances of varying shades of brilliant.

"Starred Up"- The last few years have seen a number of young actors emerge with powerhouse showcase pictures; Tom Hardy in "Bronson" and Michael Fassbender in "Hunger" spring to mind. But Hardy and Fassbender had better watch their backs, because Jack O'Connell is here. The young star of David Mackenzie's new prison drama has all the trappings of a star in the making: he oozes charisma and in this film seems not to play the role so much as he slips into it like a tailored glove. All this might indicate that it's a showcase and nothing more, but that's reductive. A searing father and son drama that just happens to be set in a max security facility, "Starred Up" presents a complete and remarkably sophisticated family dynamic one might not expect from a film that features a man brawling prison guards with a pair of broken chair legs. At the risk of using a ludicrously overused term, this is nothing if not an unqualified tour-de-force.

"Frank" - This must be the decade of the mediocre musician movie, because less than a year after the Coens' "Inside Llewyn Davis" comes the latest from Lenny Abrahamson. While that first picture followed a talented, self-defeating folk singer, "Frank" is about a man so mediocre it borders on comical in the film. Domhnall Gleeson plays Jon, a keyboardist who falls in with an offbeat (to put it mildly) band led by the eponymous, mysterious Frank (Michael Fassbender, mostly obscured beneath a massive, paper-mache mask) as they struggle with their artistic and commercial endeavors. The brilliance of "Frank" is that it's essentially about accepting one's own mediocrity; and while there is much more going on in the film, it's almost unheard of for a film to treat this kind of subject matter with the wit, grace and humor as is on display here. The character dynamics are also wonderfully realized: Abrahamson and his cast create a tight-knit ensemble that sizzles with chemistry. A incomparable picture.

"Blue Ruin" - In the age in which studios release trailers, extended trailers, behind the scenes featurettes, and context-free clips of the film long before it's released, it's best to know as little as possible about "Blue Ruin" as possible. That's not to say it's got a Shyamalan-style twist, but every innovation and every small stroke of genius to be found here are best experienced cold. You see, this is the kind of movie that doesn't take your attention for granted. It doesn't pander to audience expectations. It earns your attention with every frame and every composition. When a gunshot rings out, you hear it. When blood is shed, you feel it. In other words, see this movie.
Bonus film: Jim Mickle's similarly visceral "Cold in July".



THE RUNNERS-UP

In the interest of time, I chose only five films, and while I do believe they were in a class of their own, there were several films that came pretty close. Just missing out was  John Michael McDonagh's acerbic examination of faith and virtue,"Calvary", and Drake Doremus deserves plaudits for his severely underrated romance "Breathe In". One of my favorite directors, James Gray, released a new film this year, entitled "The Immigrant", and while it had much to recommend, it was perhaps too elegiac for its own good. Alex van Warmerdam's Dutch nightmare "Borgman" was also colored with shades of brilliance, but leaned too heavily on the sadistic side to be of greater mention. Other also-rans include "The Raid 2", "Under the Skin", "Joe", "The Rover", and "Metro Manila".

THE ABSOLUTE WORST

I mostly try to avoid the "Tammy"s and the "Transformers"s of the world, so there have only been movies awful enough to deserve mention. "3 Days to Kill", directed by the consonant-loving McG could have erred on the fun side of Eurotrash but it's mostly a thickheaded, nonsensical, completely incoherent collage of images that someone decided to call a film. I had low expectations for "The Purge: Anarchy", but damned if James DeMonaco's film didn't disappoint. Nothing works in this film - it tries to be edgy and topical but ends up looking like the product of a screenwriter who can sort of remember watching CNN a couple nights ago. Finally, the film made by people who should have known better: "The Two Faces of January". Written and directed by Hossein Amini, who penned "Drive", and starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar "Llewyn Davis"Isaac, the best thing anyone could say about the movie is that it isn't longer. Everything from beginning to end seems like a miscalculation. The dialogue goes from cliched to cartoonish within a single scene, and it's difficult to take any of the characters seriously when they basically change personalities every twenty minutes or so. Amini also manages to direct the talent right out of his gifted lead actors; here the trio has the collective charisma of a muffin. Avoid "January" like the plague, if the plague could bore you to death.