1. her
Ultimately, her is asking you some tough questions. Do we need technology, or do we need people? Or do we just need to work on being happy, with whomever or whatever makes us so? That's for you to decide. What I know is that in a season of film so full of watered-down shit that I struggle to find anything to say about it other than "Don't bother", it's so refreshing and overwhelming to experience a film so honest and heartfelt and personal and raw and insightful and challenging and just fucking perfect that I have so much to say I struggle to find the place to start. Thank her.
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
I imagine it would have been tempting to play it safe with Guardians of the Galaxy, to merely pepper the self-referential humour into it the same way Thor: The Dark World did. Instead, they latched onto it with full conviction, delivering a movie with five violent, cynical, morally-questionable jerks that it then asks us to fall in love with. But we do, because as Star-Lord says, "I may be an a-hole, but I'm not 100% a dick." It's also, verbose character analyses aside, a ridiculously entertaining good time at the movies. Marvel have been putting out quality films one after another, but they've finally made one that's going to be memorable. My inner twelve-year-old could not be happier. Go see it. See it twice.
1. Calvary
The Catholic church hasn't been the most popular of late. As more and more evidence of its countless covered-up incidents of child abuse has been revealed, the church has found itself at the ire of much of the world. I think one of the reasons I love Calvary so much is that it has the stones to stand bravely in front of the angry mob in defence. Father Lavelle theorises in one of the film's later scenes that people spend too much time focusing on sin, and not enough on virtues, going on to cite forgiveness as a particularly underrated quality, which stems from the film's central idea that spirituality and faith have never been the problem. Organisation of them has.
1. Interstellar
Personally, I'm so grateful there are still people that have the ability (read: money) to create films so full of ambition, and ideas, and love for the craft, and love for us, even if they're imperfect experiences. When the majority of Hollywood productions can't get much further than "What if, like, Dracula was, like, a superhero?", I'll more than happily take one film that shoots for the heavens with zero care for how far it falls short. It's just icing on the cake that it shatters the stratosphere. Stop getting stroppy about the science and just go see a movie. Christopher Nolan is one of the few people left making them.
1. The Babadook
So, The Babadook is pretty gutsy as far as narratives go, and it approaches being a horror flick with the same confidence. Jennifer Kent takes a huge gamble by having Amelia read The Babadook almost in its entirety fifteen minutes in. The cat's out of the bag in terms of what the monster is going to look like, something movies like this often rely on to generate interest. It works here, though, partly because of the established tone I mentioned, leaving you in a constant state of anticipated terror regardless of whether or not you've seen the ghost, but mostly because she understands that the supernatural boogeyman is far less terrifying than the possibility of a real one. ... It's also, above all else, a top-notch Australian production that, by taking genuine, relatable human drama and visualising it as a monster, succeeds where many fail in making a horror movie that's actually horrific.
1. The Lego Movie
The writing perfectly captures the play time dialogue you used to make, adding gloriously innocent depth and excitement to what is a bunch of pegged pieces of plastic stuck to a mat. It makes it all the more heartbreaking when the reveal comes that this isn't the child's Lego. It's his dad's: a man who always followed the instructions, who created perfect little universes that didn't stray a single brick from the box, who glued his pieces to the board so that there can never be any irregularities or innovations. Because he's afraid. Afraid that if he tries to be creative, he'll fail. Afraid that if he goes against the instructions, he'll be ridiculed. But that's the beauty of Lego: you can't fail. If it looks bad, just pull it apart and try it again. Pull it apart anyway! The possibilities are endless. The Lego hero stares up at the Lego villain, as the scene is mirrored with the child looking up at his father, and he says, "You don't have to be the bad guy. You are the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe. And you are capable of amazing things." Jesus, I cried buckets.
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
My absolute favourite thing about The Grand Budapest Hotel comes from one man asking another a question, and like a good storyteller, he knows that a question is just an opportunity to tell a tale. How did Zero come to own the building? That isn't really answered until the last couple of minutes. Does that make it a bad story? We come to the last shot of the film. The young girl is still sat by the grave, reading the book. The film is the author's retelling of Zero's account of his childhood memories. There must be something worth hearing in a story so old.
1. Godzilla
Do you want to know why movies like Transformers or The Hobbit make you tired? It's not the length. It's the fact that your awareness of its falsity is made all the more apparent by its impossible cinematography. When you can do so much of the special thing, it ceases to be special. Godzilla understands this, and I can't stress this enough, fucking perfectly. If we as humanity are the protagonist, the movie is seen through our eyes, and this is done by keeping the camera stuck firmly on two legs. We catch glimpses of these humongous beasts through windshields, or from a rooftop, or from inside the goggles of a paratrooper descending into the den of Gods. If the camera is level, it's because we're looking out of a high-rise window, otherwise the camera is looking up. This is all to elicit a particular emotion from the audience. It's not excitement, it's not tension and it's not fear: it's awe.
1. The Wolf of Wall Street
In the wrong hands, The Wolf of Wall Street could have easily been a dopey, heavy-handed anti-capitalism flick. Thankfully, it's smart enough to not be anti-anything. If anything, it's anti-addiction to things that are addictive, but even that's not really the case. It's simply about the nature of people, specifically those that seize on opportunity and allow it to consume them. As hard as it may be to hear, Jordan Belfort, the coke-sniffing, midget-tossing, two-timing, wife-bashing, money-stealing, no-good, dirty lying rat, isn't a monster. He's a person, and he used to be just like you. And you can be just like him. All you've got to do is listen closely.
1. 12 Years a Slave
At just over two hours, it's one of the few times that the phrase "emotionally draining" isn't just a couple of buzz words. There were more than a few times in the film I found myself thinking, "Hit the space bar and take five", because what I was watching was so fucking harrowing that I was fidgeting, unable to get comfortable and desperate for a brief moment of reprieve. And then I realised that was the point. It's hard to watch because it should be. This is a film built to transcend race, religion or politics and just put you in the shoes of a human being legally recognised as a slave. Solomon Northup received no moment of reprieve, so why should you?
Honourable Mentions
The Rover
The Rover's most impressive quality is its realisation that the apocalypse would probably be just as tedious and boring as what came before it. It also recognises that, chances are, people won't change their tune or realise that simply surviving is the only thing that makes us human. ... They'll still cling furiously to the notion that, even in the face of the end of the world, they have a purpose and they're special. When they're not. They're all, collectively, just the ones clever, cowardly or lucky enough to have not bit the bullet yet.
What We Do In The Shadows
Watching dumb people fail is sad. Watching just-slightly-out-of-touch people fail is hilarious. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi know this. The New Zealander vampires that are the focus of mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows are good at what they do. Or at least, they were. The comedy of the film stems from their resistance to fully adapt to the changing world.
Gone Girl
We don't want reality. Reality is boring. We want to be someone else, to play a role. That is what Gone Girl is about at its core: who we are is rarely who we want to be. Most of us come to terms with that, make peace with the reality of our situation. Some of us don't. Some of us see meeting a new person as a chance to be a new person. But what happens when you like the person you're pretending to be more than the person you are?
Bottom Five
Wolf Creek 2
In the end, Wolf Creek 2 is just too dopey: it wants to deliver a film that salutes the first film and treads new ground, but its method to achieve that is to remove maturity and push everything into excess, and the result is a morally empty maggot of a film that says nothing. It's a film that's clearly satirising the [racism] that runs rampant through Australia, but it's so fucking moronic in its delivery that it winds up kind of championing it.
Deliver Us From Evil
When the end of a so-called horror film's second act is a knife fight in a stairwell between a muscled-up douchebag and a red-eyed monster man, that's the cue to vow never to watch an "Inspired by true events" horror movie again, get up, walk out and salvage what's left of your Sunday afternoon with something a little less moronic. It's what Eric Bana would want you to do.
Sin Titty 2: A Dame to Kill For
What does it say of your movie when you're only willing to let a woman have some depth if she's got her tits out? What does it say of your movie when the most I got out of it was relief that there's still one person with some say in Hollywood that cares about Mickey Rourke? What does it say of your movie when your sixty-five million dollar production only makes two on its opening day? Go home, Sin City 2. You're drunk.
Need for Speed
Need For Speed is the simple story of a small town American mechanic who causes the injuries and occasional death of countless civilians, cops and fellow racers because he gotta go fast. Or his friend died or something, who fucking cares? If you want to sit in pain for two hours, save your money and headbutt a brick.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
It fucking sucked.
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