I love elimination style of anything because it narrows down to the best of the best in the end. And 2014 has already wrapped up and I’ve watched 62 movies out of hundreds.
This time I want a different style of reviewing, I want to include the process of elimination I’ve made in choosing the top 10 movies this year. Of course, it’ll be clear to everyone that most of the films I’ve seen this year are more like publicly known rather than those award winning acclaimed movies, which probably have greater story to some I’ve chosen. But let’s not ignore the fact that these movies that I’ve chosen are famous and box office hit for a reason.
There’ll be four parts in this review, and I’ll explain each below.
PART I:
In this part, I list down all the 62 films I’ve seen and got rid of those intolerable, or to be direct, totally HIDEOUS movies that are the fails of 2014.
For me, I guess the worst film I’ve seen would be ‘THE HUNGOVER GAMES’. I can’t even put on words on how bad it was: it even was worse than 2013’s ‘THIS IS THE END’, you have this comedy that’s trying hard to make a good spoof but it went from bad comedy to painful comedy.
And I think I would like to mention ‘SPIDER-MAN 2’ as well as one of the WORST films of 2014. I never really fancied the reboot because Toby McGuire’s version was ten times way better that this one which has a dysfunctional storyline, cast and villains and the Part 2 is worst in its much anticipation from an extravagant worldwide promotion.
‘STEP UP: ALL IN’ was another fail. Whatever happened to this awesome and cool dance film? It went down with its really cheesy storyline and cheap dialogues and dance showdowns.
PART II:
After filtering the films and taken away those I can’t tolerate; in this part, I already took away those movies that I CAN tolerate, or those we call the so-so films: not good but not bad either.
The film ‘UNDER THE SKIN’ is a complicated, artistic and has a life reality innuendo with it that sometimes borderline ridiculous and genius, but somehow I missed the point. Everybody’s ranting about how great this film was and their grand eureka moment in questioning things about life, but it did made me feel confused a bit, although I had my assumptions on what the point really is, but I’m not that sure.
The horror films ‘PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES’, ‘OCULUS’, and ‘ANNABELLE’ were for me just right but not that splendid especially on Annabelle which is really daunting but not as daunting as ‘THE CONJURING’. The story missed the mark here with Annabelle.
The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies as well is the film I have tolerated in 2014. It’s not really good, especially when you look at the three movies holistically, but it’s not bad as well since the last parts always are usually (if not tolerable) good (e.g. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2).
Disney movies such as ‘MALEFICENT’ and ‘BIG HERO 6’ are for me quite childish for my taste and are mediocre compared to the past renditions of twisted ‘SNOW WHITE’ story and the like. And as for the latter: ‘FROZEN’ which has been part of ‘BIG HERO 6’s promotion.
PART III:
Here on the third part, I rated the films on the scale of 1 to 10 (sounds like Baymax hehe), lowest to highest respectively, and the basis will always be the first film on top which is 300: Rise of an Empire. For whatever score I gave to that film, the score of the next film on the list will be compared to it, so on.
300: Rise of an Empire – 7
Divergent – 9
Captain America: The Winter Soldier – 10
Neighbors – 6
Godzilla – 6
X-Men: Days of Future Past – 8
A Million Ways to Die in the West – 6
22 Jump Street – 8
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – 8
Hercules – 8
Lucy – 7
Guardians of the Galaxy – 10
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 8
What If – 7
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – 7
The Maze Runner – 9
Gone Girl – 10
Horns – 8
Interstellar – 9
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – 9
The Interview – 8
The Grand Budapest Hotel – 8
Snowpiercer – 10
PART IV:
And finally, here I have the list of The Top 10 Films of 2014.
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Snowpiercer
- Gone Girl
- Divergent
- Interstellar
- The Maze Runner
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
- X-Men: Days of Future Past
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
When you ask me what’s the best film in 2014, I would say ‘CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER’… although ‘GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY’ is quite a bombshell last year, so I ended up rambling on what really is the top one. But since these two MARVEL films are on the same universe, but if we base it content-wise, I think CapAm wins the game… box office-wise and by winning the hearts of millions of people: Guardians wins. But I’ll go with content.
‘SNOWPIERCER’ is a huge superstar film in 2014 which awed me to the extreme. It’s very unique, very compelling and the awesome anecdote of reality surprised me especially in dealing with the cynicism in societal hierarchy.
‘GONE GIRL’ and ‘INTERSTELLAR’ are no-brainers upon including them to the list… I mean, we have David Fincher and Christopher Nolan here… what could go wrong?
Dystopian films ‘THE MAZE RUNNER’ and ‘THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY’ are in as well because of their really emotionally charged, rotten future conundrum that somehow reached from the screen to the hearts of the people.
‘X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST’ are in my 9th although I consider it as the greatest X-MEN film ever. And last but not the least is ‘DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES’ which was emotional, heartwarming, and just really good.
In a nutshell, 2014 is jam-packed of beautiful and amazing films. My list of top 10 is considered the best of the best, but those films I rated are already a good-watch in that sense like, ’22 JUMP STREET’, ‘HORNS’, ‘THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL’, ‘THE INTERVIEW’, ‘WHAT IF’ and many others.
And that’s it for 2014. Did I miss a movie? How about you, what were your favorites last year?
