BEST MOVIES 2014

Expertise Provided By: Andrew O’Hehir, “Salon”

(1) BOYHOOD

Director Richard Linklater’s “American family masterpiece” tops the list for 2014. Filmed over 12 years, the movie has the breadth of a Russian novel and “a fascination with time (and with Texas) that is all Linklater.”

(2) LEVIATHAN

“A crackerjack saga about life in a spectacular corner of Putin’s Russia,” this political-social-familial drama conjures up echoes of Madame Bovery and Anna Karenina.

(3) INHERENT VICE

Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s shaggy 70’s detective yarn is a retelling of both Don Quixote and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, focused on an essential Anderson-Pynchon-Hunter S. Thompson obsession: Whatever happened to the American Dream?

(4) WINTER SLEEP

Turkish tale of money, class, and religion. Set in a stunning mountain landscape, “it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen.” Starring the stunning Melisa Sozen, the movie will reward viewers intrepid enough to tackle the 3 ½ hour running time.

(5) THE HOMESMAN

Director and co-star Tommy Lee Jones’ “beautiful but pitiless Western” is an unflinching depiction of American history in the mode of “12 Years a Slave.” Hilary Swank is magnificent as a woman transporting three mentally ill farm women from their desolate, lonely, and harsh life on the prairie back to civilization.

(6) UNDER THE SKIN

An “audacious, unfriendly and thoroughly masterful sci-fi nightmare.” Scarlet Johansson stars as a mysterious serial killer in director Jonathan Glazer’s “haunted vision of alienation and annihilation that you won’t soon, or ever, forget.”

(7) SNOWPIECER

Korean director Boon Joon-ho’s “stylish hallucinatory fable about apocalyptic class warfare about a train to nowhere.” Flashes of humor enliven the dark dystopian tale of the have-nots rebelling against the 1 percent.

(8) THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Wes Anderson’s whimsical pre-World War II farce, starring Ralph Fiennes and a fabulous cast of supporting characters. Beneath the fantastical and droll Gingerbread House aesthetic, Anderson explores “Nabokavian questions about the death of the past and the perversely painful nature of cultural memory.”

(9) THE IMMIGRANT

The marvelous Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix star in a luminous 1920’s drama about a penniless Polish immigrant at Ellis Island and a pimp who “befriends” her. A dark, rich classic American survival story “with an enigmatic and almost religious tableaux of sacrifice, transcendence and possible redemption.”

(10) A GIRL WALKS HOME AT NIGHT

A black and white vampire movie with dialogue in Farsi shot in Southern California. Seriously. Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour debut “throbs with meaning and emotion, with thwarted sexuality and the search for love…If you wish more movies felt like classic David Bowie albums, then climb aboard.”

(11) 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH

Documentary-ish portrait of post-punk singer-songwriter Nick Cave. The result is a “revelatory, loving and often beautiful study of a unique cultural fixture who has largely kept his relationships private.”

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