Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: 2014 in films and TV-series

12/27/2015

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

The Top 10 of 2014

1. Boyhood - Richard Linklater + Best Coming-of-Age Movie of the Year

2. Mommy - Xavier Dolan + Best Canadian Movie of the Year + Best Youth Movie of the Year

3. The Look of Silence - Joshua Oppenheimer + Best Danish Movie of the Year

4. The Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson + Best Ensemble of the Year + Best Adventure of the Year

5. American Sniper - Clint Eastwood + Best War Movie of the Year

6. The Normal Heart - Ryan Murphy + Best TV Movie of the Year + Best Adaptation of the Year

7. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence/En Duva Satt På en Gren och Funderade på Tillvaron - Roy Andersson + Best Swedish Movie of the Year

8. Godzilla - Gareth Edwards + Best Kaiju Movie of the Year + Sexiest Screen Couple of the Year (Elizabeth Olsen & Aaron Taylor-Johnson)

9. The Good Lie - Philippe Falardeau + Best True Story Movie of the Year

10. The Homesman - Tommy Lee Jones + Best Western of the Year

Other great 2014 films (in alphabetic order)

Alive Inside/Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Mind - Michael Rossato-Bennett

The Babadook - Jennifer Kent + Best Horror Movie of the Year + Best Australian Movie of the Year

Before Midnight - Richard Linklater

Calvary - John Michael McDonagh + Best Irish Movie of the Year

The Equalizer - Antoine Fuqua

Force Majeure/Turist - Ruben Östlund

Interstellar - Christopher Nolan + Best Science Fiction Movie of the Year

The Lego Movie - Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Looking season 1 - Michael Lannan, creator + Best New TV-Series of the Year

Magic in the Moonlight - Woody Allen + Best Romcom of the Year

Nightcrawler - Dan Gilroy

Non-Stop - Jaume Collet-Serra

Obvious Child - Gillian Robespierre + Best Independent Movie of the Year

Pride - Matthew Warchus + Best English Movie of the Year + Best LGBT Movie of the Year

The Salvation - Kristian Levring

Speed Walking/Kapgang - Niels Arden Oplev

Good 2014 films (in alphabetic order)

A Most Wanted Man - Anton Corbijn

Birdman - Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu

The Duke of Burgundy - Peter Strickland + Sexiest Movie of the Year

The Expendables 3 - Patrick Hughes

Guardians of the Galaxy - James Gunn + Best Blockbuster of the Year

The Imitation Game - Morten Tyldum

In Real Life/Det Andet Liv - Jonas Elmer

Love Is Strange - Ira Sachs

Sabotage - David Ayer

Sex Tape - Jake Kasdan

St. Vincent - Theodore Melfi

Timbuktu - Abderrahmane Sissako + Best Political Movie of the Year + Best Mauritanian Movie of the Year

True Detective - season 1 - Nic Pizzolatto

Tusk - Kevin Smith + Strangest Movie of the Year

The Two Faces of January - Hossein Amini

The Worst of 2014

1. The Monuments Men - George Clooney

2. Mr. Peabody & Sherman - Rob Minkoff

3. Hercules - Brett Ratner

4. Saint Laurent - Bertrand Bonello

Mediocre 2014 movies:

Dumb and Dumber To
While We're Young
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Remarks:

Adding 22 titles, this first updated edition of the 2014 lists gets the title count up to 48. The next edition will be even more comprehensive.
The top 10 already contains 5 masterpieces, making 2014 an impressive movie year already: Remaining in top is Richard Linklater's 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood, followed by Xavier Dolan's propulsive Mommy and Joshua Oppenheimer's deeply stirring documentary The Look of Silence. Wes Anderson's fabulous The Grand Budapest Hotel and Clint Eastwood's riveting American Sniper are the two remaining masterpieces. The last five slots are filled out by Ryan Murphy's strong The Normal Heart TV movie, Roy Andersson's poignant, original A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Gareth Edwards' fantastic Godzilla, Philippe Falardeau's hope-inspiring, great The Good Lie and finally Tommy Lee Jones' grueling, marvelous The Homesman. Falling from the top 10 this year are Michael Lannan's Looking season 1, John Michael McDonagh's Calvary, Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight, Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Antoine Fuqua's The Equalizer.
At the other end of the scale, the worst of list only comprises 4 titles so far: George Clooney's awful The Monuments Men, Rob Minkoff's insipid Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Brett Ratner's equally insipid Hercules and Bertrand Bonello's inflated Saint Laurent.

Notes on the 2015 Oscars:

The academy missed most of the year's best films pretty spectacularly this year, as it threw most of its love on the just good Birdman:
Birdman won 4 awards, for Best Picture, Director (Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu), Original Screenplay and Cinematography (Emanuel Lubezki).
Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor for The Theory of Everything; Julianne Moore Best Actress for Still Alice. J. K. Simmons won Best Supporting Actor for Whiplash, which also won sound mixing and editing Oscars. Patricia Arquette won Boyhood's scandalously only Oscar as Best Supporting Actress.
Favorite The Imitation Game only won Best Adapted Screenplay (Graham Moore). The Grand Budapest Hotel won for Costumes, Hairstyling and Makeup, Score (Alexandre Desplat) and Production Design, equaling Birdman's 4 wins, though in lesser categories. American Sniper, another of the year's absolute best films, won only won award, for sound mixing. Interstellar won for visual effects and Selma for Best Song (Glory).
Best Animated Short was Feast, Live-Action The Telephone Call, Documentary Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1. Best Feature Documentary was Citizenfour. Best Foreign Film, ahead of Tangerines, Leviathan, Wild Tales and Timbuktu, was Poland's Pawel Pawlikowski's great Ida. Disney won Best Animated Feature for Big Hero 6.
Honorary awards went to Hayao Miyazaki, Maureen O'Hara, Jean-Claude Carrière and Harry Belafonte.
Neil Patrick Harris hosted the show and wasn't nearly as funny or classy as most people had hoped. All in all the 2015 Oscars were very unmemorable.

2014 titles still on the watch-list:

Selma, Ride, Skin Trade, Big Hero 6, Citizenfour, Iris, Trash, Inherent Vice, Gone Girl, Elephant Song, Still Alice, Blackfoot Trail, Adult Beginners, The Theory of Everything, Song of the Sea, Big Game, Welcome to Me, Before I Go to Sleep, The Boxtrolls, Far from Men, Goodnight Mummy, Wild, She's Funny That Way, Heaven Knows What, Leviathan, The Salt of the Earth, Two Days, One Night, Wild Tales, The Fault in Our Stars, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Mr. Turner, Virunga, We'll Never Have Paris, Break Point, Wild Canaries, The Way He Looks, Boys, What We Do in the Shadows, To Be Takei, Last Days in Vietnam, Whiplash The Overnighters, The Skeleton Twins, Life Itself, Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead, Cesar Chavez, They Came Together, Kelly & Cal, Zero Motivation, Rob the Mob, Walk of Shame, Grace of Monaco, Mr. Turner, Maps to the Stars, Kick, Tammy, Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Humbling, This Is Where I Leave You, I Am Ali, Serena, Sex Ed, Selma, Annie, Unbroken and The Interview and Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.

Previous annual lists:
2014 in films - according to Film Excess
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess

What have been your best and worst 2014 movie experiences?
What has surprised positively and what has disappointed you?
Any 2014 movie or TV-series that isn't yet but needs to be on Film Excess' watch-list?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (15-24)

12/27/2015

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

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