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

Top 10: The Best of 2014

1. The Way He Looks/Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho - Daniel Ribeiro + Best Brazilian Movie of the Year + Best Debut Movie of the Year + Best Romance of the Year

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

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

4. The Look of Silence, documentary - Joshua Oppenheimer + Best Danish Movie of the Year

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

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

7. The Normal Heart, TV movie - Ryan Murphy + Best TV Movie of the Year  + Best Adaptation of the Year

8. Silicon Valley S1 - John Altschuler, Dave Krinsky and Mike Judge (creators) + Best New TV-series

9. 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

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

Other great 2014 movies and TV-series (in alphabetic order):

Alive Inside/Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Mind, documentary - 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

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

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

 

The Lego Movie - Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Leviathan/Левиафан/Leviafan - Andrey Zvyagintsev + Best Russian Movie of the Year + Best Big Flop Movie of the Year + Most Undeserved Flop of the Year + Best Societal Critique of the Year

Looking season 1  - Michael Lannan, creator + Best San Francisco Title 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

Olive Kitteridge, TV miniseries - Lisa Chodolenko + Best Miniseries of the Year + Best Maine Title of the Year

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

Speed Walking/Kapgang - Niels Arden Oplev 

Winter Sleep/Kış Uykusu - Nuri Bilge Ceylan + Best Turkish Movie of the Year
  
Good 2014 movies and TV-series (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

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

Love Is Strange - Ira Sachs

Sabotage - David Ayer + Most Expensive Flop of the Year

The Salvation - Kristian Levring

Sex Tape - Jake Kasdan

The Skeleton Twins - Craig Johnson

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 (creator)

Tusk - Kevin Smith + Strangest Movie of the Year

The Two Faces of January - Hossein Amini

Wild Tales/Relatos Salvajes - Damián Szifron + Best Argentinian Movie of the Year + Best Anthology of the Year

Bottom 10: The Worst of of 2014:

1. The Monuments Men - George Clooney

2.  300: Rise of an Empire - Noam Murro + Stupidest Movie of the Year + Worst Sequel of the Year

3. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - Marc Webb + Worst Poster of the Year

4. Before I Go to Sleep - Rowan Joffe

5. Sharknado 2: The Second One, TV movie - Anthony C. Ferrante

6. The Rover - David Michôd

7. Blind - Eskil Vogt

8. Mr. Peabody & Sherman - Rob Minkoff

9. 22 Jump Street - Phil Lord, Christopher Miller + Most Undeserved Hit of the Year

10. Unbroken - Angelina Jolie

Other failed, poor or mediocre 2014 movies:


Annabelle + Best Mega-Hit Movie of the Year
As Above, So Below - John Erick Dowdle + Best Mockumentary of the Year + Best Paris Movie of the Year
Dumb and Dumber To  
Hercules - Brett Ratner
Pawn Sacrifice 
Saint Laurent - Bertrand Bonello
She's Funny that Way - Peter Bogdanovich 
They Came Together  + Best New York Movie of the Year
While We're Young 
X-Men: Days of Future Past 

[68 titles in total]
 
Notes:

The 4th update adds just one title to the year total, Andrey Zvyagintsev's great drama Leviathan.
The Top 10 contains 7 masterpieces: Brazilian Daniel Ribeiro's youth romance debut, the stirring The Way He Looks is the year's best film, followed by Richard Linklater's phenomenal, many years in the making coming-of-age drama Boyhood and Xavier Dolan's propulsive Mommy. The list continues with Joshua Oppenheimer's deeply compelling documentary The Look of Silence, Wes Anderson's fabulous The Grand Budapest Hotel, Clint Eastwood's riveting American Sniper, John Altschuler, Dave Krinsky and Mike Judge's hilarious, clever Silicon Valley S1, Ryan Murphy's strong The Normal Heart TV movie, Roy Andersson's poignant, original A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and Tommy Lee Jones' grueling, marvelous The Homesman.

Other noteworthy, great titles this year include Michael Lannan's San Francisco drama series Looking S1, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's epic drama Winter Sleep, John Michael McDonagh's religious crime drama Calvary, Woody Allen's marvelous romcom Magic in the Moonlight, Dan Gilroy's eerie crime thriller Nightcrawler, Antoine Fuqua's effective revenge actioner The Equalizer, Gareth Edwards' fantastic Godzilla, Philippe Falardeau's hope-inspiring, great The Good Lie and Lisa Chodolenko's profoundly moving Olive Kitteridge adaptation miniseries.
While Richard Linklater, releasing masterpiece Boyhood and great Before Midnight, both critical and commercial hits, as well as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller enjoyed vast commercial success with the surprisingly great The Lego Movie and the not-so-great 22 Jump Street, others were less fortunate:
On the Bottom 10 list, George Clooney's awful The Monuments Men still takes the cake, followed by Noam Murro's CGI-stuffed, off-putting 300: Rise of an Empire and Marc Webb's stupendously expensive and still awfully boring The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The list goes on with Rowan Joffe's yawn-inducing memory loss thriller Before I Go to Sleep, Anthony C. Ferrante's Sharknado 2: The Second One, David Michôd's depressing, boring The Rover, Eskil Vogt's equally depressing and artsy Blind, Rob Minkoff's insipid Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's headache-inducing 22 Jump Street and finally Angelina Jolie's failed epic Unbroken. 
Other great filmmakers that disappointed this year with sub-par output include Bobby & Peter Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber To), Brett Ratner (Hercules), Peter Bogdanovich (She's Funny that Way), Noah Baumbach (While We're Young), David Wain (They Came Together) and Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past).

On the 2015 Oscars:

The academy missed most of the year's best films pretty adamantly 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 the sound mixing and editing Oscars. Patricia Arquette won Boyhood's scandalously only Oscar as Best Supporting Actress.
Predicted 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 one 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 as classy as most people had hoped. All in all the 2015 Oscars were very unmemorable.

IMDb's user-generated Top 10 most popular movies of 2014:

1.  Interstellar
2. Guardians of the Galaxy
3. Transformers: Age of Extinction
4. Whiplash
5. The Theory of Everything
6. Gone Girl
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
8. The Expendables 3
9. Paddington
10. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 

The 2014 Cannes Film Festival:

The year's jury was headed by Jane Campion. Olivier Dahan's ridiculed Grace of Monaco opened the fest, and the year's official poster featured a picture of Marcello Mastroianni from Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963).
The Palme d'Or went to Nuri Bilge Ceylan's great Winter Sleep. Other main prizes went to Kornél Mundruczó's White God (Un Certain Regard), Annie Silverstein's Skunk (Cinéfondation), Simón Mesa Soto's Leidi (Short Film Palm d'Or), Alice Rohrwacher's The Wonders (Grand Prix), Bennett Miller (Best Director, Foxcatcher), Julianne Moore (Best Actress, Maps to the Stars), Timothy Spall (Best Actor, Mr. Turner) among others.
The 18 films in the main competition were:
The Captive, Clouds of Sils Maria, Foxcatcher, Goodbye to Language, The Homesman, Jimmy's Hall, Leviathan, Maps to the Stars, Mommy, Mr. Turner, Saint Laurent, The Search, Still the Water, Timbuktu, Two Days, One Night, Wild Tales, Winter Sleep, The Wonders.

Biggest flops of the year:

[The loss is based solely on the cost and box office earnings for the films. Marketing costs and additional revenue (home video, TV rights and other auxiliary profits) are not taken into account]   

1. Mr. Peabody & Sherman - 37.52 mil. $ range
2. Sabotage - 28 mil. $ range
3. The Good Lie - 18.72 mil. $ range
4. Pawn Sacrifice - 16.8 mil. $ range
5. Before I Go to Sleep - 14.96 mil. $ range
6. The Homesman - 14.6 mil. $ range
7. The Salvation - 12.5 mil. $ range
8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - 9.44 mil. $ range
9. Saint Laurent - 8.8 mil. $ range
10. The Monuments Men - 8.12 mil. $ range
= Combined losses: 169.46 mil. $

Biggest hits of the year:

[The gain is based solely on the cost and box office earnings for the films. Marketing costs and additional revenue (home video, TV rights and other auxiliary profits) are not taken into account] 

1. American Sniper - 160.16 mil. $ range
2. The Lego Movie - 127.24 mil. $ range
3. Interstellar - 105.96 mil. $ range
4. X-Men: Days of Future Past - 99.12 mil. $ range 
5. Annabelle - 96.22 mil. $ range
6. The Imitation Game - 79.4 mil. $ range 
7. Guardians of the Galaxy - 77.02 mil. $ range
8. 22 Jump Street - 48.02 mil. $ range
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel - 46.92 mil. $ range
10. Godzilla - 35.76 mil. $ range
= Combined profits: 875.82 mil. $
 
 
2014 titles still on the watch-list:

Selma, Ride, Big Hero 6, Citizenfour, Iris, Trash, Inherent Vice, Elephant Song, Still Alice, Blackfoot Trail, Adult Beginners, Song of the Sea, Big Game, Welcome to Me, The Boxtrolls, Far from Men, Goodnight Mummy, Heaven Knows What, The Salt of the Earth, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Virunga, We'll Never Have Paris, Break Point, Wild Canaries, Boys, What We Do in the Shadows, To Be Takei, Last Days in Vietnam, The Overnighters, Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead, Cesar Chavez, Kelly & Cal, Zero Motivation, Rob the Mob, Walk of Shame, Mr. Turner, Kick, Tammy, Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Humbling, This Is Where I Leave You, I Am Ali, Serena, Sex Ed, Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, Salem S1, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Paddington, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Into the Woods, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Drop, The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay - Part 1, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Noah, I Origins, Big Eyes, That Awkward Moment, Night at the Museum 3, The Other Woman, The Purge: Anarki, The Raid 2, A Most Violent Year, Love & Mercy, White Bird in a Blizzard, '71, Jersey Boys, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The One I Love, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Muppets Most Wanted, Madame Bovary, White God, Samba, Theeb, Marnie, Bear Story, Idiotsitter S1, The Wonders, Still the Water, The Search, Goodbye to Language, The Captive

Previous annual lists:

2017 in films - according to Film Excess
2016 in films - according to Film Excess
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2014 in films - according to Film Excess
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV] 
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
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 IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
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 III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess 2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess    
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

 

What do you think of the lists?
Which films need to figure on the next update?
What are your favorite and least favorite 2014 movie and TV-series?