It's December and
that time of the year again, Top ten of the year. To be completely
honest, i've not seen a huge amount of terrible films so I’ll be
omitting the top ten worst films which I usually do under each of the
good films in the countdown, instead i'll list the three worst films
of the year at the end of the list, so without further ado, lets kick
this into gear with numero 10....
THE BAGMAN (2014)
Dir. David Grovic
This film took me by
surprise. A relatively low key, low budget noir-ish tale about a
criminal hired to collect a bag and wait for the owner to pick it up.
A simple premise. Obviously if that was the entire premise then it
would be an incredibly dull film, however, our main man, Jack, played
with effortless cool by John Cusack, comes up against an assortment
of oddballs and criminals intent on getting the bag including a 6ft+
Eastern European hooker. Two Russian mobsters, a corrupt sheriff and
a sleazy, wheelchair bound motel owner played by Crispin Glover, all
anxious to get the bag. The owner of the bag and the big bad of the
movie is played by Robert De Niro in a role that shows one of the
greatest actors of all time having a blast playing the slightly camp
but ruthless Dragna. It's all wrapped up in a neat little darkly
comic crime thriller which is reminiscent of Grosse Point Blank and
Cusack's other motel thriller, Identity. The Dialogue has some issues
with the characters always asking if “you looked in the bag?” but
other than that it's a very fun, very cool little film well worth
your time.
GRAND PIANO
(2013/2014 U.K) Dir. Eugenio Mira
When I first heard the premise of Grand Piano I laughed, what is this
shit, Speed but at a piano?...seriously folks, this film was pretty
damn awesome and a great throwback to Hitchcock/De Palmer movies.
Frodo Baggins plays a once brilliant piano prodigy coaxed back into
the concert hall for one last show after the death of his mentor.
He's set to play the Mentor's prized custom built piano. As he sits
down to play, a red dot appears. A sniper has him in his sights and
unless he does what he says, he'll kill him and his wife, a famous
film star attending the concert. He wants frodo to play a piece of
music that is apparently impossible to play. The final notes are a
key, the key opens a hidden compartment in the piano containing the
fortune of the mentor, the sniper wants that fortune. It's a clever
set up for a tense 90 minute thrill ride. Much like my number 10
spot, Grand Piano stars John Cusack as the sniper, his cool sounding
voice is quite chilling as he blackmails and threatens Elijah Woods'
character. It shares similarities with Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth
with the sniper only heard for 90% of the film until the reveal at
the end. The film is beautifully shot too, there's some wonderful
twisting camera angles and tracking shots. I'd definitely recommend
it.
THE PURGE: ANARCHY
(2014) Dir. James DeMonaco
If like me you
thought the idea of the first Purge film was a great but were left
completely let down by the actual execution, the whole film being
just a run of the mill home invasion flick?, then Purge Anarchy is
what the first films idea should have been. What I don't get though
is how Anarchy is described and categorized as a horror film when it
is clearly a throwback to the darker, earlier action films of the
late 70s, early 80s like Escape From New York, Walter Hill's The
Warriors and even Enzo Castellari's The Bronx Warriors, none of which
are horror films. It's also a great addition to the totalitarian
sci-fi genre due to it's near future setting and how the government
controls both the crime rate and over population with it's “annual
Purge”. If the government can't kill off a few thousand people
without an uproar, legalize crime for 12 hours once a year and let
the people you control do it for you. That's what I loved about this
one. The film also boast Frank Grillo, essentially playing a
variation on the Punisher, which I have been saying for years now,
should be the next Frank Castle. Anywho, if you didn't like the first
Purge, don't let this one pass you by. It's totally badass....
GUARDIANS OF THE
GALAXY (2014) Dir. James Gunn.
Guardians of The
Galaxy only coming in at 7? what's wrong with you?...i'll tell you,
Guardians is an awesome film, it's probably the best film Marvel have
ever made, it has one of the best soundtracks of the year, it made a
superstar out of Chris Pratt and it was directed with affection by
James Gunn but, it didn't win me over as much as some of the other
films in the countdown, I wasn't blown away by it, I loved it don't
get me wrong but in an age where we have Star Trek, Star Wars,
Firefly, The Last Starfighter, Battlestar Galactica etc...it all felt
a bit too familiar. Saying that it was fun to see something a bit
different coming from Marvel, every year there's another Avengers
film coming at us building up to the Thanos/whatever the fuck it is
story line and even though GotG does follow that plot, it's a fun,
heavily referenced throwback to sci-fi space operas of the 70s and
80s and seems to have been written by someone with a genuine love for
the comic and for that genre. James Gunn does a
fantastic job with both script and directing duties and proved that
with complete control over the project, big studio pictures with 100+
mill budgets and director controlled projects can make a fuck load of
cash. Like I said, its the best Marvel film to date and bloody good
2hrs.
EDGE OF TOMORROW
(2014) Dir. Doug Liman
Edge Of
Tomorrow/Live.Die.Repeat/All You Need Is Kill or whatever the fuck
Warner decided the film is called is a terrific movie. Last year
Action Cruise got on my top ten with Oblivion, an underrated Sci-fi
gem, this year he gets on the list with this awesome sci-fi gem too.
Based on the book All You Need Is Kill by Japanese author Hiroshi
Sakurazaka, The film follows Military PR man Bill Gage, a soldier
with no combat experience forced to join the infantry as they prepare
to drop into battle on the shores of France against a seemingly
unstoppable alien race. During the attack Gage is killed but the
blood of an alien mixes with his DNA and he wakes up, forced to live
the day over and over again. He decides the only way to win the war
is to train, he's been given the gift of time and enlists the help of
Rita, The Angel of Verdan, a hero of the War. Rita had the same
ability as Gage and the two start to train, turning Gage into an
unstoppable killing machine. With it's mix of Groundhog Day and
Starship Troopers, Edge Of Tomorrow is a fresh, fast paced action
film with a budget bigger than Transformers 4 but an hour shorter and
it works, the film works on both it's great premise and the action
and is one of the best films produced by a major Hollywood studio in
a long ass time.
DAWN OF THE PLANET
OF THE APES (2014) Dir: Matt Reeves
If you recall two
years ago, my number one film of that years this films predecessor,
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. On reflection, that film should not
have been my number 1 it should have been my number 2 as I now feel
that Super 8 was the best film of that year. Fast forward to 2014 and
the sequel is on my top 10 of 2014. Dawn is a bigger, stronger, more
powerful film and eclipses the still brilliant first film thanks to
the scope and intensity that Dawn brings us that Rise never. Dawn is
The Road Warrior of the Apes movies. Rise was like Mad Max, a society
unaware it was on the brink of collapse only this time our downfall
was not oil shortages or nuclear war but angry monkeys with the
ability of speech. It's a few years after the Ape/Human war and San
Francisco is an overgrown, wasteland of abandoned buildings and
rusted cars. The human survivors live in the city while the ape
overlords kick back up in the forest under the leadership of Caeser,
portrayed brilliantly by Mo-Cap king Andy Serkis. I'm not going to
spoil the plot because some of you may have not seen it yet but mark
my words, it is a brilliant film. A blockbuster movie with a plot,
great action sequences, some of the best CGI i've ever seen but more
importantly it's a blockbuster hollywood movie with heart. I cannot
fault a single performance by anyone. See it, love it, buy the
T-Shirt. A fantastic post apocalyptic movie with monkeys.
THE RAID 2: BERENDAL
(2014) Dir. Gareth Evans
Holy Flirking
Schmidt Batman! The Raid 2 is insane. At two and a half hours, Welsh
director Gareth Evans has upped his game as an action director. His
first martial arts film, Merantu is a great example of an action
director learning his craft, The Raid is a great example of an action
director putting what he learnt on his first film into motion on a
bigger scale, The Raid 2 is an action director on top of his game.
Heavily influenced by Korean, Chinese and Japanese crime/Action
films, The Raid 2 takes us deep into the criminal underworld of
Jakarta, a city run by two families, an Indonesian crime family and
a Japanese crime family. They're on the brink of war and our hero
from the first film, Rama, is sent undercover into the Indonesian
family to take them down and weed out all the corrupt cops on their
pay roll. It's a hard film to summarize so I won't go into detail
here but you can read my extensive review HERE. When you go to see a
sequel to the raid you go for the action and holy fuck is this film
packed to the brim with some of greatest action sequences since John
Woo releases a couple of white doves during a bloody gun battle. Just
some highlights of fights for you...1) the prison yard fight, so
epic, brutal, dirty and violent 2) the night club dust up, again,
epic, brutal, violent 3) The warehouse fight..see 1 and 2, 4) that
car chase. 8 minutes of some of the most intense chase action since
Ronin, brilliantly shot using go-pro, Red camera and all going at
what seems like a top speed of a 120mph and finally 5) the final 1 on
1 kitchen fight, you need to see it to believe it. The Raid 2 is a
crime thriller/action masterclass which I personally would place next
to cinema's greatest gangster films like The Godfather, Infernal
Affairs, Scarface...Just an incredible incredible film.
COLD IN JULY (2014)
Dir. Jim Mickle
I'm a big supporter
of Director Jim Mickle and his writing/producing partner Nick Damici.
From their first low budget indie horror, Mulberry Street through
Stakeland and We Are What We Are, infact Stakeland appeared on my Top
10 of 2011. This time around Mickle and Damici swap out horror for
Souther Gothic Noir painted with an 80s neon brush. A twisting,
labyrinthine crime thriller about a man who kills an intruder only
for the intruder's ex-con father to show up on his door step all
menacing and shit, but not all is as it seems as the plot unfolds the
events of the beginning unravel to reveal a darker much more sinister
story and see's the two men teaming up with a dodgy private
investigator to take down some nefarious persons. I really don't want
to give anything away because Cold In July is a film that needs to be
seen with no prior knowledge of the twists. It's beautifully shot and
scored and the screenplay by Mickle and Damici is wonderfully dark
and at time darkly funny. Add to the pot three outstanding central
performances from Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepherd and Don Johnson, an
80s synth score from the likes of Dynatron (check out their Cosmo
black track that appear in the film) and a lot of 80s nostalgia such
as VHS tapes etc and you have your self an absolutely stunning
achievement in crime cinema.
SNOWPIERCER
(2013/2014 U.K) Dir. Joon-ho Bong
A complete fuck up
on the Weinstein marketing front, Snowpiercer died a death in the U.S
because Bob and Harvey Weinstein decided to cut the film by 20 mins
to concentrate on the action of Snowpiercer and release it wide, when
met with a humongous outcry from cinema goers and cinefiles, the
Weinsteins dropped the film, essentially burying it. It appeared at a
few festivals to critical acclaim and had a very very very limited
theatrical run but then disappeared reapearing on Netflix and then on
a special edition blu-ray from Anchor Bay. The film is outstanding. A
truly breathtaking science fiction film that plays on the themes of
class and survival all set aboard a perpetual motion train that
continually circles the globe after we get thrown into a new ice age.
The Weinsteins didn't give the film or the film's director, Korean
director Joon-Ho Bong, the respect they so rightfully deserved. I’ve
read a lot people saying how the film is unrealistic and how the rear
passengers should be grateful for having a place on board, but these
arguments are always killed by intelligent responses about the
political aspects of the film, the hierarchy and that the themes and
ideas set out in the film are more than relevant to what's happening
in the world right now. The poor will eventually take no more
bullshit from the rich and will revolt, this happened here in the U.K
a few years back when under privileged youth's decided to make a
statement the suits in the government by rioting in London, sure a
lot of the rioters were doing it to get free shit but a certain
percentage did it to lash out at the lack of money, jobs, food etc
available for youngsters in todays society who come from a poor
background while the suits in office sit in swanky restaurants eating
caviare and drinking champaign on their huge yearly bonus. It's these
important themes that resonated with me when I first saw Snowpiercer
and it's what made me absolutely love it. It's one of the best social
commentaries on film since Robocop ('87) or Terry Gilliam's Brazil
('85). The film also boast some fantastic performances from Chris
Evans, Jamie Bell and John Hurt as well Korean superstar Kang-Ho Song
(The Host) but the most insane performance comes from Tilda Swinton's
Yorkshire accented, buck toothed emissary, Mason. An outstanding film
that was never given the respect it so rightfully deserved.
THE GUEST (2014)
Dir. Adam Winguard
When The Guest
started showing at film festivals around the globe to acclaim, so my
interest was piqued quite quickly. The reviews likened the film to
The Terminator and Halloween and how it was a good old fashioned
throwback to those type of unstoppable killing machines you find in
early 80s exploitation films like The Exterminator. So I was buzzing
off the bat. When I finally got the chance to see it, it blew my
mind, yes it had the sense of those films but it was entirely it's
own beast. Taking cues from everything from The Terminator,
Halloween, The Stepfather and even Universal Soldier, Winguard and
his co-writer/producer Simon Barrett crafted an effective, tense,
funny and violent action horror film with a great 80s synth style
soundtrack much like my number three choice, Cold In July. For me, a
fan of 80s cinema, these homages and the soundtrack transported me
back to being a teenager, a time when I discovered a lot of my
favourite genre films from that decade. The plot follows a young man
who turns up on the doorstep of the family claiming to be a friend of
their recently deceased soldier son. They invite the stranger into
their home and he slowly infiltrates their family, befriending the
mother, the father and the son but not the daughter who begins to get
suspicious of their new guest. As the story unfolds, the film does
what I like to refer to as the “from dusk till dawn switch-up”
going from a slowburn psychological drama akin to Single White Female
into a fast paced, violent shoot 'em up, slasher action horror. Some
people have found this switch up to be a bit jarring but I love it
when films switch tone, it's happened in a few films where i've been
losing interest but then as the film switches tone my attention has
been grabbed and I get really pumped for the film. This happened
recently with a film that just missed out on making the top 10, a
horror film called Starry Eyes (I recommend it). The film also boasts
some pretty great performances, the obvious one being Dan Stevens,
the former Downton Abby actor who puts in a chilling yet darkly
humorous performance as David, the titles Guest. A man with
unbelievable skill at despatching people. Then we have genre fave,
Leland Orser (Taken, Alien Resurrection) as the borderline alcoholic
father who almost see's David as a surrogate son, Sheila Kelly (L.A
Law, Lost) as the grieving mother, Brendan Mayer (Tooth Fairy) as the
bullied son who David befriends and teaches how to defend himself and
the daughter, played by newcomer Maika Munroe (The Bling Ring) who
bares a striking resemblance to Amber Heard. Add into that mix a cast
of support characters played by Joel David Moore, Ethan Embry and
Lance Reddick. It's really well shot, has a great score and the
performances are stand out, also, if you're a fan of John Carpenter's
Halloween, you'll bloody love this as it pays a lot of homage to that
film and there's a nice little Halloween 3 reference towards the end.
I absolutely loved
The Guest and I haven't stopped thinking about it since watching it a
month ago so if a film can do that it deserves to be my number 1 film
of 2014.
Well there we have
it folks, another year has passed and another top 10 list completed.
There were some films that I never got around to viewing such as
Fury, The Babadook, Predestination and the remake of Annie (yeah
right!) but as my countdowns go from December to December they might
very well end up on next years top 10.
Some of the films
that just missed out on the countdown which I highly recommend are...
- Afflicted
- Non-Stop
- In The Blood
- Lone Survivor
- Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
- Frozen
- Dragon Day
- All Cheerleaders Die
- The Lego Movie
- Lucy
- Horns
- Housebound
- Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead
- Starry Eyes.
I do recommend you
check these films out. Now usually I insert my top ten worst films of
the year but I couldn't work out a list of ten worst films so here
are my 4 worst films of the year...
TRANSFORMERS 4
(2014) Dir. Michael Bay
Fuck off Bay, enough
is enough already and jesus mate, does it need to be 3hrs long?
3 DAYS TO KILL
(2014) Dir. McG
If I wanted to watch
an action movie with Kevin Costner being a total badass, i'd watch
Waterworld, other wise this painful family drama with lackluster
action scenes is dead on arrival. Watch Taken instead.
EXTRATERRESTRIAL
(2014) Dir. The Vicious Bros
Clichéd, familiar,
dumb, badly written, rip off of better movies. Fuck the vicious bros.
NEED FOR SPEED
(2014) Dir. Scott Waugh
What happened to
Jesse Pinkman at the end of Breaking Bad when he drove off into the
night?...he drove right into this turd of a film which ripped off the
plot of Vanishing point. Dull and uninspired storytelling. Good chase
scenes though...
Well there we have
it folks. Have a great Christmas and a fucking awesome 2015....Peace
Out!
No comments:
Post a Comment